Whither Liberty Part II

tee bee

Part of the carryover conversation from Whither Liberty - At Government's Feet or at Its Head? was a discussion of exactly what government should be responsible.

I began with the federal government and delineated what I thought they should be responsible for:

A. Provide for the common defense
1. Support the states in preparing for civil and national defense

B. Promote the general welfare
1. Support commerce through minimal transportation organization and
2. Provide minimal regulation of commerce, seeking to ally states and never to trump them unless civil or national defense are jeopardized by a state's action or law
3. Ensure significant property ownership rights
4. Ensure significant self-protection rights
5. Ensure that taxation never rests inequitably
6. Ensure that taxation never rests heavily or accretes more to the federal government than to the states

C. Secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity
1. Provide reasonable order to the judicial process, explicitely ensuring that no laws contradict Constitutional laws
2. Provide minimal support and framework for states to provide education

Without a working framework of what you believe government should have the power to do, how can you support legislation and candidates?

More importantly, how can you influence them?

CP @ GMC.

Georgia Primary News

Yesterday was Georgia primary day. I took KJita, to show her what voting was. She even got a Georgia "I voted" sticker from the lady at the booth. She then took mine, also. Since she wore two "I voted" stickers yesterday, I assumed everyone thought she voted Democrat twice. I taught her to say "I voted libertarian."

Anyway, the good news:

The Fair Tax was on the ballot in three Georgia counties yesterday. The results:

Gwinnett County:
Total Votes: 35,755
Yes - 31,068. 86.9%
No - 4,687 13.1%

Cobb County:
Total votes: 39,458
Yes - 33,598. 85.15%
No - 5,860. 14.85%

Fayette County:
Total votes: 11,517
Yes - 9,828. 85.33%
No - 1,689. 14.67%

Big win for the Fair Tax. Now, if we could only get the politicians to take notice.

Also, great news for the people of east Gwinnett and DeKalb County. Cynthia Jihad McKinney was forced into a run off election. Hank Johnson, a former two term commissioner of DeKalb County, took 47% to Cynthia's 48% of the vote. That means, in three weeks, even fewer people will vote to decide who wins the Democratic Primary for Georgia's forth district (and whoever wins the primary will win the election).

Ms. Sheehan was present at Cynthia's expected celebration party last night. Once again, she leaves disappointed.

What a story

The annual, sort of, blog story is still underway at VC.

Our favorite hero, Brett Barboursville, a man who has risen from the dead more times than John Foregainst Kerry, was last spotted down at Rancho Malario, speeding off into the sunset toward Tijuana, a new face, and possibly a new identity. Meanwhile, Delilah, fresh from an appointment at the ALASE clinic, and the evil arch-fiend KKKarl Rove were experiencing what can only be termed a low polar moment of yaw inertia in Delilah's yummy red Mazda RX8 as she sped to Brett's side, unaware that he was, even then, fleeing the scene.

But at Farouk’s Souk and Pastry Nook, the course of true love ne'er doth run smooth. Given the events of the past year and Joe and Val Wilson's latest desperate plea for privacy via trial-by-media, we thought it only right to bring Brett back from the dead one. more. freaking. time:

Karl Rove to the butterfly kiss of Delilah's hand reaching across the jet black interior of the Mazda RX8; not the kind of treacly sweet butterfly kiss you see little girls give their Daddies but more the sweat-drenched, not-for-prime-time hot butterfly-on-butterfly action you see on the Nature channel late at night when your wife is out of town and the blinds are closed, her buttery soft digits momentarily caressing the gearshift as she retrieved her Moto Q from the glove compartment; "Brett honey?", she purred, almost as soon as her french-manicured fingers had ceased tripping across the keys as artfully as an exotic dancer from the Camelot in Teddy Kennedy's lap, "Those horrid Wilsons...you heard, I suppose...this changes everything!"...

Go check it out, and maybe contribute a good paragraph or two. Of course, if you haven't read the prior stories, you probably won't enjoy this one.

More Bad News About Global Warming

Apparently, global warming is preventing the killing of white, knuckle dragging Republikkkans in Nebraska and Kansas.

The 30-county area they serve in central Nebraska and north-central Kansas hasn't had a confirmed tornado for the first six months of this year. That hasn't happened since 1950.

Global warming treatens the life of nearly everyone on the planet, especially women, children, minorities and Palestinians.

But isn't it just like a Bush-Reich environmental disaster to stop killing the trailer park communities of the white, Red Staters in the mid-west?

Set Your TiVo Now

Comedy Central has finally grown a pair and will air the Scientology South Park episode again.

Comedy Central plans to air the Emmy-nominated episode on July 19. It was last scheduled to rerun in March but was abruptly pulled by the network.

The network said, hey, nothing unusual.

The network rotates its 150 episodes of "South Park" in and out of the broadcast schedule, spokesman Tony Fox said Wednesday. "This episode just happens to be rotating back in," he said.

Parker and Stone call BS.

The show's co-creators, Trey Parker and Matt Stone, were told in May that the episode was pulled from the schedule to appease Cruise and his partners in "Mission: Impossible III," according to reports.

Then they exercised their creative market power.

"If they hadn't put this episode back on the air, we'd have had serious issues, and we wouldn't be doing anything else with them," Stone said in Wednesday's edition of the trade paper Variety.

'Bout time.

This is one of the funniest episodes you will ever see. It is really a classic, though I would suggest that you probably won't like it that much if you belong a money grubbing, litigation happy cult that believes that we are all inhabited by stress causing aliens and that science fiction writers have the answers to life all the while pretending to be a religion for tax reasons.

No particular reason for that comment. I just don't think that is this show's demographic.

When Muslims Go Too Far

A report from Katahkstan claims that a chicken laid an egg. Well, there is more to the story.

A chicken in a Kazakh village has laid an egg with the word "Allah" inscribed on its shell, state media reported Thursday.

"Our mosque confirmed that it says 'Allah' in Arabic," Bites Amantayeva, a farmer from the village of Stepnoi in eastern Kazakhstan, told state news agency Kazinform.

"We'll keep this egg and we don't think it'll go bad."

You realize that this can only escalate the war against the Christian world. Now we Christians will have to step up our battle over signs. We will see the Virgin Mary in the water stains of an underpass on I-65 or a grilled cheese sandwich (see right). Jesus' image will appear on moldy bread in Aunt Gertie's cupboard.

This is not going to be pretty. We need to disarm and stop this religious war quickly.

Any one for an omelet?

Open Letter to Tucker Carlson

One of my favorite talking head shows is The Situation with Tucker Carlson show on MSNBC (Tucker's blog). I discovered it when it was on at 11pm M-Th nights and watched it when I could. MSNBC however has had nothing but disaster in that time slot. The network tried Donohue, which of course sucked bottom. Then they tried Dennis Miller, whom I enjoy greatly. But its ratings failed, and Dennis wasn't that great of a moderator at times. I do wish him the best in getting some type of talk show, whether it's political or not. Now they have Tucker's show.

Many people remember Tucker for being one of the right wing hacks (everyone was a 'hack') on Crossfire, and particularly the one that Jon Stewart called an "asshole." Takes one to know one I suppose. But Tucker and all the other hosts of that show were doing what CNN wanted as best as I can tell. It was a show about talking over each other, as many talking head shows become when more than one guest is on, or when anyone tries to talk over Nancy Grace or Bill O'Reilly.

Tucker's new show, however, does not suffer that problem. I have evaluated Tucker politically as an anti-Iraq war conservative with some of the good libertarian leanings. He regularly has segments with viewpoints opposing his own, but he talks to them politely, uses appropriate wit, and when he needs to cut them off to stay on point or time, he does so as politely as one can. He has a comfortable wit and I think the guy would be a hoot to drink with. Or maybe he is just a good actor. Doubt it.

Due to ratings issues, MSNBC recently changed its schedule. As of the July 4 week, Tucker's live time of 11pm was moved to 4 pm with a rerun at 6 pm. Before, I watched Tucker when I could and when I thought about it and the Braves weren't in a close game that the bullpen would eventually lose. Now, I TiVo him. In that sense, I will probably watch him more often that before. But I have complaints, because with the time change, there also came a format change.

In the old format, Tucker had a couple of regular guests, including Max Kellerman of ESPN and a segment with a liberal, usually some lady from Air America. When I say regular, I mean practically every night - I know Max was on every night. Max's job was to argue one or two issues as a devil's advocate -- no matter Tucker's position, he had to argue the other side. It was often a hoot as Tucker would force him to defend Nazi-loving NAMBLA members who counterfeit money, or whatever. I have yet to see either of those guests in the new format.

Instead, Tucker now has a segment called "Beat the Media." Its purpose is to take clips from MSNBC competitors and make fun of the hosts in some way. I suppose it would be funny if it weren't for the fact that many of the most ridiculous news programing is on MSNBC, other than Tucker of course. I understand why. Apparently Keith Olbermann runs the show since he is the only guy with a real audience, and his show is dedicated to (1) bashing the current administration and (2) bashing Bill O'Reilly. But this segment is beneath Tucker, and I think (and hope) he seems a little uncomfortable with this clear sour grapes approach to entertainment.

Hey, execs at MSNBC, don't turn Tucker Carlson into some self-important petty ankle biter of the competition like Keith Olbermann. Put him back in the 11 pm hour. No one is watching "Inside Reports: Lock up in an Arkansas Women's Prison." Except me of course, but that is purely for research purposes.

Masters In The Obvious

An aquarium nut has noticed an unfortunate side effect to adopting two sharks. His fish disappear.

"These were ordered by, I believe a dentist, and when he saw that they were good-sized sharks (and) they wouldn't fit in his tank, they needed a home or they were going to die," Valentine said. The new additions to his tank have made snacks out of his other fish.

"They're not as hungry as normally today because they just ate one of our donated puffer fish," Valentine said. The puffer fish are not the only ones to fall victim to the sharks, Dwyer reported.

"We had a nice display of some angels, a couple of raffs and about 40 damsels. When the sharks were entered in the tank about a month ago, they're all gone," Valentine said.

As we know from pro-Saddam liberals, if the fish aren't in the tank now, they probably were never there.

He also has four children. I hope he doesn't encourage them to go swimming.

World Ends -- Women Hurt Most

A new study reveals that women who work long hours are more likely to eat poorly, smoke and do other bad stuff. But men, the study found, are just fine.

"Women who work long hours eat more high-fat and high-sugar snacks, exercise less, drink more caffeine and, if smokers, smoke more than their male colleagues," said Dr. Daryl O'Connor, a researcher at Leeds University.

"For men, working longer hours has no negative impact on exercise, caffeine intake or smoking," O'Connor said in a statement released by the Economic and Social Research Council, which funded his study.

One can see the clear Catch-22 here. Our employers tend to reward hard workers, but we like good looking, hard workers. Since the hard working women are fat, high strung, and smelly from smoking, they don't get the promotion. The good looking women are of course not working hard, so they don't get the promotion. That leaves only us men, who thankfully are not judged so harshly on our looks.

God is good.

Animal News

This man from Alabamastan gets the death penalty if Cassandra (see #27 on the link) is on the jury.

What gets terrorists fired up? Kangaroos:

Residents of the northeast Georgia town of Dawsonville are befuddled by news that an 87-acre kangaroo farm is listed among sites nationwide that are considered a prime target for terrorists. [T]he report released Tuesday by the inspector general of the Department of Homeland Security caught the town by surprise.

Ya think? I wonder why.

The inspector general found that the National Asset Database includes "unusual or out-of-place" sites whose presence tainted the credibility of the list.

No kidding. As the Sheriff said, "If it's because they think it's a place that draws crowds, a Wal-Mart is a lot more dangerous than a kangaroo farm." Does anyone really (I mean really) doubt that Homeland Security is wasting at least 80% of the tax dollars being funneled through that moras?

In life's continuing effort to immitate art, "snakes on a plane":

Dutch customs officials found a live poisonous snake in a package sent by airmail from Hong Kong to a collector in the Netherlands.

Officials said customs inspectors thought the snake was a rubber gag gift when they first scanned the package.

However, the inspectors learned that the snake was a live creature when they noticed it moving. [Ed. note: You can't get anything past those "inspectors."]

Officials don't know if the snake might have posed a threat to passengers had it escaped, as in the upcoming movie "Snakes on a Plane."

Snakes on a Plane.

How can that movie be anything but a blockbuster?

Thoughts on the GWOT

tee bee

I've posted a piece I've been working on for several weeks:Pro GWOT Since December 21, 1988.

It's become increasingly important in terms of support and strategy for the war that we acknowledge the locus as well as the broader roots of what we are up against.

It's a long piece, so I'll only post excerpts.

I've posted a piece I've been working on for several weeks:Pro GWOT Since December 21, 1988.It's become increasingly important in terms of support and strategy for the war that we acknowledge the locus as well as the broader roots of what we are up against.It's a long piece, so I'll only post excerpts.

...

I threatened back then to cull my unflinching support for the war from any perceived Bush loyalty in another post.

Here it is - the day the Global War on Terror began.

In 1988, terrorists took down a Pan Am plane over Lockerbie, Scotland (1, 2, 3, 4), killing 270 people, including eleven citizens of Lockerbie. A bomb detonated in the forward hold, causing the plane to dump passengers and debris over the 81 mile trail of the crash.

The world held its breath as the suspected terrorists were hunted; no one doubted that it was again the work of terrorists demanding either money for their cause or for the release of their fellow terrorists.
...

Regardless of whether you believe the terrorists behind the Lockerbie massacre were Libyan or Syrian, the fact remains that before Lockerbie went down, virtually every terrorist attack had taken place on soil or the air route of a sympathetic nation or in distant points where we had military presence.

Lockerbie signaled a sea change: These hyperactive and ideologically unified terrorists were opposed to the idea and ideals of the West - not simply any inroads or presence in their homelands by Westerners - and were now determined bring to the battle to our doorstep with as violent and costly results as possible.

CP @ BBA.

Get Gymkata In DVD

Sleeping on the job has its punishment. You see, I needed your help. One of the most inept, inexplicably bad "sports" movies, actions movies, and general release movies of all time is Gymkata. "What is Gymkata?" you ask. Well, I've talked about this movie before, but here goes.

According to the tag line, it is "The skill of gymnastics, the kill of karate." Personally, I'd put my money on Hoyce Gracie everytime. Nonetheless, this movie has the script of a 10 year old, the acting quality of an elementary production of Peter and the Wolf, and the sound effects of a Bugs Bunny Movie. It is unintentional hilarity.

In 1985, Kurt Thomas had just competed and won something in the Olympics. Since it was OK to love your country in 1985, and many Olympians were still amatuers, many Olympic athletes were determined to cross over into money making careers. Thomas decided to pretend to be an actor, and his dream, Gymkata was made.

The plot is certainly unique. Johnathan Cabot (Thomas) is a champion gymnast. In the tiny, yet savage, country of Parmistan, there is a perfect spot for a "star wars" site. For the US to get this site, they must compete in the brutal "Game." No one has won the game in 900 years. That is right. 900 years. So to be prepared, Cabot trains for TWO MONTHS! Cabot, the son of a former operative, must win the game to get the star wars site approved. Cabot must combine his gymnastics skills of the west with fighting secrets of the east and form the absurd: GYMKATA!

So, how does the plot go, you ask? This is the best site to explain it: I-Mockery. I encourage you to read the summary from beginning to end. I know he tells you how the story ends, but it is OK. This is not a movie with the element of surprise. This is not Sixth Sense, trust me.

Where does Gymkata rate in the movie world? Well, it is Maxim's 17th Worst Movie all time. That was generous, actually. I have read other reviews that place it in much worse positions, including the worst sports movie of all time, and the worst movie of all time, but I can't find them on line.

In any event, there was an election being held by Amazon to vote to release this classic movie onto DVD. Here is another place to vote for Gymkata's DVD release. Like a Georgia democrat who still does not have to show ID, I voted often. But had I been on the ball, I could have appealed to my mass body of readers to vote for Gymkata as well. Alas, voting ended July 1, and the winners will be anounced in August.

Don't listen to this guy -- a Gymkata hater. If Gymkata is chosen, add it to your collection.

Gay* Thursday 7/13/2006

The return of Gay* Thursday brings us the biggest, happiest, athletic event that the French speaking, boring, socialized medicine loving Canadians have organized since 1976. The First Annual World Out Games, which fairly could be called the Happy Games, is about to start. This is, if they can get the atheletes into the country.

Organizers of an international event in Montreal for gay, lesbian and transgendered athletes say some participants are having trouble getting into Canada, prompting a public appeal to federal Immigration Minister Monte Solberg.

Just two weeks before the games are to begin, 242 foreign participants are still waiting for visas, say organizers for the 1st World Outgames.

The Visa problems may be due in part because of discrimination against gays, though not directly by Canada.

Noel St. Pierre, an immigration lawyer in Montreal, told CBC that several of those rejected entry into Canada were told it was because they have criminal records.

St. Pierre said he was investigating the nature of the criminal records, since many of the invited athletes face prosecution in their home countries for being homosexual.

Yep. They are criminals, though their criminal record might be solely related to their one qualification for these games.

Would Mrs. Tingle call this ironic?

* Gay: 1 a : happily excited : MERRY b : keenly alive and exuberant : having or inducing high spirits 2 a : BRIGHT, LIVELY b : brilliant in color

For more Gay* Thursday fun, check out A Guide to Midwestern Culture.

More Soccer News

Today's government run schools are turning our nation into a bunch of mindless, spineless, wimps. No tollerence policies are instituted to prevent administraters from having to exercise their mind and think, and everything from grading with colors to the playground is becoming a feeling sensitive pansy land.

But, when you decide to ban soccer, as school in Charlestown, S.C. did recently, it somehow doesn't feel so bad.

H/t: Best of the Web.

Carnival of Liberty LII

The one year anniversary of the Carnival of Liberty was celebrated on July 4. Check it out at Unrepentant Individual.

There was a time, when I was more active, that participated in this Carnival on a regular basis. Perhaps I will get busy blogging again, but sadly, I am more than busy enough doing things that pay the private school tuition.

Oh, and if you don't like the Carnival of Liberty, you're a stinking commie.

Soccer Still Sucks

Anyone who is a regular reader here knows two things: (1) my last few months of blogging has been rather boring (thanks to tee bee for getting anything done here); and (2) I hate the guts and livers of soccer. And unlike Danny Lombard, I have seen soccer and understand it.

Well, the World Cup is over.

Soccer sucks. It leads to famine, disease, gay gangs terrorizing cities (see photo above) and civil war. And we all know that all World Cup games end in 0-0 tie followed by shoot outs. That is, unless a team scores on a penalty kick or corner kick. No one ever scores during normal play. Nope. Peanlty kicks, corner kicks and the inevidible shoot out because no one can score in over time either.


Don't believe me? Watch the championship game when it replayed tonight on your local spanish speaking station. Here is what you will see:


France's only goal, Zidane's penalty kick in the seventh minute, was the lone score by an Italy opponent in seven games.

The Italians put the ball into the net 12 minutes later on Materazzi's header off a corner kick.


Then no one scores again. So Italy wins the game in a shoot out.