Great news, since I loaned my copy of On The Road to a friend of mine 5 years ago and will probably never get it back. Viking Press has gotten permission to reprint an uncensored version of "On The Road" by the end of next year, in time for the 50th anniversary of the original publication.

Here is a link to an article about it -

While working on an English minor I took a Beat Lit class - amazing. Except for Naked Lunch. Anyway, I'm thrilled about this... but I'm not sure if I can wait a year and a half for a copy of On The Road. Maybe I can find a used copy until then.

So, my man (e:derschlickmeis)ter was in Connecticut supporting Joe Lieberman. Most aren't obsessed over politics like I am so I will provide supporting information for those who aren't aware of what is going on in CT.

Ned Lamont, rich white guy, is running against Joe Lieberman in the Democratic primary and is making hay over Senator Lieberman's staunch support of the Iraq war. This is primarily driven by national left wing activist organizations such as moveon.org, who are essentially hell bent on removing Lieberman from office and are willing to spend millions in donations and grass roots organizing in order to help achieve this. In essence, the national radicals on the left have hijacked the elections for the senate seat in Connecticut in order to attempt to prop up a guy more inclined to see things their way.

Where this gets intriguing is the polling numbers. My feelings on the accuracy of polling numbers is well known, but even these cannot be ignored. Polling suggests that Democrats are split directly down the middle betwen the candidates. However, since Senator Lieberman has said that he will run as an independant if he loses the Democratic primary, polling suggests that if Lamont wins the primary Lieberman will win the Senate seat by a 51% to 27%. Forget landslide - that is a bloodbath. Either way, Lieberman wins, which is truly a relief. How is this possible? If Lieberman runs as an Independant, CT state Republicans are going to bail on whatever New England RINO Republican is running and support Lieberman.

I applaud Bill Clinton for shunning the insanity that is marginalizing his party nationally and supporting one of the only politicians left in Washington that is honest and has integrity. The far left states that Lieberman "isn't really a Democrat" - that logic is hilarious to me and only proves that liberals' collective historical perspective starts at the day of their birth. Ever heard of JFK? There is no Demcrat left that is as close to JFK politically as Lieberman is... Lieberman is more of a Kennedy than Teddy ever was.

Another lefty, Al Gore, refuses to support Lieberman and also refused to support him during his bid for the presidency. The irony is that without Lieberman as his running mate in '00 he would have never garnered the moderate Democrat support that made it possible to be competitive against GWB at the time.

Cheers to the only sane politician in New England.

Does anybody have a copy of Chomsky's "Manufacturing Consent" that they would be willing to let me borrow?

Or alternately, does anybody know where the best selection of used books are around here?

When I first heard of this article I thought, "How is it possible that somebody could suggest that peace movements don't actually create peace but MORE war?"

Read on - this article is absolutely brilliant.

July 21, 2006
Pacifists versus Peace
By Thomas Sowell

One of the many failings of our educational system is that it sends out into the world people who cannot tell rhetoric from reality. They have learned no systematic way to analyze ideas, derive their implications and test those implications against hard facts.

"Peace" movements are among those who take advantage of this widespread inability to see beyond rhetoric to realities. Few people even seem interested in the actual track record of so-called "peace" movements -- that is, whether such movements actually produce peace or war.

Take the Middle East. People are calling for a cease-fire in the interests of peace. But there have been more cease-fires in the Middle East than anywhere else. If cease-fires actually promoted peace, the Middle East would be the most peaceful region on the face of the earth instead of the most violent.

Was World War II ended by cease-fires or by annihilating much of Germany and Japan? Make no mistake about it, innocent civilians died in the process. Indeed, American prisoners of war died when we bombed Germany.

There is a reason why General Sherman said "war is hell" more than a century ago. But he helped end the Civil War with his devastating march through Georgia -- not by cease fires or bowing to "world opinion" and there were no corrupt busybodies like the United Nations to demand replacing military force with diplomacy.

There was a time when it would have been suicidal to threaten, much less attack, a nation with much stronger military power because one of the dangers to the attacker would be the prospect of being annihilated.

"World opinion," the U.N. and "peace movements" have eliminated that deterrent. An aggressor today knows that if his aggression fails, he will still be protected from the full retaliatory power and fury of those he attacked because there will be hand-wringers demanding a cease fire, negotiations and concessions.

That has been a formula for never-ending attacks on Israel in the Middle East. The disastrous track record of that approach extends to other times and places -- but who looks at track records?

Remember the Falkland Islands war, when Argentina sent troops into the Falklands to capture this little British colony in the South Atlantic?

Argentina had been claiming to be the rightful owner of those islands for more than a century. Why didn't it attack these little islands before? At no time did the British have enough troops there to defend them.

