Links posted on December 24, 2007
Climate Change for the Beautiful People (Special investigative report by Grünhaus Gaz, environmental correspondent.) On December 4, 10,000 worldcrats and their coteries jetted into the Indonesian resort island of Bali to attend yet another in a long line of climate-change conferences. No one seemed bothered by an AP article that asserted, "Their emissions are probably going to be greater than a small African country." "I've been here all day," coos a young bikini-clad American woman reclining on a white sand beach who asks not to be identified. "This is the best free vacation since the Rio shindig." Asked to explain the "free" part, she smirks, "My boyfriend owns and operates Chokejet Charters Air Service. He's politically connected. We fly American politicians and UN bureaucrats to these climate things. They have unlimited taxpayer money, you know."
Links posted on November 14, 2007
The Cancercrats of Texas This article was sent to 25 mainstream daily newspapers in Texas. The Article: The politicians who run Texas government want you to hand over three billion of your hard-earned taxbucks so they can create yet another state bureaucracy. It's called Proposition 15 and it will be on the November 6 statewide ballot. A yes vote will change the Texas Constitution, which will authorize taxpayer funded cancer research. It won't cure cancer. It will only create a bureaucracy. Like a dog that can't pass a tree without giving it a hind-legged salute, government can't do anything without creating a bureaucracy.
Links posted on November 01, 2007
The Stupidification of America People have voluntarily stupidified themselves because they've bought into assorted cultural caca, ideological concepts frequently abetted or opportunistically manipulated after the fact by the nation's political donkey dung dishers and elephant effluvia flingers. Libertarians are uniquely positioned to snicker, sneer and snort at this ongoing social stupidification because they don't subscribe to the lefty-righty fakery of political correctness.
Links posted on October 14, 2007
The WarOn Commission Report There are several special interest high profile taxbuck-funded long-running campaigns to report on, and most of these so-called WarOns are going quite well for the bureaucracies that run them and the bureaucrats who directly benefit from them. Item: War On Poverty. This war has been a very successful project for the Lefty-whimpery-whiny social welfare crowd since President Johnson launched it in 1964. Because of the various change-as-needed definitions of "poverty" the program will never run out of "welfare fodder."
Links posted on October 01, 2007
A paean to political Patriotism No matter how many times their Political Mommies and Daddies abuse them, they will keep crawling back for more. They will keep paying taxes and voting and believing pretty-sounding lies and going to jail even when they didn't hurt anyone. All because someone told them that they're good little Citizens and should always love someone else more than they love themselves, like a televangelist or a flag or a social welfare program or anything else that makes them feel warm and cozy while they're living under some Politician's thumb.
Links posted on September 16, 2007
The state of the State of Columbia From time to time a pint-sized parcel of property dubbed District of Columbia is heard to agitate for statehood. Considering that its capital, Washington, which is of course also the capital of a whole nation/empire/allegedly Free World, would have the same city limits as the state would have state lines, we’re talking more city-state than state. Still, it seems only inevitable that this odd-shaped shard of landscape will eventually snatch the status of tiniest state from the grip of Rhode Island, so perhaps a hank of history would be helpful here.
Links posted on September 03, 2007
Welcome to Political Playland Traditional amusement parks are themed to cartoon characters or movie studios or magic kingdoms or even country music like Dollywood and Opreyland. New ones are all about politics. Two examples are "Stalin's World" and "Caminata Nocturna." Built near Vilnius, Lithuania, Stalin's World reproduces Soviet Communist Hell. Caminata Nocturna (Night Hike) is a Mexican theme park that simulates the experience of sneaking across the US-Mexican border. These are real. They're way too outrageous to make up. Which means that any day now we'll be seeing internet pop-up ads for these fun filled venues: Welcome to Xtreme Lib-Zone USSA, Grampa Gore's Inconvenient WarmWorld, Live Free at LibertarianLand.
Links posted on August 14, 2007
Endangering Endangered Entities It appears, from reading public reports on the matter, that the very people in charge of keeping our officially governmentally designated endangered species free from endangerment can't catch a clue. Perhaps it's because their generation grew up permanently parked before interminable Saturday morning cartoon shows where they were repeatedly taught that animals are just cute little peoplelike creatures who can talk and sing and dance and knock one another on the noggin without enduring damage.
Links posted on July 31, 2007
Gay Bombs and Bubble Wrapped Battlefields The following data was gleaned from heavily redacted documents obtained through the little-known Freedom of Information About Really Stupid Wasteful Military Boondoggles Act. Fort Clonefield Genetic Warfare Research Labs developed a method for identifying and extracting the human Nationality Stereotype Gene, or NSG. Government scientists first isolated an American NSG and injected it into several "volunteer" Iraqi Enemy Combatants at Guantanamo. The American NSG caused the Iraqis to start playing poker and smoking cigars on Saturday night, lying about their sexual exploits and getting into fistfights over the superiority of Ford versus Chevrolet pickup trucks.
Links posted on July 18, 2007
Why America needs immigration amnesty Both BigGov Democrats and BigGov Republicans know full well that the only way to save their mutually cherished authoritarian socialist welfare state is to keep the taxpaying base of the ponzi pyramid bigger than the tax-eating top. They didn't want to fashion a fast-track citizenship program for illegal immigrants out of "fairness" after all; they desperately needed to conscript as many bodies as possible into the legally sanctioned aboveground workforce where their fleecy tax coats could be sheered at will.
Links posted on July 01, 2007
All breadwinners are mercenaries While libertarian George Phillies equates the mercenary with the child molester, another libertarian flipped that recipe like a flapjack and ended the military draft in America. In his book "Radicals for Capitalism" Brian Doherty whets our palettes with a tasty tale of Milton Friedman who served on the government commission that ended the draft in 1973. Opposed to ending conscription, General Westmoreland stewed over the prospect of leading an army of mercenaries. According to Doherty, a verbal food fight broke out.
