He who angers you conquers you.
Elizabeth Kenny
Tweet of the Day
"A hated government does not long survive." -- Seneca. Democrats are like cockroaches.
— Ronald Guillemette (@raguillem) July 19, 2015
Image of the Day
A Couple of Notes About Sore Points With Me
I've published over 300 tweets. I used to get a weekly summary of my most popular tweets but for some reason those email notifications stopped several weeks backs. I've attracted maybe a handful of followers, most other pro-liberty types. I'm a little disappointed, because I like to think my Tweets are fairly unique and interesting; for example, for a long time, I've been looking to tweak the BeeGees' well-known track from Grease (Frankie Valli performance) with respect to Greece. So over the weekend, I tweeted my variation--and seemingly no impact--not retweeted, favorited, etc. Then I sent one out on Donald Trump who had personally attacked John McCain's military service , where I pointed out Trump was a rich boy draft deferer during the Vietnam era. I just got notified that Trump's twitter account now includes me on their "I am rich" list. Yeah, you guys really got the point...
I prefer a less strident form of expressing my pro-life views. (I have a nephew-in-law who is an in-your-face abortion abolitionist and "de-friended" me on Facebook (yes, I managed to go on) when I told him that he needed to tone it down, mocking my "pro-life" views.) I think my pro-life beliefs have seeped out, although I select "Choose Life" as an attempt to morally persuade others. I'll occasionally republish pro-life images. I will never accept someone's political right to kill a preborn child. It horrifies me that this country has killed millions of preborn babies; we are talking about people who knowingly had sex, knowing pregnancy was a risk. Some of the women having abortions had abortions in the past. Several days back (I think in LifeSiteNews), I ran across a story of gender-selection abortions where the mother had aborted something like 19 female fetuses before she finally got her desired male fetus. Then there was the horrific Kermit Gosnell scandal and stories of jars of souvenir baby feet and hands, freezers packed with dead babies, etc.
I have never taken well Obama's single-handed blockage of the Illinois born alive infant protection act. But the recent expose of Planned Parenthood (I believe the nation's largest provider of abortion services) transacting in aborted baby body parts offends anyone with a decent set of morals. One of the talking points I've seen in response is that the video expose had been "debunked", was edited out of context, etc. By "debunking", they don't mean that PP doesn't transact in body parts, but they transact with the "right types of recipients", they don't make a lot of money from it, and they got the permission of the mother, who had her child killed, as if she had the moral authority to make such a decision. ("Maybe there is a noble end for killing my child...") This is so off-the-charts unconscionable that I don't suffer fools trying to defend it gladly.
Guest Post Comment. Donald Trump wasn't captured
Donald "Four Bankruptcies" Trump is a self-important incompetent buffoon who proves with every asinine ignorant thing he says that it is possible to a man to get rich in America without being intelligent. First, about his personal attack against McCain, a legitimate POW, because McCain has been involved in overdue immigration reform: Donald Trump is a chickenhawk draft dodger, who wouldn't last a day in the military without a glass of Perrier. I have issues with McCain's neo-con policies (not an issue for the editors of this blog), but McCain not only served a full 20 years military career (and basically turned down an opportunity to be named admiral if he had stayed in), but several years in a North Vietnamese prison camp. The North Vietnamese for PR reasons (McCain's father was a high profile admiral) offered McCain an early release, and McCain told him he wouldn't leave until the men held longer were released before or with him. Donald Trump doesn't have the character to do anything as heroic if his life depended on it.
Second, Trump's morally corrupt, shameful, intellectual dishonest anti-immigrant rantings are essentially ensuring Hillary Clinton wins the 2016 election; the nativist bastards weren't satisfied with ensuring Romney's 2012 election loss. Hear me clearly, because I know the blog editors, in contradiciton of their self-professed libertarian blog name, have championed nativist views, which is an explicit rejection of the natural right to migrate. This is not a winning issue. I know Latinos fairly well; my high school diploma and 4 college degrees were all earned in Texas; I have lived in two Texas border cities. I have studied and worked with, befriended, dated, and taught Latinos. This scapegoating and gross distortions of Latinos I know for a fact is an ethnic smear. The fact of immigration tied to economic growth cannot be disputed; you have no right to tell an employer who he can hire or to keep a family apart. Trump is using all of you gullible bastards to stoke his ego. NOBODY, including me, will tolerate this SOB or his nativist policy on next year's ticket; there will be a schism if that ever happened. If necessary, I would vote for Jeb Bush or Marco Rubio to knock this asshole out of the race.
