John Deschanel is probably retarded.

Over the recent 4th of July holidays a Wisconsin man’s protest, an upside down flag, was removed from his private property prior to the town’s parade without reason or warrant. There is so much WTF in this story I’m not really sure where to begin, but the most ignorant comment comes from Village President John Deschane.

“If he wants to protest, let him protest but find a different way to do it,” Deschane said.

I have to give him credit for fitting so much ignorance into such a short sentence. First off, the courts have ruled over and over again that the American flag can be desecrated as a form of protest. Second off, you don’t get to choose how people protest your own decisions (as long as they’re doing so legally).

I really hope the ACLU takes a picture of this idiot as he’s writing a fat check to Vito Congine for stealing his property, trespassing and violating his civil rights. MMmmmm … Crow.

Conservatives want a Divorce from Liberals

Today I woke up to an email calling for Conservatives and Liberals to divorce. With this divorce they propose a number of demands about splitting up our mutual assets.

  • Conservatives and Liberals should split the country, by land mass, right down the middle. No method for doing so is outlined in the Conservatives petition.
  • Liberals are to take the liberal judges, the ACLU, the affirmative action crowd, the NAACP, and the National Organization of Women. Liberals are also to take Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid with them.
  • Conservatives want all of the guns, the cops, the NRA, and the military.
  • Liberals are to take Oprah, Michael Moore and Rosie O’Donnell. Liberals are, however, responsible for finding a bio-diesel vehicle big enough to move them.
  • Conservatives wish to take capitalism, greedy corporations, pharmaceuticals, Wal-Mart, McDonald’s, and Wall Street.
  • Liberals are to take homeboys, hippies, and illegal aliens.
  • Conservatives wish to take all hockey moms, greedy CEO’s, and rednecks.
  • Conservatives wish to take all of the Bibles.
  • Liberals are to take all copies of Mein Kampf.
  • Conservatives wish to keep Fox News and insist the Liberals have NBC, CNN, MSNBC, CBS, ABC and the entirety of Hollywood. As a goodwill gesture Conservatives wish to give Liberals National Public Television as well.
  • Conservatives wish to keep Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity.
  • Liberals will take Al Franken and Keith Oberman.
  • Conservatives are willing to let the Liberals negotiate peace agreements with Iran and Palestine, but reserve the right to invade and/or “hammer the crap out of” any country that threatens them.
  • Liberals may take the peaceniks and war protestors.
  • Conservatives wish to keep their Judo-Christian values, while the Liberals will take Islam, Scientology, Humanism, and Shirley McClain with them.
  • Conservatives wish to retain all Hummers, SUV’s, pickup trucks, motor homes, oversized luxury cars, power boats, Harley Davidsons, and private airplanes.
  • Liberals will receive rights to all 4-cylinder vehicles, all hybrid technology, mopeds, kayaks and canoes.
  • Conservatives wish that Liberals will give their entire populous healthcare. Conservatives will continue providing privatized healthcare.
  • Conservatives wish to keep “God Bless America” and the National Anthem. Conservatives wish that the Liberals take “Imagine”, “I’d Like to Teach the World to Sing”, “Kumbaya”, and “We Are the World”.
  • Conservatives wish to continue practicing trickle down economics. Liberals are allowed to give trickle up poverty a their best shot.
  • Conservatives wish to keep the US history, name and flag.

Liberals can see merit in the Conservatives’ desire to file for divorce. By and large most of your demands seem perfectly reasonable. Before we can properly file for divorce, we need to flesh out the details of our separation agreement. Below is the Liberals’ counteroffer.

  • Liberals accept, at face value, the idea of splitting the country in half by land mass. We propose splitting the country according to the electoral map from the previous four Presidential elections. Any state that went for a Liberal in 3 or more of the last 4 elections will be the sole custody of Liberals. The following states voted for a liberal in 4 out of 4 of the last Presidential elections: Maine, Washington, Delaware, Maryland, New Jersey, Connecticut, New York, Vermont, Massachusetts, Michigan, Pennsylvania, Minnesota, California, Rhode Island, Wisconsin, Illinois, Oregon, and Hawaii. The following states voted for a liberal in 3 out of 4 of the last Presidential elections: New Hampshire, New Mexico, and Iowa.
  • Liberals accept all of the terms outlined for the liberal judges, NAACP, ACLU and NOW. Liberals assume that by accepting the entire NAACP that Conservatives do not wish to have any of the people they represent as well. Liberals wish they be allowed to move to the new Liberal union, if they wish.
  • Liberals concede guns and the NRA. However, Liberals object to all cops and the entire military. Liberals believe police officers are an important part of any civilized union and wish to retain the services of those already employed in our union. Furthermore, Liberals wish to keep all military bases that currently reside within the confines of our union. This includes 31 bases in California alone.
  • Liberals accept all of the Conservatives’ terms with regards to Oprah, Michael Moore, and Rosie O’Donnell. Liberals are more than happy to take a billionaire philanthropist, a man whose first film documented the plight of blue collar men and women working in the auto industry, and a loud mouthed lesbian into the new Liberal union. Furthermore, Liberals accept responsibility for finding comfortable bio-diesel transportation for all three.
  • Liberals object to the idea of taking “capitalism” as capitalism is, in fact, an idea rather than an object that someone can easily negotiate possession of. Liberals conceded all rights to 100% free markets as Liberals believe free markets, driven by corporations’ quest for profits, left unchecked are dangerous to the markets themselves (akin to giving drug addicts unfettered access to drugs). Furthermore, Liberals insist that corporations be dividing according to the new unions’ respective borders. As a goodwill gesture, Liberals will set up a special district, with equal access to both sides, on Wall Street.
  • Liberals accept Conservatives’ demands to take all homeboys and hippies. Furthermore, Liberals wish that illegal aliens be divided along the new unions’ respective borders. Texas seems just as willing as California to accept illegal aliens and, as such, Liberals feel it’s only fair Texas and similar states bear the burden equally.
  • Liberals concede all demands on hockey moms, greedy CEO’s, and rednecks. Liberals are, quite frankly, perplexed as to why Conservatives wish to keep such worthless possessions, but concede them nonetheless.
  • Despite finding Hitler’s actions despicable, Liberals will take all copies of Mein Kampf so that future Liberals don’t repeat history. Liberals believe history is important and should be preserved no matter how horrible that history may be.
  • Liberals accept all demands on the equitable division of news organizations. Furthermore, Liberals wish to keep NPR and Howard Stern, who is an ardent Liberal and benefactor of the ACLU.
  • Liberals concede to the Conservatives both the  drug addict, Rush Limbaugh and college dropout, Sean Hannity. Liberals are more than happy to take Senator Al Franken and Cornell University alum, Keith Olbermann.
  • Liberals accept their right to pursue peace agreements whenever possible and with whomever is receptive. However, Liberals wish for a clear definition of what Conservatives mean by “threaten”. Liberals are worried this may infer to “the stink eye” or “acting gay”.
  • Liberals accept all peacful people, including peaceniks, and peaceful protestors into the new Liberal union.
  • Liberals accept all peaceful religions and peaceful religious people. Liberals naturally assume anyone not wishing for peaceful coexistence will refrain from moving to or living within the Liberal union.
  • Liberals concede rights to SUV’s, Hummers, etc., but reserve the right to create alternative fueled and/or hybrid versions that do not rely on foreign oil at their descretion. Furthermore, until such technology has been brought to mass market, Liberals reserve the right to use these things in good faith for the jobs they were designed. In other words, Liberals will continue to use SUV’s and pickups for organic farming, responsible logging, etc.
  • Liberals accept all of the terms outlined for hybrid technology and fuel efficient vehicles. Liberals believe achieving foreign oil independence is crucial to surviving in the future and, as such, request all solar panels, wind farms, and hydroelectric power plants. Liberals reserve the right to pursue responsible usage of nuclear power as well.
  • Liberals wish to accept all terms on healthcare. Liberals strongly believe in the preamble to The Declaration of the United States of America, which states that life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness are among our unalienable rights. Liberals believe that neither life nor happiness can be achieved without access to proper healthcare and that, by denying equal access to healthcare, you are, by definition, denying access to peoples’ unalienable rights.
  • Liberals concede the concept of trickle down economics to the Conservatives. It did, after all, work very, very well for Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush (both presided over major Wall Street crashes; 1987, 2001 and 2008 respectively). Liberals, however, wish to pursue any economic policy they wish, which may, or may not, include the policy pursued by Bill Clinton (which resulted in a $127 billion federal surplus).
  • Liberals wish to keep the shared history both Conservatives and Liberal share. It’s not easy to divide that up. That being said, Liberals concede the flag if so desired, but object to Conservatives’ use of “The United States of America”. The name implies an ambiguous network of diverse states working together towards a common goal. The homogeneous Conservative union (filled solely with conservative, Christian, white people) should probably choose a more concise name. Liberals suggest The United States of Jesusland.
  • Furthermore, Liberals wish that the Conservatives break it gently to Mississippi, Louisiana, Alaska, West Virginia, North Dakota, Alabama, Virginia, Kentucky, South Dakota, etc. they they won’t be able to get more money from the federal government than they put in anymore either. Liberals understand that Conservatives are against the redistribution of wealth and, as such, assume this won’t be an issue.

The resulting Liberal union would take 54.16% of the GDP with it, Silicon Valley, New York City, San Francisco, the home of Boeing, most of the good wine, the arts, the movie industry, the auto industry, the entire Ivy League, Stanford, University of Michigan, CalTech, UC Berkeley, JGI (first to map the human genome), Lawrence Livermore Labs, most of Boeing’s manufacturing facilities, the nation’s largest airports, nearly all of the major ports of entry, etc.

The Liberals wish the Conservatives luck. The Liberal union will have the largest GDP for any country in the world, soundly beating The United States of Jesusland by $1.1 trillion.

The Conservatives will need to figure out where to get their movies and TV shows from. Conservatives will also have difficulty finding doctors since a full two thirds of the top medical schools now reside in the Liberal union.

Manufacturing SUV’s and Hummers is difficult when most of the manufacturing plants reside either outside of both of our new unions or reside in states within the Liberal union. Either way, those manufacturing facilities are controlled by companies residing in the Liberal union. Furthermore, most commercial aircraft are now built within the Liberal union and controlled by Boeing, which resides in two Liberal union states.

The Liberal union will also be sure to ship all of our fancy new drugs to The United States of Jesusland as five out of the top five pharmecutical companies reside within the Liberal states.

Actually, now that we think about it, divorce sounds like a splendid idea.

Year in Review

  1. The end of 2008 marks the end of my first year as Digg’s Lead Architect. In that time we’ve rewritten the majority of the site using frameworks that I built. We’re currently rewriting the underlying data access layer to be horizontally partitioned, elastic, services oriented and multi-homed.
  2. In early January, Digg Images launched and, with it, the result of months of work resulting in a completely rewritten submission framework for Digg. This project resulted in me writing and releasing Net_Gearman. I consider this project to be some of my best work at Digg.
  3. In early January I snuck off to Vail for one last snowboarding trip before back surgery. It was on this trip that I finally became comfortable with Western black diamonds, including an awkward drop off of an 8+ foot precipice into 3+ feet of fluffy powder.
  4. On January 23rd, 2008 I went in for back surgery. Two hours after surgery I was up and walking around without a hint of sciatica or back pain. I can’t thank Dr. Fred Naraghi enough for what I view as a second chance at life.
  5. 2008 will be known as the Year of the Conferences for me. I spoke at Future of Web Apps in Miamion a panel at SXSW on scaling websitesMySQL Conference on Services Oriented Architecture, Web 2.0 Expo in New York City, Future of Web Apps in London with Blaine Cook, Future of Web Design on the friction between developers and designers, and Q-Con in San Francisco on Digg’s architecture.
  6. The summer brought another bout of triathlon training. Along with my friend Mark Lewandowski, I trained for my first Olympic distance triathlon, which I ended up finishing in 2 hours, 50 minutes and change. As part of our training Mark and I also did a 72 mile bike race around Lake Tahoe. The race included 3,900 feet of vertical gain over 72 miles and is, without a doubt, the most challenging endurance race of my life. I finished the race in 4 hours, 15 minutes and change.
  7. In June I was elected to the PEAR Group, which is the governing board of my favorite PHP project.
  8. In early September I launched PleaseDressMe with my friends AJ and Gary Vaynerchuk. The site continues to gain traction in the tshirt arena and is, to date, my most successful side project.
  9. In October Aubrey, Kevin and I went on a whirlwind tour of Europe that included Oktoberfest in Munich, London, and Amsterdam.
  10. November brought big news at Digg with the hire of my friend and release manager for PHP6, Andrei Zmievski, as Digg’s first Open Source Fellow.
  11. November also brought about me finally diving into Python and Django for a side project. I’ve built an API for iPhone games that my friend Garren and I plan on releasing soon. More on this to come.
  12. December brought another trip to Thailand with my good friend Chris Lea. We’d originally planned to do Thailand, Cambodia and either Laos or Vietnam, however the islands of Koh Phangan and Koh Samui had other ideas. I type this sitting on Haad Lamai on Koh Samui. So far it’s been an epic trip with highlights including New Year’s Eve on Haad Rin Nok and a trip back to Haad Rin Nok tomorrow for another Full Moon Party.

This year I’m going to follow the year in cities theme that so many other blogs follow because I feel I really have done a ridiculous amount of travel this year.

  • San Francisco, CA
  • Miami, FL
  • Austin, TX
  • San Diego, CA
  • Seattle, WA
  • Vail, CO
  • East Jordan, MI
  • New York, NY
  • Munich, Germany
  • London, United Kingdom
  • Amsterdam, Netherlands
  • Los Angeles, CA
  • Bangkok, Thailand
  • Haad Leela, Koh Phangan, Thailand
  • Haad Lamai, Koh Samui, Thailand

I’m going to start a new theme here today. Below is my year in open source software. This is a list of projects I’ve released publicly and/or have contributed to. I’m not sure how many lines of code this is, but this is, by far, my most prolific year in FOSS contributions.

We won!

I’m sitting at the Burp Castle with Daniel Burka and Arne Fismen celebrating our new President, Barack Obama, after celebrating in Times Square with thousands of people. The Burp Castle has temporarily suspended their “Sush Rule” so that we can properly celebrate Barack’s acceptance speech.

Yes we can!

As I type this an African American is the President elect of the United States. Let that sink in a bit. The people of the United States have made a strong stand against the agents of intolerance. They’ve said with resounding thunder that religious zealots, war mongers and ignorant people have no place in our great nation. If you’re against gay rights, against a black President, in favor of endless war for oil, or against renewable energy we’ve risen up and clearly stated your ignorant and bigoted views of the world are not welcome.

I, for one, welcome change for the good.

Sarah Palin is absolutely unfit to be Vice President

There, I said it. As plainly as I can possibly state it. I’ve been reading a lot about Sarah Palin, watching interviews, and watching the debates. I’ve come to the conclusion that voting this woman into office would be irresponsible and, potentially, catastrophic. I’m going to list a number of absolute facts gleaned from interviews and public record. If, by the end of this list, you think this woman should be Vice President please post a comment detailing why, in the face of these facts, you feel she’s qualified for the second highest office in the free world.

  • She transferred five times to four different colleges in five years before, finally, obtaining a Bachelor’s of Science in communication-journalism from the University of Idaho. Barack Obama graduated from Columbia University with a degree in political science with a specialization in international relations and went on to receive a law degree from Harvard University. Joe Biden has an undergraduate degree in history and political science from the University of Delaware along with a law degree from Syracuse University.
  • She obtained her first passport in 2007 for a trip to Kuwait. Joe Biden has been on the Senate’s Committee on Foreign Relations for 35 years. Barack Obama has served on that same committee since joining the Senate along with serving on the Senate’s Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs.
  • Before her recent meetings in New York this last month she’d never met a single head of state.
  • She was the mayor of a city of 10,000 people and governor for a state 650,000 people. While an Illinois state Senator for Illinois’ 13th District, Barack Obama represented about 800,000 people.
  • If a 15 year old was raped by her father, she would “counsel her to choose life”.
  • She has given only three interviews (not including the debate) since being nominated for VP. Joe Biden has given over 100 interviews since he has been nominated for VP.

This woman, simply put, is unfit to be Vice President of the United States. Despite Senator McCain having relevant experience, he’s shown himself to be incapable of making critical decisions by the simple fact of choosing such an unqualified person for the second highest office in the free world. 

Please vote for Barack Obama and Joe Biden on November 4th, 2008. 

The tale of two VP picks

About a week ago Barack Obama announced he’d selected Senator Joe Biden to be his running mate. To say the least, I was underwhelmed. I felt that Obama had a real chance to shoot the moon with a really progressive pick. My pick? Michael Bloomberg, the mayor of New York City. Ask any New Yorker how much they love their mayor and you’ll get an idea of the type of operation Bloomberg runs. 

That being said, Biden does bring a few benefits to the table. First, and foremost, his son is serving in Iraq so there’s really no possible way you can say he doesn’t have any idea what’s going on over there. He’s a serious policy wonk with 35 years of Senate experience. He definitely fills the role of attack dog quite nicely and he’s an old white guy, which America seems to love when it comes to politicians. In other words, he was a perfectly reasonable and safe pick to be Obama’s running mate. He offsets many of Obama’s real and perceived weaknesses.

Then you have Sarah Palin, whom John McCain announced would be his running mate a few months ago. She has 20 months of experience as the governor of the 47th largest state by population and started her political career 13 years ago in her local PTA. She’s embroiled in an investigation in her home state about using her influence as governor to have her former brother-in-law fired. To top things off her 17-year-old unwed daughter is five months pregnant (a non-issue if she wasn’t a staunch supporter of abstinence and the removal of sex education from the classroom).

When your party is being embroiled in scandals left and right over abuse of power, considers itself the moral authority of the nation and taunts itself to be the leaders in foreign affairs, you’ve got to ask yourself what the hell John McCain was thinking. At the very least, Palin is a distraction. At the very worst, she’ll kill the entire campaign.So who would I have picked? I’d have thumbed my nose at the Christian conservatives (who else are they going to vote for? Obama?) and went with Tom Ridge or Joe Liberman. Both have solid credentials and would have been able and ready to step in as President if the 72-year-old cancer survivor has health issues. Palin, on the other hand, has arguably less administrative experience than 46 other governors and 16 major US cities (all have larger populations than the entire state of Alaska).

Pretty much no matter which way you slice this, objectively speaking, Palin was a horrible pick for a running mate. Karl Rove would have never let this happen if he were still involved heavily in campaigning.  

2008 President Election

With McCain’s pick of Alaska Governor Sarah Palin we are staring at the most historic election in the history of the United States. In November the great people of our nation will go to the voting booths and have a choice between a half white, half black, child of a single mother and an immigrant father or a mother of 5. Let there be no doubt we’re living in historic times.That being said, I have a problem with both VP picks. Obama picked a lifelong politician to appease those who think he doesn’t have the experience to lead the nation. McCain picked a woman, frankly, to curry as much favor with women who voted for Hilary in the primaries just because Hilary was a woman. At their core, both choices are, at best, placating swing voters and, at worst, publicity stunts.Not that this really changes my mind. I’ll be voting for Obama this fall. In a two party system you’re stuck choosing the person who most closely represents your own feelings and interests and, for me, that person is Obama. Why?

  • I’m an advocate for a woman’s right to choose what she does with her own body.
  • I think the Iraq war was, and continues to be, a stain on the history of our great nation.
  • I don’t think religion belongs anywhere near our government.
  • I believe that we should be heavily investing in alternative energy. I believe in this so strongly that we should do so at the expense of heavier taxes and a decreased military budget. Make no mistake; the future of America’s economy heavily depends on affordable, renewable energy.
  • I believe drugs and prostitution should be legalized, taxed and regulated. Australia has a brothel that’s a publicly traded company. The Netherlands has had legalized drugs for quite some time now. Both are respected members of the international community and neither of their societies have spiraled out of control into the pits of Hell.
  • I believe that people making tons of money should pay more, not less, in taxes. If you’re making over $250,000 a year I really don’t want to hear you bitching about paying 10% more in taxes than a single mother making $25,000 a year. I wonder how you’ll “sustain” on “only” $150,000 a year in net income.

Given the above facts about my own personal beliefs the best candidate for me is Barack Obama. There’s no way in hell he’d propose legalizing drugs or prostitution and he’s a church going man, but he’ll get us the hell out of Iraq, put taxes on the rich back in place that Bush removed, invest heavily in alternative energy and fight for a woman’s choice. I can live with that. 

Army and Marines welcome terrorists into their ranks

In what has to be the richest ironic twist I’ve seen in my life a CNN article titled “Army, Marines give wavers to more felons” it’s reported that both the Army and the Marines have decided to go ahead and let known and convicted terrorists join them while fighting their fellow terrorists.

Recruits were allowed to enlist after having been convicted of crimes including assault, burglary, drug possession and making terrorist threats.

One thing that's wrong with America

From an article on Mother Jones titled “Am I a Torturer“:

In survey after survey, as many as two-thirds of Americans say torture is justified when it’s used to get information from terrorists. In an abc/Washington Post poll in the wake of the 2004 scandal, 60 percent of respondents classified what happened at Abu Ghraib as mere abuse, not torture. And as recently as last year, 68 percent of Americans told Pew Research pollsters that they consider torture an acceptable option when dealing with terrorists.

If standing someone up on a box, putting a hood on their head and then attaching electrodes to various parts of their body isn’t torture I sure as hell don’t know what is (Satar Jabar, by the way, was charged with car jacking and not terrorism).

