A Free Market Prayer For The New Year

Sometime around Christmas I went out to eat with some old-time old-school friends that I hadn't seen for a while.  We chose a Mexican restaurant (and the food was amazing). 

I got a massive amount of burritos, tostadas, rice, beans, chips, queso, and I forget what else for only $10.95.  Everyone else got a similar bounty for their bucks. 

My friends at the table are not religious.  They're not even spiritual.  But one of them said "For this food at this price, I feel like a prayer of some kind is in order." 

All eyes turned in my direction....

Here's what I improvised, or at least my rough memory of it.  It owes more than a little to Leonard Reed's immortal "I, Pencil" essay. 

No heads were bowed.  No eyes were closed.  I wasn't talking to god or gods.  It's just what I wanted people to know, and what I hoped we all felt:

"We're grateful for this food.  For the farmers who grew it, for the cattlemen who fed it, and for the workers who harvested it. 

Let us not forget the factory owners who processed it, none of whom knew that we would be here eating today.  May we always remember to be grateful for the truckers and warehouse workers who handled the shipping and transport, despite them not even knowing our names.

May we never forget the tremendous risk undertaken by anyone who tries to open and run a restaurant.  And we are grateful for the cooks, the wait staff, the bus boys, and the cleaning crew.

All of those hard-working wonderful people accomplished this miracle on our behalf for the price of $10.95 each. 

May we all be free from rent-seekers who would interject themselves, uninvited, into this process.

May everyone involved in our exchanges believe that they have gotten the best of every deal, and may we all live our lives in a way that encourages others to trade their dishes for our dollars."

- Amen

(The last part in italics wasn't in the original prayer.  I just thought of it, and considered it too good to leave out.)  

On thanking the military for their service

A Facebook friend of mine named David Singhiser threw down this well-written, thoughtful post yesterday. 
Other than the Christian angle that he takes, I've been having a lot of the same thoughts. 

What and how you speak has consequences. Earlier this week I lost my temper and lost most of my cousins and at least the respect, if I ever had any, from my brother and sister.

I regret the loss. I wish I could regret what I said. I suppose I should regret how I said what I said, but it got their attention, even if it was too late: a cousin was cheered and congratulated upon joining the US Marines last month.

Just as what I said has consequences, so do other things that I see constantly posted: nice, kind, patriotic posts, given with the best of intentions.

But I hate and despise them, because they too have consequences.

"Thank you for your service;" "They're fighting for our freedoms."

Or the blasphemous:

"There are two defining forces which have ever offered to die for you: Jesus Christ, for your soul, the American soldier, for your freedom."

What's wrong with that? What kind of jerk am I that would despise that?

It's a simple thank you, but what else does it say?

Dear soldier, you, who I don't know, and have never met, I assume that everything you have done has been to serve me, my family, and country, my dear hero, I know this, because you wear a uniform.

And what are the consequences? It teaches our children that putting on a uniform and doing nothing else makes one a hero.

We do not know what kind of service the soldier has performed. For all we know he has spent the last years protecting poppy fields in Afghanistan for the drug lords. We do know if he has spent his free time throwing puppies off a cliff for target practice as has been posted on YouTube.

No, we assume they are great heroes, moral and virtuous, because they wear a uniform.

That is one consequence you teach your kids: put on a uniform and you will be a hero.

Repentance, virtue, kindness, love, compassion, courage to go against the grain?

No, that is not encouraged.

Put on a uniform and conform, that is the message you champion.

"Thank You For Your Service" inspires the unthinking into joining the military. They believe it, because they hear and see it repeatedly: "They're fighting for our freedom."

So kids who are not mature enough to buy alcohol, are allowed to join the military thinking that they will be defending freedom, when in fact, they are fighting for what Eisenhower warned against: the military industrial complex, and of course oil.

Every time you thank a soldier for his service, find out just what he or she did, look around and make sure a kid doesn't hear and get the impression that by joining up, he or she becomes a hero.

Realize that though they may think they are protecting freedom, our freedoms are not in danger by tribesmen in Afghanistan or zealots in Iraq, or Libya, or Syria. American soldiers are fighting and dying for someone's greed.

As bad as the Taliban are, can they really keep you from speaking your mind, keep you from going to church, reading or writing a book? Who really threatens your freedom? The threat is not overseas. So why is the military overseas?

There are consequences to what you say. Look beyond the niceties.

Thanking strangers, standing up and applauding at airports, because they wear a uniform only encourages more children to aspire to join, kill, and get killed.

