October 31, 2010

Vlogging Outtakes



What if there was an episode of The Punk Patriot where all you saw was the stuff I edit out?

Rally to Restore Sanity: What Sanity? (The Stupid Win)



So much for peaceful discourse. Deep down inside of everybody is a stupid chimpanzee who hits things that they disagree with. Some of them wear suits.

Here's the Daily Show's executive Producer assaulting a 9-11 Truth person.
Regardless of what you think about 9-11 truth folks: they're righteous/annoying-- they don't deserve to be asssaulted.



The best way to deal with something you find annoying, is to just walk away and ignore it.
That would be the sane, rational thing to do.

But then, we aren't sane or rational here in the USA. We love to hit things we don't understand or don't like. Like Iraq, Arabs, CodePink, anti-war protesters, hippies, journalists, or poor people.



I look forward to more from Davis Fleetwood's time at the rally. You can subscribe to his channel here:

Davis Fleetwood's channel

October 30, 2010

Solidarity 2.0



If you want to live in a country where We The People govern ourselves, all you have to do is start acting like it.

Every two years, there’s some election of some sort. Every two years, the corporate owned media reports the election results as being split between somewhere around 50%.

That’s not true. Because each year, about 60% of the population DOESN’T VOTE.

Mathematically that means that the people who vote only make up around 40% of the population. And since that population of people who actually vote is split nearly 50/50 between two pro-war, pro-corporate parties who don’t give a fuck about you, we are being ruled by the electoral decisions of 21% of the population.

People on the blue side of the 40% of people who vote love to talk about Ralph Nader as being a ‘spoiler candidate.’

With a majority of people not voting, I think we need to start looking in the mirror for who’s REALLY spoiling our elections.

Mathematically, if everybody who didn’t vote in 2000 out of apathy or cynicism had voted for Ralph Nader, Ralph Nader would have been our 43rd president. Not Bush. Not Gore. It wouldn’t have mattered that over a million people were illegally barred from voting due to fictional criminal records. It wouldn’t have mattered that the supreme court decided the election in Bush’s favor when Gore had won the most votes.

The election would have been a landslide for the Green Party, with 60% voting Green, and only 20% voting Republican, and only 20% voting Democrat.

So why doesn’t this happen? We’re told all the time by the Droopy Dogs of left-wing, the cheerleaders for apathy and cyncism, people like Noam Chomsky and Chris Hedges that we should try “not voting” as a way to protest, or that third parties don’t have a chance of winning because the corporate power over our lives is SO complete, blah blah blah, doom and gloom.

Here’s the truth-- we have the vote. We are the ones who are really in charge, but we either throw away our vote by supporting candidates that don’t support us, or we stay home in protest.

So what’s the real answer? This is my call to arms:

You need to get off the internet, and get into your community. You need to start working to build the third party movement into a force to be contended with. The Green Party is only 10 years old and at a national level is skeletal at best. We need people to organize in their communities, and build third parties like the Green Party up at the local and state level. Poland threw off Communist rule by organizing people all across the country in small local, decentralized groups. It was called the “Solidarity” movement.

We need a “Solidarity 2.0” here in the USA.

In truth, if you want a government where we the people govern ourselves, all you need to do is start acting like it.

VOTE.

Or, if you don’t mind being ruled by the will of 21% of the population, stay home.






October 28, 2010

KILL & EAT THE RICH (video)



Much thanks to Davis Fleetwood for making this video about my "Kill & Eat the Rich" campaign:


So I have this fable:

They told us when they took our jobs overseas, "No hard feelings. It's just business, you know?"
They told us when they destroyed our 401ks through gambling with our money, "No hard feelings. It's just business, you know?"
They told us when we fell behind on our mortgage and foreclosed on our house, kicking us to the street, "No hard feelings. It's just business, you know?"
As more and more people were forced on welfare, the government's budget started to look grim. When they cut welfare spending entirely so that they could enjoy bigger tax cuts to "stimulate the economy," they told us, "No hard feelings. It's just business, you know?"

Then the poor had nothing left to eat, and no place to go. So they had to kill and eat the rich.

They descended on Wall Street by the millions, stopping all traffic.

