Valerie Hunter Gordon, who has died aged 94, helped to deliver mothers from the daily drudgery of mangle, washing line and ironing board by inventing the first disposable nappy system.
In 1947 Valerie, the wife of an Army officer, was living in Camberley, Surrey, and expecting her third child. She was not looking forward to the prospect of washing, ironing and drying the traditional towelling nappies which were all that were available at the time.
“I just didn’t want to wash them,” she told an interviewer last year. “You had to iron them as well. It was awful labour. I was amazed you couldn’t buy a disposable version. I enquired of the US and you couldn’t buy them there. It was extraordinary.”
So she decided she had better do something about it herself.
After a certain amount of trial and error (initially she used old nylon parachutes, of which there were many spare after the war), and drawing on her considerable needlework skills, she came up with a pair of adjustable PVC waterproof pants fastened with poppers, with a cord around the waist, which could be wiped clean, or washed and bleached. Into these she slipped a pad of cellulose wadding with a thin layer of cotton wool next to the baby’s skin to prevent soreness. The waterproof pants prevented leakage and were shaped to ensure that the pad remained in position without safety pins.
Unlike modern all-in-one disposable nappies, Valerie’s design meant that only the biodegradable dirty pads were disposed of, while the waterproof pants could be rinsed and used again. This system created very little permanent waste; it also significantly reduced the water and electricity consumption associated with washing cotton nappies.
The nappies were a huge success on her baby son Nigel and she soon began taking orders from the wives of other senior officers at Staff College in Camberley.
“My husband used to cut out the pads on the floor of the attic when he came home from work and I used to run them up with my mother’s old sewing machine... I would go out for tea with the wives and babies, and they would say, 'Oh Valerie, wouldn’t you make one for me?’ It became a full-time job. It was more hard work than washing the damn things.”
While poking around for a Salvador Dali museum in Figueres, Spain [Marcin Wichary] stumbled upon something else—the Emporda Technical Museum.
According to travel guides, you'll find it described as "[a collection that] shows how technology and science has affected our lives, [with] some beautiful items on show," but boy is that an understatement, as Wichary found out.
If Weiner's sexting leads to Hillary's defeat I may literally die laughing. Huma, Hillary, and the men they married - feminists will never let this go.
We believe that the correct number [of firearms in circulation in the USA] is much higher — somewhere between 412 and 660 million. You may wonder how we came to that number, so buckle up (and cringe, if you’re a math-phobe, although it never gets too theoretical): unlike most of the academics and reporters we linked above, we’re going to use publicly available data, and show our work.
What if we told you that one ATF computer system logged, by serial number, 252,000,000 unique firearms [produced from 1999-2016], and represented only those firearms manufactured, imported or sold by a relatively small number of the nation’s tens of thousands of Federal Firearms Licensees?
. . .
At this point we have a reasonable and very conservative, very low estimate of 329 million new firearms to the US market 1999-2016. The question becomes one of estimating how many firearms were made and imported in the period from the invention of modern metallic cartridge, smokeless powder ammunition from, say, 1899 to 1998 — and how many of those survive as practical, usable firearms.
. . .
Absent a better idea, we can say that the US inventory of firearms is almost certainly between 412 and 660 million, not the lower numbers recently trumpeted in the media.
Angus Grant, who has died of cancer aged 49, was the dreadlocked fiddler and leader of the Scottish band Shooglenifty, pioneers of a style of music variously described as techno ceilidh, acid croft or hypnofolkadelia – a blend of traditional folk with the rhythmic energy of contemporary dance music.
Shooglenifty’s unique twist on traditional Scottish tunes won them an extensive fan base not only in Scotland, but in continental Europe, the US and Australasia – even India, Malaysia and Japan.
They performed for Nelson Mandela, played with dhol drummers of Rajasthan at the Commonwealth Games in Glasgow and collaborated with Lebanese musicians in Beirut. In 1996 they became the first band to incite a stage invasion at Sydney Opera House and in 2000 they played in Cuba a whole year before the Manic Street Preachers’ more famous “Louder than War” gig.
. . .
Grant, described by one reviewer as a “bedraggled, bearded musical Merlin”, explained the band’s name as “just two nonsense Scottish words thrown together – 'Nifty’ is obviously just nifty and 'shoogle’ is to shake something. It’s saying you can have a good dance to it or have good sex to it”.
Having been brought up in the Scottish Highlands, as the band absorbed new global influences, it was he who kept it rooted to the traditional tunes of Scotland.
