The Militant Libertarian

I'm pissed off and I'm a libertarian. What else you wanna know?

Saturday, November 22, 2008

The Virginian Rebel: Emperor-elect Obama to Save Us From Unemployment, The Business Cycle

The Virginian Rebel: Emperor-elect Obama to Save Us From Unemployment, The Business Cycle

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Gov't snooping on 'Joe the Plumber' deemed improper

Former Ohio Secretary of State Ken Blackwell says he's "delighted" with the conclusion of Ohio's government watchdog that an agency director improperly used government computers to find personal information on the man who became known as "Joe the Plumber" during the presidential campaign.

Ohio Inspector General Tom Charles has issued a report that says Barack Obama donor Helen Jones-Kelley, the head of Ohio's Department of Job and Family Services, looked up Samuel Wurzelbacher's records without any legitimate business purposes. Charles looked into 18 background checks on the Toledo-area man and found that eight of them had no legitimate business purpose. (See earlier story)

Blackwell, now senior fellow for family empowerment at the Family Research Council in Washington, DC, says Jones-Kelley used the powers of government to try to "intimidate and squash free speech."

Ken Blackwell"I think it's important that now there's this follow-up," says the state's former secretary of state. "You can't turn a blind eye to this improper behavior or you can't try to paper over it, or you can't let it go without consequence -- because if you reward bad behavior or you turn a blind eye to bad behavior, all you're going to get is more bad behavior."

Jones-Kelley was placed on leave earlier this month over separate allegations that a state computer or state e-mail account was used to assist in political fundraising. Blackwell says Jones-Kelley has shown a "disturbing pattern" of conduct.

"I am really concerned that the powers that be, the higher-ups in the present [Gov. Ted] Strickland administration, don't seem to be willing to really give a proper punishment or a response to this inappropriate behavior," he laments.

Although Blackwell would not say Jones-Kelley should be fired, he said her actions are evidence of "government gone crazy."

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Friday, November 21, 2008

Wake Up! Jan. 21 Is Their Day




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The Virginian Rebel: Why the State is the Enemy of the People

The Virginian Rebel: Why the State is the Enemy of the People

Why do many libertarians reject the legitimacy of the State? The answer is that, unlike the majority of the population, libertarians generally understand what the State is. George Washington came close to the point when he said, "government is force, not reason." Murray Rothbard has an even better definition of the State in his essay The Anatomy of the State:

Go here for the rest.

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Who Owns Nature?

Who Owns Nature?: Monsanto & Biotech Corporations Move to Monopolize Seeds & Biodiversity

New report warns of corporate concentration, commodification of nature; highlights global resistance grounded in "Food Sovereignty"


From thousands of seed companies and public breeding institutions three decades ago, 10 companies now control more than two-thirds of global proprietary seed sales From dozens of pesticide companies three decades ago, 10 now control almost 90% of agrochemical sales worldwide From almost 1,000 biotech start-ups 15 years ago, 10 companies now account for three-quarters of industry revenues The top 10 pharmaceutical companies control 55% of the global drug market

With collapsing systems - eco, climate, food and financial - as the backdrop, Who Owns Nature? warns that, with engineering of living organisms at the nano-scale (a.k.a. synthetic biology), industry is setting the stage for a corporate grab that extends to all of nature.

"About one-quarter of the world's biomass has already been commodified," explains ETC Group's Pat Mooney. "With extreme genetic engineering, we're seeing new corporate strategies to capture and commodify the three-quarters of the world's biomass that has, until now, remained beyond the market economy."

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Thursday, November 20, 2008

Browbeating Teachers For Obama

This teacher claims that this is not brow-beating, she was asking legitimate questions. All while wearing an Obama pin, of course, and using terms like "O Jesus" in class...



"We don't need no education
We don't need no thought control.
No dark sarcasms in the classroom
Teachers leave them kids alone!"


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Less Than 60 Shopping Days Till the Big Gun Grab

From: http://www.lewrockwell.com/suprynowicz/suprynowicz104.html
by Vin Suprynowicz

It’s been a week and a half since Barack Obama was elected president. He won’t take office for another two months. But he’s already got one big group of Americans on their feet.

What is Barack Obama’s position on the rights to bear arms?

Sen. Obama’s campaign Web site says he “respects the constitutional rights of Americans to bear arms.” It promises he will “protect the rights of hunters and other law-abiding Americans to purchase, own, transport and use guns.”