Their numbers were so large, the police couldn't do anything to stop the massive crowd of the disenfranchised. They flooded the buildings of Wall Street, the halls of DC, of the McMansions of Texas, and like a horde of zombies, they tore into the flesh of the horrified wealthy, who screamed and shat themselves, knowing that they were powerless to stop the oncoming mass of gnashing teeth and hungry mouths.

And as the poor picked the bones clean over the burning piles of money, the poor said to the bones:

"No hard feelings. It's just business, you know?"



Now, I want to explain, I don't actually advocate killing and eating the rich. It's just that, like Obama and Hillary talking about nuking Iran-- I just think we should "keep all options on the table."

Speaking of which, I recently saw an old advert for Scott Paper Towels, asking "is your washroom breeding Bolsheviks?"
Which went on to say how harsh paper towels and unsanitary bathroom conditions pissed workers off, and made them more likely to unionize and join the communist party, which one can only assume means that they're going to crash the gates and kill you and all the other board members.

Yes! Once upon a time, people were so scared of the poor that they were willing to do the most basic things to keep them happy.
Like keep the bathroom clean, and buy soft toilet paper.

Just think what the corporate elite would be willing to do for the betterment of humanity if they thought they had to prevent us from killing and eating them?

You can buy the t-shirt here:
http://www.etsy.com/listing/59971127/tshirt-kill-and-eat-the-rich

Wear it proud!

October 26, 2010

KILL & EAT THE RICH



They told us when they took our jobs overseas, "No hard feelings. It's just business, you know?"
They told us when they destroyed our 401ks through gambling with our money, "No hard feelings. It's just business, you know?"
They told us when we fell behind on our mortgage and foreclosed on our house, kicking us to the street, "No hard feelings. It's just business, you know?"
As more and more people were forced on welfare, the government's budget started to look grim. When they cut welfare spending entirely so that they could enjoy bigger tax cuts to "stimulate the economy," they told us, "No hard feelings. It's just business, you know?"

Then the poor had nothing left to eat, and no place to go.

So they had to kill and eat the rich.

They descended on Wall Street by the millions, stopping all traffic.

Their numbers were so large, the police couldn't do anything to stop the massive crowd of the disenfranchised. They flooded the buildings of Wall Street, the halls of DC, of the McMansions of Texas, and like a horde of zombies, they tore into the flesh of the horrified wealthy, who screamed and shat themselves, knowing that they were powerless to stop the oncoming mass of gnashing teeth and hungry mouths.

And as the poor picked the bones clean over the burning piles of money, the poor said to the bones:

"No hard feelings. It's just business, you know?"

Available in sizes S-XL
$10 on etsy.com
If you buy in bulk, the price goes down. Email me for more details.

Rand Paul volunteer tries to give protester a curb-job

From TalkingPointsMemo:

So first, I want to say, contrary to the nature of the upcoming "Rally to Restore Sanity" that Conservativism should be viewed as a mental illness: Sociopathy.

Why? Because they stand for everything we were taught was bad behaviour in kindergarten, when we were taught constructive social skills.

We were taught that sharing was good, and hogging things was bad.
We were taught that you shouldn't be mean to somebody just because they're different from you.
We were taught that you DON'T HIT PEOPLE.

Let alone stomp their heads in.

Conservatives stand for hoarding things to yourself. The rich deserve to hoard everything, and use their wealth to buy even more wealth, which they should also be allowed hoard.
Conservatives stand for being bigoted towards gays, mexicans, the french, and anybody who isn't white (whatever "white" means. According to some conservatives, Arabs are "sand niggers.")
Conservatives also apparently believe that it's okay to give a curb job to somebody, if they're a female or a liberal.

Or both in the instance of Lauren Valle. From TalkingPointsMemo:


As the candidates arrived, a group of Paul supporters pulled a female MoveOn member to the ground and held her there as another Paul supporter stomped on the back of her head and neck.
[snip]
The victim suffered a concussion and multiple sprains in the assault, according to MoveOn's political director Ilyse Hogue.
[snip]
MoveOn has called on Rand Paul to explicitly condemn the attack, but so far he hasn't.
The man seen stomping the victim in the head has been identified as now-former Paul volunteer Tim Profit
t.


