http://afp.google.com/article/ALeqM5i2YCtBg15ovSmHo1y23Qc4oc_cdQ

“WASHINGTON (AFP) — Senator John McCain has won the Republican party’s caucuses in Louisiana while longshot candidate Ron Paul took second place, the state party said Wednesday, citing preliminary results.”

After living in Austin, Texas for the last three years I’ve now returned to Los Angeles, a favorite city of mine, for work and higher education. I’m a big fan of the diversity and opportunities here as well as the pedestrian culture in my neighborhood. And having the beach breeze and mild weather doesn’t hurt either.

I work in the health care industry as a licensed professional and am going to work at a state college hospital with a well known name. Going to work for a hospital has always been a big ordeal with an incredible bureaucracy and tons of paperwork. And this time has been no different, except for…

Hidden away on a page where I sign off on research patent rights, etc… was a small block of text to the effect of my swearing an oath to ‘uphold the constitution of the United States and the state of California‘ and to ’support and defend’ it. It was labeled the ‘loyalty oath’. Next to the line where I was to sign was a small section of text that stated I was signing this oath with out ‘mental evasion’ and the usual text. My gut felt like a ton of bricks.

So as everyone was happily signing a way as part of the due process in the group setting I asked the administrator why we had to sign a military style oath to the government and what it meant. She responded with the nonsensical answer that everyone does: “After 9/11, everything changed”. WTF? How in any way does 9/11 have anything to do with taking care of my patients? Since I didn’t expect to get more information from her (no fault of hers, she was merely a functionary) I then asked the simple question, “If I refuse to sign this will I still be hired?”. She had no answer for that either and I refused to press the issue. But likewise, I refused to sign the oath.

After the paperwork was done, I let her know privately that I had not signed the loyalty oath and would not do so until I spoke further with the HR department as well as Risk Management (hospital liability lawyers department). And I won’t either unless it gets to the point that they refuse to continue the hiring process with me because I will not sign a (observably meaningless) ‘loyalty oath’ to a government that I do not support. If and when that time comes, I will most likely sign the oath simply so I can eat. Imagine that.

This is just awful on so many levels. If I have to sign this under threat of non-employment isn’t that ‘duress’? Wouldn’t I be committing ‘mental evasion’ as well a perjuring myself by signing a legal document simply for the sake of completing the paperwork that is just a rubber stamp along the assembly line anyway? What’s striking also, is that no one even questioned this signing of said document and reactions to my questioning of the oath were of the nature that no one has every really questioned it before. It is such a rare or unique occurrence that there were no canned answers for them to feed back to me.

Well, I have two weeks until my official start date. I plan on speaking to the aforementioned hospital departments in the interim. I’ll update here as events warrant simply because if I want to know how weird and ironic all of this gets, I image some of you others would as well.

“Thus Spoke Zarathustra” - Friedrich Nietzche

Part I, Chapter 11 - The New Idol

Somewhere there are still peoples and herds, but not with us, my
brothers: here there are states.

A state? What is that? Well! open now your ears to me, for now I will
speak to you about the death of peoples.

State is the name of the coldest of all cold monsters. Coldly it lies;
and this lie slips from its mouth: “I, the state, am the people.”

It is a lie! It was creators who created peoples, and hung a faith and a
love over them: thus they served life.

Destroyers are they who lay snares for the many, and call it state: they
hang a sword and a hundred cravings over them.

Where there are still peoples, the state is not understood, and is hated
as the evil eye, and as sin against laws and customs.

This sign I give to you: every people speaks its own language of good
and evil, which its neighbor does not understand. It has created its own
language of laws and customs.

But the state lies in all the tongues of good and evil; and whatever it
says it lies; and whatever it has it has stolen.

Everything in it is false; it bites with stolen teeth, and bites often.
It is false down to its bowels.

Confusion of tongues of good and evil; this sign I give you as the sign
of the state. This sign points to the will to death! it points to the
preachers of death!

All too many are born: for the superfluous the state was created!

See how it entices them to it, the all-too-many! How it swallows and
chews and rechews them!

“On earth there is nothing greater than I: I am the governing hand of
God.”- thus roars the monster. And not only the long-eared and
short-sighted fall upon their knees!

Ah! even in your ears, you great souls, it whispers its gloomy lies! Ah!
it finds out the rich hearts which willingly squander themselves!

Yes, it finds you too, you conquerors of the old God! You became weary
of conflict, and now your weariness serves the new idol!

