Free the Animal

Kennedy

I'm sitting here at a bar in a casino (where else at 5:30?) the TV is going, sound off, no subtitles, and it's wall to wall Teddy.

Did he check out, or do I need to start praying?

How Do You Do It?

I caught like five minutes of Terry McAuliffe on Tim Russert yesterday as I was packing up in San Fran.

It's all just automatic lying, all the time, and everyone is perfectly happy to play along. Disgusting. I don't know what I'd do if I thought that ultimately, what I make of my life somehow necessitates a daily dose of the bullshit they're peddling.

I don't think the nightmarish disaster that is national politics will in any way be solved until people lose interest in the spectacle, beyond derisive ridicule and moral condemnation for the whole lot of it, without distinction or equivocation.

God Bless the Intertubes

Delicious.

(Beck snagged that from Soja)

The Vote is In

And apparently, nobody is buying shares in the Republican Party.

And in a closed-door session at the Capitol, National Republican Congressional Committee Chairman Tom Cole (R-Okla.) told members that the NRCC doesn’t have enough cash to “save them” in November if they don’t raise enough money or run strong campaigns themselves.

On a plain practical level, I can't understand why a person in the world would give a hoot about the Republicans, when they can simply get The Real Thing™ from the Democrats.

It's far and long from the time and place where there was any difference between Coke & Pepsi worth caring about, if there ever really was.

(Via a link from Billy)

OMG - White People Can't Clap

Oh, laf. Via Steve L, just right now in email (who's apparently a reader), Chuck Love and the oh, so, Reverend, Wright.

And I'll Keep Saying It

Fuck Obama. And his pretentious, stupid bitch.

Caroline Glick has her number.

Speaking in February of the man she knows better than anyone else does, Michelle Obama said that her husband, Illinois Senator and candidate for the Democratic Presidential nomination Barack Obama, is the only candidate for president who understands that before America can solve its problems, Americans have to fix their "broken souls."

She also said that her husband's unique understanding of the state of souls of the American people makes him uniquely qualified to be President. Obama can do what his opponent in the Democratic race Senator Hillary Clinton, and Senator John McCain, the presumptive Republican presidential nominee, cannot do. He can heal his countrymen's broken souls. He will redeem them.

But then, saving souls is hard work, and Mrs. Obama won't place the whole burden on her husband. He'll make the Americans work for him. As she put it, "Barack Obama will require you to work. He is going to demand that you shed your cynicism. That you put down your divisions. That you come out of your isolation, that you move out of your comfort zone. That you push yourselves to be better. And that you engage. Barack will never allow you to go back to your lives as usual, uninvolved, uninformed."

Outrageous.

(link: Art)

I Told You

Right here. And right on queue, the stupid bitch delivers:

“The truth is, in order to get things like universal health care and a revamped education system, then someone is going to have to give up a piece of their pie so that someone else can have more.”

Fuck Obama, individually and severally. This one happened to be belched from the geul of Michelle, but it doesn't really matter. They both ought to be pelted with rotten fruits and vegetables and run out of town.

Look: this is really simple. Health care, education, brake linings...all things -- values -- that must be produced. There isn't a thing in the world special about them on the principle of value production. Now, from that perspective, you tell me by what logic any intelligent person could possibly believe that the means to produce values and deliver them to a marketplace requires that some have their values taken away from them by force.

Did Bill Gates computerize the world by taking computers from some people and giving them to others? How about Henry Ford? How did two cars end up in every garage?

I don't know what's worse, a stupid, out of touch, business and historically ignorant political class, or those who fall for this most ancient of political scams.

(link train: Beck, Breda, Tamara, Morrissey)

Word

I don't know that you can put the whole political enchilada any better than Kyle Bennett does here.

I don't vote. I don't believe in voting. I don't believe in democracy. I'm a capitalist and an individualist, and those are, separately but especially in combination, wholly incompatible with democracy. I believe in the ideals of the Declaration, and that the Constitution was a repudiation of them. I believe in governance by the *unanimous* and individually revocable consent of the governed. The only forms of governance that are consistent with that are self-governance or governance for hire by individuals.

Voting is a way of distributing power over other people's lives. I don't want any power over other people's lives, and I don't want anyone having power over mine. The only power I want to share in is the power to trade or not to trade, to associate or not associate, to respect or not to respect. Government itself is the second biggest scam ever pulled over on the human race, and it is the cause of most of the problems in the world today. Those that it is not the cause of are nearly insolvable because government won't get out of the way.

There's no utopias, but there is real freedom, real happiness, and a truly good life available to human beings. Government is an obstacle to that, not a benefit. Rules are absolutely necessary for them, but government is about the arbitrary, and the lawless when law is defined as natural law. Government is chaos.

Attention Shoppers

Gene Healy is back blogging, and has published his first book. The Cult of the Presidency.

They say that when you’re writing a book, you should have a two-sentence answer at the ready in case people ask you what it’s about while you’re on the elevator. For a long time, mine was “it’s about the presidency. I’m against it.”

That elevator pitch was enough for me.

Pathological

How anyone could even consider letting this pathological liar, Hillary Rodham Clinton, within a furlong of the White House is completely beyond me.

Actually, that's not true. I think most people love lies and liars. It's only the nature of what is being lied about where they discriminate.

