Author: VD

according to the Environmental Protection Agency, they were giving these kids very toxic levels of mercury. I mean as a 150- to 200-pound adult the EPA says you’re not supposed to take in more than one microgram per day. They were taking little seven- and 10-pound babies and pumping 50 and 75 micrograms of mercury into them in one shot. That’s like giving an adult 1,000 micrograms.

Once the truth comes out, this will be the biggest scandal in American history. Bigger than the Federal income tax fraud and bigger than the Federal Reserve’s inflation scam. That’s just money, but this is the ruined health and minds of two generation of children. I have no doubt that the CDC were horrified once they realized just what had been wrought and are doing their best to hide the truth so that they and the vaccine makers aren’t lynched by thousands of furious parents.

I didn’t know a single autistic child when I was a kid, and we got a small number of shots. Now, children get 21 shots before they turn two, and there is an autistic child or two in almost every social circle. This isn’t just the diagnosis people going overboard, as with ADD, these are mental and developmental problems obvious to anyone who spends five minutes with the kid. For those who are dubious, consider the following logic. The US Congress protects both the vaccine makers and doctors from liability. If there’s no danger from vaccines, why this unusual freedom from liability? Second, the Federal fund for vaccine-damaged children has paid out hundreds of millions of dollars despite the fact that it’s extremely hard to prove vaccine damage by their standards. If there’s no danger from vaccines, how is this possible? If one microgram of mercury is dangerous for an adult, how is 50 micrograms not dangerous for an infant weighing 25 times less?

If anyone wants to take issue, answer these questions. Don’t cite a lack of studies on the issue, since almost none have been done. Metastudies are worthless, while the solution to finding the truth is easy. Take two thousand children. Shoot one thousand up with the usual vaccine load, and leave the other thousand unvaccinated. Track them for ten years and see which group is healthier and in better shape. Why hasn’t this been done? Because, the vaccine lobby says, it would be unethical to not vaccinate a group of children. Right – nothing to see, don’t look here, just move along, people.

DS writes: I am a fan of the open source model in terms of being able to determine root cause of problems and allowing individuals to independently determine the behavior of their computers. However, I do take some issue with Linux– specifically, I find the GPL to be against what I stand for as a conservative person. (Now, I have a right to not accept it, and not use software with that kind of licensing in it.) The GPL seems very socialist in its nature of dictating that your future works derived from GPLed software must also be GPLed– for the “good of the community.” As a developer, this requires me to give my source code to everyone that uses my product for free.

I think this shows a serious misunderstanding of socialism, and perhaps the GPL as well. There’s absolutely nothing socialist about the GPL. Socialism requires having your choices dictated to you, and there is absolutely nothing forcing anyone to use GPL code in their own source code. If you don’t like the GPL, then you are perfectly free to go write your own code yourself. This actually shows a deep awareness of and respect for property rights, which are wholly lacking in any socialist system.

It is companies like SCO and Cisco which have no respect for property rights, as they wish to be able to use GPL code without being bound by the price of releasing their own source code. Furthermore, the GPL permits one to freely sell one’s binary products at whatever price one wishes, which again would not be permitted in a socialist system. There are also some serious questions about the legitimacy of the expansion of copyright to software code in a free market system.

Now, if the government required the use of GPL code in all software products as well as the public release of all source code, dictated how much you could charge for the resulting binary product, and then took all the revenue from it, DS would have a strong case. But i it neither looks, walks nor quacks like a duck, it is not a duck.

Erika Riemann was 14 when she was imprisoned by by the communist regime in East Germany. She had defaced a portrait of Stalin hanging in her school by painting a red bow over his moustache with her mother’s lipstick. In three East German prisons, including a former Nazi concentration camp, she was repeatedly raped, starved and beaten. Finally she was forced to endure a mock mass extermination in a gas chamber.

I wonder what their ideal punishment is for daring to draw a moustache on Hillary. Remember this the next time you hear a left-liberal lecturing you about tolerance. It must drive them berserk that they haven’t been successful in convincing everyone that Stalin is really right-wing, as they were with his more infamous fellow socialist.

