Reinke Faces Life

http://www.homelandstupidity.us/2008/04/12/tsa-rules-led-to-pilots-gun-firing-in-flight

TSA rules led to pilot’s gun firing in flight
By Michael Hampton
Posted: April 12, 2008 7:41 am

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Transportation Security Administration rules are to blame for the conditions leading up to an accidental discharge of a US Airways pilot’s pistol during landing, say airline pilots familiar with the program.

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If you read this, you wonder what boob wrote these procedures!

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http://www.theargus.co.uk/news/generalnews/
display.var.2186883.0.mp_suggests_decriminalising_hard_drugs.php

MP suggests decriminalising hard drugs
By Andy Whelan

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Brighton Kemptown MP Des Turner has called for hard drugs to be legalised.

The Labour MP spoke out after an investigation by The Argus lifted the lid on street dealing in Brighton and Hove.

Reporter Andy Whelan bought heroin from a man in one of Hove’s main shopping streets. And it took him just 26 minutes to obtain the drug.

Dr Turner’s comments come after details of yet another young victim of the city’s heroin trade were revealed.

An inquest into the death of Tania Meires heard that heroin in Brighton was so pure that injecting it was like “playing Russian roulette every time”.

***End Quote***

I’m against drug addiction. But, it’s a MEDICAL problem.

Passing laws against it is as effective as passing a law repealing gravity.

How stupid are we?

How many children must die? How many lives ruined? How many unintended consequences have to be endured?

Laws don’t change behaviors. They just raise and shift the costs!

We, in effect, have a random death sentence for drug experimentation.

How stupid are we?

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http://www.lewrockwell.com/olson/olson12.html

A Way for All States To End REAL-ID
by Thomas Andrew Olson

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Libertarians have long lobbied for an end to state-mandated driver licensing. Here is a new opportunity to put that idea back on the table. After all, which is more important, rigid control over driver licensing, or the imposition of a biometric police-state national identity card? State legislatures, even those who are already on record opposing REAL-ID, could simply slip out from under the law’s requirements by closing their licensing agencies for good, and either farming out certain functions to private-sector contractors, or eliminating them entirely.

***End Quote***

I have often advocated that the insurance companies would be best suited, with the most self-interest, in registering cars and drivers. They do my annual policy renewal quickly and easily for ‘free’.

How much could it cost to have them make some tin advertising for the front and back of every car?

Certainly not our freedoms!

Remember after papers, came death camps in Germany and Russia.

I hear you saying it can’t happen here! Who says? It has. thnk about the prisons.

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http://computerworld.com/action/article.do?command=printArticleBasic&articleId=9055126

Opinion: I want to live in a surveillance society
Mike Elgan
January 03, 2008 (Computerworld) I

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There are many situations where I’d like to see surveillance legalized, normalized or even required, including:

* Interaction with police: When we get pulled over, it should be perfectly legal to openly videotape the entire conversation, as well as when we’re questioned or interrogated. They’ve got a dash cam or interrogation room camera pointed at us. We should have one pointed at them, too. (The knowledge that such cameras are allowed might prevent abuse like this.)

* Any interaction between caregiver and child: When babies and children or seniors or others who for whatever reason aren’t able to defend themselves are potential targets for abuse, it should be legal for their parents or other relatives to secretly tape encounters with caregivers and use those recordings as evidence in court.

* Anytime politicians meet with lobbyists: Why not use required surveillance to expose or prevent backdoor wheeling and dealing? When our representatives meet with special interest groups, corporate executives or other people out to buy influence, it’s not something that’s personal or private for the elected politician. There should be special lobbyist meeting rooms with cameras running 24/7. If congressmen and others meet with lobbyists outside the rooms, they go to jail for corruption. This is the people’s business, and we have the right to know all about those conversations.

* Court: It should be our right to record any public hearing or courtroom proceeding. If the public is invited, then banning video cameras and voice recorders is only to reduce the accountability of the judge (rather than, say, to protect the privacy of the accused). Why should judges be granted this protection?

