Long time no see. I’ve been thinking about this place for a bit while I’ve been out, hoping it’s been going okay. I should have known better than to question any project associated with the fine bloggers here, though, and I see it’s gone pretty smoothly. Apparently we lost our domain name but that might be back, but no matter what it looks like we’re staying here.
I’ve been out for a while due to pressing IRL issues (I’m going to be a dad? Muh?) but hopefully I can return in a somewhat limited form, at least, for a while. In the meantime I’ve noticed that Ron Paul’s been steadily following a stealth delegate strategy. What can I say? I hope it works out for him; if it doesn’t it means that the only political story I’ve really had time to follow will end in defeat.
What’s happened in the Libertarian Party since I’ve been out, guys?
It’s kind of academic to a lot of people, but to a very select handful of the electorate, it’s one of the most critical issues.
Where does Ron Paul stand on Native American rights?
Right now the Bureau of Indian Affairs routinely denies Native Americans basic rights, rights that if systematically denied the average American would throw the country into the hands of the other party, if not outright revolution.
Lakota farmers have to seek BIA permission to grow crops on their own reservation, and continually agitate for their land back while the government owns and does nothing with the adjoining Custer National Grasslands and Oglala National Grasslands. Why can’t we give that back to them, and why can’t we let them have the same freedom we give our own farmers?
Osage members have to sign a “stupid Indian” clause establishing them as legal minors, regardless of their age, and putting their money in the hands of a non-Native American citizen if they wish to do business deals outside of their reservation.
Centuries after the European invasion, a class of people are still routinely denied their rights, and what’s more, it’s still socially acceptable to be racist towards them. We have the Cleveland Indians and the Atlanta Braves, but if we had the Baltimore Negroes or the San Francisco Chinks, there would be no end to the speeches against it and the boycotts threatened. In towns near the Native reservations, it’s all right to talk about “stupid drunken Indians” or for cops to pull people over for Driving While Native. Where people don’t do this, it’s merely because there aren’t any Natives left-our ancestors succeeded in extirpating them.
I say this because I have a Lakota friend who is very much a supporter of Ron Paul, but is hoping that he will come out and announce a common-sense policy that finally puts an end to government’s abuse and control of the first Americans. He could have done so at the minority debate, but focused on blacks and Hispanics.
Natives aren’t a huge demographic like blacks and Hispanics. Most states will not swing one way or another on the Native vote. But I’ll say this-if a Republican candidate were to come out swinging in support of Native rights, Alaska’s 12% native population would support him in the primaries. Arizona’s Navajos and Hopis would stand with all the Goldwater Republicans in the state. South Dakota would join the Ron Paul Revolution for good. And so would most of the rest of the Western states where Native Americans still remain a sizeable minority.
It’s not that I think Ron Paul is against Natives. I’m sure he isn’t. But he needs to come out and SAY that he stands with them, or else he runs the risk of looking like all the other politicians to the group that has lost more liberty than anyone else.
Under mounting public pressure, Turkey’s government is mulling a cross-border military operation into Iraq to pursue the Kurdish separatist rebels based there. Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan has so far withstood military pressure to authorize such a move, but with 26 people killed in two recent attacks, public calls for retaliation are growing. The top-selling daily Hurriyet ran a banner headline Monday saying, “This warrants going into [Iraq].” Opposition politicians on both left and right have accused the government of failing to respond to the increased violence.
When the world hegemon proves itself to be a bloody warmonger, naturally the rank and file will tend to follow suit. Turkey’s going to get itself involved in Iraq now, when diplomacy (which ironically we’re pulling for in this instance) could probably solve the problem. Not only that, but the democratically-elected though religiously-fundamentalist party ruling Turkey is looking to get itself overthrown by a military coup if they don’t do this right. So we’ll have not only completely failed at “spreading democracy” but we’ll have been indirectly responsible for ending a healthy democracy. Awesome.
Back when I went to a Baptist church, three things were impressed upon me: the importance of potlucks, the importance of the temperance wagon, and the importance of outlining each and every sermon in three big bullet points, usually with alliteration up in that mutha.
Why am I saying these things? Because I had a dinner party last night. There is this absolutely delectable dish that I make, it’s pretty much unnamed, but the recipe was crafted by God Himself and handed to my mother and she gave me the recipe. It’s chicken and mushrooms in a sauce made with mayonnaise, cheddar cheese soup, white wine and various spices served over rice. It’s basically my “Impress Prospective Females And/Or People At Formal Occasions” dish.
So anyway. I had this dinner party last night and went to make this dish and realized I was out of white wine, and so I went down to the corner store to get more. I discovered that, despite the fact that the Sutter Home White Zinfandel was staring me in the eyes from its position right there on the shelf, that I could not purchase it. No sir, on Sundays it’s there to make the store look pretty, and nothing more. You see, the Baptists in Nebraska had long ago banned alcohol sales (except for beer) on Sundays.
Okay, so let’s step back here for a second and think about where the movement is going. Right now, to be perfectly honest, the bulk of its focus is on Ron Paul. He’s grabbed ahold of some serious anti-neocon sentiment in the GOP and is running with it. There is an actual chance that he might be our next President. Not to denigrate my party, but the LP Presidential race is kind of a sideshow right now. Furthermore, the coalition he’s assembled and draped in Republican clothing isn’t going away. He’s pulling in tons of people to the broader movement. The question is where they’re going to go.
A lot of it depends on what happens on Election Day. If Ron Paul isn’t the nominee, then he’s just sent a message to the GOP-a loud message, to be sure, but one of many. If he wins the nomination but loses the election, then he’s the next Barry Goldwater and he’ll establish the libertarians as a real force within the GOP, and it’ll lead to a moderate libertarian being elected sooner or later down the road, as well as the Republican Liberty Caucus becoming a major force in-house. If he wins the election, then he’s the next Ronald Reagan and after the GOP loses itself to political heresy down the road once more, everyone will be calling themselves “Ron Paul Republicans” in an attempt to be cast as reformers, and isolationist libertarianism will probably assert itself as the primary ideological force in the GOP once more.
In any of these potential futures, we have to ask where the Libertarian Party steps in. Really, it’s a question of just how effective the libertarians in the GOP are. The more effective they are at controlling policy within the GOP and passing laws in Congress, the less of a need the movement will have for a protest party. (I’m sure that with the infighting among the libertarian movement, though, that there will always exist a Libertarian Party at some level… probably the purists holding on while the reformers forcefully implement “regime change” in the GOP.) But the Libertarian Party is needed only to triangulate against two extremely statist parties, and is less necessary once at least one of those parties starts moving closer to liberty, in the proportion with which that party moves towards liberty.
To those that say a vote for a Republican is a vote for neocon aggression… well, a vote for a Democrat is a vote for slavery and Japanese internment camps, while a vote for a Libertarian candidate is a vote for (insert your favorite Libertarian scandal here, there’s been plenty). Just how far back in history are you going to go? Political parties are not people that have inflicted cruelties and abominations upon the body politic and foreign nations. They are tools; nothing more and nothing less. In this country, there seem to be two of them that actually get elected. Unless you want the likes of Eric Dondero representing our movement to the outside world that actually has the power to change things, I would suggest that we start rethinking our priorities, and start thinking about how we can actually curtail this beast of a federal government.
Rand Paul said that every day he’s surprised at “how big” his father’s campaign has gotten. Last week, they asked supporters to raise $500,000. “They passed that in three days, and now we’re asking them to raise a million,” Rand Paul said. By Sunday, they had done just that. And Rand Paul said his father might end the third fundraising quarter with more cash on hand than most of the other Republicans. “We may have more money on hand than Romney if you subtract what he’s given himself,” he said.
Given that the crusty elite fucks in the Gay Old Party are begging Ron for money, this could mean something. Who’s up for taking over the GOP?
The New York Times had an excellent piece up there on the 15th.
One of the most influential business books ever written is a 1,200-page novel published 50 years ago, on Oct. 12, 1957. It is still drawing readers; it ranks 388th on Amazon.com’s best-seller list. (“Winning,” by John F. Welch Jr., at a breezy 384 pages, is No. 1,431.)
The book is “Atlas Shrugged,” Ayn Rand’s glorification of the right of individuals to live entirely for their own interest.
For years, Rand’s message was attacked by intellectuals whom her circle labeled “do-gooders,” who argued that individuals should also work in the service of others. Her book was dismissed as an homage to greed. Gore Vidal described its philosophy as “nearly perfect in its immorality.”
But the book attracted a coterie of fans, some of them top corporate executives, who dared not speak of its impact except in private. When they read the book, often as college students, they now say, it gave form and substance to their inchoate thoughts, showing there is no conflict between private ambition and public benefit.
Even though she’s not exactly one of my favorite libertarian authors, it’s still good to see that our ideas affect the world we live in.
You guys wish you were this cool. Chaz and I (C.E. Oberg) were in Springfield for the day and we met up with Chris and his family for lunch. We had fun debating politics and discussing music-it’s scary how close our interests align there. But we were debating ideas for getting the Illinois Libertarian Party on a more secure footing. So I figured I’d open up that discussion to the blog. Any ideas? Corrupt state, vicious ballot access laws, unions own everything. How to proceed?
…here’s the necessary groundwork. Red State Eclectic lays it all out for you.
Some states have open primaries, some have closed primaries, some states have their state convention send delegates. But usually, you have to register as a Republican… which, if you’re in a state that the Libertarian Party isn’t registered in, is probably worth it if you can actually help him get the nomination. Otherwise… the Libertarians need everyone they can to stay on board and help them keep ballot access.
Just got this from a Myspace bulletin, so take it for what it’s worth, but:
For those of you who have been following the Ed and Elaine Brown story, this message is for you:
Reports of 20-30 shots fired at Ed’s house up in Plainfield…no news as to who is the culprit. Possibly law enforcement agents. Confirmed by inside sources at the Brown house..unreported by outside MSM. Developing…
They tried ignoring him, they tried mocking him, now they’re trying to damn him with faint praise.
Ron Paul will not be the next president of the United States. But his candidacy gives us a good hint about the country the next president is going to have to knit back together.
Other than that andthe fact that the article treats Eric Dondero as a credible source, it’s fairly good.
Having just peroused my own internet politics blog and seen the Kubby declaration/interview, I gotta say:
I am goddamn proud to be a Libertarian.
This doesn’t happen often. For years, surrounded by people whose political opinions could be boiled down to “lol war” or “yay socialism,” I took a lot of shit in real life for being a libertarian and a Libertarian. I made a bet with my dad in 2004 that Michael Badnarik would cost Bush his reelection. I lost it, obviously.
After that, I saw my movement divided between people who wanted to get shit done no matter the cost, and people who wanted to resurrect Murray Rothbard and have him rewrite the Constitution-the bickerings of a party and an ideology defeated time and time again. I was too petty to rise above it. We never really resolved those issues, of course, and I am nominally on the side of the reformers for the little it’s worth. The reformers won their victory in the 2006 convention, but then the purists one-upped them.
The very first time that I can say I was proud to be a Libertarian, it was because a purist-Stan Jones-got shit done for freedom. I had even written up an article a few days beforehand taking his campaign to task for talking about the New World Order or whatever it is he did. But he showed us all up, and he defeated the Republican senator in Montana, and he gave the Senate to Nancy Pelosi c/o the Libertarian Party. There were others, of course, other victories we handed them, and other minor positions in small towns and offyear elections that are just as vital, if not moreso, to building the Party in the long term. But that was the very first time that, when my friends asked why the hell I kept throwing away my vote, I could point to them and say “THIS is why.” Read the rest of this entry »
No, I’m not talking about the 9/11 Truthers. I’m talking about astrologers.
Reposted from the National Ledger for the lulz:
Ron Paul has the Sun in Leo (view chart), but that is the only fire in his chart. As a Leo, he needs to take center stage – needs to be recognized for his views and his positions and his desire to do good things. The elemental balance of his chart reveals a great deal about him: with only a small amount of fire he is not particularly inspired or ego-oriented; however, the fire planet Mars is in Scorpio and conjuncts benevolent Jupiter which adds the missing fire that his chart otherwise lacks. With five planets in earth signs he is practical and steady, with a focus planted firmly in the material world.
His chart shows Mercury in Virgo which is cautious and shows an analytic mind with a love of details. Virgo often has a tendency towards more conservative views because of its cautious nature, but in Ron Paul’s chart that Virgo Mercury makes a close trine to Uranus, the planet of revolutionary change. This shows that he is not afraid of new ideas and enjoys thinking for himself. Uranus rules the internet and technology, and this dynamic in his chart illustrates his standing as this year’s Internet Candidate. Still, Saturn is exactly opposite his Mercury which shows that at an early age he was criticized for his ideas. Saturn is retrograde in his chart which suggests that he is still overly critical of himself. Saturn aspects are often more difficult when we are younger and add strength as we age, so the opposition of Saturn to Mercury can develop the strength of conviction in later years that is now serving Ron Paul so well.
I mean, I guess it’s cool and all, it takes all kinds… but fuck, that’s hilarious. Astrology, lol.
Could he win the first primary? I sure hope so. It could give him a MAJOR boost, potentially propelling him to victory. Anyway, the Ron Paul campaign put out the following press release:
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
July 7, 2007
ARLINGTON, VIRGINIA – Presidential candidate Ron Paul today won the Coalition for New Hampshire Taxpayers (CNHT) straw poll at their annual picnic in Hopkinton, New Hampshire. Dr. Paul received 182 of 294 votes cast, or 65 percent. In second place was Rudy Giuliani with 24 votes, or 8 percent.
“Today’s strong victory is further proof that Dr. Paul’s message is resonating throughout New Hampshire,” said campaign manager Lew Moore. “Dr. Paul is the only candidate in this race truly dedicated to smaller government and lower taxes for all Americans.”
CNHT is a statewide, grassroots organization dedicated to reducing the size of government at all levels, stopping judicial activism, providing students and parents with a choice of educational opportunities, expanding job markets, and protecting property rights.
I dig it. I like it. I put in my two cents; you should too. Maybe something cool could come of it, and we’ll get a coherent policy that might even be able to be advocated with other supporters of proportional representation (I’m thinking the Greens here).
Seriously though, it’s written by an anarcho-capitalist tax resister and sounds fucking COOL. From the summary:
Despite the apparent endless stream of “how to” and “self-help” books, one segment of the population still has nowhere to turn for help and guidance: the would-be tyrants and oppressors of the world. The purpose of this book is to remedy that deficiency.
If you are one of those individuals who most of all crave the ability to dominate, subjugate and control your fellow man, this book is for you. But as with many endeavors, satisfying your lust for dominion over others and building a successful tyrannical regime cannot be done with willpower alone. You need a little know-how as well. That is where this book comes in; combining your desire to enslave the masses with the lessons found in this book, you will soon be well on your way to becoming a successful tyrant!
At a time when Libertarian Party membership continues to rise, a recent Rasmussen Report survey indicates that Republican Party affiliation continues to decline while Democratic Party affiliation is decreasing, as well.
Republican numbers have been dropping since the November 2004 elections and they continue to decrease with no bottom in sight. For the last four consecutive months, the amount of self-identified Republicans continued their decline – from 31.1 percent to 30.8 percent in a telephone survey of 15,000 adults.
The number of self-identified Democrats fell to 36.3 percent, its lowest number in seventeen months. Democrats have suffered losses in the last three consecutive months, resulting in a six month decrease of 4.5 percent.
At the same time, Libertarian Party membership numbers have been on an upswing. For the last five months, people willing to pay at least $25 per year for Libertarian Party affiliation have increased at a rate of approximately 2.7 percent per month, which is a 14 percent increase from December’s figure.
