Fox News to cancel Freedom Watch !!

Fox Business News Network has announced plans to cancel Judge John Napolitano's Freedom Watch program. 

This is not a good thing. 

With the exception of John Stossel's show, there is no other program on TV devoted to Libertarian issues, and Stossel's program suffers from the same problem as this blog.....How many times and how many ways can you prove that the government is totally screwed before you get tired of the project?  How many wars?  How much debt?  How many drug war prisoners?   How many insane giveways to insiders?  How many illiterate and innumerate high school graduates?  How many generation of a family have to be on welfare?  What is it going to take?   

You've got the Welfare/Warfare Statists on Castro News Network and MSDNC.  You've got the Warfare/Welfare Statists on Fox News.    Napolitano is passionately anti-corporate welfare, anti-military industrial complex, anti-drug war, and anti-nanny state.  He found a home for several years on Fox Business, and has spent the last few months exposing the fundamental silliness of the Mewts and Santorum. 
 
Well, that explains the parent Fox network cancellation, doesn't it? 

Here's a video of someone discussing the issue with Wayne Allyn Root, the Las Vegas Libertarian oddsmaker.  (John Spivey and I once had a pleasant evening drinking most of the beer that was iced down in Root's hotel suite bathtub.) 

Fox Business has the right to broadcast whatever they choose to broadcast. (Some might say they have some responsibility to show some diverse viewpoints because of government licensing of the airwaves, but that's another conversation for another time.)

However, customers of the network's advertisers, and the suits who sell advertising for Fox need to know that some viewers aren't happy with this decision. Here are the people to contact:

FOX News Digital
Digital Media Sales
1211 Avenue of the Americas, 22 Floor
New York, NY 10036
(212) 301-5473

Fox Business Network
John McCann
VP, Advertising Sales, FBN
(212) 301-5009

Direct Response/Paid Programming Sales
Lisa Bortolato
Director, Direct Response
(212) 301-5418

Political and Issue Advertising
Digital Media Sales
John McCann
VP, Political Advertising Fox News Networks
(212) 301-5009

Email Fox Business at:
advertise@foxbusiness.com

Noted gay marriage opponent holds fundraiser at home of lesbian couple !!

Go here. 

Makes you wonder why they didn't hold a fundraiser for Mewt or Santorum. 

The Libertarian Party is THE party that wants to get government out of the marriage business.  If you care about gay and lesbian rights to marriage, we're the only way to go.   End of story. 

The protest against Obama's discriminatory politicies happened in Beverly Hills.  Pic came from here. 

The Texas Republican Party ballot proposals for 2012

The Texas Republican Party is going to give their voters another fascinating list of proposals on their primary ballots. 

Go here to read some commentary on their earlier proposals. 

Here's what made the final cut for 2012.  I'll address these one at a time.


SCHOOL CHOICE:

The state should fund education by allowing dollars to follow the child instead of the bureaucracy, through a program which allows parents the freedom to choose their child's school, public or private, while also saving significant taxpayer dollars. Yes or No.

Well, yes.  Unfortunately, the Texas constitution requires the state to provide an education for all children who move here or were born here.  Fortunately, it doesn't specify how.  This proposal would be the way to go.  But let's see you boys slide this one past the teacher unions.  And the lawyers.  And the Supreme Court. 


REPEALING OBAMACARE:
Congress should immediately repeal the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (otherwise known as Obamacare) and reject the rationing of healthcare by government or the intrusion by government into the doctor - patient relationship. Yes or No.

Once again, here is a common sense "Yes" that the rational voter can check and feel good about himself.  Unfortunately, Texas voters can check resolutions and ballot proposals until they run out of #2 pencils, and it won't do them a bit of good.  We sold our souls to Satan with the introduction of Medicare and Medicaid.  The entire godawful system is now centered around government intrusion. 

The Republicans also have this problem....

