Time magazine covers, then and now

Here's the cover from Time magazine's "Person(s) Of The Year" award issue from 2003.  Two corporate whistleblowers and a lady from the FBI who thought the Feds could've done more to prevent 9-11. 

Flash forward ten years.  Bradley Manning.  Edward Snowden.  Julian Assange.  Now THOSE are some whistleblowers.  All three have done incredibly important things for the cause of liberty, and at great personal risk.  They make the three ladies shown above look like mid-level managers who finally had the courage to use the company Suggestion Box. 

 Manning will probably die in a cage and Snowden and Assange can't travel freely. 

Here's to Time magazine going the way of Newsweek.  Sooner, not later.  Good riddance. 
Die quickly, mainstream media.  Die quickly. 

The Mainstream Media's bias against Libertarians

A few days ago, Mark Halperin created this chart for Time magazine. 

Ok, it's his chart.  He doesn't have to include anyone that he doesn't want to. 
But he's got Newt on there, along with Palin and Bachmann. 

At the time this was published, Newt was polling at 10%.  So was Ron Paul.  Where is Ron Paul on the chart?  Where is Gary Johnson? 

I watched Meet The Depressed last Sunday.  All sorts of Republican long shots were mentioned during the panel discussion, but with little or no mention of Paul or Johnson.  I noticed the same thing on The McLaughlin Group.  I think Eleanor Clift mentioned Paul in passing, saying something like "Ron Paul is in there, but he's really a libertarian". 

I could list dozens of other examples of an anti-libertarian bias in the media, but I'll go ahead and get to the point. 

The Mainstream Political Media, as a general rule, cannot stand libertarianism.  IMHO, here's why:

To make it to the top in political journalism, one must cultivate contacts in government, and guard and cherish those contacts above all else.  
Political reporters have to understand the political system, and how things get done in government.  The better their understanding, the better their salary, prestige, and status. 

But here comes a group of people who think electing a new president should be no more important than choosing a new lawncare service.  If libertarians were elected in large enough numbers, government wouldn't be nearly as important.  Therefore, political media wouldn't be as important. 

After the initial spending cuts of 55%, and the bulldozing of various Federal buildings, and the closing of overseas military bases, and the decimation of the bureaucrats, and the release of our Drug War POW's, and the public flogging of Paul Krugman, the Mainstream Media would have very little to write about.

Imagine the following fantasy news article.....

Washington (CNN) -- A group of military contractors, lobbyists, and manufacturing trade associations met with Senator John Spivey (L-Texas) to secure funding for a new BR549 bomber, a defense program guaranteed to create jobs for working Americans, help our economy, and protect our border with Canada. 
Senator Spivey said "No".
The group then met with Senator John Jay Myers (L-Texas) who told them "Not just no, but HELL no."   
Not much happened after that. 

Imagine you're a professional typist/reporter.  What had you rather type and report about? 
Government leaving people the hell alone? 
Or Obama's efforts to save the economy, Libya, Egypt, Social Security, education, the dollar, and everything else the government has screwed up? 

An Inconvenient Thermometer

We have a new record-breaking cold temperature in Maine.

It hit fifty degrees below zero last month.

This ties the record for coldest temperature ever recorded in New England, a record set in 1933.

Pics of global cooling from Freeborn John. Pics of schizophrenic Time Magazine covers from Globalwarming Lies.

Paragraphs That I Didn't Finish Reading....

How Obama Rewrote the Book
By Nancy Gibbs, Wednesday, Nov. 05, 2008
Time Magazine

Some princes are born in palaces. Some are born in mangers. But a few are born in the imagination, out of scraps of history and hope. Barack Obama....


New York Magazine
Daily Intel

One day, I was loitering on the steps of the law-school library, when a mutual friend walked over with him and introduced us. I don't think we shook hands, because I was busy clawing into a pack of Marlboro reds. We both just nodded, and Obama said, in a tone that struck me — or so I'll tell people from this day forward — as eerily presidential, "Hey, you mind if I bum one of those? I'm dying for a smoke....."

Mark Twain on the cover of Time magazine

Mark Twain, one of my literary heroes, has made the cover of Time magazine approximately 98 years after his death.

