Carnival Of The Libertarians - Resurrected

I'm the proprietor of the "Carnival Of The Libertarians" franchise. 

I tried to keep it going for a year or so, but got so much non-Libertarian blogspam that I gave up on the project. 

Here's an attempted resurrection of Carnival Of The Libertarians.  If this gets any significant traffic, every few weeks I'll repost what I think are the best liberty-minded blogs, articles, essays and rants. 

*************

Brian Micklethewaite of Samizdata has an excellent idea about how to ensure that our governments have read the constitution. 

Guess who is the nation's largest drug smuggler?  The DEA.  

An investigation conducted in Mexico found the American government allowed that country’s largest drug cartel, Sinaloa, to operate without fear of persecution. That groups is estimated to be responsible for 80 percent of the cocaine coming into the country through Chicago. In exchange, the leaders of Sinaloa provided the DEA information on rival gangs.

 "But in a Libertarian society, who would decide which cartel gets to be the favorite?"

The Verge has a great piece on the irony of one Nobel Peace Prize winner hunting down another Nobel Peace Price nominee. 

If you've ever wondered about the ratio of legitimate constitutional legislation vs. bureaucratic "guidance" that you can be fined or jailed for not following, just go here. 

If you are a Libertarian, you are probably tired of hearing about the greatness of Sweden's healthcare system.  Well, Sweden's healthcare system is now moving toward what the U.S. system just abandoned, while the U.S. is moving towards what Sweden has given up on trying to make work.  Or something.

The main problem is naturally due to the central planning of health care, whether or not it is planned by regional “competing” governments. While access and quality are guaranteed by national law, Swedes usually have to line up for care. As noted above, wait times may be days or weeks for appointments with GPs while several (or many, and increasing) hours for ER care, but the real problem is apparent in specialist care such as surgery where wait times are not uncommonly several months, or even years.

Reason Magazine displays Hillary Clinton's abysmal ignorance on The Drug Trade, The Drug War, and therefore, just about everything else. 

Holy Nullification, Batman !!!  The New Hampshire Legislature is considering a bill that would mandate that juries be instructed that they could vote to acquit if they disagreed with a law. 

What's the difference in a Statist and a Libertarian?  Just 30 days of reading. 

I love me some NFL, and I look forward to the day when I can legally bet on some NFL.  But according to Reason Magazine, no city should ever do anything to attract the NFL. 

Sports stadiums not only appear to be a bad deal for tax payers, but having a franchise could also hurt loyal fans by making it difficult to watch their hometown team play thanks to the expansion of sports broadcasts and the complexities of NFL blackout rules. 

“If you have a team in Los Angeles and it doesn’t sell out, they can blackout the game in Los Angeles which means you often lose games…and as a fan there’s no payback in that,” says Daniel Durbin, Director of the University of Southern California’s Institute of Sports Media and Society. 

Though local boosters like LaBonge may continue to dream of having the NFL in the city, it’s becoming increasingly clear that not having a team may be the best deal for tax payers and fans alike. 

Go here and you'll learn that our government has spent $3,000 per American (i.e. $6,000 per taxpayer) to rebuild Afghanistan.  The article doesn't mention how much we spent to tear it down prior to the rebuilding. 

Here's something else on the NFL Cronyism Trifecta - tax exemptions on earnings, free stadiums, and to put some icing on the cake, the city and state provide them with free security guards. 

My father used to tell me that "even a blind hog can find an acorn every now and then".  That bit of wisdom even applies to Paul Krugman, the New York Times Obama apologist.  Go here to see him actually get something right. 

Colbert nails it on U.S. foreign policy. 

A professional drug warrior goes batshit crazy over the mere idea that he might no longer be paid to interfere in the lives of other people. 

Here's Barack Obama's best debate performance.  Ever.  He's debating some dude named Barack Obama. 

Finally (and yes, this is bait for an Instalanche) here's Glenn Reynolds comparing marijuana legalization and the dismal failure of Obamacare. 

That's all, folks !!






 

"Like Shooting Fish In A Barrel" - Let's interview the anti-Koch protesters

Oh Lord help us all.

There are rumors that the evil Koch brothers, Charles and David, might buy the L.A. Times.  Just having one libertarian-ish print rag on the west coast was enough to send The Great Herd Of Independent Minds into a frenzy. 

David Koch ran for Vice-President on the Libertarian Party ticket in 1980.  The platform he advocated included ending the Drug War (a war which the L.A. Times supports, BTW), recognizing marriage equality, eliminating business kickbacks subsidies, and all the other planks of the Libertarian platform that have been solidly in place since about 1971. 

The evil Koch brothers donated something like $20 million dollars to the ACLU to fight George Bush's Patriot Act.  I have a deep admiration for activist Radley Balko, who is partly funded by the Koch bro's.  Balko spends his days getting wrongly convicted death-row inmates released from Barack's jails, and fighting the Random Conviction Generator that is my home state of Mississippi's "criminal justice" system. 