This bearer of a very Capitalist sounding name, Tim Profitt, said to reporters that the camera angle makes the incident appear far worse than it really was."

Yeah... um, also the fact that Lauren Valle suffered several sprains to her neck and a fucking concussion also make it look worse than it really was too, huh?

Here's the video:

October 24, 2010

October 15, 2010

Footage of Laura Wells Arrest at the NBC hosted CA Gubernatorial Debates



To all of you who keep saying, "if voting changed things, they'd make it illegal."

Well, voting DOES change things, but instead of making voting illegal, they've just decided to make attending a debate while being a member of the Green Party illegal instead.

October 13, 2010

CA Gubernatorial Candidate arrested at NBC Debates

I've been here before. NBC excluded a candidate that I had worked for during the Democratic Party primaries in Nevada and New Hampshire, etc, even though he had met the requirements for entering the debate. A local court decided that Dennis Kucinich must be let into the debate, but then a federal appeals court decided that it was the "1st amendment rights of a corporate broadcasting entity to exclude or include whomever they wanted in the debates."

I can tell you this with utmost certainty-- the corporate media distorts elections, makes up the rules as they go, and the debates they host are a complete and total sham.

Just yesterday Green Party candidate for Governor, Laura Wells was arrested at a debate she was excluded from. According to my sources, Laura Wells was peacfully and quietly on her way to be seated in attendance of the debate when security arrested and escorted her off the premises for "tresspassing."



She had every right to be there- as she had tickets to attend the debate.
What was the real excuse for kicking her out? Laura Wells was arrested for "tresspassing on private property" a tactic used to kick Ralph Nader off the premises during his exclusion of the 2000 presidential debates-- despite the fact that he ALSO had a ticket. Not that he was there to debate- the Corporate Media didn't even let them WATCH the debate. As though their very presence would somehow taint their two-corporate-party lovefest.



NBC's story doesn't quite match up with what actually happened, excluding as many facts as they can to hide how bad they were and distort what actually happened. NBC reports she was arrested while protesting her exclusion, and makes sure to justify it by saying that "The Green Party is not a factor in this race, according to all polls."

Really? And yet the Green Party is also simultaneously such a threat that you have to arrest their Gubernatorial candidate simply for attending the debate- with a legitimate ticket, and a legitimate reason to be there? Make up your mind! Which is it?



Is the Green Party a factor or not?

Then as if to justify their exclusionary tactics, NBC follows up with this: "Polls show Brown, the current attorney general and former governor and former eBay CEO Meg Whitman in a dead heat."

Again-- Make up your mind! Which is it? Is the Green Party a factor or not? If they aren't a factor, they clearly would not have any bearing on the dead heat that this race is in, now would they? Unless they are a factor, in which case- LET THEM DEBATE.



Here's what actually happened:

October 12, 2010

Rally to Restore Sanity: What Sanity?

How can you tell if you are the least crazy person in the nuthouse?




You’re watching the Punk Patriot. You can subscribe to my channel by clicking here.

So I will not be at the Rally to Restore Sanity. I will be at work, in a factory repeating the same motions for hours on end, making things that you will one day use without thinking about the labor that went into it. My friend Davis Fleetwood however, he WILL be there. I’m interested to see what he comes away from it with as far as analysis and such. You can subscribe to his channel here.

I’m wondering how far this rally will go to restore sanity. First, you have to ask-- did we ever HAVE it? Sanity is an odd and elusive thing. When you are surrounded by a collective insanity, insanity seems sane, and it’s deviation from that insanity that seems insane. In conditions such as these, the craziest people in the nuthouse will point their fingers at the sane and berate them for their insane behaviour.

As you know, I covered a gathering of some of the most truely sane people in America, the Veterans For Peace National Convention. They’ve been at the front lines of our empire. They know what is going on outside of the iron gates of the nuthouse.

I came away from that convention with my head filled with their stories, and it dawned on me, there really should be a new field of psychology, not for diagnosing individuals, but for diagnosing societies. Because the Society of USA, at it’s core, is mentally ill.

It’s not like traditional mental illness, where it’s just something that happens to you. Oh no, this social mental illness is a contagion, like a virus. And we are pumped full of the viruses of this illness every day. It’s not anything deliberately done by anyone. It’s just a viral illness, like the common cold, Herpes, or HIV.

