Do not seek to follow in the footsteps of the men of old; Seek what they sought.
Basho
Tweet of the Day
Brandolini’s Law: “The amount of energy necessary to refute bullshit is an order of magnitude bigger than to produce it."
— Alex Nowrasteh (@AlexNowrasteh) September 5, 2015
Hillary Clinton: "It depends on what the meaning of 'classified' is." #sarcasm http://t.co/9wBjVOA5OW
— Ronald Guillemette (@raguillem) September 6, 2015
Image of the Day |
| via South Carolina Libertarian Party |
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| via Independent Institue |
Donald "Flip-Flop" Trump
Andrew McCarthy, "Hillary to Staffer Wary of Sending Classified Info: ‘Just Email It’: Thumbs UP!
This is just another nauseating episode in Clinton's unconscionable email scandal. I just want to underscore a couple of points. McCarthy makes a key distinction between classified documents and classified information. (This is what I'm referencing to in my above tweet.) Although I can't comment on specifics, I can tell you classified documents and/or communications are transmitted on dedicated networks and workstations, typically not your own work PC. You would not expect to have access to your personal smartphone, access to recordable media (say, a flash drive or other media), etc. So when Clinton talks about something like she did not store classified communications (from the dedicated network) on her server, this may very well be the case (I don't know the specifics of how Clinton got classified documents; for example, maybe they were hand-delivered in a tightly secured room).
But when Clinton discussed not receiving classified documents in her personal email servers, she's really intentionally misleading the American people. She's hoping that an unaware public would infer that all classified data are in specially marked documents--but she knows that that isn't true. Some data are automatically classified by the nature their content--whether or not the sender properly marked the document as required. There are rules for classification, and in fact it was Clinton's responsibility to ensure these rules were complied with in the State Department. What the most recent revelations deal with is that some of the emails Hillary Clinton got contained classified information--which may not not have been indicated as such; keep in mind she has been arguing classified information was never stored on her (likely insecure) home server.
The second point, in the title of the post, is equally disturbing: she seems to be encouraging her subordinate to send her something in an email that the subordinate is balking about sending because of classification rules. She felt that this certain speech, which was publicly available, shouldn't be classified and didn't want to wait for the information to be declassified. (Say what? You mean there's red tape in government? Say it ain't so, Joe.) Clinton may have been right to complain about red tape, but she had no authority whatsoever to encourage a subordinate to waive classification rules.
Taxpayer Funded Snake Oil
Facebook Corner
(Liberty.me). "Are we seeing the rise of a fascist movement in the U.S., and has Trump unleashed them? Is this our Road to Serfdom? Judging from Trump’s rise, and what I’ve experienced in the last week, there is no basis for pretending otherwise." - Jeffrey A. Tucker
I think Jeffrey Tucker is on to something. The Trump movement (I call them cultists) and his counterintuitive rise in the polls which seems to be invigorated by his petty behavior are worrisome. I remember McCain had to struggle with conservatives over his votes on the Bush tax cuts, and Romney had to take on soundbites from his Senate campaign against Ted Kennedy and being the godfather of ObamaCare, i.e., RomneyCare. These supporters are totally unfazed by his radical position shifts. And I mean, for example, after the 2012 election, Trump blamed Romney's loss on his "maniacal, mean-spirited" immigration policy of self-deportation (i.e., putting the squeeze on employers not to hire immigrants); less than 3 years later, he himself has called for the up to $600B cost of forcible eviction of over 11M aliens, many from the only home they've ever known. Goldberg has an interesting current column where he showed that support for single-payer health care MORE THAN DOUBLED among so-called conservatives (to over 40%), after they heard Trump praise it. During the recent GOP debate, when questioned over his unsupported claim that Mexico was dumping their prisons across the border, he bluffed something ridiculous like his unnamed buddies in the Border Patrol were the source (no doubt from all the prison release documents discarded on this side of the border....)
I don't have to remind you that there are clear parallels to the disastrous Hoover presidency, with his tariffs. populist upper-income tax hikes, the jawboning of businesses (re: his threat to slap tariffs on Mexican-built Ford vehicles), Mexican repatriation, etc. We've been there, done that, and this is coming after 8 years of an FDR wannabe.
