John Kerry had better not have any stock in getting support off of his support base among online bloggers. With the exception of a few notables, I have found the majority of bloggers that support Kerry to be virulent bullies that have zero tolerance for another person's religious or political position. In short, they're everything they consistently accuse the right of being. The situation of one of our latest bullies underscores this. With the assistance of a friend, he passes on a half as...
Well, Barbara Walters is coming out of retirement to do an interview with Mary Kay LeTourneau, the teacher who had a long standing affair with her 12 year old student. What bugs me about this is the way this has brought out our perceptions of child sexual abuse victims who happen to be male. Throughout this whole ordeal, LeTourneau has been portrayed as a sympathetic figure because the student wanted the affair. The press' treatment of LeTourneau is wrong. As a man who was a childhood v...
OK, folks, a bit of a plea here. I was watching the news on Hurricane Jeanne hitting the shore and thinking about it in light of my current situation. Here's the deal: If I know I have work, I could be to Florida in about 10 days to help with cleanup and rebuilding efforts(I would need to take advantage of Greyhound's 7 day advance fare purchase). What I would need is as follows: *some sort of accomodation for my family (5 children). As we're behind on our rent here, I can't leave them ...
Well, folks, you will be happy to know that I finally got my unemployment check. While it still leaves us short, it's not NEARLY as short as we were. Now to get it cashed, which may be easier said than done (a Wisconsin check in Nevada).
Before I start this article, I would like to point to the title, which I admit needs a lot of tweaking. I decided, though, to kill the "Down and Out in America" thread title as it was overly pessimistic. So, if anyone has any good title suggestions to keep you updated that aren't as negative, I'd love to hear them. Yesterday was interesting, to say the least. I got up at 8:30 am to get down to day labor to pick up my check. Once there, they told me I couldn't pick up the check until 4:30 pm (...
A couple of my past blogs have focused on the Free State Project, and one previous blog has touched on the failure of libertarians in New Hampshire (the chosen state for the FSP) to put Michael Badnarik, the Libertarian Party candidate, on the ballot, making NH one of only two states (Oklahoma being the other) where Badnarik doesn't appear on the ballot. For those who are unfamiliar with the Free State Project, here is a portion of their mission statement, pulled from their homepage at www.f...
More than 5 weeks after applying, I finally received a decision as to my unemployment benefits. They were approved (as they should have been; I did nothing to merit being dismissed), so that much is good news. The bad side of it is, still no check, but at least now I can LOOK for one (hopefully not 5 weeks from now!)
This from the Augusta Free Press Positive press boosts Libertarian candidate Notes from the Press Chris Graham chris@augustafreepress.com One thing that has surprised Libertarian Party presidential candidate Michael Badnarik to date: the positive coverage from the news media for his campaign. "I've been very pleased with the attention that the campaign has been getting so far," Badnarik told The Augusta Free Press . "I would say that the media cove...
The following is taken from Michael Badnarik's blog at www.badnarik.org . I replied to the people at opendebates.org and told them that I felt they had become as bad as the monsters they set out to fight, and that their entire agenda seems to revolve around getting Nader (on the ballot in 39 states) into the debates, but not other third party candidates (such as Badnarik, on the ballot in 48 or 49, depending on the results of a court decision in Oklahoma). The press release below was posted ...
This from the Libertarian party website at www.lp.org : Libertarian candidate competes in Olympic fencing CODY MATTERN In August, the Libertarian Party's candidate for Oregon state House of Representatives (District 35) took time to go to Athens for the Olympic Games. But Cody Mattern, the 23-year-old from Tigard, Ore., wasn't sitting in the stands watching others participate in the games. As one of the best fencers in the world, he ...
I decided to do a little googling today and entered the words "libertarian blogs". That my blog didn't appear on the first page of links was not terribly surprising; it's a huge internet, and many Libertarians have realized that blogs are a very viable medium for advancing the message of the Libertarian Party. Undaunted, I went to page two, expecting to continue on down and find my blog buried in the La Brea tar pits of forgotten blogs, but found it nicely perched at number 19. 19's not too b...
Well, I finished my weekly work assignment at 5:00 today, so I will get paid for 31 hours tomorrow. This means we'll have some money around the house. It also means, unfortunately, that I can't go into Vegas tomorrow as I had planned for extra work, because I need to collect my check from the day labor here in town, and they don't open until 8 (If I'm not at the day labor in Vegas by 5:30 am, I can only hope to be put on "standby" in case someone doesn't show up). There are a couple of hopefu...
For those who read my blog regularly, you know what we've been through over the last month. For those who don't, basically, I had a job this summer that I liked, and that I thought liked me. Then, just short of 2 weeks after the youngest of our five children was born (after two weeks of holding off labor with my wife having to remain 80 miles away from the family due to fears of inadequate medical care here), I was unceremoniously fired from that job. Since then, I have received exactly $44.32 i...
I was challenged on another thread by someone who claims Christianity, and yet harbors an outward animosity to the poor. Having studied the subject for many years, I am well aware of many of the Bible's teachings on poverty and on how we are to treat the poor. These teachings are NOT popular in the conservative church in America today, but rather have been supplanted by a me-first mentality that I consider to be downright apostate. To that end, I have compiled some verses on the bible's teaching...
This is a press release from the Badnarik 2004 website: BADNARIK ADDRESS TO THE YOUTH OF AMERICA September 21 — =========================== September 21, 2004 For Immediate Release Contact: Stephen P. Gordon Office: (512) 637-6867 Cell: (256) 227-8360 communications@badnarik.org =========================== Below is a statement issued by Libertarian presidential candidate Michael Badnarik to Americans 18 to 30 years of age: Nowhere is the increasing failure of the American p...