Those whom I know who are still in the military or have been in the military, who have studied the history of this country, love and understand freedom and liberty, hate being thanked.

They feel a range from embarrassment to disgust of the thoughtless idolization of the military. They, more than anyone know the crimes, the stupidity, and the evil that goes on in war and the military. Some are haunted by what they have seen; some are haunted by what they have done.

Thanking them only intensifies their pain.

And what about the threat to the souls of your children? Listening to some of you, I'd think they've joined a church choir. Christ taught us to love our enemies. The military teaches soldiers to dehumanize the enemy, calling them: Krauts, Japs, Gooks, Sand Niggers. It begins in training. It makes it easier to kill, because you see, there once was a time when most soldiers just shot above the heads of the enemy troops. The military had to put a stop to that.

Beautiful

What exactly follows the military? Where do they go for R&R? Monasteries or brothels? You've encouraged children to dive in to a den of vipers, you thank them, idolize them, and damn them because you refuse to think, you repeat the clichés, you follow the mob, believe the propaganda, all the while insisting you're free.

Instead of supporting the troops, keep your loved ones from joining. Don't feed the beast with your children. Have you not read in the Old Testament how the ungodly threw their children into the fire? What are you doing, if not that?

Discourage anyone from joining. Encourage them to be true heroes, fighting for freedom with their minds and their words. Instead of killing and getting killed, teach them to be peace makers.

Brutes and slaves, blind followers, obeying masters, killing and getting killed for glory! heroism! honor!

Free people are better than that.

Christians follow, honor, and obey the Prince of Peace.

I stand my what I said. I am sickened by parents, family members, teachers, counselors, pastors, or friends who encourage young men and women into joining the US military. They failed them. They believed lies, followed the herd, and sent children marching into the fire.

A Libertarian Hymn

I'm probably going to do nothing but Thanksgiving and gratitude posts for the rest of this week. 
Despite Obama, despite John Boehner, despite the rise of the warrior cops, despite the next Texas goobernatorial (sic) race being about abortion and nothing else, I've got it pretty good.

Some of my well-being is because of family, some is luck, and some is because the founders of my country wanted the citizenry to be left the hell alone.  Most of us have no idea how lucky we are, and some of our neighbors are clueless enough to want to unravel the protections that have made our prosperity possible.  Go figure. 

With the exception of some Christmases and Easters, I haven't made church in several years.  Here's something I wrote about Thanksgiving waaaaaay back in 2009, when the gods and I were on better terms. 

Enjoy.  Be thankful that people aren't trying to help you.

*************

I made it to Broadway Baptist Church for their pre-Thanksgiving dinner last Sunday night. I've been taking an extended leave of absence from BBC for about 6 months now, but when I do stick my nose back in the door, there's usually something to surprise or inspire me.
My friend Dr. Ralph, agent provocateur of this site, was also there. Go here for The Doctor's Thanksgiving post. We tried to sit and eat together, but higher authorities intervened.

This is the hymn that the music ministry folks chose to end the service. As soon as I read the words, I stuck the text into my pocket....please pay particular attention to the second verse:

Praise God for the harvest of orchard and field,
praise God for the people who gather their yield,
the long hours of labour, the skills of a team,
the patience of science, the power of machine.

Praise God for the harvest that comes from afar,
from market and harbour, the sea and the shore:
foods packed and transported, and gathered and grown
by God-given neighbours, unseen and unknown.

Praise God for the harvest that's quarried and mined,
then sifted, and smelted, or shaped and refined:
for oil and for iron, for copper and coal,
praise God, who in love has provided them all.

Praise God for the harvest of science and skill,
the urge to discover, create and fulfil:
for dreams and inventions that promise to gain
a future more hopeful, a world more humane.

Praise God for the harvest of mercy and love
from leaders and peoples who struggle and serve
for patience and kindness, that all may be led
to freedom and justice, and all may be fed.

That's the version found at hymnsUK.com , anyway. My instinct lately has been to trust the British versions of everything.
Dr. Ralph found me as we were leaving. "That was quite a libertarian hymn," he said, and I wholeheartedly agreed.
If you don't understand the point I'm trying to make, hit some of the links. I can't believe someone actually wrote a hymn that 's good enough to cause Dr Ralph to stop twirling his villain moustache and take notice.
Verse two stands alone nicely, no links required. A song in praise of Supply Chain Management.

