A note to freshen up the references to Senator Jon Kyl - at least I haven't seen anyone claim that Mr. Kyl is "most likely to blow up the world" (that award goes to Arizona Senator John McCain). How old will John McCain be come election day 2008? Answer: 72 years old. Older than Ronald "I cannot recall" Reagan who was 69 years old upon becoming president.

There is something indescribable to be learned from Sarah Silverman.

Iraq:The hidden story. From UK station Channel 4 dated May 12th, 2006, 48 minutes.

Over at aznetroots.com the simmering hate of current day liberals boils over even as government regulation rachets up one more notch. Luckily you can demonstate the reason why government minimum wage laws hurt people in just one picture.

At least one person at Hot AZ It Gets thinks we should be sympathetic to the continued efforts of the Arizona legislature to get a pay increase. As if getting paid $24,000 a year plus $35 dollars a day they are in session isn't fair. For a job where they are only required to work 120 days of the year (compared to a working man's 260 days) I think that is fine and plenty fair. If they really addressed all the issues they wouldn't be called for special sessions and the populace could breathe easier knowing that the legislature and executive departments weren't concocting some new way to regulate Arizonans in a new and different way.

From Gabriel Gifford's Cactus Roots Connection, Vol. 22 we learn that the Democrats still haven't learned that government minumum wage laws have negative effects:

Raising the Minimum Wage
Giffords also backed legislation boosting the minimum wage to $7.25 an hour, the latest in a series of sweeping measures enacted by the 110th Congress. Giffords is a co-sponsor of the bipartisan minimum wage bill, the first pay raise for working Americans in a decade. Now $5.15 an hour, the minimum wage will go up $2.10 over two years and directly benefit an estimated 13 million workers and their families.

In Arizona, an estimated 148,000 workers will benefit from the hourly wage hike. Nearly 70 percent of those workers are at least 20 years old and almost 60 percent are women. "This pay raise is long overdue," said Giffords, the former president and chief executive officer of Tucson's El Campo Tire Inc. "Over the past ten years the minimum wage was stuck at $5.15 an hour, while members of Congress benefited from nearly $32,000 in pay increases. That is unacceptable."

And how many wokers won't benefit from this hike and will be fired or never hired in the first place? Shoot folks, if the minimum wage is so good why not immediately raise it to $9.00 a hour? The reason is that the negative effects would be too evident and the voting public would learn that Democrats can't be trusted (the Republicans can't either but that's an item for another day).

For some background:

According to a claim by the Mackinac Center for Public Policy, the passage of the first Federal mandated minimum wage in the United States in 1933 led to an estimated 500,000 blacks losing their jobs via replacement by higher skilled and more educated white laborers. Milton Friedman, 1976 Nobel Prize winner in Economics, called the minimum wage one of the most "anti-negro laws" for what he saw as its adverse affects on employers.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minimum_wage#_note-mack

I do not agree with liberal socialists and I do not agree with conservative socialists but I imagine everybody agrees that the vermin who create badware are to be despised and shunned. Visit www.stopbadware.org to learn more about this scourge and find out what Google, Lenovo, Sun Microsystems and a couple of non-profit groups are doing to turn back the tide.

Ron Paul Speech on the Patriot Act

Ron Paul talks about the Patriot Act and how the government eventually catches up to what the people want. Recorded August 31st, 2006.

It is good to see that there is at least one Democrat pointing out those electected democrats who aren't smart enough to figure out that some people who voted for Democrats wanted less war and not more.

The Libertarian Alternative - Bureaucrash on making capitalism cool

I enjoyed watching Heather Talley of Bureaucrash.com and host Mark Selzer talk about making capitalism cool.

Catastrophic events notwithstanding, it looks like Arizona will have to cope with Republican Senator Jon Kyl for six more years. I still can't believe the majority of voters swallowed his "Time magazine says I am one of the 10 best Senators". That probably is true, unfortunately for the average citizen the 10 best US Senators are drunk on power and indifferent to the suffering of others. Add that to the existing Republican predeliction to assume that there is no real rush to get out of Iraq and it will likely at least a year before President Bush will feel like declaring victory so that GI Joe and GI Jane can be stationed where they can protect americans and not the corporate welfare queens, Halliburton and a dozen other companies.

Deadpan satire is such a sharp knife.

