Defiance

As you know by now, they're coming for the bloggers. Us who have the nerve to say what we feel about the corrupt, inane, impotent bastards that allegedly represent us, we are bound to be hunted down due to the Campaign Finance Reform Act.

This ends here. Now.

To any government force out there: you will NOT stop me. If you regulate, I will ignore it. If you fine, I will not pay it. If you attempt to arrest, I will not surrender. I will NOT be silenced, I don't care if I have to take my bare hands and strangle the life out of whosoever is unlucky enough to attempt to enforce it. You. Will. NOT. Win.


I am joining the insurrection.

I am also sending, courtesy of DownsizeDC.org, a final warning to those who would dare abridge our rights. The text below, a letter to both of my state's US senators and the House Rep. of my district is of that. Since they all happen to be Republicans, I made sure to dig into them in a particular manner:

I understand that a federal judge has ordered the FEC to craft regulations controlling individual political activity on the Internet. This decision is a direct consequence of BCRA. I urge you to take action today to repeal BCRA.

In case you have forgotten it since taking office, here's the 1st Amendment of the US Constitution:

"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 it says "no law", it means NO LAW. There is no authority whatsoever for such regulation as the campaign finance reform act has foisted on us.

I believe you are a Republican, yes? I know the mantra: "limited government", "upholding the constitution", "personal responsibility". If your party is relevant at all to modern day america, you will live by your words and move to relegate this obvious affront to Republican ideals and freedom itself to the ash heap of history. The Republican Party allowing ridiculous legislation like this to slide past is symptomatic of the reason why many who would otherwise be Republicans are not. Either earn our confidence and honor your oaths of office, or do the next honorable thing: resign.

BTW: from this point on, any past statements made even remotely favorable to John McCain in any way whatsoever are null and void. No one who has brought on such hell is worthy of even being called a man, much less a US Senator.

Intellectual diversion: on gay marriage

Glen Whitman examines a bit of the reasoning from fellow gay-marriage supporters:

Some advocates of gay marriage, as well as a California Superior Court judge, have argued that barring same-sex marriages constitutes a form of sex discrimination. The argument, in simplest terms, goes like this: Eve can marry Steve, but Adam cannot marry Steve. Thus the law discriminates against Adam, because it gives Eve rights that Adam does not have.

Interestingly, the argument implies that both sexes are being discriminated against. Adam can marry Madam, but Eve cannot, so the law gives Adam rights that Eve does not have.

Much as I support gay marriage, I don’t think this argument flies....

The point he later makes about it, that it depends on a difference in the rules each side starts off with, is pretty much accurate IMO. But really, the train of thought that the concept he criticizes comes from starts off from a wrong turn in the first place.

Gay-marriage advocates who reference the discrimination defense are prone to accepting a condition that has no real reason to exist: the modern (re)definition of marriage itself. Marriage has not always been a contractual agreement, in fact for much of its existence it was purely a religious/personal matter, the current situation that we call "marriage" is in reality a religious pact combined with a contract -- what we would now call a "civil union".

This combination came about, like many of our currently questionable laws*, from past prejudice: it used to be to legally marry outside of your race required a "miscegenation liscense", which of course was ridiculously difficult to get. As racist sentiment melted away to become less publically acceptable, the concept of marriage "liscensing" shifted to apply to everyone regardless of race. Over time, people came to accept this as normal.

Now that gay marriage has flared up, we're seeing an interesting scenario which neither side realizes:

-The anti-gay-marriage side thinks they're defending their values when the concept they're protecting actually does more damage to them (by tying the religious concept of marriage to universal acceptance via government, blocking their right to see a difference on their own).

-The pro-gay-marriage side thinks they're fighting discrimination when what they want a piece of is itself born of discrimination, and sanctions a degree of government oversight of their lives.

Supporting gay-marriage should be seen for what it is: a second choice to take since re-seperation of the legal and personal aspects of modern marriage, while being the most consistent solution, is also the least likely.


(* - seriously. Look up the origins of the drug laws, for example)

What's the precedent for this?

Noticed something odd in an article about South Dakota's abortion laws...

Gov. Mike Rounds....signed a bill that will automatically ban most abortions in South Dakota if the U.S. Supreme Court reverses its 1973 Roe decision and gives states authority to prohibit abortion. The only exceptions would be cases where a woman's life is in danger. Doctors who perform illegal abortions could receive up to two years in prison.

Hmm...Scheduling legislation to go into effect based on an "If-->Then": Has this always been legal? Should it be? Has there been much conflict on it?

"end western farm-socialism NOW!"

Poor people for free-trade strike back:

The group of 20 developing nations on Friday demanded that the United States and European countries cut billions of dollars in export subsidies they give their farmers within the next five years.

The G-20 nations, which scuttled global trade talks in 2003 with their tough stance on agriculture policy, said at a meeting in the Indian capital that these countries must end export subsidies within "a period no longer than five years," according to a draft agreement that was to be adopted at the two-day meeting ending Saturday.