....foods packed and transported, and gathered and grown
by God-given neighbours, unseen and unknown.

If you're still unclear on the concept, here's The Boston Globe's token libertarian, Jeff Jacoby, explaining why we should be grateful for a certain economic principle which, if you live in the U.S., allowed you to eat some turkey sometime this week:

The activities of countless people over the course of many months had to be intricately choreographed and precisely timed, so that when you showed up to buy a fresh Thanksgiving turkey, there would be one -- or more likely, a few dozen -- waiting. The level of coordination that was required to pull it off is mind-boggling. But what is even more mind-boggling is this: No one coordinated it.

No turkey czar sat in a command post somewhere, consulting a master plan and issuing orders. No one forced people to cooperate for your benefit. And yet they did cooperate. When you arrived at the supermarket, your turkey was there. You didn't have to do anything but show up to buy it. If that isn't a miracle, what should we call it?

Adam Smith called it "the invisible hand" -- the mysterious power that leads innumerable people, each working for his own gain, to promote ends that benefit many.

Out of the seeming chaos of millions of uncoordinated private transactions emerges the spontaneous order of the market. Free human beings freely interact, and the result is an array of goods and services more immense than the human mind can comprehend. No dictator, no bureaucracy, no supercomputer plans it in advance. Indeed, the more an economy is planned, the more it is plagued by shortages, dislocation, and failure.

It is commonplace to speak of seeing God's signature in the intricacy of a spider's web or the animation of a beehive. But they pale in comparison to the kaleidoscopic energy and productivity of the free market. If it is a blessing from Heaven when seeds are transformed into grain, how much more of a blessing is it when our private, voluntary exchanges are transformed - without our ever intending it - into prosperity, innovation, and growth?
Well said, Mr. Jacoby. Here's one last verse for that hymn; this one composed by Yours Truly. I don't think it's going to appear in a hymnal any time soon....

Praise God for our system of sweet Liberty,
The framework of freedom which feeds you and me.
Praise God for the scholars and writers who've shown
More people can prosper if just left alone.

**********

Have a good Thanksgiving, folks. 

Thanksgiving and gratitude: Tell me I'm a good man

I've been thinking a lot about Thanksgiving and gratitude for the last few days. 
Here's one of my favorite snippets of movie dialogue ever. 
It's from the Spielberg classic "Saving Private Ryan", which ends with the following exchange between James Ryan (as an old man) and his wife. 
They're standing at the grave of one a WW2 soldier who sacrificed himself so Ryan could live. 

James Ryan: Tell me I have led a good life.
Ryan's Wife: What?
James Ryan: Tell me I'm a good man.
Ryan's Wife: You are.

Ryan knows that a squadron of soldiers sacrificed themselves to keep him alive.  He wants reassurance that he's lived a life worthy of that sacrifice. 

*******

Tell me I'm a good man.

Nathan Hale, a soldier in the Continental Army during the American Revolution, volunteered for a spying mission.  He was captured by the British, and hanged.  His last words were:  "I only regret that I have but one life to give for my country."

Tell me I'm a good man.

William Tyndale dared to translate the bible from Greek and Hebrew into English.  His work revolutionized theology, education, and the English language, and was probably instrumental in toppling the concept of the "Divine Right Of Kings".  He lived most his adult life hunted like an animal all over Europe.  After being convicted of heresy, he was strangled, and his body was burned at the stake. 

Tell me I'm a good man. 

In 2012, CIA employee, NSA specialist, and computer programmer Edward Snowden became one of the nation's most notorious whistleblowers, leaking over 200,000 classified documents to journalist Glenn Greenwald, among others.  His disclosures revealed an out-of-control government conducting warrantless surveillance of emails and phone calls.  He will probably live out the rest of his life as a political refugee in the Soviet Union. 

Tell me I'm a good man. 

Fannie Lou Hamer grew up picking cotton near Ruleville, Mississippi.  She helped found the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party, and organized the Mississippi Freedom Summer.  After being arrested on false charges near Winona, Mississippi, police officers almost beat her to death.  Shortly afterwards, she got under Lyndon Johnson's skin on national TV with a speech that included the following line:  "All of this is on account we want to register, to become first-class citizens, and if the Freedom Democratic Party is not seated now, I question America. Is this America, the land of the free and the home of the brave where we have to sleep with our telephones off the hooks because our lives be threatened daily because we want to live as decent human beings - in America?"

 Tell me I'm a good man. 