* Your own phone calls: It’s legal to secretly record your own phone calls in 38 states (plus the District of Columbia). But it’s illegal in the other 12 states: California, Connecticut, Florida, Illinois, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Montana, Nevada, New Hampshire, Pennsylvania and Washington. You can record calls only if you get the consent of the other person on the phone. But I think all rights and protections involving your home (such as the right to keep security cameras and other cameras running without announcing the fact to visitors) apply to your home phone as well — and your cell phone, too, for that matter.

***End Quote***

Seems only fair. How can we “prove” their misconduct? And, they always misbehave.

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http://www.lewrockwell.com/suprynowicz/suprynowicz78.html

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California’s 2nd District Court of Appeal on Feb. 28 declared the parents of most of that state’s 166,000 home-schooled children to be outlaws, ruling the law requires parents to send their children to full-time state-certified public or private schools or else have them taught at home by “credentialed” tutors – which most home-school parents, presumably, aren’t.

“California courts have held that … parents do not have a constitutional right to homeschool their children,” Justice H. Walter Croskey said in the 3-0 ruling, which makes it clear those parents can be criminally prosecuted for failing to comply.

And did Judge Croskey and his black-robed ruling-class pals say this was because the home-schoolers weren’t doing as well at teaching reading, writing and ‘rithmetic?

Of course not. They couldn’t say that, because tests consistently shows home-school kids, taught by parents without state “certificates” or licenses, score 30 to 37 percentile points higher than their public school peers across all subjects.

So why ban home-schooling, if the academic results are far better?

Judge Croskey obligingly explained: “A primary purpose of the educational system is to train school children in good citizenship, patriotism and loyalty to the state and the nation as a means of protecting the public welfare.”

***End Quote***

Oops, did the judge let the cat out of the bag?

Gooferment skools are youth propaganda camps. Stalin and Mao would be so proud. And, Kruschev was right. The Communists won!

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http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/articles/news/news.html?in_article_id=536270&in_page_id=1770

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Then Camra, the Campaign for Real Ale, was founded to fight for traditional beer and pubs.

It found a surprising ally. Margaret Thatcher, who hated monopolies and brewers (despite the fact that they were significant donors to the Tory Party), rallied to the cause.

Laws were passed that no brewer could own more than 2,000 pubs. Furthermore, they would have to give their landlords the option of selling at least one “guest beer” produced by a rival.

The idea could not have been simpler: by smashing the big brewers’ monopoly, there would be a flowering of smaller brewers, varied pubs and more choice for drinkers. But it didn’t work out like that.

Roger Protz of Camra looks slightly uncomfortable when I ask him what went wrong. “Basically, I think we were tremendously naive,” he says.

What happened was that the brewers created stand-alone pub companies – known as PubCos – to which they sold all their pubs.

Because they didn’t brew beer themselves, these new companies were exempt from the legislation.

“There were a lot of sweetheart deals,” explains Protz. “The brewers would say to some of their management team, ‘Here’s a golden handshake, go off, buy a tranche of pubs and in return only take our beers.’ That was what happened.

“We were offered this great shangri-la of choice but now choice is just as restricted under the pub companies as it was under the brewers.”

The statistics bear him out. In 1989, the three biggest brewers owned around 20,000 pubs, about a third of the UK’s total. Today, the three biggest PubCos own – wait for it – around 20,000 pubs.

In 1989, the six biggest brewers produced 75 per cent of all the beer drunk in Britain’s pubs. Today, they produce 84per cent.

What have changed are the pubs themselves.

***End Quote***

Ahh, the gooferment at work.

It’s hard to imagine bigger stupidity.

Where there is a will, there’s a way.

And, what exactly was the gooferment seeking to do? Didn’t work. So, I guess, they’ll pass yet another law!

Argh!

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***Begin Quote***

“The argument for liberty is not an argument against organization, which is one of the most powerful tools human reason can employ, but an argument against all exclusive, privileged, monopolistic organization, against the use of coercion to prevent others from doing better.”

