...under the weather. I always feel this way the day after I get my flu-shot. Headache and all that. So I'm going to just point out that I continue to add links to friends on the side-bar. Incidentally -- did you know that Ru Paul has a blog? No, I'm not adding that one to the list but I thought it was interesting. These days you aren't anybody unless you have your own blog. See you tomorrow night...

I had thought my post election photos had summed up the effects of the election for Vermont Senator Jim Jeffords but now there is a story floating around that after the election, Jeffords tried to switch back. As far as I can tell, this rumor started in the Washington Times:

... According to a senior Senate leadership source, the election results were barely in before Mr. Jeffords' office put out feelers to his former party's leaders. The message? That the Vermonter would be happy to caucus with the GOP ã so long as he retained his committee chairmanship. Republican leaders rightly rolled their eyes.

Frankly, I didn't believe it so I emailed a friend in Burlington who's friends with one of the staff members at Jefford's Burlington office. She got back to me saying it was the first anyone had heard of it.

Now regular readers know I have no use for Jim Jeffords and am quite gleeful over his new "status." But while he isn't the sharpest tack in the box, he certainly knows that four years from now he will be up for re-election and has lost virtually all support in Vermont from Republican voters. From his standpoint that's probably okay since he enjoys wide support from Independents and Democrats.

If he were to re-cast his allegiance with the Republicans, he would infuriate his Democratic supporters. He would get his butt whupped in the next election. He would be history. The name Bob Smith of N.H. comes to mind; you can't go back.

I suppose it's possible one of his Washington staff floated the idea in conversation but I'm certain nothing originated from Jeffords himself. Certainly he knows how many bad feelings he generated with his "turn-coat" actions last year. And he certainly knows re-election math in Vermont.

All giant news gathering organizations such as Alphecca eventually face the threat of legal action. Last week I published a letter from a celebrity and this week I received this in the mail:



Needless to say, this letter from Barbra, Barbara, er... I mean her lawyer, has our legal department working overtime.

I might need some of the lawyer-bloggers out there to help me out...

Yes, it's that time again; time to check the bias levels on the Yahoo Gun Debate page. Our side seems to be losing ground. And there was nothing in all the articles listed referring to National Ammo Day.

Yahoo Gun Control Debate Articles
Sample Date	Pro More Gun Control Or Anti-Gun	Not More Gun Control Or Is Pro 2nd Amendment	Neutral Articles
11/20/02	18	2	2
11/13/02	14	2	3
11/7/02	17	4	-
10/26/02	21	4	-

Also note that the two neutral and two "pro" articles were hold-overs from past weeks. Yahoo also has not seen fit to list any story concerning how the gun control issue effected the recent elections -- or didn't effect them, such as in Maryland. I'll repeat what I said a couple weeks ago about other bloggers keeping similar tallies on other subjects from the Yahoo news pages. Folks, we need to get our message out there to counter the liberal forces controlling so many of the "news sources."

For more info just click the image. And go out and buy some ammo.

Some, on the left, wonder why we are so anxious to wage war with Iraq but not the other members of "the axis of evil." I have my own uninformed opinions, of course. I have opinions on everything. That's why I have a blog...

North Korea? Yes, they are evil and their people are starving because the government spends every slim dime it has on suppression and (as we now know) nuclear weapons. Communism is a failed plan. It doesn't work in the real world. It has never worked. All it does is cause misery and magnify the distinctions of class. Anyway, North Korea marches up this stupid path. But they aren't a threat to the U.S. Not now. They aren't training and sending agents of destruction into the U.S. At least not yet.

We know where Iraq is at. Their leader is certifiably insane, and we know from arial photos and other sources that Iraq hosts all sorts of international terrorist training camps. I won't quote for now but you can read about it in the Arabic News. In addition, Iraq poses a threat to Israel because their philosophy is to attack Israel when they (Iraq) are attacked. Sort of like, OK, if you threaten me, I'll threaten that other guy over there... How brave, how bold, how pathetic, how chicken-shit. But Iraq -Saddam Hussein- has dangerous weapons. We know this because he slaughtered thousand of Kurds with chemical weapons and the international community has already intercepted shipments of radioactive materials to Iraq. And Iraq serves as the "Club Med" for disenfranchised terrorist groups such as Al Queda. They pose a definite, immediate threat to the United States and all of the civilized world.