(a separate comment)
A comment specifically to the idiotic editor who penned the offensive post, which is one of the worst pieces I've seen on this blog; he implies that unlike Donald Trump, who took advantage of every double standard available to avoid conscription, McCain was "dumb enough" to get caught by the draft and then to get caught by the North Vietnamese. You know, it's one thing to argue against America's involvement in the Vietnam War and/or condemn conscription as a mortal sin against liberty, but making Chickenhawk Donald "Draft Dodger" Trump to be "smarter" because like Bill Clinton, he managed to avoid conflict is laughably absurd and one of the dumbest things I've ever seen published.
Listen, jerk. McCain was following in the footsteps of his father and grandfather who had served honorably during earlier American wars. He was not drafted; he went to Annapolis. He got shot down flying a mission in North Vietnam. Given the neo-con bias of this blog, the last thing you should be doing is mocking a genuine war hero (ask the POW's who served with him) just because he doesn't share your dysfunctional nativist views.
Facebook Corner
(Jeffrey Tucker). Last week I wrote an article that, I’m pretty sure, received the highest circulation I’ve ever had on a single piece of writing. It was an an interesting experience.
I do think there's a personality cult thing going on with the Donald Trump movement. I think there is arguably a bit Hamiltonian, authoritarian streak both in today's left-wing fascists and some right-wing fascists. We already know that Bush was a domestic interventionist, given the expansion of domestic spending, especially in federal government meddling in education, a new, unpaid-for Medicare benefit, and the interventions during the 2008 economic tsunami. Not to mention federal regulations grew on his watch. I've just heard Trump's lost-touch-with-reality bluster that he would order Ford to shutter its Chinese plants and bring them back to the states. He has no such dictatorial powers, of course, as President. But he is also an avowed trade warrior. It's hard to believe anyone takes a buffoon like Trump seriously.
I do think that many conservatives who are mostly economically liberal do seem to be receptive to security/rule-of-law appeals to authority. Hence, we see advocacy of neo-con policies, tough law and order, immigration law enforcement, higher defense budgets, etc. I do think that most fusionists like myself dislike this sort of fear-mongering authoritarian pitches.
I disagree with the line that the fascist Dems and the GOP are the same. I do think the GOP is wary about confronting all the entrenched interests with government spending and doing away with bread and circuses. There's always resistance to change, but it's very easy and predictable to know demagogues will come after any real reforms from the GOP: look what happened in the Greek elections.
(Jeffrey Tucker). "If I want Ford to move that [Chinese] plant into the United States, they'll do it. Believe me." ~ Donald Trump
I think Trump has been visiting Colorado too often. Donald "Four Bankruptcies" Trump has no dictatorial authority as President. Ford has property rights protected by the US Constitution. Trump is an anti-liberty economic illiterate who without any filter spouts any bullshit preposterous idea his mind creates without regard to the truth; as in real life, the Donald's mouth writes a check he can't cash. Unfortunately, his minions believe bluster as credible as a used car salesman's hype. If the Trumpster understood economics, he would understand the federal government's power to tax, spend and regulate impairs economic growth and job creation.
(IPI). The saga of whether state employees are entitled to full pay in the absence of a budget continued on July 17 after Appellate courts weighed in on orders by two different Illinois judges who came to opposite conclusions.
It’s almost inevitable that the state will violate either the Fair Labor Standards Act or the Illinois Constitution.
If they are working they should get full pay..unlike the politicians who get paid but don't do the jobs they were elected to do.
Not if "full pay" means above what they would make for the same work in the private sector. No more corrupt crony unionist bargains at the expense of the taxpayer!
(FEE). Tenure is a barrier to entry in the academic job market that makes it difficult to replace poorly performing faculty with better alternatives.