We’re continually assured that government policies are grounded in evidence, whether it’s an anti-bullying programme in Finland, an alcohol awareness initiative in Texas or climate change responses around the globe. Science itself, we’re told, is guiding our footsteps.
There’s just one problem: science is in deep trouble. Last year, Richard Horton, editor of the Lancet, referred to fears that ‘much of the scientific literature, perhaps half, may simply be untrue’ and that ‘science has taken a turn toward darkness.’
It’s a worrying thought. Government policies can’t be considered evidence-based if the evidence on which they depend hasn’t been independently verified, yet the vast majority of academic research is never put to this test. Instead, something called peer review takes place. When a research paper is submitted, journals invite a couple of people to evaluate it. Known as referees, these individuals recommend that the paper be published, modified, or rejected.
If it’s true that one gets what one pays for, let me point out that referees typically work for no payment. They lack both the time and the resources to perform anything other than a cursory overview. Nothing like an audit occurs. No one examines the raw data for accuracy or the computer code for errors. Peer review doesn’t guarantee that proper statistical analyses were employed, or that lab equipment was used properly. The peer review process itself is full of serious flaws, yet is treated as if it’s the handmaiden of objective truth.
And it shows. Referees at the most prestigious of journals have given the green light to research that was later found to be wholly fraudulent. Conversely, they’ve scoffed at work that went on to win Nobel prizes. Richard Smith, a former editor of the British Medical Journal, describes peer review as a roulette wheel, a lottery and a black box. He points out that an extensive body of research finds scant evidence that this vetting process accomplishes much at all. On the other hand, a mountain of scholarship has identified profound deficiencies.
. . .
Politicians and journalists have long found it convenient to regard peer-reviewed research as de facto sound science. Saying ‘Look at the studies!’ is a convenient way of avoiding argument ... We’ve long been assured that reports produced by the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) are authoritative because they rely entirely on peer-reviewed scientific literature. A 2010 InterAcademy Council investigation found this claim to be false, but that’s another story. Even if all IPCC source material did meet this threshold, the fact that one academic journal — and there are 25,000 of them — conducted an unspecified and unregulated peer review ritual is no warranty that a paper isn’t total nonsense.
If half of scientific literature ‘may simply be untrue’, then might it be that some of the climate research cited by the IPCC is also untrue? Even raising this question is often seen as being anti-scientific. But science is never settled. The history of scientific progress is the history of one set of assumptions being disproven, and another taking its place.
'Small brown pebble found on East Sussex beach is pickled dinosaur brain'
"I would never, ever invest money in a 401(k)," Cardone tells CNBC. "Why would I go to work, have my employer give me another $6,000 a year, and then take that money and send it off to Wall Street, where I can't even touch it for 30 years? I wouldn't do that."
The popular retirement plans are "traps that prevent people from ever having enough," Cardone writes on his website. "The 401(k) is merely where you kiss your money away for 40 years hoping it grows up."
Rather than focusing on saving, focus on earning — you can't save your way to millionaire status, he says.
"Wall Street is telling you to invest little bits, early. They don't believe in your ability to earn money," Cardone tells CNBC. "People need to show the ability to produce more revenue — not invest it — first. People get rich because they produce revenue, not because they make little investments over time."
And don't just focus on earning — focus on earning big, says Cardone. "Keep stacking that paper until you have a hundred grand in the bank. I know this is very unrealistic for a lot of people, but the reason it's unrealistic is because you've been conditioned to think small."
Grant is promoting saving the money you earn, but counter to most advice, he says to put the money in a good old-fashioned savings account — where your money is accessible at a moment's notice — until you have at least $100,000. Then, you can start investing.
"Put your saved money into secured, sacred (untouchable) accounts," he writes on Entrepreneur. "Never use these accounts for anything, not even an emergency. ... To this day, at least twice a year, I am broke because I always invest my surpluses into ventures I cannot access."
Alistair Urquhart, who has died aged 97, was a prisoner of the Japanese from 1942 to 1945, surviving both the infamous Death Railway and the atom bomb dropped on Nagasaki; his memoir, The Forgotten Highlander, became a bestseller in 2009.
When Singapore fell to the Japanese in February 1942, approximately 80,000 British, Indian and Australian troops became prisoners of war. Urquhart took part in a forced march of 18 miles to Selarang Barracks on the Changi peninsula, which became a vast PoW camp. On the way there, the road was lined with the heads of decapitated Chinese on spikes.
