“And how we burned in the camps later, thinking: What would things have been like if every Security operative, when he went out at night to make an arrest, had been uncertain whether he would return alive and had to say good-bye to his family? Or if, during periods of mass arrests, as for example in Leningrad, when they arrested a quarter of the entire city, people had not simply sat there in their lairs, paling with terror at every bang of the downstairs door and at every step on the staircase, but had understood they had nothing left to lose and had boldly set up in the downstairs hall an ambush of half a dozen people with axes, hammers, pokers, or whatever else was at hand? . . .”
– Alexandr Solzhenitzyn “The Gulag Archipelago,”
Weston County looks great Mama. The 307 would be a paradise if only less populated by 575K less quasi-statists. I fear clocks always say zero-dark-thirty aim-high fly-fight-win there. Your hair is 1/2 mm long, time for a haircut hippy! Maybe it’s not that militarized?
I was thinking the whole legal weed thing would blossom further and have greater implications for CO. Wishful thinking, eh?
CrossWest Adventures: Weston County WY
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=94AM2gdrHIM
Everywhere you need to license your ATV? In this video no chest protector and full helmet. There are signs off road? Really? Nowhere in USA is free anymore? WTF? – Oh and thanks Herr Eisenhower for Thunder Basin National Grassland. Soviet Nazi jerk.
I’ve never once smoked a cigarette, but I use smoking as a shibboleth. Is the Marlboro Man still welcome in restaurants and businesses? Or is everyone business managed via the local council?
How about gambling, Riverton Arapaho, Wyoming Downs, Wind River, and and all the other things in the litany of vices. Living Freedom IMO means allowing unpopular and potentially damaging things, openly exercise all rights or lose them, I say. Only in a voluntary manner without public funding and unwelcome intrusions of course.
Vice List
http://writeworld.tumblr.com/viceslist
Wyoming looks pretty decent from what I can gather. Also whatever bottle clubs are sounds encouraging. I like the sound of West End Lounge: “It’s a dark place inside with a film on what light source there would be.” Plus liquor sold via drivethru. Sounds tolerable and helicopter-nanny-yuppie free.
Bruce Perkins, owner of Perkin’s Tavern and, most recently, the Newcastle Game Room not sure he deserves 2013 Newcastle person of the year nomination? Come on Bruce.
Do the local papers have those horrible police blotters where every minute detail of everyones life is published for all to read and disapprove of? What do you see as the downsides of Weston County, Mama?
Wyoming Smoke Free
http://www.no-smoke.org/goingsmokefree.php?id=173
No, not perfect, sadly. Still too much statism, but hardly any nanny state… unless you really push it into other people’s faces, most things are tolerated or ignored. A crime wave in town here is a gas drive off and a shoplifting on the same day. The major crime in the county is hay theft, and still some occasional cattle rustling.
The local paper is a weekly, and the publisher/editor is pretty liberal. Most of the paper is dedicated to what city and state government is doing, with at least half all about the local schools and their sports teams. The “blotter” only lists the calls to the Newcastle police, a little band of 7 or 8 intrepid officers I’ve hardly ever even seen. They wrestle with such things as lost and loose dogs, lost keys and wallets, doors found open on rare occasions, and the even more rare domestic squabble. Once in a great while they do issue a traffic ticket, but are far more apt to just give a warning. I’ve never been stopped, myself, but have been riding with others who were. Nobody even mentioned the guns on our hips. They have no SWAT team or armored vehicles. One got fired a few years ago for drawing a gun on a “citizen,” but I’ll tell you that story when you visit. 🙂 The city and county share an HQ building and a single jail cell. I could go on, but you get the drift.
It’s a nice place to live, warts and all. Oh, and all the gambling you want just across the line in S. Dakota. I’ve no interest in it myself. 🙂
Very intriguing. I’ve grown fond of casinos as venues, because you just show up and do what you want. Eat, drink, watch and listen to the mathematically challenged and try not to openly laugh.
I can’t stand to be subject to any kind of processing. I will not wait to be seated, or jump through hoops or comply with Nazi clerks who need a credit report and a birth certificate to sell me anything. That rules out most non-casino restaurants. Anything in a shopping mall. Many other places.
Hi can I help… No, I’ve already done a 180 out of Rube Goldberg’s House of Horrors unless you’re insanely attractive or incredibly witty or something.
Leave me be, you Catcher In the Rye Phonies. I’ll stick to dive businesses, and english-free international markets and establishments, and whatever other workarounds when I can.
It’s great when you first move somewhere usually, you haven’t yet memorized the common collectivism of the locals, and felt the weight of its immovable omnipresence.
― J.D. Salinger
“What really knocks me out is a book that, when you’re all done reading it, you wish the author that wrote it was a terrific friend of yours and you could call him up on the phone whenever you felt like it. That doesn’t happen much, though.”
“That’s the thing about girls. Every time they do something pretty, even if they’re not much to look at, or even if they’re sort of stupid, you fall in love with them, and then you never know where the hell you are. Girls. Jesus Christ. They can drive you crazy. They really can.”
“I’m sick of just liking people. I wish to God I could meet somebody I could respect.”
