On Vacation

Starting tomorrow, I'll be on vacation for two weeks in the Southwest and will be posting sporadically, if at all. Hopefully I'll return with a fresh perspective on life, and a liver none the worse for wear from Cuervo consumption.

I'll post again on the 15th of May (or thereabouts).

Cheers!

The Latest in Neocon Rubbish (With Responses, Courtesy of My Guest)

A very dear but misguided friend and colleague of mine, long under the spell of the neocon-pseudo-right, forwarded an email this morning containing the latest gibberish-laden ravings of Ann Coulter, the neocons’ own defective clone of the socialist-left’s Maureen Dowd. While I am loathe to give this rabid, demented creature any attention whatsoever, lest any of my readers think she merits it, I’d like to post some acerbic responses to her latest batch of nonsense, offered by another dear friend of mine whom I’ll call “Marlowe.” Marlowe suffers fools of all flavors even less gladly than I do and has a unique knack for taking acid-laden responses to moronic ravings right off the tip of my own tongue (or fingers, as the case may be). Since this is the week before I depart on a much-deserved two-week vacation and am not in the mood to write anything profound (or even anything particularly focused or adult in tone, as yesterday’s post shows), I thought I would let Marlowe respond (his comments in italics) to Annie’s verbal vomitus for me (my own scattered comments bolded and bracketed). Here is the original article, for those with strength of stomach and idol time on their hands.

Democrats pushed the federal gas tax? Hmm....the gas tax was raised 14.4 cents, spread across three separate bills: 1982, 1990 and 1993. Hmm...I seem to recall two Republican presidents who would have signed those bills. Not to mention that the Republican congress has done nothing to reduce the [federal] gas tax in the last twelve years in spite of having majority control for all of it.

Democrats pushed the state [gas] taxes? Hmm...so that would mean that states like Florida and Nevada should have some of the lowest gas taxes around. Hmm...bullshit! Nevada and Florida [both with Republican governors and Republican-dominated state legislatures] are both in the top ten. Most importantly, who [other than the residents of a given state] gives a flying goat f*** , [or has any right or reason to be concerned] what tax a state levies against their residents? Under the Constitution, as if Ann has ever read it, that is a state's god-given right [alterable only by the voters and legislators of said state, something called "states' rights" that the neocons' official party used to hold as sacrosanct before they came to power and could exercise unchecked power to destroy it].

“Free market?” Excuse me while I wipe the urine stains from my trousers. She is going to mention “free market” while her [beloved] administration is investigating oil companies for “price gouging?” This is too f***ing funny. Only a neocon and a socialist would try to put “free market” and “price gouging” in the same sentence [while trying to imply that the former is somehow affected by the latter. While I always thought that Annie was probably a Keynesian socialist, as are all neocons whenever they try to bumble their way through a discussion of economics, I never imagined she was primordially ignorant of even the fundamentals of markets].

Bottom line is that the current ‘conservative” [yeah, right!] movement in America is a farce [and an insulting, transparent sham], at best. Despite claims of smaller government, less taxation and states rights, this administration, like all the “conservative” administrations since Lincoln has raped the American people in a manner similar to a virgin in a Saxon raid. At least the Democrats have the decency to be upfront with their lies and Constitutional violations [Liberranter’s Note: Emphasis mine, and the reason, lest anyone wonder, why I’m always much nastier toward and harder on Republicans than Democrats. At least the Dems don’t insult my intelligence with transparent hypocrisy].

Thanks, Marlowe. Your acid blasts are an all-too-rare treat.

What a Mess (But Typical)!

This article by Henry Payne published in the online version of the Detroit News highlights perfectly the consequences of 1) government-driven economic policy in general, and 2) that policy as enacted by megalomaniac legislators with the economic education of toddlers. Reading this, one absolutely gnashes one’s teeth in rage at the lobotomized stupidity of demopublicans who bring economic havoc upon their constituents in order to fellate their preferred interest groups du jour (to put it crassly).

What I cannot understand for the life of me is the process of how one particular special interest group exerts its power at the expense of another, or how the various bought-and-paid-for inmates of the domed asylum on Crapitol Hill determine who gets what special favor at another’s expense. In particular, I am amazed that ConAgra, ADM, or whatever other agrimafia make up the ethanol lobby were able to force their agenda over that of the oil companies. I was always under the impression (as were, I think, many of the rest of us unwashed, ign’nt peasants) that oil trumped agricommodities anytime in terms of the fiscal war chest at its disposal. Apparently that’s not the case, at least today. Maybe it depends on which crook is bribed on which committee. Who knows?

