This detailed geo-statistical analysis entitled “The Fog of War: The Geography of the WikiLeaks Afghanistan War Logs 2004-2009″ has been published, not much more than a month after Wikileaks made available to the world six years of Afghanistan records and reports. The study was honestly, scientifically, and nimbly completed and published at no direct cost to the intelligence community. It was made possible by the decentralization, fluidity, and constant sharing and shifting of roles and responsibilities that comprise the Internet. As I read through this lucid analysis, I recalled the recently published Washington Post project, Top Secret America. Both the Post and the researchers in “Fog of War” tried to be careful not to step on government toes, but the very process and existence of these kinds of analyses are cause for great optimism, and provide a strong justification to radically slash government spending on intelligence that the state has proven to be unable to use effectively.

The neocon-allied Unification Church’s DC daily, the Washington Times, has been sold for $1, in an internal Moon family transaction. Recently, Newsweek was also sold for a buck by the money-losing Washington Post. Can the paper itself be far behind? Or Time and US News too? And how about the NY Times?

“Stop Demagoguing the Mosque,” read by Stephanie Murphy.

LRC contributing writer Don Cooper posted this to his Facebook page:

“Too funny: just went through TSA with my ID and ticket receipt. I printed my ticket receipt off the Internet by mistake instead of my boarding pass. When I went through the “security checkpoint” the guy was shooting the s**t with someone and didn’t notice. What a joke of a boondoggle jobs program the TSA is.”

Another TSA “satisfied customer” writes:

“I travel very often, and I cannot count the many times I have gone through security at the airport and come out the other end realizing I had liquids, gels, or some sharp object that could possibly be used as a weapon accidentally sitting in my carry-on.  Yet, I have also lost count of the times when they’ve had to pull my bag to the side to inspect something that could not possibly be harmful in any way.”

The Discovery Channel building hostage news was surreal yesterday, if only because it’s a local event for me and a friend was “locked-down” in a neighboring building. I was a little shocked to find out that this (obviously disturbed) man was killed. What he did was unequivocally wrong, but it was a tragic end to the day nonetheless.

I was reading all of this online, so it wasn’t until this morning that the surreality hit home again. On the local news, they showed snipers prone, a SWAT truck, a robot sitting next to another ominous black vehicle, and a soldier running to the scene. All of this for a single man with a handgun and some homemade bombs.

It’s impossible to convincingly play the role of a Monday-morning quarterback, but one cannot help wonder if this anti-gun state were instead a place where even 10% of the population open-carried? Maybe Lee was deranged enough to have gone on his mission anyway. But would it have taken 4 hours, what seems like the entire Montgomery County arsenal (why does my county have an arsenal?), helicopters into the night, and the lobby still shut down this morning?

There’s a bank run going on at Kabul Bank—as can happen to any fractional-reserve bank without an FDIC, and indeed a run is the only free-market way to correct such crooked institutions. So one of the largest shareholders, US puppet Hamid Karzai’s brother Mahmoud has a solution: “America should do something,” he said. Kabul Bank “has money”—sure it does Mamoud—but cannot “withstand a stampede by panicked depositors,” as Huffpo puts it in banksterspeak. Maybe the Taliban is telling the truth about such crooked regime banks. That would be terrorism indeed.

UPDATE It appears that the US Bankocracy will bail out its criminal kid in Afghanistan. Yet another war crime.

Writes Bill Watkins:

The 2010 Greater Kansas City Bartending Competition was won by my daughter’s boyfriend, Mark Church.  His winning entry was, of all things, “The Refined Austrian Cocktail” which is made with the following ingredients:

Austrian gin, Austrian brandy, house-infused aromatized wine, Kirsch liqueur, and homemade aromatic bitters, garnished with a grilled orange wheel.

UPDATE from Jedd Coburn:

I always thought the Austo-cocktail was colloidal silver and Goldschlager

The WSJ-LRC discussion continues, with contributions from propaganda- analyst Lila Rajiva and Switzerland’s Daily Bell.