In 2010, U.S. Army Intelligence Analyst Bradley Manning downloaded more than 400,000 military documents to Wikileaks, including video of airstrikes killing Iraqi civilians and journalists.  His whistleblowing activity was met with a conviction for treason.  Manning will probably spend the rest of his life in a cage. 

Tell me I'm a good man.  Tell me that I'm living a life worthy of this kind of sacrifice. 

On November 9, 2012, Malala Yousafzai, a 15-year old Pakistani girl, was shot in the head by the Taliban.  She had been an advocate of education for girls and women. 

Tell me I'm a good man. 

Irwin Schiff, father of investment guru Peter Schiff, repeatedly and eloquently made the claim that the U.S. tax code is unjust and unconstitutional.  In 2005, he was convicted of willfully failing to pay income tax, and will be in a Fort Worth, TX federal prison until sometime in 2017. 

Tell me I'm a good man.  Tell me that I don't ever take any of these sacrifices for granted.  Remind me that there will always be evil men who want to use political power and force for their own advantage.  Tell me that I'm the kind of person who will stand up to the bullies of the state.  Tell me that I'm living a life that would make these people proud. 

Tell me I'm a good man. 

Be sure to thank the people who didn't try to make it happen

If you're a tech geek, you've seen this picture.  Let's start at the top left and go clockwise.  There's a videocam, a primitive jam box, a radio, an electric typewriter, a calculator, some VHS tapes, a VCR, some things I don't recognize, a digital recorder, a pager, and a camera. 

We now have this.  It'll do everything shown above, will fit in your pocket, will probably last longer, and it costs a fraction of the gizmos shown above.  I'm not a techno-geek, and I've given up on going after the best stuff, so the phone I arbitrarily posted below is probably out-of-date already. 

I've got a 3 or 4 year old Blackberry knockoff, and I'm still getting accustomed to the joy of pulling up "Map" and typing in "Haircut" or "bar" or "bourbon" and being directed to the nearest supplier. 

Here's something from Gizmodo:

A company called Ampex put out the first "home entertainment" VTR in 1963, only it cost $30,000 in the Neiman Marcus Christmas catalog, and was nicknamed Grant's Tomb because the product manager who thought it up was going to be shoved inside by the company's accountants. (He would have fit, too, the thing was so big.) Sony comes along in the middle of that decade and puts out a $1,200 "portable" VTR that came with a leatherette case and its own TV. It still weighed 65 pounds.

No one intended the glorious destruction of the VCR/VHS/tape recorder/typewriter industry.  It just kinda happened.  People wanted to make money.  Others were just tinkerers.  And for the most part, they were left alone.  There was no Central Planner in Washington, overseeing the evolution of what you probably have in your pocket or purse.  No Technology Czar carefully planning each step of the demolition of BetaMax.   (Had there been a Technology Czar, you would still be watching  Betamax or VHS tapes, at best.  Do some reading on Regulatory Capture.  Regulators and Czars almost always wind up protecting the status quo.) 

Here's a good summary of the undersigned, unplanned and spontaneous social order that many of us are still fortunate enough to live in.  Don Boudreaux at his best:

"....many people simply cannot conceive of social order that isn’t consciously designed and enforced by some secular creator (that is, by the state).  Most people are secular theists regarding social order.  Order must, for secular theists, be the result of a some higher power that designs, intends, imposes, and guides willfully the order that we see about us.  Without a higher secular power designing and keeping control of things, chaos or near-chaos would necessarily reign.

Get rid of this secular deity – or suffer it to fall under the influence of secular devils (for American “Progressives,” those devils today are tea-partiers) – and society must deteriorate.  Rules of the road would wither away, or certainly not be enforced; roads themselves would never be built; the electromagnetic spectrum would become a commons tragically overused (and, hence, rendered useless) by countless broadcasters scrambling for airtime; and automobiles – were they to exist at all – would be horrible death traps.

The great insight of the social sciences – which too few social scientists themselves get – is that society, to the extent that it is complex and functional, is necessarily the result of human action but not of human design.

Reasonable people can and do dispute how much sovereign intention and design are necessary or worthwhile to tweak, modify, polish, protect, top-off the emergent social order that not only did government not design but couldn’t possibly have even begun to design.*  But it is totally false and wrongheaded – yet it is the dominant view of almost everyone – that most of the economic and social order that we experience about us is the result of government and, hence, would necessarily disappear or collapse into disarray were government to disappear or fail to perform its duty well.

