Thom’s article:
Libertarians Believe in Kingdom Rather than Democracy | Thom Hartmann

“I’ve often said that Libertarians are Republicans who want to smoke dope and get laid (they’re in favor of decriminalizing pot and prostitution), but what Rand Paul is showing us that their worldview goes much farther than even a Republican like Richard Nixon – who brought us the EPA – would.”

That’s right, Thom – but libertarians don’t believe in Kingdom, they believe in a Magic Kingdom. In modern libertarianism, a super-deity called Free Market rights all wrongs and makes everyone free through it’s magical power of privatization. And even though we have wonderful examples of universal privatization in places like Somalia, somehow the magic deity will make things all better in America. You just have to believe…

We could wish that libertarianism was a movement of personal freedom, as it would like to disguise itself. If only libertarians weren’t so stuck on their worship of corporatism it might be different. However, we have to deal with modern libertarianism as it IS, not as we wish it was.

The fact that libertarian think tanks are funded by corporations and the super rich should tell you everything you need to know. But of course, the average citizen probably doesn’t realize that. So let us clarify AGAIN that libertarians want ZERO regulations on corporations AND universal privatization. That means that while you may own your own home, you won’t be able to set foot outside of your little piece of property without having to “trespass” on someone else’s property. That means that if you are allowed on the streets and sidewalks at all, it will be a privilege granted to you by the owner of that property. You will be able to do so ONLY under the rules of the owner, and that privilege will be subject to revocation at any time.

Rand Paul’s insistence that businesses should be able to be “white’s only” or “no Jews allowed” if the owner chooses isn’t an aberration, it is the cornerstone of libertarianism: private property rights above all; no public rights, period.

Once again, we remind you that you have NO rights when you are on someone else’s private property. And under the libertarian ideal, every inch of space is someone else’s private property.

The faith of libertarians is admirable for its steadfastness in the face of reality. Their idea that corporations, which now do so much harm as they play games at the edge of the law, will suddenly start doing good things once they have no restraints on them would seem to fly in the face of both common sense and empirical observation. For the faithful, however, reality has a well-known liberal bias and may be ignored.

It reminds me of the line that is used every time there is a merger: “The new combined company will be more efficient and will be able to pass the savings along to the consumer.” – Yeah… they will be able to - that’s very different from actually doing, however. The reality is that no corporations ever merged so that they could pass savings along to consumers; they did it to maximize profits. And that’s all corporations ever try to do, is maximize profits. But that never stopped a libertarian from believing.

Oh, and speaking of Libertarians being Republicans who want to smoke dope: Try going into a mall wearing the “wrong” kind of t-shirt (one that is against “mall policy”) …or saying the wrong thing – in that privately-owned public space – and see what happens. And yet Libertarians think that dope will be okay? Well, maybe, but only if the giant corporation that owns the town in which you live decides to allow it. That decision will depend only on how it affects the quarterly corporate bottom line.

If libertarianism prevails then we hope and pray that the libertarians are at least right in this one aspect and dope becomes legal. Frankly you’ll need to be stoned 24/7 to deal with your life under the corporate jack-boot …and knowing that you, Mr. Libertarian, helped bring about our living hell.

Another reason why libertarianism means no liberty at all.

He’s going about this the hard way.  Why doesn’t he just buy a pair of sunglasses with a digital camera built into them, like I got as a present for Christmas?  It works just fine.  I’ve been able to take pictures of people on line in front of me at the supermarket and fast food places without them ever knowing about it.  My fantasy is that I’ll be in a store when it gets robbed so I can take some sneaky pictures of the thieves, which I can then hand over to the police and become the darling of the media, for about fifteen minutes.

Hey, it could happen.

A camera eye

According to the story linked below:

“Which words are exactly considered profane is
still unclear, but the bill does have a list of qualifications for
profanity including words or actions that are lewd, vulgar or indecent
in nature.”

Well, thanks for clearing that up, Senator Douchebag.

I’ve got five bucks to bet that this assclown will eventually get caught involved in either a gay relationship or be found to have a substantial kiddie porn collection (no, I’m not equating being gay with being a perv; it’s that moralizing losers like this tend to lump them together and have enormous issues about their own “sinful” proclivities).

Oddly, the article doesn’t mention this guy’s political affiliation, but come on, you know he’s a Republican.  That’s the GOP for you, always working on the big issues in America–like cussing.

story link

Banning Books Still in Fashion.

This is the part I like.  Pissed at the city but not wanting to pay the daily fine, the guy covers the mural–with a banner that has the First Amendment on it.

Balls in your court, City of Clearwater.  Go ahead, say that the First Amendment is illegal.  This’ll be great to watch.

Story link

From Cartoon People

So you conspire to trash the US Constitution, you create a policy where torture isn’t torture unless YOU or the President say it is… some people don’t like that, and this makes YOU a victim of the War on Terror?

Wonkette : Alberto Gonzales, War On Terror’s Latest Victim

Mr. Gonzales said that “for some reason, I am portrayed as the one who is evil in formulating policies that people disagree with. I consider myself a casualty, one of the many casualties of the war on terror.”

Oh the humanity! Poor misunderstood Alberto. He only wanted to turn America into the Soviet Union. How could anyone call him evil? SNIVEL–WHINE. Why can’t people see what a good little crypto-Nazi he is?

He truly pities the fool.

I started thinking like that a few years back when I saw a commercial for the U.S. Army which talked about our soldiers as “peacekeepers” and showed them riding around in a tank-like conveyance. Funny thing: the streets the tank-looking thing was moving along looked more like an American ghetto than some place full of furriners. A little bell went off in my head. Lo and behold, I just read the following:

Ray Gun for Taming America

Play Security Checkpoint.

Read the comments on this product.

Well, I’ve always said that the modern incarnation of fascism wouldn’t come with a shouting dictator but with a smiley face and a corporate logo – and here we are: Terror toys: Scan-It X-Ray Machine the Ugly Face of 21st-Century Toys. Yep, for todays young-uns, nothing is more fun than violating the privacy of their fellow citizens. I understand that the brown shirts and armbands are sold separately, but it does come with pair of rubber gloves for the mandatory body cavity search.

What’s next, a home waterboarding kit?

Poison gumballs the next terror tactic?

Welcome to Reality®, Dude.  Apparently what the high-tech stuff of the near future really is, is “pain weapons” designed to break up riots.  I guess we’re not supposed to think about this, but it seems that the Big Brains among us see a future in which there are riots so large that the military, not the police, has to break them up.

“But, Cranky Media Guy,” you say, “the military says these pain weapons are intended for use in places like Iraq, not Detroit.”

To you I respond, “Uh, since when do you see the military using non-lethal weapons?  Don’t they normally just shoot people with the intent of killing them?  After all, dead enemies are gone forever, while stunned enemies just plot how to get you another day.

Sorry, I’m not buying the notion that these will not be deployed domestically, which makes me wonder what the Powers That Be think is going to cause American society to devolve into large-scale rioting.  I just hope we don’t all find out the answer to that question.

Run away the ray-gun is coming : We test US army’s new secret weapon.

You may be aware that Great Britain is the country with the most security cameras on Earth.  London has a so-called Ring of Steel, a web of cameras and roadblocks “designed to detect, track and deter terrorists.” 

New York emulating London’s web of cameras is a good thing, you say?  It’ll help prevent terror attacks, you say.  Oh, really?

From the NYT:

“British officials said images captured by the cameras helped track
suspects after the London subway bombings in 2005 and the car bomb
plots last month.”

In other words, the thousands of cameras in London did exactly Jack Shit to prevent psychos from killing innocent people.  Do you honestly imagine that anyone extreme enough to engage in a suicide bombing is going to think, “I’m willing to die for [insert irrational cause here] but not if I’m on camera“?

Let me ask you a question.  If you think that government-operated cameras exist to protect the public and are a great thing, would you have wanted to live in the former Soviet Union or East Germany which employed many of them?

“No,” you say, “those cameras were installed by governments that were afraid of their own citizens and which used the threat of terrorists/subversives/whatever to keep the public docile and in line.”

To that, I reply, “Exactly.”

New York Plans Surveillance Veil for Downtown – New York Times

You know, this blog is supposed to be about publicity stunts, promotions and me getting hired to invent same.  The trouble is that things that piss me off keep presenting themselves and begging me to write about them.

Yeah, it seems funny on the surface to arrest a woman for making faces at a police dog, but if you think about if for a minute, it really ain’t funny.

From my vantage point, it’s just another step along the path to making every act that can possibly be construed as objecting to any action on the part of an authority figure illegal.

I do have a suggestion for the woman in question, however, and it’s only half-unserious.  I say she goes to court and has her lawyer subpoena the dog to testify.  After all, the dog is the only one who can say whether her staring at him really made him feel intimidated, right?  The police started this joke; I think she should take it to the punchline.