Something a Bit Different

I’m not quite sure what to make of this.

Although, I can come up with waaaaaaaaaay too many jokes, which just tells me that I’m not nice.

Via these guys.

Save Gaia; Wear Fur

The Australian’s Janet Albrechtsen travels to Canada, and discovers that according to the Fur Council of Canada’s new ad campaign, fur is now eco-fashion.

Janet explains: “At the weekend, Canada’s National Post reported on an advertising campaign launched at the end of last year by the Fur Council of Canada, which represents 70,000 of the nation’s fur traders. These sassy new ads feature gorgeous women draped in fur, one under the heading “Environmental activist”.

The ads explain that buying a fur coat is the ecologically correct thing to do because fox stoles and mink coats are natural, renewable and sustainable. By contrast, synthetic furs are no more than by-products of the petro-chemical industry. Making a single faux fur coat can chew up 19 litres of petroleum, a non-renewable resource, says the council. Ergo, buying a fur coat is good for the planet.

“Welcome to the brave new world of climate change politics. The Fur Council’s campaign has been so successful that even comedians are sending out the “fur is green” message. Picked up by a Canadian comedy show, a camp-looking guy who resembles Borat in a fur coat gets off some great lines assuring us that a genuine fur coat creates less pollution than synthetic textiles and uses no child labour. “So say auf Wiedersehen to faux fur,” he smiles into the camera. “You wouldn’t wear a barrel of oil, so why would you wear a coat that is made from one?”

“You can find it on YouTube. And if you’re worried about being sprayed with paint by those nasty PETA people, funny fur boy has some advice: “Well, you just turn around and tell them that every spray can produces enough fluorocarbons to drown three polar bears. Who’s the killer now, PETA?” Fur boy’s advice if you want to do something good for the environment: “Kill a small animal and slap it on your noggin.”

UPDATE: 10,000 Free “Carbon Credits” to the first person who finds that YouTube video for me.

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Sound and fury, signifying pretty much nothing so far

Dr. Sanity, whose blog I check regularly to make sure that I am still… well… sane, has the perfect take on this season’s electoral primary circus. I absolutely hate the primaries, because it’s just a frickin’ horse race whose outcome is impossible to know until we get to the actual nomination process. And I don’t trust the slick packages that are presented to us as candidates. As noted, past history is the key:

Temperament is crucial in selecting a candidate in these troubled times who is able to make sound, rational decisions that will keep the country safe and, at the same time, hold true to our precious values and freedoms.

And, only by accident do we ever get a true picture of the candidate’s real temperaments during this primary season. Their personas are all pre-packaged and wrapped to perfection. The rare moments when we see the real person shining through the glitz is often so brief that it can be hard to recognize. And, even those rare moments are frequently scripted to make us think we are seeing the real person beneath, when in fact, we are seeing exactly what they want us to see.

Nothing that happens in Iowa, or New Hampshire, or frickin’ NeverNeverLand, matters to me, unless one of the candidates were to go postal and leap off the stage to choke out his opponents (or her opponents, I kind of can see Hillary being pushed past the limit). I’m not looking for slickness, or likability, or the usual empty promises. I’m looking for a president who won’t panic and let me down in a crunch, who won’t take crap from our enemies by turning the other cheek, who won’t pander to the loudest crowd of me-firsts for votes. Maybe it’s too much to ask for in the real world. But I can always hope.

The First Thing We Do…

~The Beef of God strolls into His pasture and lows~

God has a Beef with Lawyers.

begin rant/

Above is The Beef of God’s favorite coffee mug. I have a matching t-shirt too (two, actually) and on any day I wear it, at least a half-dozen people come up to me and say something like, “That’s GREAT! Where can I get one?!” I’ve never had even one say anything along the lines of, “That’s idiotic,” and I’ve had those t-shirts for almost ten years.

You wouldn’t believe the stories of woe at the hands of lawyers that I hear – well, perhaps you would. My favorite head-shakers are from divorced men with children who have been financially gutted by their ex-wives, who, 1) Cheated on them, 2) Divorced them, 3) Took custody of their children, and then, 4) Basically had the American “legal” system steal almost all of their assets. There probably isn’t any greater injustice than the way men are treated in divorce situations in this country, unless you take a look at our insane drug laws, of course.