Remember that.  Now, get up.  Make some popcorn.  Come back.  Hit play.  The folks from :40 through :59 are absolutely priceless. 

And when you're finished, help me promote the idea of the Koch brothers purchasing the Fort Worth Star-Telegram.  I promise to re-subscribe. 

Why Mitt Romney Lost

Here's Nick Gillespie of Reason magazine on why Mitt Romney lost the 2012 presidential election. 

Go Back To F***ing Sleep

Outstanding actor and economic dunce Samuel L. Jackson recently produced this video, charmingly titled "Wake The F*** Up". 

It's for voters who think that we've all been doing dandy for the last four years, that we're fighting undeclared wars in fewer countries than we were four years ago, and that teen minority unemployment isn't at 50%, and that Barack Obama didn't flunk Economics 101 at Occidental College.  If those voters don't "Wake The F*** Up", Obama won't be elected. 

Here goes:

Reason magazine, the greatest periodical currently on the newsstands, has produced an equally charming response.  Here's their rebuttal to Samuel L. Jackson:

Gary Johnson rips Paul Ryan. In Fort Worth. Covered by Reason magazine.

Reason magazine has a reporter named Garrett Quinn following Gary Johnson's tour of Texas. 

Gary Johnson is unimpressed with Paul Ryan.  Here's Mr. Quinn's conversation with Johnson on the danger of Republicans in Libertarian clothing:

Gary Johnson is not happy that some in the media call Republican vice presidential candidate and Wisconsin Congressman Paul Ryan a libertarian.

“He voted for the Patriot Act, he voted for the National Defense Appropriation Act, he voted to ban online poker, he’s proposing a budget that gets balanced in thirty years. He is anything but a libertarian, anything but,” said Johnson after a packed campaign dinner at Hill’s Café.

Johnson, the Libertarian Party nominee for president, noted that Ryan was a strict social conservative that voted to restrict abortion rights and against marriage equality.

“Paul Ryan submitted personhood legislation that is anything but libertarian,” he said. Johnson's eyes widened and his volume increased as he went into detail about Ryan’s support for a national version of Virginia’s controversial transvaginal ultrasound law.

Yeah.  Can you imagine the interest your grandkids will be paying on a budget that's not balanced for another 30 years???

Also, if you hit the link at the top, you'll see that the pic from the interview isn't from Johnson's appearance at Hill's Cafe in Austin, but from Fort Worth's own Joe T. Garcia's restaurant, where the Tarrant County Libertarian Party held a fundraise/rally. 

The Life Of Julia - Libertarian Remix

The Obama campaign has rolled out an unintentionally hilarious slideshow called "The Life Of Julia".  It shows the life of a woman through her government benefits.  If you have even the slightest interest in Victimology, you've gotta check it out.  I don't care who you are, or which hoss you support in this race.  This thing is funny.  The parody potential is massive.  For starters, just look at the first slide.  It touts the benefits of HeadStart?!??!!!   Really?  Even if the Department of Health And Human Services says HeadStart probably doesn't make a difference? 

Want to know what else is super creepy about this accursed thing? 

Tribalism. 

Not only can Julia not exist without help from Dear Leader, The Teleprompter Jesus, but she might also have some difficulties if she doesn't align herself with a tribe.  (In case you're new to my blog, I see religious, ethnic, and national tribalism as the #1 curse on humanity.)  Check out this drop-down menu from the Obama campaign at the beginning of the slideshow:

I honestly can't believe that the Democrats had the cajones to put LGBT Americans on their site.  Barack Obama is the highest ranking gay marriage opponent in the United States.  But enough about the obvious....Julia needs the government for almost everything, and she needs to be aligned with a special-interest group, right?  Right. 

Parodies of this thing are all over the place.  Iowahawk's is greatness. Go there. 
 
Reason magazine is a much bigger outfit with a much bigger budget for these amusements, so I'm going to borrow most of their pics.  Go here to see the pics in context.   And please go here every day.  It's great stuff.

Here goes, from Reason:

Then, just 6 months later, disaster strikes Julia's family:

Julia turns 18, and is ready to take on the world !!!  (Be sure to check out Iowahawk's parody.  At this point, Iowahawk has Julia going to get a degree in Feminist Website Design.) 

Just seven years later, Julia graduates.  And like most recent graduates, she's a victim of Barackaganda. 

Julia's son goes to school.  There is no mention of Julia's sperm donor on the Obama website, BTW.  Who needs a Daddy when you've got a Big Brother? 

Thanks to the new, Weimer Germany-levels of government debt and inflation, Julia is able to start a business !!

Julia is now resigned to working the rest of her life, providing stimulus funds for Washington to send to supporters and campaign contributors.  A life well-spent and well-lived, Julia.  You have the thanks of a grateful nation.  The government was bribing you with your own money the whole time, but you didn't bitch about it.  Great job !!

