Sam Houston Museum

My first story from this year's trip to the US is from the Sam Houston museum in Huntsville, Texas. I've posted earlier about the huge statue of him that stands right by the side of the interstate, and how interesting he was as a politician and statseman, but I can confirm that a deeper look makes the man even more colorful.

Houston is indeed one of the greatest statesmen America has ever fostered, and in addition he has that hint of lovable rogue about him that I like in a politician. He left school after just a few months and only worked on the family farm for a short time, before running off at age 16 to join the Cherokees. He stayed with them for around two years and was adopted by a chief and learned the language. He acquired the nickname "The Raven".

Later, he started a school for about half a year - something quite brazen, considering he could barely write and do maths himself. Around 20 he finally joined the army to fight against the British in the War of 1812. In a fit of maternal love his mother is reported to have said that she'd rather see all her sons placed in a grave than have one of them value his life above that of honor. The heart swells at the thought.

During the war he was injured, but made such an impression that he caught the eye of general, later president, Andrew Jackson. The two struck up a friendship that lasted through their lifetimes. Houston had a failed marriage that lasted only three months and then was accused of slander by a Congressman. Houston physically beat the politician (again an endearable trait) and the subsequent trial, in which he was found guilty, provided him with a national audience and ended in his popularity increasing.

Much followed, much, much more than I can reasonably fit in here. He was elected governor of Tennessee, but left office to live with the injuns again. This time he was given the nickname of "the big drunk" by them, on account of his alcohol consumption. In addition he was made a member of the Cherokee nation and also married a native woman.

Finally, Houston ended up in Texas. Here, he fell in love with the land and fought for independence from Mexico. He was elected president of the new, independent Republic, but always favored inclusion in the United States. When that goal was finally obtained some ten years later, he was elected Texas' first Senator, but was recalled when he voted against the Kansas-Nebraska act. Houston was also governor for a while, but was kicked out because he refused to take an oath of allegiance to the Confederacy.

As a Senator, he bravely stood on principle on numerous occasions and claimed the role of a "national politician", rather than a sectional one, as was so common not just in the south in those days. Indeed, special interests like geography continue to play an oversized part in US (and Norwegian!) politics.

Finally, a little story about his views on slavery. While not a principled opponent of the abominable practice in any way, he treated his slaves much better than most. As with so many other farmers he would sometimes rent out his slaves for other labor when they were not required on the farm, but unlike others he let them keep the proceeds.

It seems that he struck up a genuine friendship with his main slave, Joshua, who he encouraged to learn to read and write (which was banned at the time) and who took his name - not an uncommon thing back then. After the Civil War, when Houston was dead and his wife and children were in economic need, a freed Joshua offered to give them his life savings of 2,000 dollars - quite a huge sum of money at the time. The widow turned down the money, but I find the gesture moving. I don't know about y'all, but I just don't think I would make that kind of offer to people I viewed as my oppressors.

In later years, Joshua became a respected member of the Huntsville community and actually served as an alderman during Reconstruction. American history has quite a few of these little stories, which is one reason why I loooove traveling around, visiting museums and learning about this stuff.

Sadly, I don't have a single photo from Huntsville, as my camera decided to die on me (for now at least), but you can read more about Sam Houston and view pictures and more stories about him on the museum's webpage.

Visiting Adam Smith

Siri and I went to visit our philosophical hero Adam Smith today. He's buried in a cemetary quite a bit down the hill on the Royal Mile. His gravesite is in the extreme left hand corner when you're facing the church with the Royal Mile at your back.

Me, the gravesite and an English 20-pound bill. It's ironic that Adam Smith can be found on English banknotes but not Scottish.


Siri in front of Adam Smith's grave.


*sniffle*

I, a communist

Mwahahahahahaaaaa! Today I actually signed the list proposal for a local alliance of the Socialist Left Party, the Marxists (not very in my experience) and some independent reds. They're trying to put together an alternative before September's local elections here in my hometown and since they're a new alternative they needed 300 signatures in order to run.

I don't know if they'll make it, but to me it's mostly a question of democracy. To my mind this means giving the people what they want, good and hard. If a majority of the locals think we should give these loonies (ok, ok, I actually know many of them and they're nice people) power, so be it. We'll have four years of dreamy idiocy and then the state can come in and clean up the remains before giving power to the right for the next twenty years...

Anyway, they're a democratic alternative (not much prolatarian revolution left here...) and I think they should be allowed to give it a go, even though I don't agree with them on much. I certainly won't vote for them. But since I'm not a member of any other party, I'll at least give them my signature, if they want it. That's a small price to pay for democracy.

Sweet irony

You may remember how former prez George W. Bush caught heat because he kept pronouncing "nuclear" as "nucUlear"? Yesterday I saw "The China Syndrome", and guess who did the same thing? Michael Douglas.