The U.S. and the international community agreed to a change in the international embargo of Iraq, to allow limited oil sales in exchange for money to be used for medical supplies and food for the beleaguered people. But NOT ONE PENNY went to feed people or provide them with medicine. It all went to building bombs and more "Presidential Palaces."

Remember the citizenry of Afahanistan celebrating their freedom in the streets when the United States liberated them from the Taliban? I truely believe you will see the same in Iraq when we stomp Hussein and his minions.

But what about Iran? I don't think we need to go in there at this moment. It wasn't that long ago, less then 30 years ago, that Iran almost became "Westernized." The population was educated, they enjoyed freedom and culture and were joining the 21st century of international acceptance and commerce. They were prospering. A band of Islamic fundamentalists (what else?) staged a revolution and took the whole country back in time about a century.

But those Iranians that are old enough remember, and the teachers at the universities who are old enough to remember, well, they remember how close Iran came to joining and enjoying the fruits of the modern world and the prosperity and freedom it offers. And the youth are learning through oral tradition. And they are starting to rebel. A lot. And the Mullahs are scared and know they are losing their grip. The inevitable is happening. Here are some quotes from a wonderful story filed by Parisa Hafezi of Reuters:

TEHRAN (Reuters) - Hundreds of Iranian hard-liners clashed with pro-reform students at a demonstration on Monday, the first serious outbreak of violence in 10 days of university protests against a dissident's death sentence.

And:

"We will continue to protest till Shahroudi officially apologizes and there is a guarantee no one will be jailed because of what they say," student leader Saeed Razavi Faqih told Reuters.

And:

The almost daily meetings at universities in the capital and across the country have been the biggest pro-reform protests in Iran since police and hardline vigilantes put down violent Tehran student unrest in the summer of 1999.

Khamenei's intervention was an apparent setback for the hardline judiciary's four-year legal onslaught against leading reformers, liberal intellectuals and the pro-reform press.

The reformists, allied to President Mohammad Khatami, enjoy popular support and dominate parliament, but have run into stiff resistance from conservatives, who control the judiciary and other key state bodies and oppose change to the Islamic system.

This is only the tip of a year of protests by students and other moderates in Iran. I believe the hard-line Islamic government of Iran will soon implode. The people had a taste of freedom and modernity, and they want it back. We (the U.S.) need do nothing. The revolutionary elements of Iran society will eventually win. Let's play hands-off here. We can, through subtle means, support them, supply them, encourage them. But let's not move our military in there. I believe Iran will, because of the bravery and idealism of their young, throw off the shackles of their hard-line government and join the world community again. And we should be the first to say, "welcome back."

Mike Silverman's Red Letter Day blog has an anecdote about his partner selling Bernie Goetz a new computer keyboard. Yes, that Bernie Goetz. See, he took a screw-driver to the old one and... He should do what I do with uncooperative computer equipment -- shoot it with a few 9mm rounds. If it doesn't want to work, make sure it stays that way.

...after yesterday's rant. Anyway, I plan a nice day off of plowing through some unread mystery novels. In the meantime, I've added some links to neat new sites on the side-panel. Diane Leibel has just started a new blog titled Everything Must Go so stop by and encourage her. And checkout Michael Wagner's PlanetPuck which is sort-of like Drudge on different medications.

More later on this same Bat-Channel...

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"The man who trades freedom for security does not deserve nor will he ever receive either."
--Benjamin Franklin

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This might not be the most coherent of my postings but, "damn the torpedoes, full speed ahead!" Let me start in a round-about way with a couple of hypotheticals:

Cars are dangerous. We've regulated them, licensed the drivers, enacted all sorts of laws to control how they should be operated and driven, and yet 45,000 people die in auto accidents every year. The freedom of people to be mobile, to live in one place and to shop or work in another simply doesn't work. If only 10 people died each year, or maybe a hundred, perhaps the risks would be worth it to ensure the freedom of people to own cars and travel of their own free will all about the United States. But 45 thousand? Many would say that any death, one death, is one too many.

So I guess we should ban all private ownership of automobiles. Cars don't have to be a necessesity. From now on you must live within walking distance of where you work, shop, go to school, or party. Or you can rely on public transportation. After all, we want to save lives, right? Isn't that the most important thing? One life lost is one too many. Right?

Swimming pools! My Ghod! Inspite of all our attempts to regulate them and specify the type of protective fence we put around them, over 400 children drown in swimming pools every year! One child lost is one too many. Right? So we should outlaw all swimming pools and all existing swimming pools should be filled in and paved over. Right? Your right to cool off during the summer should not infringe on my child's right to total safety and insulation from any possible threat to his existence.

Huh? You disagree? Okay, how many lives should we allow to be lost before we eliminate the risk to those lives? A thousand? 10 thousand? How many?

Regular readers of Alphecca think they know where I'm going with this; another posting about gun-control. Nope! But let's be honest, the arguments I'm about to present could easily apply to gun-control. But I'm tackling something different today: Total Information Awareness. You've heard of it, of course. It was snuck in, first by the Democrats and then adopted by the Republicans in The House, into the Homeland Security Act. The House has already passed the measure. Now it's onto The Senate. And frankly, I think this particular part of the Homeland Security Act will cost us more then it will save us. From an unsigned editorial titled, "Orwell's Nightmare," here's some background from The Times-Picayune:

By now, Americans may be resigned to having their personal data floating around in the electronic ether. But it's some consolation that no one agency has custody of all that information. To get at data on a specific person, government agencies at least have to ask for it -- and in many cases seek court permission.

If John Poindexter gets his way, though, the federal government will develop technology that systematically collects vast quantities of information on Americans -- e-mail, financial transactions, travel plans and other electronic data. This effort, known as Total Information Awareness, is part of the proposed Homeland Security Act, which has passed the U.S. House of Representatives and is headed for approval in the Senate.

Slipping the initiative into such a large, complex bill is a mistake. As its slightly chilling name suggests, Total Information Awareness would vastly expand the information available instantly to federal government agents.

And:

The trouble is that government agents would get that information only after sifting through medical data of hundreds of millions of people.

You don't have to be obsessed with black helicopters and jackbooted federal agents to worry about where this technology might lead. Unscrupulous officials could misuse it. Over time, agencies might use the technology for purposes other than stopping terrorism.

As William Safire brilliantly put it in an article titled, "You Are A Suspect" in The New York Times:

Every purchase you make with a credit card, every magazine subscription you buy and medical prescription you fill, every Web site you visit and e-mail you send or receive, every academic grade you receive, every bank deposit you make, every trip you book and every event you attend ã all these transactions and communications will go into what the Defense Department describes as "a virtual, centralized grand database."

To this computerized dossier on your private life from commercial sources, add every piece of information that government has about you -- passport application, driver's license and bridge toll records, judicial and divorce records, complaints from nosy neighbors to the F.B.I., your lifetime paper trail plus the latest hidden camera surveillance -- and you have the supersnoop's dream: a "Total Information Awareness" about every U.S. citizen.

About a month ago I discussed this problem. The problem of our elected officials to over-react and rush in with legislation to counter a problem that winds up doing more harm -to our freedom and liberty- then to secure it.

Folks, we face all sorts of dangers every day. Threats to our lives. But we always have. Our distant ancestors faced dangers that led to, or promoted our evolution so we could reach the "lofty" state we enjoy today. Yes, we could try to eliminate every danger to our lives, but would we still enjoy our freedoms? Would we really be safer? Is the United Kingdom safer because they took away every law-abiding citizen's firearm? And put cameras on every street corner? As every statistic provided by the English government itself attests: NO! What did England's citizenry give up in exchange? Besides, of course, their freedom and privacy?

Information about us is collected and passed around every minute of every day. Our medical records, our shopping habits, our credit worthiness. So far, there are "firewalls" between each database. So far, all these collectors of our personal information use it only to further their own interests. Now, the U.S. government wants to put all of it into one place under their scrutiny. To look for patterns. To look for terrorists. To look for threats to our country. Sounds admirable doesn't it? Almost altruistic. And our government would never mis-use that information, right? And they would limit the scope of use of that information to JUST looking for threats, right?

Well, no. So far, the U.S. government has an unspotted, sterling record of mis-using information it collects. What data is collected for one thing can easily be -and always is- used for other purposes. Power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. "Oh come on, Jeff, you're being hysterical. It's for the National Defense." Yes. The government's NIC database for gun-registration was supposed to dispose of all records after a gun purchase was approved. That was/is the law. Yet Chicago filed lawsuit to obtain those records and the ATF refuses to provide them. Which implies that those records still exist. Here's part of the AP story from Yahoo:

Solicitor General Theodore Olson argued in his filings that the appeals court decision "would significantly intrude upon the privacy of hundreds of thousands of individuals ã including firearms purchasers, potential witnesses to crime and others ã without meaningfully assisting the public to evaluate the conduct of the federal government."

NRA lawyer Stephen Halbrook said if the Supreme Court does not stop the release of the information, gun owners' privacy will be violated.

"The city of Chicago wants all the names and addresses of people who have bought firearms," Halbrook said. "There's no public interest in knowing that, any more than knowing the amount of income you make __ that's between you and the IRS."

Chicago officials argued in their court filings that they were entitled to some information.

"There is simply no reasonable expectation of privacy involved in the purchase of firearms," said the city's lawyer, Lawrence Rosenthal. "And the recovery of a firearm by the authorities in the course of a criminal investigation is even less private."

"No reasonable expectation of privacy..." How about when you rent a video? Or buy a car? Or what groceries you buy? Or your medical records? Your sex life? Your... So finally I'm getting around to my point. Every single time a government agency has been allowed to collect information about us -we, the people- they have shared it, mis-used it, used it against us for purposes other then why it was collected in the first place.

The stated purpose of this provision of the Homeland Security Act is to detect the terrorists amongst us and protect us from them. The problem, of course, is that we give up a precious amount of our privacy. Is it worth it? How many lives could the government save by having and using all of this data? A thousand lives? Ten thousand? And is that many lives enough reason to forfeit our privacy and freedom? I don't know; I'm asking you.

It's very easy to say, "yes, we must give up some of our precious liberty to secure our country and freedom." Really? Personally, watching the World Trade Centers fall was the first time I had cried in many, many years. But we survived. As a country we survived and it made us stronger and more resolute to protect our freedom and way of life. Osama, and Al Queda hate us because we represent freedom of thought, of life, of a way of living that they can't possibly understand and they want to destroy us, as do all "peace loving fanatic Muslims" because we enjoy life, and we reject control by a religion, by a governing body, by fanatics from any stripe.

But! What have they wrought? Instead of shrugging off the attacks by these mutants, of simply retalitating against them -as we should- we have aquieseced to them. We have changed our American way of life. We are giving up our freedoms, our mobility, our privacy, our expectation of a distant government that leaves us alone and protects us from external threats without our having to make lifestyle sacrifices to accomplish it. And I'm going to ask you again; is it worth it? Some bloggers say yes. Giving up a small amount of freedom is worth our security. These are the same arguments "gun-grabbers" use to justify registering or taking away our guns.

As sure as I am sitting here typing away, some mutant Islamic fanatics will eventually attack our country again. Should we give up our freedoms and way of life to prevent it? I can tell you that no matter what we do, no matter what measures, laws, regulations we enact, one of these fanatic Islamic mutants will get through and succeed. And lives will be lost. But somehow, around 270 million of us will survive. I won't even try to do the math and figure out a ratio but I think we should really, really consider whether this loss of life should force us to give up our liberties, our freedoms, and our way of existance. They can't win. They can hurt us, wound us, give us pause from shock, but they can't win. We can and will crush this garbage. They are but tiny, stupid ants upon our floor. And yet we seem to be giving in to them. Our hysterical, sound-bite politicians are rushing forward with laws and legislation that would rob us of the very thing these crumb-bums want to take from us.

We are the ones reeling and changing because of them. So they are winning. So right now, we all have to step back, take a deep breath and say, stop it. Not the terrorists. Nothing will stop them. It's our elected leaders, our government. Stop it! Don't let them dictate the terms under which we have to live. Don't let them change our way of life. Don't let them cause YOU to eliminate the freedoms and liberties that our ancestors fought so hard to secure for us.

Yeah, children have drowned in swimming pools. It sucks. But it doesn't mean we should all give up the pleasure and enjoyment of swimming pools. And yeah, a lot of people die in auto-accidents every year, but that is -and I don't mean this flippantly- the cost of business, as it were. We're not about to give up our cars, nor should we. And yeah, our country is under siege but we should never give up the one thing our assailants hate most about us: Our freedoms, our privacies, our joy in living free from the shackles of a totalitarian government. Don't let them win. Don't let them dictate to us the way we have to live our lives. Write someone, a Congressman, a Senator, the President. They want to over-react for the newscamera, to fill us with fear, to disrupt us, to control us. Don't let Congress do it. That's what our enemy is trying to do. We don't need to help them along. We need to fight them. To keep on keeping on with our way of life. Yeah, it drives them crazy. Good! Fuck 'em!

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"The man who trades freedom for security does not deserve nor will he ever receive either."
--Benjamin Franklin

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Of course we all listen to music when "working" and I started off with the blues of Chicago's great Son Seals, but then moved on to RUSH. I really believe Big Money is one of the great albums but Distant Early Warning (never mind the politics) is one of my 3 or 4 favorite songs. And I guess that song sums up my mission here:

"The world weighs on my shoulders, but what am I to do,

It sometimes drives me crazy, but I worry about you,

I know it makes no difference to what you're going through,

But I've seen the tip of the iceburg, and I worry about you..."

...I will be working on the technical side of Alphecca, as well as updating the other four sites of mine. Yes... I own five domains and am now going to improve them. I have my once-a-month weekend off and I want to organize this endeavor of mine. Get out the tiny violin because as you probably don't know, I use no helpers such as FrontPage, DreamWeaver, etc. Everything is hand-coded directly onto the index page and such. My goal is to actually learn HTML properly. Eventually, my goal is also to learn Style Sheets and PHP, and lastly MySQL. Anyway, I just use a simple HTML text editor, PageSpinner, and sometimes BBEdit, to code everything. That's why my sites look so lame. (This is the point where you are supposed to rush to email me and say, "gosh, Jeff, Alphecca and company look GREAT!"

Be that as it may, I am re-organizing the Alphecca structure (seperate directories for photos, etc., ) to make it easier for tired oldsters such as myself to maintain the site. My website host, Hosting Matters, has been rather lame with website statistics of late but I'm averaging about 629 hits (about) per day and over 203 unique visitors a day (for the month of November.) And Alphecca has grown beyond where I can just FETCH everything up and try to keep track of it all in one directory. Time to build some structure into the file directories before there are too many files to do that with. I also know that the blurry type in my homepage photo is bugging some of you so I'm going to work on a new top-photo as well. And I want to update my links list.

So that's how I plan to spend this Saturday (and it's snowing and the first day of hunting season, a beautiful day indeed but I'm going to spend it in front of the computer) and will return with my sparkling commentary tomorrow morning.

One more thing: You will not find any "tip-jar" on Alphecca. I don't want to try to depend or plan on that. This is a labor of love, an outlet for my rants and raves. All I ask is that if you enjoy Alphecca, and you have your own blog, please provide a link to me so my hyper-inflated ego can enjoy a wider readership. And please let me know if you do, by email, and I promise I will add a link to your blog. Thanks, everyone!