James J. Lee, the Al Gore inspired environmentalist who undertook a destructive assault on the Discovery Channel building, will be quickly dropped down the “memory hole” as a political embarrassment.  The anti-life implications of this secular religion were revealed in his brief manifesto urging television programming to “save the planet,” by showing “how people can live WITHOUT giving birth to more filthy human children” who, in his words, “are pollution.”  As we are seeing with the established order’s responses to Wikileaks, the power structure cannot abide revelations to the public of the details of its various schemes.  Mr. Lee must be forgotten.

On the other hand, had this man been a cousin of the treasurer of the Mud Flats, Kansas, Tea Party, we would never hear the end of the reporting on this event!

(Thanks to Travis Holte)

Our police state, that is:

[Thanks to Austin White]

Writes Glenn Jacobs:

I received a solicitation for a donation to Joe Arpaio’s campaign today. The letter chronicled Arpaio’s battles with illegal immigrants, Mexican drug cartels, and “open-border” leftists. I find it alarming that a local politician is utilizing illegal immigration as a national fund-raising platform (especially a fascist thug like Arpaio). Meanwhile, we have the mosque controversy in New York, and a mosque under construction vandalized and burned in middle Tennessee.

Lew, it seems as if all that is needed is the right spark and the collectivist inclinations of so many Americans will explode into the police state that we all fear. The politicians and media have worked very hard to create the scapegoats with which to divert the public’s attention away from the failed policies of the State.

I wasn’t around in the ’60s and don’t remember the ’70s so I don’t have much with which to compare the current environment except history books, but things are starting to get really ugly, aren’t they?

Writes Robert Wenzel:

Michael Douglas has reprised his role as Gordon Gekko in Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps, which will be released in theatres September 24.

Of more significance is that Douglas, after months of misdiagnoses, was recently diagnosed with stage 4 throat cancer. He appeared on the David Letterman show last night in an incredible display of class and grit. Keep in mind while you watch this that just weeks earlier he learned of his cancer and that he has already started his chemotherapy treatment.

The must-see clip:

And read the rest of Bob here on misdiagnosis.

(Thanks to Matt Collins)

RESPONSE from Gary North:

I want to rise in defense of Soupy Sales!

He was famous for ad-libbing.  Here is what he said (approximately).

“Hey, kids, go to your father’s wallet when he’s sleeping.  Take out some of those green pieces of paper with pictures of George Washington and Thomas Jefferson on them and send them to your friend Soupy at WNEW, New York City.”

He got suspended for two weeks.  He apologized.

Let’s face it: the gag was aimed at adults.  He had a lot of adult viewers wherever he broadcast.

Some people lack a sense of humor.

I remember when all the usual suspects in the DC libertarian world heralded Bjorn Lomborg and his book The Skeptical Environmentalist because he was a moderate, and not a hardcore type. One must, to be respectable in the Beltway, accept all the idiot and even anti-human notions of environmentalism, then seek to achieve them by semi-market methods. Now, being an enviro-skeptic does not mean disliking the birds and the bees, nor the outdoors. Hunting, fishing, birdwatching, hiking, etc. are all great human pastimes. As to pollution, Rothbard was right here too. But the enviro-skeptic sees mankind as the central fact of nature, with everything to be judged  in relation to people. We also understand that it will take private property in the wilderness, the oceans, etc. for the proper balance to be struck. But back to Bjorn Lomborg: he has now become a total Algorean, whose new book, Smart Solutions to Climate Change: Comparing Costs and Benefits, calls for giant carbon taxes, so the UN can stop mythical man-made global warming. This is, of course, actually a way for the well-connected and corrupt to get richer off the rest of us, and the criminal politicians (if I do not repeat myself) to gain more power.

UPDATE I wrote this manifesto more than 10 years ago.

UPDATE from a friend:

Seems the Discovery gunman was inspired by An Inconvenient “Truth.”

UPDATE The Discovery environmentalist, true to his kind, is especially concerned with stopping the births of more “parasitic human infants.”

Writes Matt Houseward:

The public needs to realize that humans are part of the delicate natural balance as well.  Humans are predators, and as beautiful as some competing predators are, they’re not necessary so long as we’re around.  If timber wolves, for example, only lived in zoos and game preserves, the environment would be no worse off, so long as humans are allowed to hunt in order to cull deer populations.  Africa is doing itself a great disservice in bowing to political pressure to keep Africa wild.  I like baboons as much as the next guy, but I have to wonder: is the African ecosystem going to fall apart if there aren’t enough baboons around eating insects, fish, and fruit?  Or, more likely, are there other animal populations that will fill in the gap that won’t kill livestock, raid vineyards, and rip the shingles off people’s homes?

