On Chick-Fil-A and chickens

It seems like the internet, the Tweetosphere, Facebook, and the pitiful remnants of the print media are all a-clucking about Chick-Fil-A. 
Dan Cathy, Chick-Fil-A's CEO, in addition to supporting some anti-gay and lesbian organizations, made the following comments to the Baptist Press: 

Some have opposed the company's support of the traditional family. "Well, guilty as charged," said Cathy when asked about the company's position.


"We are very much supportive of the family -- the biblical definition of the family unit. We are a family-owned business, a family-led business, and we are married to our first wives. We give God thanks for that.

"We operate as a family business ... our restaurants are typically led by families; some are single. We want to do anything we possibly can to strengthen families. We are very much committed to that," Cathy emphasized.

Blah, Blah, Blah, blah, and blah.  If Dan Cathy wants to give money to a group called Gods And Ghosts and Goblins Against Gays, that's his business. If customers want to avoid his business because of it, more power to them.  That's their business, right? 

Here's what I don't understand.....How is it that the Leftosphere is going totally batshit against a Chicken Restaurant for their anti-gay stance WHEN THAT IS THE EXACT SAME POLICY HELD BY BARACK FREAKIN' OBAMA TWO MONTHS AGO ?????

Where was the outrage?  Why didn't lefties, liberals and the rest of the Great Herd Of Independent Minds decide to boycott the Democrat Party?  Why were the Libertarians the only ones standing up for Gay/Lesbian equality??? 

Hell's Bells, I'm a freakin' Shipping Manager and Freight Broker.  But I had balls enough to publish this in the Fort Worth Star-Telegram back when Barack Obama was still "evolving". 
Was it easy? No. 
Did I take a lot of crap because of it?  Yes. 
So why couldn't The Teleprompter Jesus do the same thing until the day after North Carolina voted on their anti-gay/lesbian marriage referendum? 

It's because he's a physical and moral coward.  (Hit that link.  He flip-flops around like a catfish on the lake bank.) 

Barack Obama is a chicken. 

Here's the LP candidate for President, Gary Johnson:

"I think I do better than Obama on civil liberties, I think I crush him when it comes to dollars and cents," Johnson said. "I think I do a lot bettrer than Romney on dollars and cents but I think I crush him on civil liberties."


Asked if he was the best candidate on gay marriage, Johnson said "There's no question unabashedly let's have marriage equality now, gay rights are constitutionally guaranteed."

A Johnson presidency would ensure a "libertarian president who's going to challenge Democrats to fix things when it comes to civil liberties and then get a libertarian president who's going to challenge the Republicans on dollars and cents, something they're horrible on."

End of rant. 
The picture of our president in a chicken suit came from here. 

Bill Gates - Outsourcer, Destroyer Of Jobs, and Evil, Evil Man

In the late 1980's, IBM was poised to open a major typewriter manufacturing plant in rural Kentucky. 
The building they constructed to house this project was almost 1,000,000 square feet. 

You can go here to see the proud history of IBM typewriters.  Notice how the history ends in the late 1990's. 

Most of this is because of one man. 

Bill Gates. 

He eliminated tens of thousands of jobs in the U.S. typewriter industry.  His software packages have also eliminated American jobs at the U.S. postal service, secretarial positions, and the printing industry.  The job losses that can be laid at his feet probably number in the millions.  And yet some people consider him a hero.

Please do your part to reverse this trend.  Take whatever device you're using to read this, lift it high above your head, and smash it into tiny little pieces.  Then go buy a typewriter.

Create jobs for America !!!  Boycott Bill Gates and all others who try to eliminate jobs in the name of lower prices and better products for consumers !!!

On San Francisco's city employee travel boycott

Let me get this out of the way first.....
If it weren't for the entitlement giveaways that our politicians throw out as if every day were Mardi Gras, I would favor "open borders". 
(Yeah, we would have to stop pissing off the rest of the world, which would greatly reduce the chances that someone would bring in a nuke from Toronto.  And we would have to reduce the size of government by about 90%, so the Statists would have nothing to gain by importing more Statist voters.  Probably a fantasy, but it would be nice.  The #1 predictor of whether you'll be wealthy or miserable?  The lines of latitude and longitude where you happen to be born.  That ain't right.) 

Anyway, because of the Arizona's recent crackdown on illegal immigrants, the city of San Francisco is banning travel by all of their city employees to Arizona.  Here's the San Francisco Chronicle's City Insider Blog:

San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom announced today a moratorium on official city travel to Arizona after the state enacted a controversial new immigration law that directs local police to arrest those suspected of being in the country illegally.
The ban on city employee travel to Arizona takes effect immediately, although there are some exceptions, including for law enforcement officials investigating a crime, officials said. It's unclear how many planned trips by city workers will be curtailed.