Go here, to Reason Magazine, to see the actual stats backing up the jokes (also known as Obama and Romney policy statements.) 

One other thing - Here's a good breakdown of the Obama/Julia Victimization Slideshow from Hot Air. 

3 years old – Julia gets a new-and-improved Head Start, which a new HHS study shows won’t do anything for her anyway.

17 years old – Race to the Top improves Julia’s SAT scores. Is there any evidence at all to support that argument? Even so, she’s down the list from all of the home-schooled children and the charter- and private-school students who actually got an education rather than an NEA indoctrination. However, thanks to the NEA indoctrination, Julia is now better prepared for a life on the government dole.

18 years old – Julia’s family qualifies for a $10,000 tuition tax credit spread out over four years, while Obama’s student-loan subsidies drive tuition costs up even faster.

22 years old – Julia undergoes surgery, which has to be funded by her parents’ employers despite Julia being an adult, and which will be most likely delayed as providers decline in number thanks to the economics of ObamaCare.

23 years old — Thanks to the Lily Ledbetter Act, trial attorneys get rich by filing lawsuits against employers that otherwise wouldn’t have been brought, leaving fewer resources to hire Julia. No college job for our intrepid Julia!

25 years old – Julia finally gets her 4-year degree in seven years, thanks to the inability to handle the tuition bubble and the lack of work. However, the good news is that the $200,000 in student loans will only hang over her head for 20 years, while taxpayers like Julia end up paying for the costs of default.

27 years old – Julia wants to have sex for the first time in her life, apparently, and is looking for contraception. Her employer would provide it for free thanks to the ObamaCare HHS mandate … if she could only find a job.

31 years old – Julia gets pregnant, which tells you all you need to know about free contraception. Oddly, Julia hasn’t gotten married first, probably because the economy is so poor by this time with the huge entitlement debt crisis breaking that no one can conceive of putting a home together. Fortunately, ObamaCare makes pregnancy possible, because until Obama took office, no one ever got pregnant, since government support and approval for it didn’t exist.

37 years old – Julia’s son Zachary, named after his sperm donor, starts school. Head Start has long since disappeared, apparently, but Race to the Top still exists. Must be a marathon.

42 years old – Julia starts a business with an SBA loan, which also apparently never existed before Obama took office. Her student loans are just three years away from defaulting onto the backs to taxpayers, so that’s good news.

65 years old – My, how time flies! (Do women do nothing of value between 42 and 65?) Julia enrolls in Medicare, which ceased to exist decades earlier, thanks to the fact that Obama and Tim Geithner didn’t have a plan to address the debt crisis — all they knew was they didn’t like anyone else’s plan. You can get the cards at Spencer’s as a gag gift.

67 years old – Julia retires, since the entitlement collapse wiped out her business and the rest of the American economy. The timeline stops here, which suggests that the IPAB probably denied her care, as she was nothing but a drain on society by this time, and the few resources they have left had to be used to pay for face lifts for members of Congress.

There you have it — a timeline filled with government interventions in a fantasy lifetime, with absolutely no sense of the cost it would take to provide Government Nanny to Julia and the rest of the country. At least they picked the right name for their fantasy woman trapped in an all-encompassing government; Julia was the name of the lead female character in George Orwell’s 1984, after all.

Lord have mercy, I'm glad to be alive for all this.  Interesting times, interesting times. 

Blog Comment Of The Decade

I'm sick and tired of messing with bureacracies. 

I'm tired of the "city" of Richland Hills.  I'm tired of their code enforcement Nazis, and their chief, a little guy who is surfing the First Baptist Church Of Euless website every time I've walked past his office. 

I'm tired of the Department Of Transportation making up arbitrary rules about how far my guys can travel, how long they have to rest, what kind of paperwork they have to have on board, and blah, blah, blah.  Look up CSA 2010 when time permits. 
I'm tired of getting emails from online Sherpas who promise to help me navigate all the CSA 2010 bullshit. 

The government digs a ditch, and then those who dug the ditch go into the private sector and set up shops to help you navigate the ditch. 

I'm tired of The Federal Reserve printing money so George Bush, Barack Obama, Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid and John Boehner can pay their bills without passing legislation or tax increases.  I'm disgusted by the (recent) revelation that The Fed has an entire "education" wing that goes out to propagandize school kids, but can't debate or even discuss their policies with a political party. 

I'm sick of Barack Cokehead Obama carrying out raids on medical marijuana dispensaries. 

I'm p.o.'d about all the highway patrolmen suddenly pulling over people around Loop 820, a stretch of interstate where I've seen very few accidents.  This has nothing to do with safety, and everything to do with revenue.  Between my workplace on the northside and my meeting area on the west side, I typically see 4 revenue generators with radar guns.  It's nuts, nuts, nuts. 