I learned everything I needed to know about the American legal system when I was twelve years old. I was the sole witness to a hit-and-run incident involving one neighbor in her car and another neighbor’s dog. The neighbor in the car was a notorious old crone who drove a bulbous, black and yellow fifties-era Ford – there was nothing else even remotely like it in my neighborhood – so there was no mistaking who the driver was. The collie was not killed, but her shoulder and leg were broken, and the veterinary bills were quite high. So, there was a lawsuit, and yours truly – then a mere calf – was the witness.

When I was on the witness stand, the defence lawyer hammered and hammered me, and the lawyer-judge allowed him to, even though the plaitiff’s lawyer objected several times. I didn’t cry – I was far to filled with Angus Anger to cry – but it was the first time in my life that I felt real and genuine righteous rage. My ears began to ring, my peripheral vision narrowed, and I really and truly did see red.

The defence lawyer argued that since my view of the incident was with the automobile quartering away, and the impact would have been on the opposite side of the car, I couldn’t possibly have seen the dog get hit. Believe it, or not, the lawyer-judge actually bought this line of complete and utter horse-shit.

As a proud Calf Scout ought to do, I did my civic duty, told the truth, and yet justice was not done. To add insult to injury, I was abused in the process.

This. is. fact. Unlike probably 50% of the shit-decisions that come out of our courts today.

In the perfect clarity of my twelve year old mind, I said to myself, “These are bad men.” Bad men to me back then – this was 1970 – were the kind of sum-sucking maggots out of hell that John Wayne would have shot on sight, but not before telling them that they were scum-sucking maggots out of hell.

That lawyer and lawyer-judge were both very fortunate that my father – a fairly high ranking military officer by that time – was there that day, because my mother had 110% of her Irish up, and she was prepared to do them both grievious bodily harm. All five feet and one inch of her.

I hated every lawyer I met for decades afterward – my mom still hates ’em – and I told them so. “You’re a lawyer? Well then, you’re shit as a human being.” (I said that to a guy who butted in line ahead of me at an airline ticket counter one day, because – as he explained – he was a lawyer, and too important and in a hurry to wait in line like the rest of us second class citizens).

Fortunately, I have met some lawyers who are genuinely decent people over the recent years, so my views have moderated somewhat – but not too much – and today, incredibly, my closest friend is a lawyer. However, she’s not among what I call the “courtroom curs” as she makes her living basically protecting people from the predations of that type of filth.

Then, the internet has helped too: I think people like Glenn Reynolds and the Power Line guys are pretty cool lawyers (Wouldn’t “Shyster Line” be a GREAT name for an anti-lawyer blog!), but they have their own ignorant streaks and blind spots – sometimes I think law school must make Marine Book Camp look like a Cub Scout meeting in the indoctrination department – but then, don’t we all have our dysfunctional aspects.

So, I don’t hate all lawyers – just most of them – and I don’t think we should kill them all – we may not even have to kill (m)any of them ~bull-snort~ – but it may be time for us to stockpile a few thousand barrels of tar, a few metric tons of feathers, and a couple million rails to run a most them out of town on.

The US has the highest documented incarceration rate in the world – that’s right, in the Land of the Free and the Home of the Brave, a higher percentage of people are imprisoned than in any other country in the world – and half of all prisoners are imprisoned for non-violent offenses. Read this Wikipedia article from top to bottom and tell me we don’t have a problem with runaway lawyers and idiotic laws in this country.

People have detested lawyers since long before Shakespeare’s time, and for good reason: Law is the second oldest profession behind prostitution. At least with a good whore you get an orgasm out of the deal, but lawyers don’t even bring K-Y, much less do you the courtesy of a reach-around.

For us Westerners, the problem with lawyers goes back to the beginning of our Judeo-Christian culture. If you want to make Old Testament reading a bit more enlightening on this matter, every time you encounter the word “scribe” substitute “lawyer” for it.

SCRIBE noun 2 (also Scribe) Judaism; an ancient Jewish record-keeper, or later, a professional theologian and jurist. Mac Dictionary

See why this will help? Scribes are the exact antecedents of today’s lawyers and judges.