Television is the main culprit for spreading this disease. TV spends all day trying to convince us that the abnormal is normal, and the normal is abnormal.

In the breaks between shows, some celebrity is talking to you, in a deliberate and calm voice, like a sane person, about how they are so scared of being seen in public with skin blemishes that she avoids leaving her house. So much so that it interferes with her lifestyle. She can’t go grocery shopping anymore. She’s afraid of doing publicity to promote her TV shows. But she was able to cure this by using Proactive, and now she “loves it” and feels that “she can never be without it.”
I’m sorry but you don’t need a skin cleanser. You need therapy.

The History Channel has a running series of shows dedicated to glorifying the latest, most effective tools for killing on the market, as though they were toys, or lawnmowers, or refrigerators-- something that everybody should have. As if this fetish for killing was normal, rather than indicative of a cultural psychosis.

This same show parades “non lethal weapons” used on peaceful protesters here in the USA, but doesn’t talk about that fact. Instead they say that they are for nonviolent interventions in Foreign Wars. If that’s true, are we waging a war on Dissent and Freedom of Expression here in the USA? Because those ideas certainly seem foreign as of late.

“Fun Facts” are presented between commercial breaks for this weapons show, and include the factoid that “prolonged exposure to loud music has been used by the US military to ‘soften up prisoners for interrogation’” The playlist includes Eminem, Rage Against the Machine, and Barney the Dinosaur.

What they leave out is that this took place in Guantanamo, that the prisoners were chained in stress positions and exposed to volume levels capable of damaging hearing permanently, and is legally defined as TORTURE. But they don’t say this. They present it as though it were harmless fun. Something funny to laugh about at the water cooler. It’s no wonder, with this as our normal, that we’re raising a nation of psychotics, that our kids shoot and kill one another at school.

Take a good look at yourself America. You’ve completely lost your shit.

When you hit rock bottom you are going to hit so hard-- but on account of how your head is so wrapped up in the flag that you can’t see where you are going, you also can’t see the ground rushing up to meet your face, and you won’t shake off your denial that you are falling until all your teeth are broken, your lips shredded, and you pull your head up from the dirt, your mouth bleeding, your gums receding, your eyes no longer seeing stars and bars as you finally pull the flag away from your face, and you’ll come to learn that your body has been entirely eaten by cancer, America. You’ll have no legs to stand on any longer-- atrophied from the fact that you haven’t actually stood for anything for a long long time.

This is the Punk Patriot signing off. To Life, Liberty, and pursuit of a less fucked up Government.

October 9, 2010

After finding tracking device on his car, FBI agents raid man's apartment

Demanding that he return "Federal Property...





Reposted from Gizmodo.com:

A California student got a visit from the FBI this week after he found a secret GPS tracking device on his car, and a friend posted photos of it online. The post prompted wide speculation about whether the device was real, whether the young Arab-American was being targeted in a terrorism investigation and what the authorities would do.

It took just 24 hours to find out: The device was real, the student was being secretly tracked and the FBI wanted their expensive device back, the student told Wired.com in an interview Wednesday.

The answer came when half-a-dozen FBI agents and police officers appeared at Yasir Afifi's apartment complex in Santa Clara, California, on Tuesday demanding he return the device.

Afifi, a 20-year-old U.S.-born citizen, cooperated willingly and said he'd done nothing to merit attention from authorities. Comments the agents made during their visit suggested he'd been under FBI surveillance for three to six months.

An FBI spokesman wouldn't acknowledge that the device belonged to the agency or that agents appeared at Afifi's house.

"I can't really tell you much about it, because it's still an ongoing investigation," said spokesman Pete Lee, who works in the agency's San Francisco headquarters.

Afifi, the son of an Islamic-American community leader who died a year ago in Egypt, is one of only a few people known to have found a government-tracking device on their vehicle.

His discovery comes in the wake of a recent ruling by the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals saying it's legal for law enforcement to secretly place a tracking device on a suspect's car without getting a warrant, even if the car is parked in a private driveway.

Brian Alseth from the American Civil Liberties Union in Washington state contacted Afifi after seeing pictures of the tracking device posted online and told him the ACLU had been waiting for a case like this to challenge the ruling.