Glenn Reynolds recently linked to a Reason magazine blog comment that I think is freakin' brilliant.  Here goes: 

It's not a coincidence. Politicians, pundits, and professional, revolving-door bureacrats are 100% revenge of the f***ing nerds. Every loser in high school or college that just knew he was smarter and better than everyone else is in DC pacticing politics, writing about politics, and arbitrarily f***ing up the lives of everyone else with regulations just because they can.


Yep.  And we're going to keep putting up with it for how much longer? 

The picture of bureaucratic hell came from here. 

Now They're Wanting To Ban Car Radios !!

Well, they wanted to. 

Go here for the entire sordid story of Ray LaHood's predecessor, a Nanny-Stater named George Parker.  He thought that you would never be able to operate a car radio without being a danger to yourself and others. 

My favorite paragraph:

Two state senators were more than happy to empower Parker, according to an Associated Press report from the hearing. Senator James C. Moran offered legislation that would enlist “neighbors of an applicant” to “sign affidavits as to the driver’s moral fitness”; Senator William E. Weeks sponsored a bill that would “require a physician’s certificate for an applicant for a driver’s license.”


And that, ladies and gentlemen is why right-thinking people must always watch out for the busybodies amongst us.  Vote them out. 

Vote Libertarian. 

Cough Drops - The Mandate

I hope everyone has enjoyed the media firestorm about whether the government should be able to force the Catholic Church to provide birth control pills to its employees. 

I also hope that you'll take just a few minutes from your busy day to enjoy this bit o' brilliance from Reason magazine:



Here's a modest proposal from the great Virginia Postrel about selling birth control pills over-the-counter:

Making the pill available over the counter could reduce the amount of outrage and invective available for entertaining radio audiences, spurring political fundraising and otherwise amusing the American public. But the medical risks are quite low....

Birth-control pills can have side effects, of course, but so can such over-the-counter drugs as antihistamines, ibuprofen or the Aleve that once turned me into a scary, hive-covered monster. That’s why even the most common over-the-counter drugs, including aspirin, carry warning labels. Most women aren’t at risk from oral contraceptives, however, just as most patients aren’t at risk from aspirin or Benadryl, and studies suggest that a patient checklist can catch most potential problems....

Aside from safety, the biggest argument for keeping birth- control pills prescription-only is, to put it bluntly, extortion. The current arrangement forces women to go to the doctor at least once a year, usually submitting to a pelvic exam, if they want this extremely reliable form of contraception. That demand may suit doctors’ paternalist instincts and financial interests, but it doesn’t serve patients’ needs. As [a 1993 editorial in the American Journal of Public Health] noted, the exam requirement “assumes that it would be worse for a woman’s health to miss out on routine care than it would be to miss out on taking oral contraceptives.”

Hit this link to read the whole thing. 
From Nick Gillespie:

Can't legislators agree that those of us who are, say, over 18 years old, are adults and if we can buy condoms without a prescription, we should be able to shop for birth-control pills on our lonesome too? And a host of other drugs?

And this young woman, Sandra Fluke, claims that birth control for her three years of law school is an intolerable burden, and that other people should be forced to pay for it.  She claims that it will cost her $3,000.00 for three years. 
Bullshit. 
Can we not do the charitable thing, and put a damn condom machine in her dorm room? 

The Occupy Wall Street protest song

I don't care which side of the Wall Street protest divide you're on, this is funny.
It's from the geniuses at Reason magazine. 

Come gather round people
come and join your hands
we're taking Wall Street
and we're making demands
and we're heeding the call
and we're crying for help
only 1% of us have wealth

but first we need posters
we need to make signs
but to do so it seems
that we need some supplies

We need poster board
I can't make it myself
but it's 10 cents a sheet
at the store it's on sale
an example of economies of scale
it's so evil

They're saying that freedom
has done little to stop
Corporations from keeping
the wealth at the top
But at what point in history
would a kid and a king
both have clean water to drink?

George Washington was
the richest man of his age
But he lost all his teeth
at a very young age
Because they didn't have Scope
and they all crapped in trays
we're not wealthy?

now there's fountains on streets
from which clean water pours
Four dollar generics
at all big box stores
a sultan and student
both have iPhone 4s
it's not fair

Come gather young people
come on everyone
and I'll tell you a tale
of a fortunate son

He's born in a country
and given vaccine
and rendered immune
to all kinds of disease
the Kardashians are on
all his TVs
it's not perfect

Banks don't need bailouts
on that we agree
so let's start up a group
and let's take to the streets
because if we do that then
you know what that means
we're racist.

On the care and feeding of recessions

Congratulations on your new recession ! 
Here's how to care for and feed your new economic downturn.  Just think....  By applying the right policies, you may be one of the lucky few to turn your baby downturn into a full-blown depression. 
Maybe, just maybe, you can follow in the footsteps of FDR and grow A Great Depression !   But for now, let's start small. 