Writes Ron:

The President’s announcement that all U.S. combat troops have left Iraq is no more believable than the ‘Mission Accomplished’ declaration was in 2003. Once again, we are being told the mission has been accomplished and our brave men and women are coming back home. Though the people are hopeful they remain skeptical, and rightfully so.

The biggest problem is that success in Iraq is undefinable since the mission was never defined. The reasons given for the invasion were based on misinformation. Now, the war has cost us hundreds of billions of dollars and this has contributed significantly to our economic woes.

Forty-four hundred Americans are dead, thirty thousand severely wounded, and more than a hundred thousand are suffering from serious health problems related to Post Traumatic Stress Syndrome. This alone should tell us that it was not worth the investment and the needless sacrifice of our young people and the taxpayers.

Read the rest of this entry »

Writes Sandro Scoppa of the Fondazione Vincenzo Scoppa, Catanzaro, Italy:

I am very proud to announce you and to all our Misesian friends that in Soverato, Calabria, we have the first street named in honor of Ludwig von Mises!

1. Nullification: How To Resist Federal Tyranny in the 21st Century, by Thomas E. Woods, Jr.;

2. Libertarianism Today, by Jacob H. Huebert;

3. American Empire Before the Fall, by Bruce Fein;

4. The Backyard Homestead; Produce All the Food You Need on Just a Quarter Acre, by Carleen Madigan;

5. The Primal Blueprint: How To Reprogram Your Genes for Effortless Weight Loss, Vibrant Health, and Boundless Energy, by Mark Sisson;

6. How an Economy Grows and Why It Crashes, by Peter D. Schiff;

7. The Ruling Class: How They Corrupted America and What We Can Do About It, by Angelo M. Codevilla;

8. The Road to Serfdom, by F. A. Hayek;

9. Weapons of Mass Instruction: A Schoolteacher’s Journey Through the Dark World of Compulsory Schooling, by John Taylor Gatto;

10. Lies the Government Told You: Myth, Power and  Deception in American History, by Andrew P. Napolitano.

Over the years, I’ve noticed a very common misconception about how a government raises money. Interestingly, this misconception has been stated by Austrian economists as well as all the other “economists” in the world.

The misconception is that government raises money three ways: taxation, printing, and/or borrowing. But in truth, borrowing is just a detour from the only two ways that a government actually raises money: taxation and/or printing. Unless the government is going to default on its borrowed funds, it still needs to pay them back by taxation and/or printing—like it pays for everything else. (Unless, of course, it borrows more money to pay back the original borrowed funds!! But even then, unless it is going to completely default on any of its borrowed funds, the only way government raises money is through taxation and/or printing.)

As far as I’m concerned, for anyone—Austrian economists, or otherwise—to keep repeating the “three ways a government raises money” misconception obfuscates the real issue: that government can only raise money by theft and/or counterfeiting (i.e., fraud).

UPDATE: Many people have written to me to point out that by printing more counterfeit money (therefore lowering the value of the money already in circulation—i.e., inflation), counterfeiting is also a form of theft. (Another expression that has been around for years is that inflation is a “hidden” tax.) Up until a month ago, I would have agreed with all of these people. Read the rest of this entry »

Lew, just how sloppy and/or biased that Wall Street Journal article was, as pointed out by The Daily Bell, can be seen by simply Googling “Austrian Economics,” as the reporter should have done.  The first thing that pops up is the Web page of the Ludwig von Mises Institute.  Peter Boettke is way, way down the list.  One would think that a WSJ reporter doing a story on Austrian economics would have the intelligence to conduct such a search.

Or before declaring Boettke the most influential Austrian in the world, perhaps one should first take a look at the popularity (or lack thereof) of any books he may have written, compared to other Austrians.  A quick look at Amazon.com shows that Boettke’s biggest seller, Calculation and Coordination: Essays on Socialism and the Political Economy of Transition, has a sales ranking of 1,224,424.  Two of his other books are in the 6 million range.