Seven months later, he was crammed with 30 others into one of a number of small steel containers used for transporting goods by rail. It was dark, airless and so hot that the steel sides burned any skin that came in contact with them.
After five days and nights, he set out with his companions on a six-day march of 30 miles. Prodded by bayonets and beaten with bamboo canes, they had to keep up a good pace through the jungle while avoiding venomous tree snakes dangling from the branches overhead.
On arrival at Kanyu Camp, on the River Kwai, Urquhart had contracted malaria and was covered in scabies and lice, but he had to help build the huts in which some 200 of his comrades were to live.
After the huts were completed, he started work on a section of the 260-mile-long Burma-Siam Railway, hacking through jungle, gouging out passes, spanning ravines, bridging rivers in one of the most inhospitable regions in the world – all on starvation rations. Many thousands of British, Australian, Dutch, American and Canadian prisoners would perish in the task.
Several of the overseers were selected for their brutality and sadism, and punishment took many forms. Cuts on feet and legs from poisonous plants, bad food or lack of hygiene were unavoidable and turned into ulcers which rotted flesh, muscle and tendons.
Urquhart, desperate to stop the rot that was devouring his legs, went to the doctor. He was advised to collect some maggots from the latrines and put these on the ulcers. The maggots nibbled away at the diseased flesh, new skin formed and the wounds healed.
He spent more than seven months splintering rock on a two-mile section known as Hellfire Pass that required five cuttings and seven bridges. On top of the cuttings, one of the guards relieved his boredom by rolling boulders down on to the prisoners toiling below. Out of sight of the guards, Urquhart sabotaged the bridge construction, sawing halfway through wooden bolts and depositing termites in the joints of load-bearing timbers.
Urquhart received a bad beating for resisting the sexual advances of a Korean guard and was then made to stand to attention through two cold nights and a day under blazing sun. Whenever he lost consciousness, he had water thrown over him and was kicked back into life. Finally, he was squeezed into a semi-submerged cage and spent a week in a cramped hole in stifling heat.
When the monsoon arrived, the Kwai and its tributaries became loaded with cholera bacteria. Urquhart contracted the disease. He was isolated in the “death tent” and was the only survivor. He was then sent to Chungkai, a large hospital camp. Besides cholera, he had dysentery, beriberi and malaria and had lost the use of his legs.
He was examined by Colonel (Weary) Dunlop, an Australian doctor, who intervened with the Japanese constantly on behalf of his patients, at the risk of being executed, and has been credited with saving countless lives. After six months of treatment and rehabilitation, Urquhart was sent to the River Valley Road Camp in Singapore City.
In September 1944, together with 900 other British PoWs, Urquhart was herded aboard the cargo vessel Kachidoki Maru. He said afterwards that nothing that he had experienced in the camps had prepared him for the conditions on one of the Japanese “hellships”. Inside the hold, it was standing room only and there were no lavatory facilities. In the hot, dark, fetid atmosphere, men were driven mad by thirst. Cannibalism and even vampirism were not unknown.
Six days out of Singapore, the ship, part of a convoy, collided with an oil tanker which had been torpedoed and set on fire. There were no red crosses on the ship to indicate that PoWs were on board. That night, Kachidoki Maru was torpedoed by the American submarine Pampanito and sank within 15 minutes.
Water flooded the hold and Urquhart was washed over the side. The sea was thick with burning oil from other sinkings in the convoy. More than 240 of his comrades died that night. There were terrible scenes as men fought for a piece of driftwood that would support them. Urquhart found a one-man raft. By the fifth day, he was badly burned and unable to see. His eyes had been seared by the strength of the sun.
He was picked up, barely conscious, by a Japanese whaling ship and dropped off at Hainan Island. There, he and other prisoners who had survived the sinkings were paraded naked through the village. In mid-September he was taken by stretcher and lowered into the hold of another “hellship”.
Again the convoy was attacked by submarines, but after an 11-day voyage they reached Japan. Urquhart was put to work in a coal mine at Omuta. By that time he could hardly stand and scarcely knew his own name.
Dr Mathieson, a Scot serving in the RAMC, persuaded the Japanese to move Urquhart to the camp hospital, where he worked as an orderly. The doctor’s courage, dedication and skill saved Urquhart’s life and that of many others.
His camp was 10 miles from Nagasaki, and when the atom bomb was dropped on the city, his shrunken frame was knocked sideways by the blast. For several days he and his comrades feared that the Japanese would massacre them to destroy the evidence of their atrocities, but on August 21 1945 the camp commander announced the end of the war and the British gradually took over.