At any rate, this represents, to me, yet one more nail rammed into the coffin lid of what little remnant of the free market remains in this country. I didn’t ask to burn ethanol in my car, especially not for the sake of keeping some pig-fornicating Iowa farmer in business through welfare subsidies who otherwise would deservedly go bankrupt. Get Rome-on-the-Potomac the hell out of our gasoline, and let Cletus the Redneck Farmer either grow crops that will earn him a profit without sticking his filthy fingers into my wallet, or let him get another job doing something else that will enable him to earn an honest living on his own.

By the way, I hope Cletus the Redneck Farmer enjoys paying three-plus bucks a gallon to fill up his oversized pickup truck, despite the fact that half of it consists of his useless damned ethanol (which, if it were really marketable and useful, wouldn’t need subsidies from Rome-on-the-Potomac or the use of Rome-on-the-Potomac’s brute force to make us buy it). Maybe he’ll stop to think that the subsidies he demands from Rome-on-the-Potomac every month come out of his own pocket too in the form of the taxes he pays on the gas he buys. Stupid bumpkins.

There, now I feel better.

A Quote, and My Contention of It

Quoted on today’s Antiwar.com:

War is too serious a matter to entrust to military men. – Georges Clemenceau

I disagree with Monsieur Clemenceau on this. It is isolated, self-deluded, usually megalomaniac civilian politicians (a group to which Clemenceau belonged), not soldiers, who have been responsible for starting most of history’s most devastating conflicts. I actually believe that if the decision to go to war were left up to the soldiers who have fought them in the past, war would disappear altogether as way of conflict resolution or aggression.

Just a thought.

Some More Random Thoughts

• How do you treat the wait staff? This article posted on today’s LRC definitely bears repeating and reposting. I’d also like to add that in few other cultures than ours is waiting tables considered a dirty and demeaning job, and I, for one, have never regarded it as such. I’ll never forget all my years of living in Southern Europe and the Eastern Mediterranean, where waiting tables is considered an honorable profession, one often passed down from father to sons over many generations. One could tell when dining in Italian Trattorias, Greek Tavernas, or Turkish Locantas that the waiters were masters at their craft who made a physically and often mentally demanding skill look effortless. My hat is still doffed to them. To paraphrase the author of the article, there but for the grace of God go you. In fact, you may yet “go there”, for all any of us knows (can you spell o-u-t-s-o-u-r-c-i-n-g?).
  
  
• In the midst of all of the hoopla over the 100^th anniversary of the Great San Francisco Earthquake and Fire, one observation has gone unmade, at least as far as I am aware. That observation is, can you imagine the same tragedy happening today and the city being rebuilt without that city’s “leadership” [sic] and inhabitants crawling, groveling and squalling to Uncle Sam for a handout? Neither can I. It is amazing that within 18 months after this great tragedy, San Francisco was completely rebuilt, with almost no signs of the devastation remaining. How did they do it?
  
  The better question to ask is why did they do it, and the reason is “business.” The city fathers at the time realized that to allow San Francisco to remain a charred ruin would discourage the commerce that was the city’s lifeblood. The city’s reputation as a natural hazard was already well-known at the time, due to the common knowledge of its location along the San Andreas Fault. They therefore realized that in order to survive economically, they had to rebuild, and rebuild a better, stronger city, or go under. While the federal government did allocate one million dollars to relief and rebuilding (the equivalent of almost one billion of today’s inflated dollars), the bulk of the rebuilding came actually from the pockets and labors of the city’s own residents, particularly those men whom today’s socialist do-gooders would look down upon as “robber barons.” But these “robber barons” had a personal stake in seeing the city rebuilt, for without a rebuilt city, they would face absolute financial ruin. Therefore, the opened up their wallets and “made it happen.” Do you think there might be some lessons here for the post-Katrina New Orleans and Gulf Coast of today?

• I actually heard something on D.C. radio this morning about suburban Montgomery County, Maryland convening a “town hall”-style meeting to discuss the impending “avian flu” crisis and how it might shut down the county’s government. Seriously, folks; I’m not making this up! I swear if I hear one more piece of government propaganda about this non-event (do any of you A.D.D.-inflicted Amorikons remember “SARS” from a couple of years back?), I’m going to go ballistic. Bottom line, people: There has been no, zero, zilch, nada indication that this strain of influenza is in any imminent danger of spreading as a pandemic through humans. My advice to anyone worried about this is to get a life and focus on solving problems that are within your grasp. Panicking at the first note of government propaganda, obviously being spread to deflect attention from the misery and anarcho-tyranny that the State has purposely inflicted upon you is exactly the kind of simi-moronic behavior that they want from you. Unless your goal is to demonstrate that you are too stupid to filter information for yourself and that you want the State to baby-sit you, ignore this BS.

