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Friday, October 28, 2011

Land, the Old West, and How the Government Owns It All: Ted Poe's Idea to Sell America to Solve the National Debt

Did you know the US government owns most of the land out West (over 80% of Nevada, for example)? Did you know a congressman thinks selling that land will help solve the national debt?

Did you know that I reported on this idea? It's a trip through American History, with grumpy old men like Jackson and stiff modern magazines like Bloomberg weighing in along the way. Check out the idea that Stephen Moore of Wall Street Journal told me privately was a 'pretty good idea'--and see what you think.

http://www.yaf.org/debt_land.aspx

It's dry fact up until the end. I hope you like dry facts up until the end.

Tuesday, October 25, 2011

My interview w/ Robert J. Laplander: on Military Hero Benjamin Kaufman and his Medal of Honor

So, this guy basically charged a machine gun by himself, got blown in the arm, kept going, chuckin' grenades the whole way, and got to them with an empty pistol. He took a prisoner and fought the Germans with a shovel. Yes ladies and gentlemen, they had a machine gun, he had a shovel, and he took a prisoner.
BAMF. (Beast and Macho Fiend, of course)
Click at 41:38 to listen to me! Or just listen to the whole thing. It's all good stuff.

Apparently, Laplander told me afterwards, everyone was hungry and tired and frustrated that day, and they weren't progressing through the woods as hoped, and people were dying, and Kaufman just had enough. He didn't care about anything but his men anymore.

Somebody needs to make a movie about this MF-er (Manly Fighter).

And yes, I believe in taking back those letters people have made repugnant. FU should be Free Yourself, WTF should be Why This Freakiness, and so on and so forth. I'm taking back the alphabet!

Also, I noticed my Russian crew have kinda disappeared--used to have a whole bunch of people from beautiful Russia following along. Sorry it's been all news-focused and not so much random stuff recently. I'm a reporter, you know. But I will, I promise I will, be posting more research soon.

And that, my friends, is how not to stay on topic when introducing a media interview you did. = )

Edit 10/26/2011: About taking back the alphabet--please, please don't take me seriously.
Edit five seconds later: Well, take me a little seriously. Just not like, enough to scare you.

Saturday, October 22, 2011

What the DC Protestors Are Really Saying--Occupy DC Interviews Oct 7


October 7 footage, interviews by Alicia Powe and yours truly. Here's what they told me--they're not waiting around to be co-opted by the Democratic Party.

Friday, October 21, 2011

Why Clean Comedy is the Answer to All The World's Problems. Yes, All of Them.


Brian Regan, comedian extroardinare, performed Oct. 20 to a crazy crowd--a crowd that included one guy who just kept shouting randomly until he left the theatre--and led me to believe that he can save the world.

This is nothing new.

As you all know, endorphins released by laughter increase life span. And even though scientists have found evidence of humor in some animals, no creature actively seeks out laughter the way human beings do. I would even posit that humor helped win World War II for the Allies, because comedy shows kept the soldiers going, fueled the war effort, and healed wounds after the conflict. So what? So laughter is a part of who we are. But I am not making some vacuous point that laughter makes us live longer or encourages us to live better lives or any such happy mumbo jumbo.

Laughter can save the world in two forms only: pure power, and pure innocence.

Let's sound the grim wake-up call about power: humor trumps logic in messaging. George Carland and other comedians win people's minds politically by making them laugh at the opposition. It used to frustrate me to no end when people I disagreed with used jokes to counter my logical arguments--and, without ever answering me, they won the support of those around them.

But laughter's manipulative messaging power can take any side and any form. That alone will save nothing.

Enter Brian Regan.

Much like the illustrious Jackie Chan, Regan focuses on the ordinary human being. He constantly makes fun of himself, and all of us, in a way that reminds us of our universal humanness: his hilarious comments on Mubarak's soldier riding a camel out into an angry mob did not excuse the dictatorship, but did turn the soldier into a human being for the audience--a feat that I could never accomplish with any amount of preaching about loving your enemies. Most importantly, Regan cuts out gratuitous violence, sex, and certain language, forcing himself to actually think rather than simply appealing to our easy instincts.

Why is that important?

I heard once that a study shows children laugh something on the order of several hundred times a day. Adults on average laugh fifteen. I posit that the loss of laughter rolls in with the loss of interest, the loss of sensation. Why do I say this?

Visit any video store and check out the adult comedy section. What's funny? Sex, Quinn Tarentino-style violence, and sex. Awkward cruelty in conversation, too, makes adults roar, but don't you dare forget sex.

