"Don't hurt people and don't take their stuff" - Matt Kibbe

3/29/11

Obama is Awesome?

I was never a fan of George W. Bush or the war in Iraq. I was never a fan of Billy Lewinski or his war on Yugoslavia. And for certain Obama and his war on Libya are definitely not awesome.

You may want to watch this "xtranormal" voice to video presentation before heading over to the Left Coast Rebel to read the excellent analysis of President Obama's explanation for his Libyan adventure.

It's time well spent.



Many thanks to Captain McCann for bringing our attention to this video.

3/28/11

I Liked Ike

On this day  in the year when I was almost 19 years old I was a sad kid. I never told any of my friends that I was sad because they might have thought I was goofier than they already thought. You must keep in mind what was going on in 1969, and what other folks my age were mainly focused on at that time.

But on this day (3-28) back then, former President Eisenhower passed into history. He was the first President that I was aware of in my life. In fact my first memory of politics (I was maybe eight years old), or anything other than what I wanted at the moment, was of my mother or father telling me sternly - as I made a noisy entrance into the room where our television was located - to "Be quiet! The President is speaking!"

I remember being confounded about why it was so important to be quiet while some old guy on TV was talking about something I neither understood nor cared about. But my parents were watching intently, (dare I say reverently?) and I knew something was different about this telecast. I have no memory about the subject of that speech, and even today I'm not even mildly curious.

President Eisenhower is not a political or even philosophical ideal of mine. He was not a libertarian. It wasn't fashionable or even desirable in a world that he had just helped save from the horrors of German Nazism,  Japanese Bushido's or Soviet Communism, to be one. 

It's my opinion that a President, like every other person, must be judged in the context of his times

I have no idols, but I do have heroes. And he is a hero of mine for many reasons this space won't allow me to bore you with. So he wasn't a libertarian, but he was a patriot.

On a whim, in preparation for writing this, I googled the word "ike." The results were depressing. A word which used to mean only one thing to the vast majority of the world didn't yield a single result which referred to the former President. The number one entry was for a sandwich shop. I gave up after four pages.

My Ike was a hero, not a hero sandwich. I wish we had more heroes today.

3/23/11

Everything from the origin of central banking to calls to "End the Fed" in less than 5 minutes

Networking for Liberty is the phrase I have settled on to describe the way information is passed around the Internet to advance the cause of smaller government and more freedom.

It includes blogging, Facebook friendships and forwarded emails with links to news stories and interesting and informative videos. It's not a bad way to earn a living either. Just ask Matt Drudge.

So far I haven't earned a nickel doing it, but a blogger is always just one viral posting away from enough advertising revenue to pay for a whole month's worth of greens fees.

I feature a lot of the videos, cartoons and other information I receive from those sources on the sidebar of this site and I frequently write commentaries about the ideas contained in them so we can share the wealth of ideas without spending all day web surfing or all night arguing politics over adult beverages in our favorite watering holes. (OK, the last one is kinda fun).

I've met some interesting people along the way and I've learned a lot as well. The net is the best way I know of to surround myself with folks who are smarter than I am without actually paying them.

One of the people I network with is the semi-famous Dan Mitchell of the Cato Institute. Like many of my "networkers", I've never met him in person.  Dan gives me (along with an unknown number of other bloggers) the heads up on new things he's working on that he would like to see widely disseminated. I'm happy to oblige because his stuff is a good fit for the kind of people who come to this site.

He sent a link to the following video. It's one I think will appeal to the busy folks who nevertheless find time to come here for some interesting informational snacks to chew on between making a living and giving most of it to the government. It's the first in a series and I'll be featuring the rest as they become available. It runs a mere five minutes. I hope you enjoy it (and the rest to come) and learn some history while you do.

In the meantime, please keep networking because the work we do here on the net may turn out to be the work that allows us to regain our liberty. China doesn't seek to censor and repress the Internet because it's helpful to statism.

3/16/11

Poking Fun at the President From Behind the Crab Cake Curtain

Maryland is a good place to spend time with loved ones, but it doesn't lend itself well to writing blog posts. Too much sightseeing and kickin' back and not enough time for inspiration.

But I saw this joke, and it's funny enough to share with all the folks who are starving for their daily fix of mediocre writing and pontificating.  Maybe this will hold 'em over 'til I get back and start swinging again.



3/8/11

The Sixty Four Thousand Dollar Question

People of my generation remember the popular TV game show of that name very well. The amount of money referenced in the title was a staggering amount to the common man in those times and the idea of enticing people to watch the show by using that astounding figure worked like a charm back then. 64 thousand dollars was a lot of money.