Links posted on June 14, 2007
Culture shocker: Paris in the Pokey Unlike the airhead heiress, former "Lost" star Michelle Rodriguez may hold the celebrity cell-time record, serving just four hours and twenty minutes of her 60-day DUI probation violation sentence in 2006 before being released "due to jail overcrowding." The reason for the overcrowding has long been noted by libertarians decrying America's badly broken "justice" system. Public-endangering starlets and harlots like Rodriguez and Hilton (drunk driving, reckless driving, feckless driving) are sprung so jails can be jammed with victimless crime political prisoners.
Links posted on May 31, 2007
The war against law-abiding citizens Most Americans seem to believe that obeying their nation's laws is all that it takes to be a good person. Identifying oneself as a "law-abiding citizen" is a common homily trotted out to prove one's superior morality and worthiness. It seems never to occur to such folk that there may be good laws and bad laws, that "laws" are frequently found at the root of the world's most egregious evils.
Links posted on May 14, 2007
Earth Day and Tiffy the Teenage Fortuneteller Under the headline "Scientists Offer Frightening Forecast" AOL News celebrated Politically Correct Earth Day this year by posting a cataclysmic horror story on how and when the Human Homeland will go to people-perpetuated Perdition in an artificially manufactured petroleum-based plastic hand basket. The predictions feature, as do all predictions, whether from the Book of Revelation or Nostradamus or Tiffy the Teenage Fortuneteller, a mixture of shock and awe, fuzziness and no statute of limitations.
Links posted on April 30, 2007
The Moneycrats of Crock They were stunned. The gray, boring, unimaginative breed of moneysucking subhumans known as bureaucrats who inhabit the American enclave variously known as Oz or Wonderland or The District of Crock couldn't believe the headline from Politico.com (February 9, 2007): "Bush Wants Funding Jump for Anti-Drug Ads Rated as Useless." Paperpushers and Agencycrats from all over Crock gathered in their natural habitat, a gray, boring, unimaginative federal building in the nation's capital, to read the article aloud.
Links posted on April 15, 2007
Committing the Crime of Free Speech Two men with foreign, suspicious-sounding names, Elahwal and Iqbal, were arrested for the capitalistic entrepreneurial crime of using satellite dishes to distribute Hezbollah television station broadcasts to their New York-area customers. Since the USSA government designated the station, al Manar, as a global terrorist entity, the two men face five-year prison terms for stupidly believing that freedom of speech exists in America. The thinking, apparently, is that anyone watching a terrorist TV station is guilty of aiding global terrorism. In related news, SWAT-clad FBI agents raided the HBO studios where the TV series "The Sopranos" is taped and roughed up everyone they could get their gunbutts on.
Links posted on April 01, 2007
Dim bulbs to ban light bulbs Levine wants to force everyone to use the more efficient compact fluorescent light bulbs in spite of the fact that the bulbs are, quoting from the same article, "being promoted by Wal-Mart." (If a libertarian suggested that Levine forgot for purely political point-scoring purposes that his boringly socialist party's political playbook obligates every Democrat everywhere to vilify Wal-Mart at every opportunity he would likely stare back in confused incomprehension at such a notion.)
Links posted on March 14, 2007
Ten reasons to love global warming People are obsessing about today's global warming because anti-libertarian political opportunists and cultural Marxists and enviro-religionists and government-paid researchers who stand to gain political and/or social power and prestige and lots of taxbucks are demanding that we obsess about it. To counter the Al Goregoyle-lead gloomsayers, here are 10 reasons to love global warming.
Links posted on February 28, 2007
The War on Peanuts Many libertarian pundits claimed that the point of the story was that we should fear terrorists no more than we fear the lowly peanut. However, President Bush, who desperately needed to appear leaderly after the House and Senate were lost on his watch – just as he desperately needed to appear leaderly after the Twin Towers were lost on his watch – used the crisis to immediately declare a War on Peanuts and nominated recently ousted former Republican Congresscrat Ben D. Pheeted of South Virginia as his new Peanut Czar.
Links posted on February 14, 2007
Poisoned spies and conspiracy theories The ongoing saga of the former KGB operative offed by a radioactive substance continues to titillate conspiracy connoisseurs. It's the greatest undercover caper since the Twin Towers were secretly booby trapped by government boobies and imploded in league with Islamo-zealot suicide pilots, and reportedly has Kennedy Assassination Plot investigators crawling out from behind their grassy knolls with wild-eyed theories of magic polonium bullets.
Links posted on January 31, 2007
Playing the I Won't Run game Anyone can hog headlines by running for president. John Kerry is merely the latest master media manipulator to do so by announcing that he's not. Senate Majority Leadercrat Bill Frist not only rejected a 2008 bid for the White House, but is also retiring from politics altogether after serving 12 years as promised. The announcement stunned libertarians who noted that Frist actually served 12 years in the Senate after pledging to serve no more than 12 years in the Senate. Still, others have pointed out that the Tennessee pol remains under investigation by the Securities and Exchange Commission for insider trading. Rumors persist that Martha Stewart's old bunk is still available.
Links posted on January 14, 2007
Too late to Barr the door Libertarian Party press releases: "Libertarian Party Launches TV Ad Campaign Targeting Rep. Bob Barr on Medical Marijuana." "Medical marijuana ads play role in defeat of U.S. Rep. Bob Barr." "Former Congressman Bob Barr Accepts Leadership Position within the Libertarian Party." Comment: "The LP spends $50,000 to defeat Barr and now they're Strange Bedfellows. What next, Nancy Pelosi for Public Relations Director?"
Links posted on January 01, 2007
2006: Freedom in the rearview mire It's time to play "Year in Review," that game beloved by the MSM (that's cybersay for mainstream media) because, come the new year, journalist types are hung over, bored, unimaginative, and generally find it easier to dig through old headlines than to write something original. No difference here. So, from a hungover, bored, unimaginative libertarian point of bleary view, here's looking at 2006 in the rearview mire.