1) The best way to grow a recession is to try to kill it.  Get Congress, the President, the Unions and the courts involved in killing the recession.  These are the people who couldn't run a profitable whorehouse, so your recession is bound to thrive and prosper. 

2) Take money from one group and give it to another group.  Claim that it is for our own good, and that this will help kill the baby recession.  If this doesn't scare away economic growth, nothing will.  Then sit back and watch your baby recession grow to maturity. 

3) Apply various Keynesian stimulus measures, and apply them deeply and throroughly.  Stimulus, stimulus, stimulus.  Prevent consumers from spending their own money as they see fit.  YOU are the one who is trying to save a recession.  Those selfish Tea Party Bastards are trying to reward vendors and suppliers who fill consumers' needs.  The State wants to reward donors and unions.  Which group do you want spending the money ?  Doh!!  You have an infant recession to take care of. 

4) Take a bunch of people who have never had to hire anybody, fire anybody, or produce a profit, and give them the responsibility for "creating jobs".

5) Let governors get away with bragging about how many jobs that they created.  This confuses the electorate, and continues the illusion that a larger, more active government helps an economy.  In reality, this just helps your baby recession grow.  

6) Like many other living things, recessions grow best in mounds of bullshit.  Apply it liberally.   

This chart showing ideal recession growth came from Reason magazine.  Anyone wanting to grow a recession should avoid this magazine at all costs. 

Ummmm...We don't believe that our neighbors deserve a choice

Here's Reason magazine's Nick Gillespie laying into assorted idjits who don't want to allow their neighbors to have a choice in department stores.

More on the Incredible Shrinking Republican Budget Cuts !!!!

Tuesday morning, I linked to something that claimed the Republican budget miserable defeat compromise was down to $14 billion dollars. 

The numbers just keep getting smaller, don’t they? Republicans started the year demanding $100 billion in cuts. But it quickly turned out that when they said $100 billion, they were just talking hypothetically. Instead, they meant $100 billion on an annualized basis. The next we heard, Republicans were aiming to trim $61 billion. And not one penny less! Eventually, they agreed to a deal that they claimed cut $38 billion. But of that $38 billion, it turns out, the real cuts only add up to about $14 billion. Any bets on how many days before the cuts disappear entirely?

I shouldn't have linked to that piece by the otherwise reliable folks at Reason magazine.  The Republicans aren't going to cut $14 billion dollars from the budget.  The Congressional Budget Office reports that the real cuts only amount to $352 million.  That's million, not billion. 
Fool us once, shame on them.  Fool us every election cycle since electing budget-bustin' Ronald Reagan, shame on us. 

A new budget estimate released Wednesday shows that the spending bill negotiated between President Barack Obama and House Speaker John Boehner would produce less than 1 percent of the $38 billion in promised savings by the end of this budget year.



The Congressional Budget Office estimate shows that compared with current spending rates the spending bill due for a House vote Thursday would cut federal outlays from non-war accounts by just $352 million through Sept. 30. About $8 billion in immediate cuts to domestic programs and foreign aid are offset by nearly equal increases in defense spending.


When war funding is factored in the legislation would actually increase total federal outlays by $3.3 billion relative to current levels. 

....The budget deficit is projected at $1.6 trillion this year.


So instead of any type of cut, we'll probably spend 3.3 billion more than anticipated. 

Sorry for posting the inaccurate info on Tuesday.  Gotta remember....  Republicans don't cut government.  Republicans don't cut government.  Republicans don't cut government.  Republicans don't cut government.  Republicans don't cut government. Republicans don't cut government. Republicans don't cut government. Republicans don't cut government.  Republicans don't cut government. Republicans don't cut government. Republicans don't cut government. Republicans don't cut government. Republicans don't cut government. Republicans don't cut government. Republicans don't cut government. Republicans don't cut government.  Republicans don't cut government. Republicans don't cut government. Republicans don't cut government. Republicans don't cut government. Republicans don't cut government. Republicans don't cut government. Republicans don't cut government. Republicans don't cut government. Republicans don't cut government. Republicans don't cut government. Republicans don't cut government. Republicans don't cut government. Republicans don't cut government. Republicans don't cut government. Republicans don't cut government. Republicans don't cut government.


There.  I almost have it internalized. 

Big Government pic came from here. 

But the government looks after the little guy !!!

From The Agitator:

There’s a lot going on in this video. But first and foremost it’s a lesson in public choice theory, or the misconception that appointed experts and regulators always act in the interest of the public, or in the interests of science. Self-interest is just as prevalent in the public sector as it is in the private sector.

