Speaking of writers who can be wonderful to read even when you don’t agree with their every utterance Matt Taibi has a new piece in Rolling Stone, “Why Isn’t Wall Street in Jail?” While I think a better question is “Why is the federal government in bed with Wall Street and why are they performing abnormal acts on millions of unconsenting adults?” it’s still a good read. Taibi is right up there with Glenn Greenwald, Robert Scheer, Sam Smith, and Nat Hentoff among writers I admire for their integrity, reasoning power, humanity, or writing skill, even though conventional wisdom says…
Category: Government
Government evils — but I repeat myself
Got any relatives in the U.S. Air Force? Any at all? Not necessarily a son or a brother or a daughter or anybody that close. But how about your third cousin twice removed? Your uncle by marriage? The brother-in-law of your sister’s estranged husband? And have you read any of the information disclosed in the WikiLeaked cables? (Confess it; you know you have.) Then congratulations! YOU may be our Federal Felon of the Day!
Why you should always pay your website designer. George W. Bush cancels speaking engagement in Switzerland. If he’d gone he might have been arrested for war crimes. Speaking of which, I was poking around Wikipedia the other day and learned that the top U.S. representative at the Bretton Woods Conference (and with John Maynard Keynes one of the two most influential figures in the monetary agreement forged there) was a Soviet agent. Sheesh. I really do try not to fall into conspiracy theories. But that’s just strange. A lot of what this man did is just strange. Very smart, Mubarak.…
Charles Hugh Smith created this chart way back when to show the vast complex dedicated to preserving the status quo and offers this related comment now: There is a peculiar divide between the conventional and unconventional perception of the resilience/vulnerability of the Status Quo. The conventional view sees the Status Quo as stable and powerful enough to weather any threat or storm short of a full-scale thermonuclear war (i.e. an exchange of 1,000+ nuclear warheads) or climate catastrophe (meltdown of the Antarctic ice cap, etc.). The unconventional view is that the Status Quo is increasingly vulnerable to a “Black Swan”…
Or maybe I should ask — Do you see yourself as living in your “country of record,” wherever and whatever it may be? Of course, whether we’re anarchists, minarchists, unquestioning patriots, or brain-dead vegetables (but I repeat myself), we do reside within some country of record. Obviously a fact, even when we philosophically posture against bondage or allegiance to any governmental gang. But I’m asking about perceptions. The other day I read an article on LewRockwell.com about “Renewing the Patriot Act while America Sleeps.” I was struck by how little I cared, even though it was a fine, informative article.…
The USA: Ninth freest nation on earth and proud to rank third among the “mostly free,” economically speaking. (Motto: “We take second place to none! But we take third place behind Ireland and Denmark.”) Deroy Murdock has a pretty good take on the news. (Although some of us might differ with what exactly “free trade” means. NAFTA? Gimme a break!) Via Joel. First thorough recap of “Project Gunwalker” I’ve seen. What, the ATF dirty? Causing the very problems it claims to want to solve? Nevah! You know all those new 1099 requirements in Obamacare? The ones everybody’s tearing their hair…
You really can’t apologize for saying something like this. Well, I guess you can apologize for anything if you’re a politician. But we who were targets of your disdain will always know you meant exactly what you said in the first place, bubba. And you know that “civility” the Dems are all in favor of? Well, not so much for themselves, you know …. Arizona gets it right. Found this while pondering quirks of human nature for one of yesterday’s posts. Turns out that old expression “You’re only as old as you feel” might have some validity. Or maybe better…
Big surprise. Kids apparently don’t learn much in their first two years of college. “Sit. Stay. Parse. Good Girl!” More on that incredibly learned border collie. (NY Times free subscription link.) Don’t you think the WSJ should have called BS on this? What a load of you know what. Oh yeah. That’s how to solve Europe’s problems: counterfeit. (And no need to point out that the Euro is already counterfeit. Don’t we all know …) More on the topic of the week. The last paragraph is freaking brilliant. Great Gary Marbut is at it again. The idea isn’t new: to…
So. Did you break any good laws yesterday? Any bad ones? No need to confess, of course, but it would be entertaining and instructive to see some of your more creative victimless lawbreaking in the comments section. You don’t even need to have done it yesterday. (After all, no good Freedom Outlaw is going to break a law, let alone perform the act on schedule, just because some blogger thinks it’s a good idea.) What? You say you didn’t break any laws yesterday? Not one? Were you in a coma all day or what? Short of that, you must simply…
Today is that silliest of all holidays, Martin Luther King Day. Okay, the man had his good points. But does anybody on the planet really believe he’s the one American who merits a holiday in his honor (ever since Washington and Lincoln got combined into the drearily homogenized “Presidents Day”)? Ridiculous! What makes him so special he should be elevated above Jefferson, Franklin, Thoreau, Washington (Booker T.), Lysander Spooner, Victoria Woodhull, George Washington Carver, Clara Barton, Frank Lloyd Wright, Aaron Copland, Alexander Graham Bell, Anne Hutchinson, Mark Twain, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Frederick Douglass, Nellie Bly, Malcolm X, Andrew Carnegie, Maria…