(Balkolink)

Indeed

(From Chris K, in email.)

Hitch on Hillary

In Slate.

There are two kinds of deliberate and premeditated deceit, commonly known as suggestio falsi and suppressio veri. (Neither of them is covered by the additionally lying claim of having "misspoken.") The first involves what seems to be most obvious in the present case: the putting forward of a bogus or misleading account of events. But the second, and often the more serious, means that the liar in question has also attempted to bury or to obscure something that actually is true. Let us examine how Sen. Clinton has managed to commit both of these offenses to veracity and decency and how in doing so she has rivaled, if not indeed surpassed, the disbarred and perjured hack who is her husband and tutor.

The whole thing, if you please.

Loyalty: The Bludgeon Of Con Artists and Scammers

I have no like or respect for Governor Bill Richardson but I did take a moment of pleasure at the thought of him delivering the Automatic Liars a good kick in the teeth.

Now Radley has commentary on that most giant of lying pricks, that enormous fuckwad James Carville. But the politics of the thing are peripheral to what really interests me.

I’ve always though the alleged virtue of loyalty is way overrated.

Look, it's even simpler that that. The only reason the concept of loyalty really exists is to con, guilt-trip, or scam someone into signing onto something for which there isn't sufficient reason, value, or desire in it for them to do so on those bases alone.

Loyalty is for stupid suckers, unless of course one is talking about loyalty to truth, honesty, justice, reality, morality. But if you really pay attention, loyalty is most often employed in the attempt to circumvent all of those.

I have never in my life admonished loyalty to anything but reality. I would consider it an effrontery to do so.

Damn; He Beat Her to It

Peggy Noonan has up an absolute must read on Super Hillary! at the WSJ. I'll leave you to the more serious elements, though this would be a good except:

She is concussed. But she is a scrapper, a fighter, and she's doing what she knows how to do: scrap and fight. Only harder. So that she ups the ante every day. She helped Ireland achieve peace. She tried to stop Nafta. She's been a leader for 35 years. She landed in Bosnia under siege and bravely dodged bullets. It was as if she'd watched the movie "Wag the Dog," with its fake footage of a terrified refugee woman running frantically from mortar fire, and found it not a cautionary tale about manipulation and politics, but an inspiration.

And this, quoting an eye witness account.

"Actually Mrs. Clinton was too modest. I was there and saw it all. When Mrs. Clinton got off the plane the tarmac came under mortar and machine gun fire. I was blown off my tank and exposed to enemy fire. Mrs. Clinton without regard to her own safety dragged me to safety, jumped on the tank and opened fire, killing 50 of the enemy." Soon a suicide bomber appeared, but Mrs. Clinton stopped the guards from opening fire. "She talked to the man in his own language and got him [to] surrender. She found that he had suffered terribly as a result of policies of George Bush. She defused the bomb vest herself." Then she turned to his wounds. "She stopped my bleeding and saved my life. Chelsea donated the blood."

(via Dr. Eades)

Later: Oh yea. This may have been what the guy was referring to. Kyle Bennett pointed that out in a comment on a previous post.

Nukes

I had no real intention to blog about this; just something that automatically came to mind at the time. But what the hell. I'm on an afternoon roll.

I'll make it short. I would not expect you to be aware, but as a young and fresh Navy ensign, one of my collateral duties was the security over eight nuclear weapons on the USS REEVES (CG-24). If you don't know how the security over nukes works, here's a brief primer: two-man control. In the U.S., there is never less than two people in the presence of a nuclear weapon at any time.

Both have loaded and un-safed sidearms in readily accessible holsters at all times. Had I ever wanted, I could have created one hell of an international shit storm. So could and can to this very day thousands of others. In a sense, your life hangs on their whim.

Analogy: commercial airliners: two-man control.

The People Who Dictate Your Affairs

Jay says:

Jerry Springer nation is voting your life away one hoof-marked ballot at a time.

Billy adds:

Why on earth would you submit anything remotely having to do with your rights to these peoples' opinions?

Indeed; why on earth? Whatever for do you see the necessity? Now, I'll stipulate that I care not a wit how clueless, shallow, and ignorant these morons are, or remain. I couldn't care less how they manage their peaceful affairs. What's more, I don't care that you seem to see the necessity of making these idiots the managers of your own affairs -- knock yourselves out. I can't on earth see why, but it's an inescapable logic that you indeed want them to run your lives each time you fill out a ballot.

Go ahead and deny it, but your plain actions belie your words. It's Jerry Springer nation to be sure -- a nation of morons -- and if you vote you're enthusiastically going along for the ride.

I will never, ever waste my time with voting again. Even if it were a morally valid way to "run the country" (a phrase I loath for its implications) -- which it's not -- you'd still have to contend with the reality that even if you're a smart and informed person that would generally make the "right call" on matters of "public policy," there is simply no way on earth that you will ever be able to out-compete the moronic masses. (Just look at the evidence over the last two hundred years.)

Consider the often quoted and alluded to idea: "voting empowers the people." Question: why on earth do you want to "empower" fucking idiots? Huh?

I don't know what's worse, fucking idiots who believe themselves worthy of a general opinion because they carry the moniker of "voter," or the minority of seemingly smart and informed folks who "empower" them.

Fat Nannies

The last sentence of comment number two on Boston's trans fat ban pretty much sums it up.

What next, setting a bedtime for us?

Number 14 isn't bad, either.

I would like to see a ban on politicians. They make people sick and poor.

I'd add stupid.

There are a few other good comments and good points, and it's in some measure gratifying to see that Boston isn't totally devoid of human adults; but if you want to get a good taste of the collectivized, eusocial mentality of most people, go read those comments.

Oh, and get a look at fat face Boston Mayor, Thomas M. Menino. The difference between a fat fuck like him, and a formerly fat guy like me is that I took it upon myself to do something about it.

Do you have any idea to what depths I hate people like this?

"Character"

This is 100% down the line spot on, I think. It is definitely worth a read, all of it.

Obama’s denunciation of Wright’s bigotry amounts to too little too late. The time to stand up to him wasn’t now, when his association with Wright is sinking his hopes for the White House. The time to have stood up to Wright was when Obama was just another member of his church. If he truly believes in what he says he believes, he should have walked out of Wright’s church or grabbed Wright’s microphone and told his fellow churchgoers that Wright was wrong and that they mustn’t hate. In twenty years of attending Wright’s church, why didn’t Obama once stand before his fellow church members and tell them that they mustn’t hate their country and their fellow Americans?

The fact that he didn’t, and the fact that he upheld this man until just a few months ago as his spiritual mentor and still refuses to condemn him and his deeply flawed character tells me everything I need to know about Barack Obama. I think that he is an opportunistic, weak man. I hope and pray that he doesn’t become President.

There's a silver lining to all of this in my view. It's exposing something right out there in the open for all to see: perhaps the bigger racial bigotry problem in America is minority bigotry against whites. Or, at least, they have been getting a pass on it for four decades. Maybe not so much, anymore?

Want an example, right up in your face almost every day? How about this bit of pretentious nonsense: "people of color." I, for one, have never missed the implications and overtones in that -- what amounts to -- racial smear of colorless white people.

A great many of the ordinary racial bigots I've ever known have been black people. That may not be your experience, but it has been mine.

(link: Beck)

The Size of It

Either Obama is too stupid to see how "deep" this country's problems are -- a goodly portion of which are manifest in fulminant barking like the right Rev. Wright's -- or he knows exactly how deep they are and he likes the look from the bottom, all while he's confident that he can convince you of his vista from the sunny uplands of racial harmony.

Yep. There's very good reasons why Obama was and in a member of that congregation. Even if you buy the notion -- though I don't -- that he sincerely would like to end racial divisiveness as a deep-rooted problem in America, he's plenty happy to use it as a springboard, pivot, or catapult in the meantime.

In the end he, just like everyone else who's ever talked "harmony," has and will find the political mileage delivered by such politics too tempting to give up.

{ahem}...As I was saying...

Yea, nope, Obama's skin color hasn't a thing to do with any of this. Here; just listen to his pastor of 20 years, Jeremiah Wright.

McPhillips found that and Billy linked it. Don't miss the part about how he loves the hell out of white people "[his] enemies," and won't stoop to their level of "hatred" and "bigotry" (this, after a 3-minute, hate and bigotry-filled rant against white people that no prominent white person could ever get away with in reference to blacks).

The Scandal: Honest Truth

It's like I told a guy the other day at the gym as I was just finishing up with the after shave and whatnot at the sink, TV overhead bleating out some sort of particular nonsense about the general nonsense that constitutes the national nonsense of the presidential election: "I'm so glad I don't care."

I really don't. One of three people are going to be the next "good king," there's nothing I can do about that, and each and every one of them is an absolute horror to contemplate as president. Which one would be worse? Hell, you can make a million arguments in all different sorts of directions. Here's the deal: any one of them will be bad enough, and that's for sure.

But I did happen to catch this bit, just a minute ago.

Ferraro stirred controversy with her recent remarks that Obama's campaign was successful because he was black.

Now I ask you: unless there was solid truth to that (and I don't see how you can honestly call it any other way), why else would such remarks "stir controversy?" It's not like we're seeing blanket widespread condemnation, or anything. Nope. The conceptual tags surrounding it, rather, are things like "controversial" and "distancing" and "stepping down." It's all quite civilized for something Obama & Co. would wish to imply is a vicious lie.

You all do what you want. Me? I would never shame myself by getting within 100 miles of a process where the goddammed plain Jane black & white honest truth is "controversial."

I am gratified about one thing, though. As far as I'm concerned, I'm tickled pink every time one of those Democrat assholes has to back track, shut up, distance themselves, or otherwise shy away from the plan truth of the matter with respect to Obama and his racial heritage. For four or five decades, now, they have used race as a divisive wedge, they have all benefited mightily, and now they're getting fucked right and left with the same club they've been beating "racists" over the head with for years. It's a good show, and I'm lovin' it. Let Obama just rub their faces in their own hypocrisy until the end of times, as far as I'm concerned.

Just like with that Spitzer fuck: I'll take my justice anywhere I can get it.

General Presumptions

Wanna know how to take in news, like this item today, totally in stride, without the slightest whiff of surprise? General presumptions. So now it's NY Governor Elliot Spitzer admitting some sort of involvement in a "prostitution ring" (that's the euphemism designed to get you to recoil, not think).

Spitzer, 48, built his political legacy on rooting out corruption, including several headline-making battles with Wall Street while serving as attorney general. He stormed into the governor's office in 2006 with a historic share of the vote, vowing to continue his no-nonsense approach to fixing one of the nation's worst governments.

Time magazine had named him "Crusader of the Year" when he was attorney general and the tabloids proclaimed him "Eliot Ness."

Why is it that elementary school children have a keen eye for poseurs: do-gooders, tattletales, and teacher-pets whom they can see right through in an instant; yet the moment they're handed a voter registration card they become complete morons?

I generally presume that politicians are the sorts of people who want to enforce the rules against everyone else, but see no particular need to restrain themselves. In Spitzer's case, I never had an inkling of a microscopic doubt about exactly and precisely who he was. But I was always baffled about how he was able, apparently, to fool so many others. Or not; I keep forgetting my other general presumption: most everyone nowadays, in a political context, is a commie that would have you either toiling on their behalf, or doing time in the Gulag. In that sense, perhaps no one is really surprised about Spitzer. He's just exactly the kind of guy everyone wants doing their dirty work.

Like I Said Back When I Said It...

...Fuck Obama and His Stupid Bitch.

I meant it. And here's the latest from Michelle Obama, the stupid bitch.

“Barack Obama will require you to work. He is going to demand that you shed your cynicism. That you put down your divisions. That you come out of your isolation and that you move out of your comfort zone. That you push yourselves to be better. And that you engage. Barack will never allow you to go back to your lives as usual – uninvolved, uninformed – you have to stay at the seat at the table of democracy with a man like Barack Obama not just on Tuesday but in a year from now, in four years from now, in eights years from now, you will have to be engaged.”

Fuck you, bitch. Who the fucking fuck do you think you are? And Tell Barack he can take his "require[ments]" and just fuck right off along with you. Understand: I hate people who talk like that.

That's via Billy, who de-euphemizes that pretentious "seat at the table" bullshit and rot. That Protein Wisdom link has a lot more.

Later: Here's another one, from that Protein Wisdom piece:

“in 2008 we should be in a place where children can dream any kind of life for themselves regardless of their race, their gender their socio-economic status. They should be able to dream big dreams and know they are going to have the love and resources of this entire nation behind them. That is the least we can do for our children. But the truth is we are not there yet.”

Vacuous, contemptible bullshit.

More later: Krauthammer:

There’s no better path to success than getting people to buy a free commodity. Like the genius who figured out how to get people to pay for water: Bottle it (Aquafina was revealed to be nothing more than reprocessed tap water) and charge more than they pay for gasoline. Or consider how Google found a way to sell dictionary nouns — boat, shoe, clock — by charging advertisers zillions to be listed whenever the word is searched.

And now, in the most amazing trick of all, a silver-tongued freshman senator has found a way to sell hope. To get it, you need only give him your vote. Barack Obama is getting millions.

This kind of sale is hardly new. Organized religion has been offering a similar commodity — salvation — for millennia. Which is why the Obama campaign has the feel of a religious revival with, as writer James Wolcott observed, a “salvational fervor” and “idealistic zeal divorced from any particular policy or cause and chariot-driven by pure euphoria.”

“We are the hope of the future,” sayeth Obama. We can “remake this world as it should be.” Believe in me and I shall redeem not just you but your country — nay, we can become “a hymn that will heal this nation, repair this world, and make this time different than all the rest.”

Charles is only partially right, though. Yea, you can get people to buy something that's free. You can also get them to buy even more, and more, of the very thing that is at the root of their despair. Government is the problem. There will never be an ounce of solution in any measure of it, in any reconfiguration.

Not that the Doprahs preening after Obama are considering anything at this level. They're too busy being "hopeful" for "change." But it's what you asked for: democracy. In practical election dynamics, it means that less and less substance will be necessary to con more and more voters.

Even more later: Do I really think she's "stupid," or is that just ad hominem? Yes, I think she's stupid, as I think anyone is essentially and fundamentally stupid who has either lost, or never gained the ability to think, reason, and integrate facts proceeding from general principles as it is the human capacity to do. I don't think she ever had the ability. These are people -- her especially, from everything I've heard -- who "principally" hold facts and their logical relationships to one-another as mostly irrelevant. What's important is merely a whole slew of feelings, whims, desires, inspirations, hopes, fears, dreams, passions, and so on; and of course they all come in conflict with one another from the perspective of an integrated, hierarchical, rational view of the nature of man. That's stupidity, and the most charitable I can be to her is that she's in good company; in the hundreds of millions, perhaps billions.

The Clintons

If you're into that sort of thing, a pretty interesting commentary by Martin McPhillips on Hillary's apparent demise.

That was via Beck, who delivers on insight of his own.

That'll Teach 'Em!

Appears someone has inevitably bowed to awesome U.S. Power to wage economic sanctions, trade embargoes, and travel restrictions. Only took 50 years.

Listen: I get not doing business with scoundrels, but since I'm delving into practical geopolitical realities, look at this: We're dealing with a puny island nation that couldn't get off it's ass to produce much of anything anyway (though the cigars are fab), so what we essentially accomplished was not to cut them down, but if anything, to keep them from rising up (economically, as international traders), which would have made it increasingly difficult for Castro to hold power. Now, one could understand doing something like that to a Japan, a China, a Taiwan -- but Cuba? The former would undoubtedly be harmed tremendously, so sanctions would have real practical clout. For a Cuba, all it did was empower "them."

I have believed for 20 years that U.S. economic sanctions are essentially what kept Castro in power. The U.S. handed him his half-century fiefdom. Our actions made it easy for him to play David, and who doesn't love David?

To play Devil's Advocate with myself, Cuba was unique, being a Communist nation 90 miles from our shores; and The Cuban Missile Crisis undoubtedly etched quite a scar on the American psyche for a generation, at least.

Well, I for one will welcome some sort of détente, even if it isn't in the manner I'd go about it.

King Day

There are few things so loathsome to me as the idea of this "holiday."

Here's a perspective adjustment. What was it, about 230 years ago that we kicked out the King? And we've been doing our level best to bring him back ever since. Kinda reminds me of the "being born from a vagina" joke (where we men spend the rest of our lives trying to get back in one).

Word

Yep. Exactly. McCain is loathsome because Bush is loathsome. You people drawing silly distinctions are just silly and foolish.

"Attractive Logic"

I think that's about right.

Mostly I just think that as human beings, we don't change things personally and we don't do it collectively until something really motivates us to change it. It's not about freedom, or anything like that. If people perceive they're doin' alright, they simply aren't going to change anything.

What we do is pretend as though we're changing things -- enthusiasm for Obama's campaign with its vacuous and nebulous calls for "change" as exhibit one.

One might entertain the notion of a Hillary! as president if only to see what America is really made of. My guess: not a whole lot. Not anymore.

Hoist By His Own Petartd

Looks like Kim du Toit's beloved "We the People" are really dealing him a lousy hand.

I can't see where he has a thing to complain about. It's moving forward precisely according to his stated principles, which is that the majority rules the minority. Kim is in the minority, now, so one must necessarily question his intelligence, if not his sanity.

The Cannibal Pot

Two pieces of good news, today, and one bad.

I showed up at the gym for my workout and though I've never discussed politics with him, my personal trainer says: "you didn't vote, did you?" Nope. With others standing around, he proceeds to tell me that when he was going over the list of appointments this morning, he thought of the election and then figured that every one of his clients would go vote, save one -- me. I was about his last and so far he was batting .1000. So for my money, it's astoundingly good news that I come off like that to people without even broaching the subject.

So then I figure, OK, since I've got them all here... I proceed to invoke the metaphor to Frédéric Bastiat's more concrete description of The State.

Government is the great fiction through which everybody endeavors to live at the expense of everybody else.

I think I read Billy calling it Cannibal-Pot Hysteria back in 2003 and I've been stealing it ever since. So I tell them: "It's all -- soup-to-nuts -- just about the hysteria surrounding a cannibal pot; who gets tossed in, who gets to feast."

They all laugh, so they get it. More good news. But then I have to wonder how it is that if someone gets it, why they would laugh. Then it dawns on me: everyone thinks they're going to get to feast.

Of course. That's is why they vote, right? So there's your bad news. If I watch the local news I can see one-off incidents of depravity cross my TV screen on a nightly basis. Today I get to witness mass depravity. Bea just informed me she didn't vote. It's her call and I wouldn't say anything if she did, but knowing she didn't just fills me with pride and joy.

So here's to being a good citizen (don't vote) and to being a good parent (teach your kids that it's pathetic scam for herds, depraved at that, and not worthy of a rational person's time or attention).

Sharing

This was the headline on the top of the Yahoo homepage as I just fired up the MacBook on returning home from the office:

Obama, Clinton strike genial debate tone

At once I heard a collective sigh of relief across the land, implying that those we call "voters" are likely going to buy into a "power sharing arrangement." What, you think this isn't what their internals tell them? Whether it's eventually Clinton/Obama or Obama/Clinton, you can bet your ass that the "voters" will eat it up -- which is of course the whole point. We love it when despots agree to divvy up the spoils of implicit violence upon the productive. Then we can pretend that violence has been averted. We lie to ourselves every day of our lives, so this is but normal behavior. Honesty in all things, at all times, is a commitment.

I haven't read the underlying article. Why bother? This is all about who gets the reins, who gets to wield and who gets the whip, and who gets the "voter's" values shoved down their throats while paying the tab. It's about who goes into the cannibal pot, and who gets to feast.

That's about as honest as you can be about the whole nightmare.

I'll Take My Chances

Any day. Without a moment's hesitation.

Fundamentally, it's a choice between taking your chances with honest thieves, vs. attempting to strike a deal with dishonest ones; and if you can't grasp the distinction between honest and dishonest thieves, then that's at least half your problem in the frustrations you believe you observe in politics.

The virtue in honest thieves is that they can't get any help from other thieves, or anyone else. Dishonest thieves, by contrast, have all the help in the world, dear voter.

The Great Spectacle

Billy, working from Tokyo just now, takes a moment to comment on the latest in that greatest of American endeavors: the race to be president. Yep, boy, when it comes to America the Beautiful, American know-how, and everything that was ever supposed to be terrific about America, isn't it all just encapsulated in that every-four-year spectacle?

Everything we are, we owe to voting, elections, and American presidents.

Or so you'd think. Me? Well, I ran my enthusiasm for what Paul might do right up to the beginning of the primaries. My RSS reader is currently awash in weeks of as-yet unread posts from blogs that follow Paul. I'm still interested -- as a side-note to the election, now -- how his continued candidacy might effect the republican base, but it has nothing, really, to do with who's going to be president.

Billy says:

A rational person cannot listen to it, except in the spirit of estimating storms on the horizon.

Though I would say that Paul's campaign was of an entirely different character, including his crowds of whoopers, it's certainly that for the entire lot of the rest of them on both sides. Guess what? I have yet to listen to a single second of broadcast or cable news on the whole affair, save for the few YouTube clips I've posted of some of Paul's interviews and such. Haven't watched a single debate (I've read and watched select excerpts). In fact, I don't think I've had the TV on any kind of news channel (local or national) in a year, except CNBC during the trading day, and even that is no more than once every couple of weeks.

I expect that to continue. I also can't read blogs that serve to "analyze" the political scene. It's like listening to a sports station where a host and callers "analyze" the expected results of some sporting match on the mix of players and their past statistical performance. Maybe there's some validity to that, but I think they're by-and-large just fooling themselves. As to the election, this thing is going to march forward and some semblance of life is going to go on. I really am going to do my best to ignore most of it and live that life. I expect to be relentlessly anti-state in my blogging: raging against the warfare that currently excites the republicans, as well as the welfare that always excites the democrats. It's two sides of the same coin.

But who knows? I just might end up getting tuned into this deal once it shakes out to the two principal players it's going to be. At some level it can be hard to resist the national urge, each four or eight years, to toss out the bad King and replace him with a good King.

"Let's Move On"

Looks like that's the response Justin Raimondo is getting to the his previous post I blogged yesterday.

This is why the Reasonoids didn’t bother examining and analyzing what was written, and certainly not in context: as Sanchez himself admits, Kirchick did “stretch” the truth. But the only truth Kirchick and his pals at Reason and Cato were and are interested in is who wrote the material in question, not if (and why) it was “racist.” With that, Senor Sanchez can’t be bothered: truth doesn’t matter, context doesn’t matter, and he doesn’t “feel much need” to go into it. Of course he doesn’t: let Fox News take it from here, right Julie?

I quit donating to Cato years ago, and had been thinking about not renewing my subscription to Reason Magazine whenever it happens that it expires, of which I have no idea (I always take the 4-yr option or whatever it is). Given this nonsense, as well as a recent outrage at Reason's Hit & Run Blog, I think I'll just stop.

It's not that I don't wish them (Reason and Cato) well, but for organizations that are so-called "libertarian," but not anti-state, their treatment of Ron Paul has bean despicable, disgraceful, and outrageous at every level (yea: I been usin' that 'O' word a lot, lately). I wish them well, but I wouldn't give a flying fuck if they both decayed into complete irrelevance and oblivion. I'm not going to cheer it on, or contribute to it, but other than a possible irresistible urge to link something they put out now and then, I just don't care about either of them, anymore.

...And I don't know why they're behaving as they are. I don't for a second believe that any of them seriously believes Paul is a racist or a sympathizer (which means I consider them dishonest; but what's new?). I'm also suspicious of the convenient speculation -- often assertion -- that a President Paul or even a serious national contender by MSM standards would steal their thunder and diminish what little prestige they think they have. That leaves me with just the fact: they don't want to publicly support Ron Paul. I suspect the real reason is pretty pedestrian. They didn't think he had a serious shot, and didn't want to be seen as "fringe" or "kooky" or "unserious" in supporting him. You see, libertarianism, to many of them, needs to sneak in through the back door. Never mind that, for instance, locking people in jail for a decade for some dope "crime" is an insolent contradiction of justice and liberty: it's more efficient not to. To the extreme: if Reason and Cato were public policy advisers to the Third Reich, you'd see them making arguments of what bad political and economic policy it is to exterminate the Jews, and they'd collect all sorts of studies, statistics, and charts showing what a net economic benefit the Jews were to Germans at large. That's true, of course, but it's as impertinent as you can get.

I am an anti-statist and that's really all I am. Libertarian? Liberty? There's no possibility of any such thing in the shadow of an evil institution that feeds and self-perpetuates on warfare from the right and welfare from the left (or when they switch places or join forces, just to keep up illusions). Wring your hands to your heart's content about how worrisome and risky things would be without it. Fine. I don't believe you -- I have no honest reason to believe you -- but you may be right. Still: I'm willing to take my chances. It's that simple. None of you have any moral right to tie my to your grand utopian/dystopian schemes.

Continental

If you don't know what I mean by the reference, that's fine; it's esoteric. Watch this anyway. I think it makes a good deal of sense -- and if for nothing else, in its pointing out indisputable absurdities.

Libertarianism 101

I really had only a raw sense of my view of the Ron Paul vs. Some Libertarians (note: I am never referring to the LP, unless I write 'LP' or 'Party') over racists and other bigoted remarks in newsletters published under his name when I wrote this.

Karen De Coster does a far more thorough job of it, touches on other idiosyncrasies concerning the libertarian movement, and hashes out some good background. This is an interesting connection I'd never really thought about.

One thing rampant among libertarians is their lack of the ambition gene outside of libertarianism and the web. So many of these people have no real job, no career, and in fact, if they can't align themselves with some small-time, paid position at some libertarian outfit, they remain unemployed. As such, they will do anything to not make enemies in the movement, and in fact they must win friends in order to write columns and hope for paid gigs. They are low-paid and no-paid libertarians. Their perspective on the real world is warped because they sell their principles for a paycheck or a job.

I'd always had a sense about that. I think it was Greg Swann who once characterized it to me as "the virtue of living in squalor." But I'd always wondered about how some of them finance their existence at all. Well, here's maybe a clue:

The Kochtopus. That gigantic and powerful machine that has funded much of the conservative and Beltway Libertarian apparatus. Just look who is number one on its list of organizations funded.

I'm not really ashamed to admit that I once supported CATO, both in donations and attending luncheons they'd sponsor in San Francisco about once a quarter. I got to meet and hear P.J. O'Rourke at one of those and he's among the more honest of the conservative-libertarian hybrid creature. Plus, they do some good work. But I was always irked that their approach is wholly and completely devoid of any moral foundation that I could see. Well, the sticky part of having a moral foundation is that those of us who do, invariably end up yelling at one another from time-to-time. Why? Well, because we can, but more importantly, none of it implies voting booths or goons with guns & jails to keep everyone's thoughts in line. Practical, slide-rule efficiency "libertarian" politics al-la CATO and others implicitly summons the voters and goons. You have to be careful what you say. You might end up implying that one of your co "freedom champions" needs state reeducation, or worse. It's all a matter of efficiency, you see.

Let's continue, and this is the part that's more directly related to my own post I linked, above.

The Kochtopus, and thus those tied to Cato, IHS, George Mason, etc., is made up of hired tongues who have to act within certain boundaries, and those boundaries are a reflection of the state's moral code: the state makes the eradication of racism, homophobia, sexism, anti-Israelism, and all other un-PC "isms" its top priority. The cosmopolitan / Beltway / Centralizing / PC libertarians consistently promote the state, and especially its moral codes. While Lew Rockwell is always and everywhere anti-state, the focus of the anti-Rockwellians is not the state and its effect on individual liberty, but promoting the state's thought control on racism, homophobia, gay marriage, immigration, and all other pc topics. This has become the new "libertarianism." Libertarians have become some sick and twisted version of the Gestapo on thought control, motives, and guilt by association.

Not one of these posts that I have seen, that brand Lew with all these nasty tendencies, have produced a shred of evidence: a link, an article, a byline, or otherwise. What it comes down to is this: Lew doesn't use his website to promote queer marriage, gay this and gay that, Rosa Parks, MLK, or any other "hero" of the politically-correct, libertarian Kochtopus. Instead, he promotes ideas which are against the state and its collectivization of the individual.

So you guessed it - by not consistently promoting the state-approved, pc agenda, one is therefore found guilty of all charges by those who do promote The Agenda. If you don't beat the drums for, say, gay marriage, that makes you a "homophobe." And on and on.

Why do so many people get so worked up about racism and other forms of bigotry and discrimination? Because, one way or another, they have some kind of win or lose stake in it; and that stake that promises a win, or forecasts a loss, is a consequence of the state, of public policy. So there's a public fight at the voting booth, in the media, at the level of  general rhetoric and social discourse. Your words betray your thoughts, your thoughts your likely actions; so it is by your words that you signal to everyone else whether you need to be embraced as one who'll help garner a win, or condemned as an adversary, a cost.

Remove the state, i.e., the organized coercion that sorts those who win from those who lose; those who pay from those who receive, and you get to yell at assholes all day long, be yelled at by others, and somewhere in that great disorganized mess, self-organize into freely chosen associations of people who mostly get along and value one another for largely who they are.

This is libertarianism.

And those on the attack seem to me to be more about singing in the choir for the beltway "libertarian" machine that is as reliant on the state as is the NAACP, NOW, ACLU, NAW, or any of the others. If they want to yell at Ron Paul because they think he is a racist, or too cozy with those who are, that's fine. I've no quarrel with that and they're welcome to make their case. Everyone is welcome to make their personal judgments accordingly.

But it isn't about that.

Primarily, it's about a potential president who promises to essentially remove a CATO and other's raison d'être, though I'm sure they'd find something to do. There'll have to be another school to "privatize" somewhere. But CATO and its ilk are rather like the NAACP, in that both rely on total state regulation of the private affairs of individuals. The principles are exactly the same. The NAACP requires, for its survival, that the state impose racism one way or the other (the other is called: affirmative action). That way, they can oppose the state, or support the state. Same with CATO. They fool libertarians when they "oppose the state," because they're not, really, any more -- not one bit more -- than is the NAACP, which is to say: never on principle. Indeed; they need the state. They require the state; like a vampire needs fresh blood.

I could go on, but hopefully you get the idea. The point is that there's a never-ending battle (which they all admit), and the reason it's a never-ending battle is because the battle, by design, is over managing effects, not -- and never -- expunging the cause: which is the state itself.