Not only that, but we’re disproportionately getting the troops on the frontline. The guys who have seen “Islamo-fascism” firsthand are turning to us. Apparently the best way to support the troops is to support the Libertarian Party, straight from the horse’s mouth.
This man hasn’t strayed far from the headlines. Whether it’s the dustup over LibertyMix or his recent resignation from National, he’s been in the forefront of Libertarian news as of late. LFV got a chance to talk with Stephen Gordon recently about his involvement in LM, his resignation, and his plans for the future.
Last Free Voice: You have taken a lot of flak from various corners of the libertarian blogosphere for your support of LibertyMix in the past, and have yet to disavow that support. What exactly did you do in support of LibertyMix, and knowing what you know today, would you do it again?
Stephen Gordon: I strongly believe in the project. However, if I had it to do over again, the timeline would have been promoted in a significantly different manner. Stephen Van Dyke and I spent a good deal of time discussing the project in
the past and his technical vision is, in my opinion, very sound. My role was to primarily handle marketing and he was/is the key technical person. I even had several people who had promised to sign on as paid advertisers (those who have paid their $25 don’t have to worry about that). I’m very sorry that the project is considerably overdue and regret any hardship this may have caused anyone.
LFV: You have talked to Stephen VanDyke repeatedly about this project. Do you, in your personal opinion, think that LibertyMix will ever be launched? Do you think Hammer of Truth will even ever be back online and operational as a blog again?
SG: I frequently pester Van Dyke about the project and I talked with him again last night. I’d call him more often if I thought it would speed things up. I’d be more than willing to bet that both sites will be operational in the future. Like most of you, I’d not be willing to place any money on the exact launch date, though. Read the rest of this entry »
You heard it here first. The ACLUNE is stepping up to defend the God Hates Fags crowd in the recent flag-stomping case in my quasi-hometown of Bellevue, Nebraska. The director, Amy Miller, just sent me this in an email before she sent it off to the other news sources. Omaha World-Herald, you just got scooped.
ACLU Nebraska Announces Entry into Flag Desecration Case
For immediate release: June 8, 2007
Contact (402) 476-8091 for more information
ACLU Nebraska announced today it will enter an appearance for Shirley L. Phelps-Roper, a member of a controversial conservative Christian church, who has been criminally charged in Bellevue Nebraska.
Phelps-Roper was charged under a Nebraska law that prohibits flag desecration. The arrest happened while Phelps-Roper and other members of her church were conducting one of their protests outside the funeral of a soldier from the Iraq War.
Phelps-Roper is a member of the Westboro Baptist Church. Its members believe that homosexuality is a sin and an abomination and further believe that God is punishing America for the sin of homosexuality by killing American soldiers. During the most recent protest in Bellevue, Phelps-Roper was arrested because she draped an American flag around her waist and her son stood on the flag.
“Free speech and the right to protest extends to all Americans, even when the message is very unpopular and upsetting,” said Laurel Marsh, Executive Director of ACLU Nebraska. “This is the essence of the First Amendment.”
The Nebraska law was enacted in the late 1970’s, which was before the US Supreme Court issued its ruling that even burning a flag is protected by the First Amendment. The Nebraska law states: “A person commits the offense of mutilating a flag if such person intentionally casts contempt or ridicule upon a flag by mutilating, defacing, defiling, burning, or trampling upon such flag.” (Nebraska Revised Statute Section 28-928)
“The Nebraska law is simply a dead letter law that should not be on the books anymore,” said Amy Miller, Legal Director of ACLU Nebraska. “The Supreme Court has had three separate cases involving so-called flag desecration charges, and each time has found that protestors may use the flag as part of their message.”
“Clearly, the ACLU disagrees with the Westboro Baptist Church’s message that gay people are an abomination,” said Miller. “The ACLU spends a significant amount of time working for equality on the basis of sexual orientation and I myself am gay. But disagreeing with the message doesn’t mean that we can allow the government to try to silence protected free speech. Punishing this use of the flag is contrary to the very spirit of freedom the flag stands for.”
The criminal charges are scheduled for first hearing on July 11 at 9 a.m. in Sarpy County Court. ACLU Nebraska will be preparing legal documents to submit to the court which outline how Phelps-Roper’s conduct was legal and protected by the First Amendment. As with all of their cases, ACLU is representing Phelps-Roper free of charge.
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FINAL: It’s too dispiriting to list and rebut every wrongheaded policy on sale tonight, so I won’t. Suffice to say that, despite the frequent references by CNN’s John King to the strength of the antiwar movement among Democratic voters, each of the candidates with a shot at becoming president or vice president is a committed imperialist. If this is how they play to their supposedly antiwar base, imagine what they’ll be saying when they turn right after the primaries.
This is their liveblogging of the Democratic debate. Jesus tits, it looks painful. We let the Democrats win for one reason and one reason only-to get us out of the war. We figured that’d be worth the domestic policy clusterfucks they’d inevitably foist on us. But no. Right now, the only good thing coming from the 2008 elections is that it smashed the GOP over the head with the cold hard brick of reality-or, at least, the GOP voters.
First Nancy Pelosi sells the fuck out on the war funding issue, and now all the Democratic candidates are sucking military-industrial schlong. The Democrats are, to put it like this article did, “whimpering welfare-warfare half-wits.” And I hope to God that the anti-war vote pulls them out of Congress if they can’t pull us out of Iraq.
A former Democratic Party activist who left dog feces on the doorstep of U.S. Rep. Marilyn Musgrave’s Greeley office during last year’s 4th Congressional District campaign was found not guilty Wednesday of criminal use of a noxious substance.
…
Ensz’s lawyers never denied that their client left a Musgrave campaign brochure full of feces at the front door of the congresswoman’s office. But they argued that Ensz was making a statement protected by free speech – the poop was a symbol of what she thought of Musgrave’s politics.
“Her only intention of going over there was to make a political statement that Marilyn Musgrave’s politics stink,” attorney Shannon D. Lyons said after the verdict.
I’m not entirely sure what to make of that, so I guess it’s good that the judge came down on the side of free speech. But yeah. A little odd, and a little childish coming from a real campaign… and this is coming from LFfuckingV. If WE’RE calling you childish, well, fuck.
Customs officers at Cairo’s airport on Thursday detained a man bound for Saudi Arabia who was trying to smuggle 700 live snakes on a plane, airport authorities said.
The officers were stunned when a passenger, identified as Yahia Rahim Tulba, after being asked to open his carry-on bag, told them it contained live snakes.
Tulba opened his bag to show the snakes to the police and asked the officers, who held a safe distance, not to come close. Among the various snakes, hidden in small cloth sacks, were two poisonous cobras.
If you rip off a cheesy American flick’s plot device as your terror instrument… it means the Americans have won.
After the alarm continued for more than a minute, I decided to go investigate the cause. Finding no sign of fire or smoke, I proceeded out the F Street exit, where I encountered Libertarian Party political director Stephen Gordon and the LP national chairman, Bill Redpath. I took advantage of this opportunity to inquire of Mr. Gordon about LP affairs, and asked whether the party’s Region 4 representative, Bob Barr, was in attendance. Mr. Gordon told me that Mr. Barr was indeed present for the gala, and was seated at the National Rifle Association’s table.
That’s when Mr. Gordon told me he believed that Mr. Barr had activated a smoke alarm by smoking a cigar on the premises.
Was Mr. Gordon joking? Well, Mr. Barr is indeed a cigar smoker and he has a reputation for mischief. And you know what they say about libertarians ….
After all the complaints about things that weren’t his fault, this is why we need Stephen Gordon at the job he’s at now. He gets shit done for the Party. Where doors might have been closed to us, they’re open. He was invited to John McCain’s son’s anniversary, for Christ’s sakes-hardly a political event but one that helps build clout. He has the ear of our friends and enemies in Washington and these calls to fire him will only shoot us in the foot.
Not to be callous over the whole LibertyMix thing, but caveat emptor. And Gordon was just as hoodwinked as the rest of us. Let the man do his job advancing liberty, or let out your grief on an innocent man and watch us all live in a more statist world because of it.
And Edwards called for plans to spread the burden of serving the country by mandating national service.
“One of the things we ought to be thinking about is some level of mandatory service to our country, so that everybody in America — not just the poor kids who get sent to war — are serving this country,” Edwards said.
After the event, Edwards said he had not meant to imply that only the poor go to war, only that everyone should serve in some way.
“We have people from all walks of life in America who are serving, including Reservists and National Guard,” Edwards said. “What we want to do is to have all Americans to have a chance to serve their country.”
Hey! Last time I recalled I serve my country with every tax dollar you withhold from me. And a “chance” to serve my country? I have that already; in fact the military is making damn sure I know about my “chance” every other time I go to the Student Center here on campus. (Asthma is useful for one thing on this planet; keeping pushy war marketers at bay.)
Presidential hopeful John Edwards said Monday that Americans should speak out against the war in Iraq this Memorial Day weekend, renewing an anti-war call that has been criticized by the leader of the American Legion.
Edwards also said all young people should serve their country, “not just poor kids who get sent to war.”
I see what you did there, Edwards… you and the rest of the statist left. If you and the elite fucks you serve are going to end the war for us, you’ll only do it at the cost of reenacting one of the most oppressive institutions in modern American history: the draft. You want to advance statism with every action and it’s just not going to happen. The same 70% of America that opposes the war also opposes a draft, or “national service,” or whatever else you want to call it in order to market this evil to us. You’re not going to get anywhere, and thank God.
The Bush Administration has tried to cover this up for too long, with their doctored photos taking the Hulkster out of the picture. It’s just a cynical ploy of theirs to give them an excuse for war. They thought their secret was foolproof…
…what they weren’t counting on was some dude with a website.
Next, let’s make North Korea the chair of the United Nations Commission of Not Being Completely Batshit Insane! Or maybe let’s make America the chair of the United Nations Commission of Pronouncing “Nuclear” Correctly. (That’s “noo-KLEAR,” not “new-kyu-LUR,” Mr. Bush.)
Boy howdy, this United Nations is made of fail. EPIC fail. Should this Republic last a thousand years, our descendants will tell stories of this legendary failure to their children to scare them into not punching their kid sisters anymore. (They’ll probably also use the letter “W” as a swear word, but that’s neither here nor there.)
Anyway, yeah. Why the hell are we still letting these complete and total pieces drive up land prices in Manhattan?
Homeboy’s got a fuckton of press these days. He’s the boy hero of the libertarian blogosphere. So here’s all the interesting shit about him that I found.
Saul Anuzis, the asshat from Michigan that tried to get Ron Paul barred from the debates, just took back what he said. Already neocon twits are taking back what they said, unasked, without Ron Paul taking back his common sense when Giuliani demanded him to. Fascism loses, kids. But that doesn’t stop this dumbass from Real Clear Politics arguing that Ron Paul should be ejected not because of what he said, but because he’s a libertarian. (Small-l, even; Paul’s views, not his LP membership, are this douche’s problem.)
Oh yeah, and while the MSM’s chugging down the Haterade, they completely bashed Ron Paul. Their reasoning? “Just please stop e-mailing us. Thanks.” Arrogant establishment SOBs ought to be made to eat shit when we inaugurate President Paul.
LewRockwell.com had a video of three of the hostesses of The View taking up Ron Paul’s banner against the remaining one, who seems to be voting for President of 9/11 (srsly, her argument was basically “But… TERRORISTS!”). Odd having Rosie O’Donnell in my corner for once, but whatev.
What’s left to be taken seriously of the social conservative movement has just told Giuliani to get fucked. Unfortunately, this means the bulk of them will probably rally around Romney, not Paul… although a lot of the pro-life hardcores probably will defect to us anyway simply because Paul’s a dedicated champion of the pro-life cause.
Even if Paul doesn’t win, it’s likely that his merely being there will stir shit up within the GOP for years to come anyway.
It was a pretty extensive interview regarding Phillies’ positions on gay issues, and it can be found here. I liked everything I read but this:
LGBTQ people around the world face tremendous challenges in the face of government and societal persecution. In places ranging from the Palestinian Authority to Iran to China to Singapore to Algeria to Zimbabwe, LGBTQ people are regularly imprisoned, tortured, beaten, mutilated, and murdered simply because of their sexual orientation and/or gender identity. Many seek asylum in the United States, but find their application delayed or denied due to government policies that seek to limit immigration. As a result, the US government regularly sends back thousands of people to an uncertain fate – or worse, a certain fate of torture and death – rather than welcoming the oppressed. As president, will you support efforts to reform the immigration system to allow oppressed LGBTQ people from abroad to find sanctuary and freedom in America?
I prefer to encourage people abroad to fix their own regimes, and to exert American pressure to move foreign regimes in the direction of becoming civilized countries.
I’m not sure just how activist he intends to be on that-whether he’d just let free trade run its course by exposing them to greater liberty, or whether he’d directly snoop in other nations’ business. But it’s really not our government’s business how other countries conduct their affairs.
Also, even though Phillies doesn’t directly come out and say it, this highlights my biggest problem with his platform-the anti-immigration stance. (It’s also my biggest problem with Ron Paul’s platform, so this isn’t an attack on Phillies.) I really think that while we shouldn’t go mucking about in other countries’ political systems, we should be more than welcoming of anyone who wants to come here for any reason-refugees included. Emma Lazarus knew the score.
But, all in all, it was a lot of good stuff to see from the Phillies campaign.
As was mentioned previously, Pat Dixon lost his campaign for reelection. As he’s one of the premier statesmen of the Libertarian Party, this was a shocker, so LFV dashed to find out why. Reprinted after the jump is our email interview. Read the rest of this entry »
South African environmental inspectors discovered 10 poisonous snakes smuggled in video cassette cases when they searched a suspicious package at a post office, officials said.
Working on a tip-off, the inspectors seized the package from the Czech Republic and opened the cases to find live albino monocle cobras, Arabian saw-scaled vipers, Namibian spitting cobras and Australian Taipans, reputed to be the most poisonous snake on earth.
A potentially deadly situation was narrowly averted… but this situation wouldn’t have existed in the first place if there were a system in place for law-abiding animal collectors to transfer animals safely through various countries for their own private collections. I understand the worries about preserving local ecologies, and species migration has harmed that in a lot of places. However, I think that ultimately, there is a place for the legalization of such things, at least in some controlled fashion. After all, it would help sponsor the preservation of a lot of rare species, and cut down on incidents like this.
Reason Magazine already has an article up mentioning LibertyUp, and traffic’s through the roof today. We just need a couple more major libertarian blogs to do this and we’ll have one hell of a community.
I feel sorry for his family, of course, and on a non-political and non-theological level I’m sad to see a fellow human being die.
Not to be a dick, though, but this is some of the greatest news that the social and civil libertarian crowd could possibly hear. A man who stood against equal rights for women, gays, and immigrants can no longer influence our political system. Furthermore, this seems to be the starkest demonstration God could have possibly given us that the social conservative branch of the Republican Party is dead, leaving only fiscal conservatives and neocons, with the neocons about to die off as well.
Our future may be cloudy in the short term, but twenty years from now we will look back on these days like people today look back on the Vietnam War, draft and stagflation and wonder what the hell they must have been thinking.
A fund raiser for the Libertarian Party of Georgia
To be held on Wednesday, May 23, 2007 at Smith’s Olde Bar (1578 Piedmont Avenue, Atlanta, GA, 404.875.1522), the show will feature performances by: The Judies, Like Clockwork, The Lord Is My Shotgun, Heather Luttrell, Pistolero, and Fisher Meehan. Doors will open at 7, the music will start at 7:30, and the cover charge will be $10. Door proceeds from the concert will be donated to the Libertarian Party of Georgia. Along with the bands, the following organizations will have tables at the concert: thinkLIBERTARIAN, Libertarian Party of Georgia, Georgians for FAIRTAX, Secure Our Future, Marijuana Policy Project (MPP), Citizens Against Marijuana Prohibition (CAMP), and more to be announced. Local modern rock station 99X has placed the event on their promotions calendar and will have a promotional van at the concert as well.