South African company Ultimate Unmanned has launched its new Viper 1000C unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV), which is based on a Stemme motor glider.
The company said the idea is to lease the platform and sell air time for missions such as surveillance, border patrol, anti-piracy, pipeline monitoring, counter-terrorism, mapping, anti-smuggling, wildlife monitoring etc. Ultimate Unmanned is targeting the Middle East, amongst other regions, as parent company Ultimate Aviation has an existing footprint across Africa and the Middle East.
. . .
The Viper 1000C ... is based on the Stemme S6, production models will be based on the Stemme S15 (which has been converted to the Patroller UAV by France’s Sagem), with the S6-based Viper to be used for training.
Endurance of the aircraft is 28 hours with external and internal extended endurance tanks. Maximum altitude is 25 000 feet. The 18 metre long, 1 100 kg aircraft has a cruise speed of 113 knots and is powered by a turbocharged Rotax 914 engine delivering 113 hp.
Flight is fully autonomous with automatic takeoff and landing and point to point waypoint navigation. Multiple payload options include high definition cameras, forward looking infrared systems and night vision systems. Two wing mounted hardpoints can carry up to 80 kg of payload, although total payload is up to 350 kg.
. . .
The ground based command and control centre is mounted in a 6 x 2.56 x 2 metre trailer that includes a kitchen, bunks, toilet, shower, weather station, pilot and payload operator stations, generator, water and fuel tanks and satellite communications link.
Fifty of 72 warplanes that went missing 70 years ago have reportedly been found buried under the former airport of the Central Anatolian province of Kayseri.
A German Focke-Wulf Fw 190A3
after landing in the UK by mistake in June 1942
(image courtesy of Wikimedia Commons - click it for a larger view)
Cooperation between Turkey and Germany continued after World War I and paved the way for production cooperation with German aircraft manufacturer Junkers. Afterward, Turkey’s first plane factory was founded, producing [Junkers] A-20 model planes.
To continue mutual production, a trade deal was signed between Turkey and Nazi Germany in 1941 following the efforts of former Chancellor Franz von Papen. Turkey sold iron and chrome ore to Germany and, in exchange, acquired 72 FW-190A3 warplanes.
The planes, whose pieces were produced in Anatolia, were brought to Turkey in 1943. The planes made their first flight on July 10, 1943, and were distributed to five provinces. A total of 50 of the planes were sent to Kayseri before disappearing in 1947.
According to newly surfaced documents, the U.S. wanted Turkey to destroy all German FW-190A3 warplanes in order to sell its planes that had remained unsold after World War II. As a result of lengthy talks with Ankara, the planes were never seen again.
It was pure chance that [Chris] Dempsey came into [Heather] Krueger’s life.
The code-enforcement officer in Frankfort, Ill., overheard one of his co-workers talk about a cousin who was dying of cancer and desperately needed a liver transplant.
Dempsey readily agreed to get tested to see if he was a match.
“I spent four years in the Marine Corps and learned there never to run away from anything,” he explained to CBS News. “So I just said to myself, ‘Hey, if I can help, I’m going to help.’ ”
He turned out to be a match.
“I got off the phone and ran down the hallway, and my mother and I were both crying our eyes out in disbelief,” Krueger said on “Today.” “I had never even met this man before.”
The pair finally met over lunch to discuss the surgery, and then found themselves becoming friends as the operation loomed nearer.
. . .
Krueger and Dempsey went in for the eight-hour procedure at the University of Illinois Hospital on March 16, 2015.
The surgery was a success — and the pair became even closer in its aftermath. They soon realized they’d fallen in love.
Last December, Dempsey took Krueger to the top of the Hancock Building in Chicago, and then proposed to her after a carriage ride.
The work, Sands of Time, “a tempestuous tale of boiling eggs and boiling tempers”, was written to last precisely three minutes and 34 seconds, the time it takes to boil an egg (though it sometimes lasted a little over four minutes).
“The intention was to create a piece which bore the same relationship to opera as a miniature does to a full-length portrait,” Reynolds told the Guardian in 2004. He also hoped to slash the existing shortest opera record set in 1928 by Darius Milhaud with Deliverance of Theseus, which ran for a comparatively flabby seven minutes and 27 seconds.
Reynolds and his librettist, Simon Rees, created a suburban domestic scenario of a couple, Flo and Stan, having an argument at breakfast, starting with the egg timer being turned on and ending with the egg coming out of the saucepan.