It has been a very long time since I read The Lord of The Rings but I remember being captivated by the story Mr. Tolkien told. Reading articles about it are a continuing source of intellectual enjoyment. William Lopascio's recounting of his thoughts on TLOTR is a inspiring story.

Being a libertarian and not being desirous of regulating more jobs out of existence in the US I oppose (Arizona) proposition 202. In case you think that people earning minimum wage are looking forward to increased government regulation of private enterprise, take a look at comment #1 on this post.

"It's All About Who You Sleep With ... a Cautionary Note from Michael Moore" I watched Fahrenheit 9/11 that I downloaded from the internet (via the Macintosh version of BearShare). I found it to be an eye opening education on how much the Bush administration is in bed with the oil interests (and not the average American). Michael Moore in his post tells Democratic candidates that if they can't or won't dump their pro-war positions that they are in for a rude awakening come election day. I agree. I don't think many Democrats have the wisdom to accept his advice which I why I am voting for the Libertarian Party candidates for (Arizona) Governor, Secretary of State, US Senate and US Congress, district 5.

I haven't seen "Iraq for Sale: The War Profiteers" but people don't hear nearly enough about Iraq War profiteering. I look forward to seeing this movie. People hear about the mercenary firm Blackwater USA and corrupt contracting company Halliburton KBR perhaps once a month and then they fade into the background hum.

I am not United States Senator Jon Kyl.

I would think that would be pretty evident if you look at the picture on the sidebar at the right.

Like some tatoos, people make mistakes they later regret. Choosing the URL of this blog is a decision that I will have to learn to live with.

Why I would willingly choose to incorporate Jon Kyl's name in a URL?

I didn't start this blog because Arizona has a US Senator who is indifferent to the human life (both American and Iraqi) being snuffed out on a daily basis. I thought that some human being might search on Jon Kyl and stumble upon this little bit of flotsam in the great ocean of the internet.

hotazitgets.com has called me out on this and only now do I realize what a horrible atrocity I have committed.

This is, of course, but the smallest fraction of the offense that Jon Kyl has committed in his continuing efforts to keep Americans in harms way by supporting the Iraq government or the resulting deaths of Iraqis shot or blown to smithereens by good ole American bombs or burned to death by our patriotic white phosphorus rounds (I am sure they only harmed the guilty).

I am also not Jim Pederson who also supports the continuing idiocy that is the US occupation of Iraq.

I am not Richard Mack either. Mr. Mack "will do everything to bring our troops home NOW!" which is a darn sight better position than any other candidate for US Senate 2006 (AZ).

Just so we are clear on this.. I am not Jon Kyl and I don't wish to be Jon Kyl.

When possible I try to make a diffence by putting my money where my beliefs are. I'd like to see hemp (also known as marijuana or cannabis) have a higher profile in the US and the world. Hemp has the capacity to reduce fossil fuel use. I often take the time when shopping at my local health food store or health food supermarket to buy hemp seed/hemp nut based "granola bars". You might be pleasantly amazed to see the variety of brands and flavors they are available in. While I will likely always favor products of the Dr. Bronner company (Alpsnack), there are a cornucopia of other products available.

If ever you want to differentiate between political candidates you should examine whether they fall into one of two groups. First there are those candidates who cannot leave people well enough alone and then there are those candidates who wish to leave people alone so long as their behavior is peaceful.

Notwithstanding that two strip clubs have been present in Scottsdale for I would estimate 8 years now, those people who just cannot leave people alone to find their own perdition feel the need to regulate the strip clubs out of existence.

Congressional candidates J.D. Hayworth and Harry Mitchell both favor regulating strip clubs out of existence.

If you live in Arizona congressional district 5, please vote for Warren Severin so that those who live or travel to the City of Scottsdale can continue to attend strip clubs if they so choose or not attend strip clubs if they don't choose.

Not to mention how much free publicity Proposition 401 gives to Skin Cabaret and Babe's Cabaret will get as a result of the governments counterproductive efforts to ban strip clubs in Scottsdale.

If you haven't read about the pitiful excuse Arizona and Maricopa county have for election officials in the Phoenix New Times you have missed out. FreedomsPhoenix.com has an article written by Dave Hodges that touches on recent events and makes a logical case that voters should not trust the Arizona election department to operate on a "trust us" basis.