The site is here. If you’re anywhere near Georgia, go check that shit out. $10 cover for a rock show is not a bad price by any stretch of the imagination. More state and local parties need to do things like this.
It’s got to be such a drag being Ron Paul. Here you are, a smart libertarian guy with a backbone, having to share podium space with a bunch of totalitarian asshat hacks that dare to breathe your air.
The condescension to and mockery of the sole Republican candidate who seems to care about individual liberty has begun to tick me off. Chris Matthews can be heard groaning “Oh, God,” after Paul spoke of the “original intent” of the Founders with respect to the Constitution. And in the YouTube clip below, Rudy Giuliani actually seems to be guffawing after Paul’s defense of habeas corpus. I’m glad Paul’s supporters are fighting back on the web. He deserves more respect than he has gotten thus far, not least because compared to the pandering of his competitors, Paul actually seems to believe what he says. And what he says has more to do with conservatism than the crap the rest of them are peddling.
For all the noise made about “getting back to the roots of the Reagan revolution,” the GOP seems to be doing a piss-poor job of it. Their frontrunners all blow goats, and it looks like the Republican wing of the Republican Party are starting to uniformly reject them. Ron Paul emerged as the winner of the last debate, and if he continues to gain traction he may just end up with the nomination. A longshot, to be sure, but stranger things have happened.
I loves me some Libertarian Party but even more than that, I loves me some liberty. Here’s hoping he kicks all their asses and grabs the nomination.
My bloggers have been aware of it for a few days, because they’ve helped with the betatesting. It was Last Free Voice’s very first secret project, secret because I didn’t want to make promises and not keep them until they were already kept. That’s happened in the past and I didn’t want to go that route.
Well, our unmade promises are kept now. We have a blog aggregator, and we have it for free. All your favorite libertarian blogs are present at LibertyUp.com and we’ve got forums, too-finally a place where the entire Libertarian blogosphere can gather and chill. We’re not stopping there, though-we’ve got plenty of other nifties in the pipeline, nifties that we didn’t want to hold up the rest of the site for. So go on. Check it out. Register and post on the boards. If you catch an error, email it to me or Joe (the site developer and my good friend) and we’ll get it taken care of. If we didn’t include your blog, give us an RSS feed and we will.
Apparently the Phillies campaign’s started purchasing AdWords ads, and their website is closing in on 750,000 hits, with 1000 people visiting it every day. Oh yeah, and the man himself, George Phillies, is now the State Chair of the Libertarian Party of Massachusetts, much congrats goes out to him from the staff here at LFV. Oh yeah, and if you’re gonna be at the LPGA convention in Atlanta on the 19th, be sure to stop by to hear one of our better Presidential contenders speak.
On April 23, Cheryl Crow, the well-know singer was quoted in Britain’s The Register as saying: “I propose a limitation be put on how many squares of toilet paper can be used in any one sitting. Now, I don’t want to rob any law-abiding American of his or her God-given rights, but I think we are an industrious enough people that we can make it work with only one square per restroom visit, except, of course, on those pesky occasions where two to three could be required.”
Ms. Crow has reportedly since claimed that she was merely joking. Be that as it may, her proposal follows logically from ideas that permeate the environmental movement. It follows from the belief in the need to reduce consumption as a means of reducing the emission of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, which emissions allegedly cause global warming. It also follows from the doctrine of the alleged intrinsic value of nature undisturbed by man. If the trees from which toilet paper is ultimately made are intrinsically valuable and thus must not be disturbed, it follows that man should not have toilet paper.
Even if she was joking, screw that. And I gotta admit… I’m never going to be able to listen to her music with a straight face anymore.
But one piece of toilet paper? Who the hell does she think she’s talking to, Arnold Rimmer? “One up, one down, and one to polish”?! How about no. I’m pretty sure that the Earth is not going to asplodinate because I wiped my ass thoroughly.
This is what the mouth-breathing yokels in their government have to say about small-government types, under the context that we’re all terrorists: Read the rest of this entry »
I just got off the phone with Steve Kubby a few minutes ago. At his request (and per my longstanding desire), I have tendered my resignation as his campaign manager.
If the above sounds a lot like “Knapp got fired,” yeah, pretty much … but let me plainly state that I fully concurred with Steve’s judgment, and was more than happy to resign a title which I never wanted to hold in the first place. If I’d thought he was making a mistake, I’d have argued the point and forced him to fire me if he wanted me gone.
Gone, by the way, I am not. I still support Steve’s campaign, I expect to continue working with Steve’s campaign in various roles, and I’m not available to any other presidential campaign in any role.
…
And now, for those of you wondering what my resignation is all about, three words: Wayne Allyn Root. In particular, my public comments on him and his candidacy, starting with this one and this one.
When I first agreed to work with Steve, and then when he hit me up to assume the title of campaign manager, one of my clearly stated conditions was that I remain free to express my own opinions. In the case of becoming campaign manager, I had frankly hoped that that condition would be a deal-breaker (have I mentioned that I didn’t want the job?), and it should have been. But it wasn’t, so here we are.
I think Knapp was perfectly in the right for calling out Root on his bullshit. Nonetheless, I can understand Kubby’s position here, and I wish them both the best of luck in advancing the Libertarian Party in the future.
Yeah, TIME did an interview of this guy, who’s currently telling the dictatorial fuck Robert Mugabe to stop killing people. I don’t typically support the church getting involved in politics, but there comes a time when a voice-any voice-is welcome if it’s shouting down a despot. And I love Archbishop Pius Ncube’s quote at the end:
I don’t care. I will say what I want to say. I will not be quietened. I am not their slave. I do get afraid. But there comes a time when you have to overcome that. I take a stand because I am convinced I am speaking the truth.
A lawyer for Harlan Ullman, who created the “shock and awe” military strategy and writes a column for the Washington Times, said his client has no intention of helping Deborah Jeane Palfrey.
She is the 51-year-old accused madam of Pamela Martin and Associates, and is charged in federal court with racketeering and money laundering associated with prostitution.
Honest businesslady fucked over by government, damn the Man to Hell, legalize prostitution. Okay, got the obligatory libertarian diatribe out of the way. Here’s the best part:
Palfrey has maintained her agency was never a prostitution ring. She has given ABC News phone records purportedly indicating a list of her clients, hoping they will be compelled to testify in her favour.
The expansive phone records — so substantial the documents weigh a collective 46 pounds — were handed to the news broadcaster before a judge’s order barring their release took effect.
Yes, that’s right. There’s some horny motherfucking politicians on Capitol Hill, 46 pounds’ worth of records of them. Funny that the judge is barring its release… maybe he got a “massage” as well? God I would KILL to be a bookworm in that book right now.
Widely considered the frontrunner for the Libertarian Presidential nomination, Wayne Root is a resident of Henderson, Nevada- and a strong supporter of Nevada’s brand of Libertarian politics.
He is a anti-tax, limited government, pro states’ rights, anti-Nanny State, socially tolerant, anti-Yucca Mountain Libertarian conservative in the mold of Ronald Reagan and Barry Goldwater.
I find myself wanting to bash this guy because of this poorly-written article and because Dondero thinks he’s the Second Coming of Christ, but then again I really ought to give him a chance. The article is biased as all fuck, not even acknowledging any other big names vying for the nomination. But that’s not necessarily the man’s fault, and he admittedly does seem to have some pull with gamblers, which by all rights is a natural Libertarian constituency. But if he’s gonna run, where’s his website? Read the rest of this entry »
This article from the Houston Chronicle was fairly interesting. Therein, they interviewed Randal O’Toole of the Cato Institute about his views on city planning and roads vs. mass transit.
Question: You say that for the most part, Houston gets it right, while Portland (Ore.), where you used to live, is a textbook example of government gone wrong. A lot of people would say it’s just the reverse.
Answer: Except for the light rail part, Houston really is a model for how urban planning ought to be done — which is privately.
Q: Do you think government has a legitimate role in planning transportation?
A: If government does anything, it ought to be through agencies like the Harris County Toll Road Authority, which has a single mission and relies on its own revenue to fulfill it.
Q: A lot of people say Houston already has too much concrete.
A: It’s a thrill to be here, in a way, because everywhere you go you see these new freeways being constructed. I’ve been all over the country, and nobody is building them anymore.
My opinion on the matter is… up in the air. I appreciate the “density” argument from liberals because it seems consistent with the efficient land use ends of geolibertarianism. However, I despise central planning and bureaucracy, and government almost never gets land planning right. I’m also left wondering if a free market could support a mass transit system that was wholly independent of government, and moreover if the government would let it happen.
After all, roads are government-subsidized transportation too. If the government is going to subsidize something, we might as well make sure it’s cost-effective, I’d think.
Maybe just a land value tax would set this whole density/transit problem straight? Replace the income tax with a land value tax?
The bit below was posted to the discussion list of the LP Radical caucus via Joseph Knight of the LPNM. In it, Steve Kubby’s campaign manager Tom Knapp apologizes to the LPNM for Steve not being able to make their convention as he had originally planned. He cites a lack of money and time, and then goes on to add that Kubby may be involved in a race for County Supervisor very soon and will have even less time and money.
If Steve is interested in Mendocino County politics and feels he can make a difference there, good for him. But if he can’t make the full commitment to run one campaign, why try running two at once? Being a presidential candidate will more likely hurt than help Kubby in the supervisor race, and why should LP supporters take him seriously as a presidential candidate if he is obviously back-burnering the presidential race to focus on local politics? How can they seriously expect people who were reluctant to give in the first place to start giving when he is splitting an already desperately undergrown effort?
I basically have nothing to add to this except that it makes Kubby look potentially less attractive as a Presidential candidate. If he can win in Mendocino County, he should go for it. But he should drop his Presidential campaign if that’s the case.
I had been more or less sold on Stanhope until he dropped out, but now it looks like Kubby and Phillies still… and neither one has really been building momentum as of late. If I absolutely had to choose someone it would probably still be Kubby, but I’m hoping someone else will enter the race above all.
The issues most central to the Libertarian voters include the following:
* The freedom not to pay taxes
* The freedom to, if one so wishes, pay lots and lots of taxes.
* The freedom to pay employees less than minimum wage.
* The freedom to protect yourself from angry workers who get paid less than minimum wage.
* The freedom to pay for, sell and profit from sex.
* The freedom to have lots of kinky sex.
Their tactics are extreme, but nothing new for the area.
“We are not looking for bloodshed. We minimize it,” a senior Salvation Council member says. “If a suspect is peaceful, we arrest and hand him to the authorities, but if he resists, there will be no other way than to shoot him.”
Al Qaeda has hit back hard at the tribes in recent weeks, sending chlorine bombs, car bombs and suicide bombers in explosive chest vests against their leaders.
Their allies violate their own laws and Constitution.
Asked if there had been an assassination program backed by U.S. forces, Zalmay Khalilzad, then-U.S. ambassador to Iraq, said, “We lose no sleep over the struggle against al Qaeda and the killing of al Qaeda people.”
But progress could be made here. Iraq might actually be pacified by the time we pull out. The ascendancy of the anti-war position in America is undoubtedly showing the insurgency that we don’t intend to run, or occupy, their country forever. That leaves the only other major foreign military force in Iraq to be al-Qaeda, which offers… no such promise. The post-veto Bush-Pelosi showdown will likely have benchmarks emerge as a sort of compromise position, which will allow America to pull out.
Gov. Timothy M. Kaine on Monday closed the loophole in state law that allowed the Virginia Tech gunman to pass a federal background check and buy the weapons used in the massacre.
Kaine issued an executive order requiring that a database of people banned from buying guns include anyone who is found to be dangerous and ordered to undergo involuntary mental health treatment.
It’s not particularly annoying, but it’s still an expansion of state power, done in the name of nannystatist fearmongering. “OMG KOREAN ZERG RUSH NEVAR FORGETT!!!11eleventyone!” Yeah, this is bullshit.
When Israel’s oldest kibbutz, Degania, announced that it was giving up its socialist ideals and going private–members could own homes and earn salaries based on how hard they worked–few other than the kibbutzniks themselves were happy. For many Israelis, Degania was a symbol of rosier days, a Zionist idyll of honest work and camaraderie. But for those who called it home, the kibbutz had become an anachronism as rusty as the battered farm tools on display for tourists. Today, the younger generation of kibbutzniks pines for individualism. Tamara Gal-Sarai gazes out over the kibbutz lawn until her eyes settle on the blue-white shimmer of the Sea of Galilee. “The Israeli press blames us for killing their utopia,” she says. “It was as if we’d destroyed a national treasure.”
At the very least, this is an argument for volitarianism, for allowing any sort of thing so long as all actions are voluntary. When all actions are voluntary, transition is easier. They essentially switched their economy from a Soviet model to a capitalist one, but because everything was voluntary from the very beginning, it was far easier.
Moving closer to a veto showdown with President Bush, the House late Wednesday narrowly approved a bill funding the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq that sets a goal of withdrawing U.S. combat forces from Iraq next year.
The final vote on the $124 billion funding bill was 218-208, with two members voting present. The tally was largely along party lines, with just two Republicans voting for it and 13 Democrats voting against.
The Senate will take up the bill Thursday morning, setting up a likely confrontation with Bush, who has repeatedly vowed to veto any appropriations measure that contains a timetable for withdrawing troops.
My favorite part? I think the Democrats may be shrewder than anyone’s given them credit for so far by dragging this out. Check out the last paragraph:
Without the additional appropriations, the Pentagon will soon have to begin shifting money and deferring some projects to find the funds to continue the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, although just when that situation might become critical is a matter of dispute between the White House and Democrats in Congress.
It is within the realm of possibility that the Democrats will end funding not by outright denying funding, but by letting the issue slide until Bush is forced to beg them for the terms they’re offering now. The Democrats have it in their history of denying budgets and appropriations bills to the point where the government shut down twice under Clinton, so it’s possible. Plus, they’d come out looking like the good guys to everyone concerned: “We WANTED to give Bush his money for his war, but he wouldn’t be reasonable, and now look where we are. So because he wouldn’t say yes, the Pentagon had to bring the troops home. Oh well.”
All righty, blogosphere. Let’s get him elected! I don’t even know what the fuck he’s running for, but fuck! He knows his shit, he’s not drooling on the carpet, and he’s a Libertarian! Go go go!
It isn’t often that a single Senate subcommittee hearing puts on the table a half-dozen nightmarish scenarios that hardly anyone in Washington is worrying about.
Or, when it does, that hardly anyone pays attention.
But that is what quietly unfolded when former Sen. Sam Nunn, the Georgia Democrat, recently appeared for just over an hour before the Senate Armed Services subcommittee.
…
He gave the U.S. and Russia a score of 5 out of 10 on making progress in eliminating nuclear materials. He said that as other nations become nuclear capable, the number drops. Progress on rounding up loose, radiological matter — non-weapons-grade material that is the stuff of dirty bombs — is even worse. He said the score drops to 4 out of 10 when it comes to destroying chemical weapons. (He happily noted that Kazakhstan, Ukraine and Belarus all destroyed their stockpiles.)
He said Moscow and Washington were much further behind in jointly working to eliminate biological weapons from their arsenals. The Russians, he explained, are not cooperating on that front and security in other nations is even harder to guarantee. On that score, he said, “I’d say we were about 1 out of 10.”
Sam Konkin apparently wrote a fairly extensive history of the Libertarian Party… pretty fucking biased, but still interesting to read. You can check it out here. Of course, it looks like another, more… um… mainstream history’s been published, and it’s on my Christmas list. “Radicals for Capitalism” by Brian Doherty looks pretty sweet.
