Archive for October, 2008
Educating for Anarchism, Blagnet.net edition
Friday, October 31st, 2008Mike over at nostate.com has an occasional post entitled Educating for Anarchism, in which he posts real life exchanges of his political beliefs with others. Below, you will find an exchange with my brother in a Facebook message thread (which sadly, is the best means he has of keeping in ...
Obama’s 30-minute infomercial
Thursday, October 30th, 2008I heard about Barack Obama's 30-minute policy-advertising infomercial after it had aired. Since I haven't heard any of it or read a transcript, I can only guess as to its contents. Before I search for a transcript, I want to make this prediction (which I certainly would have made beforehand ...
Quote of the day
Thursday, October 30th, 2008Since I am too busy and uninspired lately to write anything substantive, other than explaining why my Statist friends and colleagues are wrong to support the Democrats so faithfully (and various other corollaries that would be fun, if not necessarily interesting or thought-provoking, to write about if I had the ...
Quote of the day
Tuesday, October 28th, 2008"I wonder if Stevens has ever cared the tiniest bit about the way that Justice Department lawyers treat people until now. Now that he's the victim, suddenly he fancies himself some kind of underdog hero." —Ryan McMaken, on Sen. Ted Stevens blaming his conviction on an "unconscionable" Department of Justice [sic]
Anti–universal health care proposal in Arizona
Sunday, October 26th, 2008I was intrigued by this George Will column in the Washington Post, which might mark the first time that has happened to me. He begins: On Election Day, Arizonans can give the nation the gift of a good example. They can enact a measure that could shape the health-care debate that ...
Quote of the day
Friday, October 24th, 2008"Whenever there is a problem due to 'too much freedom', the solution is to restrict freedom, and not to blame the individual that committed the crime. Whenever there is a problem due to a corrupt system, then the individuals are blamed and never the corrupt system." —FSK, Kangaroo Court Fnord.
Hamburgers
Friday, October 24th, 2008In a valient effort to not be very productive at work on a Friday, I stumbed across a group on Facebook that has a collection of amusing pictures. Like most of my college aged cohorts that populate Facebook, this group is unabashedly pro-Obama. He's the new Jesus, so sayeth the ...
Immorality and control
Friday, October 24th, 2008I liked this post by Francois Tremblay about hierarchies and control. One of the good things about being a libertarian blagger is that you can have intellectual debates with other amateur (or, sometimes, professional) philosophers about real, substantive issues. The bad side is that libertarians often disagree over semantics and ...
Liberals obsessed with Sarah Palin
Tuesday, October 21st, 2008My hardcore-Democrat friends (read: my friends) are officially obsessed with Sarah Palin. Not in the stupid, absurd way in which Charles Murray or Rich Lowry are, but it is no less pathetic. They gave up talking about the issues three or four weeks ago—although they did watch the idiotic and ...
Andy Rooney: More war! More death! More inflation! More corporatism!
Monday, October 20th, 2008I still don't have much time for real writing, but I hope to some time late this week; until then, enjoy this dim-witted quote from the doddering old Andy Rooney, from last night's "60 Minutes": I'd really like to meet our next president, so I sort of hate to tell you ...
Quote of the day
Thursday, October 16th, 2008"Bush is to the left of me now. Comrade Bush announced he will buy shares in private banks." —Hugo Chavez Hat tip: Mike Tennant.
Irresponsible lending and borrowing
Thursday, October 16th, 2008I liked this post by Less Antman and the comments following it, explaining some of the basics of the housing market crisis and its role in the current recession. It is short and simple, but I appreciate that type of post or article in my efforts to learn more about ...
A Question
Tuesday, October 14th, 2008For many of our readers here, it may be surprising to find that I am a veteran. It's not really something I bring up often, and typically when others do, I try to change the subject. I do have a post planned for the near future that addresses some of ...
Meet CutoutDissection.com
Tuesday, October 14th, 2008Which once again proves my theory that teenagers are idiots.
Quote of the day
Sunday, October 12th, 2008Via Jeffrey Tucker on the Mises blag, this passage from Ludwig von Mises's Causes of the Economic Crisis, 1931: The appearance of periodically recurring economic crises is the necessary consequence of repeatedly renewed attempts to reduce the 'natural' rates of interest on the market by means of banking policy. The crises ...
Democratic vs. oligarchic news sites
Friday, October 10th, 2008Recently Jeffrey Tucker wrote about the reasons he doesn't like Digg.com as much as he used to: There was a time, I vaguely recall, when Digg was a must read. Nearly every item unearthed some smart, interesting bit of inside knowledge, tech news before it became mainstream, fascinating observations that you ...
Arthur Silber on our choice of war criminals
Tuesday, October 7th, 2008I imagine many of my friends and colleagues are watching the debate between two hideous megalomaniacs, two shameless scumbags, two proud war criminals, as I write this. I don't imagine they would ever read anything as honest or powerful as Arthur Silber writes on a regular basis. I liked this ...
Crazy, libertarian extremists were right about the boom and bust
Sunday, October 5th, 2008Yes, I read a Karen De Coster post and wasn't immediately repulsed or offended. She makes two points I've thought to myself recently: The point being that "crazy, extremist" libertarians/contrarians/skeptics, who long ago pointed out the facts about statist policies propping up an unsustainable economic boom, are just crazy and extremist. ...
Quote of the day
Saturday, October 4th, 2008“The Soviet economy is proof that...a socialist command economy can function and even thrive.” —Nobel Prize winner Paul A. Samuelson, 1989 Hat tip: Robert Higgs, in an excellent rant about the impracticality of every government-created economic program, such as the recently-collapsed Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.
Austrian business cycle theory and recent irrationality
Saturday, October 4th, 2008I am not even an amateur economist yet, much less a real economist, but I think I understand the basics of the Austrian business cycle theory (ABCT). As you know, I think it explains the boom–bust cycle of our economies pretty well (but maybe that's because the libertarian economists I ...
Blagnet.net survey
Thursday, October 2nd, 2008Blagnet.net's survey of the day: What did you do instead of watching the debate between two professional-criminal VP candidates? I debated with Francois over the morality and voluntariness of hierarchies and attempted to learn about banking and finance from FSK.
Quote of the day
Wednesday, October 1st, 2008"This is the way government's supposed to work, folks, and it did." —Senator Judd Gregg, R-NH, on the "Bank Robbery of 2008" How right he is, though he has no idea why.