I like that a lot.  I hope that Los Angeles, San Diego, Fresno, and Long Beach do the same thing.  And on the other hand, I hope that Phoenix, Tucson, Tempe, and Tombstone Arizona retaliate by not allowing their employees travel to anywhere in California.  Or anywhere else. 

I hope the Fort Worth, Texas, City Council doesn't allow its city employees to travel anywhere at all.  I hope that they tell all city employees to stay their asses at home and repair the potholes that are all over the East Side. 

It would be nice if the Booger Den, Mississippi, City Council declared that there would be no more travel on the government tit.  Never ever. 

Why restrict this protest to the city and town level?  I think the world would be a better place if Obama had a sit-down with Hillary and told her something like, "Mrs. Clinton, they've passed a racist, fascist, hate-filled anti-immigration law in Arizona.  And in protest, I need you to stay out of Arizona, China, Israel, Jordan, Africa, and Mexico.  Stay home."   

Would we have more money in the Treasury if we told our defense employees that they couldn't spend any more time defending, say, Germany and Japan, and that those nations were going to have to provide their own defense?  Would our boys and girls currently fighting in the Middle East Sandbox be better off it we told them to come home and get their feet back under their Mamas' kitchen tables?  Let's get them back to defending the borders, and nothing else.  That would solve any and all immigration "problems" right there.

The San Francisco Government Travel Boycott - may it spread far and wide.  

John Stossel's show on Healthcare

There are very few diamonds in the television dungheap.

John Stossel's new show, Stossel, is one of them. Thursday's show featured John Mackey, the founder of Whole Foods, and it was excellent. It will probably repeat on FoxBusiness a couple of more times. You owe it to yourself, you owe it to libertarianism, you owe it to John Stossel's ratings, and you owe it to the planet to Tivo this show every week. You owe it to third world countries. Think of The Children. It's the closest thing to a libertarian TV program that I've seen.


If you don't know his story, Mackey recently wrote an article for the Wall Street Journal advocating a more free market approach to healthcare. All of Mackey's proposals were simple, inexpensive, and fair. The ThoughtPolice were outraged, of course, and called for a boycott of Whole Foods.
(Whole Foods is the leading organic/locally grown/health food outlet in the U.S. Whole Foods' customers, until recently, didn't know that the Whole Foods CEO was a Libertarian who voted for Bob Barr in the most recent election, and who also contributes large chunks of money to Reason magazine. God bless him. He's doing more for humanity through his charitable work than he's ever done by providing locally grown organic arugula to the socially aware shoppers of Highland Park, TX. Please hit both of those links if time permits.)


Mackey claims that since the boycott, sales have actually increased. I intend to go to the Arlington TX store this morning for the first time ever. Guess why?

Stossel also had the leader of the Whole Foods boycott on the program, a guy who mostly fumed and sputtered and expressed his outrage. There are all sorts of links to various TV shows and resources on the boycott site, but there's no mention of this dude's appearance on Stossel's program. Mostly because John Mackey carved the poor guy up into tiny bite-sized organic pieces, doused them with a locally-grown marinade, and ate them (with sustainably produced utensils).


Last week, Stossel showed how you can get the taxpayers to buy you a free golf cart via the Cash For Clunkers scam. This week, he explained why you are insured for a free electric wheelchair, whether you want to be insured for one or not. (You are probably eligible ! ! Even if you aren't handicapped ! ! Our operators are standing by ! ! Call now ! ! Dial 1-800-WE-LOBBIED-FOR-IT ! !)


The program closed with a short piece on Lasik eye surgery. In the past ten years, the cost of a Lasik procedure on one eye has dropped from more than $2,000 to somewhere around $1,000, despite a near-doubling of all other medical costs.

Why?

Because Lasik isn't not covered by insurance, so people shop around. If the price isn't right, fewer people elect to have the procedure done. Lasik is one of the few free market medical procedures. Doctors have to compete for the business. Customers care about the cost. Therefore, the cost is dropping.


Stossel. FoxBusiness. Go to the Tivo now. Program it to record.

One other thing....in my previous post about Stossel, I mentioned that all of the audience questions were hostile. I kinda like that.
Others disagree. Go to Stossel's blog for a discussion.
Full Disclosure: See those display fixtures Mackey is standing near? I think they were made by my employer, Jukt Micronics.

And on the seventh day, Donald Boudreaux rested....

George Mason University economics professor Donald Boudreaux has gone on a tear. The last few days on his Cafe Hayek blog have included some of the best posts I've ever read.

First, he has to correct Harold Meyerson's assertion that American manufacturing is declining. It isn't. We're combining parts from all over the world with our parts. That's what we do at my Jukt Micronics gig. If you're so inclined, you can go here to read an ancient post of mine about Harold Meyerson. Before this blog was two months old, I already knew I'd be needing a "Harold Meyerson" post label.