The gathering also urged other poorer nations to join their fight to correct what they described as trade imbalances created by non-tariff barriers imposed by rich countries.

Good. It's complete hypocrisy that the governments of the 1st world preach free-trade while refusing to practice it ourselves.

All of the faux-populist talk going on, painting foreign competition as if it were some insidious plot to undermine us, may as well be thinly-veiled racism for what it implies: that the West is more deserving than anyone else. As if it isn't bad enough to not realize that free-trade is not a zero-sum game, protectionists routinely make asides to supremecy. It reminds me of awhile back when regulars of the politics section of SOHH's message board did an "invasion" of a forum of white supremecists and found neo-nazis talking up a "white socialism". Mayhaps when people take pictures of those crowds of anti-"globalization" protestors (most of them are actually anti-capitalist, not merely "anti-globalization") they've been overlooking a chunk of the constituency?

India, China and Brazil led the 20-country group that blocked a U.S.-European Union proposal on farm trade at the last WTO ministerial talks, held in Cancun, Mexico, in September 2003. The talks collapsed when the poorer nations refused to ease investment rules and open their agricultural markets to foreign competition unless rich countries stop giving their farmers billions of dollars in subsidies and cut other non-tariff barriers to trade.

Of course they did, who in their right mind would've taken that deal? If someone asked me if I wanted to play them in a game of one-on-one b-ball, but they refused to allow me to wear shoes, I'd tell them to piss off.

The long-term trend in global economics has been that the richer a nation is, the less dependant it is on farming. Despite the common sympathetic portrayals of the "small-town family farm", that is not who those subsidies are going to. Most of our agriculture is corporatized these days, and even then farming in general is of no importance in our economy. What we're practicing is keep-the-rest-of-the-world-broke-ism, period.

Keep in mind the following numbers:

Farm subsidies total more than $230 billion a year in the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, almost 30 times the amount of agricultural aid to developing countries, according to the Food and Agricultural Organization, a UN agency. Subsidies include between $3 billion and $4 billion a year for U.S. cotton farmers.

Prices for sugar, cocoa, coffee, cotton and coconut oil fell more than 40 percent between 1980 and 2000. Had prices for the top 10 agricultural commodity exports of developing countries kept pace with inflation since 1980, those exporters would have received an extra $112 billion in 2002, the FAO said in a Feb. 15 report.

Healthcare = attempting the impossible

A Hit'n'Run post on the impending collapse of Medicare had me thinking about this. Thus, I bring you:

Why healthcare will never, ever, be "solved"

1) The people & resources it uses are not infinite. There is no endless supply of dollars, doctors, medicines, etc. A non-infinite resource cannot be guaranteed (as a socialized system would attempt) in any form without causing complete chaos.

2) the need for healthcare is infinite. There will never come a time when there's no use for it. In a market system, theorhetically Rational Economic Man would be better served chewing glass than providing healthcare.

No matter what system it is run under, what's being done is an attempt to address an unlimited demand with a limited supply. This being figured out would be an achievement akin to creating a perpetual motion machine.

I stringintly oppose the onset of a Socialist healthcare system, but not because I believe the free-market can serve the need: nothing can, it is simply not possible to do so. I do feel that a more reasonable system would lean closer to a free-market one than we currently do, both in less reliance on 3rd-party payers and in there being a crackdown on government favortism with providers, but my reason for opposing socialized healthcare is squarely focused on the fact of government incompetance, namely my belief that their imminent failure would bleed over into fields other than healthcare.

WTF is in the water there?

Who knew it was so easy to come across hot Lebanese chicks?

I smell a potential Playboy spread...

Slightly clever, but mostly ignorant

Jon Henke takes note of a curious contradiction on Social Security reform:

The public overwhelmingly disapproves of 1) the way Bush is handling Social Security (56% - 35%), and 2) "Bush's proposals on Social Security" (55% - 37%).

But the public also overwhelmingly supports — by a margin of 56%-41% — "a plan in which people who chose to could invest some of their Social Security contributions in the stock market".

Uh....If the public supports personal accounts, then to which of Bush's "proposals on Social Security" do they object? Because the only thing he's actually proposed is the option to "invest some of their Social Security contributions in the stock market".

It seems like a stripper opposing nudity, doesn't it? Well...not quite.

There are basically two reasons to oppose the SS private accounts plan:

-The rational reason: it's not actually private at all, since the proposal is so strangled by regulations & contradictions that what was supposed to have served in theory as a step towards phase-out of the program instead looks to further enshrine the entire problem with social security itself -- that the gov't will inherently take your money it claims to be saving and spend it. Sadly this reasoning is much more likely to be the domain of people who've already been part of the choir from day one. Instead, most subscribe to...