The cranks are unhappy because a GOP bare majority and leaders Boehner and McConnell won't dictate terms to a veto-bearing President. They want somebody, anyone to vent their frustrations, which Trump does. But anyone who thinks that a celebrity who revisited his infamous feud with Rosie O'Donnell during the debate can dictate terms to Putin, China, Mexico--or his opposition in Congress has been spending too much time in Colorado. Never mind this is a guy who drove his companies into 4 bankruptcies and has no public sector administrative experience; he would become the Presidential Apprentice.
Recall the only Presidential candidate with a fresh, liberty-oriented agenda, Rand Paul has lost almost two-thirds of his support over the summer to, of all people, Donald Trump. That's truly a frightening concept; Rand Paul is still getting hits from his Dad's supporters as he tries to broaden his appeal with certain nuanced positions. During the FNC debate, he got less speaking time than any of the other candidates, and that includes his interruptions of Trump and Christie.
The challenge we as libertarians face is dealing with a restless majority of voters, most of who are economically illiterate. After 15 years of abysmal economic growth, we see decades-low labor force participation rates, a sluggish global economy exacerbated by a Chinese economic slump. I think economic uncertainty is manifesting itself in the populist economic nationalism espoused by left-fascist Sanders and right-fascist Trump. Nearly 100 years after Mises demonstrated the folly of central planning an economy, people can't grasp the notions that declaring unilateral free trade, restoring open immigration, freeing the private sector from a near $2T yoke of regulation and devolving and downsizing government are in our best long-term interests. Most voters worry that free markets mean chaos, which exacerbates economic uncertainty--and they are drawn to some opportunistic buffoon like Trump, who projects the confidence that he has the answers.
[Responding to an anti-immigrant troll who, among other things, objected to my phrase "from the only home they've ever known", arguing that the adult immigrants came from homes in other lands. I have zero tolerance for this type of nonsense; my context was clear.]
I was referring to children, obviously, the fact that 45% or so of the heads of household own homes and many have been here for a decade or longer. The idea of deporting families with American and/or US-educated children is morally unconscionable. Stop using the term "illegal"; that's an anti-liberty term; as Judge Napolitano notes, the Constitution does not empower the Congress to regulate immigration, just naturalization. Anyone who does not understand the economic benefit of deregulated borders, just as among the 50 states is economically ignorant. Immigration and trade are two of the most crucial reasons why America became the world's greatest economy barely a century after its birth. And let us not forget 2 of the greatest blunders of immigration policy occurred in the mid-1960's with the first time quotas from countries in the Western Hemisphere and the discontinuation of the highly successful bracero (guest worker) program, which had reduced border violations by about 95%.
As you admitted, some 1M unauthorized aliens left on their own since 2007. I'm sure the morally corrupt xenophobes and nativists haven't figured out that paradox, after pushing the false claim that it's the social welfare state drawing them here in the first place--what was it: Mexico offers better social welfare than the US?
Because a group of folks like the neo-Nazi's support Trump, does not mean that Trump supports their values.
Have you heard this jackass and his constant juvenile, petty behavior vs. others? He basically enables thuggish behavior, like when those Boston brothers assaulted a homeless Latino, citing Trump as their inspiration.
(Proud to be an American). Donald Trump says his views on immigration mirror those of the majority of Americans. Do you agree or disagree with that assessment?
HELL NO! Only economic retards fail to understand the win-win effect of immigration on the American economy. Recall the ill-tempered,unqualified, incompetent right-fascist Donald "Four Bankruptcies" Trump said after the 2012 election said that Romney lost because of his "maniacal, mean-spirited" self-deportation policy; now the flip-flopping son of a bitch is proposing kicking longtime residents, nearly half of who own their own home, many children who were born here, are US citizens, and have never been (or can't remember) another home, out of the country--if Romney was wrong with his plan to put the squeeze on employers, spending up to $600B to kick out 11M people who are contributing to our economy, Trump is wrong on steroids.
Political Cartoon
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| Courtesy of Steve Kelley via Libertarian Catholic |
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| Courtesy of Gary Varvel via Townhall |
Tina Turner, "Typical Male"