Links posted on December 17, 2006
Man bites dog: straight man outed A general journalistic principal: Dog Bites Man is not news; Man Bites Dog is news. World-renowned lingerie and handbag designer Ignacio Octavo Ulysses (known to his legion of fans and trademark attorneys simply as Iggy) stunned the global gay community by announcing that he is straight. "I can no longer live a lie," Iggy announced during his acceptance speech at the International Fashion Designers and Trend-Setters Awards Festival in Cannes. (Satire)
Links posted on November 30, 2006
The Terrorist Whisperers
Forget x-ray machines and body wands and bomb-sniffing bowwows. The TSA is working on a machine that can uncover terrorists by combining the capabilities of the Horse Whisperer, the Ghost Whisperer and Angela’s Eyes. The folks at TSA (Touch and Stroke Agents) want to turn Israeli terror detection techniques into software algorisms so they can catch terrorists. This is because (multiple choice):
a. Americans are obsessed with technology
b. The TSA bureauboobs are obsessed with squandering more of our taxbucks
c. Wand-waving GED-dropout TSA hirelings are untrainable
Links posted on November 15, 2006
ID theft, Real ID, and the Wizard of ID In today's Peeping Tom Dystopia, government datacrats at all levels are fixated on finding out everything about us. They track us with spycams and RFID chips and warrantless wiretaps and computer stealthbugs and black boxes in our autos and covert email intercepts and mandatory snitching from our bankers and doctors and telephone firms and credit card companies. They need this massive database of birthdays and divorces and pay raises and colonoscopies and vaginal wart prescriptions because they are from the government and they are here to protect us.
Links posted on October 30, 2006
Ain't no lesser of two evils Libertarians, especially the anarcho variety, wonder why anyone who truly has values would bother to vote at all. Between the Donkeycrats and the Grand Old Partyarchs there ain't no lesser of two evils. Below are excerpts from one such mass-circulated dreadmail stating the horrors of a Democrat win (each one is reprinted verbatim), followed by what, based on their track record, Republicans would do instead, followed thereafter by the libertarian response to both.
Links posted on October 15, 2006
California claims cars cook climate "Ladies and Gentlemen of the media, thank you for attending our politically crafted soundbite-and-posturing Image Management Event today. I will now turn the proceedings over to our Chief Legalcrat, Sue Pantzoff, Commissar of the Department of Dimwitted Lawsuits for the Peoples Republik of Kalifornia. Kalifornia has filed suit against the six largest automakers operating in the United States because their dirty cars and trucks are causing global warming."
Links posted on September 30, 2006
The Wit And Wisdom of Rightwing Rant Radio
Eight things libertarians can learn from conservative talk show caterwaulers:
1. Everything President Bush has ever done or said makes him a great American, a hero, a patriot, and the savior of the Western World. If a Democrat had done and said exactly the same things, he would have been a communist, a coward, a traitor, and the Devil incarnate.
Links posted on September 19, 2006
License to Kill Freedom Popular in USSA From a news report in the once communist but now enlightened Westernized European Union member Slovak Republic: a teacher who took his class on a school trip to a historic cathedral was arrested because he did not have a license to give guided tours. The pupils were also arrested for listening to the unlicensed tour. Some people, such as American libertarians, are outraged by this example of bureaucratic pettiness.
Links posted on August 31, 2006
Can government regulators regulate themselves? NSA, CIA in inter-agency spy-down: The NSA conducted a three-year, six million dollar operation that used undercover agents to spy on suspected al qaeda terrorists who were actually CIA undercover agents conducting a three-year, six million dollar operation to spy on suspected al qaeda terrorists who were actually NSA undercover agents spying on them. Commendations will be passed out to all concerned. (Satire)
Links posted on August 14, 2006
All's fair in love and counterterrorism The New York Times created a firestorm when it outed the Bush administration for secretly spying on Americans' financial transactions under the now infamous headline splashed across Fairly Unbalanced FoxNews, CNN Commie News Narrators and moribund over-the-air alphabet news network program TV screens: "Bank Data Is Sifted by U.S. in Secret to Block Terror."
Links posted on August 01, 2006
Former House Congresscrat declares World War III Former Speaker of the House Rich Newtgringe proclaimed that the USSA is actively engaged in fighting World War III and that President Bush should just publicly say so. "There's a lot of cool stuff we can do," the former Republican Congresscrat from Georgiabama mused, "if we simply declare World War III, or IV, or V against … against … whoever. We can ration tires, force people to rip up their backyard decks and plant victory gardens, inflict big government's coercive powers onto every aspect of American life, at least on the last little bits of it that still languish beyond Washington's enlightened supervision, and draft everybody's kids into the Cannon Fodder Corps."
Links posted on July 18, 2006
Obligatory global warming scares of the day When scientists at the Golden State Global Warming Detection and Advanced Warning Center in Palo Alto detected a sudden, sharp increase of .0013 degree Celsius in the Global Warming Temperature Index (GWTI), they immediately initiated a Warming Alert, which caused all of the Warming Warning sirens in coastal Southern California to go off and emergency alerts to be broadcast over all media including XM radios, cell phones and iPods. Many drivers panicked and hit their brakes, causing a multi-car smashup that went on for thirteen minutes. No fatalities were recorded, but first-responders reported thirty-two cases of airbag deployment facial burns and at least seven incidents of hyperventilation. Most victims were treated at the scene and released back into their SUVs.
Links posted on July 04, 2006
States to ban mind-destroying "book" scourge Hardknoxville, Tennesseesaw - Police and teachers haven't noticed large numbers of kids getting hooked on the allegedly dangerous hallucinogenic material known in street parlance as "book," and federal drug agents say that few people are currently using it. But that hasn't dissuaded Tennesseesawen lawmakers and political opportunists in five other states from seeking to outlaw the substance. The great fear, of course, is that excessive use of "book" can turn otherwise successfully soccerized youngsters away from group mentality lives and into maladjusted geeks, nerds or, even worse, individualists.
