State of the Empire

Another outreach piece from Susan Hogarth of
LP Radicals.

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The Energy Vortex

An exchange provoked by the Libertarian Response to Bush’s State of the Union Speech

Andrew L Sullivan writes…

You have a choice of drilling for oil in your own damn country or fighting for it in the Persian Gulf. PICK AND CHOOSE!

http://www.terrorfreeoil.org/

Well, yeah, those are a couple of choices. But there are others such as biodiesel from hemp, biodiesel from other sources, hydrogen, elctric based on wind, wave, geothermal, solar, fusion etc.

Currently the market incentives for developing alternative energy are pretty badly distorted: one way of looking at half a trillion for Iraq, among other military expenditures, is as a subsidy for petroleum. There are also non-military subsidies like highway spending (actually, in a sense military spending as well, they are technically Defense Highways).

Then there is the prohibition related ban on industrial hemp, even though it can’t possibly get anybody high.

Also, corporate personhood and limited liability absolves corporations of the true costs and risks of petroleum drilling, refining and burning, thus throwing off the cost/benefit/risk of petrol against other types of energy.

Taxes and regulations fossilize the market, destroying the natural turbulence that keep new companies from forming and rising and artificially keeping the big players securely on top.

That, and the SS system, keeps potential venture capital locked up.

The linkage of health care to employment is another system that keeps people, on the margin, as corporate employees rather than starting up entrepreneurial ventures, and the government school system teaches regimentation and unthinking leader-following for the purpose of
docile corporate and government employment.

Those are just a few of the factors.

Steve Kubby’s Energy Policy:

http://www.kubby2008.com/node/9

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Originally posted at pauliecannoli wordpress

Michelle Shinghal rocks the national television thing

LFV’s very own Michelle Shinghal took part in a nationally-televised forum regarding the President’s State of the Union Address. We’ve got pics. Michelle’s the brunette looker holding down the Libertarian fort in the back row. We’re working on obtaining video for our beloved masses.

Link, link, and link.

Blair impedes religious rights

This comes by way of everyone’s favorite Aussie Libertarian, GreginOz. He linked me to an article in the Sydney Morning Herald describing how the UK is set to force religious adoption agencies to help gay couples adopt children.

Now, don’t get me wrong, I’m all for gay marriage, adoption, etc. But for the government to step in and force a religious organization to do something that violates their beliefs? That’s wrong. I’ll let GreginOz have his say here, since I essentially agree wholeheartedly.

Cutnpaste the above link and one finds a story on how The Church will not be able to discriminate against gay couples seeking to adopt children. It seems innocuous and I can imagine many wise (sic) liberals nodding into their latte,
double non-sugar, tiny, elegant cafe cups at the logicality. And yet…and yet…although I am basically a Militant Secularist this makes me very uncomfortable. The Libertarian in me will recognize anyone’s right to worship and I don’t care if you pray to Allah, Elvis Presley or the Flying Spaghetti Monster. Here we have The State, in the form of the E.C. and U.K. governments, imposing their own morality on an institution with it’s own, carefully articulated, 2000 year old morality.

If someone thinks it crazy to let a couple of sodomites: high on amyl nitrate, viagra and E (”…oh what a night, late December back in ‘63…) , with pink butt plugs waving from their ritually scarred, taut and stretched anuses, actually bring up children, does that mean they are prejudiced? What does ‘prejudice’ mean? Does it mean not having a State sanctioned opinion? The State
DOES attempt Social Engineering but then, so do families. Can one legislate opinion? Or manufacture it, perhaps? I think I have a reasonable grasp of what the Catholic Church is about, there IS the odd book about it out there. What do I know of the officials that crafted these anti-discrimination laws? What are THEIR values? What agenda? Quo bono? Do anti-hate laws simply disempower every single, straight, western, white, (nominally) christian male? Or is that me, droppin’ acid and turning into an even more paranoid Alex Jonesesque parody?

Cultural Relativism = all things being equal…except all things ARE NOT equal, are they! Unless you swallow my jism, maybe. Regards GreginOz.

“And like some sort of fungus, we’re growing every day…”

Gotta rock the random Project 86 quote. Especially in light of the excellent excellent news I have for all of you out in Readerland.

We’re going to move to a real server. We should have our own domain, lastfreevoice.com, here soon. There’ll be many site upgrades, and I’ll let you know when to migrate over yonder. There will be ads, and there will be much more flexibility for the site.

We won’t lose any of our posts, all the authors will be set up as they are now, everything’ll be fine.

Now I know the ads might piss a few people off, but I’ll be upfront where the money’s going. It won’t go to fund the latest, greatest beat-the-shit-outta-Kos effort. It won’t go to buy me alcohol (well, not more than my personal share anyway). It’ll go where money generated by this sort of thing should be going all along: into the pockets of the editors, all of them.

It won’t do that right away, but as soon as I’ve got enough revenue to justify it (about $60 a month), every regular contributor will be getting paid. It’s only fair to them, because they labor to bring you, my lovely lovely readers, the latest in news from the internets. And they’re very good at what they do, and this will encourage them to hone their skills. You are a wonderful readership and deserve the highest-quality blogging that money can buy. So with this, I hope to bring LFV forward quite a bit.

However, ads will be meaningless without readership… but our readership has been growing by leaps and bounds. In no small part, this is thanks to the efforts made to Digg our articles. So please, go here and Digg everything you see. We’ll have actual “Digg This!” buttons on the posts on the new site, but until then… this is the quickest way to help us out over there.

I’m really excited for the future of this blog. We’ve got nowhere to go but up, and I couldn’t ask for better comrades. Thanks for keeping the community alive!

California is ridiculous

While perusing the internet in regards to our infamous banning hooligans who wish to strip the nation of what they consider “bad habits” I came across Governor Schwarzenegger’s smoking tent ban. Apparently the Governor of California set up a smoking tent on the Capitol grounds in Sacramento. People were in an uproar over this fiasco, claiming that it was unhealthy and a violation of State Law.

On the site is included a sample letter you could send to the Governor or a Representative to complain about this absurd atrocity to mankind, the elderly and the children. Think of the children people! If they see some ex-musclebound Austrian thug taking a toke of his illegally imported Romeo y Julieta it might influence the kids to work out, do light porn flicks, wield a bastard sword in B-rated movies, marry a Kennedy and start smoking sanctioned cigars from the Carribean! Oh, the humanity!

Another complaint about the smoking tent was that it caused flooding back in 2004 and this caused an uproar. After all it was an issue when they set it up due to the smoking but it also is an issue in a city which was constructed in a wash just outside of swamp land. So now since the tent is something horrible already it has begun to cause the people to walk through more water than they usually have to.

I’m sick of Iraq.

The invasion of Iraq occurred when I was in seventh grade. Influenced by my incredibly conservative urban Dallas surroundings, I took George W. Bush’s words as absolute truth. My father, who described himself as “a bit of a pacifist”, wasn’t so sure about it, but my mother seemed pretty confident. I thus cheered the invasion.

At the end of my sophomore year of high school, somebody linked me to LP.org. I immediately recognized the platform as the true “conservative” principles my parents had taught me. I began to understand that there was no legitimate reason to have attacked Iraq.

Even after that, I occasionally read the monotonous reports of violence. “33 killed in Ramadi.” “67 killed in 3 bombs across Baghdad.” “Sectarian violence taints Iraqi military.” “US troops kill 20 insurgents across Sunni Triangle.” “5 US troops killed in violence across Iraq.” But I haven’t read one of those for almost a year and a half now. I know what it will contain. I know what I think about it. I know that there’s a slim possibility I could be drafted enslaved to contribute to it. But I’m sick of it. I don’t want to hear about it again.

Today, I clicked on a headline with Iraq and a number in it for the first time since sometime in 2005. At first, I was really confused why I had done that. Then I realized that it had caught my eye because the number was 3 digits this time.

I find it hard to believe that I’m unique here. In fact, I imagine many, if not most, Americans feel this way. So here, folks, is another argument against staying in Iraq: If you’re no longer shocked by all the carnage – if you, bluntly, no longer care – what the hell are you doing supporting the presence of a hundred thousand Americans, many of whom are your age (in my case) or your kids’ age (in the case of many others of you) someplace where they could be killed any second? You want them to die in your service, but you won’t mourn them when they die?

I’m sick of Iraq.

The invasion of Iraq occurred when I was in seventh grade. Influenced by my incredibly conservative urban Dallas surroundings, I took George W. Bush’s words as absolute truth. My father, who described himself as “a bit of a pacifist”, wasn’t so sure about it, but my mother seemed pretty confident. I thus cheered the invasion.

At the end of my sophomore year of high school, somebody linked me to LP.org. I immediately recognized the platform as the true “conservative” principles my parents had taught me. I began to understand that there was no legitimate reason to have attacked Iraq.

Even after that, I occasionally read the monotonous reports of violence. “33 killed in Ramadi.” “67 killed in 3 bombs across Baghdad.” “Sectarian violence taints Iraqi military.” “US troops kill 20 insurgents across Sunni Triangle.” “5 US troops killed in violence across Iraq.” But I haven’t read one of those for almost a year and a half now. I know what it will contain. I know what I think about it. I know that there’s a slim possibility I could be drafted enslaved to contribute to it. But I’m sick of it. I don’t want to hear about it again.

Today, I clicked on a headline with Iraq and a number in it for the first time since sometime in 2005. At first, I was really confused why I had done that. Then I realized that it had caught my eye because the number was 3 digits this time.

I find it hard to believe that I’m unique here. In fact, I imagine many, if not most, Americans feel this way. So here, folks, is another argument against staying in Iraq: If you’re no longer shocked by all the carnage – if you, bluntly, no longer care – what the hell are you doing supporting the presence of a hundred thousand Americans, many of whom are your age (in my case) or your kids’ age (in the case of many others of you) someplace where they could be killed any second? You want them to die in your service, but you won’t mourn them when they die?

Canada: “We fucked up;” America: “Yay upfucking!”

In a dramatic demonstration of why Canada is five places higher than us on the State of World Liberty Index, the Canadian government gave $8.9 million USD to Maher Arar, a Canadian citizen wrongly accused of terrorism, extradited to Syria, and tortured before being released in 2003.

Meanwhile, our government says he’s still a threat.

From CNN:

Canada’s prime minister apologized to Maher Arar on Friday and announced the government would compensate him C$10.5 million (US$8.9 million) for its role in his deportation from the U.S. to Syria, where he was tortured while held in prison for nearly a year.

Prime Minister Stephen Harper again called on the U.S. government to remove the Ottawa telecoms engineer from any of its no-fly or terrorist watchlists and reiterated that Ottawa would keep pressing Washington to clear Arar’s name.

“We think the evidence is absolutely clear and that the United States should in good faith remove Mr. Arar from the list,” Harper told a news conference in Ottawa. “We don’t intend to either change or drop our position.”

The U.S. government has repeatedly insisted it has reasons to leave the 37-year-old on its watchlists. The issue has grown into an unpleasant diplomatic row between the world’s largest trading partners and closest allies.

*sigh*

Alberto Gonzales, this is why students protest you when you speak at Georgetown. You may speak for the American government, but you do not speak for America.

IRS sucks life out of space too

What if you won a free trip to space, aboard one of the new private spacecraft being built by the likes of Burt Rutan?

What if you couldn’t go because you couldn’t afford the goddamn taxes?

Brian Emmett’s childhood fantasy came true when he won a free trip to outer space.

But the 31-year-old was crushed when he had to cancel his reservation because of Uncle Sam.

Emmett won his ticket to the stars in a 2005 sweepstakes by Oracle Corp., in which he answered a series of online questions on Java computer code.

He became an instant celebrity, giving media interviews and appearing on stage at Oracle’s trade show.

For the self-described space buff who has attended space camp and watched shuttle launches from Kennedy Space Center, it seemed like a chance to become an astronaut on a dime.

Then reality hit. After some number-crunching, Emmett realized he would have to report the $138,000 galactic joy ride as income and owe $25,000 in taxes.

Unwilling to sink into debt, the software consultant from the San Francisco Bay area gave up his seat.

“There was definitely a period of mourning. I was totally crestfallen,” Emmett said. “Everything you had hoped for as a kid sort of evaporates in front of you.”

Man, what a fucking killjoy. You gotta picture some IRS taxmonkey jacking off to this, too. I think they use human tears as medicine. What did the Fresno-bound motherfuckers have to say about it?

The IRS declined to comment, saying it does not talk about individual matters.

Someone needs to kill them in the face.