Texas Senator John Cornyn was one of the first senators to propose keeping the good parts of ObamaCare and eliminating the bad parts, which is kinda like trying to pick up a turd by the clean end.  After intense criticism from just about everyone, Cornyn immediately started back-pedaling like a circus monkey and repented of his statement.  I promise you that John Cornyn will be re-elected in a landslide.  Texas Republicans will still vote for him despite his fondness of the Obama Doctor Rationing System.

Texas Republicans will also vote to nominate Mitt Romney for president.  You might remember Mitt as the Midwife Of ObamaCare, the John The Baptist of Massachusetts whose RomneyCare system prepared the way for the real thing.

So yes, repealing ObamaCare would be a good thing.  But Republican voters will foolishly try to achieve this goal by voting for Republican politicians.


PUBLIC PRAYER
Government should be prohibited from restricting the content of public prayer. Yes or No.

I am so tired of beating this dead horse.  According to Jesus, no Christian should ever, ever, ever pray in public. 

Matthew 6:5 "And when you pray, do not be like the hypocrites, for they love to pray standing in the synagogues and on the street corners to be seen by men. I tell you the truth, they have received their reward in full.  But when you pray, go into your room, close the door and pray to your Father, who is unseen. Then your Father, who sees what is done in secret, will reward you.

Do we really want John S. Jones standing up in City Council meetings and offering up prayers to The Flying Spaghetti Monster?  Do we want to equip our football sidelines with Muslim prayer rugs?  Can the Tioga Texas school board afford to purchase that many rosaries? 
Are all of these just silly questions about a silly proposal?  Yes.   
This one should get a "No" vote. 


BALANCED BUDGET / COMBINING GOVERNMENT GROWTH
Out of control spending should be stopped at all levels of federal and state government through constitutional amendments limiting any increase in government spending to the combined increase of population and inflation without voter approval. Yes or No.

Texas already has a balanced budget requirement.
Washington does not. 
This is a good idea on the surface. 
Here's what's wrong with it. 

"....limiting any increase in government spending to the combined increase of population and inflation..."

Barack Obama and Mitt Romney and Ben Bernanke would cheerfully inflate the currency to the point of worthlessness in exchange for more funding and more government.  Hell, their predecessors have done it just for fun.  You can't leave those people with a loophole like that one. 

Those are the Texas 2012 Republican Party ballot proposals.  I'm pleased that there's nothing on there this year about pissing off immigrants, alienating gays and lesbians, or forcing teen mothers to watch videos of fetuses being thrown into blenders.  But couldn't they afford to get a first year political science student to review these things for relevance, feasibility, and common sense? 

The picture of the Texas Republican Party logo came from here, in an article about Texas Republicans voting to ban oral sex. 

Beaten for driving while diabetic

Here's a video of some government employees beating the crap out of a guy who is in a diabetic coma.  They think he's drunk. 
It's featured in the Las Vegas Review-Journal. 



The victim got $250,000 in restitution from....you.  The cops involved walked away fat and happy, of course. 

Go here to read the Vegas Review-Journal account of the mess. 
Go here to read Radley Balko's commentary on the incident, posted under the line of police dialogue "Stop resisisting, Motherf***er", and also includes the following observations:

•This certainly isn’t the first time cops have mistaken diabetic shock for intoxication—and with similar results. We’ve also seen a number of incidents where cops have mistaken epileptic seizures for aggressive behavior, often resulting in a Tasering. The root problem here is the same as that with the cops who mistakenly mistake a bounding or territorial dog with an aggressive one, and then kill it. The cops get excused because they made “honest mistakes.” (Though in this case, the honest mistake ended with mistaking low blood sugar for intoxication.) But that means they haven’t been trained properly. At some point, enough of these stories should have made the news that departments across the country would begin to implement such training. That doesn’t appear to be happening.

•Note that at one point in the video, after they’ve just beaten a helpless man, one cop asks his fellow officers if any of them are hurt.

•Not only were none of these cops criminally charged, every one of them is apparently still protecting and serving the public. The story indicates one seargeant was “disciplined,” but we aren’t allowed to know what that discipline was. The department also claims to have changed some policies in response to the incident. But we aren’t allowed to know exactly what those changes are, either.

