Quote of the Day
There's nothing I like less thanbad arguments for a view that I hold dear.
Daniel Dennett
Pro-Liberty Thought of the Day
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| Via Libertarian Republic |
Image of the Day
Just a preliminary note: I ad-libbed to a recent embedded cartoon on the IRS email kerfuffle, saying that I was waiting for someone to mention the NSA. Looks like great minds think alike:
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| Via Libertarian Republic |
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| Via Carpe Diem |
In Support of Traditional Marriage and Family
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| Via Lifesitenews |
New Nominee for Bad Judge of the Year: Michigan Judge Margaret Noe
Go Grey!
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| Via Economic Freedom |
The leftist media are having a field day over Pat Robertson's recently bashing Bush over Iraq, but they of course have a convenient, short attention span. This is from before Bush's reelection in Washpo:
Asked about Bush's mistakes, the evangelist recalled: "I met with him down in Nashville before the Gulf war started. And he was the most self-assured man I ever met in my life." Borrowing a line from Mark Twain, Robertson said Bush looked "like a contented Christian with four aces."Remember Obama's infamous 2002 speech against the prospective Iraq war? It begins:
"He was just sitting there, like, I'm on top of the world, and I warned him about this war. I had deep misgivings about this war, deep misgivings. And I was trying to say, 'Mr. President, you better prepare the American people for casualties,' " Robertson said.
"Oh, no, we're not going to have any casualties," Robertson quoted Bush as saying. " 'Well,' I said, 'it's the way it's going to be. . . . The Lord told me it was going to be, A, a disaster and, B, messy.' "
I stand before you as someone who is not opposed to war in all circumstances. The Civil War was one of the bloodiest in history, and yet it was only through the crucible of the sword, the sacrifice of multitudes, that we could begin to perfect this union, and drive the scourge of slavery from our soil.I'll for the moment forget the fact NPR doesn't seem to recognize the difference between a state senator and US Senator. This speech demonstrates Obama's mediocre judgment, as if we lived in a black-and-white world of good wars and bad wars. Every other nation involved in the slave trade managed to rid itself of the abomination without a war over secession and a post-war regional occupation that triggered a resentful backlash century of racially oppressive public policies. Obama has obviously not read DiLorenzo's account of the war; he ignores the fact that the Union side included slave states (Missouri, Kentucky, Delaware, and Maryland), that in Lincoln's inaugural address, he said "I have no purpose, directly or indirectly, to interfere with the institution of slavery in the States where it exists. I believe I have no lawful right to do so, and I have no inclination to do so" and in the Emancipation Proclamation, well into the war, he didn't liberate the slaves in the Union while presumptuously and hypocritically freeing the slaves not under his control. At least 618,000 men died during the war, about 1.1 million casualties overall (3.5 million slaves in the South, over two-thirds of families held no slaves.) Yes, I realize Obama paid lip service to the casualties, but this is his example of a good/just war. And let's not talk about how anxious FDR was to get the US into WWII; for example, his embargo of oil to Japan was an economic act of war--at the time the US supplied over 75% of Japan's oil. Not that throwing American oil field workers under the bus during a Depression or the trade balance would be unaffected.
In fact, George HW Bush understood that overthrowing Saddam Hussein at the end of the first Gulf War would have exacerbated sectarian tensions--and "you break it, you own it". Cheney essentially said the same thing in 1994 as I discussed in a prior post. I don't have an argument with Obama's case against intervening in Iraq, but Obama is more interested in discussing context vs. principles.
So he wins the White House in 2008 with a supermajority and he could have expedited exits from Iraq and Afghanistan. He sticks to Bush's timetable (and actually tried and failed to negotiate an extension), but the Nobel Peace laureate doubles down on the "good war" of Afghanistan, which the Soviets abandoned years earlier.
Nevertheless, he takes full credit for ending our Iraq occupation and now the Shiite majority government, which has refused to recognize the rights of the minority Sunnis and Kurds, finds itself facing a relevant secession. Obama now is responding with military advisers and implied prospective air strikes, finding itself in an odd alliance with Iran, backing the Iraq majority government, which it has been isolating during his Presidency while facing the implications of supporting the Syrian resistance, parts of which are now involved in the ISIS advance in Iraq. Obama is seeing the chickens coming home to roost on a convoluted interventionist foreign policy: some "mission accomplished", Obama. Once again, the lawless, unprincipled POTUS is refusing to go to Congress for approval, arguing that 2002 vote he used to bash Hillary et al. in 2008 is a blank check, even after he took credit for ending the occupation. Unconscionable and incompetent...
Facebook Corner
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| via Libertarian Republic |
(Mercatus Center at George Mason). Today, as much as one-third of the nation’s highways may be in poor or mediocre condition. In a new study for Mercatus, Clifford Winston of The Brookings Institution offers private-sector solutions to our transportation infrastructure problems.
It's time to privatize EVERYTHING. Unlike the "progressive" troll in this thread, we need to realize that government is too bureaucratic, incompetent, and inadequately vested/motivated to resolve the problem they themselves created; it's time to retire the Senator Potholes and eliminate politicization of our nation's infrastructure. Some good ideas in this working paper; if the private sector was involved and cronyism of special interests (like unions and public transit) enabled by public monopoly was eliminated., trucking companies would have to pay commensurate fees, transit operations would have to pay their own way (e.g., private buslines vs. overpriced rails), more competitive road construction would not be artificially highly priced to accommodate crony unionism, and competition of private roads, more timely maintenance by motivated private vendors, utilization of advanced technology to road materials (e.g., heated runways) and traffic conditions/control, variable tolling and deregulated traffic flows would help alleviate congestion. In short, we need spontaneous order, not megalomaniac public policy.