Sadly, most people are apparently just incapable of understanding that almost all social order emerges undesigned and unplanned.  Most people are and seemingly will remain naive secular creationists, ignorant that the forces of natural selection and evolution are constantly at play in society, and that these force are usually only thwarted or distorted by attempts to engineer society from on high.  And (here’s an irony) this sad ignorance of the nature of society afflicts even – perhaps especially – those people who have no difficulty understanding that very complex, beautiful, and highly functional non-social orders (such as biological order and the order of the cosmos) emerge unplanned and undesigned."

So next time you make a phone call, record a video, post a FB photo, send a text, snap a picture, get directions, post a blog rant, or watch a DVD, be sure to thank the person in Washington D.C. who didn't try to make it all happen. 

Happy Father's Day

Here's a picture of my father, the late Donald Gene Patterson, and my daughter, The Aggie. 
My father was the greatest man I've ever known.  The End.  Full Stop. 

There was a time during the "Men's Movement" scare of the late 1980's early 1990's, where men would go out into the woods and sit in drum circles and take turns slamming their fathers. 

I have no idea, no background, or no experiences to help me fathom what those guys were talking about.  Lucky me. 

If you visit this site regularly, what you're reading is merely an expansion of what I learned riding around our farm in his pickup truck.  While he would've never supported, say, the right to use marijuana or gay marriage, I believe he was doing the best he could with the light that he had to see by. 

I miss him so very much. 

BTW, for Father's Day, The Aggie gave me an original drawing of Peyton Manning, our football hero.  Pretty dang cool. 

Thank You

Many thanks to the Libertarian Party candidates, door-knockers, sign-posters, phone-callers, Facebook-sharers, forum-attenders and other supporters !! 

This was our best year ever. 

Check out the Tarrant County Elections website when time permits.  Then head over to the Texas site.   A staggering number of Republicans and Democrats voted "straight ticket".  Even so, a lot of Dems and Independents selected our folks when there was a two-candidate race between the LP candidate and a Republican. 

We had a respectable showing in many of the 3-party races. 

If I'm disappointed in anything, it's Gary Johnson's total.  Yes, he doubled the 2008 number, but I would've put money on a 3x performance. 

But dang it, we didn't win anything. 

There's always 2014. 

Ungrateful Cubans

Things like this make me sick....This is from the Seattle Times:

MIAMI - They led a life of privilege in a society of chronic scarcity. Children of top Cuban officials from Fidel Castro on down, they attended elite schools and often received coveted visas to study abroad.


They were being groomed to lead Cuba into the 21st century. Yet, with the passage of time and the decline of communism in the world, many of the children of Cuban revolutionaries have stopped believing in their parents and their values. Some never did believe.

The recent spectacular escape to the United States of Castro's own daughter dramatized the crisis of confidence among the children of the Cuban revolutionary "aristocracy." Alina Fernandez Revuelta, Castro's 37-year-old daughter, is only the latest in a growing number of elite defectors, a few of whom are now in Miami.

Fidel Castro has provided his people with programs for jobs, healthcare, and education.  There's hardly a Cuban alive who hasn't benefited from his economic, medical, or academic systems. 

He's given them roads.  He provided infrastructure - telephone lines, plumbing, and electricity.  Every time a Cuban looks at anything on his island, he should proudly step back and say "I didn't build that". 

But there are so-called "reformers" in Cuba who want to destroy the very system that has supported them their entire lives!!! 

Some of them want to overthrow Fidel Castro.  Yeah.  You heard it right.  But whose roads are the idealistic revolutionaries going to march on?  Fidel's.  Whose food will they eat?  Fidel's.  Whose roofs will they sleep under?  The ones provided by Fidel Castro. 

The hypocrisy makes me ill. 

Cubans didn't plow those sugar cane fields, erect those buildings, or pave those roads.  The Cuban government did it. 

If any of those ungrateful little Cubans can read this blog post, it's because Fidel Castro provided a system that taught them how to read. 

A Day In The Life Of A Statist. Or A Departmentist.

Someone (with the aid of schoolteachers, The Department Of Education, and the roadbuilders of the Information Superhighway) has written a clever little socialist parable that is making the rounds on Facebook:

This morning I was awoken by my alarm clock powered by electricity generated by the public power monopoly regulated by the US Department of Energy. I then took a shower in the clean water provided by the municipal water utility. After that, I turned on the TV to one of the FCC regulated channels to see what the National Weather Service of the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration determined the weather was going to be like using satellites designed, built and launched by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration. I watched this while eating my breakfast of US Department of Agriculture inspected food and taking the drugs which have been determined as safe by the Food and Drug Administration.