By contrast, our own Tom Woods’s Meltdown is currently at 22,797 and his latest book, Nullification, is ranked at 9,245 this morning.  Meltdown was a New York Times bestseller when it was first published.  My most popular book, The Real Lincoln, is ranked today at 10,458, eight-and-a-half years after it was published.  A Wall Street Journal editor who fails to ask such elementary questions  for such an article is either incompetent or grossly biased and deceiving.

How funny that the Coordination Problem School is now calling itself Austrian again, just as it had readopted the name twice before, after trying out Market Process Economics and Interpretive Economics, and having each bomb. But then, Austrian economics is hot right now, thanks especially to Rothbard and Ron Paul, as Ryan McMaken notes. The whole fascinating WSJ controversey stepped up with Robert Wenzel’s blog, then Tom DiLorenzo’s comment, and Bob Wenzel’s post this morning. Switzerland’s Daily Bell has covered the story here and here. One side, which has made its peace with the Fed and the rest of DC, has Koch oil billions and subscription-only newspapers on its side. The other has the free Internet and the man whose very name can still make Charles Koch go apoplectic, as happened not too long ago in Aspen. For more than 50 years, it’s been Power vs. Murray. I know where I’m putting my money.

UPDATE from Marc Davis:

I have an idea for the Coordination Problem School. Why don’t they start calling it the School of Kochonomics? They would, then, all be Kochonomists.

UPDATE from Bryan Morton:

Wouldn’t they be Kochnesians?

For many years, students attending Mises University have told me of absurd and ridiculous stories (a.k.a., lies) about us that have been spread by the Koch Foundation-funded beltwaytarians at George Mason University.  (I can recall two GMU students staring at me in utter disbelief when I told them most students at Mises University were undergraduates, with about a fifth graduate students and a few visiting faculty.  They had been told it was “a political training camp for high school kids”). 

There is a group of economists there who are ashamed of the name “Austrian economics” who nevertheless claim to be, well, sort of, kind of, anyhow, Austrian economists, but they keep desperately trying to come up with a new name for themselves.  Their latest ridiculous name is “coordination problem economists.”  Sounds like a marketing nightmare, but hey, they’re academics.

The latest lie about us that I’ve learned of comes from one Brian Bedient, a former student of Professor Pete Boettke at George Mason University who a young twenty-something reporter for the Wall Street Journal laughingly claimed is the leader of the resurgent Austrian economics movement in America.  The lie, as told by Bedient (scroll down to the “comments”)  is how Boettke told a group of George Mason graduate students that to him, “the last straw” with the Mises Institute/LewRockwell.com crowd was when some of them supposedly “disrupted” Nobel laureate economist Ronald Coase’s 99th birthday party because “Coase wouldn’t debate Walter Block.”  How boorish can you get!  Disrupting an old man’s 99th birthday party because of extraordinarily childish hubris!  Who would want to associate with such people?!  Stay away from them — they’re weird!

This is a lie.  It never happened.  If it did, the “Uptights” at George Mason would have been broadcasting it all over their blogs for months.  But even Bedient said in his blog comment that he couldn’t find any discussion of it on the Web.   Our friend Professor Peter Klein, whose career has involved careful study of “Coasean” economics, has been in touch with several people who were at Coase’s birthday party and there has been no mention of any “disruption.”  It never happened.

Read the rest of this entry »

It always starts out with the MSM doing a puff piece on some “wonderful” new technology which will make our lives “safer” and more “efficient.” From the broadcasting arm of the number one New World Order industrial corporation, General Electric, comes this story about the “convenience” of being microchipped for identification. (I know all of us have a serious problem about “not” carrying around any identification with us when we go outdoors with our wallets. Don’t worry—with the microchip implant we won’t even need our wallets anymore because all of our personal and financial information will be stored on this “convenient” chip.)

[Thanks to Nicole Bourbaki]

CNN is running a blurb across its screen reading: “Obama calls for ‘full-scale attack’ on economy.”  Good grief!  Hasn’t this administration done enough damage already?

Don’t miss Robert Wenzel on the recent WSJ article allegedly on the Austrian School. The WSJ actually focused on the Coordination Problem School, a small but well-funded VA offshoot of the Austrians.

UPDATE This article by Joe Salerno is also relevant.