(a followup exchange on yesterday's IPI about one Chicago area government looking to privatize some operations as a result of pressure on valuating unfunded liabilities; my original comment praised privatization as long overdue.)
Like the privatization of schools, charter schools,
unions will fight to keep their JUICY contracts and pensions.
those "Juicy" contracts that Unions have with employers is merely protection for the employees. Not all Unions are about high wages. Abolish the Unions and watch the employers go back to NO Health coverage - too expensive .... NO Pensions - too expensive ..... firing employees because they're too old, too sick, discriminate...I could go on.....the only truly "JUICY" contracts are what politicians have.....NO vesting time for full Pensions, Lifetime Health coverage, don't pay into SS because they have their own "SS" system.....turn your disgust where it belongs.....the political system is what is killing us.....
Those contracts brought US auto to bankruptcy; the business models, including those in the public sector, are simply not sustainable in the long run. These politicians made commitments they were not in fact funding properly--which means they were being made on the backs of future taxpayers--why the hell should they care? They won't be in power when the bills come due.
[First discussant] is right. The union leadership had to know their cronies' promises weren't feasible and weren't being funded. They probably felt they had a gun to future taxpayers' heads with certain pro-union guarantees written in state constitutions. The idea that, for example, some retired cops deserve more pension at the expense of laying off younger active cops actually working and making less money isn't going to be acceptable to future taxpayers, period.
As for political whores, let's face it: most of them are in it for fame and power, not to line their pockets. The average federal legislator is a millionaire on paper. They raise more money to get reelected than they are paid while in office. Perot, Bloomberg, the Kennedy's, the Rockefeller's, Romney, etc.--all these people are set for life; they don't need to work for a living. The idea that cutting down on what amounts to pocket change may be very popular, but it's a drop in the bucket of what these fools are putting on the backs of future generations. A lot of these fools, especially Democrats, will tell the unions whatever it takes to get them through their next reelection, but do you really think they are worried about what happens when they get off the rollercoaster?
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| Via Libertarian Catholic |
(This comes from a libertarian.org thread where I saw one of my pet peeves, that many libertarians see conservatives and liberals being essentially the same in terms of government intervention.)
Not just govt spending but in intervention in people's lives. Rep intervene in certain areas while dems in others. Like two sides of the same coin they compliment each other.
No, modern-day social conservatives do not support government intervention beyond basic protections of unalienable rights. It is true that in the past some religious groups and "progressives" wanted to restrict alcohol and drug transactions and other laws (say, Sunday commerce, sodomy laws, etc.), but today's social conservatives oppose socially experimental policies advocated by special interests and ideological activist jurists, restrictions on religious speech, morally hazardous public policies and interventions against religious institutions (e.g., ObamaCare mandated birth control).
As a libertarian Catholic, I oppose the bumper sticker, shallow analysis in this thread. It was not the conservative movement that created the entitlement Ponzi schemes or the social welfare net, and whereas it is true that more recent (Goldwater ff) conservatives have had a more interventionist policy, it is NOT a traditional conservative view (consider, for example Robert Taft), and let's not forget that liberals/"progressives" intervened in WWI and WWII, Korea, and Vietnam. Clinton did intervene in East Europe, and Obama has radically escated drone interventions, meddled in Libya and was ready to do the same in Syria.
(an exchange on a Bastiat Institute thread about a porn actress college student whom knows more about economics than anyone in the Obama Administration)
So healthcare costs weren't high before Obamacare?
Healthcare costs have been exacerbated by other government policies: state barriers to competition, medical occupation cartels, tax-subsidized ordinary vs. major medical expenses, government price-fixing and "free" mandated benefits, government paperwork, regulations and delayed disbursements, redistributive vs. risk-based cost sharing, etc., and I'm just getting started. We already know that subsidies artificially lower the prices of products and services, stoking demand for an already inflation-bound system. The only viable alternative to this unsustainable system is privatization and true interstate reforms allowing cross-state economies of scale in marketing major medical policies. If government has any role, it should be for needs-based premium cost support and to reinsure, if necessary high risk pools and catastrophic coverage.
(Drudge Report). Oleg Mikheyev, a lawmaker with pro-Kremlin A Just Russia party, says vertiginous heels as well as trainers, ballet flats and men's loafers are bad for people's health and it's time to do something about it.Mikheyev has sent a proposal to the Customs Union which also includes ex-Soviet Belarus and Kazakhstan, suggesting that the Moscow-led group introduce official standards stipulating the height of heels.
In support of the liberty of any or no footwear
(Reason). Will Oakland FINALLY legalize pinball?
Political Cartoon
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| Courtesy of Steve Breen and Townhall |
Josh Groban, "You Raise Me Up". I've technically engaged in some category license over the past few months; for example, I included some hits I stored on cassettes vs. my iPod Shuffle. I think I started the series right before the holidays last year and hopefully haven't repeated selections along the way... I may reprise the series in the future, but Sunday starts my solo artist series and other prospective series in country music, classical music, duets, R&B, musicals, and/or other themes.
