Archive for the ‘Elections’ Category
Hypocrites silent as Obama authorizes military detention of American citizens
Monday, January 2nd, 2012One of the most unfortunate aspects of America's democratic process and its current state here at the beginning of 2012 is the nearly compete absence of discussion of some central issues by most people, along with their failure to acknowledge that those issues even exist and their complete hypocrisy regarding ...
Jim Breuer on democracy
Saturday, October 23rd, 2010I really liked actor-comedian Jim Breuer's perspective on politics and democracy on the Regular Guys Show on Friday, October 22, 2010. He was an in-studio guest, and he stuck around for the last news segment of the morning. When the news guy brought up the local elections and the fact ...
Fish in a barrel 7
Monday, May 24th, 2010I've been a little depressed about how little time I have/make for blagging and reading about politics and economics this year, but it's because I'm working a lot, exercising five or six times a week, and watching things obsessively on DVD, like Star Trek and Futurama and True Blood. I ...
Campaign finance reform is pretty simple
Monday, January 25th, 2010Many of my friends and millions of people in the blogosphere/social-mediasphere have expressed their outrage and indignation at the Supreme Court's ruling that corporations can spend as much as they want to promote or oppose whatever political candidates or causes that they want. One of my friends said she was ...
One year of Obama crimes and failures
Tuesday, January 19th, 2010Barack Obama is already a terrible president, a war criminal who belongs in prison beside Dick Cheney and George W. Bush. He is an economic ignoramus who despises private enterprise, exalts the State over the individual, and dreams of a world in which the inert, gray, bureaucratic mediocrity of corporate-State ...
Quote of the day
Friday, October 16th, 2009Charles Johnson, October 14, 2009: If you want a recipe for real disgust with the prevailing political establishment, and a real opening for radical critique, one of the things that has to happen is that dissidents need to begin to see that even the longed-for best-case scenario can’t possibly deliver what ...
Misconceptions about libertarianism and Statism
Tuesday, September 1st, 2009I find that correcting misconceptions about libertarianism amounts more to correcting misconceptions about the State than anything else. Statists don't understand libertarianism because they don't understand their own philosophy. Libertarianism is individual liberty, personal sovereignty, voluntary association, and moral egalitarianism for all people. By "moral egalitarianism" I mean everyone is ...
Blagnet.net’s quiz of the day
Tuesday, April 7th, 2009Who said the following? It must be understood that toil alone makes for accomplishment and advancement, and righteous possession is the reward of toil, and its incentive. There is no progress except in the stimulus of competition. When competition—natural, fair, impelling competition—is suppressed, whether by law, compact or conspiracy, we halt the ...
Obama’s nationalism and socialism
Wednesday, January 21st, 2009Partly because I like quotations so much and partly because I haven't perused many blags recently, my favorite blag post of the last several days was this one by Michael Rozeff. He compares the unifying, nationalistic theme of Obama's four-year presidential campaign to the ideas and slogans of the Nazis. ...
Of course, Rahm Emanuel secretly negotiated with Blagojevich
Wednesday, December 17th, 2008The fact that Rahm Emanuel is a belligerent warmonger hasn't noticeably stirred up very much unrest among Obama maniacs. Neither has his...shall we say, vicious and vindictive personality. In fact, a lot of people lauded Obama's choice for his chief of staff precisely because of Emanuel's uncompromising and dictatorial attitude ...
Sarah Palin: same old neoconservatism cost them election
Tuesday, November 11th, 2008From an article at Politico.com, reporting on an interview that appeared in the Anchorage Daily News, we learn that Sarah Palin blames her and McCain's defeat on the fact that their campaign represented the "status quo" and that the people wanted change—anything different from the Bush regime—and the McCain/Palin ticket ...
Sheldon Richman on Black Tuesday
Saturday, November 8th, 2008I wish I had seen Sheldon Richman's thoughts about America's election of a black man to its highest and most vaunted position before I wrote my last post, because I think his take on it (and Wil Wilkinson's, whom he quotes) matches mine more closely than does Lew's, which, if ...
Race and Obama’s non-achievement
Friday, November 7th, 2008Compare semi-libertarian Radley Balko's commentary on President-elect Obama's achievement: Tonight, we took a huge step toward putting race behind us. It’s something to be proud of. to real libertarian Lew Rockwell's assessment of the perception that Obama (and his voters) achieved something monumental: The main message concerns race. All the headlines blared ...