No Vote Fraud Here. Move Along, Comrades…

From LP blog

2004 Libertarian Recount Conclusion

There have been several recent media reports about the somewhat exciting conclusion of recount operations in Ohio.
Richard Winger of Ballot Access News wrapped it all up quite well:

After the November 2004 election, the presidential nominees of the Green Party and the Libertarian Party jointly requested a recount of the presidential vote in New Mexico and in Ohio.

Both states had relatively nominal fees for requesting a recount. But elections officials in both states were determined to thwart the requests. In New Mexico, the state retroactively increased the fee ten-fold and a lower court said that was OK. The two candidates couldn’t afford the $1,400,000 new fee for the recount, so they dropped their request, and the voting-counting machines were then reprogrammed so that any recount would be impossible. Later, on May 16, 2006, the New Mexico Supreme Court said the two candidates should have received the recount they had requested after all, but, of course, by then it was too late.

In Ohio, the recount supposedly went ahead. Under the law, a few precincts were supposedly to be randomly chosen. A hand count of these randomly-chosen precincts was then to be compared with the machine total. If they matched, no further recount in that county was needed. On January 24, a jury convicted two Ohio elections officials of rigging the recount. Instead of randomly choosing precincts, they first identified a few precincts in which the hand-count and the machine-count matched. Then they claimed that those precincts had been the randomly-chosen ones; and since totals matched, no further recount of other precincts was needed. As in New Mexico, it is too late to do anything about it.

Posted by Stephen Gordon at January 26, 2007 10:06 AM

Coffee Talk with a Compliant Brother

“Sometimes we should just accept things the way they have been and understand that we should sacrifice some of our personal liberties to benefit our nation and this war against terror”.

The paraphrased quote above came from my older brother earlier this new year as I sat down on his porch after a cozy cup of caffeinated coffee and taking hits from a social disease I suffer from called smoking. We were in a debate over the rantings of Keith Olberman directed at his attack on our current administration regarding the lifting of Habeas Corpus and the new founded state of dictatorship our current administration has enacted.

My brother was raised the same as I was, in a Reagan Republican household who thought the Republicans can do no wrong. Now the differences between us are found in our talents: He is a musician, and a damn good one at that. He can rip out lyrics and blur his hands on the neck of any guitar i have ever seen him on, all the while busting out cords that are more sonorous than I have to say the best of them. He would frequent clubs and studios throughout the greater Southern California and simply do what he does best, play. He took himself further than most who have no name and has played with names that went on to sell themselves out for a price, something he never did. I can play a stereo quite well.

Now my brothers argument regarding Habeas Corpus and the new dictatorial powers our current administration have is that their hands are tied to do anything necessary to stop some foreigner from blowing us up on our home soil. He believes that in order for us to continue down our path of freedom we should have to exercise our freedoms by giving some of them up, as did the Japanese Americans during WWII and the nation during the MacCarthy period. All of these we should take into consideration since 9/11.

Another point which he made was that we as a nation have not grown but declined in our way of thinking regarding searches and seizures, whether it be detained while the police search your valuables, your home or your person. His statement is one we have heard throughout the later half of the 20th century “if you’re not doing or hiding anything, whats the problem?”. He truly believes that our police should have the right to do as they please and pull over, walk into, browse and demand on site without a judge. He also feels that giving up these rights are justifiable and will not be abused. Yet he is a Reagan Republican through and through.

Fuck Da Eagles or FCC?

You all know that I am a hardcore Saints fan. I was recently in Jackson Hole skiing and made sure to be off the -30 degrees mountain in time for the Saints’ game against Philly. Anil and I were trying to sneak smokes on the balcony between plays when we saw the most profane thing. The camera zoomed in on a cheering Saints fan who was wearing a “Fuck Da Eagles” shirt.

Ok, not profane for us- we both caught it and laughed. We were sure it said fuck but wine made us wonder if it really said “pluck”. I told Anil that I know my city and it does not censor itself.

Lo and behold new evidence. Fuck it must be. Will the FCC get involved?? Probably not. NOLA hasn’t the government on her side, but she does have Saints.

FTR, I believe the Saints later lost to the Giants due to weather. Weather related losses hit New Orleanians hard, and then we come back winners. Superbowl 2008 will be a NOLA gift!

originally at ideasfromfreeminds

The State of the Union: Libertarian Responses

The following reaction to the King George’s latest State of the Union speech at
http://kubby2008.com/ got so many hits that it overwhelmed our server yesterday and caused the website to go down for most of the afternoon. We’ve got the site back up now, and Tom Knapp says we will be getting a server upgrade soon.

My fellow Americans,

Earlier this evening, America listened as President George W. Bush addressed a joint session of Congress, fulfilling his Constitutional duty to report annually to Congress on “the state of the union.” Shortly thereafter, Virginia Senator Jim Webb delivered the Democratic Party’s response to his report.

I am not privileged to address you tonight over broadcast televison or radio; my party’s opinions are considered unworthy of coverage by the “mainstream media.” A response, however, is required, and I accept the responsibility for making it as an American, a presidential candidate, and hopefully a worthy, although not official, representative of my party.

The union, President Bush tells us, is strong. And he may be right. What he does not admit is that the union is weaker now than when he took office.

As evidence for his claim of national strength, he cites an economy which thrives in spite of, not because of, the ministrations of his government … and proposes additional “help” of the type that weakens rather than strengthens it.

As proof of the bright future before us and the care which we take to leave our children a better world, he points to his “No Child Left Behind Act” — an act which props up a disintegrating public education system with more of the federal interference that, until only a few short years ago, his party had pledged to eliminate at the first opportunity.

Addressing himself to the question of national defense, he defends to the very last his failed experiments in foreign military adventurism which have stretched America’s armed forces to the breaking point, alienated our friends, empowered our enemies, and left us less, not more, secure against attack or invasion.

Turning to issues of energy independence and environmental sanity, he recommends more subsidies and more regulation, rather than smaller government and more innovation.

Like President Bush, I believe that the union is strong. Unlike President Bush, I and my fellow Libertarians understand what makes America strong.

We understand that every dollar in taxes taken out of your paycheck makes America weaker, and that every dollar left in your pocket makes America stronger.

We understand that Washington’s one-size-fits-all programs for public education make America weaker, and that parental control and individual choice in education make America stronger.

We understand that “bring’em on” and “mission accomplished” and “surge” make America weaker, and that a foreign policy based on “friendship and commerce with all nations, entangling alliances with none” makes America stronger.

We understand that government subsidies to Big Oil and Big Agriculture make America weaker, that unsubsidized competition makes America stronger — and that only the innovation fostered by a truly free market will allow us to meet the challenges of pollution, climate change and future fossil fuel scarcity.

The union is strong — not because of the efforts George W. Bush and his fellow politicians, but in spite of them. And in their clutches, America can only continue to become weaker … because the strength of our union, my fellow Americans, is freedom.

The notion that government exists only for the purpose of securing our rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, bequeathed us by our nation’s founders, is the foundation upon which every worthwhile American accomplishment rests. The Bush adminstration, the Congress, and their predecessors in the White House and on Capitol Hill, have gone at that foundation with a sledgehammer.

The cracks they’ve produced in that foundation are visible all around us. The Patriot Act. The Military Commissions Act. Warrantless searches and wiretaps. No-knock raids. Detention without charge, counsel or trial. As a nation, we now imprison more of our own than any other. One in thirty of us are trapped in a “justice” system that has long since ceased to represent justice. The rest of us are subject to reams of arbitrary and capricious edicts concerning what we may say, how we may worship, which political candidates we may support (and how much we do so financially), what arms we may carry in our own defense, what medicines we may use, even whether or not we can play cards on the Internet.

America as we know it — everything in it worthy of our devotion and allegiance — stands at the edge of cliff, below which the darkness of totalitarianism awaits. Whether or not our union is strong enough to step backward from the precipice is a question only time will answer.

Over the next two years, I’ll watch with you as the new Democratic Congress wrestles with the problem of restoring freedoms that a corrupt and lawless administration has robbed us of. If history is any guide, the Democrats will choose instead to go to work with their own sledgehammers.

In the meantime, I urge you to join with me in support of America’s last, best hope for a better tomorrow: The Libertarian Party. Even as we speak, hundreds of Libertarians toil in elected and appointed office or as volunteer party activists, working to protect your reedom. With your help, we can elect thousands of new local officials, hundreds of state legislators, dozens of US
Representatives and Senators and, yes, a President, who understand what makes America strong and are prepared to act on that understanding.

Let freedom grow!
Steve Kubby
Libertarian for President

George Phillies and Bill Redpath have also written responses to the
Shrub speech. My favorite review of Dubai-ya’s oratory, however, was written by Jason Gatties.

UPDATE 1/26: Libertarian Presidential Candidate Kent McManigal has also written a response to the State of the Union blatherings.

Blast in Shiite area of Baghdad kills 26

While waking up to a bad cup of decaf coffee (high blood pressure and smoking makes this fat Capitalist back off from the tasty and awakening intelligence booster of caffeine) I browsed this piece of work on Yahoo!…

So is it just me or does this look like what Ayman al-Zawahiri said is beginning to come to fruition? I guess we should expect more things like this to come around in the next few days. After all, Zawahiri did state that “if we are killed, you will be killed” and things like this are not to be overlooked.

Sadly the article linked says nothing about Zawahiri and his comments a couple days back. I guess we as Americans feel that any threats against the Great Nation and Free Country of the US is impenetrable and we can take out anything that comes against us, well, at the expense of a few ten of thousands of third-world foreigners on their own soil…

Ridiculous…

State of the Union Preview

By way of Radley Balko, the Agitator

Another new face!

ElfMomNino, who rocks her shit spectacularly over at the Chapman For President blog, is going to join our staff! She’s got one of the funniest libertarian blogs on the ‘net, keeping track of one of the Party’s biggest embarrassments.

So yeah, everyone give her a big LFV welcome!

(Well, a big LFV welcome would probably involve toilet paper, the Second Amendment and the phrase “bugger off and die” so let’s just be nice to her an’ shit. )

Badnarik’s gonna advise the Chapman campaign?

In the latest round of WTFtitude involving the sadsackiest of all Libertarian Presidential contenders, apparently Michael Badnarik is going to advise Gene Chapman’s Presidential campaign. With Allen Hacker set to profess at Gene’s “American Libertarian University,” this likely means that not only has Badnarik gone fucking nuts, but he’s still got no problem with the douche that ruined the best-funded Libertarian House campaign in history. Yeah, my last remaining shreds of sympathy for Badnarik just left the building.

Watch this and laugh, kiddos.

Props.

Taxes of Evil 2

Earlier we had a discussion of the Taxes of Evil outreach piece:

Taxes of Evil 1

We now have a new update.

Final draft of Version1:

Susan writes,

Send your contributions to help print this to my Paypal account!!! Please!

Copies will be sent to all local LPs who request it – courtesy of the
LP Radicals.

Anyone wanting to help with printing (and help is needed! sooner better than later!) can just go to www.paypal.com and use Susan’s email address to send money to: hogarth@gmail.com

Regarding printing and distributing these, Susan says:

By the way, I have no problems with anyone using any of these in any form, modifying them, whatever. No credit neccessary. But PLEASE ask me for the source files. I did the layout in an excellent open source program called Scribus, but can provide the idles as EPS and other formats.

I suggest those looking into working on layout and design look into Scribus.

The US War Crime Family Commission

Here’s something I’ve ben pointing out for quite a while now:


Pro-war Clinton candidacy success would mean same mob bosses have ruled U.S. since 1980

"Hillary Heralds 30 Year Plus Control Of America By Interlocking Crime Family"

Another Clinton in office would mean America being under the thiefdom of either a Bush or a Clinton for a total of at least 32 years, 36 if Hillary is re-elected (many now acknowledge that H.W. Bush pulled the strings as VP during the Reagan era)

Clinton voted for the Patriot Act and she voted for the war in Iraq, but so many Democrats are blinded by the cult of personality that they will overwhelmingly vote to put this crime family back in office.

Then again, we might just get an indefinite extention of Bush through martial law, precipitated by a war with Iran, Unless The Bush Crime family is impeached now, says Paul Craig Roberts.

Robert Higgs has an in-depth analysis of the
Living Reality of Military-Economic Fascism and corruption through the military-industrial
complex.

And even LP national is talking about The State of the Monarchy.