Lisa writes: Ok, so I am not highly motivated about private viewing of naked ladies. I am concerned about Microsoft. I have gone through the hate, seething, loathing, gosh it’s like getting away from a bad boyfriend. In this cycle, I really have had to look at why I was having these shifting feelings. In the end, I decided the reason is that I fear Microsoft. But, I am stuck, I do not know how to install or use any of the open source systems. I just upgraded my machine, and though a fantastic machine, it probably is not compatable with open source materials and won’t be for a year (or five, about how long it took my last new computer to become compliant) or more.

So, through my doubt, because I fear Microsoft (corpo-socialism, ack!! but true), I will ask you what you suggest as far as becoming a free-tech. How do I start, what would be useful reading, what is legitimately feasable for a tech-twit to get in the way of software to at least begin looking at this stuff? If you state something, I hope you have ideas about doing something about it?!?

You have to walk before you can run, and only about 10 percent of the computer-using community is really ready to seriously go for broke and ride the tank right now. But it’s easy to take the first steps, which consist of getting losing Explorer, Office and Outlook/Outlook Express. Explorer is the easiest and you have lots of options. I would start with downloading Opera and giving it a whirl. The ability to turn pop-up blocking on and off at will is really nice. There are other options too, including Mozilla and Mozilla Firebird.

The second step, and probably the most important with regards to getting comfortable with the concept of Open Source software, is making the move to OpenOffice 1.1. You can download this for Windows – or buy the CDs – and get the functional equivalents of Word, Excel, Powerpoint etc. They aren’t perfectly identical, but are similar enough that you won’t have any problem operating things. Nor will you have to change your files. I use .sxw (Writer format) files for my new stuff, but my current novel is still in the very same .doc file I was using with Word.

Email can be a little more problematic, since conversions can be a pain and Hotmail requires the use of poppers that require a bit of technical fiddling, but there are many, many options here. Eudora is probably the most popular, although both Opera and Mozilla have email components which will serve as an integrated suite ala Explorer/Outlook express. And then, of course, there’s the big leap to Linux, which encompasses all of these steps and then more.

But there’s no need to make the migration all at once. Take one step at a time, try each application out, and move on from there. It’s worth it, and if you value freedom, I think it’s worth investing the time and effort involved. The Trusted Computing threat is real; this is neither paranoia nor media hype, but the considered opinion of many informed people in the technical field. It is Palladium and the TCG, more than anything, that has turned me from a Microsoft user and fan to an outspoken opponent.

LMC writes: I work for a major oil company and I can tell you unequivocally that we have thousands of computers here and abroad that use Microsoft exclusively for not only desktops, and their servers, but our Control Computers (those that get you heating oil and gasoline) which also run using Microsoft. Even if you are right, IT IS TOO LATE and for you to tell someone to migrate to something else to ward off Microsoft is ridiculous. No offense.



None taken. I imagine we’ll need a new bumper sticker soon: “I’ll give up my unTrusted Computer when they pry my cold dead fingers off the keyboard.”

Ride the tank. Be the Penguin.

RSL asks: Where are the sources of the information that you quote in this artice? I.e what are the “Non-Governmental Social Control Box” and “Totalitarian Control Group?”

Didn’t you see the link in the column? Anyhow, TCG = Trusted Computer Group and NGSCB = Next Generation Secure Computing Base. The Trusted Computing FAQ is the best place to start and has links to original material, including the Totalitarians own web site.

At least we finally know where that phrase comes from. The aliens were at Microsoft all along! I always thought that “Bill Gates” looked as if he were wearing a rubber mask. These people are obviously in on the conspiracy, trying to hide the truth.

HR writes: I was delighted when I found your articles on WorldNetDaily. I like the way you express strong Christian conservatism with wit and erudition. Your work is a rare combination of solid values, bold style, and intelligence. Good job, and I hope we hear a lot more from you.

Frankly, I’m not so sanguine about the blog. I think your gravitas is on the line. My concern is that you’re going to undermine the reputation you’re earning as a thoughtful, educated, conservative writer. The more I hear about [list of recent blog subjects], the less I’m able to take seriously your writing elsewhere and on other subjects.

What do you all think? Obviously, there’s around 650 visits a day, so people are reading this, but that’s not even 5 percent of those who read the column at WorldNetDaily alone. I started this blog as a means of providing some personal connection to my readers since deciding to drop the Mailbox after the vast majority of hate mailers and critics were scared off. I certainly enjoy blogging, but not so much that I think it’s worth sabotaging the column over.