It would set up heroes and honorable ones around it, the new idol!
Gladly it basks in the sunshine of good consciences,- the cold monster!

It will give everything to you, if you worship it, the new idol: thus it
buys the lustre of your virtue, and the glance of your proud eyes.

Through you it seeks to seduce the all-too-many! Yes, a hellish artifice
has been created here, a death-horse jingling with the trappings of
divine honors!

Yes, a dying for many has been created here, which glorifies itself as
life: verily, a great service to all preachers of death!

The state, I call it, where all drink poison, the good and the bad: the
state, where all lose themselves, the good and the bad: the state, where
the slow suicide of all- is called “life.”

Behold the superfluous! They steal the works of the creators and the
treasures of the wise. Education, they call their theft- and everything
becomes sickness and trouble to them!

Behold the superfluous! They are always sick; they vomit their bile and
call it a newspaper. They devour each other and cannot even digest
themselves.

Behold the superfluous! They acquire wealth and become the poorer for
it. They seek power, and the lever of power, much money- these impotent
ones!

See them clamber, these nimble apes! They clamber over one another, and
thus pull each other into the mud and the abyss.

They all strive for the throne: this is their madness- as if happiness
sat on the throne! Often filth sits on the throne.- and often also the
throne on filth.

Madmen they all seem to me, and clambering apes, and too eager. Foul
smells their idol to me, the cold monster: foul they all smell to me,
these idolaters.

My brothers, will you suffocate in the fumes of their maws and
appetites! Better to break the windows and jump into the open air!

Escape from their foul stench! Escape from the idolatry of the superfluous!

Escape from their foul stench! Escape from the steam of these human
sacrifices!

The earth is yet free for great souls. There are still many empty sites
for the lonesome and the twosome, surrounded by the fragrance of
tranquil seas.

A free life is yet possible for great souls. He who possesses little is
that much less possessed: blessed be a little poverty!

There, where the state ends- there only begins the man who is not
superfluous: there begins the song of the necessary, the single and
irreplaceable melody.

There, where the state ends- look there, my brothers! Do you not see it,
the rainbow and the bridges of the Superman?

Thus spoke Zarathustra.

Men held in Michigan suspected of plan to attack Mackinac Bridge.

Federal authorities helped with the investigation into a possible terror threat to the Mackinac Bridge. The FBI office in Detroit worked with local law enforcement authorities before the police arrested three men in Caro on Friday. Officers found about 1,000 pre-paid cell phones in their van. Police in Caro arrested the three Palestinian-American men after they allegedly bought 80 of the phones at a Wal-Mart store in Caro.

Full story (such as it is) here.

Well, I had planned to embed the video for you to point and click, but WordPress apparently doesn’t like leaving my HTML alone… So anyway, here’s the link to this video.

Hyperbolic? Sure. Entertaining? You bet’cha!

From the pages of the WSJ…

“Which Travelers Have ‘Hostile Intent’?
Biometric Device May Have the AnswerAt airport security checkpoints in Knoxville, Tenn. this summer, scores of departing passengers were chosen to step behind a curtain, sit in a metallic oval booth and don headphones.

With one hand inserted into a sensor that monitors physical responses, the travelers used the other hand to answer questions on a touch screen about their plans. A machine measured biometric responses — blood pressure, pulse and sweat levels — that then were analyzed by software. The idea was to ferret out U.S. officials who were carrying out carefully constructed but make-believe terrorist missions.”

Let your blood pressure rise here.

A friend in the Army passed me this post from MENAFN.com, which is an event in and of itself. There was a time he and I didn’t speak for over a year because he had yet to open his eyes past the blind patriotism he’d been taught. I am extremely proud of him for finally using his God given gift of critical thinking, but that’s another story…

I’ve never heard of Mike Whitney before this post or the ‘Middle East North African Financial Network’ (MENAFN), but he sure has the number on what’s going on over there right now. Oh wait… We’re all supposed to be concerned about carrying sodas on airplanes right now. Sorry. Back to your regularly scheduled, federally supervised daily dose of fear…

When you’re no longer scared of your refreshing beverage, Read This.

From The Raw Story and to be published in the NYT today:

“Its report calls for standardized tests to measure student learning, along with federal monitoring of colleges’ quality.”

“Several higher education groups have criticized it for focusing on workforce skills and employability to the exclusion of academic goals and the education of students as citizens. The National Association of Independent Colleges and Universities has particularly singled out as an intrusion on privacy the recommendation for a national database to follow individual students’ progress through their academic careers.”

Read The Raw Story here