If we are killed, you will be killed

I was reading the latest report from CNN.com regarding Ayman al-Zawahiri and the rebuttal to President Bush’s new strategy in Iraq. According to Zawahiri “if we are killed, you will be killed”. There was also the statement of “”Why not send 50,000 or 100,000? Aren’t you aware that the dogs of Iraq are pining for your troops’ dead bodies? Send your entire army to be annihilated at the hands of the Mujahedeen to free the world from your evil and theirs because Iraq, the land of the caliphate and jihad, is able to bury 10 armies like yours, with God’s help and power.”

First of all we enter this war in an Imperialist action to “police the world”. Then we come up with “WMD’s and the War Against Terror” after we put a bunch of holes and blew off mountain tops in Afghanistan. After Afghanistan we invade Iraq for the cause of freedom and not for oil. Then we find out that one of the sole reasons was for oil. Now we are sending over more troops this year and we are threatened by the second in command of the Terrorists who took credit for the destruction of the Twin Towers better known to us uneducated types as “9/11″.

Now I am not too hip on the hype and lingo of the modern reporter who has an edge on the savvy colloquialisms of today, but by my best recollection of former years, i.e. Operations Desert Shield, Desert Storm, Somalia, Serbia/Croatia, hell, even Libya and Grenada, the big result of sending people in to combat is to have victory, let alone victory for the good guys. How are we, the “World Police” good guys in this manner? We go in, rough up the former leaders, set up a puppet democracy with a full-proof plan to rid it of its oil for at least 30 years to our own corporations and then plunder off of the people in their misery, send in more troops to help “preserve their democracy” from uprisings and we don’t expect to get hate-mail from the second in command of Al-Queda? I was actually expecting more from Bin Laden than what was given. Now we have a threat that we will get our butts blown to smithereens(good band btw) if we kill any more. In the article I linked even the FBI is involved in finding out more plans here on our soil.

What do we expect? The world to heed to our call for this tripe? Does the whole world seek out our United States freedoms, where I cant even have a smoke in my car anymore in New Jersey, nor can I have a smoke in a bar in California or Springfield, IL? “The Land of the Free” has more issues, lets actually call them for what they are “problems” with trying to maintain a ton of red tape on every law that not only are we full of loopholes from ass-clowns in office creating new laws which make more problems all for a small but obnoxiously loud portion of society(you heard me MADD and OSHA!) that we cannot breathe our own smoke-filled air without being told I either have to out it out or receive a fine, because I am on a sidewalk within two-hundred feet of the door of the local Denny’s. Give me a break, or better yet, suck it up, America! While these terrorists are fighting off the plunderers of their land from the great white devil who blew up their religious site, their homes and their communities, you are busy bitching and moaning about some kid out on the sidewalk smoking because he cant smoke with his coffee in a now non-existent smoking section while you eat your lard-boiled, fat-laden, artery-hardening Grand Slam Breakfast with a diet coke.

A sweet opportunity to spread the message

Yahoo News has reported that an Australian man was booted from a Qantas flight for not changing his t-shirt.

Allen Jasson said on Monday he was turned away last Friday at a Qantas departure gate in the southern city of Melbourne when he tried to board a flight to London while wearing a shirt with the a picture of Bush and the slogan “World’s #1 terrorist.”

Qantas offered to put the London resident on another flight if he wears a different shirt, but the man refused to change.

I might forfeit the fare but I have made up my mind that I would rather stand up for the principle of free speech,” he said.

You can’t mention Bush, speech and terrorist without being reminded of the SOTU Address tomorrow. I can’t sleep through it either. HDNet has invited me to sit on a panel to discuss the speech. We are taping tomorrow in Dallas and Dan Rather is hosting from New York. Given news like this, it should be an interesting discussion and I am thankful HDNet thought to include a libertarian.

I hope to represent us well so if you have any pointers, make them known in the comments section.

Burridge Gets Big Bloody Red Nose, Starts Taking Off Ass-Clown Costume

A few days ago, we reported about how state representative Burridge in NH responded to a constituent's polite email in favor of decriminalizing marijuana by calling him a dumb pothead who should become a snitch and CC'ed the local cops.

Now,
Homeland Stupidity reports that all the calls and emails that Burridge has received as a result of the coverage of this issue on blogs such as this one has caused him to change not just his tone, but possibly his mind as well.

The Keene Sentinel reports

“This is a learning process for me,” said Burridge, who has received dozens of calls from as far as Florida, Missouri and California. “I’m certainly learning the power of blogs. … It’s fascinating.”

When the Internet storm dies down, Burridge would like to meet with Iselin to discuss the issue further, he said. “He’s certainly a very energized and passionate young man.”

Iselin said he would be open to a meeting, as well. He is even hoping that Burridge might appear on his television show.

“I was just trying to get in touch with him in the first place,” Iselin said. “That’s what this whole thing was about.”

This blog was one of many,
like this one which experienced the most traffic we ever had due to reporting this story,
and (just like us) suggesting ways people both in and out of NH can take action. This blog, like ours, has many good ideas and templates for letters you can use in the comment section.

Going beyond what is reported in the Sentinel, the MassCann blog reports:

State of NH had a decrim meeting today. LEAP (Law Enforcement Against Prohibition) spoke. Delmar (Burridge) was at the meeting. He has listened and talked to many of his constituents over the last few days and he is now publicly pledging to support marijuana decrim and will vote for it.

Sweet!

Let's keep in touch with Burridge, make sure that this is true and if so, that he keeps his word.

Phillies campaign update: 1/22/2007

The man himself shot me off an email a few days ago and I haven’t had the opportunity to check my inbox until now. But I figure that since we’ve got plenty of coverage up for the Kubby campaign, we should also do the same for Phillies.

Anyway, here’s a list of appearances for Phillies. If you’re in the area for any of this, it’d be a good idea to check out what he’s saying and how he’s saying it. Let’s make the most informed decision about our Presidential candidate as we possibly can.

Too brilliant not to share.

I think I just read one of the smartest approaches to the Reformer/Radical divide yet. Yeah, Paulie’s a contributor here but that’s not why I’m giving him props. Just read this shit for yourself, cowboy:

The best solution to Republitarians and warmongers in the LP is to out-recruit them. Rather than dropping out of the party, what we should do is engage in tons of activism, outreach and party growth and sign up new members, activists and supporters.

Here are two things that will help

1) Nominate a LP presidential candidate who is not a Republitarian and who appeals to the left-libertarian border. We’ve never done this, yet we can in 2008 – Steve Kubby is running for President. The campaign is in its very early stages, yet he has already spoken to a crowd of 50,000 at a time (how many libertarian candidates have ever done that) and been featured alongside non-libertarian candidates in a “viral video” which has been viewed by tens of thousands, mostly outside the party and movement.

I’m the assistant national volunteer coordinator and we are seeking volunteers in every state.

Even moderate “reform” libertarians, like Chuck Moulton, who I talked to yesterday acknowledge that Kubby is the leading candidate for the LP nomination of those who have so far announced their intent to seek it. Kubby will be on Angela’s show on the 25th – Angela, if you area reading, how can we listen live?

2) We need to hand out massive amounts of info at antiwar rallies about how taxes fund the war machine. This should also be a part of our tax day protests at the post office. Non-LP libertarians can adopt these ideas to whatever organizations they want to promote, or to leaderless resistance.

We need to have an intra-party dialogue about the relationship between radicalism and reform, but ultimately, both sides want the Party to succeed in its goals. And so if the Radical Caucus brings in a ton of people and kicks our asses… well, wonderful! They just brought in a ton of people and helped the party. And if it’s the other way around, well, same thing. I think, though, that it will be competition like this that ultimately does the best for the party, not either side’s ideas in a vacuum.

Well at least he’s honest.

Go to hell, gringos!

President Hugo Chavez returned to his weekly radio and TV broadcast Sunday, extolling the ideals of socialist thinker Karl Marx and telling U.S. officials to “Go to hell!” for what he called unacceptable meddling in Venezuela’s affairs.

Chavez defended his government’s effort to establish a socialist model and rejected U.S. concerns over a measure to grant him broad lawmaking powers, saying: “Go to hell, gringos! Go home!”

Score one for having balls big enough to be confused for flesh-colored beanbags. Scratch a couple for being a socialist douche. Wait, what’s that?

The National Assembly, controlled by the president’s political allies, is expected to give final approval this week to what it calls the “enabling law,” which would grant Chavez authority to pass a series of laws by decree during an 18-month period.

Oh, you’re passing an “enabling act”? Well gee golly willakers, where’ve I heard this before? And before someone cries about Godwin’s Law… the dude named it himself, and it follows basically the same lines as the original, so yeah.

So I’m not sure, but I think this pretty well means that you lose at politics, bucko. But look on the bright side-after the world undoes the damage you’ve done and your own country is embarrassed to have ever elected you to anything higher than dogcatcher, you’ll have a lot of lameass kids spraypainting your name all over the place and listening to really shitty metal that talks about you. Maybe some nutcase will talk about Venezuelan UFOs based in Antarctica, to boot.

A Bunch Of Stuff In One Post

Alex Jones reports that Congress has passed anti-freedom legislation which would make blogs like this one register as “lobbyists” with the government. That, and Manchurian Candidate John McCain wants to fine us $300,000 for anything the regime finds offensive. After that, see
http://lastfreevoice.wordpress.com/2007/01/09/texas-prison-camp-future-american-gulag/.

Justin Raimondo at Antiwar.com
is rallying support for US House Joint Resolution 14, a binding resolution that forbids the President from ordering an attack on Iran absent military action against U.S. forces, or a demonstrably imminent threat of attack.

At Rad Geek People’s Daily, Charles
Johnson talks about how US opium eradication in Afghanistan is causing a rise in young girls being sold into slavery by their families.

In a case of absurd over-reaction, besides tasering and arresting a smoker who wouldn’t put out his cigarette at a bus stop the cops “also contacted the Armenian Consulate in Washington, D.C., and notified the Joint Terrorism Task Force” . (via Lew Rockwell Blog).

Oh yeah, and as if that wasn’t enough, there’s video of US troops taunting a crippled dog in Iraq. Aren’t you looking forward to these guys being our militarized police and prison (camp) guards back home? I know I am.

UPDATE: Brad at Wendy McElroy’s blog says the provision that makes bloggers lobbyists was stripped out of the bill that passed…that probably means they will be re-introducing it in other bills, so let’s keep an eye on it.

Kubby Update 2007.01.19

http://kubby2008.com

National Live Radio Interview Saturday January 20 7:30 PM PT

Steve Kubby will be interviewed this Saturday night on a national broadcast of “We The People” with David Sears on the CRN DIGITAL TALK RADIO NETWORK. The live program is heard nationwide on CRN TALK via Cable systems nationwide and several radio stations. The
broadcast reaches an audience of 11 million and is heard round the world via Internet streaming. Please check the affiliate listing at http://www.crni.net for the cable system or radio station nearest you.

Next Prez Blog: Kubby still leading Libertarian candidates

“Steve Kubby (steady) — appears best positioned among the leading LP candidates to continue building momentum for his campaign if Ron Paul draws donations and volunteers away from the party for his Republican primary bid. …”

The Next Prez –
http://thenextprez.blogspot.com/index.html

And this item seems kinda counter-intuitive….

Kubby Wins Conservative Poll

31 Dec 2006 by United States Conservative

“Libertarian Steve Kubby won the December match up poll from The Conservative President 2008.

December Poll Results:

Chuck Baldwin(CON) 28.68%
Joe Biden (D) 2.94%
Lou Dobbs (I) 14.71%
Rudy Giuliani(R) 21.32%
Steve Kubby (LIB) 30.88%

Rich Whitney (GRN) 1.47%

Conservative President 2008 -

http://conservativepresident2008.blogspot.com/index.html

Steve Kubby appears on Blog Talk Radio’s “Liberated Space” with host Angela Keaton. This is a half-hour interview, commencing at 4:30pm Pacific Time, Thursday, January 25th.

http://www.blogtalkradio.com/liberatedspace

Good news from Iraq

Well, apparently al-Maliki has enough confidence in his own troops now to tell Bush to piss off.

“I can strongly say that we could have been in a better situation right now regarding the equipment we have and the weapons we have,” Maliki said through a translator in an interview with six reporters from Western media, including TIME. “And if that would have happened, it would have greatly decreased the level of our losses and the losses of the Multi-National Forces as well.”

…

“If we succeed in implementing the agreement between us to speed up the equipping and providing weapons to our military forces,” he said, “I think that within three to six months our need for the American troops will dramatically go down.”

Well, he’s half-right…

Bolivian President Evo Morales had some interesting things to say about the drug war.

Bolivian President Evo Morales said on Friday that coca farmers are not cocaine traffickers and that rich countries should fight demand for the coca-based drug instead of shutting down farms.

“I’m a coca leaf farmer and they’ve always accused me of being a drug trafficker, but coca leaves don’t cause addiction,” Morales said at a summit of South American leaders in Rio de Janeiro.

Good, good… just the kind of badassery I’d expect from someone who had the nerve to give Condi Rice a coca leaf guitar.

“There shouldn’t just be zero cocaine policies, there should be zero demand, zero market policies.”

…

“You should talk to some developed, industrialized countries about eradicating this evil,” he said.

Ouch… say it ain’t so, Evo! Reducing demand doesn’t work, don’t foist the statism on us. We should just legalize it outright and have some reduced programs to contain the worst excesses of it-rehab is much more libertarian than jail and the DEA.

What needs to happen in Denver in 2008

Is it more than two years away? Yes! Does that matter? Oh no.

In Portland in 2006, the Libertarian Party made some significant changes. Like them or hate them, they’ve been made. Unfortunately, it’s a lot easier to dump platform planks than it is to add them. So in order to patch together a newer, more complete platform, both Radicals and Reformers are going to have to work together on this.

First off, let’s focus on the process. The ideals of the Radicals and the Reformers are largely the same; we’ve both got all types of libertarians in our ranks, although I daresay that there’s more moderates in the Reform Caucus. But largely, we’re coming from the same philosophical background. The only difference is tactics.

Vote This Ass-Clown Out!

OK, Free Staters…time to show what y’all are made of and make some serious stink about this out of control politician. This deserves to be in all your letters to the editor, public pickets, call every radio and TV station in the state, hell, make it national news. This psychotic individual is clearly legislating while impaired. Book ‘im Danno!

Constituent Representation in Keene by way of Homeland Stupidity

Earlier today I decided to write my representative, Delmar Burridge, an e-mail to voice my support for HB92, decriminalizing marijuana. Unfortunately I was very disheartened by the response I got to my letter. I expect much more from my representatives. Below is both my original letter and his response:

Dear Representative Delmar Burridge

I hope you are in good health. I understand that you are on the Criminal Justice and Public Safety committee which is going to hear testimony this Wednesday on HB92, decriminalizing marijuana. I know you are opposed to this bill, but I trust you can understand how important of an issue this is to many people both in Keene and the rest of New Hampshire. I hope you will consider passing it through committee so that all sides will have their chance to speak on it. NH has some of the most draconian legislation on marijuana, and hundreds of our friends and family members are being arrested for choosing to smoke instead of drink. Please think about passing this through committee so everyone can listen to the opposition and have their chance to speak.Thank you very much,

Toby Iselin
Keene NH

And his response:

Dear Toby:

My youngest brother Albert who I was very close to died from head injuries sustained when he wrecked his car in West Virginia. His wife walked away. He was a triple major in college; biology, philosophy, and psychology and was smoking a joint before the crash. It is all very vivid including the anguish my parents went through. This occurred in the 1970s and I still miss him. I began work as a juvenile probation officer in the poorest section in Philadelphia in 1969 and the above described experience pales to my on the job, eyeball to eyeball observation of family devastation I saw daily…..and these males were reefer users just like you….saying the same dumb stuff just like you and they were not smart college smart. I saw lots of blood and death. Trust me, these campers were not soon going to be setting the world on fire. Some did suffer severe burns.

Last night one of your buddies called me twice even asking me to be on his TV show. He was yelling and screaming and I hung up on him. You have to chill this guy out. I will say to you what I said to three different callers; I will vote no on this Bill and have lots of very chilling stories to relate to the other committee members so it goes my way.

Suggest you change all your friends, be the designated driver when you are old enough to drink since you don’t drink. I will sign the Bill that keeps tobacco out of the bars when it come up in the house so you don’t get second hand smoke.

I am copying two members of the Keene Police Department in case you want to change your ways and act legal and save your friends.

You are very passionate in your beliefs and would make a great snitch. It is thrilling to dime on your so called friends.

Be healthy and be well.

Delmar D. Burridge
DBurridge@ne.rr.com

(603) 352-5363 or
(603) 542-7744

I would just like to add that I never said that I don’t drink, and nowhere in the e-mail did I mention that I smoke marijuana. It seems that Representative Delmar Burridge is making assumptions without looking at any of the arguments or evidence.

This post also appears at
http://pauliecannoli.wordpress.com/2007/01/17/vote-this-ass-clown-out/

Another thing government sucks at

Even many libertarians believe that government is the most efficient way to deliver basic utilities – like water drainage, for instance. An example out of Dallas shows this isn’t true.

Water trickles through the dirt ditch now, past Modesto Medina’s back yard and into the Trinity River. … Watching the Weather Channel’s forecast Tuesday night for more rain was a reminder that their home could soon sag into the bottom of a city drainage creek designed to carry floodwaters to the Trinity River.

That’s right, the City of Dallas, in its overarching wisdom, builds a drainage creek behind this family’s yard, fails to properly reinforce the sides, and the trench takes away their backyard. So the city’s coming to save the day, right? Of course not.

City crews dumped fill dirt into the crevice and placed a concrete slab near the house’s storm drain to reduce erosion. But the dirt has washed away, and the slab has pulled away from the house. Mr. Medina said that he has urged the city to build a concrete ditch or buy his property but that the city said the cost was too great.

See, this is what you get when you trust government to do anything. Hopefully this guy will take the city to court and make them fix it up, but this is a whole lot of crap he shouldn’t have had to go through.

Taxes of Evil

Over at Ground Up Libs Andy mentioned and idea he had which we have been kicking around for years to make a flier to distribute at antiwar rallies and April 15th demonstrations about how taxes fund the war machine.

This time, Susan Hogarth of LP Radicals picked up on the idea and come up with a cool flyer that we are hoping to actually print and distribute. This is her second edit and there might be more changes coming.

Your ideas, as always, are welcome on any changes that could improve the flyer.

Front:

Back:

You can use this file with added contact information for your LP local group or campaign, but Susan asks that you contact her for the source files to alter the file, rather than editing the .jpg, and she will be making it available in a variety of formats.

She is also trying to raise a couple of hundred dollars for a print run.

This post also appears at

http://pauliecannoli.wordpress.com/2007/01/17/taxes-of-evil/

Allen Hacker To Be Professor At Gene Chapman University?

In the past this blog has covered LP Presidential candidates George Phillies and Steve Kubby.

For those as yet unaware of the other candidates for the Libertarian Party 2008 presidential nomination, truck driving tax protestor and self-proclaimed spiritual heir of Mahatma Ghandi
Gene Chapman is also running for President.

Chapman is also seeking “Constitution, Southern, Goldwater-Reagan Conservative, Independent, Reform and Boston Tea Party nominations”. Among other things, Chapman is
a musical genius.

In the past, Chapman has gone on several death fasts to fight for freedom, and even attempted to set himself on fire at the IRS building. He was prevented from doing so because he was driving an RV with a leaky propane tank, and locked up in a mental hospital for Dysthymia.

Chapman is a technological pioneer in the field of in the use of audio and video blogs and comments, and along with his trusty sidekick Doug Kenline works diligently at keeping his opponents honest by urging them strenuously to include free site meters on their websites and inviting them on his audio blog radio show. They are fond of calling anyone who disagrees
with them “Satanist Communists” and “fancy fuck sock puppet boys”.

Chapman is, naturally, gathering attention from major national media outlets,

recently being invited on Fox and Friends, Good Morning America, CBS Morning News, Late Night with Conan O’Brien as well as being offered deals by
Dream Works Studio and Bad Boy Records.

He is also the subject of government conferences; the study of his ideas and work has drawn together multiagency taskforces including the IRS, FBI and possibly BATFE.

Recently,
Chapman staffer Kenline issued specific, graphic death threats against 18 year old Phillies staffer Jake Porter.

While we are as yet unaware of any specifically anti-Phillies or anti-Kubby websites, Chapman opponents have gone negative early with several attack sites put out by Elfino’s Mom, Frank Buckner, and some anonymous challenger.

But, what really brings Chapman to our attention at this time is his founding of
American Libertarian University. According to Chapman’s blog, “Libertarian legend Allen Hacker is looking over our offer to join the teaching staff of the American Libertarian University.” At this time, we are seeking independent confirmation of this report.

This post also appears at
http://pauliecannoli.wordpress.com/2007/01/17/allen-hacker-to-be-professor-at-gene-chapman-university/

Steve Kubby’s MLK day message

This is an MLK day Message from Steve Kubby, Libertarian for President with markup links by me, paulie cannoli.

FREE AT LAST?

I wonder what Martin Luther King, Jr., would think of the America we live in — how he’d feel had he and his assassin not met on that fateful April morning and if instead he had awakened this morning to his 78th birthday.

I wonder what he’d have to say about a country that treats one in thirty of its own citizens as criminals.

I wonder how he’d characterize a country that imprisons more of its own people than any other nation on earth.

I wander what he’d call a country that incarcerates one in four of
its young black males.

I wonder if he could tolerate a country that differentiates between
“white people’s cocaine” and “black people’s cocaine” in its sentencing laws.

I wonder if Dr. King would have the moral strength to stick to his philosophy of non-violence in this era of militarized police, “no-
knock” raids, death sentences for self-defense, and the cold-blooded murder of elderly black women by their alleged protectors.

I wonder if Dr. King would even recognize the America we live in today.

I don’t think he would. I think he’d still be leading marches and working for justice — demanding that America make good on what he called the “architects of our republic['s] … promissory note to which every American was to fall heir. … a promise that all men
would be guaranteed the inalienable rights of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.”

Dr. King is not often described as a “libertarian” when his work for racial equality is remembered — and maybe there are other, better words to describe his ideas. Certainly the movemement he led for so many years has sometimes struck out in directions he’d likely not
have supported. But, just as clearly, he understood the importance of freedom. On this, his birthday, I like to take a few minutes to remember the closing words of his famous 1963 speech in Washington:

“When we let freedom ring, when we let it ring from every village and every hamlet, from every state and every city, we will be able to speed up that day when all of God’s children, black men and white men, Jews and Gentiles, Protestants and Catholics, will be able to
join hands and sing in the words of the old Negro spiritual, ‘Free at last! free at last! thank God Almighty, we are free at last!’”

I hope that you’ll spend a few moments pondering those words with me — and the coming years working with me to renew them and to make them real.

Let freedom grow!
Steve Kubby
Libertarian for President

This post also appears at
http://pauliecannoli.wordpress.com/2007/01/15/steve-kubbys-mlk-day-message/

Rules are rules, and rulers are assholes.

A 17-year-old US student who enjoys re-enacting medieval battles has been banned from wielding his favourite sword in his graduation yearbook…The school rejected the photo, saying it contravened a strict zero-tolerance policy on weapons.

Yeah, OK. Because history enthusiasts are really a threat to safety. The ACLU is helping the student sue the school for restricting his speech.

Story from the BBC.

Dubai-ya Officially Declares Martial Law

Can we all say Impeachment together yet?

At
http://www.infowars.com/articles/iraq/bush_vows_no_matter_what_surge_is_on.htm

Bush vows to 60 Minutes that ‘no matter what Congress wants’ surge is on

Raw Story | January 13, 2007

In an interview set to air on this Sunday’s 60 Minutes, President George W. Bush vows to send an additional 21,500 troops to Iraq “no matter what” the Democratic-controlled Congress tries to do.

“Do you believe as Commander in Chief you have the authority to put the troops in there no matter what the Congress wants to do,” 60 Minutes correspondent Scott Pelley asks Bush in the short clip uploaded to the CBS News web site Friday night.

“I think I’ve got, in this situation, I do, yeah,” Bush said.

“Now I fully understand they will,” Bush continued, “they could try to stop me from doing it, but, uh, I’ve made my decision and we’re going forward.”

Now, I’m no great Constitutionalist; in fact, I’m rather a fan of Lysander Spooner on the issue.

But, a limited government with divided powers is at least preferable to an unlimited one ruled by an autocratic dictator. The Constitution Bush has sworn to uphold clearly says that all appropriations – including for the military – originate in Congress, and that only Congress can declare war. If the President can simply wage undeclared wars and appropriate spending without consent of Congress, is he not a dictator and a traitor to the Constitution?

Bush clearly believes that he can rule by decree, and spend money whether the Congress likes it or not. The new Democrat “opposition” in Congress has ruled out impeachment and the last convention of the Libertarian Party (?) voted it down as well, despite having been proud to be the first party to have officially called for the impeachment of Clinton. Why the double standard?

