UPDATED: Statism Starts With YOU! (Chuckie Misses Bush)

Debt, Economy, Healthcare, Individual Rights, libertarianism, Liberty, Morality, Political Economy, Political Philosophy, Republicans, The State, Welfare

The following is from “Statism Starts With YOU!”, now on WND.Com:

“Why did federal regulators not intervene sooner? A tragedy could have been averted. That was the first demand made following the accidental death of 8 spectators, and the injury of 12, at the California 200 off-road race. The derby was held in the Mojave Desert, in the Lucerne Valley. The driver of one of the racing trucks lost control of his vehicle, flipped and landed on bystanders, who are in the habit of getting as close as they possibly can to the tracks.”

“Evidently, what draws fans of desert racing to the sport, attest Phil Willon and David Zahniser of the Los Angeles Times, is the ‘the danger, dust and noise of watching 3,500-pound trucks roaring past — close enough almost to touch — and then rocketing into the air over treacherous jumps with nicknames like ‘the rock pile.'”

It’s all great fun until something goes terribly wrong. Then it’s someone else’s fault.” …

This tragedy, off-the-beaten-track, well illustrates the dynamics of state encroachment. Statism always and everywhere begins with The People.”

The complete column is “Statism Starts With YOU!”

Read my libertarian manifesto, Broad Sides: One Woman’s Clash With A Corrupt Society.

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UPDATE (Aug. 20): “I miss Bush intensely,” said one of the main Republican ideologues, Charles Krauthammer. “Iraq ended this week fairly successfully. And the economy, Obama purchased with the stimulus; it’s his economy.”

That’s the depth of the thinking of your above-average Republican.

UPDATED: Fine, We Won; Just Come Home

America, Foreign Policy, Iraq, Middle East, Military, War

“We won, we’re going home! We won! Its over! America, we brought democracy to Iraq!” Bless the poor survivor of America’s invasion and occupation of Iraq, who shouted these pathos- (and bathos) filled words out of “the back of his Stryker vehicle.” Jubilation among the soldiers, the second most abused and bamboozled people to have (voluntarily) taken part in the Iraq fiasco, is more than understandable. The first are the Iraqis, whom we conscripted involuntarily. (MURDER BY MAJORITY.)

I noticed that Keith Olbernmann and Rachel Maddow, who were honest about Bush’s war during the Bush years, have reversed course, declaring victory. I suspect this has something to do with the fact that 1) their guy Obama now owns the Iraq war. 2) Midterm elections are nearing.

“Amazing. We finally made it out, we made it back. We’re good. Happy to be here. Happy to go home. We got our mission done successfully and it was good to go.” So said Pvt. Nicholas Kelly. I’m chocking back the tears as I write (thinking of stuff like this, which I chronicled during the years of writing about Iraq).

Pvt. Troy Danahy of Hampton, N.H: I missed “Just America in general. I just miss grass, simple, little things, winter, snow and all that.”

After a mere week of 90 plus degrees in the shade here in the Pacific North-West, the olfactory sensations that come with the cool never fail to make my heart overflow for this beautiful landscape that is my home. Can you imagine how intoxicating the fragrance of home is to the poor men who’ve suffered the suffocating climate of Iraq, that barren, inhospitable, dangerous dump?

I’ll leave it at that. It’ll be a while before these men arrive on these shores of ours. Still, Welcome home. I’m a little tongue-tied, emotional, and teary-eyed myself.

Is it really over, or is this just another of their cruel, craven jokes?!

UPDATE: Recommended: “Iraq in the rear-view mirror” by Ned Parker. The Powers That Be have promised that the remaining troops will not see combat. I presume this means no more patrols for IEDs (Improvised Explosive Devices).

Naughty Laura

Free Speech, Journalism, Media, Political Correctness, Race

The difference between the racial transgressions of broadcasters Don Imus and Dr. Laura Schlessinger is that Imus’s “nappy-headed hos” utterance was used to describe the black Rutgers women’s basketball team that he was admiring at the time. Dr. Laura was not describing or addressing blacks when she rattled off the “N” word yesterday on her radio show; she was merely describing the way other blacks use the word liberally. Evidently, you are not even allowed to use the words in reporting on another’s use of it.