Cap’n Mal on elections
Wednesday, November 5th, 2008I think a lot about my friends' perceptions of my somewhat-anti-voting and voting for "nobody" mentality. I don't talk about it much because, in all honesty, from what I've observed of their discussions amongst themselves, the extent of their understanding of political philosophy is "anti-Democrat = neocon Republican." So I ...
Almost vindicated
Wednesday, November 5th, 2008One of the main reasons I wrote that it's understandable to vote was to spread publicity about anti-establishment, anti-State candidates and thereby make a more specific, public statement of disapproval with the system (as opposed to the silent, inactive form of disapproval that is complete abstention). That's why I had ...
It can’t get any worse
Wednesday, November 5th, 2008I heard an Obama supporter say this today (paraphrasing because I couldn't quite hear everything, from across the room): "When we elected Dubya eight years ago, we thought he would be halfway decent, and he turned out to be terrible. ... Although, at this point in time, everybody's saying, 'It ...
Well, that didn’t last long
Wednesday, November 5th, 2008Last night I wrote about the sick and depressed feeling that my unintentional, half-subconscious rooting for Barack Obama gave me; this feeling was very strong all day yesterday, from my trip to the polls to my viewing of Comedy Central's election coverage, because I found myself actually rooting for Obama ...
Rooting for Barack Obama
Tuesday, November 4th, 2008All of my friends and colleagues, being scientific researchers who are funded by the State (National Institutes of Health, mainly), want Obama to win so badly they can taste it. They preach about doing your civic duty of voting every chance they get, and they talk and email about how ...
Michigan ballot proposals
Tuesday, November 4th, 2008I broke down and went to my polling location this morning to vote for one ballot proposal and vote against four of them, and write in "NOBODY" for president, Senate, House of Representatives, state legislature positions, mayor, etc. The ballot proposal I voted Yes on was to legalize medical marijuana ...
Many, many quotes of the day!
Monday, November 3rd, 2008I probably visit Vox Popoli, Vox Day's blag, about once or twice a month, and when I can avoid or ignore the egomaniacal self-promotion and non-Christian-bashing, I am rarely disappointed. There were a couple gems in his recent posts: There's no shortage of evidence that most people are idiots. This is ...
Undecided voters are the biggest idiots on the planet
Monday, November 3rd, 2008In Michigan and probably some other states, there has been some moderate amount of discussion, amongst state legislators and radio hosts and other worthless people, about whether voters should be allowed to wear political shirts to their polling places on election day. Since campaign advertisements such as signs and flyers ...
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 ...
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 ...
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 ...
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.
Democratic voters are stupid, evil, or ignorant
Sunday, September 28th, 2008Being a big-shot blagger is a stressful and demanding hobby. Similar to the evolution of rules, bylaws, punishments, and social mores in a customary-law society, our positions, assertions, and predictions are under constant judgment and scrutiny by the global community of readers and other blaggers, leading to the success of ...
The Republocrats are ALL against us
Wednesday, September 24th, 2008Brad at WendyMcElroy.com is right on the money: If the bailout accomplishes nothing else, it may expose the charade of the "two-party" system to a few more eyes. The Democrats' excuse for supporting so much atrocious Bush legislation (Patriot Act, use of force, Military Commissions Act, warrantless wiretapping, etc.) has traditionally been ...
Thoughts on libertarianism and voting
Sunday, September 14th, 2008The anarchist argument against voting in democratic elections is that participating in the immoral system of determining right and wrong that is democracy (mob-rule) gives your tacit consent to the outcome of such elections; by voting, you demonstrate that you agree that mob-rule is a valid and just way of ...
Why I Don’t Vote
Wednesday, September 10th, 2008Following yesterday's article in my University's paper, another writer wrote a follow up article which essentially praises both Presidential candidates. I'll admit, I didn't read the whole thing since the first few sentences seemed to be filled with glowing praise of politicians, and I'd rather not waste my time. Instead, I ...
Vote with your feet, not your mind
Thursday, September 4th, 2008In an astonishing departure from the norm, James Ostrowski blagged about something unrelated to Buffalo, NY, his father's career in Buffalo, NY, or his own amazing prescience in making political predictions. He's frustrated that the Democrats look as though they're about to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory once ...
Biden good, Palin bad
Saturday, August 30th, 2008Predictably, all of my friends, acquaintances, and co-workers whom I've heard express their thoughts and opinions about Obama/McCain running mate choices enthusiastically approve of Obama's selection of Joe Biden and speak badly or neutrally of Sarah Palin, McCain's running mate. This is because they are all hardcore liberal Democrats. (By ...