As a former junior (untenured) professor, I completely agree. Tenure is often highly political and/or corrupt. In my case, I was in my first semester at a college in the University of Wisconsin system. A doctoral student friend had been reluctant to let me view his proposal. Finally, he froze the proposal, and I checked out a copy. The College of Business was not departmentalized but my academic discipline had an informal senior professor lead, and he was this student's dissertation chair. This faculty member had a consultancy with the local regional Bell company. In short, the student's proposal involved doing a field test at the local company (extremely unlikely) or student subjects. However, the theory behind his few hypotheses was poorly fleshed out and there was little discussion about methodology or design, statistical power or proposed analyses. I told him that the proposal was premature and he needed to withdraw the proposal. He refused, saying that he was entering the academic job market, and his candidacy required ABD status to be credible.
Several days later, there was a dog and pony show at that local Bell company. Another doctoral student offered a ride to the facility, but we were split across tours of the facility, and when my tour ended, my ride had already left--but to my "great fortune" the senior faculty member was there and offered me a ride home. A few blocks near my apartment, the colleague said that his student had briefed him on my private critique of the proposal. He briefly paid lip service for the need of the student to address my issues but the proposal would go on as scheduled. He had just recruited a well-known organizational behavior professor--who would be attending the defense as a white knight whose instructions were to take me out if I so much as opened my mouth during the defense. He then "reminded" me that I have no vote in my own tenure process.
I had never expected such a material violation of professional ethics could happen in academia. To be honest, I don't think after that happened, I really expected or wanted tenure at said institution. Even though I won doctoral faculty status in my first year (the school later liberalized its criteria--there's another corruption story behind that), I was blacklisted from student dissertation committees by senior faculty. I moved on after the end of my multi-year contract.
I suppose that tenured faculty might argue that my opposition to tenure is merely one of envy. Not really; I had two follow-up academic appointments, neither multi-year contract, but I saw similar breaches of ethics at both schools. In my subsequent career as a professional and a consultant, I've often been in limited-term contracts, meaning I always have had to compete for the next contract, directly or through service companies and I've lost jobs because of no follow-up projects/contracts.
(Rand Paul 2016). Rand Paul is fighting hard to defund Planned Parenthood.
This video was debunked and Rand Paul is a CLOWN
Maybe the OP troll's wife has the "right" to transact away his body parts after she has him killed...
I have no problem with not using others tax funds to support PP. However, I also have no problem with ending unwanted pregnancies and using the tissues for science. I believe it's kinder for the fetus, not damaging to its spiritual essence, and better for all in the long run.
If you think that other people can strip-mine the body parts of murdered preborn children, perhaps the State has the right to strip mine your body after it executes you.
This video was debunked, it was heavily edited and revised to make a smear campaign, the organization that made it is an extremist pro life group. Personally, I call bullshit.
They have no "right" whatsoever to transact in body parts of murdered preborn children, who have unalienable rights, including the property of their own bodies, you unethical bastard.
Rand Paul: Making himself unelectable by bringing up NeoCon topics not relevant to Libertarians OR the 2016 presidency campaign.
The idiot OP troll thinks "neo-con" topics include subsidizing an organization which is directly involved in the murder of millions of preborn children and transacting in their body parts. Neo-con policies, retard, involve international meddling.
I like Rand. This page pisses me off sometimes because it an unofficial page that basically puts words into Rands mouth and half the time are not doing him a justice. He does want to defund PP (which yah it should be anyway) but this edited video hatchet job is not the reason why he thinks it should be defunded. Posting about a video that's already known to be tampered with to take things out of context makes Rand look bad and less credible to those who are too lazy to see that this is not Rand Paul's page himself or his ideas per se.
Listen, fascist retard, the film, in any form, did not put words in the mouth of the unethical PP representative. You're engaging in the typical bullshit excuse of bastards caught in the act of something monstrous: "I've been quoted 'out of context'." You can put lipstick on a pig, but it's still a pig.
Political Cartoon
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| Courtesy of Michael Ramirez via Investors.com |
Kenny Rogers, "Love or Something Like It"