Links posted on June 16, 2006
Bird Flu and the Great Milk Bomb Conspiracy "Well, Mork and Mindy, tuna and powdered milk hoarding has created scarcity in supermarkets which has driven the price of those items way up, resulting in an unregulated influx of cheap foreign items that threaten to significantly increase our balance of trade deficit, and created a black market in American canned tuna and powdered milk. The street value of a can of chunk light tuna is $20 a can. And we’ve also seen a proliferation of cheap, dangerous counterfeits."
Links posted on May 31, 2006
Immigrants need to be better Americans than Americans In a speech from the Egg-Shaped Office during primetime TV (in which he finished fifth in the overnight ratings behind Fear Fracture, Let's Make a Deal or No Deal, Backpacking with the Stars and The Munsters' Bit Players and Extras Annual Reunion Special and Hip Replacement Telethon) President Bush told the nation that millions of illegal immigrants who had gotten away with breaking the law the longest could become American citizens if they paid a meaningful penalty for breaking the law, paid their taxes, learned to speak, write and sing the National Anthem in broken English, and worked in a legitimate job for a number of years.
Immigrants need to be better Americans than Americans In a speech from the Egg-Shaped Office during primetime TV (in which he finished fifth in the overnight ratings behind Fear Fracture, Let's Make a Deal or No Deal, Backpacking with the Stars and The Munsters' Bit Players and Extras Annual Reunion Special and Hip Replacement Telethon) President Bush told the nation that millions of illegal immigrants who had gotten away with breaking the law the longest could become American citizens if they paid a meaningful penalty for breaking the law, paid their taxes, learned to speak, write and sing the National Anthem in broken English, and worked in a legitimate job for a number of years.
Links posted on May 15, 2006
"Senate Embryo Imbroglio Inaugurates Euphemism Schism" Details of the Senatorial brouhaha in March over the use of tax dollars for embryonic stem-cell research is just now coming to light. While major newspapers such as the Washington Times reported the story, the nation's lowliest freelance tabloid mudslingers are only now digging up dirt on the horse-trading, log-rolling and intern-swapping that went on behind the scenes. Democratic lawmakers have changed the word 'embryo' to 'material' in a bill for embryonic stem-cell research to secure the votes of Catholic senators who did not want to be viewed as supporting abortion-related legislation.
Links posted on April 30, 2006
Bureaucrats never Burdened by Burden of Proof Shifting the burden of proof onto the accused makes life easier for governmentcrats everywhere. "Sir, I'm giving you a citation for driving while intoxicated. Sobriety check? No, we don't need to give you a breathalyzer or a blood test. The burden of proof will be on you to prove to the judge that you were sober when I stopped you. Probable cause? Our town needs the seven hundred bucks or so this whole hassle will cost you. Your rights? What are you, some kind of libertarian?
Links posted on April 16, 2006
Libertarian ScamBlogger Covertly Quizzes Bee Bureaucrat The USDA's National Animal Identification System (NAIS), announced in 2004, is plodding relentlessly ahead, first by registering every farm, ranch, dairy, pigsty, chicken coop, sheep shed and commercial fish hatchery in the country, then by tagging and RFIDing every kind of creature destined for grocery store shelves or restaurant menus. Abe E. Stynger is the newly appointed Adminiscrat of the USDA's Office of Apiary Activity. Mr. Stynger was secretly interviewed by an undisclosed member of a little-known band of libertarian ScamBloggers.
Links posted on April 02, 2006
"Busting Barflies in Bars only the Beginning?" A crack team of undercover Center for Disease Control operatives apprehended 57 allegedly overweight men, women and children consuming suspected high-calorie junk food in the food court of a Washington DC area shopping mall. "It's necessary to stop suspected obese people from gaining additional weight before they become a risk to themselves or the public," explained a department spokescrat while justifying the preemptive operation. "Just because people don't intend to get Heart disease, high blood pressure or strokes is no excuse for public obesity."
Links posted on March 16, 2006
Yelling 'Peace' in a Crowded Classroom An Indiana teacher who told her elementary school class that she honked when she saw a sign that said "Honk for Peace" was fired from her job. In a meeting, the father of one of the little girls in the class pointed at the teacher while telling the school's principal, "I want her to promise never to mention the word peace in her class again." The principal reportedly tripped over her pension in her headlong rush to acquiesce.
Links posted on February 28, 2006
America needs Gun Control ... for Bureaucrats The state Egg Inspector confronts the supermarket Produce Manager. "I've just tested your refrigerated egg display. The temperature is 44.5 degrees Fahrenheit. You are in violation of article 7-11-01-03 of the North Dakota Egg Code, which requires a chill temperature of 45 degrees Fahrenheit. That means your egg display is a crime scene. I'll have to cordon off your cold case. Then I'm calling in the Feds." Inspectorcrat Eggbert Eggleheart packs a Walther EGG. He's Agent Double-Grade A, License to Chill.
Links posted on February 15, 2006
George and Tony's Excellent Little Gulf War
"Alright folks, as you know, we here at Oxidental-Moronthaller Peaceful Solutions Consulting Resources won the $2.1 million secret contract from the Bush administration to dream up a pretext for starting a war with Iraq. You're my creative team, so let's make Oxi-Moron proud. Nerdman, what have you got?"
"Well sir, I think we need to get Saddam to attack one of our ships."
Links posted on January 30, 2006
"The Libertarian's Legitimate Litmus Lessons" Libertarian Evolution – Traces the evolutionary development of a typical member of the modern American freedom movement from simple individualist to science fiction fan to Objectivist to libertarian to Libertarian Party member to anarchist to Anarcho-Capitalist to radical Rothbardian-Konkinite Anarcho-Transhumanistic Punk/Rock Minimalist to simple individualist. Presentation includes illustrative slides of the socio-politico periodic table and timeline charts.