It’s time for all of us, as individuals and organizations, to stand up together and separately and demand impeachment hearings in Congress. If the Democrats and the LP can’t find the guts to do it, what about Representative
Ron Paul who is now
a candidate for President?

Angel Of Death – Slayer: BSG & CD Remix

via Scott Horton’s Stress

Health Care: Alternatives to Socialism and Fascism

Can liberals and libertarians find common ground on health care solutions?

At http://mutualist.livejournal.com/

01:30 pm – What is worse: socialized medicine or fascist medicine?
With the democrats retaking congress socialized medicine (er, “universal healthcare”) will once again take the center stage. While I certainly expect the far left to spew more rhetoric, I do not expect them to come anywhere close to passing a major health reform bill.

This year, I’m much more worried about the healthcare proposal coming from right-wing groups like the Heritage Foundation and Newt Gingrich’s Center for Health Transformation. The proposal is to legislatively mandate that everyone must buy health insurance and adds subsidies for families under the three times the federal poverty level ($60,000 per year for a family of four). This proposal is already law in Massachusetts, and California is considering adapting it as well.

The rub of the matter:

I think we all want a health care system that is broadly accessible. Rather than focusing on how to generate an accessible system, let’s change the focus on eliminating barriers to access. Of all the barriers to access I could name, the biggest barrier is employer provided health insurance.

After all, isn’t the root of the problem the fact that health insurance is tied to employment? This places all of the power in the hands of corporate managers, who decide whom will receive what benefits, if any at all. Health benefits are lost when people change jobs, reducing mobility, and the self-employed and chronically unemployed are often unable to obtain insurance. Health benefits are subject the budgeting whims of managers, who are increasing using cost sharing and reducing benefits to meet budgets.

The post details how WWII wage controls led to adoption of benefits as a proxy for raises, which in turn were made tax-exempt by Congress after the war. Later, this led to a price spiral in health care costs, eventually leading to the mess we have today.

To see how government started to created this problem even earlier, see

http://ruwart.com/Healing/chap5.html

Which details how the AMA-created monopoly on occupational licensing served to destroy alternative medicine and innovation, and to close the ranks of the medical profession to women, non-whites, and the poor for decades while limiting supply of services and raising prices.

Also, see
Health Care Issues: A Compendium of Posts by Kevin Carson.

This post also appears at
http://pauliecannoli.wordpress.com/2007/01/15/health-care-alternatives-to-socialism-and-fascism/

Open Letter To The LP Leadership

PLEASE FORWARD TO MEMBERS OF THE LIBERTARIAN PARTY

[THOSE WHO AGREE: Please add your name to the list at the bottom and
forward to LNC Chair Bill Redpath at chair AT lp.org... with CC to
hogarth AT gmail.com...]

Bill,

It is now several days since President Bush announced an escalation in Iraq, and several days since word of the escalation has
been widely available. Many members of the Libertarian Party
are concerned at the apparent lack of response from the Libertarian Party to this dangerous and manifestly anti-freedom action on the part of the US government.

We believe that the war in Iraq and the growing American imperialism is one of the most significant issues – if not the most significant – of our time. We believe the Libertarian response to this war, and especially escalation, should be clear and unambiguous. We want to see the Libertarian Party at the forefront of this fateful issue – not lagging behind with weak and ineffective statements, but rather
pressing forward with bold and freedom-oriented proposals. The Libertarian Party should be an antiwar leader, not a follower. The Party should rally its members to protest the war and American
interventionism vigorously.

Therefore we beg you to consider issuing a position paper which takes the following strong antiwar positions:

- The US government should remove all American troops from Iraq immediately.

- The US government should have no role in determining how Iraqi oil revenues are distributed.

- The US government should cease escalation of rhetoric and action against Iran.

- The US government should immediately cease all embargoes everywhere.

The following members of the Libertarian Party are in agreement on the statement above and add their urgings for speedy and decisive action on your part.

Susan Hogarth, Chair, Libertarian Party of Wake County, NC
Paul Elledge, LP member from North Carolina
Sidney Phillip Rhodes, LP member from North Carolina
Seth Anthony, Chair, Libertarian Party at Colorado State University
Paul Frankel, LP member from Alabama

THis post also appears at
http://pauliecannoli.wordpress.com/2007/01/15/open-letter-to-the-lp-leadership/

This Could Happen To Any Of Us

From http://www.clairewolfe.com/blog.html

YOU MAY HAVE SEEN YESTERDAY’S ABC 20/20 REPORT or read the related news story about Matt Bandy, the 16-year-old Arizona boy so hideously railroaded on child-porn charges.

He faced up to ninety years in prison for viewing (and possibly uploading) some porn pix — despite the fact that the images found on the family computer were almost certainly the result of one of the 200+ “infections” plaguing the machine. The family’s computer had been turned into a “zombie” by crackers. (Even if he had viewed or transmitted the images, of course, life in prison would be an appallingly absurd outcome.)

My friend Oliver Del Signore is the webmaster of the Justice4Matt website, which has more information about the family and the horrors inflicted on them. The site isn’t actually seeking justice for Matt; he made a plea bargain to save himself and in the end was even mercifully spared the ghastly necessity of registering as a sex offender everywhere he went for the rest of his life. But it does seek to alert others to the danger of being ensnared between malicious hackers and prosecutors interested only in PR and conviction stats. (And need I mention, Windows software.)

What’s so frightening is that something like this could happen to anybody. Matt Bandy was (and seemingly still is) an exemplary kid from a loving family. His father is a physician. The family is respectable and middle class. Nobody in the family had done anything to make themselves a target for a vengeful government. This witch-hunting madness simply swept down on them from the dark of one December morning with guns drawn. And as so often happens now, nobody from the government was interested in hearing anything that might disprove their fanatical beliefs or dispell their craving for power.

Matt and his family show a lot of courage in being willing to share their story as a warning to others. Consider the Justice4Matt site a worthy weekend read. I only regret that, while the Bandy family has been driven to make its agony public, the writer of the main article on the site disguises the names of the villains from the state who perpetrated this modern Inquisition. Such villains should be exposed and held 100 percent accountable for their actions.

Posted by Claire

This post also appears at
http://pauliecannoli.wordpress.com/2007/01/15/this-could-happen-to-any-of-us/

Walter Cronkite owns the crap out of the drug war

Kubby’s open letter to the 110th Congress

http://kubby2008.com/node/14

To the returning and incoming members of the US House of Representatives and the US Senate:

On January 3rd, our nation’s 110th Congress opened its first session, following an election in which America’s voters gave control of both bodies composing that institution to the Democratic Party for the first time in 12 years. Incoming Speaker Nancy Pelosi has announced that the “first 100 hours” of Congressional work time will be spent righting wrongs and pointing American government in a new direction. Change is in the air — but what kind of change?

I’d like to think that America’s voice has reached the ear of Republican and Democrat alike.

I’d like to believe that all of you will take America’s clear and pointed rejection of the last six years of federal governance — the gross abuse of executive power, the indefensible suppressions of our rightful liberties, the failed policy of bloody and ineffectual foreign military adventurism, the gross fiscal incompetence and imposition of massive debt on future generations, the rampant corruption — to heart, and that you’ll act decisively to turn our government around and point it toward the future.

I’d like to trust you to do those things … but to do so would be to allow hope to triumph over experience. Even as the vortex of political power that is Washington, DC begins to spin up for another cycle, pulling the country’s attention back toward it yet again, what I hear from the center of power is, to say the least, disturbing.

News roundup: 1/11/2007

The Democrats are coming to Denver too, apparently. We were here first, fuckers. At least we Libertarians aren’t putting stupid little stipulations on the city, like unionizing the city’s hotel industry. Get the donkeys outta the West unless they can learn to behave like libertarians and not fuck up our shit.

Oh yeah, and apparently we invaded Iranian soil. It was only an embassy though, so apparently that’s okay. And Bush has reportedly said that he has a bigger dick than the ruler of Syria too while he’s at it. God I need a drink or five.

Oh yeah, and Bob Barr has already gone to bat for the Libertarian Party. He’s helping rein in government data mining. Finally, Libertarians are actually doing things. Sweet!

Ethan Nadelmann on The Colbert Report

By way of Loretta Nall

This post also appears at
http://pauliecannoli.wordpress.com/2007/01/11/ethan-nadelmann-on-the-colbert-report/

Well, now we now why we went to Iraq.

Wonkette’s got the story:

As all the other reasons for the Iraq invasion and occupation are tossed aside for being either intentional deceptions (WMDs) or just plain feel-good nonsense (democracy, human rights, whatever), the real reason for the war has been a total success: U.S. and British oil companies will take over Iraq’s oil fields under a new Iraqi law written by the Bush Administration.

Western energy giants such as Exxon and Shell will control Iraqi oil exploration for the next 30 years while keeping 75% of the profits. Let freedom reign!

Brilliant. I was never one for the whole “it’s all about the oil” theory, but looks like I was wrong.

3000+ dead for a pile of fucking oil.

Shit.

Stop the Draft Before It Starts!

MLL poster: Stop the Draft!

Bush wants a larger military. The Selective Service System is busy testing its draft machinery.

Don’t wait for an official re-launch of the draft. Begin fighting it now. And if you find it useful, feel free to use this poster I’ve created for the Movement of the Libertarian Left. You’ll find a fullsize, downloadable PDF of the poster right here.

posted by Wally Conger @ http://wconger.blogspot.com  

This post also appears at
http://pauliecannoli.wordpress.com/2007/01/11/stop-the-draft-before-it-starts/

I hereby endorse the SHIT outta Ron Paul.

Finally, some unspeakably awesome news from the political world, and a potential reason for me to hold my nose and register Republican’t:

Ron Paul’s running for the GOP nomination, kids! Holy fucking shit!

I respect both Steve Kubby and George Phillies, not to mention all the fine folks who are working for their campaigns, but you know… if Ron Paul wins the GOP nomination, fuck it. I’m voting big party, and not only that, but I hope the LP doesn’t even run a Presidential campaign if that comes to pass. Save the money for down-ticket races. Shit shit shit shit SHIT this is awesome.

It’ll be like Barry Goldwater all over again, except this time we’d win the hell out of everything. No Democrat’s going to be able to out-peace Ron fucking Paul. He’d own them on civil liberties, he’d reconnect with the Republican base on taxation and spending, and he’d force the Democrat into the awkward position of being the socially-conservative one. Oh man oh man oh MAN.

I’m changing my voter registration to Republican just long enough to vote for Ron Paul in the primaries, and you should too. Let’s get a libertarian into the fucking Oval Office at last!

City of Dallas can’t find enough board members

A quarter of the City of Dallas’s various apppointed board positions are vacant. Each city council member is responsible for appointing around 18. In the words of councilmember Angela Hunt:

Sometimes it’s challenging, especially as I try to make it a policy to appoint people in my district…If anyone wants to serve, I would invite them to call my office. Ideally, I want to fill every position I have.

Right, OK. Because we wouldn’t want getting the job done to get in the way of bringing the bacon home for the district, right?

Here’s a hint: if you can’t find anybody in a city of 1.2 million to do a job, it’s probably not worth doing. Review of some of the boards reinforces this view:

• Animal Shelter Commission
• Landmark Commission
• Commission on Productivity and Innovation
• Martin Luther King Jr. Community Center Board (this is an entire board for one city-owned building)
• Youth Commission

These board positions are unpaid, which is good, because if tax dollars were going towards this it would be extra-horrifying (and which explains why the Senior Affairs Commission is full), but also provides another reason for getting rid of them: if even a bloated municipal government won’t pay for something, it almost certainly has no value.

The City of Dallas (which I am not a resident of, but live in a town surrounded by -thus I have a vested interest in its governance) is pretty screwed-up anyways. Every Wednesday, the city-owned radio station, which is generally a very good classical music station, despite its being city-owned, broadcasts the Dallas City Council meetings. They’re full of arguments over how to apply silly rules. Today there was an argument about whether to renew a permit for a tatoo parlor. Another time it was whether a private builder would have discretion of what color brick it would use on the patio of a new high-rise. It’s easy to look at the federales and get pissed off, but look closer to home sometimes too – municipal governments are huge, and nobody’s paying attention.

Surge & Dictatorship

Tuesday, January 9th in News by James Bovard on Antiwar Blog

The real issue in Bush’s speech Wednesday night is not the additional troops he intends to send to Iraq. The real issue is his nearly open proclamation of dictatorial powers.

