I don’t know Larken Rose but I have a lot of respect for him. He’s a fine writer and a hardcore thinker, and he’s clearly a man who lays his own life on the line for what he believes. I don’t agree with everything he says here. But he asks some damnfine questions. Do good, upstanding citizens have a moral obligation to allow themselves to be oppressed, harassed, terrorized, assaulted, and wrongfully detained or imprisoned? Most people would say “no.” But would most people actually mean it? There are many examples of “law enforcers” treating innocent people like dirt. Random…
9 CommentsMonth: May 2010
Sometimes when you travel the backroads, you end up at the Bates Motel. Other times, for a pittance in some old tumbledown place, you get blazing-fast wifi, a no-charge stay for your dog, and a picture window through which you can watch the sun set over mountains. Not bad. Then some woman (apparently in charge of rousing the members of a work crew) knocks on your door at 4:32 a.m. Apologizes. And comes back 10 minutes later and does it again. This time with no apology. Just turns and walks off when she sees you’re not the person she wants.…
7 CommentsLast night I stayed at the Bates Motel. Seriously. It was better than its namesake because — obviously — I survived the night. However, I dared not take a shower. Not from fear of knife-wielding weirdos, but because, as Mr. Bates himself disingenuously explained, “We have two other guests and they might have used up all the hot water.” I don’t know what the other guests did (if they existed, they were very quiet), but this was definitely a cold-water experience. It was the only open motel in the itty-bitty village where I stopped, though. I was too beat to…
5 CommentsHey, you wanna see what ObamaCare looks like? Here you go. It’s twice as tall as a can of Bud Light: That’s a copy of the actual law. It turned up at the Wyoming Republican Party convention recently, where Sen. John Barasso made appropriate use of it. Hope he didn’t strain himself. The photo above was taken by my ex-Significant Sweetie, Charles Curley who actually (OMG!) attended the convention. R’s in Wyoming are a little different than R’s in most other places, though. Nobody had a hissy fit when an armed man showed up and hobnobbed with both the state’s…
9 CommentsDoes it seem to you that the world is about to shatter? That there is so much wrongness that “the centre cannot hold”? Ah well, a lot of us have had that feeling since we became aware of the Lies Our Civics Teacher Told Us. It’s dogged me on and off since Nixon removed the last gold backing from the dollar. The fall became inevitable then; we doomsayers just expected it to come quicker. But come it must. And these days, as mainstream economists continue to tout the return of prosperity while we watch catastrophe rolling onward with our own…
4 CommentsA modest prediction: We will never know the precise details of the “technical error” that caused Thursday’s stock market madness. We’ll be told something. It might even be truthful. But it won’t (OMG will I ever forgive myself for encouraging conspiracy theories?) be the whole story. And here’s a bet, though I wouldn’t stake much money on it (and in fact, I’m hearing already that I may be wrong): The theory they’ll end up with was the one that says a single trader mistakenly typed in billion when he meant million — something along those lines. Sort of like the…
7 CommentsWell, since it appears that the U.S. stock market isn’t going to crash — yet — this morning — okay, for the next couple of hours, at least — I’m going to sit down and take up a much more serious, but slower-paced, problem that’s been on my mind. I’m talking about the national, even global plague of “do somethingness.” You know how people are always trying to find solutions to gigantic problems, and (because their only tool is government), making a worse mess of everything? Blame “do somethingness.” If we could only end the “do something” plague, clever, independent…
14 CommentsI’m sorry for not blogging the last few days. Last-Chance Gulch had company from far away and we were busy doing wild-n-crazy things. I intended to blog about the visit and our flamboyant visitor. But as I considered what to write, I realized that our activities — while harmless — were nearly all illegal, immoral, or fattening. Or at least some of the above. Now that I’m recuperated, I may take time and use my better judgment before writing up any of our scandalously fun behavior. Or not. In the meantime, I’ve been collecting. And some of what I’ve gathered…
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