Links posted on January 15, 2006
"Spy vs Spy vs Spy vs Spy" The Prezidat of the USSA has piously declared his Self-given right to spy on anyone anywhere anytime and for any reason that can even vaguely be associated with the vaguely defined War on Some Terrorists. (Definitions: If freedom fighters are somewhere opposing the oppressive yoke of an American-friendly, i.e., American-bought, government, they're terrorists. If terrorists are attacking an anti-American regime, they're freedom fighters.)
Links posted on January 03, 2006
Bush Nominates Computer for Supreme Court Out of sheer desperation, President Bush nominated a computer as his 17th and most recent candidate to replace retiring Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O'Connor. With only two months left in his second term, it's now or never for a Bush nominee to make it onto the highest court in the land. Harriet Miers, the President's first and now long forgotten nominee, drew the wrath of the President's own party when it was discovered that she just wasn't conservative enough. She was not, for example, an Evangelical Born-Again Pentecostal Witness ...
Links posted on December 15, 2005
Torture Act Elicits Illicit Denials Controversy continues over Republican Arizona Senator John McCain's attempt to attach an amendment to the Great Patriotic Motherhood Apple Pie Aunt Bee Omnibus Freespending Pork Bill that would, as a Weekly Standard article put it, "'make torture illegal' at Pentagon facilities throughout the world." The controversy seems to come, not from former prisoners of war, but from pansycrats who have never served in uniform and therefore define torture as being forced to endure a night of fretful sleep before bagging that fatcat lobbyist's fat kickback.
Links posted on November 30, 2005
Free Trade not Free in Free World In early November, President Bush failed to win agreement from leaders of five South American countries on his pitch for a hemisphere-wide misnomered "free trade" accord. The idea of people trading things they don't want for things they do want was apparently so unpopular that demonstrators "had a cow," smashing windows, torching a US flag and stoning cops in Argentina, where the trade summit took place. Since trade is an excruciatingly complicated topic for most people, this tract, which can be folded into a pamphlet and handed out at Libertarian Party outreach booths, will attempt to clarify the concept.
Links posted on November 14, 2005
The Conservative's Socially Suitable Syllabus It was a natural reaction to produce The Conservative's Socially Suitable Syllabus. Our President was the inspiration for this presentation. Pundits with a keener eye than I have noted the following Bushism: His Presidentness wants creationism taught in schools because he believes in Intelligent Design over Evolution, yet he wants the power to deploy the military if the bird flu virus evolves to the point of infecting humans. People are intelligently designed, it seems, but viruses evolve.
Links posted on October 31, 2005
Drawing a Hardline in the Sand The Minutemen, as most know, is a patriotic group of hall monitors who want to keep Mexicans on their own side of the line drawn in the sand. But now a small liberal spin-off group of the Minutemen has taken up arms. Not weapons, just arms. They are the Equal Opportunity Affirmative Action Nonsexist Cooperative of Minutepersons.
Links posted on October 17, 2005
"Beating the PC Name Game" The Political Correctness crazies are slinging their PC feces again. The National Collegiate Athletic Association has branded as "hostile" and "abusive" any school that sports an American Indian nickname. But there is a way out of this perpetual PC idiocy. Quoting libertarian science fiction writer L. Neil Smith, "If you can, within principle, take over and adopt whatever name your enemy calls you, do so. It shuts them up very handily." Does this work?
Links posted on October 02, 2005
"The Collectivist's Culturally Correct Curriculum" As a public service for parents still waffling on whether to wrest their kiddies from the clutches of public schools in favor of private or homegrown instruction, here are samplings from The Collectivist's Culturally Correct Curriculum.
Links posted on September 14, 2005
The Collapse of Political Correctness The lawlessness, looting, loss of civility and disintegration of civil society have all been documented day by day ad nauseam in the wake of the wake that washed over the Crescent City and transformed it into a virulent Venice of the South. What has gone grievously underreported, however, is the shocking collapse of Political Correctness that threatens to shred our civilization.
Links posted on September 01, 2005
SnooperChips and ToasterTaps The digital stalkers are already Spybotting and SnooperChipping and RFIDing us to death with every imaginable manner of electronic Tinker Toy. Got a black box in your car? Like the black boxes on aircraft (or EDR for "event data recorder") the devices are digital deep moles implanted in the innards of your automobile that record your basic operational actions such as speed, brake application, and that favorite of all police force profit-makers, seatbelt usage.
Links posted on August 14, 2005
Shunning the Real ID Enablers Freedom's latest foe is the two-headed snake-in-the-grass Hewlett-Packard and Microsoft. These cyberserpents are collaborating to create the hardware/software mission of turning us all into walking talking Real ID card chattel. (Quickie definition of Real ID: a thin slice of plastic containing our digitized biological and biographical persona so BigGov can steal our identities whenever it wishes.)
Links posted on July 31, 2005
Lost Principles Hotel On its face, the Lost Liberty Hotel has the scent of delicious retribution – the enabler of eminent domain abuse hoisted by his own petard. Serves him right! The "reap what ye sow" morality (another cliché) sends a powerful message that resonates with many. But it’s not a libertarian message.
Links posted on July 17, 2005
The US Supine Court The highest court in the country has flopped fish-belly upward in the ugliest ongoing exhibition of anti-Constitutional cowardice since Franklin Socialist Roosevelt threatened to pollute the power and privilege of that pompous panel by adding additional arbiters. The black-robed jurists are now nothing more than submissive enablers for their fellow freedom-defiling federalcrats, supine before the power of the political Mafiosi. The toadying began in earnest in 2003 with Campaign Finance Deform, when the jaded Justices hand-delivered Congress the "right" to ban political speech.