The idea still works today. Many state governments have upped the ante by running "Mega Millions" lotteries where the prospects (however dim) of winning 64 million dollars gets the blood pumping for a different generation of "enticees." The Lotto was originally billed as a method for raising money for education. Somehow it never got spent on anything except buying votes from political prostitutes, but that's for a different article.

Now the Congressional Republicans have upped the amount to 61 billion dollars to entice the gullible into thinking that the government is actually serious about cutting the budget. But before we get too critical of them we must keep in mind that the Obama administration and the Democrats think that sum is way too large.

As any economist worth his degree will tell you, it's not about cuts in the budget anyway. It's about government spending.

Balanced budget chatter is all the rage recently and you can expect any number of candidates in the 2012 election cycle to beat the subject into the dirt to get into power. But consider this, if an armed robber steals the exact amount needed to support his cocaine habit, his budget is in balance.

So even though deficits matter in some important ways, it's the spending that is robbing us of our freedom, not the vigorish payments. The video below will help us keep the whole situation in perspective without boring us to death like this commentary threatens to do.

So will the people actually fall for this nonsense once again because they are enticed into belief by the seemingly large dollar figure being tossed around? That, my friends, is the sixty four billion dollar question.


3/5/11

E-mail Forwards: Sometimes a Little Virus is a Good Thing

The constant arrival of E-mail "forwards" can get tiresome after awhile. Some are worth reading, but a large number are simply boring, contrived, and well, goofy. But not all of them.
I received the one copied below the other day. It may or may not be a real letter from a real doctor to the President. In my mind it's irrelevant. It certainly reflects reality in our society.

One of the most widely read essays I have written for this blog (Oct. 2009) was titled "The Best Place To Be Poor."   The subject of that piece is very similar to the email in reference and I think it is a topic worth revisiting. To this day the site receives many visits from people all over the world who have "googled" that phrase. I suspect that they don't find the result they are seeking from that inquiry. They read it anyway. I can only hope it gives them a different perspective than they had before.

In that post I included a link to an article written by a doctor named Linda Halderman. I strongly suggest that you read it again even if you already have done so in the past. It can be found here.

The content of the forwarded email is as follows;

Dear Mr. President:
   During my shift in the Emergency Room last night, I had the pleasure of evaluating a patient whose smile revealed an expensive shiny gold tooth, whose body was adorned with a wide assortment of elaborate and costly tattoos, who wore a very expensive brand of tennis shoes and who chatted on a new cellular telephone equipped with a popular R&B ringtone.  While glancing over her patient chart, I happened to notice that her payer status was listed as "Medicaid"! During my examination of her, the patient informed me that she smokes more than one costly pack of cigarettes every day and somehow still has money to buy pretzels and beer.
   And, you and our Congress expect me to pay for this woman's health care? I contend that our nation's "health care crisis" is not the result of a shortage of quality hospitals, doctors or nurses. Rather, it is the result of a "crisis of culture", a culture in which it is perfectly acceptable to spend money on luxuries and vices while refusing to take care of one's self or, heaven forbid, purchase health insurance. 

  It is a culture based in the irresponsible credo that "I can do whatever I want to because someone else will always take care of me".
   Once you fix this "culture crisis" that rewards irresponsibility and dependency, you'll be amazed at how quickly our nation's health care difficulties will disappear.
Respectfully,
STARNER JONES, MD


The good doctor (real or conjured from someones imagination) makes a point that truly IS worth forwarding. I won't mind if you forward a link to this article so that more people from all over the world will be reminded of the long term consequences caused by well meaning "solutions" imposed by government interference in societal problems.

Sometimes forwards like this "go viral" on the internet. (The best my articles have ever gone is bacterial.) In this case, maybe the doctor's letter will cause a virus that is beneficial. The current situation is deadly.

3/4/11

What Happened While I Was Away


I have been in Florida for ten days playing golf and enjoying uninterrupted sunshine.
No one missed my commentaries very much.
The Tea Party is still brewing tea. The Flee Party is still in hiding.
Apparently some guy named Charlie Sheen is still a moron.
There is still no one buying Chevy Volts from the government, just 281 people bought one in February even though gasoline prices skyrocketed during that month.
Qaddafi is still murdering his citizens.
Huge numbers of American citizens still can't find a job so apparently Obamanomics and stimulus still don't work.
The stock market went down and then up and then down again.
I'm kinda bored since I got home last night.
Nothing ever happens around here.
I think I'll go away again.