LRC readers like to own silver, as well they should. They also appreciate medicinal silver, and our favorite un-PC seasoning, salt, which were among the most popular items on Amazon.com last week:

Silverbiotics ASAP Skin Care;
Silverbiotics 16 oz. Liquid;
MesoSilver Anti-Fungal Colloidal Silver Spray;
Himalayan Crystal Salt — Fine Granulated;
Coarse Grey Sea Salt from Guerande.

The best-selling books are:

Libertarianism Today, by Jacob H. Huebert;
Dumbing Us Down: the Hidden Curriculum of Compulsory Schooling, by John Taylor Gatto;
American Empire Before the Fall, by Bruce Fein.

Thank you for your continued support of LRC through  Amazon purchases.

Writes Larry Rice:

Recently finished The Left, The Right, The State and was thoroughly impressed by the clarity, cogency, and coherency of thought from start to finish.

The reference to Hoppe’s collection of essays re: private security was also very much appreciated and timely for us all.

Next up for me: Human Action!

Murray Rothbard said that the key issue for libertarians is war, since it empowers the state and oppresses freedom, like nothing else. And now we can study war, and what the state and the merchants of death don’t want you to know, with Murray’s colleague and friend, LRC star Tom DiLorenzo. Wow.

He included uglyite John Hagee in his Traveling Church of the Divine Lincoln.

Catch Ron Paul and other speakers at a free anti-war, anti-police state, anti-socialism (if I don’t repeat myself) rally in San Francisco from 2-4pm on Sat. 9/4/10 at the SF Civic Center. See the details here.

Writes Bob Wenzel:

I noted your comments on the Glenn Beck Rally. I happened to be on the streets of D.C. as the rally was breaking up.  I watched the faces of those leaving  the event, you know, sort of like the way you watch people coming out of a movie before you head in, to see what reaction people have on thier faces, happy, sad, etc.

The Glen Beck crowd looked totally bored. No one was pumped up. No one was moved to cry. There was no camaraderie among the attendees. Nothing, zero. I could tell for sure Ron Paul and Tom Woods weren’t speaking at this event. If I saw these faces walking out of a movie theatre showing, I would bet the movie would prove to be a total bust.

Here’s the latest addition to the phony, fear-mongering War on “Terror”: an innocuous van that roams city streets to scan vehicles, etc. for Weapons of Mass Deception by using x-ray technology. Do you feel safe yet, Kiddies?

[Thanks to Mark Fee]

Some people are upset that Toys “R” Us stores are carrying an action figure of the serial-killer TV character ‘Dexter’ intended for adult collectors.

Now seems like a strange time to get upset about toy stores carrying an action figure of a fictional killer.  After all, Hasbro started selling G.I. Joe figures based on real-life killers in 1964.  And elsewhere on today’s Toys “R” Us shelves, you can buy “True Heroes” soldier playsets, which, according to the description, let children age 3 and up “emulate . . . the people who make the world safe and just.”

Also, I’ve never seen Dexter, but doesn’t he only kill a handful of people who are actually guilty of terrible crimes and not, say, thousands and thousands of actual innocent people?

Hey, Glenn and Sarah, if there’s still time at the death rally, read Wilfred Owen’s war poem.

One might yawn at yet another anthill assembly in DC. But the purpose of Glenn Beck’s huge Lincoln-military celebration–with his fellow neocon warmonger Sarah Palin (a wholly owned subsidiary of Bill Kristol)–is to try to make all the Tea Party people obedient tools of the Republican apparatus, and detach them from Ron Paul. As usual, mass killing and patriotism undermine freedom. It’s more Armageddon-promotion in the Middle East, but the true Paulians will not be fooled. According to Glenn, blessed are the warmakers. It’s an honor to die for your country. It’s an honor to lose your limbs. It’s an honor to kill other people by the boatload. But hey, Beck, don’t just talk. Fly into Afghanistan. I’ll help pay for your parachute.

Glenn Beck and Sarah Palin praised God and the military on the Mall today — as though the military and the government lived on different planets.

The always-marching Al Sharpton did not counter by embracing MLK’s passion for peace, inspired by Scripture. In a revealing outburst, he described in the Beck proceedings a different and sinister goal:

“The structural breakdown of a strong national government, which is what they’re calling for, is something that does not serve the interests of the nation and it’s something that Dr. King and others fought against,” Sharpton told C-SPAN hours before his event.