Visit the children's section, and you find variety galore: puns, bloodless physical humor, universal awkwardness, and misunderstanding inhabit worlds ranging from the ridiculous to the every day schoolyard. The violence in shows like Tom and Jerry emphasizes optimism, a Peter Pan immortality--and even though pulverized and pounded cat and mouse never die, they often recognize a "too far," a meanness that makes them friends for a brief moment of apology. Brian Regan's comedy emphasizes that kind of humanizing sensitivity, where we laugh at everything from odd voices to pure stupidity.

We need that reminder of our common, embarrassing, silly humanity. We need it every day when we disagree or make the most important life choices. We need it in foreign policy so we see people, not ideologies or forces, as actors: when we think about Arab Spring, remembering humanity keeps us from only worshipping our favorite cause--democracy--and reveals human costs such as the increased religious persecution under the new democratic regime in Egypt. We need to see politicians as people when we think about the presidential debate, or we become so wrapped up in beating our opposition that we analyze candidates only in the light of electability, rather than paying attention to policy and character. When we learn to laugh like children, we learn to see people like human beings again, because we see their foolishness reflected in the little every day things that we do.

Is this absolutely absurd? Perhaps. Perhaps to alter our senses of humor we would have to alter all of society. I'm fine with that. But how? If we had more comedians like Brian Regan, would that change anything? Does supply ever create demand?

I don't know. But I do know that you are what you laugh at, and what you put into your heart will eventually escape. Laugh at the right stuff and save the world.

Tuesday, October 18, 2011

Part 4: The federal government paying for gun ranges? And can you have a gun at a beach?

These are both questions answered below.

http://bit.ly/pEEIlK

Up there ^ Click! It will answer to all your wildest concerns! In all seriousness, this is the last part of the Gun Legislation series I wrote that they've been running over there at Human Events. I believe this is the only paper that has run articles detailing obscure gun legislation this way, so it should be at least marginally useful to you.

^_^ If not, well, this is the hownottoblog. Technically, I SHOULD include an excerpt to encourage you to read the link. But I won't.

Monday, October 17, 2011

How Not To Podcast Maybe? Me On Radio...Or in Podcasts

Hear about laws stopping gun shows and keeping college girls from owning guns. Podcast with moi here!

http://bit.ly/r0MOll  (Scroll to 34:00 to skip to me and the guns--otherwise, enjoy Dick Cheney)
And tomorrow we'll be putting up more gun legislation pieces for you, if you're into that kind of thing.

I know I am. So, you know what G&P thinks--what do you think about these laws?

It's a shame that I'm so bound in my "how not to" ways that I can't even figure out what I may or may not have done wrong in this podcast. See, I'm not even able to correctly analyze for you how not to. Wow. I'm really good at this "not" thing. XD


Wednesday, October 12, 2011

This Week's News Program...More Gun Legislation

I ran another gun legislation piece in Guns and Patriots. Any gun control advocates concerned about the danger guns pose to our society and any gun rights advocates concerned about the danger gun control poses to our society--read this. This new legislation affects your cause!

This time, I've got legislation that will make gun control advocates scream and gun rights advocates cheer.

Gun Legislation Part III

Also, this week's legislation has some special endorsement from none other than your all-time favorite Dr. Ron Paul.

That is, by the way, not an endorsement, although I dearly, dearly love his non-conformist fire. I love him partly because everyone else on the left and the right hates him for his "real-person-ness." 

Wednesday, October 5, 2011

Gun Legislation for Pro-Gun and Anti-Gun Activists, Part II

For anyone else out there interested in gun control (or the lack thereof), I wrote another article on gun bills gun control activists will love and pro-gun activists will probably abhore.

Gun Leg Part 2 article

So yeah, another article published at G&P and Human Events.

I also wrote an article on South Korean vs. US economic strategies. It's pitifully short, but you can check it out in the print version of Human Events. I'm working on getting permission to post it here for you all to read.

Whoever you all are, of course.

I'm sticking to my original convictions--this is a blog on how not to blog, and every day I must show you how one does not blog. Perhaps my unnerving, unfailing unprofessionalism will carry the day in the end.

Enter random emo rant (which is exactly how not to advertise an article):
I am still me, no matter what media outlets I write for, no matter who tries to squish my free (and happily fat) self into a business suit, no matter who would like to control my language.

I don't know where that came from--well, actually I do--but anyway, there's your how not to for today! How not to advertise your current profession correctly.
(Yes, I'm a reporter)
(and associate editor)
(and kind of sad human being)
= P
That's how not to do it. Please don't seek pity for yourself. It makes people confused.
Don't be confused, my dear, wonderful people. For all the strangeness, I am absolutely thrilled that several hundred people have actually read these research articles that I originally posted up here just for storage. You are all amazing, and I wish you a very, absolutely, exuberantly, exceedingly, fabulously, exorbitantly, hands-down-no-holds-barred lovely day.

HA!