At the appropriate time, as regulated by the US congress and kept accurate by the National Institute of Standards and Technology and the US Naval Observatory, I get into my National Highway Traffic Safety Administration approved automobile and set out to work on the roads built by the local, state and federal departments of transportation, possibly stopping to purchase additional fuel of a quality level determined by the Environmental Protection Agency, using legal tender issued by the Federal Reserve Bank. On the way out the door, I deposit any mail I have to be sent out via the US Postal Service and drop the kids off at the public school.

After work, I drive my NHTSA car back home on the DOT roads to my house, which has not burned down in my absence because of the state and local building codes and fire marshall’s inspection, and which has not been plundered of all its valuables thanks to the local police department.

I then log on to the internet, which was developed by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Administration and post on freerepublic.com and fox news forums about how socialism in medicine is bad because the government can’t do anything right. 

-Anonymous Wingnut

It begs for a response, doesn't it?  If the phrase "electricity generated by the public power monopoly regulated by the US Department of Energy" doesn't make you break out in fits of giggles, hell, it can't be done.  And then there's the long lists of unnecessary government departments, all staffed with tens of thousands of useless seat warmers, helping this guy get through his day. 

Because if the government didn't provide those services, the private sector could never ever do so.  Is that really what this dude believes?   

Someone called Ipster76 on Reddit wrote a response that goes as follows:

This morning I was awoken by my alarm clock powered by electricity generated by the local public power monopoly. After that, I turned on the TV to one of the FCC regulated channels to see what the latest misleading liberal dominated mass media reports are. I watched this while eating my unhealthy, subsidized corn-byproduct dominated breakfast thanks to the US Department of Agriculture.

Had I written this, I would've put in something about "the US Department of Agriculture - a wholly owned subsidiary of Monsanto."  But I tend to over-write. 

I then get into my National Highway Traffic Safety Administration used automobile, whose renewed title I was forced to pay an exorbitant amount for when I bought it. I then set out to my job on the roads built by the local, state and federal departments of transportation, passing by groups of 8 or more Union laborers, of which only about 2 are actually doing work at any given moment due to their collective bargaining agreement. I am also forced to slow down or risk being caught and fined by speed cameras implemented by the local government, despite the fact that I am a fully competent driver with no violations on his record, and the highway repairs have yet to be finished after 5 years. I also do not stop to purchase exorbitantly priced fuel from Big Oil subsidized by the Federal Government using legal tender that has lost value thanks to inflationary policies of the Federal Reserve Bank. At some point in the future when I am married with children, I will drop off my kids off at a private school 20 minutes away, because despite my future residence in a decent neighborhood, I am zone for an unsafe public school fraught with gang activity, and staffed by underpaid teachers.

This guy must live on Fort Worth's East Side. 

After work, I drive by the same unproductive union workers in the alleged construction zones, and am again forced to slow down because of the speed cameras. I do not stop by the liquor store, because although I am legally an adult who can vote and serve in the military, I cannot legally purchase alcohol, thus violating my rights under the Equal Protection Clause of Section I, Amendment IIV of the Constitution; however, because I am over the age of 18, it will also remain on my permanent record if I am caught in possession of it. I continue driving my car back to my apartment, which I discover has been plundered of all its valuables. I contact the local Police Department, who make a cursory investigation and fail to find any evidence, because they are too busy fighting the prohibitionist war on drugs under which gang activity has flourished for the past 30 years. I consider smoking some marijuana on my own private property to relax after a long, hard day at work, but I can’t because it has been made illegal by politicians that receive campaign funds from big pharma and the liquor lobby.

I then get on to the internet, which the Federal Government is trying to stifle through regulation and censorship, and proceed to post on r/politics about how libertarians are selfish and that the government needs to be more involved with healthcare.

Well done, sir.  Well done. 

You Didn't Lift That

Finally. 

A nation whose citizens express proper gratitude to their leaders.

London, July 30(ANI): North Korean Olympian Om Yun Chol joined an elite list of weightlifters to have lifted three times their weight during the men's 56-kg, group B, clean and jerk weightlifting competition at the London Olympics, and he has credited his world-record feat to late North Korean leader Kim Jong Il.


Om won the gold medal in the process, and according to him, it was all thanks due to their late 'great leader'.

The 20-year-old Om, who stands just a shade under 5 feet, also set an Olympic record when he cleared 168 kilograms (about 370 pounds) in the clean and jerk in the men's 56-kilogram (about 123 pounds) category.

"How can any man possibly lift 168kg? I believe the great Kim Jong Il looked over me," CBS quoted Om, as saying.

Let us all take a brief timeout from our daily tasks, go to a quiet place, and offer up prayers of gratitude to the Kims, Pol Pots, Bushes, Clintons, Reagans, Obamneys, Pelosis, Reids and Boehners who take our money away from us and then pay other people to do things for us with it.  For without them, we would have more choice in the matter. 

Go here for the entire story about Om. 
Go here for the theologian who first noted Om's proper attitude of reverence to The One who helped him lift 168 kilos.  His blog is called The Dignified Rant.  Via a link from Instapundit. 
If you've been moved by Om's story, you can go here for information on how pay for even more government's spending.  (Bush/Obama spending, not North Korean spending).

Send your checks to this address:

Attn: Dept G

Bureau of the Public Debt
P. O. Box 2188
Parkersburg, WV 26106-2188

Thank You All !!

I want to say thank you to the oil riggers, metal foundry workers, Chinese coffee growers, truckers, shippers, dockworkers and lumberjacks who made my morning Starbucks double-espresso possible. 

My Starbucks "double-espresso to go" has a plastic lid made of petrochemicals.  Thank you to the people working on that oil rig who brought that gooey black stuff up to the surface.  The mold for the lid was made on a machining center by someone who knew what the heck he was doing.  A big thank you to the machinists and everyone working at that foundry ! 

Someone had to cut down the tree that produced the paper for the cup.  Thank you, Mr. Lumberjack !!  Thank you to the pulpwood haulers who got the tree to the mill.  Thank you to the people who made the machine that turned the raw cardboard stock into cylinders.  Thank you to the chemists who produced the ink that put the Starbucks logo on the cup, and the glue that holds the cup together. 

Another big thank-you to the bean farmers in China, Ethiopia, or Latin and South America.  Thanks for growing the beans and harvesting them.  Thank you to someone else for curing them and roasting them.  And a big thanks to all the truckers, shippers and dockworkers who pulled all of these things together and got them to the Starbucks at I-30 and Western Center Boulevard in North Fort Worth. 

None of these good people did their jobs with me in mind.  They were only thinking of their own selfish selves.  Those oil rig guys, lumberjacks, pulp-wood haulers, chemists, coffee growers and shippers all have to compete with others in their profession to get me the best coffee for the lowest price possible.  They have to constantly work harder and harder and innovate more and more to keep up with my demands.  Otherwise, I'll buy my double espresso someplace else.  None of them work for me or for Starbucks.  The system simply works.     

Thank you to Thomas Jefferson, for not setting us up with a "planned" economy.  Thank you to Milton Friedman, who did more than anyone else about letting markets work.  I won't even bother thanking Howard Schultz and the hundreds of thousands of Starbucks employees worldwide.  They're the ones who take my whopping $2.11 and spread it around to the millions of other people I named earlier. 

They didn't have to be thinking of me for the system to work.  Someone upstream from them let it be known that they had a need.  That person was me.  These great people stepped up to meet that need, and dang it, I'm happy about it.   

So thank you, thank you, thank you ! 

P.S. - There is no government double-espresso czar mentioned anywhere in this process.  I hope there never will be.  Imagine some government munchkin trying to plan everything about the system I just described, and making it happen all over the world every time someone wants a cup of coffee.  Even worse, imagine what horrors await us when government munchkins, hobbits and trolls get even more involved in medicine.   

People who didn't get what they wanted for Christmas

To see the complete list, go here.

Happy Birthday, Mark Twain !!!

Sam Clemens was born 176 years ago today. 
Be grateful. 

Happy Thanksgiving !!!

“Any man worth his salt would fight for his home but only a damn fool would fight for his boarding house.”
                                                                    -Mark Twain


Here's a story that I first heard in China several years ago, and I'm probably going to re-run this post about it every Thanksgiving until I die.  The best online account I've found is on the World Socialist Website (chuckle chuckle).  It's about some Chinese farmers who got tired of starving. 


On one night in Nov. 1978, 18 villagers of Xiaogang, including (leader) Yan Jinchang, risked their lives to sign secretly an agreement, which divided the then People's Commune-owned farmland into pieces for each family to cultivate.