Uhm.

The UK parliamentary election is held today, so I thought I'd try an automated test to see where I would end up. I consider myself a conservative libertarian, who would vote Conservative in most UK constituencies. Imagine my surprise when I tried the Telegraph's test and came out with this result:

UKIP 66%
BNP 58%
Labour 49%
Conservative 42%
LibDem 28%
Green 21%

There has to be something seriously wrong when a party containing fascist, anti-semite scum like the BNP comes in 2nd and Labour beats out the Tories... (whether that wrong is with ME or the Telegraph's test is another matter).

Cracking numbers

The effin Red-Green coalition has "won" the national elections and are set for another four years of governing. However, due to Norways electoral system, the opposition gained more votes than the Red-Greens while coming up just short of a majority in Parliament (2 reps). I have calculated the numbers for the whole country as one circuit, and they are as follow (actual election result in parenthesis):

AP (Labour): 60 (64)
SV (Socialist): 11 (11)
SP (Agrarian): 10 (11)

R (Commies): 2 (-)
MGP (Greens): 1 (-)
PP (Pensioners): 1 (-)

V (Liberals): 7 (2) (These poor bastards didn't make the 4% national threshold)
KrF (Christians): 9 (10)
H (Conservatives): 29 (30)
Frp (Populist): 39 (41)

So we see that the Red-Greens would get 81 seats, 83 with the Commies. The center-right opposition would get 84 seats. This result would leave the Greens and the Pensioners holding the balance.

Support Israel

I've yet to discover any way in which I might adopt an Israeli tank or airplane or such, so I did the second best thing - I donated to Aguda Lemaan Hachayal -The Association for the Wellbeing of Israel's Soldiers.

AWIS has lots of projects like building recreational facilities for troops, creating scholarships, helping the injured etc. They have a very close relationship with the IDF, so I'm fairly confident the money will be well spent. Details on how YOU can donate here.


Note: Any and all critical comments will be deleted. This is war, and there should be no pardon for enemies of civilization - and I have at the very least no intention of providing a forum for you fuckers. You already have 99% of western media to serve as your mouthpiece, be content with that.

Pay me my money down

Back in December '07 I placed two small bets on the outcome of the presidential nomination contests. I put NOK 100 (almost $20) on Hillary (odds 1.40) and NOK 155 (appx $30) on McCain (odds 13!). The bets were placed with Bwin, a British company.

On Wednesday, the day after it had become apparent that Obama had a majority of delegates behind him, the Democratic race was "called" by Bwin, and my $20 was lost. However, I'd still not seen one dime of the money I was due for my brilliant bet on McCain. So I sent them this brief note:

"You've called the bet for the democrats, yet still haven't paid out my winnings on John McCain, who nailed the republican nomination with much greater certainty as long ago as February. What gives?"


Saturday, they came back with this pointless, formulaic answer:

"Thank you for your e-mail. We apologise for the delay in responding to your query and can confirm that in regards to the bet Who will win the Republican Party nomination? we have been informed by our book making department that the official result has not been given as yet, therefore we are unable to settle this bet. If by chance you know another verifiable source that can prove the contrary, we'll be more than happy to examine your inquiry once again. Please note that as soon as the official result has been stated this bet will be settled accordingly. Please do not hesitate to contact us if you have any further queries. Kind regards, Your bwin support team."


The "verifiable source" phrase made me blow a fuse, so I immediately sent off this reply:

"You've got to be kidding. If this represents the quality of research done by your bookmaking department, I suggest you fire them all and replace them with trained monkeys. Same quality, much cheaper.

My point was and is this: You have already notified me that the issue of the Democratic presidential nomination for 2008 has been settled in favor of "another than Hillary Clinton". This judgement is 99% likely to be correct, as Barack Obama has won the public support of more than half of the voting delegates to the party's nomination meeting in Denver in August. Only a major scandal that would lead delegates to change their minds (as they can do under the party's rules) will change this. So to all intents and purposes I agree that Clinton lost the nomination, as defined by the results of the nomination process through elections, caucuses etc.

However, under that same logic John McCain MUST be said to have won the Republican nomination. He secured a majority of voting delegates to the Republican convention as early as March 4, something most people not living isolated in deep caves would know. Again, I suggest you look into the monkey proposal.

Sources:

CNN from March:
http://edition.cnn.com/2008/POLITICS/03/04/march.4.gop/index.html

CNNs updated and current delegate tally:
http://edition.cnn.com/ELECTION/2008/primaries/results/scorecard/#val=R

It is common knowledge to anyone reading newspapers that John McCain secured the Republican nomination way earlier and more securely than Obama did the Democratic one. To call the latter bet and not the former defies all logic. If you want to wait to call the bets until the nomination meetings have been held and the process formally concluded, that would be understandable and fair. But then you should use the same measuring stick for both bets and wait until August to call the Democratic nomination.