Before there were "peace" movements and the U.N., sending troops into those islands could easily have meant finding British troops or bombs in Buenos Aires. Now "world opinion" condemned the British just for sending armed forces into the South Atlantic to take back their islands.

Shamefully, our own government was one of those that opposed the British use of force. But fortunately British prime minister Margaret Thatcher ignored "world opinion" and took back the Falklands.

The most catastrophic result of "peace" movements was World War II. While Hitler was arming Germany to the teeth, "peace" movements in Britain were advocating that their own country disarm "as an example to others."

British Labor Party Members of Parliament voted consistently against military spending and British college students publicly pledged never to fight for their country. If "peace" movements brought peace, there would never have been World War II.

Not only did that war lead to tens of millions of deaths, it came dangerously close to a crushing victory for the Nazis in Europe and the Japanese empire in Asia. And we now know that the United States was on Hitler's timetable after that.

For the first two years of that war, the Western democracies lost virtually every battle, all over the world, because pre-war "peace" movements had left them with inadequate military equipment and much of it obsolete. The Nazis and the Japanese knew that. That is why they launched the war.

"Peace" movements don't bring peace but war.

I am way behind on reading and writing journals - I forgot my damn wireless card at home before I left for my trip, so I've waited 3 days to by happenstance be at a hotel that actually has a traditional RJ-45 love connection. So here I am.

First of all, I heard a vicious rumor that a certain Manhattan resident by day/NJ resident by night is shooting me those evil chick eyes (you know what I mean!) because I have visited NYC and haven't been in contact. Allow me to assure you, mystery person, that when I get the chance I will redeem myself.

On that note, I did stay in the NJ side of metro NYC the past two days, but when I wasn't at work I was in the hotel room sleeping. Our travel rules have been becoming more demanding and more draconian so as a result I usually begin my work week extremely sleep deprived. I didn't get out AT ALL. We even ordered food in. On the bright side, I found a $120 per night hotel in Jersey that was across the street from a 20 min. bus ride to Times Square. The only thing that would have been better is a $120 per night hotel near a PATH train. Considering that I've paid more for shittier hotels in NYC, I think its a fair tradeoff.

I picked up our car at LaGuardia (pre-blackout) and the notorious traffic kept me waiting nearly an hour to cross the Whitestone Bridge. On the way bacy through I waited nearly an hour to cross the GW bridge... at 2 o' fucking clock. My friend that lives in Long Island City commutes to CT every day - after this week I don't know how he does it without sucking on an exhaust pipe. No, actually I do - its the FAT paycheck!

Ok - fast forward. I'm through with NJ and eventually drove to BWI to catch a flight. Flying out of BWI instead of Newark might seem extreme, but consider this - the flights were twice as expensive, Newark is a shithole airport, and my work day was 3 hours long. Taking a 3 hour afternoon drive on a sunny day to catch a cheaper flight out of an airport I like? Hello, do you hear that? Thats the sound of people stuck in office hell not feeling terribly sorry for me.

Have you ever heard of Yaffa Blocks... the stackable storage bins? Today I met Yaffa - she is a sweet lady and is a genius, but MY GOD was she neurotic. Goooooo Yaffa! This was the first time that I have visited a manufacturer whose product I remembered from old MTV commercials. Yaffa told me that it was cheaper to advertise on MTV than it was to advertise on "regular" channels. Anyway, her products were fairly cool and I definitely want some - if I had the storage space I would have bought some today. I also learned that Wal-Mart sells her products at more than double the manufacturing cost. I'm definitely paying retail to Aunt Yaffa - fuck Uncle Wally.

Tonight we are in Louisville, KY. Despite the lack of major pro sports, this is a very pretty city with a lot of economic prosperity. The state of Kentucky is simply gorgeous - at this point I've travelled to 35 states of the 48 continental and Kentucky, from a purely aesthetic perspective, is only behind California, Washington and Texas. We ate dinner at a Texas Roadhouse, and I saw a group of 9 (two tables, one for adults and one for kids) leave a TWO DOLLAR tip on an $81 check. What the fuck is that crap? General ignorance about courtesy and life is to blame. Lord knows that they have money left for cigarettes and beer! One of them looked like he'd been neck deep in liquor - I wanted to headbutt him Zidane style, except with a spiked helmet.

You deserve a final goodnight kiss so I will leave you with an anecdote about the most wicked redneck siting in history. It wasn't an orange charger with the "stars and bars" on it, but it was damn close. Think of an original 60's era red Mustang - absolutely beautiful. Then throw in a 120 pound white guy with a handlebar moustache and plenty of mulletude flapping as the 80 MPH wind whips through the hair. I was awestruck, like I was staring at a celebrity. The car at this point was like the bow, and the guy with the mullet was like the violin. One without the other and you cannot create beautiful music. It was magic. A guy like that must be pretty fucking cool, although he probably has shitty weed. Whatever - shitty weed is better than no weed!

Adieu.