•We also aren’t allowed to know the names of any of the officers in the video. This is inexcusable. It seems pretty clear that there’s a culture problem, here. Mistaking a diabetic for a drunk is bad enough. Beating him senseless when he clearly posed no threat is criminal. And yelling “Stop Resisting!” at a man who is clearly not resisting is indicative of a police culture in which excessive force is common enough that the officers know what to say as they’re beating someone to give them cover later. Laughing after you’ve just beaten a man, and after you’ve just discovered he was a diabetic is straight-up pathological. All of which means there’s plenty of reason to doubt this particular department’s internal review process. These officers names need to be released, so journalists and police watchdog groups outside of law enforcement can look into their histories on the job.

•Greene and his family were given a $292,500 settlement, which of course will be funded by taxpayers, not the cops who beat him senseless. This too needs to change. The cops who beat green should be forfeiting a portion of their paychecks to him for the rest of their lives. And those paychecks should preferably be compensation for work other than police work.

More stuff from the picture file

A touching moment from Camelot

For one brief shining moment, that was here in Camelot....

Go here. 

I know that the New York Post isn't the most respected news source.  So go here for the book from which the quotes are taken.  The book is published by Random House. 

Please, please, please remember this one thing when dealing with all things political:  Politicians shouldn't be our "leaders".  They shouldn't be seen as heroes or role models.  They aren't supposed to run the country.  They are ordinary humans just like you and me.   

Barack Obama isn't The Chosen One who will save us all.  George W. Bush wasn't "The Decider".  Ronald Reagan wasn't The Great Communicator.  (Hell, all he did was talk small and spend big.)  Ron Paul has obvious virtues, chief among them a consistent voting record for small government, but he's just a good guy.  Nothing less, but nothing more. 

Politicians aren't the quarterbacks.  They are supposed to be referees for the game.  They should provide some security for the players and fans.  If they want to be cheerleaders, that probably doesn't hurt anything.  But the minute they start designing plays, picking winners and losers, or God help us, trying to run a few plays, they screw up.  We pay the price for their mistakes.  They almost never do.   

YOU are the quarterback. 

Is Washington having to deal with any problems that weren't created by Washington? 

Electing a president should be no more important than choosing a new lawn and garden service.  If it really matters who wins your elections, then your government has gotten too big. 

Here's Richard Harris, now better known as the first guy to play Albus Dumbledore in the Harry Potter movies, singing about Camelot.

Bootleggers and Baptists at the Super Bowl

This was the most inspiring commercial of yesterday's Super Bowl.  It shows Budweiser heroically overcoming the nanny state, bringing the people the Budweiser that they deserve. 



This is a link to a site showing how much money Budweiser has given to "Partnership For A Drug Free America", the liquor lobby's anti-marijuana political action committee.  They spend most of their time lobbying for marijuana prohibition. 

Here's a video of a guy discussing how it all works. 




Hit the "Bootleggers And Baptists" Post Label below for more info on the concept. 
(Budweiser sells a vice.  They are the bootleggers.  "Partnership For A Drug Free America" represents the Baptists.  Both sides need each other for support and funding.)   

More pictures of our ESPN set for the Super Bowl in Indianapolis

Several days ago, I posted some pics of the ESPN set that my employer built for today's Super Bowl in Indianapolis. 
It is AWESOME. 

Here are a few more shots of the completed product. 

(That's the "Mike And Mike In The Morning" group on the far right.) 

This isn't a working fireplace, but it plays one on TV.  Those are clear acrylic cubes with lighting beneath. 
Once again, totally awesome. 

Here's a pic that I found on another site.  I think that's Jon Gruden on the far left, Steve Young in the middle, Jerry Rice second from the right (?), Michael Strahan on the far right,  and I'm not sure about everyone else. 

If you need to dress up your retail store, your shopping mall kiosk, or your broadcast stage for the greatest athletic event in the world, call Infiniti Decor in Godley, Texas. 1-800-810-9971


Go Giants.  Go Eli Manning.  Defeat the forces of evil.  (Preferably in digits ending with 3 for the Giants and 0 for the Pats.  Long story.)