• What do you say to a late twenty-something adult who still believes (and behaves as if) life is a free ride, and that if you don’t want to pay your bills and meet your obligations, then you just don't have to? Better yet, what do you do to someone like that to disabuse them of the idea once and for good? I’m wide open to suggestions. [Editor's Note: This last random thought (or rather, the incident that prompted it) was based on a mistaken assumption of guilt on the part of the party described. It turns out that the incident in question was not her fault, but rather the fault of a service vendor who neglected to credit her payment. My apologies to this young lady - for now.]
  

Random Thoughts on Tax Day

For the past couple of years it’s been customary for me to issue a Tax Day rant focusing on slavery, freedom, oppression, yadda-yadda-yadda. Since I’m feeling lazy this year (with just two weeks until I depart on a much-deserved, long-awaited two-week vacation), I’m just going to point you to my rant from last year. Nothing has really changed (other than the fact that our new accountant somehow miraculously managed to get us some of our stolen money back this year, after years of our having to fork over several thousand more dollars on this day), so just re-read what I wrote last year. The sentiments expressed certainly haven’t changed.

• Are the Amerikan people really as stupid as the clown they’ve allowed to remain ensconced in the National Cathedral of Satan on Pennsylvania Avenue? Are they really going to tolerate him dragging the nation into another war, this time against a country that will fight back with everything it has? While I’m still hesitant to bet a paycheck on the affirmative, I have a gut feeling that such a wager would be very profitable if I were to win.
  
  
• Concerning the last paragraph, will this prompt a mutiny in the armed forces? Can we expect that maybe, just once for the first time in this nation’s history, a few conscientious generals and admirals who weren’t asleep during their Constitutional Law classes at West Point, Annapolis, and Colorado Springs will stand up and do the right thing? I guess we can always dream.
  
  
• I see that ABC TV is about to air a miniseries on the events of 9/11. I don’t think I’ll be able to tolerate sitting through two to four hours of statist propaganda without throwing a heavy object through the screen of my expensive big-screen TV. My intelligence is already insulted frequently enough by the state-controlled media during the day. To voluntarily sit through another helping of this sludge during the evening is just too much to ask.
  
  
• Why is it that simple activities such as planning, organizing, leading, managing, and mentoring are so hard for people to grasp? Why is it that people who are in charge of Fortune 500 companies can’t seem to demonstrate a fundamental ability to execute something as simple as a social outing for friends and family (yes, I’m talking about a specific example that happened over the weekend. More to follow on this later.)? If I had to say anything positive at all about my nearly two decades of military service, it is that it reinforced in me these skills as a means of accomplishing tasks both simple and complex. It’s really just common sense, folks. Of course, you know what they say about common sense. The fact that “common sense” isn’t very common most certainly explains a great deal of the reason that every company you’ve ever worked for has been a dysfunctional mess that makes you wonder how in the world it manages to stay in business at all.
  
  
• Nothing is more rewarding than knowing that you’re making a difference in a little child’s life. I saw a small example of this in action over the weekend at a church Easter Festival that we organized as a community outreach. Some of those little kids acted as if they had never had so much fun in their lives. It’s amazing to think that our simple little event, an afternoon of plain, clean fun for kids, could make such a difference. I hope some of the parents of these kids take note. Childhood is an all-too-brief phase of life, particularly in this day and age. Let your kids enjoy it to its fullest. Don’t force adult circumstances and decisions onto your little ones and don’t rush them into adulthood; that will come soon enough.
  

Well, that’s it for today. Time to get back to the salt mines. If you’ve already received your tax refund, congratulations. Spend it wisely. Better yet, invest it, preferably in precious metals or some useful capital assets. If you have to send a check to the IRS, I’ve been there more than once and feel your pain. Somehow I think this is going to be the norm for most of Amerika’s taxpayers in the years to come.

A Sign of Desperation, Part Deux

Now they’re going after the zoomies. Of course they’re dressing all of this up as a move to train airmen to defend airbases in the occupied territories against assaults by insurgent ground troops, but I think we all know where this is leading. Jayzus, even Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan weren’t in dire enough straits to raid their air forces for infantrymen. We’re in deeper trouble than I thought. What’s next, Civil Air Patrol? The Sea Cadets? The Cub Scouts?

New Product Ideas

While checking my personal email this afternoon, I discovered an ad from the Mises Institute store offering “Socialism Can’t Calculate” calculators for six bucks apiece. A bargain price, I must say, and one that will prompt me to order a few for family and friends.

