GPG on Windows

This post is for people who are wondering why I have an unreadable block of text in most of my messages.

Also, as fair warning to everyone who may want to contact me later, starting on 7 July, 2012, I will no longer be reading emails that were not signed/encrypted with GPG/PGP. Unless they are from a very specific set of senders. Such as VT's email system for the online class systems (Scholar).

Hate Crime and Moral Turpitute

I just read an article on Fox News that amazed and astounded me - and not in a good way. A Dharun Ravi purposely invaded the privacy of another man during a homosexual romantic encounter and could be deported. The victim committed suicide. Ravi apparently doesn't like gay people, making this a "hate crime". In order to be deported, the crime needs to have been a "a crime of moral turpitude or an aggravated felony"

"Ex-Patriot Act"

Democratic Senators Chuck Shumer and Bob Casey have put forth a bill that would subject high earning emigrants to a nasty capital gains tax. What needs to happen is that the capital gains tax needs to be cut, so that entrepreneurs will be drawn to the US, rather than chased away from it.

Whining about Voter ID Laws

Democrats are whining about Voter ID laws. Really though, its their fault, with stuff like the ACORN scandals being linked to their party. With all that has happened to link their party to voter fraud, they are in the same position as a counterfeiter whining about new, harder to counterfeit, currency.

Privatization of the American Space Program

Another private company has plans on putting astronauts in orbit. This can only be good for the American Space Program.

Space veterans announce Liberty rocket, target 2015 launch

Occutards vs. Tea Baggers: The Stupidity of Name-calling

I dislike any sort of name-calling in the political arena on general principal. The reasoning is simple. When a political opponent is referred to in a derogatory manner, the focus is taken off of the opponent's political ideals (the reason for opposing him/her/them in the first place). Referring to members of the Occupy movement as "Occutards" may be accurate, but it moves the focus onto their intelligence rather than their Marxist ideals or criminal behavior and it predisposes any mildly liberal or moderate person to ignore your points. Calling a Tea Partier a "Tea Bagger" (in addition to being inaccurate) has the same effect upon people of moderate or mildly conservative bents. In other words, derogatory terminology moves the focus off of your opponents philosophy and onto them and it turns off the people whom you are trying to convince.

Political name-calling also tends to show a severe lack of imagination. "Occutards", "Tea Baggers", "Nazi". Really the most overused of these is "Nazi". A few points of the National Socialist platform are:

• Total confiscation of war profits
• Profit-Sharing in large enterprises
• Large scale old age pension schemes
• Nationalization of major corporations
• Education and Healthcare reform to increase the state's power
• Duty of the state to provide employment
• All with an overdose of nationalism.

The Nazi platform includes 25 points available for review here.
A brief skimming of the platform is all you need to see that calling any American elected official a Nazi is base libel. Socialist might fit some of them, Nationalist might fit others, but Nazi doesn't fit any that I know of.

I'm down off of my high horse. I had a run in with another student, who while generally smart, is politically blinkered, and has a bad habit of referring to Republicans as Nazis and Tea Partiers as "Tea Baggers".

The Slightly Eviler Twin Comes Home

Taylor comes home from college tomorrow. Evil abounds.

Note: The opinion upon which twin is eviler is just that - an opinion - and the other twin disagrees about which of us is the eviler.