"This is the kind of thing we like to throw lawyers at," Afifi said Alseth told him.

"It seems very frightening that the FBI have placed a surveillance-tracking device on the car of a 20-year-old American citizen who has done nothing more than being half-Egyptian," Alseth told Wired.com

Afifi, a business marketing student at Mission College in Santa Clara, discovered the device last Sunday when he took his car to a local garage for an oil change. When a mechanic at Ali's Auto Care raised his Ford Lincoln LS on hydraulic lifts, Afifi saw a wire sticking out near the right rear wheel and exhaust.

Garage owner Mazher Khan confirmed for Wired.com that he also saw it. A closer inspection showed it connected to a battery pack and transmitter, which were attached to the car with a magnet. Khan asked Afifi if he wanted the device removed and when Afifi said yes, Khan pulled it easily from the car's chassis.

"I wouldn't have noticed it if there wasn't a wire sticking out," Afifi said.

On Monday, a friend of Afifi's named Khaled posted pictures of the device at Reddit asking if anyone knew what it was and if it mean the FBI "is after us." (Reddit is owned by CondeNast Digital, which also owns Wired.com).

"My plan was to just put the device on another car or in a lake," Khaled wrote, "but when you come home to 2 stoned off their asses people who are hearing things in the device and convinced its a bomb you just gotta be sure."

A reader quickly identified it as an Orion Guardian ST820 tracking device made by an electronics company called Cobham, which sells the device only to law enforcement.

No one was available at Cobham to answer Wired.com's questions, but a former FBI agent who looked at the pictures confirmed it was a tracking device.

The former agent, who asked not to be named, said the device was an older model of tracking equipment that had long ago been replaced by devices that don't require batteries. Batteries die and need to be replaced if surveillance is ongoing so newer devices are placed in the engine compartment and hardwired to the car's battery so they don't run out of juice. He was surprised this one was so easily found.

"It has to be able to be removed but also stay in place and not be seen," he said. "There's always the possibility that the car will end up at a body shop or auto mechanic, so it has to be hidden well. It's very rare when the guys find them."

He said he was certain that agents who installed it would have obtained a 30-day warrant for its use.

Afifi considered selling the device on Craigslist before the FBI showed up. He was in his apartment Tuesday afternoon when a roommate told him "two sneaky-looking people" were near his car. Afifi, already heading out for an appointment, encountered a man and woman looking his vehicle outside. The man asked if Afifi knew his registration tag was expired. When Afifi asked if it bothered him, the man just smiled. Afifi got into his car and headed for the parking lot exit when two SUVs pulled up with flashing lights carrying four police officers in bullet-proof vests.

The agent who initially spoke with Afifi identified himself then as Vincent and told Afifi, "We're here to recover the device you found on your vehicle. It's federal property. It's an expensive piece, and we need it right now."

Afifi asked, "Are you the guys that put it there?" and the agent replied, "Yeah, I put it there." He told Afifi, "We're going to make this much more difficult for you if you don't cooperate."

Afifi retrieved the device from his apartment and handed it over, at which point the agents asked a series of questions – did he know anyone who traveled to Yemen or was affiliated with overseas training? One of the agents produced a printout of a blog post that Afifi's friend Khaled allegedly wrote a couple of months ago. It had "something to do with a mall or a bomb," Afifi said. He hadn't seen it before and doesn't know the details of what it said. He found it hard to believe Khaled meant anything threatening by the post.

"He's a smart kid and is not affiliated with anything extreme and never says anything stupid like that," Afifi said. "I've known that guy my whole life. "

The agents told Afifi they had other agents outside Khaled's house.

"If you want us to call them off and not talk to him we can do that," Afifi said they told him. "That was weird. [...] I didn't really believe anything they were saying."

When he later asked Khaled about the post, his friend recalled "writing something stupid," but said he wasn't involved in any wrongdoing. Khaled declined to discuss the issue with Wired.com.

The female agent, who handed Afifi a card, identified herself as Jennifer Kanaan and said she was Lebanese. She spoke some Arabic to Afifi and through the course of her comments indicated she knew what restaurants he and his girlfriend frequented. She also congratulated him on his new job. Afifi got laid off from his job a couple of days ago, but on the same day was hired as an international sales manager of laptops and computers for Cal Micro in San Jose.

