flakbait

Monday, January 23, 2012 7:14:03 PM

In the unlikely event that someone cares, I have been elsewhere. My head was bitten off by a grizzly bear. I was shot in the leg by a Visigoth. I was kidnapped and held as a love slave by Jennifer Lopez. I was swallowed by an orca. I got lost in what's left of the Amazon rain forest. I fell into the the Grand Canyon and couldn't get out. Take your your pick and if you're correct you shall be rewarded handsomely by any literary character of your choice. (Gilgamesh and Captain Ahab excluded.)

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The Sword

Saturday, November 12, 2011 3:24:04 AM

It is once again time for a bit of cold steel. Another Sword will be unsheathed in the near future. Be ready.

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the pen: a good thing

Monday, June 20, 2011 12:13:53 AM

opium, DoD, USAF, drugs ...

The U.S. government should subsidize the production, transport, distribution, sale, and possession of opium and other agriculture-based drugs. Specifically, pay people to grow it. Give it away. Transport it in military aircraft. Distribute it through the existing network of providers, and pay them to do it. Advertise the fact that their merchandise is free. If the scum try to somehow cheat the users, let the junkies dispense justice with impunity.

As far as growing it, all efforts to stop people from doing so have failed miserably. For example, the program to stop opium production in the infamous Golden Triangle (roughly where the borders of Burma, Laos, and Thailand meet). The U.S. government, in a naive attempt to dissuade farmers from growing opium poppies, paid them to stop. Being intelligent, logical businessmen, the farmers took the money and continued to grow their poppies. Two incomes for the cost of one — now, who wouldn't want to get a piece of that action? The governments of the aforementioned countries certainly did. The corruption ran, and still runs, wide and deep.

Afghanistan is also a pretty good example. We want the farmers there to quit growing their crop of choice, and why should they? What else will grow there except, perhaps, rocks and religious fanatics hell-bent on treating their dogs better than they treat their wives and daughters. The Taliban apparently pays a lot of its operating expenses with opium profits. Take their money. It's a time-honored way to do business and we should always be looking for some way to screw those assholes.

In both cases, pay the farmers to grow as much as they can. Maybe they will even have to hire some farm hands, which equals jobs, prosperity, and sharing of the wealth. The USAF picks up the stuff directly from the farmers and delivers it directly to domestic distributors, thereby bypassing and shafting not only the warlords and fanatics, but forcing the corruption industry to develop a new business plan. The complicit governments will soon realize that they, too, can profit by growing the stuff. They will either hire, or force, the farmers to plant, grow, and harvest their whatever. If that pisses off the farmers, let them deal with their governments. Every country needs a revolution or rebellion now then.

Do this for the benefit of Joe (or Jo) Taxpayer. Even with all the costs associated with my proposal we will still be ahead. (Although the defense budget won't be reduced much, at least the DoD won't be getting so many people killed -- ours and theirs. I have ideas for that which will be discussed in a subsequent post.) We can eliminate a lot of first line law enforcement activity. We can reduce prosecution and court expenditures. We can reduce the prison population and thus the cost of maintaining prisoners. We won't need to build more prisons. We will reduce the drug addict portion of our homeless population and the hassles and expense involved in looking after them. We will get rid of most junkies because by getting their needs fulfilled free, they may feel free to overdose and die -- assuming that no medical services will be provided to them (more savings!). By dying, they will slow population growth and increase the average IQ of the entire nation.

This is a Good Thing.

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