Given the level of language policing under which we all labor, it took me some time to locate Dr. Laura’s verbatim words. News reports must have redacted even the indirect use of the word. Here’s the account via ABC.com. Note the childish blanks in “n****r”:

“Schlessinger ignited a firestorm of criticism after Media Matters posted audio from a Tuesday conversation she had with a black female caller. The caller was complaining about her white husband’s friends and their use of the N-word. In response, Schlessinger said:

‘lack guys use it all the time. Turn on HBO and listen to a black comic, and all you hear is n****r, n****r, n****r. I don’t get it. If anybody without enough melanin says it, it’s a horrible thing. But when black people say it, it’s affectionate. It’s very confusing.

When the caller said she was appalled by Schlessinger’s use of the N-word, the radio host demurred, ‘Oh, then I guess you don’t watch HBO or listen to any black comedians. My dear, the point I am trying to make … we’ve got a black man as president and we’ve got more complaining about racism than ever. I think that’s hilarious.'”

“She then criticized the caller, saying ‘Don’t take things out of context. Don’t NAACP me.'”

[SNIP]

Laura has decided to “end her radio show.” If she wishes to “come back,” she’ll need to commence her Via Dolorosa. “It [could be] time for page two of the white-celebrity-struggling-with-racism playbook: sitting down with Al Sharpton or Jesse Jackson.”

UPDATED: GOP Babe On Things That Bounce Back

Democrats, Economy, Elections, Media, Republicans, The State

“How do you know there is going to be an economic recovery,” Greta Van Susteren asked GOP dummy, Dana Perino. “There always is; these things go in cycles,” squeaked the Heidi Klum of the commentariat in a voice reminiscent of the super model’s.

Dana, who was once spokesperson to a man who could not speak, is not working with much gray matter. She always smiles ever so smugly and proudly when her boss’s “modest” government expansion is hearkened back to nostalgically on FoxNews. Dana also thinks the economy is like a menstrual cycle. But even that thing stops when the hormones run out, Dana.

Another lightweight, who only sounds weightier, is Liz Cheney. The two will often form the Fox-panel staple when super dumb chicks, such as CE Cupp, are unavailable to gesture wildly and grimace while regurgitating Carl Rove’s talking points.

Liz repeated the Republican refrain, the other day, about the Democrats’ stimulus “not working.” As if it could work—the premise of that statement is that such confiscation might have worked, if only, if only…

Yes: the GOPiers’ line, for the midterm elections, is that there is a smart, economically stimulating way for the state to spend money it has stolen from the private economy. Time and again Repbulicans have explained that the stimuli consisted of misguided spending, so typical of Democrtats, instead of REAL stimulus, which is the hallmark of Republikeynesian “thought.”

No Republikeynesian heard on cable will refute the bogus notion that government is able to create jobs out of funds it has forcibly removed from the private economy, or by printing paper in the basement of the Fed. The beef the likes of dodo Perino, Newt, Dick, Carl et. al., will invariably voice is: The Dems didn’t apply the stolen funds the way one ought to have; the way we would have.

Just a friendly reminded, as we near the midterms.

UPDATE: Thanks, Myron, for the Jack Hunt article:

“If conservatives want to know how Obama and his party are currently able to get away with creating colossal debt and an even more monstrous government they should look no further than the last administration. Where was the Right — as the Left often asks, and justifiably so — when Bush doubled the size of government and the national debt during his eight year term? Where was the caller who is so angry about Michelle Obama’s vacation when Bush created the largest entitlement expansion since Lyndon Johnson, with Medicare Part D? What was Limbaugh complaining about the same week Dubya was enacting the federally intrusive education disaster ‘No Child Left Behind’?”

I can tell you where today’s Republican House Minority Leader and Obama-critic John Boehner was — the man whose party winning in 2010 might prevent ‘riots’ — he was standing right next to Bush as he signed NCLB, heartily endorsing the legislation as one of his ‘proudest achievements.’ It has been reported that some Republican outfit, apparently nostalgic for pre-Obama America, has erected a billboard featuring Bush with the caption, ‘Miss me yet?’ Are they kidding? Hell no, I don’t miss him — and any serious conservative shouldn’t either, as our current president simply continues to build upon the last one’s statist achievements.”

“And ‘building’ is exactly what it is — regardless of which party is in control, when was the last time a president departed office, leaving behind a federal government smaller than he found it? Not even Ronald Reagan did this, as each successive administration piles on new and massive bureaucracy.”

[SNIP]

Read “Obama And Bush: Partners In Government Giganticism.”