– Friedrich August von Hayek (1899-1992),
Nobel Laureate of Economic Sciences 1974

***End Quote***

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http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/03/15/AR2008031502358_pf.html

D.C.’s Gun Ban Gets Day in Court
Justices’ Decision May Set Precedent In Interpreting the 2nd Amendment
By Robert Barnes
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, March 16, 2008; A01

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Despite mountains of scholarly research, enough books to fill a library shelf and decades of political battles about gun control, the Supreme Court will have an opportunity this week that is almost unique for a modern court when it examines whether the District’s handgun ban violates the Second Amendment.

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If the Second Amendment doesn’t protect and individual right, then what does the First Amendment protect?

The right to a gun is fundamental to the question of who owns you.

Tyrants don’t want sheep that can shoot back. “Victim disarmament” is the FIRST thing that tyrants do to the people. After all, an armed citizen can be dangerous to the “bad guys”. Criminals, with or with the government uniform, can’t face an armed populace.

It’s the key issue. Let’s see what the court decides. It might surprise us.

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—–Original Message—–
From: Luddite
Sent: Friday, March 07, 2008 11:22 PM
To: John Reinke
Subject: Vermont?

Vermont isn’t one of those ‘free states’ is it, or is that just New Hampshire? Anyway, it sounds like it is a very bad place to live…it’s full of secular progressives, extremely liberal judges (who let pedaphiles out of jail), they have the highest percentage of underage drinkers, way, way, too liberal for me (and you!). (Just passing on info for a more informed American society)

—–Reply Message—–

Well, none of the states are “free”. NH is the “free-est”. VT has the virtue of having a very active secession movement.

SECEDE & SURVIVE: Liberty and Democracy as Antidotes to Sectarian Secessionism
Submitted by Carol Moore on Fri, 03/07/2008 – 10:50pm.
http://www.vtcommons.org/blog/2008/03/07/secede-survive-liberty-and-democracy-antidotes-sectarian-secessionism

HI, TX, AK, and SC are all hot beds of secession. BUT, VT is the most advanced. Last time I read about it, VT had >10% of the people favored secession and in the high 70s thought it should be studied. NH has smaller percentages, but are not far behind.

IMHO, it’s the Massholes and old hippies in VT that make it liberal. Again, imho, if VT goes, then NH will go together with them, or on the heels. The secessionists claim that they can bring VT, NH. ME, and some of the English speaking Canadian provinces into a “New England” country. Economically, VT needs NH to be at least a trading partner. Add ME and it’s like Switzerland.

It’s the only viable way to disempower the gang in DC. Remember the line in Mel Gibson’s the patriot about trading tyrants. :-) How else is the fictional “Federal Government” brought back under control?

As far as politically, I think you’d see a very “classical liberal” society evolve there in VT. Remember that in a classical liberal society, whose roots are in the Renaissance, the sovereign individual governs themselves; not King, or country. Liberal judges are an anomaly.

And, if you eliminate “Prohibition” (i.e., all drugs are legal), then there is no such thing as “underage drinking”. People have to be free to make mistakes, learn from them, and move on. If you poke around, you’ll find that there is a core percentage of “drug users” (i.e., a small percentage) that use regardless of legality.

Suggest http://www.isil.org/resources/introduction.swf as a five minute primer that explains the concepts very nicely. Best that I’ve ever seen.

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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D99NHb6B03s

FMG9: Prototype 9mm Folding Submachine Gun

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“Things get nasty; get down to business.

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I love it. Perfect for a BOB!

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http://www.lewrockwell.com/blog/lewrw/archives/019718.html

March 01, 2008
Government This, Government That
Posted by Manuel Lora at March 1, 2008 11:32 AM

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We should start referring to state owned and managed properties and functions by the word “government” and not “public” for strategic reasons. Instead of public parks we have government parks; instead of public schools we have government schools. There is something more nefarious and sinister about it. “Government Police” sounds a lot worse than “State Police” doesn’t it? Let’s apply it to government housing, government inspections, government licensing and every program and department out there such as the (government) lottery and (government) roads. If we had government restaurants, just imagine how awful they would be!

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I like this idea. And, I’ll try to do it.