Tea partiers, forget the nationalist militarist rally in DC. Read the founder of the Tea Parties on what is wrong with you people on war and foreign policy.

As I pointed out in a previous post, it appears that the United States is now seriously considering one of the most “inspired” Keynesian/Krugman economic policies that Japan enacted in the past 20 years—zero interest rates. The very last part of this short video states that the Banksters’ Puppet-Chairman Ben Bernanke might lower interest rates to zero on the money that banks keep with the “Federal” Reserve as one option to “help” the economy. Yes, Ben, zero interest rates did “wonders” for Japan’s economy—that’s why in July 2006 the Japanese zero-rate policy was ended.

[Thanks to Nicole Bourbaki]

In response to my recent post, I was asked cordially by a reader why LRC seems to have a “pro-Islam bias.” Others have genuinely wondered whether radical libertarians have been going too far in their defense of the ‘Ground Zero Mosque,’ opposition to war, and so forth, and whether such principled stands risk the neglect of the Koran’s alleged propensity to violence. The reader asks, “Can you explain to me why you, Lew, and others find nothing offensive in Islam? Or, if you do, why no one speaks out about it?”

I can’t speak for Lew, but I’ll say, up front, that I don’t agree with many tenets of Islam, that personally I do favor Christianity over Islam, and that I see nothing wrong with criticizing or questioning religious doctrines, including those of the Koran.

But I also believe in religious toleration, and in America, Muslims are a persecuted minority.

I wrote to the reader:

Since 9/11, there has been a real threat to [Muslims], as well as a general war hysteria whooped up against them. It’s not as bad as it could have been, but look at the hysteria toward the mosque. As bad as the secular state can be against Christians, I think Christians feel safer than Muslims in this country. Now, there are certainly exceptions among what are considered the fringes — some even dispute the legitimacy of calling them Christians—- such as Branch Davidians and fundamentalist Mormons. But of course, I stick up for them too. And I and others at LRC have always stood up for Christians and all other groups against smears and demonization.

We don’t all agree on religion around here. I have problems with the Koran, as well as the Hebrew Bible, much of which is a significant part of what many conservative Christians and Jews believe. Some of them might have a problem with what I believe. But I do not personally believe in demonizing Jews, Christians, Muslims, atheists, pagans, Hindus, or any other religious group. I don’t believe in casting wide nets or judging people harshly for peaceful behavior, especially as it concerns intimate questions of spirituality and worship. And when the state and its partisans are calling for the blood or trampling on the liberty of any of these groups, when the grand liberal tradition of religious tolerance and freedom is under attack, it is our ethical duty to stand up against the hysteria, propaganda, and lynch mobs. This, I think it’s safe to say, is the LRC way, the libertarian way. It should also be the American way.

I’ll be doing the Radio Free Market radio show tomorrow (Saturday) at 2 PM Eastern time, where we’ll be discussing my book, How Capitalism Saved America: The Untold History of Our Country, From the Pilgrims to the Present.  Because of the gross economic ignorance of the public (thanks to “public” schooling), hardly anyone understands what capitalism or free markets really are these days.  They are NOT a cozy, corrupt relationship between corporate plutocrats and government, as most people seem to believe.  In fact, that was exactly the system (“mercantilism”) that Adam Smith critiqued in his famous 1776 treatise, An Inquiry Into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations, one of the earliest scholarly explanations of the differences between a mercantilist and a free-market economy.

Despite having suffered greatly under the invasions, bombings, and occupations courtesy of the Israeli government, the Lebanese welcome a lavish synagogue, constructed in part with Muslim money, in the center of their own “ground zero.” As on many other questions, Muslims abroad seem less collectivist than Americans in looking at alien cultures and casting a wide net as to who is and who is not “the enemy.” Good on Lebanon for this great example of toleration. Would Americans take a cue from it. Thanks to Joseph Asbell for the link.

I can’t really root for former(?) FBI-informer Al Sharpton, but anyone competing with the Glenn Beck pro-war rally Saturday at the Abe temple in DC can’t be 100% bad. But Glenn: M.L. King—whom you will herald—was an opponent of war and the US empire. How about quoting some of this at your anti-Muslim bloodfest?