Roy Blount wrote the main article, and it's worth reading from beginning to end. Blount's "good old boy, gone up North" schtick can wear thin sometimes, but there's not a hint of it in this piece.

Stephen Carter wrote the inevitable piece on Twain and race. See "Getting Past Black and White".

They've got a piece on Twain's travel writing. Check out the map of his travels and lecture tours here.



And if you're interested, look at this collection of portraits.

The Clean Energy Scam - TIME

The cover story of Time magazine (see The Clean Energy Scam - TIME) reveals the startling discovery that the ethanol fuel frenzy is a scam.

(In related news, Jimmy Hoffa has disappeared, they've found the Titanic, and Princess Di was in a car wreck. And your eyes aren't going bad. That's a blurry copy of the Time cover.)

"An explosion in demand for farm-grown fuels has raised global crop prices to record highs, which is spurring a dramatic expansion of Brazilian agriculture, which is invading the Amazon at an increasingly alarming rate.
Propelled by mounting anxieties over soaring oil costs and climate change, biofuels have become the vanguard of the green-tech revolution, the trendy way for politicians and corporations to show they're serious about finding alternative sources of energy and in the process slowing global warming. The U.S. quintupled its production of ethanol--ethyl alcohol, a fuel distilled from plant matter--in the past decade, and Washington has just mandated another fivefold increase in renewable fuels over the next decade."

If you were visiting this site back in November, and demonstrated the patience to keep coming back, you already knew this. Here are a few more quotes from late-to-the-party Time magazine:

"People don't want to believe renewable fuels could be bad," says the lead author, Tim Searchinger, a Princeton scholar and former Environmental Defense attorney. "But when you realize we're tearing down rain forests that store loads of carbon to grow crops that store much less carbon, it becomes obvious."
The growing backlash against biofuels is a product of the law of unintended consequences. It may seem obvious now that when biofuels increase demand for crops, prices will rise and farms will expand into nature.

It's that damn Law of Unintended Consequences again. It should be repealed. If you're current on your Prozac, you might have the nerve to look at what Barack and The Clintons are saying, but breathe deeply:

The best place to see this is America's biofuel mecca: Iowa. Last year fewer than 2% of U.S. gas stations offered ethanol, and the country produced 7 billion gal. (26.5 billion L) of biofuel, which cost taxpayers at least $8 billion in subsidies. But on Nov. 6, at a biodiesel plant in Newton, Iowa, Hillary Rodham Clinton unveiled an eye-popping plan that would require all stations to offer ethanol by 2017 while mandating 60 billion gal. (227 billion L) by 2030. "This is the fuel for a much brighter future!" she declared. Barack Obama immediately criticized her--not for proposing such an expansive plan but for failing to support ethanol before she started trolling for votes in Iowa's caucuses.

Get it? Iowa is the first caucus state, therefore they get subsidies out the ying-yang. (A painful spot for subsidy storage, but profitable.) Still don't believe me? Read on. This is all written by Michael Grunwald, BTW. Great writer....

If biofuels are the new dotcoms, Iowa is Silicon Valley, with 53,000 jobs and $1.8 billion in income dependent on the industry. The state has so many ethanol distilleries under construction that it's poised to become a net importer of corn. That's why biofuel-pandering has become virtually mandatory for presidential contenders. John McCain was the rare candidate who vehemently opposed ethanol as an outrageous agribusiness boondoggle, which is why he skipped Iowa in 2000. But McCain learned his lesson in time for this year's caucuses. By 2006 he was calling ethanol a "vital alternative energy source."

Well, McCain tried. But can you freakin' believe that IOWA will be a net importer of CORN? That's how profitable this scam is ! ! ! Talking about hauling your coals to Newcastle. We're paying people to destroy the earth in the name of saving the earth ! ! ! I swear I'm not making this up ! ! ! Farmers are subsidizing the politicians in exchange for subsidizing the farmers, and it's all being done with a Virtuous Green Politically Correct Glow.

Ok, I'm calming down now. One of the 3 weiner dogs has hopped in my lap. My breathing is getting slower, and my heart rate is back under control.

Back to Time magazine, and further vindication of The Whited Sepulchre circular payoffs theory of subsidies. Heck, you can take out the word "ethanol" and replace it with any subsidized commodity. The logic still holds:

Members of Congress love biofuels too, not only because so many dream about future Iowa caucuses but also because so few want to offend the farm lobby, the most powerful force behind biofuels on Capitol Hill. Ethanol isn't about just Iowa or even the Midwest anymore. Plants are under construction in New York, Georgia, Oregon and Texas, and the ethanol boom's effect on prices has helped lift farm incomes to record levels nationwide.
Someone is paying to support these environmentally questionable industries: you. In December, President Bush signed a bipartisan energy bill that will dramatically increase support to the industry while mandating 36 billion gal. (136 billion L) of biofuel by 2022.

Congratulations. You've bought 36 billion gallons of this stuff, whether you wanted to or not. There's one mis-statement in the paragraph above. There is no "ethanol boom". There is only a government mandate that you purchase ethanol.

So if I could figure out this scam back in November, and Time Holy Magazine put it together in April, can Nancy Pelosi and Trent Lott be far behind?

Yeah. Probably.

Al Gore, Time Magazine's Person of The Year....Almost

Thank God for Vladimir Putin.

Vladimir Putin, a former KGB agent and the current Russian President, was all that stood between Al Gore and Time Magazine's "Person Of The Year" award.

Putin won it. This probably isn't enough to completely atone for Putin's KGB sins and his anti-free market crimes, but it comes close. Because of Putin, Saint Albert, The Goracle of Music City Tennessee, was only first runner-up.

If you need more fun facts about Gore, please read the New Age pap in the Time article. Especially if you have a fierce desire to learn how there can be a Deep Spiritual Side to something that's a total farce.

Please read the Gore interview, and notice Bryan Walsh consistently using the newer, more nebulous panic phrase "Climate Change" rather than previous panic phrase "Global Warming". (Climate Change has been going on for millenia. Climate always Changes. Therefore, Gore's warnings about Climate Change will be validated. But, hhhmmm. that "Global Warming" thing was uncomfortably precise. How can anyone make money off this con job if it gets colder???)

Here's the most important question in that Bryan Walsh asked in his Al Gore interview: "John Doerr, your new partner at the venture-capitalist firm Kleiner Perkins, has said of climate change, 'Sometimes panic is an appropriate response.' How do you remain optimistic?"

I've sounded off before about the Al Gore/Kleiner Perkins relationship. They're paying Gore a fortune. Both parties are about to make Tennesse Mansions-full of money by 1) continuing to panic everyone about the looming Global Warming Climate Change crisis, 2) insisting that their Buddies in Government do something about the fake crisis (with your money), 3) getting environmental legislation in place with target dates, quotas, new standards, and new bureaucracies, 4) offering government subsidies to the Alternative Energy start-up firms that Kleiner Perkins underwrites, and 5) setting other roadblocks in place that only the Kleiner Perkins Alternative Energy Wonderboys can help us get past.

It will be beautiful. I'm no longer asking people to get mad about it. That's like getting angry at the sunrise. I just want to call your attention to it, much like I hope you would call my attention to an eclipse....so we can enjoy watching it happen together.

I'm a little angry at one person, though. Bryan Walsh, who interviewed Gore, apparently asked the John Doerr "Panic is the appropriate response" question without a trace of doubt or cynicism. How in the heck does someone who claims to be a journalist do that? Does he not know that John Doerr will be a jillionaire, if only everyone will co-operate with Gore and panic?

I mean, there Walsh is, interviewing the Front Man For a Pack of Jackals. The Kleiner Perkins/Al Gore group is going to get filthy rich. That's why Kleiner Perkins is giving Saint Al the big bucks. It's not a secret. I didn't read about it in Time, where they pay Bryan Walsh to type, but it was previously in Newsweek, and I'm assuming a few newspapers. But in the Newsweek piece by Tony Dokoupil and David Kaplan, Saint Albert got the same reverent treatment.

What Livestock Auction should I attend to find cooperative journalist-sheep like these? I'm going to start making and selling perpetual motion machines, and need some free publicity.