Seeing both these things recently sort of brought me to think about the history of the movement. Certainly we’ve been around for a while by now, and we’ve had our share of successes to claim: we ended the draft, we ended stagflation, and more recently we destroyed the GOP’s stranglehold on government in 2006. We’re a plucky movement and we’re still growing, and if you look at historical trends this is about where the progressives were before the Democrats co-opted all their shit.
I gotta admit, I’m a really big fan of Penn & Teller’s “Bullshit.” What they do in there is take on something that’s usually bogus, and then beat the snot out of it with logic and facts. I was in this thread, reading this post, when it occurred to me that rocking this shit “Bullshit” style instead of doing a flamewar might be appropriate.
Let’s review. The wankers in Butler County, Ohio want to put deadbeat dads on pizza boxes. Now, my mom’s first husband was a regular deadbeat, and continues to suck to this very day. Deadbeat dads can go to hell and die. So let’s be very, very clear on this that I’m really not saying that deadbeat behavior is okay. But this government action is crossing the line.
Christina Rowe seems to be a professional profiteer in the divorce industry. This places her slightly below the morality food chain from lawyers and your more advanced cockroaches. Now don’t get me wrong, there’s nothing wrong with capitalism-she’s obviously got a product that people want, and are willing to pay her money for. But making money exclusively off of encouraging the destruction of marriages, and the complete and total plundering of the penised party to that marriage? Fuck! At least lawyers can do contract law and shit. Read the rest of this entry »
If this keeps up I’m changing the tagline from “for truth, justice and the american way” to “All Gene, All The Time!”
Okay, since everyone wants to hear the allegations so badly… I’ll mention what little I can. Keep in mind that these are allegations, and they’re unsubstantiated. Some dimwit could have pulled these out of his ass. But I doubt it, as they ring true and he ended his campaign and deleted all evidence shortly after these were posted.
No, I’m not reposting what I heard. The FBI watches this guy, and for once my libertarian self says it’s for a damn good reason. He’s crazy and he threatens people and I’m not subjecting LFV to a lawsuit or, worse, having Chapman’s unemployed ass coming down for one of us with a match and a can of gas. So I’m only posting the allegations that have been made that involve things that, if he really did them, would be legal. Read the rest of this entry »
Well, it’s Case Scholastic Day here in sunny Chadron, and that means that everyone’s getting fucking drunk, and it’s the government’s fault. You see, Case Scholastic Day was invented by CSC as a way to get high school students to come here… in large quantities… all at once. They swarm our cafeterias, they crowd our sidewalks, basically they r in r college killin r d00dz.
So, what do you do in a college town if everything’s fuck-packed and there’s no way you can go out in public?
Drink.
Case Scholastic Day is nicknamed Case Day because you’re supposed to wake up and start drinking beer. You’re supposed to have a case of 24 beers downed before the night is over. I was woken up by hearing the howls of ether-laden jocks screaming out the passenger side of their best friend’s ride out my bedroom window, and it’s only going to get worse. I despise that fermented piss colloquially known as “Budweiser” but I’m broke so I’ll probably just go get some cheapass shit whisky (Jack Daniels, I’m looking straight at you) instead and get drunk off of that. After all, it’s Case Scholastic Day… and the only way to endure the high schoolers (half of whom blow off the scheduled activities anyway and go look for a party, good job CSC) and the drunkanoids is to join their ranks for the evening. If anyone sees a post from me about bunnies or some shit later tonight, plz delete kthx.
It’s not the same Hammer of Truth, or even the same URL. It’s Susan Hogarth claiming the URL hammeroftruth.net and trying to give us a run for our money as the Heir of HoT.
So let’s see how she’s doing.
Kinda cookie-cutterish layout, not terribly distinctive… but I do realize she’s probably not a latent coding genius either, so I’ll cut her some slack for now. If she really does want to lead the next HoT though, she should get a better layout sooner or later.
What I found to be the greatest little bit of info was this though:
That’s right, Susan Hogarth cursed. You heard it here first, folks! That makes my goddamn week, I tell you what. Maybe she might actually be able to pull it off after all. At any rate, it should prove to be an interesting development, and I wish her success if it means any success for the Libertarian Party.
So Susan… speaking as your chief competitor to the throne of HoT, as it were (LOL), how about a friendly rivalry for the good of the movement?
According to a recent article in the LA Times, libertarian influence is growing in this country, especially when measured against the beginnings of the movement:
But the libertarian movement began as a reaction to how alien the ideas of unbridled individual and market liberty had become. When former Los Angeles Chamber of Commerce chief Leonard Read launched the first libertarian think tank, the Foundation for Economic Education, in 1946, his ideas about limited government and free markets were so marginal in the United States as to seem almost seditious.
Lane was investigated by the FBI in the early postwar years for daring to write on a postcard that Social Security was the sort of socialistic government management of people’s lives we fought wars against. True Social Security, she insisted, was canned vegetables and slaughtered pigs in your cellar. She and Paterson refused to accept anything from the Social Security system.
Looks like we were a target of HUAC as well? Clearly we’re as dangerous as those dirty commies. Bah, conservatives are brainless, especially in those days.
It’s really anyone’s guess what the truth is about aliens, but I’m glad to see at least one government opening up their files. Not really a huge deal, but it’d be cool if America did the same.
Traffic is crushing on the French government UFO site, but if you care to wait the URL is here.
The public’s bottom line is simple: it wants the United States to concentrate on protecting itself. When asked what should be the main purpose of American foreign policy, respondents chose “protecting the security of the US and our allies” (66%) over “promoting freedom and democracy” (21%) and “advancing our economic interest” (9%). Interestingly, Republicans were the most likely to choose self-interest over freedom and democracy (75-18%). When we asked the question more bluntly in a split sample, even more respondents (68%) chose the statement: “The main goal of US foreign policy should be to protect American security, whether it spreads our ideals or not” over a competing statement about the value of spreading our ideals, freedom and democracy.
McCain and Giuliani both want to keep us there. I mean, Captain Straight Talk Express has fucked up his verbiage in the not-so-distant past, so who knows where he stands. But I’d doubt he’d get us out… he’d rather use racial epithets and then apologize for them. How refreshing… a man who says what he means and means what he says. Straight Talk Express indeed.
But no, what pisses me off is that even the Democrats are gonna keep us there. Okay, guys, you won the Senate and the House. You can stop worshipping at the temple of Francis Fukuyama in the hopes that another fence-sitter will vote for you. You don’t have to stay in Iraq forever. Oh, wait, that’s right… I was under the illusion that this government was run by the people, for the people. Silly me. Looks like Halliburton’s made some new friends.
Well, that’s both sets of front-runners in both parties. I don’t think politics could suck any worse if the Democrats nominated Cthulhu and the Republicans nominated a Dalek.
Why didn’t we think of that? All this time, President Bush could’ve just thrown some herbs together, guided by his ancestors, and cured AIDS forever. Dammit Bush, why didn’t you dream up a cure to AIDS? Why can’t you be as cool as His Excellency Yahya Jammeh, President of the Gambia by right of complete fucking stupidity?
Just think of all the money we’ve wasted on “science” and “medicine” when all it took to cure AIDS was some goddamn fucking herbs and testicles the size of minor asteroids. Well shucks, we sure are silly. Read the rest of this entry »
I realized I hadn’t posted much since I got back so I went trolling CNN for something to piss me off enough to write about. But I went to their political section and it’s all about the Presidential primaries. So, it’s not really Libertarian news so much, but I for one welcome our new Republicratic overlords. They’ll keep this blog in business, at the very damn least. So here’s a roundup of their latest tomfoolery.
Apparently Giuliani’s law firm lobbies Congress on behalf of Hugo Chavez. Homeboy’s got like a scandal a week going down, though, so I doubt it’ll hurt him. After 9/11, he’s 10 stories tall and made of Teflon. Speaking of the grinches on parade, McCain’s got the hubris of a thousand indie shows. “Straight Talk Express” has got to be the corniest name for a political campaign I’ve ever heard. Why not just call it “Best Campaign Ever”? Seriously now.
Meanwhile, in the blue corner, the Hildabeast has more flip-flops than a goddamn beachhouse. First she starts in by giving oral to several gay-rights groups, and then she fucking blows it when some military twit decides that homos aren’t people and she doesn’t necessarily disagree. I think she might have forgotten her script on her way back from impaling junior congressmen on spikes. Speaking of Barack Obama, apparently he’s losing ground to Hillary among Democrats. I guess having a platform consisting of “audacity” and “hope” just doesn’t cut it. But hey, it’s been hilarious watching Hillary try to smear your campaign without being accused of racism, so you’ve been fun buddy.
If these polls are any indication, we’ll get to look forward to Don Teflioni vs. The Second Coming of Communism. God save us.
Cleveland Cavaliers center Scot Pollard looked into the camera during a recent game and said, “Hey kids, do drugs.”
Pollard was sitting on the bench in street clothes when he made the remark during a 20-second timeout Sunday against Indiana. The Cavaliers didn’t find it funny.
“We have spoken with Scot and certainly do not condone his actions,” general manager Danny Ferry said in a statement Wednesday. “He regrets his mistake, using inappropriate humor, particularly when he has always been very involved in the community, projecting positive messages to our youth. We will handle the issue internally.”
“It was a bad joke,” Pollard said in Thursday editions of The Plain Dealer. “That’s all it boils down to. There are a number of things people could say about it, but it just turned out it was a bad joke. Obviously, I don’t believe that.”
And you, Pollard. Stick to your guns, don’t let these humorless grouches boss you around. The entire fucking world is not run by Truth.com, start acting like it.
We’ve heard plenty from the Kubby and Phillies campaigns. Two well-run campaigns are building momentum, but new information has been slow in coming from the Stanhope campaign since the Hammer of Truth interview last year. Well, the third serious challenger in the ring is getting heard now, and heard here. With no further ado, Doug Stanhope.
LFV: Your Wikipedia article used to say that you had given up the campaign after hearing about the reporting requirements. Now it says that you are “reconsidering my presidential run while my exploratory team looks into the viability of such an endeavor.” Could you clarify this matter for our readers?
DS: I haven’t officially announced but we still have every intention of doing so. My campaign manager is not a U.S. citizen so we’ve been held up in the tangle of immigration bureaucracy while we get the rest of our ducks in a row and our website ready to launch. I am also in the process of completing some television obligations which, while not political, will certainly raise my public visibility.
Also note – Anything put on Wikipedia about me was done by the people unknown to me. It used to say that I was on ABC’s “The View” with Barbara Walters so make sure you always cross-reference anything you read there. I have never said that I’d given up on the campaign for any reason. Read the rest of this entry »
All right… I’ve been gone for a while. I really really appreciate everyone pulling together to keep stuff going while I was gone. What happened was this: I’m the vice president of Chadron State College’s Campus Historical Forum. Well, the CHF trip this year was to the Seattle area, with stops in Victoria and Vancouver. That was over spring break, so I went. Therefore, I wasn’t anywhere near a computer with which to make a bloggings. I feel bad about that.
I did have my eyes and ears open for anything to write home about, however. Most notably, when I was in Vancouver I eschewed the Canucks hockey game that the club shelled out $50 USD apiece for, and instead offered to save the club money by taking a $20 CAD instead and blowing it in town for a few hours. My first stop? The New Amsterdam, the most notorious “smoke-easy” in Vancouver. I got a dime for a nickel, and proceeded to smoke it up in there. Man, I’ve never seen so many people be so nice about weed… I got a blunt the size of a cigar because the dude next to me didn’t want to finish it. I tell you what… those BC kids know what the fuck they’re doing.
I also got to talking to the guy who started Canada’s first needle exchange program; he helped me roll my joints (I’ve always been bad at it). Apparently marijuana laws are so lax there because Vancouver’s anti-drug task force is concentrating on its heroin problem. Which is hardly good news; heroin’s a bad drug and I wouldn’t wish it on anyone. I saw, right next to Gastown, the slum areas where heroin addicts went dumpster diving for food because all their money goes to heroin. The government’s involvement just makes it worse, but still… what a way to get marijuana de-facto legalized.
Oh well. The bright side is that Vancouver’s got the freest drug laws on the North American continent, and the movement they’re building there is too far advanced to ever be stopped.
The Democrats passed it a while back, and Dubya rolled over like a little bitch. Everyone was like “OMG YAY NOW TEH POOR WILL FINALLY BE OKAY.” Hell, even Walmart, Soul-Sucking Corporate Enemy Of The People, was cheering for it. It was the feel-good political blockbuster of winter.
But it was a fucking stupid idea, and even though it hasn’t taken effect yet, it’s already started screwing over the poor.
Remember how I mentioned Walmart? Yeah, those bastardfucks were cheering this on because they realized that nobody with money would bother shopping at their store. However, raise the minimum wage and their core consumer base suddenly has a little more spending money… money they’d spend at Walmart. Not only that, but Walmart was already paying $7 and change an hour on average, so raising the minimum wage would only hurt their competition.
That’s not all though!
I went shopping with the $16.50 that the State of Nebraska thinks I earned over the last two weeks (yay severe underreporting of hours! I need a new job) the other day and went to buy soda. Knowing that I couldn’t afford the decent Cherry Coke that I usually buy for $.98, I was prepared to buy the fuck nasty Sam’s Cola because it was $.50. Lo and behold, when I got there, the Cherry Coke was $1.24 and the Sam’s Cola was $.62. Yes, that’s right. The minimum wage hasn’t even HIT yet and they’re already raising prices.
So let’s sum up. Minimum wage rises, throws about 7% of the poor out of a job. On top of that, before the wage even hits, prices for basic consumer goods go up to the point that it’ll negate any wage hike in the first place.
At least I can rest assured that the price of habañero lube that Big Government/Corporate America is using to fuck me up the ass hasn’t gone up. Either that, or they’re just sucking up the cost out of the goodness of their hearts. They rape because they care.
While the criminal Bush, giving himself a salary of one million dollars, takes many vacations on his illegal ranch in “Crawford” to oversee the child slave labourers in his salt mine, pistol whipping them with a discarded rusty water can, Dear Leader is visiting the factories of the west, the iron works in the north, giving the instructions to bring about the great upsurge in economic building of the nation under the banner of his “Speed of the Eighties” revolutionary campaign.
Dear Leader Comrade Generalissimo Kim Jong Il IS the shining sun and the hope of all humankind.
A bottle of Maker’s Mark says it’s a joke. Any takers?
Looks like National’s Fearless Leader is getting a tad fed up with our choices for President.
From… well, from us (damn, it feels good to break a story):
> From: shane.cory@lp.org
> To: lnc-discuss@lp.org
> Subject: [Lnc-discuss] Presidential Candidates
> Date: Wed, 14 Feb 2007 11:32:43 -0500 (EST)
>
> Dear LNC Members,
>
> If you have not already seen this, it is a recount of the first
> Libertarian presidential debate held in Nevada this past weekend.
>
> After reading it, I’m not sure if I should laugh or cry.
>
> The lady who wrote the piece summarizes her thoughts with this:
>
> In conclusion, here’s how I’d personally rank those candidates for the
> Libertarian presidential nomination:
> 1. Someone better, please!
> 2. George Phillies
> 3. Steve Kubby
> 4. None of the above (don’t run a presidential candidate at all)
> 5. Dave Hollist
> 6. Gene Chapman
>
> Sigh.
>
> As far as the debate performance, she rated and described our current
> batch of candidates as “whackjob”, “incoherent whackjob”, “charisma of a
> wet towel”, and the third one she could not really rate as he debated
> over the phone as he was not allowed to leave his state per the terms of
> his parole.
>
> I’m speechless. . . Read the rest of this entry »
Reading it over, I saw what was basically a recap of everything we’d been covering over on Hammer of Truth for the past year, but with the obligatory sheen that only National can put on stuff.