Professor Boudreaux then went to bed, but apparently slept fitfully. Perhaps he knew that there were still some mercantilist rent-seekers who hadn't been properly bitch-slapped. We will never know what motivated him, and it's not our place to ask the great man why, but The Professor got up early the next morning and explained to the English-speaking world that if you "protect" some of your citizen-manufacturers, all you're doing is making their products more expensive than they should be. This, in the long run, helps a small number of your wealthy citizen-manufacturers, but it hurts most of your citizen-citizens.

Later that afternoon, someone defiled Professor Boudreaux's comment field with disturbing news about what Beijing was doing to protect Chinese manufacturers. The Professor took off his academic robe, placed his chalk in the tray at the bottom of the board, and delivered a Karate Kid Crane Kick to the commenter. (I've added the commenter and his family to the prayer list at Broadway Baptist Church, and wish him a speedy recovery.)

Finally, before embarking on a much-deserved Sabbath day of rest, The Professor explains why there's no such thing as a free subsidy. Whether it's cotton, soybeans, corn, tobacco, or those things for which you can trade in a Clunker, someone is paying for every subsidy. And that would be you.

The posts about the Whole Foods boycotts are the dessert.

Brilliant, brilliant stuff. I want to go to George Mason U., and follow The Professor around while he teaches the multitudes. Maybe spend some time fishing on the Sea Of Galilee with him. Hold his coat while he heals some lepers. And then when Obama has him arrested for heresy, deny three times that I ever knew him. Then retire to my home village to write The Gospel of Saint Don.

It could happen.

Now it's time for Texans to boycott Texas

We've got more problems in our peanut butter.....

(CNN) -- The Texas Department of State Health Services on Thursday ordered the recall of all products ever shipped from the Peanut Corporation of America's plant in Plainview, Texas, after discovering dead rodents, rodent excrement and bird feathers in the plant.

So in the spirit of last year's anti-China alarmism and calls for boycotts, I'm now calling for all Texans do the right thing and boycott all Texas-made products.

"It's For The Children"®

National Review, China's Socially Responsible Mutual Funds, Methodist Economic Sanctions, and other stuff like that

I've always enjoyed reading National Review.
Yeah, they're conservative, not libertarian, but there are only two decent newstand libertarian periodicals - Reason and Liberty.
Once you get past the obligatory anti-abortion paragraph on every 10th page (founder William F. Buckley was a devout Catholic), they've got some good stuff. And now that Mr. Buckley is pushing up daisies, National Review has gotten a little more lively. Or at least quotable.

Check this out, from the April 7th issue, on China's ultra-repressive socialists aping their yuppie socialist counterparts....

China's "liberalized" economy allows some market mechanisms to operate, but it is still dominated by the corrupt leadership of the People's Liberation Army and various tentacles of the Communist Party. So investors must have been scratching their heads when they read that Shanghai-based Industrial Fund Management has received government permission to launch China's first "socially responsible" mutual fund. Where will they invest? Taiwan?

I love it. Can't you imagine a pair of Communist Party Princelings sipping their Starbucks and discussing whether it's ethical to invest in South Africa?

Next up, the National Review moves on to our good friends, the Methodists.

When the United Methodist Church kicks off its general assembly this month, one of the notable items on its agenda will be a vote on economic sanctions against....

Ok, enough National Review. I'm gonna make you guess which nation they want to sanction.

China? For their repression of Tibet, and continuing crackdowns on political, religious and market freedoms?
Nope. China's not bad enough.

Cuba? For throwing dissidents into dungeons, welding the prison doors shut, and feeding political prisoners nothing but entrails for weeks at a time?
No, they're not going to sanction Cuba. (As if they could add additional sanctions to those already imposed by the U.S....)

How about the totalitarian nightmare of Kim Jong Il's North Korea?
No way. For all their crimes against humanity, all of these nations still pretend to be more or less Socialist, and therefore we in the U.S. have much to learn from their wisdom.

The country in question will be the first nation the Methodists have ever voted to sanction, as best I can tell.

Keep guessing. Put yourself into the shoes of a Give It All Unto Caesar, Big Government Loving, Interventionist Lobbying....aww, forget it.
Try drooling a little. Get totally out of character. Try thinking of places where, in the not too distant past, it has been illegal to be a Methodist.

Russia, with its Siberian gulags?
Cambodia, because of The Killing Fields?

No. You're not trying hard enough. The religious persecution hint was unfair. I threw that in to get you off track. The nation they're wanting to sanction has religious freedoms rivaling those of the U.S.

Bring some self-hatred to the task. Pretend to feel guilty for all that you own and all the freedoms you enjoy. Then transfer the rage to others with similar freedoms, despite being surrounded by enemies. Give up? OK, back to National Review:

When the United Methodist Church kicks off its general assembly this month, one of the notable items on its agenda will be a vote on economic sanctions against....Israel.