-The "Popular" reason, which can be summed up in a mix'n'match of the following statements:
*"add-ons would be great only as a supplement to the currently existing system. Absolutely NO benefit cuts!"
*"Bush is pure evil, I don't need to see his plan to figure that out"
*"Eh, why not just raise taxes?"

The popular reasoning is popular because unlike the rational reasoning it doesn't actually require any thought. Add-ons without benefit cuts would make no sense because benefits have grown well beyond the intention of the program, simply dismissing a plan because you don't like who proposed it makes no sense, and the amount of taxes that'd be required to sustain the current system, let alone it with investment accounts bolted on rather than in exchange for benefit cuts, would be so high that they'd be impossible to implement -- whoever in congress proposed enough of an increase would be handed a landslide loss the next election.

There are problems with the SS reform proposal thus far. Problems that should be enough for significant complaint. Yet, we see real complaint over false problems.

This is gonna look odd, but...

For now I have both comments functions up. The blogger standard one is on the left, the haloscan one is on the right. Use whichever one works for you.

...and may it stick. Hard.

Bernie Ebbers: guilty

A federal jury on Tuesday found ex-WorldCom CEO Bernard Ebbers guilty on all counts for his role in an $11 billion accounting scandal, delivering a big victory to federal prosecutors, according to several media reports.

After eight days of deliberation, the jury found the WorldCom co-founder guilty of one count of conspiracy, one count of securities fraud and seven counts of making false filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission. Ebbers, 63, could spend the rest of his life in jail and pay millions of dollars in fines. He's scheduled to be sentenced on June 13, though Ebbers' lawyer indicated right after the verdict that he would appeal.

It needs to be made as clear as possible: there is no such thing as a "right" to commit fraud. Rot, f$%@er...

Places I've gotten laid...

LOL...but seriously folks, it's the latest craze!

bold the states you've been to, underline the states you've lived in and italicize the state you're in now...

Alabama / Alaska / Arizona / Arkansas / California / Colorado / Connecticut / Delaware / Florida / Georgia / Hawaii / Idaho / Illinois / Indiana / Iowa / Kansas / Kentucky / Louisiana / Maine / Maryland / Massachusetts / Michigan / Minnesota / Mississippi / Missouri / Montana / Nebraska / Nevada / New Hampshire / New Jersey / New Mexico / New York / North Carolina / North Dakota / Ohio / Oklahoma / Oregon / Pennsylvania / Rhode Island / South Carolina / South Dakota / Tennessee / Texas / Utah / Vermont / Virginia / Washington / West Virginia / Wisconsin / Wyoming / Washington D.C /

Go HERE to have a form generate the HTML for you if you're too lazy.

Free-market anarcho-syndicalists?

I remember awhile back reading somewhere a comment by a left-anarchist that upon the dissolution of the State & the organizing of people into voluntary "workers councils" or whatever that they'd actually support a free-market economy. Found this person for the longest to be a passing anomaly, bound to not be repeated.

boy was I wrong...

Found this site in random blogsurfing, and it shall be added to my links section. Quite interesting stuff, even if I don't agree with it. Though there are some valid points these type of folks make IMO, particularly on the curious hypocrisy on the part of corporate welfare queens in preaching the lasseiz-faire they do not practice. Sometimes you need some buckwild rock-throwers on your side to distract the opposition while you calmly reload...

Caucus? Or Caa-caa?

Supposedly there's a "libertarian" caucus within the Democratic Party: The Democratic Freedom Caucus. Odd, don't most caucuses have a list of members?

They seem to just claim that some are DFC Dems without even realizing it. Pity these "libertarian democrats" don't seem to really exist, they could use some...

Blog condition report

Blog condition report:

-Now that Blogger has it's own built-in comments feature I'm trying to switch to that & dump the Haloscan. Something is screwed up though, because while the haloscan stuff is gone, the blogger comments section isn't showing at all.

-I signed up for a Blogrolling account recently. That isn't working either, but not of Blogger's fault in any way. Blogrolling just doesn't seem to want to send my activation email no matter how many times I try it.

-Whether that blogroll works out or not, I'll be changing how I do my blog linkage. When the blogroll works or I say f*ck it, whichever comes first, I will wipe out my blog links section, leaving only those blogs that actually link back to me (this won't be a condition for linkage though, I'm not that cruel, it's just easier to start off). After that, I'll be surfing for interesting blogs to add to the list, and also asking for referrals from readers. As to the content of these blogs, it doesn't matter the slant to them. Whether they're Left, Right, or whatever, I'm looking for interesting input & intellectual stimulation, period.

***Update*** Finally figured out the comments thing. Also, as you can see I changed the whole layout.

So it's not just me...

Apparently Murray Rothbard took a liking to Malcolm...

Most people nowadays would probably be dumbfounded at anyone considered "on the Right" finding common ground w/ old-school black "radicals". Then again, it doesn't take much to do that does it?