“Smither tanked” became “Smither diverted enough resources to the race to cost the Republicans two House seats.” Which is a fair enough point-and a brilliant side effect of helping out his campaign. “Guthrie tanked” became “Guthrie got some good mentions in the media.” They mentioned the shit outta Bob Barr, natch… but no mention of Michael Badnarik, interestingly enough. It’s gonna take years for National’s fundraising efforts to get over that curse. And, of course, there was the pitch for money-with the interesting take that to stay solvent, they need everyone who reads it to donate at least $54.
I think, on a whole, the report was encouraging. It did take the year’s successes and failures and craft them into a larger whole, minus ignoring the fact that Michael Badnarik ever existed. I would have to concur that saving the nation from two more years of unchecked Republican rule is worthy of every penny spent on the Libertarian Party, though. That’s not just grandstanding from a party desperate for everything you can spare. That’s the greatest, noblest task this party has ever undertaken and accomplished. I wish I had the cash to chuck at National myself.
I did notice their emphasis on 45-state ballot access, though. They’re writing off the most problematic ones, and it seems like there is some serious effort by National to get the more lethargic state parties back on their feet. (Hopefully this means Nebraska will be organized again!) But yeah. We should really stop squandering our cash on those same couple states that always give us trouble. Get on the ballot in every state where the cost-benefit ratio works out, which is thankfully most of them. But give up on goddamn Oklahoma.
And get National back in the black… which after Captain Spacepants rocked his shit will be harder than ever, but not unreasonable.
All in all, I think National’s doing the best they can do in the situation, and really the best they’ve ever done. I’m proud of the guys up top right now.
All right, Paulie’s been on my ass to post my opinion on the Nevada debates, specifically between Phillies and Kubby. So, lemme get on that now that I’ve got the time. (College would be awesome if there weren’t any classes or homework, but yeah.)
I’ll start off with some of the obvious issues. Gene Chapman was the first to go. He came off sounding like a nut, but not as much of one as I would have figured. I’m figuring that it’s just some trick of the human voice that de-escalates him to simply some John Bircher in supposedly Libertarian clothing, but yes. He’s not winning any votes, I’m honestly a bit surprised he was even invited. But he reminds me of my ex-wife’s pastor father… kind of a likable-but-confused bum who speaks a good bullshit game when it comes to theology but doesn’t know shit about politics when you get down to it. Interesting guy to bullshit with but you wouldn’t elect him for dog catcher, let alone President.
The questions that were asked to Chapman were asked with what seemed like an obvious air of “What the fuck are you even talking about, dude?” “Slave Freedom Alliance” my ass. Like getting the Constitution, Southern, and whateverthefuck other parties he mentioned to endorse him would do anything. Yay, now like five more people in Georgia would vote for us! I think I’ll just go ahead and stamp upon that cursed alliance. That and he supports farm subsidies? WTF?
Christine Smith is the great disappointment of this whole endeavor. She’s a no-show at the entire campaign so far. Not just this event, either. Given that she’s usually considered as third place, I tried to cover her. I’m not going to pretend that this is some fuck-huge blog (at least not yet) but I figured that with two of the editors here being representatives from the Phillies and Kubby camps, respectively, that I ought to try to give her some equal time. So I shot off an email and no reply. Either her campaign thinks that free publicity will hurt her campaign, or they think we’re such small potatoes as to not be worth it. Yeah, no. Next please. Read the rest of this entry »
The New York Times had an interesting piece about a recent attempt to undo the worst excesses of the Military Commissions Act of 2006.
A disturbing recent phenomenon in Washington is that laws that strike to the heart of American democracy have been passed in the dead of night. So it was with a provision quietly tucked into the enormous defense budget bill at the Bush administration’s behest that makes it easier for a president to override local control of law enforcement and declare martial law.
The provision, signed into law in October, weakens two obscure but important bulwarks of liberty. One is the doctrine that bars military forces, including a federalized National Guard, from engaging in law enforcement. Called posse comitatus, it was enshrined in law after the Civil War to preserve the line between civil government and the military. The other is the Insurrection Act of 1807, which provides the major exemptions to posse comitatus. It essentially limits a president’s use of the military in law enforcement to putting down lawlessness, insurrection and rebellion, where a state is violating federal law or depriving people of constitutional rights.
…
There is a bipartisan bill, introduced by Senators Patrick Leahy, Democrat of Vermont, and Christopher Bond, Republican of Missouri, and backed unanimously by the nation’s governors, that would repeal the stealthy revisions. Congress should pass it. If changes of this kind are proposed in the future, they must get a full and open debate.
It’s not perfect, but it’s a start. Keep bringing us back our civil liberties, Democrats, and we might just let you keep your jobs.
I don’t know if any of you remember someone named Greg Dirasian, but if you do… apparently he’s taken enough time off writing Rothbard/Rand “purity” slashfic his political opinions to take a potshot at us.
Yesterday, I was doing a Google search on another topic and I came across a “Libertarian” blog, http://www.LastFreeVoice.com/. It made me embarassed that I was ever associated with the Libertarian Party. The authors on the blog were sitting around congratulating themselve on being great free speech advocates — and almost every single blog posting contained a profanity.
The semi-literate authors, seem to be short of adjectives. Thus, instead of describing something that is very big as either “enormous” or “vast” or “gigantic” or “massive” or “gargantuan” or “huge” or “mammoth” or “titanic” or “colossal”, they seem only to be able to describe it as “fucking big.” As advocates of free speech, these people cannot be taken seriously. The public will NEVER be swayed by people with such a poor grasp of the language and the public will NEVER take seriously those who cannot get past profanity.
Oh man oh man oh MAN where to begin. First off, while we’re on the subject of trying to sound like a goddamn Oxford professor, I could point out your use of the word “themselve” or the grammatically-incorrect “The semi-literate authors, seem to be short of adjectives.” But focusing on someone’s speech instead of their ideas would just be petty, now wouldn’t it bucko?
So let’s talk about ideas. The idea of this blog is to appeal to anyone and everyone who calls themselves a libertarian. Many of us DON’T swear, many of us are “purists” just like you when it comes to political philosophy. We’re pretty diverse, actually. Read the rest of this entry »
You know it’s bad when a libertarian website has Obama fever this bad.
Not even the writers of the website. Just the website itself.
For the record… can someone tell me just WTF you, me or anyone could ever possibly do with a Barack Obama wristband? Or any politician’s wristband? I mean, I fucking love Ron Paul but I’d never, y’know, have “RON PAUL 2008″ around my wrist. That’d just be silly.
Australian Prime Minister John Howard on Monday stood by his comments from a day earlier when he said that terrorists should pray that Sen. Barack Obama and the Democrats take over the White House in 2008.
Both Democrats and Republicans in the U.S. were telling Howard to butt out of American politics.
Speaking to Australia’s ABC News Radio, Howard said his comments were aimed at the Illinois Democrat’s plan to withdraw U.S. forces from Iraq in March 2008.
“What I have done is to criticize Sen. Obama’s views on a particular issue, and I don’t retreat in any way from that criticism,” Howard said. “I think if America is defeated in Iraq that will be catastrophic for the West and it will have tremendously adverse consequences for Australia.”
…
On Sunday, Howard told an Australian TV program that, “If I were running al Qaeda in Iraq, I would put a circle around March 2008, and pray, as many times as possible, for a victory not only for Obama, but also for the Democrats.”
Right now, I don’t care who wins the Kubby-Phillies pissing match. Unless it’s Gene Chapman.
Go look at this motherfucker’s crazy-ass site. This guy is fucking clownshoes, toys in the attic, all that and more. If Gene Chapman somehow manages to win the Libertarian nomination, then the Libertarian Party will just have been crashed. For good.
If the Kubby and Phillies campaigns bicker and fight among each other long enough, it might happen. Look at what happened with the Nolan-Russo fight in 2004. The two front-runners sabotaged each other to the point where another crazy-ass motherfucker won the nomination.
We can’t have that.
Both Phillies and Kubby are decent candidates, when you get down to it. Neither one would be an embarrassment to the party, although the partisans here will obviously declare that one will represent it better than the other.
So whatever you do, DO NOT let Chapman get anywhere near the nomination. He is deluded, and he says shit like this:
Mr. Kubby has some fan base in Las Vegas, but I think the Christians and the LP members who want to draw into the LP the 82% of Americans who profess faith in Jesus Christ mostly went for me.
There was a really good article on Alternet about the return of fascism, as predicted by a man who lived through the Nazi regime and smuggled documents from the Confessing Church (which stood up to the Nazis) out of Germany. That guy saw this fascism coming twenty-five years ago. Anyway, the leading snippet:
Dr. James Luther Adams, my ethics professor at Harvard Divinity School, told his students that when we were his age — he was then close to 80 — we would all be fighting the “Christian fascists.”
The warning, given 25 years ago, came at the moment Pat Robertson and other radio and television evangelists began speaking about a new political religion that would direct its efforts toward taking control of all institutions, including mainstream denominations and the government. Its stated goal was to use the United States to create a global Christian empire. This call for fundamentalists and evangelicals to take political power was a radical and ominous mutation of traditional Christianity. It was hard, at the time, to take such fantastic rhetoric seriously, especially given the buffoonish quality of those who expounded it. But Adams warned us against the blindness caused by intellectual snobbery. The Nazis, he said, were not going to return with swastikas and brown shirts. Their ideological inheritors had found a mask for fascism in the pages of the Bible.
It’s got a lot of thoughtful things to say, comparisons to make. It’s a liberal writer doing this article, so of course the obvious answer involves cash handouts to the poor and banning religious schools and other such crap. Read the rest of this entry »
Presented for amusement, possible enlightenment, and for no direct polemical purpose, the first-person tale of Susan Smith, as told to the British Guardian, who wants to be legless, and has gone through a fair amount of personal difficulty to get halfway there. Is she:
a) a screwed-up nut who ought to be locked up to prevent her from hurting herself;
b) suffering from the identifiable medical disorder “body identity integrity disorder,” probably because of the chemical make-up of her brain, who doctors have an obligation to help achieve her stated “need” to lose her limbs;
c) a woman with an unusual preference who should be permitted to contract with a willing professional to achieve her desires about her body;
d) who cares what she is or how she gets her jollies as long as I don’t have to pay for her fun and games?
Staggeringly odd, that. I gotta say that I wouldn’t do it myself if I were a doctor, but if she wants it done and can find a willing doctor, by all means. I’d have to say that her own words, in the article Reason linked, convinced me: Read the rest of this entry »
We’ve got quite the libertarian menagerie going on here, and I think it’s great.
Robert Mayer is joining our ranks. I’ll let him introduce himself in further detail, but yes. I’m really happy with the support that’s been coming in from every corner of the libertarian blogosphere for this site. I may be the admin, but it’s you guys that make this place work… stepping up to help us host the site, blog here, all that. We’re going to build this place into something impressive, and it’ll be all your fault.
So yeah, thanks to Robert for stepping up, and thanks to everyone else for making this place work. Ciao!
GreginOz shot off an email to me today, with a fascinating link. It’s an article on AlterNet about the planning for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and about the Bush Administration’s obliquity concerning the 9/11 commission.
I’ll come out and say that I doubt the government was directly behind the 9/11 attacks. But they certainly have used the attacks to their fullest potential, and have been less than forthcoming about what happened, and the paper trail certainly raises some intriguing questions.
I’m not a believer in any 9/11 conspiracy theories, but I sure would like those questions answered. And, thankfully, this article doesn’t delve into speculation; it merely presents all the facts known to date and lets the reader come to conclusions (or not come to conclusions) on their own.
I’ve always been of the opinion that places like tshirthell.com, and the people that patronize them, naturally lean towards libertarian values. Whether you agree with what amount to shock-value t-shirts or not, there remains the fact that there are people in this world that would like to ban such things. So long as those people exist, the fringe of acceptability will always be our natural ally.
Anyway, I moseyed down to their site the other day to see if there was anything new. I liked what I saw, and I’ve got more than a few t-shirts I’d like to order from there one day, when I’ve got money. Make the jump to see them, but don’t say I didn’t warn you. Read the rest of this entry »
Go on over there. That is the new site. The look isn’t quite finished yet but it’s functional enough for government work. When it’s done, it’ll look like this place does, hopefully.
Editors, you should have an email in your inboxes from me, telling you how to login over there. Oh yeah, the URL to go login is http://www.lastfreevoice.com/wp-admin , just like here but without the wordpress in the title. Yep.
We’re still sorting everything out, but by and large it looks like we’ve made the transition well enough.
A few notes, to authors and readers alike:
-Don’t post any images wider than 400px. I have to stress this because it can mess with the tables.
-When posting YouTube or Google videos, use the HTML code they have on the site itself, stop using the WordPress.com unique codes. They won’t work here.
-If something’s fucking up, lemme know about it by emailing me at princepsaugustus@hotmail.com . I’m gonna dedicate tomorrow night to making sure this bitch works.
And with that, I’m off to anime club to take a break. Please enjoy the site!
We’re in the process of setting up the new site. Now, this means that we need to upload .xml files and the like, meaning that you blog authors oughtn’t post anything here that 1) you’re not willing to lose or 2) you’re willing to repost without any new comments.
This’ll be done by this weekend, and then we can promptly resume our backbiting political drunken ways.
Oh, and if all of you give me $25, I’ll start this awesome site that’ll kick Kos’ ass in the face, and we can start the motherfucking revolution.
We’re in the process of setting up the new site. Now, this means that we need to upload .xml files and the like, meaning that you blog authors oughtn’t post anything here that 1) you’re not willing to lose or 2) you’re willing to repost without any new comments.
This’ll be done by this weekend, and then we can promptly resume our backbiting political drunken ways.
Oh, and if all of you give me $25, I’ll start this awesome site that’ll kick Kos’ ass in the face, and we can start the motherfucking revolution.
I’d like to have some LFV bloggers on the ground. All of us, if at all possible-treat it as a meetup and a journalistic thing. But I’d like to plan for it NOW, instead of rocking it like HoT and being all “THERE’S A CONVENTION OMGWTFBBQ WHO’S THERE LET’S GET HIS TAKE.” Which worked really well, everything considered, but then again it was HoT. They could get away with that shit.
So far Chaz (C.E. Oberg, but I give up trying to refer to him with a monogram, it’s so… weird) and I have plans to go. It’d be sweet if everyone could come up.
Basically my plans are tentative, but they go like this. I live in Chadron, Nebraska. I know you don’t know where that is, so with MS Paint my state-of-the-art cartographic equipment, I made you all a map.
Some legal experts say prosecutors will have a hard time proving that two men intended to cause a scare when they planted blinking electronic devices around Boston in a publicity stunt for a cartoon show.
They say the key difficulties prosecutors face are demonstrating that the men intended to cause fear, and that the devices, which depict a cartoon character, looked dangerous. The state must prove both to win felony convictions for placing a hoax device, the experts said.
“Their intent was to place these devices as part of an admittedly idiotic advertising campaign,” said defense attorney Edward P. Ryan Jr., a former president of the Massachusetts Bar Association. “Just because people got scared doesn’t mean there was intent.”
Yes, that’s right. A bunch of ads for Aqua Teen Hunger Force, with the show’s villain giving Boston the finger, resulted in the Department of Homeland Security shitting itself and closing down the city. The best part, though, was the public reaction of the two guys who put these ads up. They didn’t get pinned down for shit else but 70s hairstyles. Well, here, just watch for yourself.
She was a liberal, not a libertarian. She advocated a lot of stuff I didn’t agree with, but then again, I never read more biting political satire and I never saw anyone stand up more vehemently to the Iraq war, which I think is the defining issue of American politics today. She’s definitely one of my heroes as far as blogging goes, and she will definitely be missed.