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http://www.adventuresinlegalland.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=21&Itemid=99999999

The Government Hoax
Written by Marc Stevens
Tuesday, 21 November 2006

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The government hoax is probably the oldest, most pervasive and stubborn of hoaxes. It’s the belief in non-existent “states” and “nations” and that “government” is both legitimate and necessary. In the geographic area of the North American continent commonly referred to as the “United States,” it’s claimed only “government” can provide the service of protecting “Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness.” This is nonsense if only for the reason “government” has no duty to protect anyone and their property.

Another reason is: no service or product should be provided at the barrel of a gun. It’s that simple. There are no exceptions unless one believes people have no rights. If one believes people have no rights then “government” is not “necessary” to “protect” what doesn’t exist. If you believe people have rights, then you don’t “protect” them without their freely given consent. Also, protection is not submission to the violent unaccountable control of another nor is violent domination a legitimate method of doing business. Would you hire people who don’t acknowledge you have property, to protect your property? I wouldn’t:

“The ultimate ownership of all property is in the State; individual so-called “ownership” is only by virtue of Government, i.e., law, amounting to mere user; and that use must be in accordance with law and subordinate to the necessities of the State.” Senate Resolution #62, April 1933.

***End Quote***

Gooferment is the meme (i.e., an idea is like a gene; mental model; belief) that can kill you, enslave you, or just make you miserable. Even if you don’t realize it.

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http://www.impactlab.com/2008/02/24/how-not-to-release-a-bear

February 24th, 2008 at 6:46 am
How Not To Release A Bear
in: Photo Perspectives

Some day, silly humans will realize that the world is a dangerous place. For this bureaucrat to be with a bear’s reach during release is the height of stupidity. Luckily the fellow wasn’t killed. Note he had no side arm (i.e., a nice 1911 45 “bear discouragement device”) and no backup (i.e., someone with a big shotgun). I just shake my head.

“Attention KMart shoppers! The world is a dangerous place. Predators, of the two legged and four legged varieties, abound.”

I’d add some of those predators dress up as politicians, bureaucrats, and “law enforcement”. But no one would be listening any way.

Argh!

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http://www.dslreports.com/shownews/Supreme-Court-Refuses-To-Hear-Wiretap-Case-92011

Supreme Court Refuses To Hear Wiretap Case
Offers no comment or justification of decision
08:49AM Wednesday Feb 20 2008

***Begin Quote***

The US Supreme Court refused without comment the ACLU’s appeal of a lower court ruling that blocked the group from suing over the Bush administration’s warrantless wiretap program. The appeals court has blocked the case from proceeding because complainants couldn’t prove they were being tapped, yet they couldn’t prove they were being tapped because claims of national security block further investigation.

***End Quote***

AND, you EXPECT the gooferment court to even hear the suggestion that the gooferment infringers are WRONG.

What space time continuum are you in?

Remember Mao? Power comes from the barrel of the gun. They gottem; you don’t!

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“It does not require a majority to prevail, but rather an irate, tireless
minority keen to set brush fires in people’s minds.” — Samuel Adams

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http://duckdown.blogspot.com/2008/02/thoughts-on-school-shootings.html

***Begin Quote***

I wonder when Americans will stop blaming guns for the deaths of Americans in school shootings and start seeking out root cause. Consider the simple fact that in Canada, they have even more liberal gun laws than in the United States yet you don’t hear of school shootings there.

***End Quote***

Perhaps, we have school shootings BECAUSE they are “gun free”.

(Like passing a law EVER prevented anything. A determined human being is unstoppable.)

So, does the school janitor have tools. The teachers have rulers. Principals have pens.

A gun is a tool.

And, we don’t have to arm everyone. Just create uncertainty.

Those that want to can “pack heat”. Those that don’t benefit by the illusion that they might be.

Then when the nut jobs show up on campus and start shooting — as we know they will — they MIGHT get a surprise BEFORE they get off their first shot. At the very least, when they reload or are not looking, surprise surprise.

America was supposed to be a “free to carry your gun” zone.

Maybe that’s why we don’t have shooting at police stations, gun clubs, and GOA meetings!