P.Z. Myers and Matt Welch on Koran burnings and free speech in a time of war....and it looks like we'll always be at war

From P.Z. Myers, of the Pharyngula blog:

Sometimes, issues demand nuance. This is a complicated world and there are a great many subjects that simply aren't reducible to binaries — we do a disservice to the subtleties when we discard them in favor of absolutes. And often I can agree that we need depth and breadth of understanding if we're to navigate a difficult situation.

But sometimes the issues are black and white. Sometimes the answers are clear and absolute. And in those cases, attempts to bring out the watercolors and soften the story by blurring the edges do a disservice to reality. There are places where there are no ambiguities, and the only appropriate response is flat condemnation. And we witness them every day.

....I know what it is like to lose someone you love, and it's a pain so great that I can't imagine reaching out to cause that pain in anyone else; what killers must do is blind themselves to the enormity of their act and wall themselves off from the empathy that all human beings should have. They also must bury that portion of their mind that can sympathize with their victims in an avalanche of pretexts, these excuses that later apologists will call "nuance", or "shades of gray", or "complications". And they will dredge up the familiar roll call of empty ghosts to water down the evil of what is done. They will call it God. Country. Honor. Justice. Revenge. The priests and the mullahs and the politicians and the generals are experts at softening the contrast and blurring the edges and persuading one person that that other person over there, so much like you in every way that matters, deserves to have everything important extinguished and brutalized and disregarded.

They are so damned good at it that they can stir up the killing frenzy over anything at all. A gang of fanatics, driven by superstition and ethnic bigotry, kill thousands in a terrorist attack in one country. So zealots stir up their own froth of superstition and ethnic bigotry, and convince the targeted country to attack and kill people of yet another country that had nothing to do with the terrorist attack. What a waste of lives, yet everyone on both sides is smug and confident that the deaths on the other side were warranted.

Or even more ridiculously remote: one side takes such extreme offense at the lack of reverence shown by a few people on the other side towards some copy of a sacred object, that they then slaughter unrelated targets.

Stirred up by three angry mullahs who urged them to avenge the burning of a Koran at a Florida church, thousands of protesters on Friday overran the compound of the United Nations in this northern Afghan city, killing at least 12 people, Afghan and United Nations officials said.


Unable to find Americans on whom to vent their anger, the mob turned instead on the next-best symbol of Western intrusion — the nearby United Nations headquarters. "Some of our colleagues were just hunted down," said a spokesman for the United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan, Kieran Dwyer, in confirming the attack.

These twelve people were human beings, reduced to a statistic in a newspaper article, and dehumanized and exterminated by a mindless mob, inflamed by religious fanatics. Similarly, the hundred thousand or more killed in Iraq, the ongoing war in Afghanistan, all of these are also genuine, thinking, feeling human beings, wiped out in a cold-hearted calculus of delusion and greed. There is no justification sufficient for these acts.

Yet somehow we get lost in the wrong questions. Do we have the right to burn the Koran? Is it unreasonable to think that Afghans might have cause to be angry? Should we not defend the right of fascist politicians to live, and perhaps it is OK to grant a limited license to murder to certain people if they are of the correct political stripe or the appropriate faith? Shall we weigh the sins of a Florida preacher against those of three Afghan clerics, and come up with a number that will tell us which is the greater offender, and by how much?

I'm an extremist in this debate, I will freely confess. I hold an absolute view that no killing is ever justified, that individuals have the necessity to defend themselves against assailants, but that even that does not grant moral approval to snuffing out the life of another. Don't even try to pull out a scale and toss a copy of the Koran on one side and the life of a single human being on the other — the comparison is obscene. Do not try to tell me that some people are 'moderates' when they tolerate or even support and applaud war and death and murder for any cause, whether it is oil, or getting even, or defending the honor of wood pulp and ink.

The bone is bleached white. The flesh is burnt black. The blood splashes scarlet. You can't render it in grays and pastels without losing sight of the truth.

Hit the link to read the whole thing.  One of the best he's ever written. 

And now for something completely different....Here's the ultra libertarian Reason magazine's Matt Welch, hammering away at the same subject, but from a totally different worldview. 

Here's what Sen. Lindsey Graham(R-S.C.) said today about Florida pastor Terry Jones' burning of a
Koran, which has been used an excuse by Afghanis to murder 22 people, including seven United Nations workers:

I wish we could find some way to hold people accountable. Free speech is a great idea, but we're in a war. During World War II, you had limits on what you could do if it inspired the enemy.

More politician condemnations of Jones here.
You know what? We're always going to be in a war, thanks in no small part to the Lindsey Grahams of the world. Which means if we truly value our free speech, we're gonna have to bounce out every politician who subjects American expression to a wartime litmus test. Better yet, maybe start electing some who at least
occasionally refrain from supporting new wars against majority-Muslim countries that have yet to make it through a Reformation.
Because when we have a political class as routinely venal as Lindsey Graham—or Time's Joe Klein, who really did write that "Jones's act was murderous as any suicide bomber's"—that means that war-inspired censorship is always just a shout away.

Whatever happened to the anti-war movement?

Reason magazine asks the obvious question....

And from David Boaz:

In October 2007, Obama proclaimed, “I will promise you this, that if we have not gotten our troops out by the time I am president, it is the first thing I will do. I will get our troops home. We will bring an end to this war. You can take that to the bank.” Speaking of Iraq in February 2008, candidate Barack Obama said, “I opposed this war in 2002. I will bring this war to an end in 2009. It is time to bring our troops home.” The following month, under fire from Hillary Clinton, he reiterated, “I was opposed to this war in 2002….I have been against it in 2002, 2003, 2004, 5, 6, 7, 8 and I will bring this war to an end in 2009. So don’t be confused.”

Indeed, in his famous “the moment when the rise of the oceans began to slow” speech on the night he clinched the Democratic nomination, he also proclaimed, “I am absolutely certain that generations from now we will be able to look back and tell our children that . . . this was the moment when we ended a war.”

Today, however, he has tripled President Bush’s troop levels in Afghanistan, and we have been fighting there for more than nine years. The Pentagon has declared “the official end to Operation Iraqi Freedom and combat operations by United States forces in Iraq,” but we still have 50,000 troops there, hardly what Senator Obama promised.

Yeah, and we've got 9 more months to go in 2011.  Who will bomb next, Iran or Pakistan?  I'm voting Pakistan. 

My favorite contradiction in the State Of The Union speech

Here's my favorite contradiction from last night's State Of The Union speech. 
I woke up this morning laughing about it.
I gave it a passing smirk during the Michelob Ultra Marthon post last night, but I didn't have his exact text in front of me. 
Here goes: 

None of us can predict with certainty what the next big industry will be, or where the new jobs will come from. Thirty years ago, we couldn't know that something called the Internet would lead to an economic revolution.

Well said, sir.  Well said. 
But then he gave us this little gem:

With more research and incentives, we can break our dependence on oil with biofuels, and become the first country to have 1 million electric vehicles on the road by 2015.

We need to get behind this innovation. And to help pay for it, I'm asking Congress to eliminate the billions in taxpayer dollars we currently give to oil companies. I don't know if you've noticed, but they're doing just fine on their own. So instead of subsidizing yesterday's energy, let's invest in tomorrow's.

Damn, I wish I had a crystal ball that worked as well as his. 

One other thing....it's becoming more and more popular to invent drinking games based on words and clutch-phrases that the Teleprompter Programmer has Obama say.  Reason magazine came up with a list that would've had the nation rolling on the floor with delirium tremens as soon as the speech ended.  Here's their list:

Here at Reason, we’ll be drinking to the following:

• Any mention of “competition” or “competitiveness.”
• Any time Obama says “investment” when he means “more spending.”
• Any time the president talks up American jobs, American workers, American innovation, and American infrastructure. (Double shot if he refers to “investing” in any of these.)
• False references to "false choices."
• Warnings about the dangers of “corporate money” or “corporate speech.”
• Complaints about “Washington lobbyists” that don't mention all the former lobbyists Obama has hired.
• All mentions of civility, partisanship, and the tone in Washington.
• Cutaways to shots of Congress-critters sitting with members of the opposite party.
• Declarations that the stimulus is responsible for economic recovery.
• Claims that the health care overhaul is fiscally responsible.

Reason went off the rails by the end of their list, but "competition" and "investment" alone would've been enough to send most of us into a coma. 

Hope everyone has a great, great day.  I'm going to go "invest" in two more espresso shots and get to work.

"The Liberty Papers" on The Law Of Unintended Consequences

Good stuff here on The Law Of Unintended Consequences. 
It all reminds me of Thomas Sowell's life mantra:  "All government programs should be evaluated by the incentives they create, not by their stated goals." 

Go here to see their Top Ten Posts, selected from their 5 years of blogging.  Good stuff from The Liberty Papers.  Worth bookmarking for later reading. 

Help make more politicians cry

Go here to witness John Boehner crying on CBS.  Probably because if there are any more boehnks to be boehled out, it will be perceived as his fault.  I couldn't find a YouTube, and the enbed link wouldn't copy.  My apologies. 

Here's some video of Hillary shedding some tears for the folks back home, just to show how much she really cares:



Here's Bill Clinton at Ron Brown's funeral.  Woolgathering and giggling.  Then realizing he's on camera.  Then turning on the waterworks, hitting his mark PERFECTLY ! 



Here's Obama, having programmed his neural interface to display emotion....



And here's Joe Biden, exploiting the deaths in his family to good effect IN THE DEBATES !



Finally, here's Reason magazine, putting out a heartfelt appeal for your dollars.  Not enough politicians are crying.  Can't you give more? 

Joe Biden said this.