The agents also knew he was planning a short business trip to Dubai in a few weeks. Afifi said he often travels for business and has two teenage brothers in Egypt whom he supports financially. They live with an aunt. His U.S.-born mother, who divorced his father five years ago, lives in Arizona.

Afifi's father, Aladdin Afifi, was a U.S. citizen and former president of the Muslim Community Association here, before his family moved to Egypt in 2003. Afifi returned to the U.S. alone in 2008 to further his education he said. He knows he's on a federal watchlist and is regularly taken aside at airports for secondary screening.

Six months ago, a former roommate of his was visited by FBI agents who said they wanted to speak with Afifi. Afifi contacted one agent and was told the agency received an anonymous tip from someone saying he might be a threat to national security. Afifi told the agent he was willing to answer questions if his lawyer approved. But after Afifi's lawyer contacted the agency, he never heard from the feds again until he found their tracking device.

"I don't think they were surprised that I found it," he told Threat Level. "I'm sure they knew when I found it. [...] One of the first questions they asked me was if I was at a mechanics shop last Sunday. I said yes, that's where I found this stupid device under my car."

Afifi's attorney, who works for the civil liberties-focused Council on American Islamic Relations, said this kind of tracking is more egregious than the kind her office usually sees.

"The idea that it escalates to this level is unusual," said Zahra Billoo. "We take about one new case each week relating to FBI or law enforcement visits [to clients]. Generally they come to the individual's house or workplace, and there are issues that arise from that."

However, she said that after learning about Afifi's experience, other lawyers in her organization told her they knew of two people in Ohio who also recently discovered tracking devices on their vehicles.

Afifi's encounter with the FBI ended with the agents telling him not to worry.

"We have all the information we needed," they told him. "You don't need to call your lawyer. Don't worry, you're boring."

They shook his hand and left.

October 8, 2010

Glenn Beck finds new ways to be an a**hole, Fundraiser for Gene Cranick & Family



So, I made this shirt a while ago. It was meant to be a joke. I made it in response to Republicans accusing everything they didn’t like of being “socialism.”

I made a video about my reasoning behind it as well, which you can watch by clicking here.

The free-market worshipers insisted that I was wrong, that Fire Departments were never socialist, and that privatizing things ALWAYS fixed everything and made things run better.

Unlike those who find it convenient to ignore facts, I’ve studied history, and I know what happens when you start charging fees for essential public services. You get corrupt, immoral behaviour. Before NYC employed the socialist model, they once had private fire departments, that used to squabble over fees while houses burned down.

I thought that we had such ignorant barbarism only in our past. But that happened again, just a few days ago, in the USA. This time in Tennessee. Gene Cranick’s house burned to the ground while the Fire Dept watched, because of a squabble over a $75 dollar fee.

This is what you get when you attach a dollar sign to doing the right thing.

Glenn Beck sees nothing wrong with that. Reaching a new level of hypocritical fucktard, Glenn Beck mocked Gene Cranick on the air, complaining that “if you don’t pay your fee, you are sponging off your neighbor” totally oblivious to the poster of Benjamin Franklin behind him, with the word “Charity” on it. Go ahead and watch the clip for yourself

Now, an anti-christ, by definition, is somebody or something that claims to represent the teachings of Christ while simultaneously preaching the exact opposite of Christ taught. Glenn Beck does this on a daily basis. Food for thought.

The mocking aside, Glenn beck is absolutely right to say that “if you don’t pay the fee, your house burns down.” That is how a privatized fire department works.

Now you might think, “well I pay my taxes, I don’t have to pay any fee for the Fire Department.” You’re right. That’s because you are living in a socialist town, with a socialist government, taking taxes from everybody (mostly from those with the most wealth and most ability to pay) and then providing the protection of both fire rescue and police services to everybody in your municipality regardless of their ability to pay. That’s what compassionate, charitable, civilized human beings do.

I decided after seeing this clip that rather than being mocked on national broadcasting, that the Cranick Family actually needs is help.

To try and help out the Cranick Family, I’m doing a fundraiser.