This started me thinking about other novelty items that might sell. How about the following, that would have the Bill of Rights printed or engraved on them? That way the nation could just dispense with the hypocritical mock reverence for this obviously moribund document that’s making so many sanctimonious people look ridiculous and actually start demeaning it symbolically in the same way that they’re demeaning it in practice:

• Floormats/Doormat
  
• Toilet Paper
  
• Toilet Seat Covers
  
• Feminine Hygiene Napkins
  
• Disposable Diapers (printed on both sides)
  
• Kleenexes
  
• Garbage Bags/Trashcan Liners
  
• Swiffer™ Mop Covers
  
• HandiWipes™
  
• Puppy Housebreaking Pads
  
• Cat Litter Boxes
  
• Bedpans
  
• Colostomy Bags
  
• Children’s “Potty Chairs”
  
• Dust Rags
  
• Wrappers for Presto™ Fireplace Logs
  
• Barbecue Grill Liners

If anyone out there can think of any other products that would display the appropriate level of contempt for the Bill of Rights, let me know. Maybe someone from the current presidential administration, preferably some sacrificial lamb in the process of getting canned and who will soon need a job, will agree to endorse some of these. In fact, I think I’d use whatever profit I earned from the first round of sales to send a few hundred grand worth of merchandise to 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue itself. We know it would be appreciated there!

A Sign of Desperation

The Confederate States of America did it in 1865 as federal armies overran the Southern states and surrounded the Confederate capitol at Richmond. Nazi Germany did it in the Spring of 1945 as the Wehrmacht faced annihilation at the hands of the Russians, Americans, and British after nearly four years of unsustainable losses. The Soviet Union also did it immediately after the German invasion in June, 1941, finding itself in dire straits due to the German Wehrmacht’s blitzkrieg annihilation of most of the Red Army, the result of Uncle Joe Stalin’s murderous carelessness, paranoia, purges and neglect. I also have no doubt that Rome probably did it at various times during the Fifth Century as the Empire degenerated further into a state of collapse.

I’m talking about the “it” of drafting sailors to serve as infantrymen, the practice of turning swabbies into grunts. The Amerikan Empire, sustaining worsening casualty rates among ground troops in the Mess in Potamia, and with an ever-worsening troop shortage of its own making with no reliable source of steady replacements in sight, has done “it” as well. While the State’s propaganda machine paints this as a noble and valiant thing, a perfect example of gehörsame Volkskämpfer (“obedient citizen warriors”) making hardship sacrifices for the good of the Vaterland, the reality is very different. (Incidentally, dear readers, you might as well get used to me sprinkling incendiary Teutonic phrases into my posts. Some of you will no doubt accuse me of tastelessness and of exaggerating our national decline into anarcho-tyrannical dictatorship, but I do nothing if not call things as I see them. Right now, Amerika and its gehörsame Bergerleinin [“obedient little citizens”] most certainly merit description in Goebbels-esque terms).

The reality is that these sailors have become superfluous to the Empire. Amerika’s navy, conceived and built as an open-ocean weapon for combating equally well-armed battle fleets of other heavily-armed nation-states, has no place in the asymmetric fourth-generation warfare (4GW) that has come to characterize the Empire’s wars of colony and conquest over backward foreign hoards at the dawn of the new century. While 4GW is a tactic against which the Empire is woefully unprepared to defend itself, das Fűhrerlein and his general staff are more than willing to throw fodder into the breach, and what more cost-effective way to do so than to declare a shark a carnivorous mammal and toss it onto dry land?

Unfortunately, history has consistently demonstrated the general futility of this tactic. While veterans of this amphibiomorphic experiment have, throughout history’s various wars, experienced differing degrees of success on personal levels, the end result in each war for nations experimenting with “soldier sailors” was, with the exception of the Soviet experience, always the same: total defeat at the hands of the enemy. In the Soviets’ case, the only reason they escaped total defeat was due to having untapped reserves not immediately deployable at the war’s start, while later having the benefit of the Anglo-American second front in the West to relieve just enough pressure to prevent total destruction of their armies. Because wars seldom ever repeat themselves in tactics or outcome, there is little reason to believe that Amerika will be as fortunate in its misadventures in the Middle East (I’ve often wondered how “Stalingrad” would be rendered in Arabic, Persian, Pashtu, or Urdu).

My advice for the Amerikan Caesar and his legion commanders is to think twice about picking a fight with the mullahs in Teheran. Zoological common sense would tell a normal person that it is not a good idea to pick a fight with the neighborhood’s 300-pound bully after you’ve just been rendered a near cripple by his 200-pound sidekick. If you can’t even scrape together sufficient ground troops to stay alive in the Iraq quagmire, the wisdom of getting belligerent with Iran is, to put it kindly, highly questionable. It is a particularly good idea to remember this when you are faced with an adversary who will more than match you man-for-man on the battlefield and who has no compunction about committing mass suicide if it will somehow take you down and achieve tactical and strategic victory. But I am being fatuous in assuming that even a zoological strain of common sense exists within any place bounded by Interstate 495.

So for all of you seafarers being given marching orders and desert cammies, you can at least comfort yourself with this thought: you won’t get seasick in the desert.