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http://www.kxmb.com/News/Nation/209747.asp

***Begin Quote***

Another Massacre At A “Gun Free Zone” College Campus

Disclaimer: This article is a blog post and does not represent the views or opinions of Reiten Television, KXNet.com, its staff and associates and is wholly owned by the user who posted this content.

One gun, one person trained how to use it and willing to do so could have stopped most of this:

DEKALB, Ill. – Another person shot when a gunman opened fire at a lecture hall at Northern Illinois University has died, bringing the toll to seven, including the gunman, a coroner said Friday.

***End Quote***

It just seems absurd to create the conditions for a disaster and then everyone is surprised when it happens.

Why don’t massacres happen at police stations, gun shows, or Gun Owners of America meetings?

Because killers may be crazy, but they’re not stupid!

In today’s politically correct world, the sheeple believe in fairy tales.

The police are here to protect you. Laws mean something. Or my personal favorite, gun free zones are safe.

Let’s call “gun free zones” exactly what they are “victim disarmament zones”. Or maybe “Come shoot me” invitations?

Did you ever notice that folks don’t put “this house is gun free” signs on their lawn?

But yet the gooferment skoolz advertise the fact.

Results: not surprising.

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http://www.windley.com/archives/2008/02/universal_housing_anyone.shtml

Universal Housing Anyone?

***Begin Quote***

Liberal solutions to problems tend to sacrifice property rights for a future utopia (give us your tax dollars now and health care will be better in the future—we promise).

***End Quote***

I think this usually an IT blogger has hit the nail on the head!

Statists — either liberal or conservative — seem to think that their “latest greatest” idea should be imposed at once. On everyone but them (Look at the Congress’ health care and pensions) for “our own good”. Like we are to stupid to figure it out for ourselves.

And, don’t forget there has to be a big bunch of highly paid gooferment bureaucrats on the payroll to figure it out, administrate it, and extend it enormously.

Argh!

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***Begin Quote***

========================================================================
[4] National Identification Plan Announced
========================================================================

On January 11, Department of Homeland Security Secretary Michael
Chertoff released the agency’s final regulations for REAL ID, the
national identification system. The proposal has drawn sharp criticism
from state governments, members of Congress, civil liberties advocates,
and security experts. The law was passed in 2005 and will require
significant changes to the state driver’s license if such ID cards are
to be use for “federal purposes.”

REAL ID was appended to a bill providing tsunami relief and military
appropriations, and passed with little debate and no hearings. The REAL
ID Act repealed provisions in the Intelligence Reform and Terrorism
Prevention Act of 2004, which contained “carefully crafted language —
bipartisan language — to establish standards for States issuing
driver’s licenses,” according to Sen. Richard Durbin.

In the final regulations, Secretary Chertoff scaled back some of the
requirements, reduced the cost, and extended the deadline for state
compliance. As part of the cost-saving effort, Homeland Security has
decided not to encrypt the data that will be stored on the card, leaving
the data open for download by third parties, such as clubs and bars. The
agency said that it would make $360 million available to the states to
implement REAL ID — $80 million in dedicated funding and the agency
will allow the states can use up to $280 million in homeland security
grant funding. States argue that those grants are apportioned to first
responder training, port security, and other homeland security programs,
and that funds should not be diverted away from these programs to pay
for the national identification system.

Homeland Security says that states must apply to the agency for an
extension and promise to implement the REAL ID national identification
system or else the states’ driver’s licenses and ID cards will not be
“accepted for federal purposes” beginning on May 11, 2008. Currently,
“federal purposes” is defined as entering federal buildings, boarding
commercial flights, and entering nuclear facilities. However, Secretary
Chertoff also indicated that the REAL ID card would be used for a wide
variety of purposes, unrelated to the law that authorized the system,
including employment verification and immigration determination. He also
indicated that the agency would not prevent the use of the card by
private parties for non-government purposes.

The states are rebelling against the national ID scheme. On January 18,
Montana governor Brian Schweitzer wrote to the governors of 17 states
asking them to join him in rejecting the REAL ID system. Montana is one
of 17 that has passed legislation against REAL ID. “Today, I am asking
you to join with me in resisting the DHS coercion to comply with the
provisions of REAL ID,” Gov. Schweitzer wrote. “I would like us to speak
with one, unified voice and demand the Congress step in and fix this
mess.”