$10 of every “Socialism” shirt purchase will go directly to the Cranick family. Please forward this message to your friends in email, tweet and retweet this, share it on your facebook wall, talk about it in person with people you know. Spread the word. This is important. If not to help the Cranicks, do it to piss off Glenn Beck.

I’ve in contact with WPSD, the local affiliate that covered the story originally, asking them if they have contact info for the Cranick family.

Now, since i just started, I haven’t raised any money yet, but when I do, I want to actually be able to give it to the Cranick family.

If you have any leads on how to get in touch with them, please send me an email at PunkPatriot411@gmail.com.

Now keep in mind, it might be kind of hard to get in touch with the Cranicks. Their house just burned down, and they lost everything they own-- including phones and computers.

Till then, this is the Punk Patriot, to life, liberty, and pursuit of a less f**ked up gov’t!

October 5, 2010

Heritage Foundation- insufferable douchebags who are wrong about trade policy

The Heritage Foundation put out a press release today saying that Media Distortions are trying to convince Americans that we don't need free trade any longer.

From their press release titled "Is the Media Reporting or Distorting?":

The media seem intent on convincing Americans that they no longer support free trade. A recent article in The Wall Street Journal, for example, begins “The American public, already skeptical of free trade, is becoming increasingly hostile to it.” The article goes on to report that the results of a recent NBC News/Wall Street Journal survey show that as much as 90 percent of the U.S. public is concerned about outsourcing.


Really? I would think that it's not the MEDIA convincing us of anything. Keep in mind that the Media is owned huge conglomerates that have benefited from outsourcing our jobs to third world countries.

I think the massive unemployment, and the fact that all our manufacturing jobs are being shipped overseas is the MAIN factor that's convincing people. Maybe you assholes down in the Heritage Foundation's DC offices should take some time off from pontificating in the abstract, and take a visit to Detroit, or Cleveland, and listen to the folks on the ground that have been most hurt by your ignorant, faith-based, unscientific, bullshit trade policies. Douchebags.

Why Private Fire Departments DON'T WORK

From ThinkProgress:

there are currently two competing visions of governance in the United States. One, the conservative vision, believes in the on-your-own society, and informs a policy agenda that primarily serves the well off and privileged sectors of the country. The other vision, the progressive one, believes in an American Dream that works for all people, regardless of their racial, religious, or economic background.


This is the perverted version of America that Ron Paul, libertarians, and the Tea Party want to bring you:


From Huffington Post:

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy



A smoldering rage may be all that remains after Gene Cranick's home burned to the ground last week in Obion County, Tennessee.

Firefighters are usually the bold "veni, vidi, vici" sort, but those from neighboring South Fulton could only say "veni, vidi." They came. They watched. That's it.

Cranick lives outside of the city limits and he admits that he forgot to pay a $75 annual service fee that would have provided him with fire protection. Firefighters wouldn't lift a finger, much less the hoses that might have saved the house.

The fire reportedly started in some barrels outside. As the flames crept closer to the home, Cranick says he offered to pay whatever it would take. The plea fell on deaf ears. Hours later, the home was gone.

So were three dogs and a cat.

"They coulda' been saved if they put water on it. But they didn't do it," Cranick told MSNBC.

The South Fulton firefighters did show up and managed to save a neighbor's field. The neighbor had paid the fee. But they would provide no heroics for the Cranicks. A local news report shows them climbing back on their trucks, flames still dancing over what was once the family's home.


Read the rest: click here

This shirt was originally meant as a joke, but it seems sadly apropos today:


Click the image to go to my Etsy Shop


I want to set up a fund so that proceeds from the sale of this shirt will be donated to Gene Cranick's family. (I still have to figure out how to get in contact with them-- if you know how, please contact me)

What do you think about this?



UPDATE: So I've decided to push ahead with it. I'll start trying to raise money now, and if I get anything, I'll figure out how to get it to them. I don't yet have any money raised to worry about right now, so I'll just cross that bridge when I come to it. I've been in contact with both MSNBC and WPSD. Any other leads would be appreciated.

I love Maine


Here in Maine, we keep our wits about us, and pay attention to things that matter.

Like keeping your house warm for the winter.