The US Supine Court The highest court in the country has flopped fish-belly upward in the ugliest ongoing exhibition of anti-Constitutional cowardice since Franklin Socialist Roosevelt threatened to pollute the power and privilege of that pompous panel by adding additional arbiters. The black-robed jurists are now nothing more than submissive enablers for their fellow freedom-defiling federalcrats, supine before the power of the political Mafiosi. The toadying began in earnest in 2003 with Campaign Finance Deform, when the jaded Justices hand-delivered Congress the "right" to ban political speech.
Links posted on July 01, 2005
Bushwacked by the Patriot Act Our President, who thus far has never met a law he didn't like, threatens his first veto if the entire Patriot package isn't made permanent. "The Patriot Act," proclaimed Our President, "closed dangerous gaps in America's law enforcement and intelligence capabilities." Someone ought to inform Our President that those "dangerous gaps" also go by the name "Bill of Rights."
Links posted on June 15, 2005
From the Folderol Folder Every once in awhile I have to clean out my Folderol Folder and make room for more up-to-date outrages. Here's an amalgam of articles and other errant oddments that don't deserve a dissertation but do merit at least a mention. Example: Now we know. The correct terms are: a pride of lions, a school of fish, a gaggle of geese, and a conclave of Cardinals.
Links posted on May 31, 2005
"Regurgitate Real ID!" What Real ID really does is (a) absolutely identify each of us so the SWAT-bots can swarm us any time we buy more than one bottle of over-the-counter Sudafed, (b) turn identity theft into a convenient one-stop-shopping experience, (c) create yet another bloated black hole bureaucracy to shovel tax billions into, and (d) turn counterfeiting into a growth industry, since, according to this very article, "All but one of the 19 hijackers in the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks had some form of U.S. identification, some of it fraudulent." (And still they weren't caught, were they?) Better documents simply mean higher prices for better counterfeiters or higher bribes to the docucrats.
Links posted on May 15, 2005
"Cartoon Libertarians" People are thought-bots who can't divest their cranial cavities of the Red-Blue political concept they've become accustomed to. All American politics, they're convinced, must fit somewhere on the Left-Right, Liberal-Conservative, Democrat-Republican horizontal thermometer. They can't comprehend "libertarian" without a reference to that familiar two-dimensional standard. They're descendents of people who saw their first Technicolor movie and wondered where it fit on the black-and-white grayscale. ("Hmmm, it's sort of like those reds are fiscally black and those blues are socially white.")
Links posted on May 01, 2005
Book Review: The Loose Cannon Canon I was noodling around on the net when I cursored upon a book about science fiction called "Loose Canon" by Charles Platt, described as a combination HL Mencken and PJ O'Roarke. My curiosity quickly kindled since I'd teethed my adolescence on SF, I'd named my website "Loose Cannon" and I've admired Mencken and O'Roarke. The last time I wrote book reports was junior high school, and those were based on dust jacket blurbs, Cliffs Notes (the "Dummies" books of their day) and Classics Illustrated comics. But this isn't a book report. It's a book review. Slightly different parameters. So, I ordered the book and actually read it. Honest.
Links posted on April 15, 2005
Let's Criminalize Everything Why hadn't Mom lashed out at the driver himself, Mary mused, instead of his cell phone? Because, as all us thoughtful and attentive libertarians know, years of propaganda by product liability lawyers and their enabling judges have programmed people to buy the idea that inanimate objects – especially those produced by big corporations with deep pocketbooks – are the sources of all of society's ills. Cigarettes make us smoke. Guns, not people, shoot people. Drugs force us to take drugs.
Links posted on March 31, 2005
Chuckling at the Culture Clash The culture war is a conflict of values and viewpoints between lefty liberals and righty reactionaries. The political pummeling part of the proceedings is now popularly presented as Red State vs. Blue State, which, by definition, makes the struggle Statist, thereby leaving libertarians sometimes behind liberal lines and othertimes in the conservative camp but frequently on the sidelines alone. As long as Reds and Blues continually fail to identify big government's ongoing war against freedom as the root of the problem, and therefore fail to realize that they're being played one against the other, and furthermore steadfastly founder at getting BigGov to do the bidding of their side against the other side, the fracas will fume on forever.
Links posted on March 15, 2005
Xtreme Taxpayer Space Sports Wherever invaders invade, their sports go with them. The Romans introduced bear baiting to far off Britain. Then the Brits concocted cricket and exported it to the New World, where it was turned into baseball by the Yanks who later taught it to little Japanese kids to help them forget about atomic bombs. Even Later, via Alan Shepard's moon walk in February, 1971, they brought the game of golf to Terra's moon. And that was the beginning of taxpayer-subsidized space sports. Libertarians need to beware of the future.
Links posted on March 01, 2005
"Big Media's Rent-a-Pundits" When does a pundit become a fundit? When he or she becomes a paid puppet for the politicalcrats. When they're funded fraudsters of the Federalcrats. When they pocket political plunder to pitch partisan policies. First it was Armstrong Williams, "a prominent black pundit," who scooped up $240,000 of Bush Administration taxbucks to promote No Child Left Behind on his nationally syndicated TV show. All of which raises a very simple question in my mind: Where's my money?
Links posted on February 15, 2005
"How I Ripped Off Ayn Rand" February 2, 2005, the Centenary of Ayn Rand's birth, has inspired an abundance of autobiographical essays on "Why I am an Objectivist" or "How I became a Libertarian" or, in my instance, a contrite confessional about "How I Ripped Off Ayn Rand."
Links posted on February 01, 2005
Aid for Dependent Corporatcrats One good thing about kings and queens and related regalcrats is that once they're crowned they stay crowned. One state coronation per lifetime is enough. Not so with US presidents. Elect one of these powercrats and he gets many multimillion-dollar merrymaking coronation events, going on all over town. Of course, we call this shindig "Inauguration," which is just Americanspeak for "coronation." But re-elect one of these August American Emirs a mere four years later and he expects yet another round of revelry and worship.
