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Living Freedom Posts

How things are in the real world

Some Monday morning cheer for ya — a.k.a. how things work in the real world of big money, big influence and big government: How Fannie and Freddie — among the chief engineers of the mortgage wreckage have become even more “important” than ever. How the Big O’s proposed regulations will make the biggest Wall Street firms more untouchable than ever. (Another take here.) —– On the smaller domestic scale — here at Last-Chance Gulch where there is little money, no influence, and only those bits of big government that come wandering randomly in now and then — house walls went…

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Trolling for children

Okay, now this is odd. Couple of us were working in the meadow this afternoon when my youngest, loudest, and most car-chasing dog informed us of somebody coming down the road. Sure enough, along came a car, which went just past our driveway and stopped in a “where the heck am I?” sort of way. Now, we’re in the middle of nowhere, a good 12 miles from town, six of it on dirt and through washes. And once you’ve gone past our driveway, there is simply nowhere to go. Anyhow, there’s nowhere a stranger has any business going, unless he…

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Friday miscellany

You’ve probably already spotted the “lite” blogging this week. Unfortunately, expect the same for the next week-plus. We’re about to begin a serious building project here at Last-Chance Gulch and for roughly 10 days, it’ll be nothing but work and visitors around here. (Most of the visitors will be helping in some way with construction, bless their hearts; but we’ll all be busy.) And wouldn’t you know it, a surprise deadline came up at the same time. So much for my peaceful hermitude. If I can blog along, the way, I surely will. But don’t hold me up to really…

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That fraud in the metals markets

If you watch the precious metals markets (and don’t we all, if we’re into preparedness, even if we can’t afford to do much with our observations), you’ve probably been hearing allegations of monstrous frauds festering beneath the surface. But as with so many doings in financial markets, the specifics of metals manipulations are arcane and … well, they hurt the brain. But I finally found a human-readable explanation. (And here’s another pretty good one from the inimitable Mogambo Guru.) Terrible news, if true, for people who have invested in gold funds or who are under the illusion that they own…

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Writer in the treetops/419 revisited

Two quick things: 1. In England a broke & jobless writer takes to the trees in an experiment in low-cost, low-impact self sufficiency. Very creative. 2. I think Joel “did” 419 better than I: “It’s Interesting Times Day!” And a third: 3. Radley Balko also does today proud.

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419 + 420 = ?

Ragnar insisted in a blog comment last week that I’d better darned well come up with a great post on 4/19. Nothing like a little pressure there, eh? Well, the brain’s not working too well and neither is the cursed up-and-down Internet connection here in the high desert boondocks. And WordPress has also gone cranky on me and twice erased portions of this post. So sorry, Ragnar, there will be no Great Thoughts coming from this direction today. Perhaps you noble readers will leap in and supply some GTs of your own in the comments section. I’ve just got this…

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Weekend miscellany

First thing … don’t forget: The eBay auctions for souvenir copies of Don’t Shoot the Bastards (Yet) and 101 Things to Do ‘Til the Revolution end Monday morning. Thank you for all the bidding so far, and cheers to the charming young bidder who’s been leading the pack most of the week. Ah, but those last hours can be interesting … Daryl Gates. He was even worse than I realized. Especially read the bit from David Cay Johnston. Ugh. “Dead Dogs.” This is quite long and may be too painful for dog lovers to read. But its account of lethal…

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Daryl Gates

Ding-dong, the Wicked Witch is dead. Daryl Gates, the man who created the modern SWAT team, invented the Big Brotherish D.A.R.E. program, and who said that casual drug users should be shot as “traitors” in the war on drugs, has died at 83. Too bad it wasn’t decades sooner, before he had a chance to do so much damage, and too bad he left so many like-minded thugs to carry out his sick vision of law enforcement. The SWAT team was a good concept for handling extreme emergencies. But being born in the mind of a violent, lying, racist, piggish…

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Do I feel another book coming on?

After several years in which I believed I wasn’t likely to write another freedom book this side of the grave … I sorta kinda feel a book coming on. Not promising anything, mind you. Right now the feeling is like the one you get when a sneeze is coming on — but may or may not actually emerge. If I do this thing, though, I already have a working subtitle picked out: “Everything you need to know.” Yeah, I know. No freedom book can deliver that. But trust me, I’ll use that phrase to ironic effect. I’ve already made some…

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