Virtual Zen Meditation Ad on Facebook



Irony upon irony.

"The world is all an illusion." --Buddha
Get lost in the virtual world of Second Life, where you can have your avatar meditate!

Meditating is so time consuming anyways. I'd rather have a computer program meditate for me while I watch TV.

October 4, 2010

Screenprinting shirts is a Time Paradox

Screenprinting shirts is a time paradox. The actual act of printing the shirt, putting the ink through the screen, only takes a few seconds.

Everything else though, takes up a lot of time.

Designing the shirt. Breaking down a multi-color design into separate layers can be a huge pain in the ass, and very tedious, but it's totally worth it in the end.

Prepping your transfers. On a mulicolor design, you have to make sure that every transfer is perfectly lined up, or your design will be all wonky, and your layers won't match up. Even if you aren't working on a multi-color design, you have to make sure your screen is lined up, or you will find yourself adjusting and readjusting your shirt underneath the screen to make sure it centers well. If you're doing a run of shirts, the screen gets covered with ink which blocks your view of the shirt underneath. If your design isn't centered on the screen, forget it.

Waiting for emulsion to dry. I find myself wasting the most time waiting for my emulsion to dry on the screen because I want to get right to printing shirts as soon as possible. So I keep checking my screens over and over to see if they are dry. If you are using photo emulsion, and you aren't working on an air-conditioned environment (which I am not), it can take as little as a couple hours and as much as two days for your emulsion to fully dry, depending on the humidity levels in the ambient air. If you jump the gun and do a photoburn on a screen whose emulsion has not fully dried, you will find yourself washing most of the emulsion right off the screen, leaving a big, ugly, patchy hole in your design. And since not ALL of the emulsion comes off, you still have to clean the screen, wasting emulsion remover and time in the process.

Waiting for Ink to dry I use an artist quality fabric ink, as I dont' have the facilities for a big professional operation with plastic inks or a flash burner to solidify my ink. So I have to wait for the ink to dry. Usually 24 hours for it to fully dry. Then, after it has dried, I have to heat seal the ink to the shirt. I use an iron. The idea is to iron the shirt until you see smoke coming up from the ink, but without burning it. Depending on how big the design is, that can take as little as 5 minutes, or as long as 30 minutes, doing the shirt in sections. The worst thing that could possibly happen is that I miss a spot, or I don't iron it for long enough, and the ink ends up washing right out of the shirt when my customer washes it.

Shipping It's about a 30 min ride to the post office and back.

And then, I'm done! Until I get my next order...

Etsy
punkpatriot

October 3, 2010

Sometimes I make music

We Can Build Up a Village by PunkPatriot

We can build up a village
We can tear it apart
the singular difference
is what lays in your heart

October 2, 2010

Is Obama George Bush the 3rd?



My take on it:

Hey Average American-- You're fat, You eat too much meat, and it's killing you



I'm going to throw this out there-- I'm NOT a vegetarian. But I grew up eating lots of vegetarian and vegan meals without knowing it. It was just healthy, delicious food, and it was what we were having for dinner. I've maintained those healthy eating habits, and eat like a vegetarian most days out of the month.

The Average American has meat with EVERY meal. (Especially in Ohio, it seems)

That sort of diet drastically increases your chances of heart disease, diabetes, obesity, etc.

If you're in a family that has meat at every meal, try convincing your family to let you make a delicious, healthy, vegetarian dinner a few days out of the week. If you don't mention that it's vegetarian, you might even be able to trick them into eating a delicious, healthy meal without them even knowing or caring that it was meatless.

Stuck when trying to figure out vegetarian options for meals? Go ethnic!
Most people on this planet eat meals with no meat at all for the majority of their meals. And they get by just fine, with plenty of different options for every meal-- and never EVER buy expensive texturized vegetable protein meat-substitutes. Say sianora to tofu dogs, and say hello to a world of options:

Many Thai food options are either vegetarian or vegan.
There are a host of vegetarian meals from Northern India.
Authentic mexican food has plenty of vegetarian foods to choose from.
Arab foods are heavy on flavor, and more often than not, free of meat.
And much much much much much much more.

Explore the world's vegetarian options, and don't settle for boring food ever again!