Links posted on January 16, 2005
"You Blighted Nations" According to a New York Times article, the United Nations wants to "reform" itself in the manner of bureaucracies everywhere, by expanding its size, either by adding six new permanent members to its Security Council or by adding another whole layer of worldcrats with six new semi-permanent countries. Libertarians would rather trip the fire alarm at the East River address and, once empty, quickly sell the building to The Donald and turn it into a casino.
"You Blighted Nations" According to a New York Times article, the United Nations wants to "reform" itself in the manner of bureaucracies everywhere, by expanding its size, either by adding six new permanent members to its Security Council or by adding another whole layer of worldcrats with six new semi-permanent countries. Libertarians would rather trip the fire alarm at the East River address and, once empty, quickly sell the building to The Donald and turn it into a casino.
Links posted on January 02, 2005
The Christmas Grinch List Immediately following what rabid Rightists dubbed "The most important election in the history of civilization" (i.e., the 2004 presidential vote-fest) came much teeth-grinding, fist-shaking and hair-yanking from losing Lefties about the "Stolen Election." Apparently, after generations of Democrats reportedly stealing elections from Republicans, the liberal set was shocked, shocked that the neocons just might have learned how to steal one from them.
Links posted on December 15, 2004
Future Regulators of America The Lower Body Appendagewear Subdirectorate of the National Apparel Regulating Committee of the Office of Clothing and Coverings, an enforcement agency of the Bureau of Garb, today issued new rules for donning shoes, boots and all other forms of foot coverings that require securing by tying. The regulatory agency, which hopes to be elevated to cabinet level status next year, thus joining the other 786 Departments such as State, Defense, Justice and Transgender Sensitivity, was created during the fifth term of El Presidente Geo. Bush the Second.
Links posted on December 01, 2004
The Tasteless Screeners Awards The Transportation Security Administration, that federal bureaucracy that keeps the peripatetic public safe from attack by fingernail file-flailing fanatics, threw itself a half-million dollar awards ceremony at the Grand Hyatt in DC. While other libertarians expressed outrage at this wanton waste of taxpayer's money, this humble columnist went undercover, posing as a $90,000 a year Cosmetics Case Inspection Specialist, to bring you the following report.
Links posted on November 15, 2004
Partycrats Behaving Badly Now that the quadrennial crazy quilt called campaign season has expired, its time to peer rearward and recap the crucial issues that emerged as quintessential examples of our Great Democracy. The following news articles represent all that is great and noble about American politics. To get a true view of politics in America, try typing these two words into your Google: "candidate arrested."
Links posted on November 01, 2004
The Whole Hog Special Interest Sandwich What's the difference between pork and bacon? In a sociopolitical-inedible context, pork is the prize our Potomac politicos pass out to their henchmen hacks back home after digging their digits into the pockets of the people they pretend to represent (i.e., "pork-barrel politics") while bacon is the reward of working for an honest wage (i.e., "bringing home the bacon").
Links posted on October 16, 2004
Pour Me a Cup of Mental Disorder
Headline from the Arizona Daily Star: "1 coffee a day is enough to cause addiction." Star quote from Roland Griffiths, a professor of psychiatry and neuroscience: "When people don't get their usual dose they can suffer a range of withdrawal symptoms." Coffee must be the most studied subject on the planet, funded, almost certainly, by our taxbucks. A Google search on the keywords "coffee" and "study" produced "about 4,340,000" hits.
Links posted on October 02, 2004
Pot and the Art of Felt Tip Whipping
Sometimes while we're reading an article we get so hacked off we just want to whip out our big ol' fat red felt tip marker and lay a major rebuttal on the butthead we're butting heads with. I recently encountered one of those articles in bad need of a felt tip whipping. You know how this works. Read a little, scribble a lot, read some more, scribble a lot more. So get out your Sharpie and let's do this one together.
Links posted on September 15, 2004
A Spate of Free State Slates By now all Libertarians, excepting perhaps those few diehard Second Amendment Millennium Survivalists still abiding in self-sustaining freehold caves near the Canadian border, are familiar with the concept behind the Free State Project. To bring you up to date, the plan calls for people of libertarian temperament to move to a single high-freedom low-tax state in sufficient numbers to out-vote the local populace, take political control of the countryside and fashion Freedom in our Time.
Links posted on September 01, 2004
Sensitivity and the Right Hon. Wright
Time now to gnaw on the lefty gnats when they start swarming with their incessant sympathy silliness that justifies their welfare groupfare socialistfare pretend-it's-not-racial-quotafare entitlements at the expense of us all. In his weekly column, former Texas Congresscrat and Speaker of the House Jim Wright takes umbrage with VP Dick Cheney for taking umbrage with Sen. Kerry for taking umbrage with President Bush for not fighting a more "sensitive" war against terrorism.
Links posted on August 16, 2004
Toys for Tarts
Burleson must be the safest town in Texas. No more rapes, robberies or racketeering. No more murders, muggings or misdemeanors. All parking fines have been paid, all noxious weeds have been mowed and littering has ceased to exist. The last of humanity's most dangerous desperados, the casual pot-smoker, has been tracked down like a deadly dingo and jammed into a jail cell for life. How else could any municipal police department justify expending its citizen's taxbucks, and manpower, on a sex toy sting operation?
Links posted on August 02, 2004
Invasion of the Privacy Snatchers That Rascal Republican Representative Ron Paul from the Republic of Texas is at it again. This time he's warning us about a brain-sucking mindcrawler known as the American Community Survey. The American Community Survey is the FedGov's workaround for the deeply despised Boston Tea Party inspiring long form that some citizens were saddled with during the last Great Invasion of the Census Snoopers. Only worse.
Links posted on July 15, 2004
"The Moon is a Harsh Mistrust" Years ago, Liberty magazine did its first survey to find out where libertarians came from. I fell smack in the middle of the "typical" profile for my generation: white middleclass male teen grows up reading science fiction (in my day only outsiders called it sci-fi – to aficionados it was SF), later discovers Objectivism and spends several years as Ayn Rand clone, finally joins Libertarian Party. Most influential books: The Moon is a Harsh Mistress by Robert A. Heinlein and Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand.
Links posted on July 01, 2004
Good Golly Ms Molly!
Molly is a liberal's liberal. She's a consistent Bush-bashing Kerry-Kisser. She'll unswervingly love the Left and rip the Right. She will knee-jerkedly deify Democrats and repudiate Republicans. If I'm ever commissioned by Mad magazine to write a lampoon of long lost liberal lefties, all I need do is plagiarize the predictable "progressive" predilections of Molly Ivins.
Links posted on June 15, 2004
"To Hell in a Bipartisan Hand Basket"
"Aha!" I squawked as I read the Washington Times headline: "Bush to wage ideological campaign." Now, once and for all, we'll find out exactly what's so different between these Republicans and Democrats. I eagerly skimmed over the hors d'oeuvres, seeking the sirloin:
Links posted on May 31, 2004
Wordwrangling While eyeballing through LewRockwell.com (street name: L Rock) I happenstanced upon an article by Brad Edmonds advocating the frequent use of neologisms, which is an old invented word that means inventing new words. I've always been in favor of performing neologistics whenever new words are needed. And they are especially needed in the libertarian milieu.
Links posted on May 25, 2004
Bush’s Recess Appointments: The Real Issue, Faith Based Decision Makers. It is said that the most dangerous leader is one without self-doubt. Faith can eliminate doubt in oneself and allow them to perform acts that can be seen as dangerous to a community (*cough*Bin Laden*cough*). Does our President make decisions using a considerable amount of faith over reason?
Bush’s Recess Appointments: The Real Issue, Faith Based Decision Makers. It is said that the most dangerous leader is one without self-doubt. Faith can eliminate doubt in oneself and allow them to perform acts that can be seen as dangerous to a community (*cough*Bin Laden*cough*). Does our President make decisions using a considerable amount of faith over reason?
Links posted on May 16, 2004
Bisecting the Bureaubrain Way back in the last century (specifically, 1999) people were guffawing at Gore for claiming he'd invented the Internet. What Al actually averred was, "I took the initiative in creating the Internet." Close enough for Virginia Postrel to affix her then Reason Editor's finger on the emblematic mindset of the ruling class: If government doesn't do it, it doesn't exist. She described the statist state of mind in an editorial thusly: "It's as though an important technological development does not really exist until it has been ratified by lavish subsidies and an act of Congress – until it has come to the official attention of people like Sen. Albert Gore Jr."
Links posted on April 29, 2004
Parsing a Firearms Farce While mousing through one of my virtual history folders the other day I knocked the pixel dust off of an old article from Ohio headlined, "Belmont County Wants No Guns On Its Properties." Why did I save this snippet? I wondered. A quick review served as a memory prompter: while Ohioans had recently won back the right to concealed carry from their state nannycrats, they were simultaneously losing any place to do the actual carrying. A feature, I foresaw, that lent itself to a little libertarian parsing.
Links posted on April 14, 2004
Why I Love the IRS Since the posting date for this epistle is April 15 you'd naturally expect an exposé on income expropriation. April 15, after all, is the day we bribe our government not to throw us in jail. For libertarians, however, any dissertation on taxes would necessarily deteriorate into a (pick one) rant, rage, tirade, diatribe, harangue or hissy fit. So let's take a different approach. I'll give you three reasons why I love the IRS.
Links posted on March 31, 2004
Animal Rights: an Equine of a Dissimilar Hue
Forget human rights. I want animal rights! Humans can be convicted of animal abuse if they inflict "mild discomfort" upon un-humans. So say justicecrats in Washington State. Prosecutors were having trouble proving that a pair of ponies actually suffered pain, so the state Court of Appeals in Tacoma helpfully redefined creature discomfort for them. Animal anguish, it declared, not only includes "mild discomfort" but also "mental uneasiness," "dull distress" and "unbearable agony."
Links posted on March 15, 2004
The Pledge of a Grievance I'm constantly amazed at how everyone keeps getting this whole Pledge of Allegiance thing wrong. So why should I be any different? The fundamental issue has nothing to do with freedom of religion or freedom of speech or even its socialist source. It has everything to do with freedom, period. So here goes.
Links posted on March 06, 2004
The Liberty Manifesto - P.J. O'Rourke
Links posted on February 29, 2004
The Smoketax Hoax The Miami Herald headline honked, "Tax smokers – and 5 million will quit, health chiefs say" Really? Who says so? Four former surgeons general say so. Slap a two-buck tax on every pack of butts and smokers will respond by tossing out their ultra lights, their Zippos and their souvenir ceramic ashtrays from Bagel Beach. Just how did these four former federal fumar-crats come up with this cause and effect scenario? Probably the same way bureaucrats always come up with their brilliant brain spasms – by blowing smoke.
Links posted on February 17, 2004
Dismantling the BBC
The British government is considering a plan to break up the BBC and remove its independent status in the wake of a bitter row with the state-funded broadcaster over the Iraq war, a report said.
Links posted on February 15, 2004
Pointless Policy Pundrity Since nobody has ever asked me why I don't write spellbinding analytical commentary on policy issues I'll be happy to answer. It's pointless. Oh, there was a time, when I was facile and feckless, that I thought policy matters were a Really Big Deal. Expanding political perceptions meant one was growing up and becoming a Mature Adult. So I watched presidential speeches and state of the union addresses and political debates and nominating conventions and election eve returns and public affairs TV shows that featured haggling heads like Bleat the Press and Deface the Nation and Pointless-Counterpointless and felt very cool.
Links posted on February 01, 2004
The Good, the Bad and the Smugly I thought the days of Hollywood hyping heroes as people who always gave away their money were long gone. Roy and Gene and Hoppy, cowboy kings all, never took a dime for their Saturday matinee heroics. But their kindred spirits are alive and well today, right inside my TV set. But they come with a modern twist.
Links posted on January 14, 2004