And so, libertarians who fret about racism, bigotry, neo-confederacy, or whatever within the movement need to stop and think that if they're fighting for a libertarian world, a real one, then it necessarily means putting up with the likes of racists, bigots, morons, idiots, small minds, neo-confederates, confederates, statists, commies, francophones, anglaphones, goths, and the whole bloody mess.

Consider this: in your anarchist life (that small part left that's largely uninfluenced by state influence or control), how many of the above did you associate with, do business with, or cooperate with in one way or another today? Do you even know? Does it matter? Do you see?

Electoral Compass

As usual with these sorts of things, from a true libertarian perspective there's a few "when did you stop beating your wife" questions, i.e., begging the question in asking a question. Like: 'should the money go into the schools, or vouchers?' How about stop being a bunch of fucking thieves? Ah, but I always ask for too much.

But there you have it. I just answered "no opinion" on those impossible ones and still came out just where I'd have expected.

Shorter Version:

Fuck you, Carl Cameron.

Ron Paul

With what very little time I've had today to look at this (that's one example; you can chase links to your heart's content), I've been nothing but amused. That's not quite true: mostly disillusioned. It's a hope killing sort of thing, kinda. Or; it's not. In practical political terms, this can hurt Paul, have no effect, or help him. I fear it might help him, for all the wrong reasons. That's partly the source of my disillusionment.

Listen: old hand libertarians will be the very last people on Earth to ever to win over anyone en masse, and this latest ordeal is a very pure example. They're kooks; me included. That's mostly because we don't give a shit what you pathetically "think;" me included. But even that's not it. The point is very simple, but it's rarely detected or spoken of. What's happening to Ron Paul is classically symptomatic of libertarianism.

Here's the deal: lots of racists and other bigots are libertarians. So long as they don't advocate a state to impose their "values" on you (as you advocate to impose yours on them), they can be perfectly consistent with libertarianism in a political context (the emphasis denotes an important distinction). That simply doesn't mesh with the practicalities of politics in our as-yet primitive [d]evolution. True libertarianism is simply oil and water to practical politics. That's why the Libertarian Party is a contradiction in terms and that's why Paul is destined to have this sort of thing crop up time and again.

Why does Paul attract racists and other kooks? Because, and it must be said: Paul as politician is perfectly willing to leave them alone -- or at least mostly. In a libertarian's eyes, a racist ought to be perfectly free to be a racist: in his home, family, private affairs, and business dealings. Unequivocally. Ultimately, that's what Paul will have to face up to explicitly admitting to if he's to keep stating his principles as he's done a fair job of unabashedly doing.

Paul is not a racist, I don't think, and neither am I. But it doesn't mean I want a state to stamp it out, any more than I want a state to stamp out anything else that's a matter of people's freedom to associate in their private affairs and business dealings. Explicitly: the owner of a private bus has every right in the world to send blacks to the back of the bus. ...And any blacks who pay the bigot his fair anyway, are fools.

There's no easy way around any of this. I'd just as soon that Paul confront it dead on and let the chips fall where they may. Maybe a few more people will start actually thinking. Long shot, but it's possible.

Gentlemen

Two true gentlemen. An interview. An honest discussion of ideas.

Racists for Obama

Billy lays it out exactly like it is. It is racism at the very core of the most enthusiastic support for Obama, and that includes Oprah. Yes, I understand very well that she is not a racist in the sense that she regards white people as inferior. She's a racist because she wants to elect a president on the primary reason of his skin color. That is racism, no matter how you slice it.

Afterthought: It's racism in precisely the same way that black people say it is when you as a white person make a big deal or take particular pride in having "lots of black friends."

Iowa

Well, comparing Huckabee's 1st place finish in 2007 to Pat Robertson's 2nd place finish in 1988, one would have to conclude that on the whole, Iowans, shall we say, "haven't progressed a whole lot in 19 years." Big surprise. The bright side is that in the circles in which I travel, nowadays, I'm just as likely to happen upon and converse with a former "evangelical" as I am just about anyone else. It's always fun to compare notes on what morons we used to be.

I guess Iowa is a breeding grounds, or something. Speaking psychologically, and only for myself, the separatist nature of evangelicalism -- at least as a young person -- seems to breed a degree of -- well deserved and accurate -- inferiority sold and wrapped up as superiority (until you realize you've been scammed). If that applies in some measure to others as well, it's easy to understand how that can translate into wanting some authority to shove their religious values down the throats of everyone else -- at gunpoint. That's what the majority of republicans are voting for in Iowa, tonight: to rule your lives by whatever means necessary, including Old Testament means, I assure you very much. Political license is all that separates them from the most radical Islamic nutbars. Think not? Think again. They long for the "last days," every god dammed one of them. That's when most of you get what's coming to you in the form of eternal torment and torture. They practically orgasm at the thought; and that's how evil they are. Then again, I'm sure Huckabee is just really big on ethanol, though I haven't paid any attention at all.

Very few are willing to pretty much let you go your own way in peace, insisting they pay their own way and you pay yours. Only about 8,500 out of the miserable lot of them, so far.

Ron Paul for Condom of the United States

Author George H. Smith, who's never voted (and doesn't plan to), gives an offbeat, qualified endorsement for Ron Paul. You'll have to stay for the punchline to grasp the meaning in the title.

FWIW

Celeb endorsements for Paul: Donna D'Errico and Adam Curry.