Let me give you my favorite example:

Jeremiah 8:8 “How can you say, “We are wise, and the law of the Lord is with us”? But, behold, the false pen of the LAWYERS has made it into a lie.” RSV

If you really want to get the full impact, however, you should substitute the word “shyster” for “scribe.” This may be the only time you ever read the Old Testament and laugh out loud. I do, anyway.

SHY-STER n. Slang An unethical or unscrupulous lawyer or politician. [Perh. Scheuster, an unscrupulous 19th-cent. lawyer.] American Heritage Dictionary

BTW: There is nothing particularly anti-Semitic about the term shyster. I’ve been calling amoral, self-centered lawyers shysters since I first learned the word in 1970. Nobody ever accused me of being anti-Semitic for deploying the term until after the Will Smith movie Enemy of the State came out. Besides, a former Jewish GF of mine would probably sock anyone who called me an anti-Semite. So, anyone who says the term shyster is anti-Semitic is full of horse-shit and has watched the movie Enemy of the State one too many times (Once would be too many times).

Here’s the further revised version:

Jeremiah 8:8 “How can you say, “We are wise, and the law of the Lord is with us”? But, behold, the false pen of the SHYSTERS has made it into a lie.” RSV

In other words, these lying shit-sacks have been around since the dawn of recorded history, and they fuck up everything they touch.

If you really understand what Jeremiah said, it is obvious that the position of many Jewish sects and Christian denominations – that The Torah/Bible is the inerrant Word of God – is ridiculous. Fact is, both of these documents are positively brimming with lies introduced by scribes/lawyers/shysters. To believe that every word in the Bible is true not only requires the willful suspension of disbelief, it also requires total ignorance of basic, fundamental, fallen human nature. Reading the Bible is like the reverse of the X-Files credo, “The Truth is Out There.” In this case, “The Truth is IN There,” there’s just a lot of shysteristic horse-shit to muck through.

Previously, Jeremiah said:

Jeremiah 7:21-23 “Thus says the Lord of hosts, the God of Israel: “Add your burnt offerings to your sacrifices and eat the flesh. [It’s hard to get the full impact of this insult for us moderns, but it would be something like having a bag-lady walk into a Catholic Church and shout, “God tells you Priests to shove those Communion Wafers up your asses and then give yourselves an enema with the Communion Wine!” – Beef] For in the day that I brought them out of the land of Egypt, I did not speak to your fathers or command them concerning burnt offerings and sacrifices. But this command I gave them, ‘Obey my voice, and I will be your God, and you shall be my people; and walk in the way that I commanded you, that it may be well with you.’…” RSV

The commands that God gave the Israelites are the ones we all know (Or, ought to know):

Exodus 20:2 “I am the LORD your God, who brought you out of Egypt, out of the land of slavery. 3 “You shall have no other gods before me. 4 “You shall not make for yourself an idol in the form of anything in heaven above or on the earth beneath or in the waters below. 5 You shall not bow down to them or worship them; for I, the LORD your God, am a jealous God, punishing the children for the sin of the fathers to the third and fourth generation of those who hate me, 6 but showing love to a thousand {generations} of those who love me and keep my commandments. 7 “You shall not misuse the name of the LORD your God, for the LORD will not hold anyone guiltless who misuses his name. 8 “Remember the Sabbath day by keeping it holy. 9 Six days you shall labor and do all your work, 10 but the seventh day is a Sabbath to the LORD your God. On it you shall not do any work, neither you, nor your son or daughter, nor your manservant or maidservant, nor your animals, nor the alien within your gates. 11 For in six days the LORD made the heavens and the earth, the sea, and all that is in them, but he rested on the seventh day. Therefore the LORD blessed the Sabbath day and made it holy. 12 “Honor your father and your mother, so that you may live long in the land the LORD your God is giving you. 13 “You shall not murder. 14 “You shall not commit adultery. 15 “You shall not steal. 16 “You shall not give false testimony against your neighbor. 17 “You shall not covet your neighbor’s house. You shall not covet your neighbor’s wife, or his manservant or maidservant, his ox or donkey, or anything that belongs to your neighbor.” NIV

This is all the Israelites needed, but the priests (Who developed thoroughly shysterized minds) and scribes/lawyers/shysters built up this huge legalistic system with sacrifices and offerings and just tons of other irrelevant horse-shit. This is just the nature of the beast: Make an arcane system out of something simple. That’s what lawyers do.