“I’m the most terrific liar you ever saw in your life. It’s awful. If I’m on my way to the store to buy a magazine, even, and somebody asks me where I’m going, I’m liable to say I’m going to the opera. It’s terrible.”
“Mothers are all slightly insane.”
“Among other things, you’ll find that you’re not the first person who was ever confused and frightened and even sickened by human behavior. You’re by no means alone on that score, you’ll be excited and stimulated to know. Many, many men have been just as troubled morally and spiritually as you are right now. Happily, some of them kept records of their troubles. You’ll learn from them—if you want to. Just as someday, if you have something to offer, someone will learn something from you. It’s a beautiful reciprocal arrangement. And it isn’t education. It’s history. It’s poetry.”
“Anyway, I keep picturing all these little kids playing some game in this big field of rye and all. Thousands of little kids, and nobody’s around – nobody big, I mean – except me. And I’m standing on the edge of some crazy cliff. What I have to do, I have to catch everybody if they start to go over the cliff – I mean if they’re running and they don’t look where they’re going I have to come out from somewhere and catch them. That’s all I do all day. I’d just be the catcher in the rye and all. I know it’s crazy, but that’s the only thing I’d really like to be.”
“I am always saying “Glad to’ve met you” to somebody I’m not at all glad I met. If you want to stay alive, you have to say that stuff, though.”
“When you’re dead, they really fix you up. I hope to hell when I do die somebody has sense enough to just dump me in the river or something. Anything except sticking me in a gotdam cemetery. People coming and putting a bunch of flowers on your stomach on Sunday, and all that crap. Who wants flowers when you’re dead? Nobody.”
“And I have one of those very loud, stupid laughs. I mean if I ever sat behind myself in a movie or something, I’d probably lean over and tell myself to please shut up.”
“when you’re not looking, somebody’ll sneak up and write “Fuck you” right under your nose.”
“If a girl looks swell when she meets you, who gives a damn if she’s late?”
“I’m quite illiterate, but I read a lot. ”
“People always clap for the wrong reasons.”
“All morons hate it when you call them a moron.”
― J.D. Salinger
We have an amazing number of eating places here, considering the population, from a nice little Italian restaurant to the Taco John fast food. They are all pretty plain and countrified, however, no waiting/reservations and no officious person demanding your life history before you can be seated. We just wander in, pick a spot, grab the menu and figure out how far our pocket change will go. LOL The waitress takes the pencil from behind her ear and writes down the order, just like in the old movies. And if you go more than a few times, they’ll already know you want your salad dressing on the side or the burger buns toasted.
My favorite is Donna’s Diner on main street. That’s where the local “liars club” of retired gentlemen meet informally each morning for coffee and discussion that ranges far and wide, but frequently involves hunting and fishing topics. The coffee is good, always hot, and the prices are reasonable.
We have two independent grocery stores, three – count them! – three hardware stores, a general merchandise store and lots of other thriving businesses. Best of all, the gun club membership is only $25. a year for a single, and $35. for a family. Amazing when you think about it.
Ah yes, it’s a good life. 🙂
Mama I’m Coming Home – Ozzy Osbourne
– I wish I could decloak my Romulan defenses and just be a straight-talkin’ FSA-avoidin’ Western Free Stater, it doesn’t look all bad. Sturgis/Rapid City SD to the east or Fort Collins CO to the south of Wyoming is probably as close as I could manage. I just can’t affix that hypocritical moral majority mask 24/7, flag-hump, and get corpse-raped by long dead heroes any more.
“Out of everything I’ve lost, I miss my mind the most!”
“Maybe it’s not too late to learn how to love and forget how to hate.”
“It had a huge impact on me, ‘Smells Like Teen Spirit’ – and I was very proud when I found out that Kurt Cobain was a fan of mine. I thought he was awesome.”
“My father always said I would do something big one day.‘I’ve got a feeling about you, John Osbourne,’ he’d tell me, after he’d had a few beers.‘You’re either going to do something very special, or you’re going to go to prison.’
And he was right, my old man.”
“I was in prison before my eighteenth birthday.”
“Hating people isn’t a productive way of living. So what’s the point in hating anyone? There’s enough hate in the world as it is, without me adding to it.”
“I love you all; I love you more than life itself, but you’re all fucking mad.”
“I’m a lunatic by nature, and lunatics don’t need training – they just are.”
“Tell me I’m a sinner I got news for you. I spoke to God this morning and he don’t like you! Don’t you try and teach me no original sin; I don’t need your pity for the shape I’m in”
“You learn who your friends are when the shit hits the fan.”
“When you’re in love, it’s not just about the messing around in the sack, it’s about how empty you feel when they’re gone.”
“The power of people, when they focus on something positive, never fails to amaze me.”
“All these polo-necked wankers from grammar schools were going out and buying songs like ‘San Francisco (Be Sure to Wear Some Flowers in Your Hair)’. Flowers in your hair? Do me a f**king favor. Who gave a dog’s arse about what people were doing in San Francisco, anyway? The only flowers anyone saw in Aston were the ones they threw in the hole after you when you croaked it at the age of fifty-three ’cos you’d worked yourself to death.”