I have some sympathy for HR’s opinion. It’s always easier to have a high regard for a writer when you know nothing about them except their more or less polished craft. I happen to know a few SFWA pros I used to read as a kid, and while they’re great people, by and large, they just don’t appear to be the same sort of higher beings that I once considered them. I make no claims to having much in the way of gravitas – my friends would laugh at that, especially since Wildboyz is a pretty reasonable approximation for our collective approach to Life, the Universe and Everything – but I can see how the difference between my columns and, say, Maureen Dowd’s might give one that impression.

“Dude, that’s a lot of black mamba!”

I may have to check out The Tale of Murasaki. It could be a complete disaster, but the author’s website indicates that she’s at least done her homework and that she does have at least a modicum of the aesthetic sensitivity required to even begin thinking of writing such a book.

I briefly considered writing something similar about ten years ago, but I quickly realized that I fell significantly short in the aesthetics department. Sure, I enjoy a beautiful sunset over a mountain lake as much as the next person, but it’s just not going to send me into tearful raptures without some significant chemical alteration of the brain chemistry.

“Dean has provided no reason to expect from him especially elevated reasoning…. He seems to be an Everett Wharton. “The Prime Minister,” one of Anthony Trollope’s parliamentary novels, introduces Wharton, who was, Trollope wrote, “no fool”: “[He] had read much, and although he generally forgot what he read, there were left with him from his reading certain nebulous lights, begotten by other men’s thinking, which enabled him to talk on most subjects. It cannot be said of him that he did much thinking for himself — but he thought that he thought.”

Dean seems like that, which is not surprising or disqualifying: Most political leaders are not people of reflection, but of ambition-dictated action, living off borrowed intellectual capital. Given the accumulating evidence, the professors’ pin-up should dismount his intellectual high horse.

“He thought that he thought.” What a fantastic summary. It should serve as the epitaph of the entire Left.

So, Howard Dean says that Lao Tzu is his favorite philosopher. I happened to pick up a major in what used to be called Oriental Studies, and I’m willing to bet that if you gave him a list of 100 quotes from Confucius, Mencius, Mo Tzu, Han Fei and Lao Tzu, he couldn’t identify more than five of them without guessing. Granted, I’m not sure I could get more than 20 correct myself – it’s been a while – but then, I’m not claiming that Lao Tzu is my favorite philosopher.

If you’ve seriously studied any aspect of Asian culture, then you know that the vast, vast majority of Westerners who claim to like one form of it or another actually know next to nothing about it, and understand even less. This goes triply for an American talking about anything relating to the Tao. One thing that I love about The Tale of Genji is that it always serves as an excellent reminder of how I know so very little about what is truly a very alien mindset.

As for my favorite philosopher, it’s a toss-up. Douglas Adams or Friedrich Nietzsche. And yes, I could nail those quotes, for I am so hip that I have difficulty seeing over my own pelvis.

Minnesota’s football team was segregated then, as were those in the South when Warmath arrived [from Mississippi]. By 1958, he had started recruiting black athletes from Pennsylvania, North Carolina and elsewhere. Warmath was hung in effigy on campus during the 2-7 season of 1959. He survived the attempt to buy out his contract, then took the Gophers to back-to-back Rose Bowls. Murray remained through 1971 — an 18-year run that took him from Southern outsider to a Minnesota legend.

“Someone very high in the administration came to me in those early years and said, ‘Coach, how many black players do you have now?’ ” Warmath said. “I said, ‘I never counted, but if I had two or three more like these young men, we would be really good.’

“He was trying to tell me I had enough black players, and I was saying, ‘Take a hike.’ “

It’s quite common in the liberal North to assume that all Southerners are racist, because all good Northerners know that race is what the Civil War was about, and why would the South have fought it if they weren’t all racists. I know what I’m talking about – I’m a Minnesotan after all, and when I have a serious conversation with another man I stand shoulder to shoulder with them and look 90 degrees away from the direction of the other guy the way you’re supposed to in civil Minnesota society. As this account of Murray Warmath, one of the U of M’s two great football coaches, shows, sometimes it’s actually the left-liberal PC college administration people that are the racists. These days, that’s usually the case. Now they just think that their schools have too many Asians and Whites.