Regards,"

Today, shortly after noon, NOK 2,016 (appx $400) was deposited in my bwin account.

Best documentary

THIS should be the natural winner of an Oscar for best documentary. Unlike the so-called documentaries by previous winners Al Gore and Michael Moore, this one at least doesn't contain outright lies. Also, the threat it presents is vastly more dangerous and immediate.




UPDATE: The cowardly bastards at LiveLeak have pulled the video, but it's still available at google.

A special service to our readers

Phone cam recording of Saddam's hanging (via Drudge).

May plenty of others like him (Saddam, not Drudge... well mostly Saddam) find the same fate in the near future.

The end is near

My eyes! My eyes! It burns, take it awaaaaaayyyyyyyyyy!

(And if THIS isn't the scariest thing you've ever seen, you've got my sympathy; your life must have been hell.)

I think I've found a new niche in spoofing photos of famous people. Today's little quiz:

The person in the picture is:

a) In dire need of a better haircut
b) A living indictment of public dental care
c) Guy Verhofstadt, Prime Minister of Belgium
d) All of the above

Chocolate City

So, Nagin seems to have won the 1st round in New Orleans... I attribute this to my campaign aid of course.

I'm not sure what the mayor is doing in this picture, taken after last night's victory... maybe he's describing the size of his "chocolate" bar? The woman behind him sure seems to be having some thoughts on the subject.

Change your flag!

Now, I couldn't really give a damn about the current uprisings in Nepal, we sorta lost interest in feudalism over here several centuries ago. Reactionary monarchs or revolutionary maoists are just the same shit in different wrapping. But this photo of the Nepalese king caught my eye. Look at the pattern in the background - wouldn't that make a really cool flag for Israel??? Maybe it should come with a sound effect - like the sound of a Star Wars light sabre or something?

Truth in advertizing

New Orleans is conducting the first round of its mayoral elections Saturday, and polls show incumbent Ray Nagin to be one of two candidates to reach the run-off. To me it's quite infathomable that a man who has shown himself to be so hopelessly incompetent and so openly racist could run successfully for dog catcher, but there you are. Anyways, keeping fresh in mind Mayor Nagin's "chocolate city" remark, and the need for truth in advertizing, I thought I'd give him a hand with his campaigning:

Yet another contest

This picture shows:

a) Bush showing the Chinese president his own version of the Vulcan death grip
b) Bush checking to see if that's really an Armani suit or just a cheap, Chinese fake
c) Bush two seconds away from starting a nuclear war with China
d) All of the above

Another contest

This picture shows:

a) A definite rebuttal of the "blood-for-oil" theory
b) A gas price which is still only half that of many European countries
c) Why we should turn Alaskan caribou into fuel NOW
d) All of the above

Ambivalence

Two stories caught my eye today that made me feel slightly ambivalent about the possible outcomes (no, I'm not always in a state of raging, arrogant certainty).

First story: The French are retreating again. After retreating from Germans, Arabs and their own students for years, this time they're retreating from their own smokers. Fear of electoral reprisals has caused the government to postpone a new law banning smoking indoors. Other examples of legislative backpedalling is given in the linked article. Now, I'm all in favor of eternally postponing laws that violate private property rights, and a ban on smoking (however much I hate that disgusting habit) is a gross violation of such rights... but on the other hand, I'd sure like to see the French government actually stand up for something, other than farm subsidies and the right not to bathe frequently.

Second story: The FDA has released a statement dismissing claims that marihuana has any discernible health benefits. Now on the one hand, I tend to think the FDA is most likely correct about this. Almost every "herbal" medication in use has no scientifically proven merit whatsoever, beyond the occasional placebo effect. In medicine, "alternative" tends to be the politically correct term for "bullshit". On the other hand, I am all in favor of legalizing marihuana, and regardless of actual medical effects I think any sane adult has a fundamental right to decide for themselves what substances they wish to inhale, inject or eat. If the medical usefulness argument is disproven, civil libertarians will lose a tactically successful angle with which to introduce legalization.

Some immature personal harassment

According to this article, former Secretary of State, Madeleine Albright, claims she's able to "leg-press up to 400 pounds".

Uhm... I don't think carrying your own weight and a small hand bag qualifies as "leg-press", Madame Secretary.

*******************************
Contest: The person in the picture below looks

a) Retarded
b) Drunk
c) Suspiciously like Cherie Blair, wife of the British Prime Minister
d) All of the above

Heh

No! Not the Vulcan death grip!
AAAAAAAAAAAAAAARRRRGGGHHHH!!!