Billandkent.com is being monitored

There are many readers who come to my site to look around. In fact, last month, I received more than one million visitors to the site. This has created somewhat of an interesting problem for me, in a couple of ways. First, it has increased my bandwidth greatly. I have also lately been having some concerns about storage. This left me with two choices. I either upgrade my service plan with my Internet service provider for more space and bandwidth, or, I pull the site, which would mean that I’m done with blogging.

I decided to stick around for a bit longer. So, today, I called my service provider and increased both storage and bandwidth (they were overjoyed).

So, if you ever try to come to my site and find that I’ve been removed from Internet existence, it won’t be because I’ve decided to call it quits and disappear from the blogosphere. I mention all of this, because I am apparently being monitored by the Federal Government. At least, it’s fair to say that they are taking an interest in this site - and probably not in a good way.

I have been extremely outspoken about my feelings on a variety of topics ranging from gay marriage, gay rights, domestic violence, the death penalty, taxes, government intrusion into our lives, and the injustice of the war in Iraq. I have talked at length about my feelings on this war, our current administration in Washington, our President, and how I feel about him running this country into the ground. I’ve been criticized by people I know for being “un-American” for not “supporting” our President and our country at a time when we need “unity”. I have been criticized by my family for “causing trouble” by being so outspoken.

Well, that’s propaganda, and it’s bullshit. I call it like I see it. I will not support this President, because he is a moron and has no clue on where or how to take this country into a future that will ensure the rights of all citizens. He won his last election not by bravely confronting the problems this nation faces - problems that effect all of us, but rather, by telling people that if he doesn’t win election, the very future of marriage is at stake. This drove large masses of religious conservatives to the polls. After the election, he wanted nothing to do with the amendment to the U.S. Constitution defining marriage as “one man, one woman.”

In other words, this President has the integrity of a piss ant in a colony of ant eaters - he will do whatever it takes to survive. Screw integrity and screw beliefs. This is our leader. His integrity as a leader is matched only by his attitude towards other peoples of the world and his absolute contempt for anyone else (the United Nations) who might disagree with him. He is not my President. He is a President who was given the Presidency by the U.S. Supreme Court the first time around, and narrowly won election (and even that is still being disputed) for his second term.

This is what America is today - a nation that is too good for everyone else, a nation who looks down it’s nose at everyone else, a nation who is filled with hatred and bigotry tempered with a self-righteous attitude that the way we treat some of our citizens is justified based on religious doctrine.

Weekly, I check my site statistics on who is visiting my site, and, more importantly, where they are going. Over the last couple of months, I have seen a dramatic increase in traffic to this site from “.mil” domains (U.S. Military). And not just one branch. All branches have visited the site. And recently, the Pentagon has taken an interest in the site.

This urged me to take a closer look at where they were going. It’s hard for me to believe that they are here to read about gay marriage, so it was reasonable to assume that they were here for other reasons. Sure enough, each of their stops was to view the comments left in the Abu Ghraib photo album.

I posted the album some time ago. Actually, when the photos surfaced. Over the months, the rhetoric taking place in the comments left in the album have become increasingly hostile and anti-American. This was not my intention. I created the album because I feel what happened at Abu Ghraib was a terrible injustice. In fact, after the Abu Ghraib scandal, 90% of those held at the prison were released because they were falsely imprisoned. Many of these prisoners were the men who were abused in the photos.

I’ve always felt that those who were truly responsible for what happened there would never be punished. The people really responsible for letting this happen were too far up the chain of command. And sure enough, history has proved me right. Only the low-level soldiers who were there are the ones receiving the punishment for Abu Ghraib. That’s unfortunate, but expected. It echoes the Bush Administration’s ability to avoid all blame for anything that happens under it’s watch.

The administration, and indeed the United States does not need my help to make us look bad. We seem to be doing this just fine all by ourselves. The news around the world is buzzing about the photos just release of Saddam Hussein in his cell, in his underwear, no less. When I heard the news on TV and saw the photo, I just shook my head in disbelief and wondered how people could be so stupid. This was first released in a British newspaper but we were fast to pick up on it as well and publish it. Here we are at war, we’ve gone through the Abu Ghraib scandal, and now this. We just don’t learn. You don’t fight against a fire by throwing more gasoline on the fire. Stupid. It pissed me off, and I’m not even Iraqi.

I view free speech as being sacred. It is what our country is founded on. And believe me, if there’s one thing I do, it’s to exercise my right to free speech. But I don’t take it for granted. It’s possible that some day, you may try to come to billandkent.com, and we would no longer be here. If that happens, you will know what happened to the site. Call me paranoid, but I trust our current administration and our current government about as far as I can throw my house.

This is the world we live in folks. I’m a middle-aged gay man living way out in the country with my partner of 30 years. I live a private life, yet, on the Internet, I’m outspoken and direct. And, I am being monitored. For what? For my ideas? For calling things what they are?

I love my country. I don’t love what they are doing and I don’t love what we, as a nation, are becoming. And recently, it’s been difficult for me to say that I’m proud to be an American, for a lot of reasons. Some will say, “Well, if you don’t like America, get the hell out.” Believe me, we have thought long and hard about leaving. It’s hard to stay and be bashed by one state or another in this country day after day just because you want to marry your life partner, and still feel like “things will eventually get better.”

I don’t believe that there should be different tiers of rights for different groups of people in this country. We should be better than that.

I don’t believe that we have the right to militarily beat the hell out of another country because we are the bad ass United States. We should be better than that.

I don’t believe that we should tell the United Nations to go screw themselves because what they believe is inconvenient for us. We should be better than that.

I believe we should not use war as a first resort to solve our problems, at the expense of the lives of the young men and women serving our country in the military forces. We should be better than that.

I don’t believe that we should let a vocal minority in this country use selected passages from the Bible to beat down and demonize an unpopular minority in this country to justify legislation to further their means. If we allow that, we should also allow for the death of those who are adulterers. Divorce should be against the law and those who work on Sundays should be put to death, along with women who wear make up, for they are “harlots”. This is what the Bible calls for. You either carry out ALL the instructions of the Bible, if we want to go down that road, or we don’t. You shouldn’t get to pick and choose who or what group to condemn because it’s convenient to ignore some groups because they hit a little to close to home for you. We live in a democracy, not a theocracy - at least not yet. But if people like Senator Bill Frist gets his way, this democracy that we take for granted may soon be a thing of the past. We should be better than that.

I don’t believe that we should be spending like there is no tomorrow because “we are at war”. That excuse is getting pretty worn out and lame, and future generations of children are going to be left paying for the bill that this administration is racking up. WE SHOULD BE BETTER THAN THAT!

But we won’t be better than that unless people start speaking up and saying, “enough already!”. I don’t know what it will take for people to start doing that - to start caring about their country again - to take back the greatness of what America used to be, and should be. This is my way of doing that, for as long as I can, for as long as I am allowed.