Kinda on the conspiracy theorist fringe, which isn’t really my scene, but done really well nonetheless. What really sold me was two things: GreginOz’ recommendation (seriously, if you ever want anything posted on here, your best bet is to be GreginOz); and the fact that it mentioned Project MKULTRA, the CIA program that invented LSD and the only time in history to my knowledge that anyone in the CIA was ever convicted of human rights violations. (C.E. Oberg and I are writing a script about it, actually.) But yeah… with no further ado, the video.
The latest Libertarian mailer carries a link to a story about how a newly-elected Libertarian majority on some local soil board somewhere (the article didn’t specify) managed to shut down a complete waste of tax money, and how the bureaucrats turned out in droves with threats and sob stories aplenty.
Chairman Jack Tanner quickly moved through the agenda until he opened the floor to discuss the termination of the mobile irrigation laboratory and our two employees. The next 45 minutes or so were consumed by a series of earnest and emotional pleas by the government managers. Phrases like “millions of gallons wasted” and “billions of gallons saved” were used. Papers were pushed around with columns, charts and graphs. A case was cited in which an elderly, feeble, poor woman, unable to manage her lawn sprinklers, was “saved” by our wonderful program.
The process was disturbingly familiar as I have witnessed this play acted out in many state, county and city boardrooms over the years. Politicians eager to be re-elected are unable or unwilling to stand up to intimidation and embarrassment that comes with a difficult or unpopular decision.
The Cape Coral utilities manager was impressive and forceful. At one point he said, “Citizens don’t protect themselves so we have to.” He concluded, “You may as well keep this program because if you don’t we will find a way to continue, and the taxpayers won’t save a dime.”
Long story short, the Libertarian majority ended the program, the two workers were fired, and the bureaucrats began debating how to foist some evil onto the local populace yet again. We won this round, but big government may yet rear its ugly head. Keep voting Libertarian and we’ll be able to keep the Man down.
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.
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.
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!
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.
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.
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.
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. )
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.
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. Read the rest of this entry »
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.
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.
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.”
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.
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. Read the rest of this entry »
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.
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.
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!
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.
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?
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.
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.
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.”
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.
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.
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. Read the rest of this entry »
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.
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.
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).
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.
My friend Dan is a big big fan of Penn & Teller. Besides the fact that Penn is involved with the World Juggling Federation (yes, I actually sit at rapt attention for hours while watching grown adults play with their balls on national television), they do this lovely little show called “Bullshit.”
Dan got all three seasons of Bullshit right before Christmas break and he was showing me some episodes. I went hunting for some of the online episodes and this is one of the especially enlightening ones. I want to save the environment as much as the next guy, which is why I was so fascinated. (They also did another one on the environmental movement in general that was good.) But anyway, here it is. Half an hour but so worth it.
As I read this, I heard the sound of a thousand yellow ribbon magnets committing suicide because they’ll never quite reach that level of patriotic kitsch.
So remember Koch… y’know, of the “Clark-Koch ‘80″ fame? He bankrolled the most successful Libertarian presidential bid in history.
Well, now he wants the government to bankroll him, apparently. Free market my ass:
While the tracks are privately owned, G-P at least has been ringing phones all the way up to the governor’s office. On Friday, the company’s Portland-based lobbyist also called up Rep. Arnie Roblan, D-Coos Bay, and suggested that if times get too tough, G-P’s Coos Bay mill, which employs 140 people, may cut operations. Two-thirds of that company’s lumber heads out on rail.
If you will recall, Georgia-Pacific is owned by our own Koch, ever since last year.
So why you asking for a government handout, Koch? You’re better than this… or so we thought.
Ethiopia said on Tuesday it was half way to crushing Somali Islamists as its forces advanced on the religious movement’s Mogadishu stronghold after a week of war in the Horn of Africa.
Somalia’s envoy to Addis Ababa said Ethiopian troops were within 70 km (40 miles) of the capital and could capture it in 24 to 48 hours.
slamists countered that they were ready for a long war and any attempt to oust them would prove disastrous for their foes.
The Red Cross said more than 800 people had been wounded and thousands were fleeing the combat zone, with the United Nations saying the displacement could trigger an aid crisis in a region where relief resources are already stretched.
Ethiopian Prime Minister Meles Zenawi said his forces supporting Somalia’s weak interim government had killed up to 1,000 Islamist fighters. There was no independent verification. The Islamists also say they have killed hundreds.
“We have already completed half our mission, and as soon as we finish the second half, our troops will leave Somalia,” Meles told a news conference in the Ethiopian capital.
“We will not keep a single fighter in Somalia once our mission getting rid of the terrorists is completed.”
So Ethiopia’s doing the whole terror-fighting thing too, but at least they’re being smart about it. They’re not getting bogged down; they’re gonna go in and get out ASAP. This whole thing’ll probably be done in a month, most likely. And what’s more, they’ll probably get their targets. We could learn a thing or two from them. Granted, it’s not as awesome as not starting wars in the first place, but… eh. You take what you can get.
Oh well, so much for ULTAMITE ANARCHY OH NOES. Although Somalia’s admittedly been developing more swiftly than its statist neighbors, it hardly ever seemed like the glorious homeland that some hardcore anarcho-capitalists have raved about. Anyway, just because a country is most aligned with my political views doesn’t necessarily mean that I’d want to live there. A slightly greater degree of theoretical liberty, or running water. Well hmm.
If I ever do emigrate for political reasons, I’m headed to Estonia. A minarchist government holds far more encouraging prospects in my mind than an anarchistic area. For one thing, they won’t be overrun by worried neighbors in the space of two weeks. Jus’ sayin’ is all.
So we’re apparently the 95th-fastest growing blog on WordPress. Suck it, Tiffin Tin.
What else… in other news, archaeologists found a cuneiform tablet in an excavation of ancient Babylon. Carbon-dating has confirmed it to be the oldest example of writing in the history of the world. The translation reads as follows: “Sorry guys, LibertyMix is gonna be a little late, my bad. -SVD“ The tablet then goes on to discuss an announcement of the pre-release of Xenosaga III and finishes with a prophecy regarding the Annunaki being slain by a god known only as the “Galactic Emissary,” who then reigns over the moons of Jupiter for ten thousand years.
(Sorry SVD… you know we love you.)
Anyway, this blog is the result of boredom and Christmas. So Merry Christmas, everyone, or whateverthehell you happen to celebrate on or around this day. I just got a metric fuckton of foreign language dictionaries so I’m off to figure out how to say “non-initiation of force” in Sanskrit or some shit, LOL.
Turkmenistan is officially a nation of orphans. Government officials announced Thursday morning that President-For-Life Saparmurat Niyazov, self-proclaimed “Turkmenbashi” — the Father of all the Turkmen — had died overnight of cardiac arrest. The much-feared ruler’s death came as a shock to his five million subjects, who for 21 years had been living in near-total international isolation under his Alice-in-Wonderland dictatorship. Niyazov fought AIDS and cholera by simply outlawing any mention of them or other infectious diseases. He banned from employment, public or private, anyone who had received a degree or a diploma from a foreign educational institution over the previous decade, and had most of the domestic school curriculum replaced by studies of his book Rukhnama (Spirituality), the reading of which, he assured, was a ticket straight to Allah’s paradise. But there was nothing orthodox about the tightly controlled forms of Islam he allowed: he banned beards and mustaches, as well as long hair. And lest his subjects forget their “father,” he renamed days of the week and months of the calendar after himself and members of his family. He even ordered bread renamed by a word derived from his mother’s name.
Niyazov has gone, but his 46-foot-tall gold-plated statue (one of several hundreds of thousands of his likenesses dotted around the country) which completes a slow rotation every 24 hours atop the 230-foot tower in downtown Ashgabat will watch the resulting struggle over the world’s fifth-biggest reserve of natural gas, which Niyazov had controlled as if it were his private property.
Holy fucking shit, this asshat renamed bread. That’s pretty much the pettiest thing I’ve ever heard. That’s going down in history with “Sorry haters, God isn’t finished with me yet.” Jesus fucking Christ.
Anyway, I hope they can resolve this impending doom but quick, because the Turkmen have evidently been through enough. The last thing they need is a war on top of this guy using an entire nation as his own personal Viagra for the past twentysomething years.
That’s what I dissent from, and I dissent from it as a Christian. I dissent from the political pollution of sincere, personal faith. I dissent most strongly from the attempt to argue that one party represents God and that the other doesn’t. I dissent from having my faith co-opted and wielded by people whose politics I do not share and whose intolerance I abhor. The word Christian belongs to no political party. It’s time the quiet majority of believers took it back.
God is not Democratic or Republican… or, let’s be honest, even Libertarian. If one believes that God exists, as I happen to, it’s gotta be pretty obvious that our pathetic human squabbles do not concern him. You are not going to Hell for voting for gay marriage, and Pat Robertson can fuck himself raw if he says otherwise.
That, and the fundies (both Christian and otherwise) have finally been given a bloody nose this year. Good times, good times.
Arizona replaced long-time leader Nevada as the fastest growing state in the union during the 12 months ended July 1, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. The population of the Grand Canyon state grew 3.6 percent during that period. Nevada grew by 3.5 percent.
Regionally, the West grew faster than any other area, 1.5 percent. The South was next at 1.4 percent, with the Midwest third (0.4 percent) and the Northeast trailing (0.1 percent).
The libertarian West is surging ahead of the rest of the country, and the fastest-growing states in the second-fastest growing region (Texas and Georgia) have strong Libertarian Party organizations in their states. Good news for liberty? I think so!
He’s done gone signed a bill that’ll preserve certain historic sites. Which is a good thing… these camps were already federal property; might as well help out historians and economists by preserving our historical legacy and making them turn a buck for us so the taxpayers have an easier time of it.
But anyway, these sites were used to… oh how did they explain it? Ah yes.
The law is intended to help preserve the camps as reminders of how the United States turned on some of its citizens in a time of fear.
Fifty years from now, there’ll be bills set out to preserve Guantanamo Bay and all those camps where our allies conducted their “extraterritorial renditions” for us.
Meanwhile, kids, we’re still losing the War on Stupid if we don’t learn from the mistakes of a previous generation and allow this torture shit to continue.
The Queen made Bono of U2 a… um, hold on, gotta copy-paste this… “Knight Commander of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire.” Yeah, that. Oh hell, I’ll just quote it.
Bono — the Irish rock star, anti-poverty campaigner, and philanthropist — has been awarded an honorary British knighthood, the British Embassy in Dublin said on Saturday.
“The British Embassy in Dublin takes great pleasure in announcing that Her Majesty The Queen has appointed Bono to be an honorary Knight Commander of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire in recognition of his services to the music industry and for his humanitarian work,” according to an embassy news release.
The British ambassador to Ireland, David Reddaway, is to give Bono — a member of the rock group U2 — an “insignia of this honorary award” after New Year’s in a ceremony in the Irish capital.
Funny timing, I’d say the Queen’s got a sense of humor. Apparently something’s changing on New Year’s Day.
At any rate, I’m happy for Bono. The guy’s done a lot of good. Yeah, he’s advocated a lot of shit policies over the years… the embargo on South Africa (because restricting freedom will, um, help liberate people?) and then expecting the American taxpayer to subsidize all his plans… which I disagree with on a moral basis, even though the causes are good.
However, let’s be realistic here. He’s also corralled a lot of private-sector aid for the world’s poor, downtrodded and generally fucked-over. He got a bunch of Christian rockers to do something useful. He’s generally “done more good for the Third World than most nations,” according to Kofi Annan. Kept in the private sector, Bono’s one of the greatest humanitarians of this age. And even in the public sector… yeah it sucks that all that money was taken from us at implied gunpoint, but I’d rather be forced to pay to stop a famine than be forced to pay for a war that I don’t agree with.
The Libertarian National Committee has announced that Denver, Colorado will be the host city for the 2008 Libertarian National Convention. The LP presidential nomination convention will be held between Friday, May 23 and Monday, May 26 at the Adam’s Mark Hotel. Adam’s Mark Denver is Colorado’s largest hotel, with over 1225 rooms and 133,000 sq. ft. of meeting and exhibit space.
“We are extremely proud to serve as the venue for the 2008 convention,” said Libertarian Party of Colorado Chairman Travis Nicks. “We look forward to showing the nation’s Libertarians what the birthplace of the Libertarian Party has to offer.”
While Libertarians hold a Libertarian National Convention every two years, on presidential election years the Party selects its presidential and vice presidential candidates though the convention process.
“With all of the recent media interest about the libertarian vote in western mountain states, Denver will provide an excellent opportunity for us to show the voters what is meant by smaller government, lower taxes and more freedom,” said LNC Chairman William Redpath. “Additionally, the Libertarian National Convention won’t be a coronation of some pre-determined candidate held at taxpayer expense.”
The Libertarian Party, which recently celebrated its 35th birthday, was founded in Colorado in 1971. Libertarians do not accept public funding for their national convention, while the Republican and Democrat conventions generally cost taxpayers tens of millions of dollars.
I’m making plans now to go. I want in on this action. And I won’t actually have to travel that far-Denver’s only like 6 hours away from Chadron. This is gonna rock.
There’s an article in WaPo discussing some windbag Congressman who’s getting all pissy that one of his number isn’t using the Bible.
BIGOTRY COMES in various guises — some coded, some closeted, some colossally stupid. The bigotry displayed recently by Rep. Virgil H. Goode Jr., a Republican who represents a patch of south-central Virginia, falls squarely in the third category. Mr. Goode, evidently in a state of xenophobic delirium, went on a semi-public tirade against the looming peril and corrupting threat posed by Muslim immigration to the United States. “I fear that in the next century we will have many more Muslims in the United States if we do not adopt the strict immigration policies that I believe are necessary to preserve the values and beliefs traditional to the United States of America,” he wrote in a letter to constituents.
The inspiration for Mr. Goode’s rant is Keith Ellison, a Minnesota Democrat who last month became the first Muslim elected to Congress. Mr. Ellison, who was born in Detroit and converted to Islam in college, has decided to use the Koran during a ceremonial swearing-in, as is his constitutional right. This does not sit well with Mr. Goode, who, obnoxiously referring to his congressional colleague-to-be as “the Muslim Representative from Minnesota,” warned ominously that current immigration policy would lead to an outbreak of elected Muslims in this country and unfettered use of the Koran.
Yeah… Virginia, WTF were you thinking electing this douchebag? Weren’t you kids the same lot that gave us Washington, Lee and Jefferson? None of those guys (not even the Confederate general) would have stood for this kind of abject bigotry. So what gives?
Well, I figured I’d say it. News has already hit that ex-congressman Bob Barr has not only joined our ranks, but become a regional representative within the party itself.
He’s already had to deal with uneasy questions in regards to stances on things he’s still working out, like the drug war and gay marriage. He’s hedging, but it’s not the hedge of a slick politician, at least not to me it doesn’t sound like. It sounds like the hedge of a guy who honestly isn’t sure what he believes, but is thinking that liberty might be the answer.
I’ve had friends join the LP before and they’ve gone through the same process. Where the concepts of supporting an act and supporting the legality of an act begin to separate themselves. Where they see that we’re not all pot-smoking gun-toting crazies who want Objectivist government/anarchy/whatever yesterday. I’ve seen these wheels turn inside peoples’ heads before, and the answer isn’t to keep hammering away and to be an asshole, the answer is to be nice and give responses when asked.
There once was a movement whose people despised a man. With good reason, too-he was the antithesis of everything they stood for, he did everything in his power to drive their ideas from his homeland. But he had a personal crisis, and a change of heart… and wanted to join this new movement. The people there didn’t trust him at first, figured it was a trick, wanted nothing to do with him. But they were persuaded to not only open their hearts to him, but they even made him one of their leaders.
