Why Mitt Romney Lost

Here's Nick Gillespie of Reason magazine on why Mitt Romney lost the 2012 presidential election. 

On the Sunday morning political talk shows

Here's a sampling of the Sunday morning political mess my TIVO is recording while I'm typing this, compliments of Hot Air:

NBC’s Meet the Press: David Axelrod, Obama campaign chief strategist; Rep. Darrell Issa (R-CA), Rep. Peter King (R-NY); E.J. Dionne, Brookings and Washington Post; David Brooks, New York Times; Helene Cooper, New York Times; Chuck Todd, NBC

ABC’s This Week: Sen. Susan Collins (R-ME); Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee (D-TX); Keith Olbermann; George Will, ABC; Donna Brazile, political strategist; Matthew Dowd, political strategist; Peggy Noonan, Wall Street Journal

CBS’ Face the Nation: Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-CT); Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee (D-TX); Rep. Elijah Cummings (D-MD); Tom Comburn (R-OK); Norah O’Donnell, CBS; Stephanie Cutter, deputy Obama campaign manager; Eric Fehrnstrom, senior adviser to Romney campaign; Melinda Henneberger, Washington Post; Major Garrett, National Journal; John Dickerson, CBS; Cornel West, Princeton University; Tavis Smiley, talk show host

Fox News Sunday: Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-CT); Gov. Mitch Daniels (R-IN);

CNN’s State of the Union: David Axelrod, Obama campaign chief strategist; Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL); Rep. Elijah Cummings (D-MD); Dana Bash, CNN; Jeff Zeleny, New York Times

I watch this junk so you don't have to. 

I can sometimes predict what those folks are going to say long before they say it. 

Ughhhh. 

Believe it or not, Meet The Press usually includes David Brooks of the New York Holy Times because he's an economic conservative and will provide "balance". 

You might remember Brooks as the guy who called the ouster of Utah Republican Senator Bob Bennett "a damned outrage". 

Please note that the Court Eunuchs Of The ObamaMedia give Teleprompter Jesus programmer David Axelrod a slot on both CNN and Meet The Press. 

ABC's "This Week With George Stephanopoulos" is one of the most astounding examples of media bias you'll see this year.  Truly astounding. 

First of all, can you get drunk enough to imagine ABC airing a program called "This Week With Karl Rove"?  I can't either, but the two Stephanopoulos and Rove essentially had the same White House job.
George's guests this week include Susan Collins of Maine, one of only three Republicans to vote for Obama's Porkulus Bill. 
He's got Sheila Jackson Lee of Texas, who once took to the podium in Congress to complain of the National Weather Service giving hurricanes nothing but "lilly white" names, and proposed giving hurricanes names like "Keisha, Jamal and Deshawn".  She has also described the Tea Party as racist. 
Keith Olbermann, so left-wing rabid and so afflicted with all the logical symptoms of that condition that even Al Gore won't give him any more money, is on board this morning. 
George Will is actually an interesting guy and is worth listening to.  Will came out in favor of weed legalization last week. 
Staphanopoulos has another Clinton Senior Advisor dropping in: Donna Brazile.
Matthew Dowd used to work for Texas Democrat Bob Bullock.  Then he worked for Texas Republican George W. Bush.  After that, he gained some notoriety by writing long pieces apologizing for the harm he did to Democrat John Kerry.  Matthew Dowd used to be a flip-flopper, but then he changed his mind. 
Rounding out the discussion with George is Reagan Speechwriter and Republican journalist Peggy Noonan.  Four years ago, Noonan endorsed Barack Obama.
Is anyone at ABC even pretending that they aren't in the tank for Obama and rank Statism of the worst sort????

Out of the entire unholy lot of Talking Heads broadcasting this Sunday morning, hosts and guests, Mitch Daniels is the only one of the bunch who comes within missile-launch distance of being a libertarian. 

Here's a modest proposal for the Fox Business channel, the closest thing we have to a libertarian-ish network (they cancelled Napolitano's show, but still air John Stossel).  It would be called "What The Hell Were You Thinking?"  Here's a sample lineup:

Fox Business "What The Hell Were You Thinking?"  John Jay Myers (Libertarian - TX); John Stossel, Fox Business; Gary Johnson (Libertarian - New Mexico); Nick Gillespie, Reason Magazine; David Axelrod, Obama campaign chief strategist;  Four libertarians strap David Axelrod into a chair and review the Obama record on the economy and civil liberties while asking "What the hell were you thinking?"  Next week's guest: Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner. 

I don't know about you, but I'd watch it. 

The media brainwashing picture came from here. 

Cough Drops - The Mandate

I hope everyone has enjoyed the media firestorm about whether the government should be able to force the Catholic Church to provide birth control pills to its employees. 

I also hope that you'll take just a few minutes from your busy day to enjoy this bit o' brilliance from Reason magazine:



Here's a modest proposal from the great Virginia Postrel about selling birth control pills over-the-counter:

Making the pill available over the counter could reduce the amount of outrage and invective available for entertaining radio audiences, spurring political fundraising and otherwise amusing the American public. But the medical risks are quite low....

Birth-control pills can have side effects, of course, but so can such over-the-counter drugs as antihistamines, ibuprofen or the Aleve that once turned me into a scary, hive-covered monster. That’s why even the most common over-the-counter drugs, including aspirin, carry warning labels. Most women aren’t at risk from oral contraceptives, however, just as most patients aren’t at risk from aspirin or Benadryl, and studies suggest that a patient checklist can catch most potential problems....

Aside from safety, the biggest argument for keeping birth- control pills prescription-only is, to put it bluntly, extortion. The current arrangement forces women to go to the doctor at least once a year, usually submitting to a pelvic exam, if they want this extremely reliable form of contraception. That demand may suit doctors’ paternalist instincts and financial interests, but it doesn’t serve patients’ needs. As [a 1993 editorial in the American Journal of Public Health] noted, the exam requirement “assumes that it would be worse for a woman’s health to miss out on routine care than it would be to miss out on taking oral contraceptives.”

Hit this link to read the whole thing. 
From Nick Gillespie:

Can't legislators agree that those of us who are, say, over 18 years old, are adults and if we can buy condoms without a prescription, we should be able to shop for birth-control pills on our lonesome too? And a host of other drugs?

And this young woman, Sandra Fluke, claims that birth control for her three years of law school is an intolerable burden, and that other people should be forced to pay for it.  She claims that it will cost her $3,000.00 for three years. 
Bullshit. 
Can we not do the charitable thing, and put a damn condom machine in her dorm room? 

Ummmm...We don't believe that our neighbors deserve a choice

Here's Reason magazine's Nick Gillespie laying into assorted idjits who don't want to allow their neighbors to have a choice in department stores.

Help make more politicians cry

Go here to witness John Boehner crying on CBS.  Probably because if there are any more boehnks to be boehled out, it will be perceived as his fault.  I couldn't find a YouTube, and the enbed link wouldn't copy.  My apologies. 

Here's some video of Hillary shedding some tears for the folks back home, just to show how much she really cares:



Here's Bill Clinton at Ron Brown's funeral.  Woolgathering and giggling.  Then realizing he's on camera.  Then turning on the waterworks, hitting his mark PERFECTLY ! 



Here's Obama, having programmed his neural interface to display emotion....



And here's Joe Biden, exploiting the deaths in his family to good effect IN THE DEBATES !



Finally, here's Reason magazine, putting out a heartfelt appeal for your dollars.  Not enough politicians are crying.  Can't you give more? 

On Chris McGregor's hair in Godley Texas, and signs with more than 10 colors in Cleveland Ohio

From Reason magazine's "Daily Brickbats" column:

Officials at Godley Middle School in Texas have placed 12-year-old Chris McGregor in in-school detention until he cuts his hair. The school dress code bars male students from having hair below the shoulders, and McGregor's locks are too long. Superintendent Paul Smithson says the rule helps reduce bullying. You see, students who stand out in some way might be teased or picked on, said Smithson. "And all of a sudden we have a problem."

A San Antonio news station has Smithson's complete quote:

"Bullying's a big thing, and we want to make sure everyone's dressed appropriately, someone doesn't bring attention to themselves so that someone says something to them, and all of a sudden we have a problem."

Lordy. 
Mr. Smithson is probably a great guy, but he's been put in charge of enforcing unnecessary regulatory mess that was probably written as a response to the hippie movement in 1968. 

I just happened to read this next exchange in the latest issue of Reason.  Here are Reason editor Nick Gillespie, TV funnyman Drew Carey, and The Cleveland Ohio City Council, discussing Reason's recent video series "Reason Saves Cleveland", in which Carey and other libertarians make some helpful suggestions about keeping Cleveland from going under. 

Councilor Zack Reed:   I’ll give you a great example. It leads right into what you’re saying. There’s a gentleman in the city of Cleveland who is a very successful businessperson who now works for one of the nonprofits. He owns a business in the city, and he wants to put in a $20,000 sign, because he’s trying to bring up his business. He applied for a variance to do it. This is what he says—I’m just going to read it because it’s pretty short: “If we have to go to the zoning review board, I understand that it may take 60 days for approval. That is simply too long. I applied for a variance on 4/21. Based on the progress to the day, I will have my sign installed by 9/1.…The summer will be over. The car wash will have lost more money. This is the kind of stuff that hurts Cleveland and puts people out of business. It’s just ridiculous. I need the variance to be approved ASAP so that the sign can be manufactured and I can have some hope of getting the sign installed before the summer’s over.”

Carey: That’s a lot of money for a car wash owner in Cleveland who can only be open in the summer.

Sweeney: Let me give some context to this. If you apply for a sign that’s within our regulation, it would take somewhere between three and five days. If it’s outside the regulations, it needs to be [no bigger than] four foot by eight foot, no more than two or three colors. If you want to go 10 by 10, and put it up a little bit higher, and have 10 colors on it, you have to get approval to go outside the variance.

Carey: Why does it matter how many colors are on it?

Sweeney: It’s one of the regulations we have.

Carey: Get rid of it.

Sweeney: Got it. But what I was trying to get at, the three to five days is if you stay within the regulations, if you agree with them. If you want to go outside, it’s six weeks to put it on the calendar and have it heard. And then all the other steps.

Carey: You should be able to put up whatever sign you want, man. If it’s your business.

Reed: But understand, you can say that simplistically. We can’t say that because there has to be some type of structure.

Yeah, otherwise people would be putting up signs with more than 10 colors. 
You can hit the link above to read a transcript of the entire meeting.  High comedy breaks out several more times. 
I think our bureaucracies are willing to go to the wall to defend their old unnecessary regulations just to avoid admitting that it was silly to enforce them in the past. 

Good Night, Sleep Tight, and don't let The Bed Bugs Bite ! !

The law of unintended consequences is back! 

MYFOXNY.COM - The AMC Empire 25 movie theater complex in the Times Square area shut its doors Tuesday night to deal with a bed bug problem.
AMC said it has been testing and treating its theaters after getting complaints from some patrons about bed beg bites.
The company said it inspected the Empire 25 Tuesday and found bed bugs in an auditorium that had previously tested negative.

Here's an email sent out to the CNN employees working in the Time Warner Center:

August 13, 2010
To: TBS, Inc. Employees
From: TBS, Inc. Human Resources

The Time Warner Center Facilities Department advises that bed bugs have been detected in Time Warner Center. This determination was made after testing was conducted on several floors of the building. In response, Time Warner Facilities is working with pest control providers to address the issue in an environmentally safe manner, and during non-working hours...

There's only one effective, efficient way to get rid of bedbugs.  That would be DDT. 
Our government banned DDT in 1972. 

"To only a few chemicals does man owe as great a debt as to DDT... In little more than two decades, DDT has prevented 500 million human deaths, due to malaria, that otherwise would have been inevitable."
- National Academy of Sciences

I'm sure that our government knows best.  But in the meantime, if you see Wolf Blitzer scratching his privates on camera, you now know the reason why.  CNN can't spray their building with DDT, which, if used properly, is ok to drink in small quantities.  (There used to be a cocktail called the Mickey Slim - Gin & a pinch of DDT.)
 If you see Larry King scratching his privates on camera, it's because he has grown old and forgetful after all those years of throwing softballs to Democrats.
If you see Anderson Cooper touching himself on camera, it's because he thinks there's nothing like the feel of Anderson Cooper.
If Candy Crowley starts scratching herself on camera.....aww....never mind.    I'm not going there. 
Sorry for the digression.  I'm really enjoying the idea of The Castro News Network having a bed bug breakout.  I apologize. 
 
Here are the folks from Reason magazine on the DDT scare campaign:



Can we find a volunteer to sneak bed bugs into the EPA headquarters?

Gillespie, Stossel, Postrel, and Napolitano on the growing influence of libertarianism

Four people who would probably make the cut on my list of ideal dinner table companions, discussing the growing influence of libertarian ideas.
It is only 6 minutes long.
Please watch !

Three reasons why public sector unions are killing the economy

More brilliance from Nick Gillespie of Reason magazine.

Nick Gillespie debates Lawrence Lessig

My friend Dr. Ralph, of The Journal Of Post-Ralphaelite Thought, has long been the agent provocateur of this site, and he does his job well. Especially for someone whose job it is to be WRONG WRONG WRONG on almost all economic issues.
Dr. Ralph admires Harvard University's Lawrence Lessig.

I'm a huge fan of Reason magazine's Nick Gillespie. I have a black leather jacket that's almost identical to the one Gillespie wears to all his video and TV appearances, and my political opinions are almost identical to Gillespie's, but I have much less hair.

Lessig and Gillespie debate The Supreme Court's recent Citizens United ruling here. Bill Moyers is the moderator.

Enjoy.

The Libertarian Moment

From Reason magazine's Hit & Run department. The Washington Post didn't mention this particular finding in their initial story about their own poll results, mostly because the Post is a company newspaper in the ultimate company town:

All hail The Libertarian Moment. From an ABC News/Washington Post poll of a 1,083 American adults taken over January 12-15:

The poll asked: “Generally speaking, would you say you favor
smaller government with fewer services, or larger government with
more services?”

Fifty-eight percent said they favor a smaller government with
fewer services, and only 38 percent said they favor a larger
government with more services.

More here, via Instapundit and CNS.

Full poll results here. Question is No. 40, and you have to go back to 2002 for a higher number.

Matt Welch and Nick Gillespie on The Libertarian Moment.

John Stossel on Ayn Rand, Atlas Shrugged, and Fish Pedicures

What would happen if the most productive members of society went on strike?

Did you set your Tivo to record Stossel last night? No? Even though it was the segment devoted to Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged?
You didn't watch it, even though Atlas Shrugged is 50 years old, a thousand pages long, but recently hit #15 on Amazon.com's fiction bestseller list?
You didn't watch John Stossel and a host of guests critique the Washington D.C. Community Theatre production of the novel? The one adapted for the stage by Barney Frank and Tiny Timmy Geithner?

(Heavy sigh that can be heard by regulators in the basement of Bernanke's Federal Reserve building way over in Dallas....)
At great personal sacrifice, I watched Stossel instead of watching Alabama's Crimson Tide defeat the Texas Longhorns.

Here goes: Stossel's first guest was a banker named John Allison. Allison is a Rand fan, to say the least, and is chairman of BT&T, a North Carolina bank that he grew from nothing into something enormous, largely by avoiding financial gimmicks. Here's what the New York Times has to say about Mr. Allison:

....(Allison) also has a résumé befitting a Rand prophet. He started at BB&T, once known as the Branch Banking and Trust Company, in 1971 and became chief executive in 1989, when the bank had $4.7 billion in assets.
By the time he retired as C.E.O. in December, he had overseen 60 bank and savings-institution acquisitions and turned BB&T into the 11th-largest bank in the nation, with $152 billion in assets, according to the bank.
A 60-year-old who speaks in a rapid-fire Southern accent, Mr. Allison says the current financial crisis is primarily the government’s fault. He criticizes the Fed as trying to manipulate normal business cycles and Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac as facilitating mortgages to people who couldn’t afford them.
The government’s remedies have made matters only worse, he says: “Almost everything that has been done since this crisis started is going to reduce our long-term standard of living.”
Mr. Allison says the government forced BB&T and some other healthy banks to accept TARP money to obscure that they were simply trying to save several large banks like Citigroup.
“Everyone thinks we got some kind of subsidy,” he says, noting that his company paid the money back in June, with interest. “It’s going to cost us about $250 million for money we didn’t want.”

Allison spent some time trying to distinguish between enlightened self-interest and Ayn's preferred "shock value" term, selfishness. He mentioned that one of the ways this manifests itself in his company is their refusal to loan money in eminent domain projects, and "pick a payment" loans (AKA negative amortization gimmicks. Hit the NYT link above for details.) According to Allison, eminent domain is a threat to property rights, and therefore a threat to our economic system. Negative amortization loans are almost guaranteed to fail.
Neither of these is a win/win situation for the bank/client relationship. Allison says it's in his bank's self-interest to avoid either of these situations for a mere short-term profit.
The topic briefly switched over to government-run schools, and the lack of competition in that system. Here's one of my favorite Allison lines:

"We (at the bank) don't really like being innovative. We're forced to be innovative by the market. But if you have a government-run monolith, it is not going to be innovative, it is not going to be creative."

The next guest was C. Bradley Thompson of Clemson University, who drew some parallels between one of Rand's more bizarre scenes and the incident last fall when Hank Paulson called six bankers into his office and demanded that they take TARP money. Then Thompson and Stossel spent a few minutes playing the Stunt Casting game. Who is Dagney Taggart today? Who is Wesley Mouch? Who is John Galt?

Next up was Yaron Brook, president of The Ayn Rand Institute, who had a great time ridiculing the idea of the United States Of America having a Compensation Czar and a Regulatory Czar. Brook and Thompson discussed the perverse case of General Electric CEO Jeff Immelt, who spends about $20,000,000.00 on lobbying for regulations that will restrict competition within G.E.'s core businesses. Immelt has also seen the light and is a big-time proponent of Cap And Trade.
What's in all this for Immelt and G.E.? They gets millions in federal loan guarantees and grants. It's a beautiful system, and everyone is sure there's no Quid Pro Quo involved.

The questions from the audience began with Rand's personal life, which was, as they say, complicated. (Most of what I know about her personal life comes from watching The Passion Of Ayn Rand on DVD a few months ago. Here's a video from the film set to music by Justin Timberlake. Swear to God. I love the internet.)


I'm not a follower of Objectivism, the name Rand gave her philosophy. But let's indulge in an Et Tu argument for a moment.....
Karl Marx developed what his followers say is the most fair, equitable, and humane economic system ever imagined. But he shamefully neglected his own family, and got the housecleaner pregnant.
Look at the public teachings of Jesus, as compared to the constant rebukes he always gave his closest disciples in private.
Most of us have some serious gaps between our spoken principles vs. how we spend our day. Barack Obama, Lord and Savior of us all, for instance. Compare his soaring rhetoric to how he has thrown Greg Craig, Yosi Sergant, Anita Dunn and Van Jones under the bus.

One audience member brought up the question that Libertarians always have to answer: Don't we need some government? John Allison answered first. Government is important. There has to be a system in place to protect individual rights - i.e., a defense system, and a law enforcement system. I don't think anyone mentioned roads, which usually rounds out the minimalist government trifecta.

This question was followed by a first on the Stossel program. A woman got up and ranted about the negative impact of taxes and regulations on small businesses and entrepreneurs (Doh !). She didn't really ask a question. She didn't challenge anything previously said by the panelists. I hope Stossel avoids this type of interchange in the future, because every question from the audience on previous programs was from someone who disagreed with the guest. There's something to be said for limiting the conversation to hostile questions, not Oprah-style softballs.

The conversation almost, but not quite, got into something that I've never heard discussed on television. You know how Obama/Pelosi/Reid talk about Big Business as if it sprang forth from a gaping hole in the lid of hell? But small business is worthy of tax breaks, regulatory slack, plus flowers and back massages on major holidays?
There is no difference. Businesses don't pay taxes, people do. The money paid via business taxes is money taken from the employees of a business. Giving a tax break to the #3 and #4 guys at a small business, while witholding the tax break from the janitor at a mega-business, doesn't make much sense. But it makes us feel good.

Next up was the editor of Reason magazine, Nick Gillespie, in his trademark black leather jacket. (I'm friends with Nick on Facebook - he only has 1,527 other friends, so I'm understandably proud.) He and Stossel were shown getting something called a Fish Pedicure. You stick your feet in a water tank, and little guppies eat the dead skin off your tootsies. Very popular in Asia. (These fish were provided by Mr. John Ho, a Virginia entrepreneur who has almost been regulated out of existence by Nanny State Munchkins.)

I don't think the Libertarian Party has an official position statement on fish pedicures, so I'd like to propose one. "If I want to pay someone to allow his fish to nibble away my callouses and bunions, it's none of the government's business."

The very existence of a growing fish pedicure industry is enough to drive the cosmetology regulators totally apeshit. Stossel brought in a New York state legislator Jeffrey Klein (shown via satellite, because he was in San Juan, Puerto Rico, for a conference). Mr. Klein says that fish pedicures are "dirty, dangerous, and mean to the fish", and he wants to outlaw the practice. Under intense cross-examination, Klein admitted that no one has ever been harmed by a fish pedicure. Klein tried to say that there had been a lot of complaints. Stossel claimed that he'd looked for evidence of complaints and couldn't find any.

And then, it happened. After decades of TV studio audiences mindlessly applauding every regulatory bureaucrat, politician, troll, and hobbit who wants to regulate the _____ industry, Stossel said "Aren't you just a busybody, taking away other people's freedom?"

The audience started applauding. They cheered. They made the same noises that idiots used to make when Bill Clinton said he was going to do something FOR THE CHILDREN® . A living, breathing group of people, on television, actually got the point. They weren't huddled in a dark corner of a bar for a libertarian meetup. They weren't in Ayn Rand Objectivist chatrooms. They were on my television, with a viewing audience that probably numbered in the high 5 digits, and they almost hooted Jeffrey Klein off the screen.

Gillespie: "We're at a point in history where people are wealthier, relatively speaking, and more educated and more in charge of their lives across more different dimensions, and now we're having government come in, and people like New York state legislators, who cannot balance their budgets, who are billions of dollars in debt, who are telling us 'leave the little fish alone'. This is wrong. It's not their business. And it shouldn't be their business to regulate other businesses. Especially now."

It was a great conversation between Gillespie and Stossel, made slightly ridiculous by the cameraman occasionally pulling back and showing that they both had their feet in a fish tank with minnows nibbling their toenails.

There were more questions for Gillespie about motorcycle helmets. cell phone use while driving, and a few other topics. FoxBusiness will probably run this feature 3 or 4 more times before next week. You still have time to catch it. Here's the closing monologue. If the Lou Dobbs clip doesn't make you want to smash your fist through your computer screen, you need to cut back your valium dosage.


John Stossel. Ayn Rand. Capitalism. Atlas Shrugged. Nick Gillespie. A government regulator getting hammered. It was some great television. Better than watching the U.T. Longhorns get hammered, anyway.

Nick Gillespie's latest fund-raising ploy for Reason magazine. Brilliant.

Why you should support Reason magazine:

UPS vs Fedex

I've had to do a lot of UPS vs Fedex comparisons lately.
Here's Nick Gillespie of Reason magazine with his opinion.

One Volokh, Three Nicks, Flannery O'Connor, and passion

I'm going to quote three of my favorite websites in this post. The Volokh Conspiracy, Reason Magazine, and Counting Cats. Read all three of these closely. You will be tested.

Here's The Volokh Conspiracy:

....For libertarians who lean "left" on foreign policy, Obama's rhetoric gave them hope that as president he would fundamentally reassess American foreign policy in the direction of nonintervention, and reverse various national security policies that they felt threatened individual liberty.

....libertarian Obama supporters got the opposite of what they hoped for: a moderate on foreign and national security policy, and someone fundamentally reassessing American economic policy in the direction of bigger government.

Yep, The Teleprompter Jesus has sent an extra 17,000 troops into the sandpile, and you can check the clock to your right to remain updated on how long he's been in charge of the whole mess. And Havana East, or Guantanamo Bay, remains open for business.

Nick Gillespie of "Reason" lays out a rant on the same topic:

Question to the folks, including some of the libertarian persuasion (you fools!), who were bullish on Obama back when the alternative was John McCain, the Terri Schiavo of presidential candidates: When are you going to admit that Barry O stinks on ice?

Here's NickM, from the Counting Cats website, on the British National Party - a "whites only" political organization led by Nick Griffin. The BNP made the mistake of sending NickM a pamphlet comparing their political battles to The Battle Of Britain:

I am English and proud of it. Being English is a state of mind and I absolutely don’t need Nick Griffin’s Brownshorts to remind me of the truth of my birth. To put it bluntly he can go away and be fucked up the council gritter by an alpaca (or whatever other Latin American beast of burden is up for the job and can be hepped-up on PCP).

...OK folks. A poignant image. (The fighter plane in the BNP's pamphlet) Our finest hour and all that. Obviously “Battle for Britain 2009″ is a dismal attempt to compare what Churchill called the struggle to save Christian Civilization to the tawdry political ambitions of a one-eyed Welsh git.

....But that’s the BNP for ya. They might use the symbolism of our finest hour (farcially incorrectly - but what the heck) to their electoral ends but they do not speak for me.

They are in fact abhorrent to me. I am a libertarian and they use one of the free-world’s most potent symbols (and it was also pretty good in a furball) of freedom to espouse insane racism. I am sitting here in my shed in Cheshire with my pale skin and blue eyes and blonde(ish) hair married to a blue-eyed blonde and I am fucking outraged. English is not something you are. It is something that just happens to you. And the BNP bastards will never, ever, take that away from me.

....It is not so much that the BNP are excrable racist hoons (though they are) that I object to. It is the simple fact they’re complete fucking edjits.

Now let's toggle back over to Nick Gillespie of Reason. Trust me, I'm going someplace with all this.

Mega-props to our President Obama for yesterday's speechifying about simplifying and fair-izing the Infernal Revenue Service and all that.

Except for one small nitpicky thing: He's full of shit on this topic. How precisely is he or his Slugger's Row of policy mavens (you know, the idjits who can't even use Turbo Tax) gonna make the income tax more fair? As it stands, the top 1 percent of filers pay 40 percent of all income taxes; the top 5 percent pay 60 percent; and the top 10 percent pay fully 70 percent of all income taxes. The bottom 50 percent (5-0, Dano!) pay a whopping 3 percent of all income tax.

Kind sir, prithee, what the hell are you going to do to remedy this situation? You promise "tax cuts to the Americans who need them." Hey pal, I just shelled out tens of thousands of dollars so Citigroup can keep its fucking name on the 21st century's answer to Shea Stadium. Where in the name of Ray Sadecki and Bob Apodaca is my bailout? (Ray and Bob played for the NY Mets in Shea Stadium - TWS)

Here's my point.
What do you remember about the first quote I copied, the one from The Volokh Conspiracy? Anything? Anything at all? Prob'ly not. The logic was flawless, the grammar was flawless, and the tone was polite. But it had no passion. The person who wrote it doesn't have any blood in his mouth.

Nick Gillespie is another story. What tax preparation software did Tim Geithner use for his falsified tax returns? What company is using your tax dollars to put its name on which baseball stadium? What percentage of income taxes are paid by the bottom 50% of taxpayers? And John McCain was called the ____ ______ of presidential candidates. I bet you remember most of what was written.

Or the NickM rant... Where does NickM live? What is Nick Griffin's nationality? What Latin American Beast Of Burden would NickM encourage to have unnatural relations with Nick Griffin?

One week soon I might stage a series of Sweet-16 basketball playoff style brackets between NickM of Counting Cats and Nick Gillespie of Reason magazine. Points would be awarded based on logic, creativity, disdain for The Remaining Sheeple, and contempt for Messianic Big Brotherism.

A lot of people object to the snarky tone used on the internet. Profanity is the rule rather than the exception.

But dang it, Barack Obama is raising the troop levels in the Middle East when he promised he wouldn't. He promised to Guantanamo Bay, and he probably won't. He's spending money at a rate that makes little Bush, Daddy Bush, and Grandpaw Reagan look miserly. He's still claiming that your taxes won't go up as a result.

Nick Gillespie is the one of the few print journalists brave enough to point out the obvious: Barack Obama is full of shit. He really is.

Is Nick Griffin a one-eyed Welsh git, as NickM claims? I have no freakin' clue. I didn't know anything about the BNP until tonight. But NickM hasn't led me astray yet, and NickM has now made me want to know more.

(I apologize for the overwhelming number of people named "Nick" in this post. It just worked out that way.)

Nick Gillespie and NickM are alarmed. Fire alarms don't have a snooze button. Paul Revere didn't ride from Boston to Lexington politely whispering so as not to wake the baby.

"I use the grotesque the way I do because people are deaf and dumb and need help to see and hear." — Flannery O'Connor