I don't know how I missed this, but Joe Biden, using his own lips, teeth, tongue and throat, under his own free will, made the following statement a few weeks ago:

“Every single great idea that has marked the 21st century, the 20th century and the 19th century has required government vision and government incentive,” he said. “In the middle of the Civil War you had a guy named Lincoln paying people $16,000 for every 40 miles of track they laid across the continental United States. … No private enterprise would have done that for another 35 years.”

You can go here to experience a joyous rebuttal from The Cato Institute:

Early American railroads were built almost entirely with private funds. These railroads provided such superior transportation that by 1850 they had put most toll roads and canals out of business. Individual states still competed with one another for business—and may have offered various favors to the railroads serving those states…. For the most part, however, no federal and few state subsidies went to railroads in the eastern United States.

But what about other areas?

Whenever politicians interfered in the railroad business, however, corruption and inefficiency inevitably occurred.....There was no money to be made from operating a railroad through a desolate wasteland, yet the federal government rewarded railroad contractors with big subsidies: a thirty-year loan at below market interest rates; twenty sections (12,800 acres) of government-owned land for every mile of track; and an additional subsidy of $48,000 for every mile of track laid in mountainous regions.

Thomas Durant, Oakes Ames, and other officers of the Union Pacific Railroad, which went a thousand miles west from Council Bluffs, Iowa, started the Credit Mobilier company in 1867 and retained it to do the construction. Credit Mobilier distributed to shareholders profits estimated at between $7 million and $23 million, depleting the Union Pacific’s resources. In an effort to stop congressional investigations, the officers bribed Speaker of the House James G. Blaine and other congressmen with Credit Mobilier stock. Seldom modest about their thievery, congressmen voted themselves a 50 percent pay raise. The Union Pacific Railroad fell deep into debt, without enough revenue from passengers or shippers, and went bankrupt in 1893.

Here's a Cato transportation timeline entry on all you need to know about the Credit Mobilier scandal:

1872:  The New York Sun exposes the Credit Mobilier scandal, perhaps the largest business subsidy scandal of the 19th century.8 Credit Mobilier is a construction company financially controlled by the leaders of the Union Pacific Railroad that makes huge profits at taxpayer expense. Congressman Oakes Ames (R-MA), who is an agent of Credit Mobilier and part-owner, distributes shares of the firm's stock to members of Congress at a discounted value. In return, those members treat Credit Mobilier favorably in a variety of ways, such as by voting to appropriate funds for the firm. The scandal illustrates the corruption that usually results when the government intervenes in the economy and subsidizes businesses.

If that's not enough, George Will opens a great column with Biden's quote.  In this case, its about our next transportation-subsidy-scandal-waiting-to-happen....The Chevy Volt. 
You might think that you've never purchased a Chevy Volt.  But you have.  Yes, you have. 

The federal government, although waist-deep in red ink, offers another bribe: Any purchaser can get a tax credit of up to 50 percent of the cost (up to $2,000) of an extra-powerful (240-volt) charger. California, although so strapped it recently issued IOUs to vendors, offers a $5,000 cash rebate for which Volt buyers are not eligible but purchasers of Nissan's electric Leaf are. Go figure.

In April, in a television commercial and a Wall Street Journal column headlined "The GM Bailout: Paid Back in Full," GM's then-CEO Ed Whitacre said "we have repaid our government loan, in full, with interest, five years ahead of the original schedule." Rubbish.

GM, which has received almost $50 billion in government subventions, repaid a $6.7 billion loan using other federal funds, a TARP-funded escrow account. Sen. Charles Grassley (R-Iowa) called this a "TARP money shuffle." A commentator compared it to "paying off your Visa credit card with your MasterCard."

Meretricious accounting and deceptive marketing are inevitable when government and its misnamed "private sector" accomplices foist state capitalism on an appalled country. But those who thought the ethanol debacle defined outer limits of government foolishness pertaining to automobiles were, alas, mistaken.

And finally, Reason magazine jumps on the dogpile with this:

What was the "government vision and government incentive" that produced the assembly line?Motion-picturefilm?  Airconditioning? The electric guitar?

How about the personalcomputer? The mobile phone? Non-violentresistance?  Aspirin?

Though Biden is generally not to be taken seriously, the government-centrism of his comments are an accurate reflection of his boss, and part of the reason why next Tuesday is going to be an awkward day
of work at 1600 Pennsylvania Ave.

As it turns out, last Tuesday was an awkward day of work at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.  Unfortunately, Democrats were replaced by Republicans.  Republicans who favor many of the same economic interventions but for different industries. 
Bummer. 

Oh well.  Joe Biden really did make that statement.  No eggs were thrown and no one laughed because it went largely unreported and unanalyzed in The Mainstream Media. 
Go here to read about The Mainstream Media's quest for a journalism subsidy. 

Joe Biden - A Real Man Of Genius