The Apostle Paul went on to write the majority of books in their New Testament.
So in that spirit, welcome to the Libertarian Party, Mr. Barr. We’ve got a lot of good people, and a lot of kooks… and a lot of good people who are also kooks. We’re well-meaning and I apologize in advance if anything here scares you, or if people seem a little too insistent on protecting their favored corner of libertarian philosophy. They’re just worried, and they have some reason for it… but if we succumb to fear and distrust, well, we probably shouldn’t be running a government anyway.
Claiming the American consumer is in crisis, third-party soft drink Royal Crown Cola called for an end to two-brand dominance, demanding an equal playing field for all and urging sweeping restrictions on the amount Coke and Pepsi are allowed to spend on advertisements.
“Over the past several decades we’ve seen smaller, independent brands pushed to the sidelines,” RC Cola President John Sunderland said Monday. “We cannot compete with the massive amounts the big sodas spend on their ad campaigns—campaigns that obscure the truth and drown out alternative voices in American cola. Rather than an honest, open dialogue, we are instead subjected to a horse race between two giants that ignores the key issues of improved taste and refreshingness.”
The money quote, though:
“It’s all too easy to marginalize lesser-funded labels, especially when Coke and Pepsi can rely on huge war chests funded by the financial backing of corporations like PepsiCo and the Coca-Cola Company,” Sunderland said during a sparsely attended press conference. “In many cases, these corporations have a vested interest in these colas, and are able to saturate the media with their status-quo beverage message. That is just not fair.”
You see those cheapass chintzy little magnetic bumper stickers saying “Support the Troops” when you’re out driving. Suggesting that if you don’t buy into the lies of Bush and at least one of those guilt-laden bumper sticker companies, you’re a Bad American. (Bad American! No American treats for you!) If you’re against the war, you’re not Supporting the Troops.
Well, it looks like the Troops aren’t Supporting the Troops. Not only the Troops, but everyone else stuck in Iraq. It looks like the Onion wasn’t so far off the mark when they drafted up Operation Screw This. At least, that’s what a hefty amount of private soldiers’ correspondence seems to suggest.
The situation in Iraq has reached such a point of degradation and danger that I’ve been unable to return to report – as I did from 2003 to 2005 – from the front lines of daily life. Instead, in these past months, I have found myself in a supportive role, facilitating the work of some of my former sources, who remain in their own war-torn land, to tell their hair-raising tales of the new Iraq. While relying on my Iraqi colleagues to report the news, which we then publish at Inter Press Service and my website, I continue to
receive e-mails from others in Iraq, civilian and soldier alike.
What I know from these e-mails is that the articles on Iraq one normally reads in the local newspaper, even when, for instance, they cover the disintegration of the Iraqi health system or the collapse of the economy, provide you, at best, but a glimpse of what daily life there is now like. After all, who knows better what’s happening than those who are living it?
I thought I might just give you a taste of the sort of private communications I read every day.
He then goes on to offer up some of those emails. This one’s from a Kurd, in one of the more “developed” areas.
It is worse than ever. The problem is that our US government and the Iraqi “government” tell the world that things are improving here when they are not. All of the rebuilding bull is nothing but a scam that is worse than the oil-for-food program [of the post-Gulf War years]. We have one hour of electricity a day now. I have power to turn on some lights and my computer by way of a little generator that I hooked up to my office today. A gallon [3.8 liters] of [gasoline] costs over $4 now, when the salary of an engineer is less than $200 a month.
And here’s one from the mother of a soldier over there:
You can see how the war is destroying my son’s morale, and whittling away at his spirit. Now it’s just a killing game.
We need less Supporting the Troops and more supporting the troops. These are human lives, not political grandstanding. Get our darling girls and boys the hell out of there, and let the Iraqis take hold of their own future.
Well, it’s good that in a nation where you can be barred from running for office on the grounds of not being crazyfucking Muslim enough, there is nonetheless enough sanity to clip some wings. Yeah, I like that Ahmadinejad said a few things I agree with, but that changes not the fact that he’s a Holocaust-denying, would-be genocidal maniac.
Iran, you’re a wonderful country. You keep trying to get your scumbags outta power, and we’ll keep trying the same on our end.
I want sooooo badly to blog about some really interesting stuff. In my neighborhood alone, there is an abundance of stupidity. There is the 4 year old who was given in school suspension for sexually assaulting a teacher. There is a bill presented to allow the blind to hunt. And, the biggest news would be how kind I was to the Texas State Trooper who pulled me over and cited me for driving 89 in a 60 mph zone. I swear that I thanked him for my ticket. I had been at a happy hour and had a couple of drinks- I was not impaired- but I was worried enough to call Anil to tell him that there were flashing lights in my rearview mirror. I told him to check Collin County Jail if I did not make it home.
Readers’ Digest version of the rest of the night is that I got home and then got wasted. I spilled a half glass of good red onto my keyboard. I took the thing apart and cleaned it to the best of my hungover ability, but the ‘m’ and ’space’ keys are not functional. I am stuck using Anil’s Mac to do everything I need, and I cannot for the life of me figure out how to copy and paste links on this thing. What I know is this: there are many computer geeks in the Libertarian Party, but none close enough to fix my laptop. The 4 year old was unjustly suspended for hugging his teacher. I don’t want to be anywhere a blind person is shooting, and I am damn lucky that the cop was questioning me from the passenger side of the car. You see, in Texas, you can go to jail for being tipsy in a bar. Three drinks over four hours and being behind the wheel could probably mean life.
Some ex-Congressman yahoo is tossed in jail for falling hardcore for those fucking Nigerian email scams.
Ed Mezvinsky, a former Democratic Congressman from Iowa, is serving a seven-year sentence for fraud after getting caught up in a series of Nigerian e-mail scams.
Initially, Mezvinsky became the victim of “just about every different kind of African-based scam we’ve ever seen,” federal prosecutor Bob Zauzmer told 20/20 for a report to be broadcast this evening.
But then, says Zauzmer, Mezvinsky began to steal from clients and even his own mother-in-law to raise the money to try yet another scheme.
“He was always looking for the home run. He was always trying to find the business deal that would make him as wealthy as all the people in his social circle,” said Zauzmer.
Yes, you heard me right. A Democratic Congressman not only fell for this Nigerian Mickey Mouse bullshit, but he also stole from people in order to do it.
This is the best news ever, kids. Let me explain how we can make this shit work for the Libertarian Party. First off, find the personal email addresses for like every sitting Congressman and Senator. Spam them with this Nigerian crap-they won’t know the difference, right? it’s just a series of tubes-and when they give us access to their bank account info, take all their cash and donate it to the Libertarian Party through some “trusted intermediaries” of our own… like, I dunno, some banks down in the Bahamas? Then report EVERY SINGLE ONE of those motherfuckers for embezzlement-chances are pretty fucking good these scumbuckets would’ve taken some cash out of some program or another-and fuckblamo! we’ve just made it about twice as likely that the Libertarian Party could maybe win something, sometime ever.
I just need $200,000 to make it work. Like it or not, you NEED my bullshitting expertise to make the Party grow. I take checks and money ord-hey, where’re you going? Hey, HEY! This is about freedom for the next ten thousand years, you know! GET BACK HERE!
Sometimes the best part of being a libertarian blogger is watching two living, breathing fart jokes go at each other in the comments section. Sucks that we’re the punchline, though.
Antiwar.com has an interesting article bashing the concept of the “pro-war libertarian.”
The libertarian movement appears close to suing conservatives for divorce. The vaunted “fusion” between liberty-oriented and virtue-oriented conservatives that helped propel Ronald Reagan into the presidency is breaking down. If Republicans are going to spend like Democrats, expand government like Democrats, and centralize power in Washington like Democrats, then why should someone with libertarian inclinations vote Republican?
An increasing number of voices are now pressing for a libertarian-liberal alliance, or at least a dialogue between libertarians and the Left. But so far the discussion has largely ignored foreign policy.
…
But among professed libertarians there’s been largely silence on the role of foreign policy in deciding on whether to fuse with either conservatives or liberals.
I am most definitely a “dove.” I do find it hard to reconcile libertarianism and the Iraq war. However, many people do… and while I strongly disagree with them, I hope the LP remains a big enough tent that they can find room here too.
“…a list of 205 people that were known to the Secretary of State as being members of the Communist Party, and who, nevertheless, are still working and shaping the policy of the State Department.” -Senator Joseph McCarthy, February 9, 1950.
I wouldn’t usually quote someone whose chief contribution to American history was flopping a steamer on the Constitution, but it just seemed so apropos in light of what I just read.
Looks like Gene Chapman’s done gone shat himself in public again. The latest antic of his is calling the Phillies campaign a pack of Communists. Check it out:
Questions for George Phillies
1) Are you or have you ever been a member of the Communist Party or of a Communist cabal (i.e. Republican, Democrat or Green Party member)?
2) Are you or have you ever been, as reported on the internet, a member of the American Civil Liberties Union?
3) Do you get any bit of your paycheck from tax payers to teach?
4) Do you, as reported on the internet, support a child tax credit rather than the abolition of the unconstitutional public school system (10th Plank of “The Communist Manifesto”)?
5) Why have you not responded to the approximately 6 attempts my campaign and I have made in the past 3 1/2 months to interact with you?
respectfully,
Gene Chapman
ChapmanForPresident08.com
This guy is clearly nuts and needs to be laughed out of the movement before the movement is laughed out of mainstream politics. Oh yeah, and he can’t get chicks either.
In an era when the only thing you hear coming out of Big Christendom is oppression, it’s nice to see that I’m not the only Christian out there that gets the whole liberty thing.
I got ‘em in the mail last night, and as promised, I’m offering a review. It’s my opinion that, to a certain extent, a campaign is generally well-reflected in its bumper stickers.
So yes. It’s nothing too flashy, but it gets the job done. No Statue of Liberty graphics, just the word “George Phillies: Libertarian for President” or somesuch. A solid, but kinda ho-hum, sticker. You know exactly what you’re getting-isn’t too much, isn’t too little. But the fact that they’ve already got bumper stickers printed out (and that they sent me five!) is pretty impressive.
So what this screams to me, in general, is that the Phillies campaign, if nominated, will be pretty standard, almost boring, Libertarian fare. But it will excel at the job-I remember getting a single Badnarik bumper sticker when I asked for it in 2004, but already they’ve got quite a bit more to offer. Yeah, the Badnarik stickers were flashier… but, eh. Sometimes slow and steady wins the race, and I doubt any of us are in the mood for Badnarik’s edition of “flashy” anymore.
If any other Libertarian campaigns out there would like to send me their stickers, I’d be delighted to offer my impressions. princepsaugustus@hotmail.com and I’ll hit you up with my mailing address.
A Democratic senator from South Dakota was in critical condition Thursday after undergoing surgery to repair a brain hemorrhage.
Sen. Tim Johnson is being treated at George Washington University Hospital, about two miles from the U.S. Capitol where Johnson is set to be part of a slim Democrat majority in the Senate from next month.
…
Democrats gained a 51-49 Senate majority after last month’s election. A GOP appointee would result in a 50-50 split and allow the GOP to retain Senate control through Vice President Dick Cheney’s tie-breaking vote.
Senate Democrats, however, squashed the idea that Johnson’s illness would result in Democrats losing control of the Senate, noting that many senators have had extended absences throughout history.
“We’re not changing hands any time soon,” a Senate Democratic leadership aide told CNN.
The aide then went on to reassure CNN that Democratic Senators do not, in fact, need brains in order to fulfill their roles as elected officials, and have not required them since approximately 1916. He then reportedly ate a stem cell sandwich and rolled around luxuriantly in your tax dollars, exclaiming “It feels so pretty because it’s stolen!”
So I get an email from Paulie (are you validated yet man? I wanna make you a contributor) and it’s got a bunch of Scientology crap about Allen Hacker.
Let’s see… there’s this, where Allen Hacker “talks about his up coming program, the State of Aescir. He explores his understandings of the Galactic Consciousness and how we each play a role in it.”
Then we’ve got this bad boy, where Hacker is basically starting his own religion with (imagine that!) himself as the messiah figure. Campaign funds locked on a moon of Jupiter indeed. So that’s why he was talking about freedom for the next TEN THOUSAND YEARS.
First there was the whole ex-spy poisoning thing, and now someone appears to be getting his kicks by burning down mental hospitals. I’m not one for conspiracy theories, but the temptation to snark this bad boy up is just too great. Perhaps Putin’s burning them down? He IS ex-KGB, after all-he might miss the taste of dead human. Or maybe one of the crazies happened to accidentally come across the latest harebrained scheme of the Russian government in between bouts of drooling, and they had to be “silenced.” Or maybe his government’s just too fucking poor to sustain mental hospitals anymore, and this is how they close businesses in Russia.
It looks like international auction house Christie’s is expecting the Hitlermobile to go for at least $10 million. Seriously, how fucking cool would that be? I’ll bet it’s powered by the crushed spirits of fascism-Bush would be able to break some sort of land speed record in that mofo.
I’m definitely all for people to have the right to say/do anything that doesn’t harm others, but Jesus fursuiting Christ… what the hell? We’re making up minority groups now?
If your comment doesn’t show up, it’s not my fault. I go through the filters every time I get on here and end up having to approve a couple each time.
Oh yeah, and is anyone else having trouble accessing Third Party Watch? I haven’t been able to get on there for two days, which is kind of a problem given that I’m supposed to be contributing over there now.
I love that there’s an investigative reporter out there who finally gives a shit about liberty.
Srsly. ABC News did a piece on some nanny-statist legislation in New York City, and for once a major media network in this country wasn’t all “YAY FASCISM” about it. That makes me all warm and happy inside.
From the golden tongue of Stossel:
This week, New York became the first big city to ban trans fats.
Gee, I’m all for good health, but shouldn’t it be a matter of individual choice?
The New York Times front-page story “New York Bans Most Trans Fats in Restaurants” has the sub-headline: “A Model for Other Cities.”
“A model for what, exactly?” asks Don Boudreaux, an economist at George Mason University. “Petty tyranny? Or perhaps for similarly inspired bans on other voluntary activities with health risks? Clerking in convenience stores? Walking in the rain?”
Thank you, Big Media, for finally hearing the cries of your consumers.
I’m still not sure who I, Stuart Richards, want to personally endorse for the Libertarian Presidential nomination. Right now I’m torn between Doug Stanhope and George Phillies.
Stanhope is a celebrity who could bring in a lot of attention and cash, but he’s got some negatives that could hurt us in the eyes of the average voter. He has no problems with public speaking, but I don’t know how many people are gonna pull the level to make the Girls Gone Wild guy become the next leader of the free world.
Phillies isn’t quite a celebrity, to put it mildly, but he does have a lot of intra-party experience and he’s building a network of activists and laying groundwork now, and he might actually be able to contribute to the public debate in the same way that Aaron Russo did on the draft in 2004. But he’s got to get enough cash to put together some high-quality TV spots if he wants to do that. I’m still unsure of his fundraising capabilities.
I discount Kubby because, honestly, the stoner hippie vote is all he’s really got access to. I highly respect the man and all he’s done for the cause of liberty, but I don’t think that this is going to be his forte.
If we could combine Phillies’ activist base with, say, Badnarik’s fundraising base (which is probably burned all to Hell now), I think we could have at the very least a Nader-like impact on the Presidential election.
I will be voting Libertarian if it is at all possible to do so in the state of Nebraska in 2008. However, this doesn’t mean that I’m not gunning for my favorites in other parties. Specifically, I really really hope that Chuck Hagel gets the GOP nod. The man’s close enough to libertarianism for government purposes. Kind of a social conservative, but not off the deep end. Has supported some pork here and there, but on the whole is a strong force for fiscal responsibility. Definitely an improvement over Bush, and certainly an improvement over whatever the hell Hillary Clinton might want to do to this country.