Congress is considering legislation to repeal REAL ID. Sen. Patrick
Leahy, who co-sponsored legislation to replace REAL ID with the
negotiated rulemaking process originally enacted in the 2004
Intelligence Reform and Terrorist Prevention Act, criticized the final
regulations. “The Bush administration’s REAL ID program will not only
lead to long lines at every DMV across the country, it will impose a
massive unfunded mandate on state governments while offering absolutely
no federal privacy protections to our citizens,” Sen. Leahy said. “It is
unfortunate that instead of addressing the fundamental problems this law
poses for the states, the Administration appears content merely to
prolong a contentious and unproductive battle to force the states to
comply.”

The Department of Homeland Security has also been criticized for its own
poor security practices. In May 2007, a Homeland Security office lost
the personal data of 100,000 employees. According to security expert
Bruce Schneier, “Measures like REAL ID have limited security benefit.
Identification systems are complex, and the unforgability of the plastic
card is only a small part of the security equation. Issuance
procedures, verification procedures, and the back-end database are far
more vulnerable to abuse, and — perversely — a harder-to-forge card
makes subverting the system even more valuable. Good security doesn’t
try to divine intentionality from identification, but instead provides
for broad defenses regardless of identification.”

Department of Homeland Security’s Page on REAL ID (including links to
Final Rule and final Privacy Impact Assessment):

http://www.dhs.gov/xprevprot/programs/gc_1200062053842.shtm

Sen. Patrick Leahy, Press Release about REAL ID Final Regulations (Jan.
11, 2008):

http://leahy.senate.gov/press/200801/011108a.html

Letter From Montana Governor to 17 States (Jan. 18, 2008) (pdf):

http://governor.mt.gov/brian/RealID_080118.pdf

Stop REAL ID Campaign:

http://www.privacycoalition.org/stoprealid/

EPIC’s Press Release: Homeland Security Department Announces Deeply
Flawed Regulations For National ID System (Jan. 11, 2008):

http://epic.org/press/011108.html

EPIC’s Page on National ID Cards and REAL ID Act (includes links to
states’ anti-REAL ID legislation):

http://epic.org/privacy/id-cards/

***End Quote***

We just don’t need this bunch of boobs!

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http://www.lewrockwell.com/higgs/higgs72.html

Libertarian Foreign Policy in the Hobbesian Crosshairs: A Reply to Bret Stephens
by Robert Higgs

***Begin Quote***

Nobody “forced” Americans to begin to build a navy in the 1790s. Government officials and seafaring merchants decided to do so and to deploy this force against (among others) the pirates to whom the government had been paying protection money. They might instead have continued to pay off the Barbary raiders. Or they might have rested content to let the merchants of other nations, perhaps Great Britain, which already had a large navy, handle the shipping of American goods in the Mediterranean. The fact that U.S. leaders resorted to force does not demonstrate that they chose the best option. This option did, however, socialize the costs of engaging in the Mediterranean trade, spreading it across all American taxpayers largely for the sake of the traders who had an immediate interest in the matter.

***End Quote***

Here’s a interesting formulation of gooferment.

SOMEONE has a problem. Whey then make it a gooferment problem, it can be FIXED regardless of cost. TAXPAYERS pay and SOMEONE benefits.

Look at everything the gooferment is in and you’ll see the same paradigm and meme in play.

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http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/01/14/AR2008011401709.html?hpid=moreheadlines

Supreme Court Declines to Hear Experimental Drug Case
Petitioners Argue Terminally Ill Should Have Right to Drugs Not Yet Approved by FDA
By Robert Barnes
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, January 14, 2008; 4:36 PM

***Begin Quote***

The Supreme Court today declined to consider whether dying patients have a right to be treated with experimental drugs not yet approved by the Food and Drug Administration.

***End Quote***

Silly citizen. You need the FDA’s protection. Even if you die waiting, you’ll be “safe”. Your betters know what is best for you!

How dumb are we?