I hated those hippy-dippy songs, man.”
“I grew up having to piss in a bucket ’cos there was no indoor shitter, and now I have these computerised Japanese super-loo things that have heated seats and wash and blow-dry your arse at the touch of a button. Give it a couple of years and I’ll have a bog with a robot arm that pulls out my turds, so I don’t have to strain.”
“The bottom line is I don’t believe in a bloke called God in a white suit who sits on a fluffy cloud any more than I believe in a bloke called the Devil with a three-pronged fork and a couple of horns. If there is a God, it’s nature. If there’s a Devil, it’s nature.”
– Ozzy Osbourne quotes
– Can Ozzy really come home, or does his Mama have a long-standing restraining order by now?
Tor, I have no idea about Mz Osbourne, but this mama doesn’t do “restraining orders.” 🙂
You want no part of Ft. Collins, my friend. The statist, collectivist parasites have taken over everything from Cheyenne south to Colorado Springs. Cheyenne still has nice places around it, politics wise, but the weather is absolutely lousy all along that I-80 corridor. The wind literally NEVER stops blowing.
Rapid City is in South Dakota. While it is not as statist as Denver, they are working hard at it and may succeed in a few years. The property taxes are very high in S. Dakota as well. Still need a “permit” to carry concealed too. Far more welfare, homeless, transient and other assorted potential aggressors, as well as plenty of the official kind. Add to that some seriously corrupted (we’re talking generations) cops and sheriff’s departments – at least in the western half… and it’s no place for an individual sovereign. I lived there for six months when I first came here, and have many friends still over there.
If you want the greatest relative freedom and the lowest relative cost of living (low tax and low regulation), as well as the mildest weather in the midwest, come to NE Wyoming. I’d be tickled to have you come visit and give you the fifty cent tour.
Newcastle is the “county seat” of Weston county. About 5,000 population in the county, and 3,000 in Newcastle. No significant actual crime here, but we do have resident mountain lions, bears and the occasional cranky elk… 🙂 So bring your shootin’ iron.
California law enforcement offices can access criminal records through smartphone application
The Associated Press – The Republic and The Greenfield Reporter
Attorney General Kamala Harris says her office has designed a mobile application that will allow law enforcement officers to download criminal records and other information to their smartphones. She says the California Department of Justice maintains nearly 20 databases, but officers have had to retrieve information from them by radio through a dispatcher. Harris said Wednesday that radio transmissions can be interrupted or garbled, leading to sometimes dangerous confusion over whether a suspect has a criminal record. The so-called “mobile justice” app lets officers download the information directly and more quickly.
http://www.therepublic.com/view/story/d61
Indeed… the fugitives might just have an unpaid parking ticket, an overdue library book, or – horrors – have entered a theater with his “google glass” to make a seriously poor recording of a dumb movie that could hardly be sold by the studio that made it. Yep, they’ll collar a lot of dangerous criminals that way. (/sarc)
The answer is in the 3%. Be part of the three percent. The bad shit you see going down in Kiev is coming here. Prepare. Here’s the deal: http://www.thedailysheeple.com/an-open-letter-to-the-men-and-women-of-the-connecticut-state-police_022014
Holy shit!
@Boothe – Martin Armstorn predicts by 2015.75 in the “war cycle”
“No government will EVER admit they are the root problem and that will be the case with the USA after 2015.75. This Ukraine crisis is escalating into a danger of international war for the next 6 years.”
Feburary 19, 2014
http://armstrongeconomics.com/2014/02/
Another good quote is: “if you ain’t got nothing, you’ve got nothing to lose”. I think our masters are well aware of this one, thus the proliferation of food stamps, welfare, etc. Give the masses just enough to keep them happy and have the bread and circuses of football and NASCAR to keep them brainwashed like good sheeple.
I personally agree with Solzhenitsyn, when they come for me it’s time for the 12 guage, take a few out before they get me.
Tru dat Mike, also along the same lines as with our owners “allowing” marijuana.
I like to think this country could be retaken by peaceful means. History shows us though that once you have such vast forces of evil via Stasi, DHS and huge military forces that are thoroughly brainwashed, it almost never happens peacefully. Nothing I see these days would lead me to believe it would/will be any different in this country. If our representatives in DC had any desire to represent their constituents the country wouldn’t be in the shape it’s in now anyway. They actually look at the situation as an Us against Them scenario as can be seen by their vote.
“If our representatives in DC had any desire to represent their constituents”
What would you like to have your “representative” actually do? What is the “will of the people?” Is it not possible that YOUR “will” might be quite different than mine? How does someone actually ‘represent’ a million or more people? They ALL have different needs, wants, ideas, agendas and favorite projects?
No, the problem isn’t that the politicians don’t “represent” their constituents. The problem is that those “constituents” are not left alone to pursue their own needs, wants, ideas, agendas and so forth without theft and coercion.
No, my friend, if you truly want someone to represent you, hire a lawyer or someone else to speak for you. Nobody can legitimately “elect” someone to speak or act for others.