Seeking to reassure gun owners, Obama told a campaign audience in Ohio in October: “I will not take your shotgun away. I will not take your rifle away. I won’t take your handgun away.”

But the crowds mobbing America’s gun stores this week say a large number of Americans – including first-time gun-buyers – don’t believe it.

Read the rest here: http://www.lewrockwell.com/suprynowicz/suprynowicz104.html

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What Sam Adams Would Think of the Current US

From: http://www.lewrockwell.com/huff/huff23.html
by Bill Huff

"Democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want and deserve to get it good and hard." ~ H.L. Mencken


America is a majority being ruled by a corrupt venal minority. We may have been taught that we are under a government "of the people, by the people, for the people." But our original Republican principles and laws are straining to keep us from careening toward the precipice of Absolute Democracy.

What happens when the Common Man meets Sam Adams?

If you were to Google "Sam Adams" you might get the impression that America is a little more interested in beer than liberty – at least by one level in the search results. The original Sam Adams was not a tea teetotaler. George Washington was a purveyor of fine rye whiskey. Yet, one came to be recognized as the Father of the American Revolution and the other the Father of his country. Neither was a common man per se. But both believed with every fiber of their being that the common man should live in freedom – enough to risk being hung by George III.

Sam Adams was the kind of person feared most by tyrants. He was the one, who, like the prophet Nathan, would speak the truth to power regardless of the consequences. He incessantly agitated for Revolution. Adams was also smart enough to avoid being murdered by the British before he could foment his Revolution – quite a feat when one considers that the enemy was everywhere around him [just like today] and looked almost exactly like him. Mainly, he was the type of writer and orator who could make the common man understand the "real deal." Obviously he was prone to self-replicate. George III may have been crazy but he had the prescience to know what one man like Adams might accomplish.

How does the Common Man get to know Sam?

Find out here: http://www.lewrockwell.com/huff/huff23.html

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Wednesday, November 19, 2008

Free Mark Cuban!

Mark Cuban is a self-made billionaire...

He provoked the theatrical condemnation of coprocephalic talk show goon Bill O'Reilly by offering to bankroll the cinematic distribution of the 9-11 revisionist documentary Loose Change, which presented evidence that the Black Tuesday atrocity was an "inside job."

O'Reilly, who suffers a severe histaminic reaction whenever he's exposed to critical thinking, insisted that Loose Change was a "diversion" from the sacred war on terror that shouldn't be "given a platform" of the sort Cuban offered. Cuban riposted that since the film was already in circulation on the internet and through other samizdat channels, it made more sense to bring it out in the open and confront its claims honestly.

"I'm not going to back away from a topic because it's controversial," Cuban promised, doubtless causing O'Reilly's wattles to become empurpled with outrage.

Cuban's most recent effort to expose official squalor to the disinfecting rays of public sunlight is the investigative website BailoutSleuth.com, which is devoted to chronicling and exposing the details of the largest economic crime in history: The theft of trillions of dollars from the middle class to cushion the financial collapse of politically favored Wall Street welfare whores.

Mr. Cuban's willingness to finance this indispenseable exercise in forensic journalism has earned him more than the self-congratulatory disapproval of Bill O'Reilly: It has made him an Official Enemy of the Ruling Oligarchy and exposed him to retaliation by the Regime.

Today (November 17), the Securities and Exchange Commission, one of the Regime's more inept and corrupt enforcement appendanges, announced it was filing a civil complaint against Cuban alleging that he had been involved in "insider trading" four years ago.

From: http://freedominourtime.blogspot.com/2008/11/free-mark-cuban.html

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Obama's Voters

I've posted a shorter version of this before, but it's becoming a full documentary film, which has released a longer version of the Q&A with Obama voters being asked questions right after they'd finished voting.

A larger, more in-depth survey was done nationally by an independent firm whose results will be documented in the film.

While I doubt that most of McCain's voters were better informed than these dozen Obama supporters were, it's sobering to consider that this is the kind of person who votes in today's elections. You can thank both publik skool and the main stream media for this kind of dumbing down. They've managed to boil Presidential campaigns (and now most others) down to two things: whose got a shocking skeleton in their closet and who looks good on TV.



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Bailouts



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Tuesday, November 18, 2008

Russian Gulag Survivor Discusses the EU



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Officer Friendly to Sergeant Slaughter


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Monday, November 17, 2008

God Angrily Clarifies 'Don't Kill' Rule

NEW YORK—Responding to recent events on Earth, God, the omniscient creator-deity worshipped by billions of followers of various faiths for more than 6,000 years, angrily clarified His longtime stance against humans killing each other Monday.

"Look, I don't know, maybe I haven't made myself completely clear, so for the record, here it is again," said the Lord, His divine face betraying visible emotion during a press conference near the site of the fallen Twin Towers. "Somehow, people keep coming up with the idea that I want them to kill their neighbor. Well, I don't. And to be honest, I'm really getting sick and tired of it. Get it straight. Not only do I not want anybody to kill anyone, but I specifically commanded you not to, in really simple terms that anybody ought to be able to understand."

Worshipped by Christians, Jews, and Muslims alike, God said His name has been invoked countless times over the centuries as a reason to kill in what He called "an unending cycle of violence."

"I don't care how holy somebody claims to be," God said. "If a person tells you it's My will that they kill someone, they're wrong. Got it? I don't care what religion you are, or who you think your enemy is, here it is one more time: No killing, in My name or anyone else's, ever again."

The press conference came as a surprise to humankind, as God rarely intervenes in earthly affairs. As a matter of longstanding policy, He has traditionally left the task of interpreting His message and divine will to clerics, rabbis, priests, imams, and Biblical scholars. Theologians and laymen alike have been given the task of pondering His ineffable mysteries, deciding for themselves what to do as a matter of faith. His decision to manifest on the material plane was motivated by the deep sense of shock, outrage, and sorrow He felt over the Sept. 11 violence carried out in His name, and over its dire potential ramifications around the globe.

"I tried to put it in the simplest possible terms for you people, so you'd get it straight, because I thought it was pretty important," said God, called Yahweh and Allah respectively in the Judaic and Muslim traditions. "I guess I figured I'd left no real room for confusion after putting it in a four-word sentence with one-syllable words, on the tablets I gave to Moses. How much more clear can I get?"

"But somehow, it all gets twisted around and, next thing you know, somebody's spouting off some nonsense about, 'God says I have to kill this guy, God wants me to kill that guy, it's God's will,'" God continued. "It's not God's will, all right? News flash: 'God's will' equals 'Don't murder people.'"

Worse yet, many of the worst violators claim that their actions are justified by passages in the Bible, Torah, and Qur'an.

"To be honest, there's some contradictory stuff in there, okay?" God said. "So I can see how it could be pretty misleading. I admit it—My bad. I did My best to inspire them, but a lot of imperfect human agents have misinterpreted My message over the millennia. Frankly, much of the material that got in there is dogmatic, doctrinal bullshit. I turn My head for a second and, suddenly, all this stuff about homosexuality gets into Leviticus, and everybody thinks it's God's will to kill gays. It absolutely drives Me up the wall."

God praised the overwhelming majority of His Muslim followers as "wonderful, pious people," calling the perpetrators of the Sept. 11 attacks rare exceptions.

"This whole medieval concept of the jihad, or holy war, had all but vanished from the Muslim world in, like, the 10th century, and with good reason," God said. "There's no such thing as a holy war, only unholy ones. The vast majority of Muslims in this world reject the murderous actions of these radical extremists, just like the vast majority of Christians in America are pissed off over those two bigots on The 700 Club."

Continued God, "Read the book: 'Allah is kind, Allah is beautiful, Allah is merciful.' It goes on and on that way, page after page. But, no, some assholes have to come along and revive this stupid holy-war crap just to further their own hateful agenda. So now, everybody thinks Muslims are all murderous barbarians. Thanks, Taliban: 1,000 years of pan-Islamic cultural progress down the drain."

God stressed that His remarks were not directed exclusively at Islamic extremists, but rather at anyone whose ideological zealotry overrides his or her ability to comprehend the core message of all world religions.

"I don't care what faith you are, everybody's been making this same mistake since the dawn of time," God said. "The Muslims massacre the Hindus, the Hindus massacre the Muslims. The Buddhists, everybody massacres the Buddhists. The Jews, don't even get me started on the hardline, right-wing, Meir Kahane-loving Israeli nationalists, man. And the Christians? You people believe in a Messiah who says, 'Turn the other cheek,' but you've been killing everybody you can get your hands on since the Crusades."

Growing increasingly wrathful, God continued: "Can't you people see? What are you, morons? There are a ton of different religious traditions out there, and different cultures worship Me in different ways. But the basic message is always the same: Christianity, Islam, Judaism, Buddhism, Shintoism... every religious belief system under the sun, they all say you're supposed to love your neighbors, folks! It's not that hard a concept to grasp."

"Why would you think I'd want anything else? Humans don't need religion or God as an excuse to kill each other—you've been doing that without any help from Me since you were freaking apes!" God said. "The whole point of believing in God is to have a higher standard of behavior. How obvious can you get?"

"I'm talking to all of you, here!" continued God, His voice rising to a shout. "Do you hear Me? I don't want you to kill anybody. I'm against it, across the board. How many times do I have to say it? Don't kill each other anymore—ever! I'm fucking serious!"

Upon completing His outburst, God fell silent, standing quietly at the podium for several moments. Then, witnesses reported, God's shoulders began to shake, and He wept.

Taken from: http://www.theonion.com/content/node/28151

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The world has never seen such freezing heat

From: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/opinion/main.jhtml?xml=/opinion/2008/11/16/do1610.xml

A surreal scientific blunder last week raised a huge question mark about the temperature records that underpin the worldwide alarm over global warming. On Monday, Nasa's Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS), which is run by Al Gore's chief scientific ally, Dr James Hansen, and is one of four bodies responsible for monitoring global temperatures, announced that last month was the hottest October on record.

This was startling. Across the world there were reports of unseasonal snow and plummeting temperatures last month, from the American Great Plains to China, and from the Alps to New Zealand. China's official news agency reported that Tibet had suffered its "worst snowstorm ever". In the US, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration registered 63 local snowfall records and 115 lowest-ever temperatures for the month, and ranked it as only the 70th-warmest October in 114 years.

So what explained the anomaly? GISS's computerised temperature maps seemed to show readings across a large part of Russia had been up to 10 degrees higher than normal. But when expert readers of the two leading warming-sceptic blogs, Watts Up With That and Climate Audit, began detailed analysis of the GISS data they made an astonishing discovery. The reason for the freak figures was that scores of temperature records from Russia and elsewhere were not based on October readings at all. Figures from the previous month had simply been carried over and repeated two months running.

The error was so glaring that when it was reported on the two blogs - run by the US meteorologist Anthony Watts and Steve McIntyre, the Canadian computer analyst who won fame for his expert debunking of the notorious "hockey stick" graph - GISS began hastily revising its figures. This only made the confusion worse because, to compensate for the lowered temperatures in Russia, GISS claimed to have discovered a new "hotspot" in the Arctic - in a month when satellite images were showing Arctic sea-ice recovering so fast from its summer melt that three weeks ago it was 30 per cent more extensive than at the same time last year.

A GISS spokesman lamely explained that the reason for the error in the Russian figures was that they were obtained from another body, and that GISS did not have resources to exercise proper quality control over the data it was supplied with. This is an astonishing admission: the figures published by Dr Hansen's institute are not only one of the four data sets that the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) relies on to promote its case for global warming, but they are the most widely quoted, since they consistently show higher temperatures than the others.

If there is one scientist more responsible than any other for the alarm over global warming it is Dr Hansen, who set the whole scare in train back in 1988 with his testimony to a US Senate committee chaired by Al Gore. Again and again, Dr Hansen has been to the fore in making extreme claims over the dangers of climate change. (He was recently in the news here for supporting the Greenpeace activists acquitted of criminally damaging a coal-fired power station in Kent, on the grounds that the harm done to the planet by a new power station would far outweigh any damage they had done themselves.)

Yet last week's latest episode is far from the first time Dr Hansen's methodology has been called in question. In 2007 he was forced by Mr Watts and Mr McIntyre to revise his published figures for US surface temperatures, to show that the hottest decade of the 20th century was not the 1990s, as he had claimed, but the 1930s.

Another of his close allies is Dr Rajendra Pachauri, chairman of the IPCC, who recently startled a university audience in Australia by claiming that global temperatures have recently been rising "very much faster" than ever, in front of a graph showing them rising sharply in the past decade. In fact, as many of his audience were aware, they have not been rising in recent years and since 2007 have dropped.

Dr Pachauri, a former railway engineer with no qualifications in climate science, may believe what Dr Hansen tells him. But whether, on the basis of such evidence, it is wise for the world's governments to embark on some of the most costly economic measures ever proposed, to remedy a problem which may actually not exist, is a question which should give us all pause for thought.

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Sunday, November 16, 2008

Words That Still Ring Today


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