How much protection does Big Pharma want?

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http://www.fee.org/publications/the-freeman/article.asp?aid=8204

***Begin Quote***

Government anti-poverty programs are a classic case of the therapeutic state setting out to treat disorders created by the state itself. Urban poverty as we know it is, in fact, exclusively a creature of state intervention in consensual economic dealings. This claim may seem bold, even to most libertarians. But a lot turns on the phrase “as we know it.” Even if absolute laissez faire reigned beginning tomorrow, there would still be people in big cities who are living paycheck to paycheck, heavily in debt, homeless, jobless, or otherwise at the bottom rungs of the socioeconomic ladder. These conditions may be persistent social problems, and it may be that free people in a free society will still have to come up with voluntary institutions and practices for addressing them. But in the state-regimented market that dominates today, the material predicament that poor people find themselves in—and the arrangements they must make within that predicament—are battered into their familiar shape, as if by an invisible fist, through the diffuse effects of pervasive, interlocking interventions.

***End Quote***

Like the supposed “war on drugs”, the supposed “war on poverty” is another one that’s been lost. It would seem that the only purpose of the “poverty war” was to enhance the number of gooferment bureaucrats on the payroll.

Thanks, LBJ!

Can we now admit defeat and try something that works?

Liberty.

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http://www.homelandstupidity.us/2007/12/31/the-market-for-liberty

The Market for Liberty
By Michael Hampton
Posted: December 31, 2007 5:30 am

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Economics isn’t merely a dry, boring study of money. It is, boiled down to its essence, a study of human nature: how people interact and trade with each other. Since this obviously involves money, there is no shortage of people who want some of that money for themselves, when they haven’t earned it. And the chief ways in which they take that money are to confuse people and to establish governments.

***End Quote***

Interesting that a great book is now a free MP3 file.

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http://www.ncc-1776.org/tle2008/tle450-20080106-04.html

War is a Racket
by General Smedley Butler, USMC
Special to The Libertarian Enterprise
Published in New York by Round Table Press, Inc., 1935.

***Begin Quote***

Looking back, Woodrow Wilson was re-elected president in 1916 on a platform that he had “kept us out of war” and on the implied promise that he would “keep us out of war.” Yet, five months later he asked Congress to declare war on Germany.

In that five-month interval the people had not been asked whether they had changed their minds. The 4,000,000 young men who put on uniforms and marched or sailed away were not asked whether they wanted to go forth to suffer and die.

Then what caused our government to change its mind so suddenly?

Money.

***End Quote***

Time to have an accounting of all the dead, missing, wounded, crippled, scared, and maybe even inconvenienced at the hands of big gooferment and its accomplices. When we total up the costs, what did we real get for all the blood, sweat, and tears?

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http://www.washingtontimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20080103/EDITORIAL/583177106/1013

Guns in the cockpit
By Tracy Price
January 3, 2008

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In a recent interview, Sen. Bill Nelson of Florida stated: “The need for guns in the cockpit is just nearly not [sic] as acute as it once was. There are all kind [sic] of screening systems, there is now the reinforced cockpit door, there are air marshals, we now have a lots of checks and balances.” Hearing this, some might ask, “Do airline pilots still need to be armed?” The answer is, “Absolutely — now more than ever.”

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Duh!

This seems like restating the obvious.

The gooferment is the villain.

It seems like a cheap and easy control to implement.

I’d do it if I was “king”. And, I wouldn’t mention it. Keep it as a surprise.

The times for depending upon others to protect us are OVER!

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http://www.lewrockwell.com/vance/vance130.html

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Defense Secretary Robert Gates envisioned a new role for the U.S. Army:

Army soldiers can expect to be tasked with reviving public services, rebuilding infrastructure and promoting good governance. All these so-called nontraditional capabilities have moved into the mainstream of military thinking, planning, and strategy – where they must stay.

In his speech Secretary Gates also acknowledged that “U.S. forces will play some role in Iraq for years to come.”

Anything but actually defend the country.

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That’s why the Founders were against having a standing army.

That’s why we have DOD and Homeland Security.

That’s why we are broke, and disgusted.

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