Apparently, once a president lies a nation into war, he is entitled to absolute power for as long as he chooses. Regardless of how many Americans die or how many hundreds of thousands of foreigners are killed, the president’s prerogatives are sacred, at least as long as he recites the proper phrases regarding the spread of freedom and democracy. American voters made their will on Iraq clear at the polling booth last November. But they, like the Constitution and the federal statute book, don’t matter.

We have already heard from Bush or his lackeys about how the president is entitled to violate laws regarding wiretaps, renditions, torture, mail privacy, etc. The latest “surge” is just another example of how Bush rules by decree.

Will Bush, like other aspiring dictators, be able to cow opposition long enough to consolidate the powers he has seized?

And if the term dictator is offensive – then what is a better term for a politician who claims to be bound by no law or Constitution?

This post also appears at
http://pauliecannoli.wordpress.com/2007/01/11/surge-dictatorship/

LP Radicals Antiwar Press Release

The Libertarian Party Radical Caucus
NEW (9 January, 2007):

The LP Radical Caucus offers a press release sketching a Libertarian response to the Bush adminstration’s war escalation.

The press release is for the use of any Libertarian Party affiliate or organization wanting a rapid and forceful response to Bush’s call for escalation in Iraq. Please feel free to place your group’s name and contact information on it and release it to your local media. If you would like to make changes, feel free to do so. No credit need (or should) be given – release this under your own group’s name. The LP should be providing affiliates with platform-compliant, forceful statements on current news events. The LP should be taking a strong antiwar stand. The activists of the LP Radical Caucus offer this release to help LP affiliates make a strong Libertarian statement on current events.

9 January, 2007

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
[contact info here]

Libertarians:
The people must lead, and the leaders must follow.

In November, the American people clearly demanded an end to war and occupation in Iraq.

George Bush’s response is now clear: he plans to repeat the mistakes of Vietnam and escalate a war that most Americans and most Iraqis do not support; a military occupation and puppet rule that has killed hundreds of thousands of Iraqi civilians and killed or maimed tens of thousands of American soldiers.

The Democratic Party has also turned a deaf ear to those who voted in the vain hope that Democrats would end the occupation. Democratic Party leaders in Congress have opted for ‘partnership’ in the crimes of the Bush administration, rather than leadership in ending the unlawful military action.

The Libertarian Party stands absolutely opposed to the war in Iraq and to foreign military intervention anywhere. The politicians have demonstrated that they will not lead, so they must be made to follow. If those opposed to the war – from left, right, and center – gather together with a passionate focus solely on ending American imperialism, the rulers will follow the people – as they should. If we let ourselves be divided at this critical moment in history by our domestic differences, the wars started in the last century will linger on and end in disaster. We must stand united against the coming draft, against the expansion of imperial rule, and against all aggression both at home and abroad.

Libertarians call on Congress to end taxation and spending in support of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, to end preparations in place for a new draft (including selective service registration), and to end punishing embargoes everywhere which encourage war and discourage the expansion of peace through trade and communication.

As Libertarians, we seek a world of liberty; a world in which all individuals are sovereign over their own lives and no one is forced to sacrifice his or her values for the benefit of others.

We believe that respect for individual rights is the essential precondition for a free and prosperous world, that force and fraud must be banished from human relationships, and that only through freedom can peace and prosperity be realized.

This post also appears at

http://pauliecannoli.wordpress.com/2007/01/10/lp-radicals-antiwar-press-release/

Kubby 2008 update

The new Kubby 2008 website is up, thanks to Knappster.

http://www.kubby2008.com

The previous Kubby.com was not specifically about the campaign, rather, it was a combination of everything Steve Kubby has done in the last decade or so of his life.

This one is more focused, and more modern looking, but does not have a whole ton of content yet – that’s coming soon, though.

As you can see in the staff directory, the Cannoli is now Assistant National Volunteer Coordinator of Kubby for President 2008.

At the moment, that means I’m helping set up
google groups for Kubby supporters in every state. We have most of them done, but it will probably take a day or two more to finish. If anyone wants to help, go to the staff directory link and give Knappster, Ben Todd and myself a holler.

Knapp tells me he is working on producing radio commercials with the Sloan Ranger, a radio personality in the STL.
We’ll also probably be making TV commercial with my friend Doug Scribner, who made the pollie award winning Kubby for Governor TV commercials in 1998.

We’ll be needing some help with the print materials. This is a very rough beta which we already discussed earlier on this site.

Brochure

Business/Playing Cards

There’s also the Kubby Blog and
myspace page.

As of yesterday, the Beyonce Viral Video
which includes Kubby was at 32,000 views.

Oh yeah, and the discussion at my last Kubby in the News update I posted is still going strong, with the most comments of any topic post on Last Free Voice so far.

This post also appears at
http://pauliecannoli.wordpress.com/2007/01/09/kubby-2008-update/

They found a lost episode of Seinfeld…

Man, if this is wrong, I don’t wanna be right.

Police State of Overkill

Posted by Claire Wolfe at
http://clairewolfe.com/blog.html

THIS WEEK’S BUST of that dangerous threat to civic order, a scholarly historian.

Can you count the number of cops in the picture, boys and girls? Seven? Well, maybe. But it looks as if the champion donut-gobbler in the center may also be one of those kindly and helpful protectors of our peace and liberty. No uniform, but that does appear to be a badge on his jacket. And look — yellow police tape, too!

But of course, the crime totally justifies this show of governmental force. We must have an all-out war to end forever the deadly menace of jaywalkers!

Okay, sarcasm mode off.

The world heads for a collision course. On the one hand, the standard “hooray for the brutal cops” TV shows are to be joined this week by Armed and Famous, which puts tacky celebrities into uniform and sends them out to bust us lesser folk. (Although this may be the first time anyone’s made a TV series out of it, it’s not a new game. Shaquille O’Neal was recently caught lending entirely new meaning to the term “Shaq Attack”.) But on the other, at least a few commentators in the mainstream media are finally starting to notice and object to all the overblown brutality.

Unfortunately, you and I know that the paramilitary power ascendency is terrifyingly well entrenched and perfectly serves the purposes of its real masters. (Who, I’m sure you good blog readers hardly need the hint, aren’t you and me.) Anybody who thinks this military-style overkill began with 9-11 (as the above SF Chronicle commentator wishes to believe) hasn’t been watching. It’s had a long, long time to send down its roots. Anybody who thinks mere public indignation will end the overkill and the peacock-like displays of savagery doesn’t know the real purpose of paramilitary policing.

Besides, the people like it. And why not? It makes waaay more interesting TV than the two polite cops of Dragnet ever did. And always remember, it’s only being done to those other people. You know, the ones that are a different color or class or national origin from us and who therefore don’t count.

Why Are We Now in Somalia?

The first strike we have done since that fateful day when we lost two large towers in New York struck a cord with me. I realized then that we were after a dangerous enemy, Osama Bin Laden. He was a radical terrorist who apparently tried to blow up the World Trade Center before in the 1990’s, failed, then succeeded using hijacked planes. The United States retaliated with a small but strong force in the Afghanistan deserts, using an arsenal not seen in the region since the former Soviet Union invaded the territory. Were we justified in this action? Probably.

Then for some unknown reason, not less than a year after the strike upon our two monstrous, cyclopean towers in NYC, we invaded Iraq under the guise of “Weapons of Mass Destruction” and the typical freeing of the oppressed. Our “newfound” enemy, A recently well-hung gentleman (pun intended) known to us as the former dictator and CIA pawn Saddam Hussein, became our new prime directive. Now this also struck a cord with me but not in the same manner. Was our focus on the terrorists who flew two large passenger jets into the sides of our monoliths in NYC or did we come to the conclusion that Saddam Hussein was more dangerous than the man who actually succeeded in striking a blow on the land of “the free”? This brought more concern because our justification for invasion was an act of empire building, something our forefathers rejected and fled from, short of manifest destiny.

Texas Prison Camp Future American Gulag?

Detention facility currently holds as many as 200 children incarcerated after midnight arrests

Prison Planet | January 8, 2007
Paul Joseph Watson & Alex Jones

A detention camp in Taylor Texas that currently holds hundreds of rebuffed asylum seekers who legally entered the country, half of which are children swept up in midnight raids, is a potential prime location for the enforced transfer of American citizens during a time of national emergency.

The privatized Hutto jail, which is also administered by Homeland Security and Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), currently interns political asylum seekers who came to the U.S. on legal visas. Most of them are families including pregnant women and children who have never been accused of any wrongdoing but are forced to endure squalid conditions inside literal concentration camps.

In 2004 the facility was on the verge of being shutdown due to lack of occupancy but new immigration policies, allied to the burgeoning growth of the prison industry and future plans to detain American citizens on masse, have revived the potential scope of the camp, and a new contract to intern 600 individuals was finalized with immigration authorities in December 2005.

The facility is euphemistically called a “Residential Center,” yet c harges of overcrowding and poor conditions are rife , with an estimated 645 people filling a facility that has only 512 beds.

“Innocent children should not be jailed and forced to live under traumatizing and dehumanizing conditions,” said a statement from Texans United for Families, an organization that recently held a vigil protest at the facility. “It is bad policy and an impractical and inhumane response to a growing refugee crisis. The U.S. should seek alternatives to detention while making sure that it legislates policies that support families and keep them together and out of jail.”

The Infowars team recently visited the facility and were promptly told to leave the premises before having their names taken, but not before they were able to get footage of the camp “playground” where some of the children were playing behind giant mesh barbed wire. The children were kept indoors throughout the taping and were only allowed out when the film crew left to eat lunch.

Story continues at

http://www.infowars.com/articles/ps/
concentration_camps_tx_prison_camp_future_american_gulag.htm

This post also appears at
http://pauliecannoli.wordpress.com/2007/01/09/texas-prison-camp-future-american-gulag/

An Introduction

It has been a few days since Mr. Richards introduced me to Last Free Voice and I figured I should better introduce myself before I get to spread my ignorance to every one of you.

I come from a predominantly Republican family with a strong work ethic I never inherited.

I come from a very religious family who feels the need to spread their ideas and ideals on the population in the name of their deity, whereas I am a devout, religious non-evangelical and non-totalitarian spreader of my faith i.e. “worship as you please as long as I can worship as I please” kind of guy.

I come from a very quiet family whereas I married a loud woman who bore me three beautiful girls who are just like their mother.

I come from Jewish stock so expect to hear some strange Yiddish phrases emanating from me once in a while. It may come in handy to find a Yiddish to English transliterated translator online if possible.

I am dry in my humor so please feel free to pick on me as you please. After all I am the uneducated one here as far as politics go.

You also may be wondering as to why I am here and why I became a Libertarian. Well it wasn’t for the ability to hide inside a huge party and remain a wallflower if that was your first thought. The truth be known I was a Libertarian long before I knew what one was. Freedom and the rights to freedom, the Constitution and our forefathers is why I became a Libertarian. I joined because of the heart, not the mind of the Libertarian Party and I personally believe that if we were to sidestep the semantics we could become a free nation once again, no longer under the guise of freedom but actually living it, just like our founders had set up for us.

So here I am and thank you for bearing with me on this venture.

Sincerely,
C. E. Oberg

The Beach Impeach Project

More than 1000 people gathered on Ocean Beach, in Nancy Pelosi’s district, to serve as a political message.

Creative dissent from the left coast. I wonder if Pelosi is a patron of the arts.

*** Photo courtesy John Montgomery.

This post also appears at
http://pauliecannoli.wordpress.com/2007/01/09/impeach-the-son-of-a-beach/

Pelosi vows to look like douche while raising taxes on rich

Ye fucking gods, just look at the broad. If that’s her “tough face” then… yeah. *shudder*

In an effort to promote bipartisanship, Nancy Pelosi has offered to take over some of President Bush’s responsibility to provide the blogosphere with stuff to laugh at. The President told LFV reporters something about “finally I can stop eating all these pretzels to outdo that sumbitch Jimmy Carter.

In other news, Nancy Pelosi was rumored to have been contemplating a tax hike on the rich. Her statements:

“As we review what we get from … collecting our taxes and reducing waste, fraud and abuse, investing in education and in initiatives which will bring money into the Treasury, it may be that (repealing) tax cuts for those making over a certain amount of money, $500,000 a year, might be more important to the American people than ignoring the educational and health needs of America’s children,” Pelosi, D-California, said in an interview aired Sunday.

Translating from her native Districtese, her statements can be interpreted thus:

Brazil judge on free speech: “OMGWTFBBQ!?”

Perhaps he also eats babies in his spare time?

YouTube is being blocked by Brazil’s second largest fixed-line telephone operator in response to a judicial order banning a steamy video of supermodel Daniela Cicarelli, the telephone company said Monday.

Brasil Telecom SA prohibited access to YouTube across a wide swath of Latin America’s most populous country late Friday after receiving the order, said a company spokesman who declined to give his name because of departmental policy.

The widely viewed video shows Cicarelli and Brazilian banker Renato Malzoni in intimate scenes along a beach near the Spanish city of Cadiz. It became even more popular over the weekend after the Brazil ban made headlines worldwide and users posted it to a slew of other Web sites.

OH NOES ITS TEH SECKS AGAIN GET TEH BANSTICK, U R BANNZORED FROM TEH BRAZIL.

Aren’t these the same dudes that throw those huge Carnival celebrations, anyway? How the hell did this happen?

NASA might have accidentally killed tiny Martians.

You can’t make this shit up.

Two NASA space probes that visited Mars 30 years ago may have found alien microbes on the Red Planet and inadvertently killed them, a scientist is theorizing.

The Viking space probes of 1976-77 were looking for the wrong kind of life, so they didn’t recognize it, a geology professor at Washington State University said.

…

In the 1970s, the Viking mission found no signs of life.

But it was looking for Earth-like life, in which salt water is the internal liquid of living cells.

Given the cold dry conditions of Mars, life could have evolved on Mars with the key internal fluid consisting of a mix of water and hydrogen peroxide, said Schulze-Makuch.

That’s because a water-hydrogen peroxide mix stays liquid at very low temperatures, or -68 degrees Fahrenheit, and doesn’t destroy cells when it freezes. It can suck water vapor out of the air.

The Viking experiments of the 1970s wouldn’t have noticed hydrogen peroxide-based life and, in fact, would have killed it by drowning and overheating the microbes, said Schulze-Makuch.

Unintentional Irony, and Wishful Thinking

---

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Nifty!

“Dishonest Dubya” Lying Action Figure

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By way of Lisa Morgan

Also posted at:

http://pauliecannoli.wordpress.com/2007/01/08/unintentional-irony-and-wishful-thinking/

Somalia vs. Ethiopia (Aliens vs. Predators)

Earlier, Stuart and I discussed Ethiopia and Somalia

I came across this today, and thought back to that discussion….

Rad Geek writes….

… Ethiopia decided to launch a bombing campaign and a ground assault against Somalia. The putative purpose of the invasion is to run out the network of sharia courts that recently took over some of the major cities in Somalia, and then to install the transitional government into power. For those keeping track, that’s the gang of pretenders who have been holed up in the town of Baidoia for the past year, and exercising effective power over basically nowhere outside of their headquarters. (The Baidoia government was in fact governing from a secure location in Kenya for about two years before they even got up the gumption to relocate to somewhere actually in Somalia.)

So why do you suppose it is that virtually every American news report on Ethiopia’s war of conquest has insisted on referring to the Baidoia gang by the phrase Somalia’s internationally-backed government (2, 3, 4), or Somalia’s internationally-recognized government (6, 7), whenever they mention the purpose of the assault?

Do you suppose it’s because the only people who have really demonstrated any particular interest in the Baidoia gang’s pretensions to authority are foreign governments, rather than, well, Somalis?

Further reading:

• Benjamin Powell, The Independent Institute (2006-12-22): Somali Anarchy Is More Orderly than Somali Government
• the show with zefrank (2006-12-28): Somalia Briefly
• WolfesBlog (2006-11-17): The allegiance of governments is to government

Also posted at:

http://pauliecannoli.wordpress.com/2007/01/08/somalia-vs-ethiopia/

Army asks dead to sign up for another hitch

CNN | January 6, 2007 by way of Alex Jones

Story Highlights

•Letters inadvertently sent out to officers killed in action
•200 wounded soldiers also receive letters
•Invitations intended for soldiers who had recently left service
•Army sending out personnel to personally apologize to families

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Army said Friday it would apologize to the families of about 275 officers killed or wounded in action who were mistakenly sent letters urging them to return to active duty.

The letters were sent a few days after Christmas to more than 5,100 Army officers who had recently left the service. Included were letters to about 75 officers killed in action and about 200 wounded in action.

“Army personnel officials are contacting those officers’ families now to personally apologize for erroneously sending the letters,” the Army said in a brief news release issued Friday night.

The Army did not say how or when the mistake was discovered. It said the database normally used for such correspondence with former officers had been “thoroughly reviewed” to remove the names of wounded or dead soldiers.

“But an earlier list was used inadvertently for the December mailings,” the Army statement said, adding that the Army is apologizing to those officers and families affected and “regrets any confusion.”

Over at Ground Up Libs yahoo group Michael H. Wilson comments…

“Bush should be impeached, then arrested and charged with the crimes he has committed and upon being convicted he should spend the remainder of his days cleaning the soiled laundry of those injured in this debacle. Twelve hours a day 7 days a week for the remainder of his life.”

MHW
Civil Liberties
Economic Freedom

Also posted at:

http://pauliecannoli.wordpress.com/2007/01/07/army-asks-dead-to-sign-up-for-another-hitch/

Bush wants to read our mail

Silly President, writs are for feds.

A signing statement attached to postal legislation by President Bush last month may have opened the way for the government to open mail without a warrant.

The White House denies any change in policy.

The law requires government agents to get warrants to open first-class letters.

But when he signed the postal reform act, Bush added a statement saying that his administration would construe that provision “in a manner consistent, to the maximum extent permissible, with the need to conduct searches in exigent circumstances. …”

…

The full signing statement said:

“The executive branch shall construe subsection 404(c) of title 39, as enacted by subsection 1010(e) of the act, which provides for opening of an item of a class of mail otherwise sealed against inspection, in a manner consistent, to the maximum extent permissible, with the need to conduct searches in exigent circumstances, such as to protect human life and safety against hazardous materials, and the need for physical searches specifically authorized by law for foreign intelligence collection.

Dammit Bush, stop sucking.

How about electing some real people?

The op-ed page of the newspaper seems to alternate between filled with people trying to sound nuanced by creating an “opinion” out of a hodgepodge of rhetoric from the “right” and the “left” and people that might as well be fellating an elephant or a donkey. But today, the Dallas Morning News published a piece by David Brooks of the New York Times pointing out that neither the Democrats or the Republicans have what I would call “real people” as their leaders:

I have a dream that Ms. Pelosi, who was chauffeured to school as a child and who, with her investor husband, owns minority shares in the Auberge du Soleil resort hotel and the CordeValle Golf Club, will look over her famous strand of South Sea Tahitian pearls and forge bonds of understanding with the zillionaire corporate barons in the opposing party.

Zing. Let the quotes continue, because they’re awesome:

[Nancy Pelosi] is part of the clash of the rival elites, with the dollars from Brookline battling dollars from Dallas, causing upper-class strife that even diminutive dogs, vibrant velvets and petite salades can’t fully soothe.

And you expect people who own such things to use the guns of government for the “greater good” why?

The main fact to know about Ms. Pelosi is that she is a creature of the modern fundraising system. Some politicians rise because they run political machines.

Some rise because they are great communicators. Ms. Pelosi has risen because she is a master of the thousand-dollar-a-plate fundraising circuit.

Note what wasn’t included in that list: being smart, understanding the economy, or any other skill that actually makes one qualified to run the country. Maybe it’s time to elect some real people.

Dems start doing shit

Yeah, it surprised me too.

Let’s go down the list with the Dems’ “100-Hour Plan.”

First off, they’re going to set up a dealie where you can’t increase spending unless you increase taxes, and you can’t cut taxes unless you cut spending. Fiscal responsibility; I like it. Or rather, I would if it wasn’t just window dressing:

Democratic budget hawks, especially the moderate-to-conservative “Blue Dogs,” say that restoring the rule is crucial to curbing the budget deficit. Various forms of PAYGO were in place from 1990-2002, however, and Congress often found ways around it.

The version up for a vote Friday can easily be waived. Still, the incoming chairman of the Budget Committee, John Spratt Jr., D-South Carolina, touted it as better than the status quo.

“You’ve got to offset those tax cuts,” Spratt said. “And if you want to enhance an entitlement, you’ve got to pay for it.”

George Phillies on Iraq

George Phillies has released a new position paper on Iraq. Unsurprisingly, it advocates leaving immediately, the only principled and pragmatic option:

“For three thousand Americans, their relatives, and their families, peace with Iraq is now too late. Those three thousand Americans made the ultimate sacrifice for their country: They died fighting a pointless war in a foreign land. We cannot undo the sacrifice that they made. We should seek to ensure that more Americans do not go forth, courageously, only to make the same sacrifice in the distant desert sands of Iraq.

Our soldiers in Iraq face hazards unknown in past wars. They are under constant attack. No matter how often George Bush claims that we are winning, the number of effective attacks against us continues to climb, in the past year from 70 to 180 per day. Worse, that count of attacks does not include vastly more “violent acts” committed against us. Those violent acts apparently number more than one thousand a day. Over the course of a year, that’s two violent acts for each serviceman and each servicewoman in Iraq. No matter where our troops go, to Iraq’s teeming cities, to the remote wastes of Al Anbar province, or even to their bases and bunkers, Iraqi guerrillas continue their incessant war on our men and women.

There are no front lines. Our opponents wear no uniforms. Except when they are actively shooting at us, they simply blend in with their fellow Iraqis. Our brave men and women have no way to tell friend from foe, no response except to wait and watch.

For our soldiers, sailors, and airmen overseas, not to mention their families and friends, this is a war that tests people’s spirits. In World War II and Korea, there were front lines. In Viet Nam, there were areas where the Viet Cong was inactive. In the Iraqi capital, our people take refuge in the Green zone, protected by massive berms and razor wire, but the Green Zone is regularly attacked.

Our original war aims, whether sensible or misguided, at least made sense in English. We invaded Iraq to pursue President Hussein’s weapons of mass destruction. We invaded Iraq to end collaboration between Iraq and various terrorist groups. We invaded Iraq to remove President Hussein for power.

We did those things. There were no WMDs in Iraq. The Iraqi government hated Al Qaida. President Hussein had nothing to do with September 11. Now President Hussein has had his appointment with the hangman. The original mission may have been pointless, but that’s no fault of our servicemen or their relatives and families.

It’s time to bring the War on Iraq to an end. It’s time to bring our men and women home from Iraq. No matter when we leave, the Iraqis will still face their national problems. It’s no criticism of our military’s dedication or courage to say that further fighting is futile. Iraq’s problems are problems the Iraqis must solve for themselves. Our intervention only wastes American lives.

Libertarian judge swears in Libertarian office-holder

This is a first for American politics, I do believe.

From the Muncie Free Press:

“What makes this so very special is that this is the first time this has ever happened to my knowledge in the United States. Never before has a judge elected as a Libertarian given the oath of office to any newly elected officials elected as a Libertarian” said Mark Rutherford, State Chairman of the Libertarian Party of Indiana.

“Despite the election law hurdles placed against the Libertarian Party by the Republicans and Democrats, the Libertarian Party has grown in Indiana to the point where an elected Libertarian judge is now giving the oath of office to two Libertarian elected officials today.”

Susan Bell was elected to the Town Court in 2003. Tillson was elected to the Clay Township Advisory Board, and Coffman was elected to the Liberty Township Advisory Board in last November’s election.

Good for them. The LPIN is sounding more and more like a force in local politics… they’ve got a lot to be proud of and in a few more years they could be electing state senators, easily.

Yet another new blogger.

My friend C.E. Oberg is now a blogger here on LFV.

He’s new to the libertarian movement and has pretty much no experience with its inner workings-which is precisely why I thought he would make an excellent addition to this blog. Too often, we libertarians are too busy looking for the forest that we can’t see it because all the trees are in the way. Yet the inner workings of our libertarian brains are all-too-often foreign and scary to outsiders when they need not be. So, every once in a while, it’s a good thing to bring in outside opinions and outside views to give ourselves a fresh perspective. Companies do this in the real world; even the Libertarian Party just did it with Bob Barr.

He’s done other things too. He helps me keep my message boards in line, and he’s tipped me off to news plenty of times in the past, both for articles I’ve written here and back on HoT.

I look forward to reading his insights on the libertarian movement, and welcome him to the fold.

Immigration and the 2008 LP Presidential Race

As George Phillies’s electronic outreach coordinator, I’ve been taking some heat on his immigration position, reproduced here:

Americans are entitled to the certainty that their country’s just laws will be enforced until those laws are changed. Furthermore, America is a welfare state with generous safety net. The low-cost workers we import into America pay less in taxes than the social services they receive, so a vote for open borders is also a vote for a tax increase on the rest of us. Needless to say, I am not in the habit of supporting tax increases.