Having gone on at considerable length about the Republican Party and its War on America, we now reach the momentary denouement: The Republicans have lost. They lost the House. The lost the Senate. With the Senate, they lost the ability to install far-right judges. With Congress, they lost the ability to field ultraright legislation. In the next two years, there will be no more Patriot Acts. There will be no more Military Commission Acts. There will be no more Real ID acts.
…
Of course, there are a few things that Libertarians might reasonably ask from the Democratic Party in exchange for our help, recognizing that we all live in the America that we just saved.
Let’s see if the Democrats give us jack shit. Smart money says no, but then again you never know. Rick Santorum used the Green candidate in a last-ditch effort to undermine the Democratic vote. Although we can easily campaign from the left (far more easily than Greens can campaign from the right), we do tend to siphon away more Republicans on average.
A four-year-old hugged his teachers aide and was put into in-school suspension, according to the father. But La Vega school administrators have a different story.
Damarcus Blackwell’s four-year-old son was lining-up to get on the bus after school last month, when he was accused of rubbing his face in the chest of a female employee.
Without the government there to take such things way too seriously, who knows what could have happened? Children are so unruly these days; the boy might have chloroformed her and drug her back to his mommy’s house. God knows what could have happened after that… he could have tied her down and offered her a juice box, or forced her to read him a bedtime story.
Thank God we’ve got the government here to protect us from these ferocious, precocious serial snugglers.
Yeah, so I’ve been added as a contributor over on Third Party Watch. For anyone who’s been following that site for a while, they’ll understand the sheer usefulness it’s offered to people not just in the Libertarian Party, but in the Green, Constitution, Reform and all the various Socialist Parties too. It’s a useful site for anyone who gives serious credence to the concept of third parties and Austin Cassidy’s done a great job with it.
TPW was the site that brought us coverage of the 2006 LP Convention and has served us well in this interim “wherethefuck did HoT go” stage. So I’m really proud to be aboard that team.
We’re also in the process of getting Paulie Cannoli up on here as a LFV contributor. Agree or disagree with him, he’s a fascinating guy with a lot of interesting stuff to say, and we’ll be honored to have him onboard. Now to just get WordPress to finally work so he can post.
For those not in the loop, Bagge’s one of the cartoonists for Reason. He does a damn good job, in my haughty opinion. By all means, check him out. My favorite so far has got to be the one about the Libertarian election party.
Seriously, it took the Republicans two whole fucking years to come around and write an exit strategy for Iraq. And whaddya know? Just like the Democrats before them, they’re ripping off the Libertarian Party’s IES.
Maybe it’s not so much that the Libertarian Party has direct influence over the political process in eventuality as it is that the Libertarian Party, whatever wing of it you care to talk about, has a virtual monopoly on common sense in American politics. Seriously, we figured out a way to GTFO of Iraq like two years ago. So you changed like three details of our plan or whatever, big fucking deal. We’re smarter than you, and if the voting public had just voted for us two years ago, we’d already be out of there.
The thing about common sense is, even though it’s not common, eventually you have to come around and possess some minimal level of it in order to keep your job/life/whatever. If you don’t learn it on your own, it will be beat into you by the sheer force of life. So when Dubya was a total fucking failure at international politics and the Iraqi insurgency was in his base killing his d00dz kicking our asses, finally his dad had to step in and put one of his more competent lackeys in charge to save the situation. And that’s where we got the Baker Report-a plan that not even Dubya can criticize, if for no other reason than that it came from his own “team.”
And that now means that every party on Capitol Hill basically agrees on what needs to be done, which means it should only be a year or two before they work out the politics of which party and what senators get blamed for what, they figure out a comprehensive plan that’s basically the IES/Baker Report but with a different name on the header, and we finally get the well-deserved fuck out of Dodge.
The Supreme Court agreed to step into a dispute over free speech rights Friday involving a suspended high school student and his banner that proclaimed “Bong Hits 4 Jesus.’’
Justices agreed to hear the appeal by the Juneau, Alaska, school board and principal Deborah Morse of a lower court ruling that allowed the student’s civil rights lawsuit to proceed. The school board hired former Whitewater prosecutor Kenneth Starr to argue its case to the high court.
The incident occurred in January 2002, as the Olympic torch relay wound through Juneau, en route to the winter games in Salt Lake City. As the torch passed by the school, student Joseph Frederick and friends unfurled the banner across the street from campus apparently to attract the attention of television cameras.
First Amendment done owned this, how the hell is this even an issue? Let’s review WTF it says:
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.
…when this guy is making more sense than our President.
Mahmoud Ahmadinejad wrote a letter to the American people on November 29. It’s 80% common sense, with some crap about the Jews and monotheistic government thrown in.
But seriously, I have to admire the guy’s statesmanship, immoral statist though he be. Just read the letter and lemme know what you think, noble readers.
Some random guy in Pennsylvania decided to get rid of every single incumbent in the Pennsylvania House and Senate and actually managed to evict a total of 47 legislators through primary losses and retirements forced by voter outrage.
How did Russ Diamond pull this off? He spent less than $200 to start a web-based political action committee called PA CleanSweep and recruited 97 oddballs to run on a simple anti-incumbent platform, all because the Pennsylvania politicians had given themselves a huge pay raise atop an already huge pile of benefits.
Diamond’s gubernatorial campaign turned out to be a bust, but his larger crusade has been a tremendous success. His efforts show that even if a third party is doomed to failure, a third political brand can work wonders. Diamond’s campaign has run candidates in both parties’ primaries and as independents by staking out a single-issue identity. With that small initial investment of $182.47, he successfully built a political identity and sold it to working-class Pennsylvania voters. Nationally, Diamond’s campaign could serve as a model for others trying to overturn entrenched incumbents and bring fresh faces—and fresh ideas—into politics.
You know, more and more, it’s looking like the success of the libertarian movement will take the shape of the success of earlier broad-based political movements. Yeah, there was a Progressive Party and a Socialist Party and whatever. Yeah, they earned a lot of votes. But there was also a Non-Partisan League and a metric fuckton of progressives in both parties agitating for change.
The libertarian movement will have come of age when we’re welcome voters in both parties… and by the looks of it, they’re all starting to wake up to us. The seeds that Milton Friedman and Barry Goldwater planted are finally coming to fruition.
The reception thrown by Nancy Pelosi at the Capitol a week after the Democrats prevailed in congressional elections was a party some power players had been waiting more than a decade to attend. The fête was for newly elected freshmen lawmakers, but Pelosi’s invited guests included big-name Democratic lobbyists like Jack Quinn, Tony Podesta and Steve Elmendorf. Said a partygoer: “I thought to myself, they’re all back, all the same old faces. It was just like old times.”
Nancy Pelosi is a lying scumbag, and though we play this game of politics and though I consider her mildly less evil (for now) than the alternative, let’s not pretend otherwise.
I hope the Democrats lose one of the houses of Congress in 2008, and I hope it’s Libertarians running from the left that doom them.
So I guess we caught a Department of Homeland Security official screwing the pooch?
From CNN:
A federal immigration official pleaded guilty Thursday to receiving more than $600,000 in bribes for falsifying documents for illegal immigrants.
Robert Schofield, 57, could face 25 years in federal prison when he is sentenced in February.
He pleaded guilty in U.S. District Court in Alexandria, Virginia, to issuing fraudulent documents to at least 184 illegal immigrants who falsely received U.S. citizenship.
First off, I’ll state the obvious: corruption in government sucks, and to an extent it’s unavoidable-hence why government ought to be minimized as we libertarians claim.
But secondly, there is another aspect to all this: supply and demand must be satisfied. If it cannot be satisfied in a legal manner, it will be satisfied in an illegal manner. Many good people want very badly to get into this country; if we restrict them from doing so with quotas and other unreasonable controls, then they will meet this demand illegally, by bribing people in the DHS.
I’m not saying we need absolutely no immigration controls whatsoever; I want to know that al-Qaeda and convicted murderers aren’t coming into the country. But we need to significantly raise or abolish our yearly quotas of people coming in… and keep on busting corrupt officials while we’re at it, too.
Lou Dobbs is a self-important blowhard who’s way too fascinated with the fact that someone used his name to describe a type of Democrat.
He’s also a protectionist who’s going to get our economy into deep shit if anyone ever actually bothers taking him seriously.
Victorious Democrats will, with the opening of the 110th Congress, have a historic opportunity to right the course of a country that has been hell-bent on permitting free-trade corporatists and faith-based economics to bankrupt the nation.
As the New Year approaches, newly elected Democrats in the House and Senate will be battered by calls, even demands, to stay the course, rather than right it. And we can only hope they and their new leadership in both houses will have the courage and character to be rationalists and realists and overcome their partisan political debt to corporate America, and U.S. multinationals in particular.
Blah blah blah workers of the world unite. Got it.
No, we do not have to be worried about this. The reason for the trade imbalance is largely because of the protectionist markets of the East Asian economies. They’ve been exporting without allowing imports to come in, which has caused huge deficits… but a nation cannot do this indefinitely without eventually wreaking havok upon its own self.
The Chinese have begun embracing American imports. The trade imbalance is shrinking as China has begun its consumer boom, and in a few short years I’m sure we’ll actually be a net exporter to China for a while, if this keeps us.
The Japanese are in the middle of an economic winter. This is because they’ve protected themselves very strongly against American imports, American capital, American anything. But with rampant unemployment, the government’s only got a few years before the situation will have to be dealt with. They may not like that the solution lies in free trade, but they’ll have no choice but to embrace it if they want to keep their jobs.
The world economy is opening up, no question about it. And it’s bringing tangible benefits to millions of people worldwide, not just to the Third World but also to the First.
The femme fatale from Hammer of Truth is now officially onboard the LFV team. As this blog was basically our brainchild, it was just a matter of making this creature of php coding do our bidding. We still don’t quite have all the bugs worked out (I want to change the layout from one of these cookie-cutter stylesheets!) but we’re working on it.
In the meantime, it’s a pleasure to welcome her here… and to welcome the HoT readers that are starting to filter in. We’re delighted to have you. Blogs are nothing without readership, our opinions as editors aren’t as meaningful if they’re not shaped by the informed rebuttal that’s always been so skillfully provided by our readership over on HoT.
Just had to get that in before we tear each others’ throats out over the contents of the platform or the meaning of “force” or what happened on 9/11 or other such libertarian trivia.
Oh yeah, and if you want in this beast on the ground floor, all you gotta do is ask. princepsaugustus at hotmail dot com.
I really really like U2. Yes, I know Bono is a cocky, arrogant, socialist bastard. The man makes such good music.
I’ve never really liked Green Day all that much-musically, their last good album was “Dookie” and “American Idiot,” while having great lyrics, didn’t impress me much.
But damn, those two can cover a song like nothing else. The ending of this video, while a little far-fetched, works on an artistic level, I think. And it drives home a very very valid point-I’d much rather pay for the military to have helped out New Orleans than to be occupying Iraq.
In one closely watched Congressional race — Indiana’s 9th Congressional District — and two critical Senate races — Missouri and Montana — the Republican candidate was defeated by fewer votes than the Libertarian candidate received.
…
In other words, in these two critical Senate races and in Indiana, if the Republican had gotten the Libertarian’s votes, the Republican would have won.
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I can hardly contain my glee at seeing this happen after years of hoping it would. And in such dramatic fashion, with such important results.
We decided the election and I guarantee you that we’re a household name now. We may not win anything for a while, but we’re finally deciding elections in a grand fashion, and our support is growing. We cannot afford to lose this momentum.
Thank you, Jesse Jackson, for bringing absolutely nothing to the table yet again. Congrats, you just got your dick sucked live on air by a man futilely trying to save his acting career, now go away.
Curtailing free speech even more isn’t going to help anyone but a bunch of FCC bureaucats. Anyway, whose free speech are you trying to curtail? Looks to me like there’s a whole lot more black rappers saying the “n”-word than there are Klansmen or whatever. So good job, you’re now trying to kick the freedom of your people in the teeth!
Fifty years from now they’ll have the First Amendment upside down with a fucking fork up its ass.
UPDATE: Apparently the real-life inspiration for the Kramer character on Seinfeld is a libertarian? That’s cool.
Rep. Alcee Hastings vowed Tuesday to play nice with House Speaker-designate Nancy Pelosi, D-California, after she passed him over to head the House Intelligence Committee. But not before the Florida congressman delivered a parting blow to critics of his chairmanship bid.
“Sorry, haters, God is not finished with me yet,” Hastings said in a statement.
WTF? Who actually says this?
I think that’s going to be my new favorite phrase now whenever anyone dares to deny me anything. Professor gives me a bad grade? “Sorry, hater, God is not finished with me yet.” Friends don’t want to hang out? “Sorry, haters, God is not finished with me yet.” That is quite possibly the hokiest phrase ever-it must be mine.
But anyway, back on topic. I’m sorry, cowboy, but a party that was tossed into majority status on the back of corruption charges with the other guys is not about to appoint some corrupt little weasel as yourself to run anything higher than the DC dogcatcher department.
Because if they do… they’re finished and they know it.
School districts in three states and the nation’s largest teachers union asked a federal appeals court Tuesday to revive a lawsuit challenging the way government-mandated programs are funded.
The National Education Association and districts in Michigan, Vermont and Texas had sued to block the No Child Left Behind law, President Bush’s signature education policy. They argued that schools should not have to comply with requirements that aren’t paid for by the federal government.
Chief U.S. District Judge Bernard A. Friedman in Detroit dismissed the lawsuit in November 2005.
Attorney Robert Chanin, representing the Pontiac, Michigan, school district and the other plaintiffs, told the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals on Tuesday that states submitted compliance plans based on their understanding of the level of government support that would be provided. But Congress appropriated far less than needed, leaving local school districts to make up the difference, he said.
Government attorney Alisa Klein told the panel that the intent of the law was never to fully fund the provisions laid out in No Child Left Behind.
The law requires states to revise academic standards and develop tests to measure students’ progress annually. If students fail to make progress, the law requires states to take action against school districts.
The three-judge appeals court panel took the case under advisement and did not say when it will rule. The outcome would apply directly to the districts in the case, but could affect how the law is enforced in schools across the country.
This reads like the anti-zoning amendments just passed out in the West. The government retains the right to regulate just about anything they want, but they have to pay for their intervention. If there is a governmental cost to regulation, governments will be more reluctant to regulate things that don’t require regulation.
Maybe we’ll see some worthwhile reforms come out of this clusterfuck yet.
Looks like all that anti-American stuff about not supporting the more ridiculous aspects of our war on terror were horseshit. They’ve been our bitches all along.
From CNN:
European countries knew about U.S. secret jails for terrorism suspects and have obstructed an investigation into the transport and illegal detention of prisoners, a draft European Parliament report said on Tuesday.
It criticized a string of top EU officials including foreign policy chief Javier Solana and counter-terrorism coordinator Gijs de Vries, and complained of lack of cooperation from nearly all member states.
All right, let’s talk some more about how you hate our culture and our jails and all that. Or rather, we’ll do the talking; you’ll be too busy sucking you some homestyle Texas dick to really say much of anything.
The Dems need to start backhanding Dubya about the secret prisons, and but quick. We can’t count on the Europeans to uphold the laws of their own fucking countries, so all we’re left with for right now is the Democrats (God help us).
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Apparently we can add 
Ye fucking gods, just look at the broad. If that’s her “tough face” then… yeah. *shudder*
“…a list of 205 people that were known to the Secretary of State as being members of the Communist Party, and who, nevertheless, are still working and shaping the policy of the State Department.” -Senator Joseph McCarthy, February 9, 1950.