If you analyze the commands of God, they are like a top-down – or God’s-eye – view of the metaphorical Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. The final fruit of all sin is godlessness, and the root of all sin is covetousness: Desiring something that God gave to another. God gives what He gives to whom He will, and it’s none of your damned business what He gives, or to whom He gives it. His motivations are beyond questioning or understanding, so fuck the fuck off. M-kay? Covetousness/envy/jealousy leads to every other sin on the list.

When The Lamb of God appeared, His mission was to fulfill every “jot and tittle” of this hyper-legalistic insanity – which He did – and then he was executed: Not by the Jews, not by the Romans, BUT BY THE ERRANT LAW OF MAN – A ridiculous and unjust system created by scribes/lawyers/shysters out of whole cloth.

The Lamb of God reduced the above commands of God to one simple rule, “Love your neighbor as yourself.” If you love your neighbor as you love yourself, you won’t kill him, you won’t beat him up, you won’t seduce his wife, you won’t fuck his daughter, you won’t steal from him, you won’t let your dog shit in his yard, and you won’t envy him for anything God gave him that you didn’t get.

Shysters, however, are the human embodiment of covetousness. They first of all desire money, and the love of money is the root of all evil, of course (Not money itself – one can do a lot of good with money – but the LOVE of money: Coveting money). And, there is nobody’s money a shyster covets more than YOURS. Then, shysters are envious of anyone’s and everyone’s God-given freedoms and God-given possessions, so they concoct “laws” – laws that are nothing more than rules – to infringe upon these God-given freedoms, and make money when there is an infraction. People who violate these unjust and ungodly rules have their God-given freedoms and/or their God-given property taken away from them. All the while, the shysters are making money hand over fist.

Let’s get this straight: Only God can make law, and He’s made all of it that there’s ever going to be, and I listed EVERY LAST BIT OF IT above. The idea that man can make law is the ultimate shysteristic conceit, and it is an affront to God. We don’t live under “The Rule of Law,” we suffer under “The Yoke of Rules.” When the Lamb of God said, “My yoke is easy, My burden is light,” this is what he was talking about. Shysters exist almost solely to whip us when we break the rules, and steal our property for their profit. Obviously, it has been this way from the beginning of recorded history.

Of course, the shysterized mind didn’t vanish after The Lamb of God either. The pure early Followers of The Way were invaded by this abomination as well, and they basically rebuilt the burdensome Israelite legalist monstrosity – yet another Tower of Babel – within the Catholic Church and it’s Protestant spin-offs; sans the animal sacrifices, but still with just tons of legalistic and ritualistic horse-shit.

~The Beef of God snorts, paws the ground, and charges~

If I could change anything I wanted about America, these would be the first two items on my list:

1] Nobody with a law degree – whether they have ever passed a Bar Exam or not – would be eligible to run for office in any legislative body.

Lawyers making law is an obvious conflict of interest, and this is what has lead our country into ruin. Lawyers make law to benefit lawyers, not the real citizens of the country.

That’s why health care is so expensive: The law lets ambulance-chasing shysters like John Edwards become mega-multi-millionaires by suing medical doctors, so malpractice insurance is prohibitively expensive. You want affordable health care? Reform the tort laws to prevent these shysteristic abuses. The tort laws will NEVER be reformed until we kick the shyster-politicians out of Congress, because those tort laws benefit their shyster butt-buddies in private practice.

Income tax is the institutionalization of shysteristic covetousness. There is one entity – and one entity only – who has any right to a percentage of what God blesses a man with, and that entity is God Himself. He asks that you give a 10% tithe – basically, to the charity of your choice – and He doesn’t throw you into prison if you don’t. He just won’t bless you as much: Count on it. Since shysters love nothing more than other people’s money, they invented and rationalized this immoral tax scheme.

The only thing any government can legitimately tax are transactions. The infrastructure needs to be maintained, the military needs to be funded, &c. Income tax is immoral. This is a fact.