Cypriot cynical wisdom
Thursday, August 28th, 2008My college friend who is from the Turkish side of Cyprus currently has a Facebook status that reads: "is bewildered by the amount of hot air generated at political party conventions in the US. He bets you could run a steel mill with it for a year!" Amen. I just ...
Moderate voters tough for both McCain and Obama to win
Thursday, July 3rd, 2008The AP reports that self-described "moderate" voters will be hard for both McCain and Obama to win in this presidential election. It reminds me of the line from Brian on "Family Guy": "Undecided voters are the biggest idiots on the planet."
Inside the Statolatrist mind
Saturday, June 21st, 2008In New Scientist magazine, Owen Flanagan reviews the book The Political Mind by George Lakoff. Flanagan provides a surprising and refreshing non-Statolatrist perspective on science and politics in this review, but that might be typical in New Scientist—it certainly isn't in primary scientific journals. Flanagan is especially skeptical of this ...
Francois Tremblay: Agorism, not political action
Wednesday, June 4th, 2008Francois Tremblay wrote an excellent open letter to all Libertarians, and that's with a capital L, meaning the ones who think of themselves as members of the Libertarian Party and act mainly to promote LP candidates. Typically capital-L Libertarians are minarchists who believe in the Constitution or some such. This ...
Libertarian Party nomination
Wednesday, May 21st, 2008Link-and-run time: I agree with pretty much every word of this post by Roderick Long, who, despite his agorist commitments, endorses anarcho-capitalist Mary Ruwart for the LP nomination.
Hillary and Obama differ on economics
Monday, May 5th, 2008So claims David Leonhardt of the New York Times. Well, obviously that is completely stupid. He writes, For all the similarities between the two Democrats, there is also a core thematic difference between them. Mrs. Clinton tends to favor narrowly focused programs, like the gas-tax holiday, that speak to specific voter ...
Democracy disgraced
Friday, April 25th, 2008After the debate in Philadelphia between Obama and Hillary, ABC moderators George Stephanopoulos and Charlie Gibson were widely and harshly criticized for the way they ran the debate; specifically, the questions they spent the first 45 minutes on. Viewers, writers, and Obama's camp complained that voters did not hear anything ...
Obama’s wrong and so are (some of) his critics
Sunday, April 13th, 2008Barack Obama created a little stir with two of his speeches recently, at least among those of us who still haven't been bewitched by his ostentatious oratory. First, in San Francisco, he said, "So it's not surprising then that [when voters] get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or ...
The Great Depression, the current recession, and the importance of your vote
Sunday, April 13th, 2008If voting changed anything, they'd make it illegal. —Emma Goldman Many comparisons have been made, at least by Austro-libertarian economists, of the Great Depression to the current inflationary recession. The reason the two periods are compared is that both recessions were caused by the same things: the Federal Reserve and ...
Dilbert on nonvoting
Monday, March 10th, 2008I was perusing Francois Tremblay's blag and was delighted to find this post, consisting entirely of a Dilbert comic on nonvoting that Wally Conger posted. (By the way, at first I assumed that whoever first uploaded this comic got it from February 16 (my birthday) of the 2008 Dilbert page-a-day ...
Election results leaked early by Diebold
Tuesday, February 26th, 2008Ahh, how the Onion speaks (closer to) the truth more often than our traditional "news" outlets! Diebold Accidentally Leaks Results Of 2008 Election Early. Money quote: "This country is based on the fantasy that the government is the voice of the people."
Honesty and evil
Monday, February 11th, 2008Some recent exchanges with my roommate prompted this post. I have given up writing very critical things about my close friends without their knowledge, so I am not here to secretly lambaste her. Luckily, I don't even think anything very critical of her, so I abstain from criticizing her out ...
Obama’s landslide in Georgia
Tuesday, February 5th, 2008I think the reason Barack Obama won the Georgia primary so handily is because Georgia and presumably a lot of the rest of the south is vehemently anti-Hillary. I wasn't surprised Obama won South Carolina so handily. I think a lot of voters, even loyal Democrats, whether they really knew ...
Republicans are idiots
Tuesday, February 5th, 2008On CNN just now, as one of their pundits was breaking down the Georgia votes this Super Tuesday and reporting on some of the exit poll survey statistics, he said that in Georgia and in previous states, Republican voters who identified themselves as dissatisfied with President Bush largely voted for ...
Dave Barry on the presidential nomination system
Sunday, January 27th, 2008The libertarianish humor columnist hasn't lost anything in his semi-retirement. Then again, maybe he is doing as Will Rogers did and "just watching the government and reporting the facts": On Tuesday, millions of Florida voters will head for the polls. Being Floridians, many of them will become confused and drive into ...