I thought I mis-heard this story this morning on the radio, but, sadly, I was wrong:

ROCKVILLE, Md. (AP) Montgomery County residents will soon be required to scan their fingers to enter recreation centers. Officials say switching from plastic passes to finger scanners will save the recreation department $50,000 annually.

Update: And, using Rockwell’s Law, we can be sure that the opposite of this is true:

Montgomery County recreation officials have been quick to point out that the data collected through their vein scans … will not be available to other county departments or police.

Karen, you’ve hit a nerve with me about the current fearmongering in child-rearing. We have a couple of books with information about a baby’s first year. One book — I believe put out by the American Association of Pediatrics — is horrible when it comes to fearmongering. Just recently I stumbled on a few pages where literally every other paragraph contained a warning about some (usually fatal) threat. The child could choke! Your baby could be strangled! He could fall down! on and on and on…

As I am writing this, I am also reminded of the hideous tags that are on everything. My daughter’s car seat is littered with them, so that any sense of style is absurd. Compare the advertised car seat on the left with our actual car seat, complete with 3 bright yellow labels:

Libby, Montana resident Judy Mattot  had an opportunity few will enjoy — and she made the most of it.

Montana Democratic Senator Max Baucus, the chief legislative sponsor of the Obamacare monstrosity, and HEW Commissarina Welfare Kathleen Sibelius recently visited Libby to praise their own benevolence in enacting the Obamacare monstrosity.

An event of this kind is supposed to be a liturgy in which awe-struck commoners praise the Divine Leviathan and its exalted emissaries. Some participants at the 40 people assembled in Libby City Hall played their scripted roles. Mattot wasn’t one of them.

Mrs. Mattot, a retired nurse, asked Baucus and Sibelius “if either of you read the health care bill before it was passed”; if not, “that is the most despicable, irresponsible thing.”

Read the rest of this entry »

Wisconsin is the state that most defiantly nullified the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850 (as I discuss in Nullification), quoting the Kentucky Resolutions of 1798 and 1799 in its defense; today it’s the headquarters of the Bring the Guard Home movement.  Wisconsin Public Radio interviewed me for an hour about Meltdown and for another hour about Nullification, and I was treated rather better than leftists would likely have been treated on many right-wing programs.

This Saturday I’ll be in Eau Claire (not far from Minnesota) for the day, beginning with a book signing open to the public and continuing with a dinner, talk, and after-party.  Hope to cause some mischief.

Yesterday on the Fox News Channel neocon Dinesh D’Souza was discussing the recent primary elections and stated that the TEA Party-supported candidates may help the Republican Party regain the House or Senate, ”but they can’t govern.”  (This caused Democratic Party hack Susan Estrich, who was sitting next to him and who I think is probably a man, to laugh like a hyena).

These are people who were NOT chosen by the half dozen or so neocons in D.C. who run the Republican Party.  The voters in their respective states chose them instead.  Therefore, naturally, they cannot be given any serious responsibilities once they make it to Washington.

On May 1, 2003, President George W. Bush landed his plane on an aircraft carrier, and jumped out to proclaim victory in the one-sided war against the Iraqi people.  “Mission Accomplished,” read the banner behind him.  That the bulk of the killing in this war took place after that date has not dissuaded Bush’s successor from trying to bamboozle Boobus with the electioneering charade that, once again, that awful war is over, and the troops are coming home.  Except, of course, the war is not over, and some 50,000 American troops will remain in Iraq to protect corporate-state interests.  These soldiers will be redefined from a “combat” to a “transitional” status.

It is to the credit of most Americans that they do not seem to be buying into this latest snake-oil swindle.  I vividly recall the end of World War II.  I had been at a movie theater in Lincoln, Nebraska, and came out to seemingly tens of th0usands of cheering people crowding the streets.  They knew that awful war had come to an end.  I did wonder, a few days ago, when the propaganda arm of the present empire made its announcement, how long it would take for the established order to resurrect the worst Hollywood film to ever win a “best picture” Oscar: The Best Years of Our Lives, a 1946 post-war effort in defense of the war system.  Over this past weekend, I was in Palo Alto, California, and saw the following theater marquee: