People should not fear their governments; governments should fear their people.
I Just Couldn’t Have a Black Market in My Sector. This morning Rupert Murdoch’s Neocon News Network (NNN)interviewed a U.S. Army captain who was wounded in Iraq, recovered, went back, and then wrote a book about his experience. His explanation of why he was wounded by a roadside bomb was… By Thomas DiLorenzo. [LewRockwell.com Blog]
I trust the captain will receive an appropriate decoration for his heroic struggle against capitalism.
I just noticed an error in the Symantec announcement about the UPX parser vulnerability. The list of affected products includes our Mac products, which is incorrect. Not only does the vulnerability not affect any of Symantec’s Mac products, it is impossible for it to affect them. This fact should be obvious to anyone with the slightest knowledge of the Macintosh after reading the description of the vulnerability.
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Vin Suprynozicz –
A TSA Goon Gets What’s Coming to Him – I liked this chapter of
The Black Arrow so much that I typed it up. My title. No
spoilers; this chapter pretty much stands alone. Whoohaaaa!!
I finished
The Black Arrow yesterday afternoon. Great story! Probably
won’t write a review. Lots to cheer about there. I hope things go as
well as Vin imagines when the shooting starts for real. Unfortunately,
we’ve still got quite a bit of time to suffer until things get bad
enough for the revolution to start in earnest. Vin’s guess of 2031 is
probably about right. Time for my kids to grow up and be part of it,
but I expect to be dead by then, or too old to do much actual
fighting. Hopefully, old age will kill me, but I won’t be surprised if
I die in a hail of bullets in a dawn raid or at a traffic stop. [End the War on Freedom]
I’ve heard enough praise of this book to want a copy, but unfortunately the order form on the publisher’s web site doesn’t work.
If Only I Were Sophisticated Enough to Appreciate This. Marcel Duchamp’s Fountain, a man’s urinal he signed and put on display in 1917, has been declared the most influential work of modern art in a poll of 500 art experts. Tracey Emin (b. 1963), an artist influenced by Duchamp,… By Thomas Woods. [LewRockwell.com Blog]
The poll result is remarkably appropriate, in a way which no doubt escapes the “art experts” completely. It does, however, fit nicely with this article.
Al-Muhajabah, commenting on the portrayal of Muslims in movies and TV, writes:
The problem isn’t so much that there are negative depictions of Muslims, it’s that there don’t seem to be any other depictions.
There actually are other depictions, but they are so rare that when you see one it only emphasises the point. The only examples of positive depictions I can think of are The Thirteenth Warrior and Pitch Black.
Nice touches. Alaska Airlines has a number of nice features that makes it enjoyable and more convenient to fly. The email they send the day before to prompt you to use the web-based check-in system includes such niceties as links to maps of all the airports you’ll have to navigate, checklists to remind you what to pack, and weather reports/forecasts for your destination.
And freshly brewed Starbucks coffee with a copy of the Wall Street Journal, along with really helpful staff. I love flying Alaska. [code: theWebSocket;]
That sounds nice, but it’s still not what I’m looking for. If Alaska Airlines tells the FAA to get lost and allow passengers to get on their planes without going through all that Terrorist Safety Administration nonsense, they’ll get my business.
An anonymous source on the convoy life in Iraq. Winning hearts and minds the Delta way (LOL).
A trip with DynCorps is the proverbial “E-ticket” ride. We mount up in 3 heavily armored Suburbans with all the passengers in one SUV, known as the “limo”. The other two trucks are filled with PSDs, carrying AK-47s, M-4s, SAWs, grenades, and handguns. On our way out of the IZ, we rendezvous with two armored Humvees equipped with turret mounted 50-cal machine guns. And before we hit the streets of Baghdad, you hear the thump, thump, thump of our helicopter air support. Two small civilian-style black helicopters fly low over head, scouting our route and watching our flanks from above. At times, they’ll swoop low enough to kick up rotor wash and you’ll hear pebbles pinging off the SUVs.
Even before we leave the Green Zone, we’re doing extreme defensive driving. As we approach other cars, the lead vehicles will force the cars to the right while the limo swerves to the left. Rather than stop, or even slow, for intersections, we just hit our sirens and, again, the lead vehicles will set a screen while we charge through. Once we clear the military checkpoints, everything is fair game. Apparently, it’s a lot easier to clear a path through traffic when you’re facing it head-on. Thus, we seem to prefer the north-bound lanes for trips to southern Baghdad.
Our lead Humvee’s job is to clear a path for us which he does by waving an assault rifle at anyone that gets too close. If that doesn’t get their attention, his favorite weapon seems to be half-liter water bottles. He tosses these like a Nolan Ryan fastball at the windshield of cars that don’t pull to the side of the road quickly enough in his estimation. He actually has a little rack of water bottles mounted inside the turret.
The remaining vehicles in the convoy fly along over 60mph, often swerving to, I assume, prevent someone from accurately targeting us. We’re rarely more than a couple meters from the rear bumper of the vehicle in front of us and it always gives you a jolt to look out the rear window at the front grill of the chase car. Occasionally, you’ll hear the thump, thump, thump of the helicopters as they skim over the top of you. One of the more exciting things to see is one of these helos swoop in ahead of you and block traffic by settling into a hover 6 feet off the highway. [John Robb’s Weblog]
Update: I removed the name of the original poster who John Robb quoted for that person’s protection.
From The Federalist:
bq.
“We can’t expect the American People to jump from Capitalism to
Communism, but we can assist their elected leaders in giving them
small doses of Socialism, until they awaken one day to find that they
have Communism.” –Nikita Khrushchev
and:
bq.
“The American people will never knowingly adopt Socialism. But under
the name of ‘liberalism’ they will adopt every fragment of the
Socialist program, until one day America will be a Socialist nation,
without knowing how it happened.” –Norman Thomas
and:
bq.
“Social Security should be phased out and ended altogether. … Social
Security in any form is morally irredeemable. We should be debating,
not how to save Social Security, but how to end it — how to phase it
out so as to best protect both the rights of those who have paid into
it, and those who are forced to pay for it today. This will be a
painful task. But it will make possible a world in which Americans
enjoy far greater freedom to secure their own futures.” –Alex Epstein
and:
bq.
“The federal government has taken too much tax money from the people,
too much authority from the states, and too much liberty with the
Constitution.” –Ronald Reagan
[End the War on Freedom]
I especially like the first two–although I wish they had been wrong.
Mandatory health coverage – forcing the uninsured into the kettle too
Uninsureds… the modern “unwashed masses”
You may wish you were uninsured
A series of articles at No Force, No Fraud on health care insurance, the uninsured, and the damage done by government intervention.
A class above the law. OMB Watch reports, “A bill [ H.R.418 the Real ID Act] to establish national identification card standards and restrict asylum claims also contains a controversial provision to empower the Secretary of Homeland Security to waive any and all laws… By Wendy McElroy. [LewRockwell.com Blog]
Note this part in particular:
bq. (2) No judicial review. Notwithstanding any other provision of law (statutory or nonstatutory), no court shall have jurisdiction
(A) to hear any cause or claim arising from any action undertaken, or any decision made, by the Secretary of Homeland Security pursuant to paragraph (1); or
(B) to order compensatory, declaratory, injunctive, equitable, or any other relief for damage alleged to arise from any such action or decision.
This would seem to set the legal groundwork for Iron Curtain style border enforcement.