At the height of the argument representatives from the soccer pools arrive to tell them they have won a large amount of money, and peace is restored.
It is Charity Red Shirt time again!
That is where if you donate enough money to a specific cause, I will use your name in a book. Details are below.
This time we are helping my friend Mitch with his medical bills. I’ve known him for about 20 years. Mitch suffers from spina bifida and has gone through a bunch of surgeries. This is to help him climb out of the hole. Here is the link.
https://www.gofundme.com/2m664f98
Let me tell you a little bit about Mitch...
. . .
He’s a good guy who has spent his life helping others, and now I want to do something nice for him. Medical bills are expensive and Mitch has been through the wringer for years. Our mutual friend Dave set this up when he found out how far in the hole Mitch is.
This is not tax deductible. This isn’t through a 501c3. It is just a couple of guys raising money for their buddy.
. . .
If you donate $150, or you donate less but win the raffle, then I will use your name in an upcoming novel. (You can donate more too if you like, because Mitch will just use it to pay off bills).
An abandoned car in North Fitzroy has been completely painted in gold to the delight of many local residents.
The crumpled Toyota Camry had been sitting in North Fitzroy, near the intersection of McKean Street and Michael Street, for a couple of weeks before getting the makeover.
One local said that whoever crashed the car into the tree probably took off in a hurry, as the driver's side window was left down and the keys were still in the ignition.
In proof that just about anything can become a piece of street art, the installation has become an overnight landmark.
I also want to get your Atlas folks to recommend oversamples for our polling before we start in February. By market, regions, etc. I want to get this all compiled into one set of recommendations so we can maximize what we get out of our media polling.
The email even includes a handy, 37-page guide with the following poll-rigging recommendations. In Arizona, over sampling of Hispanics and Native Americans is highly recommended:
Research, microtargeting & polling projects
- Over-sample Hispanics
- Use Spanish language interviewing (Monolingual Spanish-speaking voters are among the lowest turnout Democratic targets)
For Florida, the report recommends "consistently monitoring" samples to makes sure they're "not too old" and "has enough African American and Hispanic voters." Meanwhile, "independent" voters in Tampa and Orlando are apparently more dem friendly so the report suggests filling up independent quotas in those cities first.
- Over-sample the Native American population
- Consistently monitor the sample to ensure it is not too old, and that it has enough African American and Hispanic voters to reflect the state.
Meanwhile, it's suggested that national polls over sample "key districts / regions" and "ethnic" groups "as needed."
- On Independents: Tampa and Orlando are better persuasion targets than north or south Florida (check your polls before concluding this). If there are budget questions or oversamples, make sure that Tampa and Orlando are included first.
- General election benchmark, 800 sample, with potential over samples in key districts/regions
- Benchmark polling in targeted races, with ethnic over samples as needed
- Targeting tracking polls in key races, with ethnic over samples as needed
It’s over! The entire model our societies have been based on for at least as long as we ourselves have lived, is over! That’s why there’s Trump.
There is no growth. There hasn’t been any real growth for years. All there is left are empty hollow sunshiny S&P stock market numbers propped up with ultra cheap debt and buybacks, and employment figures that hide untold millions hiding from the labor force. And most of all there’s debt, public as well as private, that has served to keep an illusion of growth alive and now increasingly no longer can.
These false growth numbers have one purpose only: for the public to keep the incumbent powers that be in their plush seats. But they could always ever only pull the curtain of Oz over people’s eyes for so long, and it’s no longer so long.
. . .
‘Leaders’ such as Trump and Le Pen can only be seen as intermediate figures necessary for nations, and indeed the world, to adapt to an entirely different paradigm. One that is at best based on consolidation, on trying not to lose too much, instead of trying to conquer the world.
But also one that is likely to lead to warfare and mayhem, because nobody’s been willing to address even the possibility of no more growth, and therefore everyone will be looking to squeeze growth out of any available place, starting with their neighbors, and the globe’s weakest. It’s the Roman empire all over again, where the core strangled the periphery ever harder until the Barbarians and the Visigoths decided it was enough and then some.
That is the meaning of Donald Trump, and of Brexit. You’re not going to understand these things without taking a few steps back, and without looking at history, and especially without acknowledging the possibility that, in economics, perpetual growth may indeed be what physics has always said it was: an impossible pipedream.
Trump has a role to play in this whether he wins the election or not. He’s the big red flashing American warning sign that the increase in poverty that has so far been felt only among those who it has hit, will shake the familiar political landscape on its foundations, and that this landscape will never return.