There’s a troubling trend in America, in my not-so-humble opinion, and that’s that we’re in a sort of dark ages about what’s considered “liberal”. The following things will get you labeled, at best, as an idealistic hippie and, at worst, a terrorist sympathizer in this country.

  • That everyone, everywhere should have access to clean air and clean water and, in order to guarantee such things, we should put heavy environmental restrictions on both corporations and the federal government (the worst polluter in the world by most standards). As a guy who heavily supported using environmentally friendly detergents once told me, “Republicans don’t want to regulate what corporations and the government puts into the water supply. Who the fuck doesn’t want clean water?” Indeed, who doesn’t?
  • That war is bad. Since when did we go from being a neutral country to being the global bully willing to blow anyone and anybody up? I don’t disagree with war. I fully support what we did in Afghanistan and the recent strikes in Somalia. I just don’t see why everyone is so pumped up about war. It’s shitty and leads to us being perceived as total assholes.
  • That everyone should have basic access to some sort of health care. Humans are exceptionally empathetic. We’re always willing to lend a hand to someone who’s sick, but Americans will be damned if we help those lazy welfare bastards stay healthy so they can just mooch more off of our hard earned money. Guess what? I know people who make “good money” ($40, 000 to $60,000) that can’t afford health care for themselves and their families. We also have about 8,000,000 uninsured children.
  • That the death penalty is both hypocritical and inhumane. I, literally (and horribly), can’t wait for the first innocent person to be executed. Personally, I think it’s already happened and we just don’t know it yet. But, mark my words, in our (Gen X’ers) lifetime we’ll see a man or woman who has been killed (murdered?) by the government posthumously exonerated with DNA or other forensic evidence. I, personally, can’t stand the thought that my government might kill someone someday who was innocent. I’d much rather we just lock them up and throw away the key. Also, the death penalty cases cost us a bunch of money in comparison to just locking them away for life.
  • That the War on Drugs isn’t helping. We spend about $19 billion a year on the War on Drugs (and untold more on prostitution). I say we legalize it, regulate it and tax the shit out of it. I’m a huge fan of vice taxes as we’re basically taxing the people who have the highest burden on state services. To put it another way; we spent just over half of that ($56 billion) on the entire Department of Education in 2006.
  • That you don’t have a right to tell someone else what they can and can’t do with their body. This covers everything from who inserts what into whom, who has which procedures and what people put knowingly into their own body. Stay the hell away from my body. It’s not yours; it’s mine.

Call me a tree hugging, terrorist loving, dirty ass hippie if you want, but I believe the above and think it’s ludicrous that I’m a “dirty hippie” rather than a “a person with common sense”. So, how do we fix it? I think the following would be a pretty good start.

  • Abolish the death penalty with a Constitutional amendment.
  • Legalize drugs and prostitution. Once that’s done heavily regulate them in the same manner as tobacco and alcohol along with heavy taxes.
  • Sign the Kyoto Protocol along with drastically increasing the EPA’s funding. Interesting side note is that the EPA was created by Richard Nixon (I use this little nugget to warp my fellow liberals’ minds).
  • Drastically cut military funding. Use that money for medical, technical and environmental research. Or build some huge ass solar power plants in Nevada.
  • Raise the emission standards on cars to 100mpg (phased in over, say, a decade). We have the technology now and this measure would create a little more pressure on those idiots at Ford and GM to get moving on that. VW is about to release a car that gets 70mpg so it’s plausible right now.
  • Create a Constitutional amendment that secures the rights of one’s own body in all matters. I’d throw in something about not discriminating people based on sex, color, religion, sexual orientation, etc.
  • Create a national health care system that covers children under the age of 18 for all medical costs. The coverage would be lowered to “simple” medical coverage for adults (e.g. You could get your broken arm fixed and medicine for your cold, but that $1,000,000 cancer treatment will require outside insurance). Australia and New Zealand have a two tier system like this and, according to one former US citizen in NZ told me, it works fine.

If that makes me a hippie then so be it.

America's unlikely defender

No one has the right to take the life of another. No crime, no feeling of revenge, justifies that. Society has a right and a duty to isolate men and women who have caused harm, and may cause harm again, but to take their lives is unnecessary, unuseful and blasphemous. If you believe in God, life belongs to God. If you don’t believe in God, life belongs to oneself. It does not belong to the state.