Kitty Antonik Wakfer whacks all of us who say we support WikiLeaks and Bradley Manning, but who haven’t cancelled our Amazon and PayPal accounts or cut up our MasterCards and Visas. She does one very good thing, which is to provide a list of possible payment alternatives — even if many of them haven’t reached the point of sustainability (and may never) and others aren’t really applicable. But the whole piece also does one very bad thing. It implies that because she has chosen the course of boycotting businesses on behalf of WikiLeaks, others who haven’t are wrongheaded at best,…
Category: Mind and Spirit
Spirituality, moods, feelings, and thinking free to live free.
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…
Hm. All that media noise you’ve been hearing about the star Betelgeuse going supernova — possibly right on schedule for the infamous year of 2012? Not so much. Supernova, yes. Some time in the next million years or so. Schedule, no. Nor will a supernova produce anything like “the twin suns of Tatooine.” But then, you knew that, didn’t you? Scary, though, how many people (including the well-paid media mavens at the Huffington Post) uncritically buy that brand of nonsense.
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…
Why do people take credit for their successes but blame their failures on everyone and everything else? Likewise, why do we believe our own flaws and failings deserve understanding, while other people’s screwups are all obviously the result of evil, irresponsibility, or habitual bad choices and they deserve exactly what they get? Why do people continue to believe that Republicans are the party of small government? It’s not like there’s no evidence to the contrary. Why, when a bank has four drive-up windows, will everybody line up at the one closest to the building? Why do people put “for sale”…
Via Rational Review News, here’s part IV of Devi Barker’s provocative series on authoritarian sociopathy. All four installments have been good, but this is both the best and the scariest. If the studies Barker cites tell the truth, then the truth is that most people who receive even a hint that they might be powerful a) demand higher standards for other people’s behavior and b) think they’re entitled to be given a pass on their own immoral or illegal acts. It apparently takes very little to put the average Jill or Joe into that mindset. (Likewise, it doesn’t take much…
Jason Richwine of the American Enterprise Institute asks all the wrong questions: Full-body scanners, invasive pat-downs, harsh carry-on restrictions—has the Transportation Security Administration gone too far? Critics and defenders of the TSA tend to talk past each other, so I propose a new approach to answering the question. Let us imagine there were a major airline that could opt out of all TSA regulations. Call it “Liberty Air.” Liberty Air openly advertises that it takes zero safety precautions when it comes to screening passengers and baggage. Would you fly on this airline? … To bolster the argument, imagine that Liberty…
This is the conclusion of my interview with Michael W. Dean and Neema Vedadi, creators of the film Guns and Weed: The Road to Freedom. Part I. Part II. —– We pick up in the midst of Michael’s answer to yesterday’s question about the challenge of finding actors and others to appear onscreen in Guns and Weed. MICHAEL DEAN: We did a lot of things ourselves, to solve problems. There aren’t a lot of good actors in Casper, so Neema and I played multiple parts. I’d thought of asking Boston [T. Party] to play the bad cop, Sergeant Dan Banning.…
This is the second of a three-part interview with Michael W. Dean and Neema Vedadi, the creators of the new film “Guns and Weed: The Road to Freedom.” Part I is here. CLAIRE WOLFE: How did you two work together on this project? MICHAEL DEAN: It was a great working relationship for many reasons, but mainly because our skill sets overlapped a lot, and also, each guy had the needed skills the other guy didn’t have. Even philosophically: Neema is a lot more well-read than I with libertarian theory, but I taught him the basic truth that if you don’t…
Documentary filmaker Michael W. Dean and young newscaster/rapper/actor Neema Vedadi have a new film out called “Guns and Weed: The Road to Freedom.” You can view the trailer here. And download the entire film from Freedom Feens (you’ll need a bit torrent client). The film is scheduled to be officially released by a distributor in spring 2011. But you can download with the blessing of the movie’s creative commons license. The online version is NSFW due to language. The spring release will be slightly shorter and cuss-free. In either version, you’ll see some familiar faces, or at least some freedomistas…