There’s some other stuff in there, but that’s the essence of it. Immigration isn’t an issue in a vacuum. Yes, open borders would be ideal, but if borders are opened without an elimination of free handouts, “entitlements” would skyrocket, as would the national debt. Obviously the goal is to eliminate silly immigration controls and free handouts, but to advocate one without advocating the other is silliness.

Liberal/libertarian alliance?

We’ve been cast as bedfellows together in 2006 simply because the Republicans finally got too bad to handle. But can we libertarians somehow hew out a sort of living arrangement with the liberals like we did with the conservatives once upon a time? Brink Lindsey seems to think so.

As a string of recent books attests, the conservative embrace of a right-wing Leviathan has left libertarian-minded intellectuals feeling left out in the cold. Bruce Bartlett, a Treasury Department official in the Reagan and Bush I administrations, blasted Bush II in Impostor: How George W. Bush Bankrupted America and Betrayed the Reagan Legacy (and got fired from his conservative think tank for his efforts). Cato Institute scholar Stephen Slivinski followed up with Buck Wild, an exposé of GOP fiscal incontinence. In The Elephant in the Room, New York Post columnist Ryan Sager bemoaned the rise of big-government conservatism and warned that excessive pandering to evangelicals would rupture the movement. And, most recently, the New Republic’s Andrew Sullivan denounced the right’s fundamentalist turn in The Conservative Soul: How We Lost It, How to Get It Back.

3,000th GI Killed In Iraq

via Antiwar.com blog
Sunday, December 31st in News by Margaret Griffis

According to the web site Icasualties.org, the number of U.S. servicemember casualties in Iraq has reached the 3,000 mark. The web site, which tracks American deaths in both Iraq and Afghanistan, reported the latest casualty this afternoon. He was Spc. Dustin R. Donica, 22, of Spring, Texas and died of small arms fire in Baghdad on December 28th. The death takes the monthly total to 111 deaths. December was the third bloodiest month since the invasion and the deadliest of the year.

Hagel’s not running. :\

Not even for reelection. From AntiWar.com:

Chuck Hagel, one of the few sane Republicans left standing, will not run for President, according to this source. Heck, he’s not even going to run for reelection to his Senate seat.

That’s too bad. He’s not perfect, but he’s the closest I’ve ever seen this state get to libertarian. He’s right about… I’d ballpark it at 85% of the time. And now he’s not going to be representing us, meaning that some cookie-cutter Bush shill will probably be elected in his place in 2008.

Fucking shame, that.

Kubby in the News

Eric Dondero asks over at Third Party Watch Any press for Kubby or Phillies?

Bush vs. Beyonce Video Includes Kubby

Steve Kubby appears briefly in this music video parody of Beyonce’s #1 single “Irreplaceable,” and it examines the political overtones in her lyrics. With George W. Bush’s approval ratings at an all-time low and Beyonce’s song at the top of the Billboard charts, the video has become a smash hit on YouTube, scoring over 7,500 hits in its first 3 days on the Internet.
Of course it’s been out a lot longer now.

http://pauliecannoli.wordpress.com/2006/12/24/video-test-bush-vs-beyonce/

Kubby.com Leads in
Presidential Website Rankings

Libertarian Steve Kubby is the early leader in the presidential website rankings, according to traffic ranking data from Alexa.com

Next Prez Blog

RANKED 1ST AMONG THIRD PARTY AND INDEPENDENTS

For the second week in a row, the popular blog The Next Prez has rated Steve Kubby the #1 candidate from any third party or independent candidate. (that was a few weeks ago, don’t know about since then).

LP National Chair Comments
on Kubby running for President

William Redpath, the National Chairman of the Libertarian Party appeared on CSPAN’s Washington Journal and immediately thought of Steve Kubby when asked about Libertarians running for President.
http://kubby.com/lp-stevekubby.wmv

KUBBY SPEAKS OUT ON MEDICAL RIGHTS

Recently, Steve Kubby was invited to speak at the 34th Annual Cancer Control Society Convention. Since 1973, the Cancer Control Society has brought life-saving information to thousands of patients and their families. Over 50 speakers, 6 movies and 80 exhibits were presented at the Sheraton Universal Hotel in Hollywood, California during the Labor Day Weekend.

KUBBY ANNOUNCES BID FOR PRESIDENT

SEATTLE — Steve Kubby announced his candidacy for the Libertarian Party nomination for President to more than 50,000 cheering fans on Sunday, August 20, at the 15th annual Seattle Hempfest in Seattle, Washington. More than 150,000 attended the event held in Myrtle Edwards Park on the shores of Puget Sound.

Kubby in the News (left column) at
http://kubby.com/00-kubbynews.html

See the archive of past (pre-presidential campaign) coverage
Over 400 Articles and Editorials about Steve Kubby:

2005 http://kubby.com/archives.2005.html

2004 http://kubby.com/archives.2004.html

2003 http://kubby.com/archives.2003.html

2002 http://kubby.com/archives.2002.html

2001 http://kubby.com/archives.2001.html

2000 http://kubby.com/archives.2000jan-aug.html

1999 http://kubby.com/archives.1999jan-dec.html

Also posted at:

http://pauliecannoli.wordpress.com/2007/01/03/kubby-in-the-news/

Ethiopian-backed Somali government legalizes a drug

Maybe they’re not all bad?

Perhaps the most telling sign of Somalia’s remarkable power shift is the rapid return to Mogadishu’s streets of the leafy twigs known as ‘khat’.

Traditionally chewed by most Somali men, but outlawed since June by hardline Islamists, the mild stimulant reappeared within hours of Mogadishu’s recapture by government forces last week.

“I am happy that miraa (khat) is back on the street. Now we can work because it gives us some energy,” said Abdi Awale, a Mogadishu resident. “But my expenses will go up again.”

Normally chewed in the afternoons and evenings, the leaf releases a mild stimulant, although users later feel down. It has a central place in Somali social gatherings, and gives a livelihood to traders and importers.

The Somali Islamic Courts Council (SICC) beat a hasty retreat from the capital and much of the south they had controlled for six months after a two-week war with government forces backed by Ethiopian troops.

You know, I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again… these Ethiopian soldiers aren’t the worst I’ve seen. Actually, they’re really effective. They won’t be bogged down in Somalia for the next few years, either-their exit strategy will be the victory that they’ve almost accomplished.

Not as cool as no war at all, but… eh. I’m not terribly worried for Somalia’s future anymore. I think they’ll do okay.

Drowning in dogma

Being a libertarian environmentalist can be frustrating. Take the most obvious issue, global warming. Many of my favorite Libertarian personalities (like Ian Bernard of Free Talk Live) insist that global warming is either a myth, not anthropogenic, or not a problem. Many environmentalists scream about the need for more government intervention. In reality, they’re both being dogmatic. I believe that the market is the best solution to environmental problems, not government or ignorance.

It’s the statist environmentalists that are pissing me off now. A Sioux Falls, SD company has genetically engineered cattle that almost certainly cannot be infected with BSE, otherwise known as mad cow disease. Average beef-eaters would say “Awesome, now I can eat beef without worrying about slowly dying from variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease.”

But it’s easy to imagine what would happen if this company tried to bring the cows to market. People wearing funny costumes would protest, the FDA would be required to go through a multi-year process to ensure the safety of something that almost certainly carries zero risk. I have a better solution than regulation: let those of us who feel the risk of vCJD is worse than the risk of something going wrong with the cows eat them, and let those other people eat “natural” cows.

Government: The last thing you want in charge of the environment

Anytime a problem of seemingly incomprehensible enormity faces a group of people, they tend to run to the most enormous thing they can think of for help. As a general rule, the most enormous thing they can think of is national government, or even larger, international bodies like the United Nations or organizations based around treaties such as the Kyoto Protocol. The solutions offered by these organizations generally include an expansion of the power of the government. This generally does not seem dangerous at the time, because government power is being expanded to accomplish something generally regarded as beneficial.

What this viewpoint fails to recognize is that anytime government power is expanded to accomplish something, no matter how beneficial, that government automatically has the power to the opposite. In a system of government which changes constantly due to elections, policies and opinions can change rapidly. Thus, in national forests established to protect their natural state, logging companies are now encouraged to transform old-growth trees into paper and two-by-fours to build suburbs.

Even so, it is tempting to resort to government power to bring solutions to the most terrifying problems confronting the world. Anthropogenic worldwide climate change is certainly among these, but still, resorting to government leaves open dangerous paths for future administrations to take. For example, artificially curbing carbon outputs through regulation lets the next group of politicians with different loyalties raise caps and rewrite laws and regulations which end up raising carbon emissions above what they would normally be.

Such concerns are not hypothetical; for example, deforestation – essentially the removal of a valuable carbon sink – is encouraged by the United States Forest Service, even including clear-cuts which essentially raze the forest. Clearly the simple existence of a government program that is supposed to take care of something guarantees nothing; in fact, all that can be guaranteed is that the allegiances of its bosses will change.

Even when a lobby is so powerful that changing politicians are frightened to ever change their favorite programs foists an idea on the government on the premise that it will help the environment, frequently the environmental benefits are questionable at bets. The most obvious example of this problem is the huge subsidy on corn ethanol provided by the United States government. Although sugarcane-derived ethanol works in Brazil, making fuel-grade ethanol from corn is highly inefficient and has mediocre results for the environment – though the profits it makes the corn lobby are unquestionable.

Nothing can match the government of a developed nation in centralized power and wealth, which is of course what makes government an obvious choice to attempt to solve problems that threaten our existence as a species. However, as governments are fickle and often backtrack, the dedicated efforts of private groups and individuals are the only thing that can consistently defend the environment.

No one group can cover all aspects of environmental protection and advocacy, but specialization is a positive feature of private environmentalism – groups such as the Nature Conservancy can focus on actually maintaining ecosystems and reserve areas, groups at universities such as our own Solar Decathlon team and our competitors can work towards finding more efficient and environmentally friendly ways to live, along with private-sector innovators taking advantage of the fact that efficiency is, as a general rule, profitable and environmentally friendly.

Another advantage of private-sector environmentalism is that it is better at weeding out poor ideas such as corn-based ethanol: without the altering presence of lobbyist-guided politicians, ideas that don’t work are not drawn out for decades based on political favoritism.
Handing responsibility for our environment to a fickle, huge, and easily confused beast like government is about as sensible and responsible as entrusting an infant to a seemingly friendly grizzly bear: the infant will be secure while the bear remains friendly, but there’s no question that things will change.

Random shit roundup: 1/1/2007

So a bunch of new laws go into effect today.

Shit laws:

Seven states — Arizona, California, Delaware, Massachusetts, New York, North Carolina and Pennsylvania — are raising their minimum wage. The federal minimum is $5.15 an hour. The new wages go as high as $7.50 an hour.

Frustrated by what some see as inaction in Washington, California passed a law that seeks to force coal-burning plants in the western U.S. to install cleaner technology if they want to sell power in the nation’s most populous state.

States also dealt with immigration (Nurses from other countries must have English language proficiency to practice in South Carolina)

campaign finance (North Carolina and Pennsylvania set stricter rules)

South Dakota and Texas raised taxes on cigarettes.

Massachusetts’ new health care law allows those earning up to 300 percent of the federal poverty level to buy into subsidized plans. (Those at or below the poverty level are being signed up for virtually free health care).

And so we’re told this is the golden age, and gold is the reason for the wars we wage…

Happy fucking New Year’s Day.

The U.S. military on Sunday announced its 3,000th fatality from the Iraq war.

The identity of the 3,000th military death could not be precisely determined as the exact times of deaths late last week were not immediately available.

On Monday, the military said two soldiers were killed Sunday in an explosion in Iraq’s Diyala province, north of Baghdad, bringing the death toll to 3,002.

The U.S. military death toll includes seven civilians working for the Department of Defense.

More than 22,000 other U.S. troops have been wounded in Iraq since the war began nearly four years ago.

What a way to ring in the new year. Dammit Bush, Congress, someone, get us out of there.

Saddam Hussein is dead.

*WARNING: SADDAM DIES. KINDA SORTA GRAPHIC. VIEWER DISCRETION ADVISED.*

And good riddance.

Was it worth the death and mayhem of the invasion? No. But fuck it, let’s take our silver linings where we can get them.

One murderous despot down, hundreds to go.