In the attack on the building serving as a barracks for the 1st Battalion 8th Marines (Battalion Landing Team - BLT 1/8), the death toll were 220 Marines, 18 sailors, and three soldiers, making this incident the deadliest single-day death toll for the United States Marine Corps since World War II's Battle of Iwo Jima, the deadliest single-day death toll for the United States Armed Forces since the first day of the Vietnam War's Tet Offensive, the deadliest single terrorist attack on American citizens in general prior to the September 11 attacks, and the deadliest single terrorist attack on American citizens overseas. Another 128 Americans were wounded in the blast. Thirteen later died of their injuries, and they are numbered among the total number who died. An elderly Lebanese man, a custodian/vendor who was known to work and sleep in his concession stand next to the building, was also killed in the first blast. The explosives used were later estimated to be equivalent to as much as 9,525 kg (21,000 pounds) of TNT.
They shall grow not old, as we that are left grow old:
Age shall not weary them, nor the years condemn.
At the going down of the sun and in the morning
We will remember them.
Tibetan religious tradition has it that when the Dalai Lama dies, the Buddha of Compassion leaves his body and incarnates in the body of a young child. The monks immediately go out in search of this blessed child, and when they find him – as they inevitably do – he is tested by a group of high lamas and enthroned as the reincarnation of his successor.
Imagine, however, if the lamas refused to recognize that the Dalai Lama was, in fact, dead. Suppose that instead of going in search of the Buddha’s new carnal home, they hooked the corpse up to a life support machine and waited patiently for the Holy One to awake and rise up. It’s not hard to see that they would be doomed to disappointment, and furthermore, would fail to find the next Dalai Lama as well.
This is precisely our dilemma today, for America, as envisioned by the Founding Fathers, is dead. By every measure, large and small, the original vision of limited government by, for and of the people has been folded, spindled and mutilated beyond recognition. When one reads the Constitution, one simply marvels at the distinct difference between its words and our present reality.
Our paper Federal Reserve Notes are not Congress-issued gold and silver coins. Our direct taxes are not apportioned. We are entangled in a veritable web of foreign alliances, Congress shamelessly makes laws regarding speech, religion and guns, and the judicial branch has arrogantly assumed for itself unchecked supremacy over the other two branches.
Regardless of whether one see these changes as blasphemous treason against the Constitution, or as reasonable and necessary modifications to what was designed to be a living document that evolves with the times, it is impossible to deny that they have been made. It is likewise impossible to assert that a massive central government possessing eminent domain, owning over a third of the land and claiming more than a third of all income is either limited or small.
For many years, conservatives and other freedom lovers have placed their trust in the Republican Party, hoping that it would fulfill its promises to return America to its national birthright of freedom and individual liberty. Those promises, unsurprisingly, were broken by the party of Abraham Lincoln, who is most famous for converting what had been a voluntary Union of free association into a forced Union by military might.
Any last vestiges of hope in the Republican Party have been shattered by the current regime, wherein a Republican President, Republican House, Republican Senate and Republican-nominated Supreme Court have demonstrated that they have zero interest in the timeless vision of America’s founders. Supporting them in the hopes that they will revive American liberties is akin to hoping that shock paddles will suffice to revive a month-old corpse. American freedom is not only dead, it has been rotting for some time.
There are those who say that a vote for a third-party candidate, such as the Libertarian’s Michael Badnarik or the Constitution Party’s Michael Peroutka, is wasted. Nothing could be further from the truth. Indeed, these are the only votes that are not wasted, for positive change will only come from those outside the corrupt bi-factional system. After all, it was neither the Tories nor the Whigs who fought for American independence.
Like the Tibetan lamas, we must go in search of those in whom the spirit of freedom and liberty burns. The revival of American liberty is still in its infancy, as only 482,451 people voted for the Libertarian and Constitution presidential candidates combined, 0.96 percent of those who voted for the victorious Republican, George W. Bush. But that is 482,395 more people than the 56 signers of the Declaration of Independence, and as for those who believe our present bipartisan system is eternal, well, tell it to the Whigs.
Or, for that matter, to the optimates and populares of Rome. The choice is simple, if not easy. A revival of liberty or the continued stink of an extinct republic as it decomposes into dictatorial empire.
America is dead. Let us go, then, and find her.
I ... do solemnly swear ... that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; that I take this obligation freely, without any mental reservation or purpose of evasion; and that I will well and faithfully discharge the duties of the office on which I am about to enter. So help me God.