The same holds true for our insane prohibition-era-flashback drug laws: There will NEVER be any sense applied to them so long as shyster-politicians are making the laws, because drug laws are the biggest bonanza of all for shysters and shyster-judges, which leads me to…

2] Nobody with a law degree – whether they have ever passed a Bar Exam or not – would be eligible to sit on any bench as a judge.

Lawyers judging law is another obvious conflict of interest, and this is another factor in the ruination of America. No lawyer-judge is ever likely to make a decision that would adversely affect the legal profession, because if he did, then all of his pillow-biting, popsicle-boy shyster pals wouldn’t invite him to their Sound of Music parties anymore.

Want to get rid of activist judges who legislate from the bench and make outrageous decisions? Get the shysters the hell out of the chambers then. That won’t be a panacea, but it will certainly help.

Every courtroom in America has all of the appearances of a racket: Lawyers make the law, lawyers prosecute the law, lawyers defend from the law, and lawyers judge the law. It’s obviously at the very least an illegal monopoly, and it is exactly organized crime much of the time. If the RICO laws were turned back on the American courts, I have no doubt but that about 25% of all lawyers would end up in prison where I believe they belong, which leads us to…

The First Law of Angodynamics:

The liberties enjoyed by any society are inversely proportional to the percentage of lawyers and police in the population.

Lawyers don’t create anything, lawyers don’t produce anything, and whatever benefit lawyers provide comes at the expense of us all, and at the expense of the economy. Comparing them to leaches is an exactly precise and perfect analogy: They suck the life blood out of us and our economy. Lawyers are worse than a zero sum game, they are an infinite suck game. They are a necessary evil, but they are an evil nonetheless, so their numbers should be kept to an absolute minimum, and their influence must be positively marginalized. That’s never going to happen as long as we allow them to be legislators and judges.

I am sick and fucking tired of being sick and fucking tired of the Shysterization of America.

~The Beef of God lays down under His tree, and resumes chewing his cud~

/end rant

Q: “What do you call a lawyer with a 75 IQ?”

A: “Your Honor.”

The Beef of God knows a lawyer wrote that joke, because the most obvious answer is, “Smart.”

Change for Change’s Sake

Number of times each Democrat said “change” or “changes” during Saturday’s televised debates

Democrats

Hillary Rodham Clinton	25 times	“I embody change. I think having the first woman president is a huge change.”
John Edwards	14 times	” I believe deeply in change.”
Barack Obama	14 times .	“We’re going to bring about real change”
Bill Richardson	8 times	“I love change. We all are for change.

Source: USA TODAY

Is “change” going to be the buzzword of the 2008 US Elections, much as “working families” was here in Oz? It’s certainly just as empty a phrase.

“I embody change!” “I believe deeply in change!” “We are all for change!” “I love change!”

Change, change, change-y change-ness. Change-ified change-ocity.

Sorry to go off on a tangent there, but hearing Hillary repeat that word 25 times has affected me. Or maybe my problem was in trying to renovate the “Working Families” Drinking Game into the “Change-y Change-ness” Drinking Game.

Is this the best buzzword y’all could come up with? What’s the deal? Don’t you all have “Working Families” in America?

……………………………………………………

UPDATE: I now have the transcript of the 5 January 2008 Democratic Debate. I count more than 90 utterances of “change” words. But is Hillary channelling Woody from “Cheers”? You be the judge:

“I want to make change, but I’ve already made change. I will continue to make change. I’m not just running on a promise of change. I’m running on 35 years of change. I’m running on having taken on the drug companies and the health insurance companies, taking on the oil companies. So, you know, I think it is clear that what we need is somebody who can deliver change. And we don’t need to be raising the false hopes of our country about what can be delivered. The best way to know what change I will produce is to look at the changes that I’ve already made.”–Hillary Clinton, Jan. 5, 2008

Woody: “I believe I was elected to the city council as an agent of change, and I fully intend to live up to that pledge. I will make change.” Frasier: “No, change ‘change’ to ‘a change.’ ” Woody: “What?” Frasier: “No, see in here, you make change. There you make a change, so just make the change–change ‘make change’ to ‘make a change’–OH, JUST CHANGE IT!!” [storms out of the bar] Woody: “I think I see why Dr. Crane never cures anybody.”–dialogue from “Cheers,” May 20, 1993

–HT: opinionjournal.com for the Cheers ref.

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