This was a bold move, as it was seen as "capitalist" and might have led to severe punishment from the government at that time.

Thus, on that secret agreement covered with villagers' seals and red fingerprints, there was a wobbly line saying that "If any word about this is divulged and the team leader is put in prison, other team members shall share the responsibility to bring up his child till he (or she) is 18. "


The original copy of this agreement is now in a museum someplace in China.  It had a huge influence.  Instead of farming the land together, and putting up with slackers, loafers, regulatory parasites and the other inevitable Socialist baggage, this brave group of Chinese farmers decided that each family would be responsible for a certain section of the land. 


That clause about agreeing to care for each others' children was a simple insurance policy.  To the best of my knowledge, none of the farmers agreed to care for the families of those who didn't share their risks.  In other words, you couldn't waltz into the agreement AFTER losing your head of household.  There's not even a hint of Obamacare in this document. 


The facts proved that it's worthwhile to take the adventure. Allocating farmland to each household, also known as "household contract responsibility system", fired the locals' enthusiasm for agriculture production, which had been contained in the outmoded planned economy, and helped poverty-stricken locals out of starvation.


That's just what happened when they agreed to stop the collectivist nonsense.  Think of what could happen if they'd been allowed to own the land, instead of having it allocated to them by their "leaders".   


The grains that a local farmer turned over to the state in the following year almost totaled what he did in past two decades, recalled Yan Hongchang, one of the 18 Xiaogang villagers who initiated the contract system.

Their practice was later supported by Deng Xiaoping, chief architect of China's reform and opening-up drive, and recognized by the Chinese government. Xiaogang has since been labeled as the pace-setter of the nation's rural reform.


Here's a similar story, from the Volokh Conspiracy.  This one hits closer to home.

Many people believe that after suffering through a severe winter, the Pilgrims’ food shortages were resolved the following spring when the Native Americans taught them to plant corn and a Thanksgiving celebration resulted. In fact, the pilgrims continued to face chronic food shortages for three years until the harvest of 1623. Bad weather or lack of farming knowledge did not cause the pilgrims’ shortages. Bad economic incentives did.


Time to quote Thomas Sowell for the 10,000th time.  Laws and policies should never be evaluated by their stated goals and objectives, but by the incentives they create. 


In 1620 Plymouth Plantation was founded with a system of communal property rights. Food and supplies were held in common and then distributed based on equality and need as determined by Plantation officials.


Like we're about to do with healthcare. 


People received the same rations whether or not they contributed to producing the food, and residents were forbidden from producing their own food. Governor William Bradford, in his 1647 history, Of Plymouth Plantation, wrote that this system was found to breed much confusion and discontent and retard much employment that would have been to their benefit and comfort. The problem was that young men, that were most able and fit for labour, did repine that they should spend their time and strength to work for other men’s wives and children without any recompense. Because of the poor incentives, little food was produced.


In other words, when the hardest-working, most creative Pilgrims realized that they were working themselves to death for people who didn't want to work as hard?  They started Going Galt.   


Faced with potential starvation in the spring of 1623, the colony decided to implement a new economic system. Every family was assigned a private parcel of land. They could then keep all they grew for themselves, but now they alone were responsible for feeding themselves. While not a complete private property system, the move away from communal ownership had dramatic results.

This change, Bradford wrote, had very good success, for it made all hands very industrious, so as much more corn was planted than otherwise would have been. Giving people economic incentives changed their behavior. Once the new system of property rights was in place, the women now went willingly into the field, and took their little ones with them to set corn; which before would allege weakness and inability.

Once the Pilgrims in the Plymouth Plantation abandoned their communal economic system and adopted one with greater individual property rights, they never again faced the starvation and food shortages of the first three years. It was only after allowing greater property rights that they could feast without worrying that famine was just around the corner.


And what have we learned from this? 

Nothing.  Absolutely nothing. 

Barack Obama is the greatest president ever.

Barack Obama, if judged by current standards, is the greatest U.S. president EVER. 
I've made that proclamation before, but it was premature.  That was nothing more than a wild prediction based on incomplete evidence. 
Obama is the greatest.  There is no competition. 

George W. gave the military industrial complex a beautiful gift in Iraq and Afghanistan.  If your aircraft, helicopter, defense contractor, or bomb-making company gave to George W., he gave back to you.   

Clinton, if judged by those standards, was a total failure.  I challenge anyone to name a major boondoggle that Clinton gave a supporter.  (To qualify as major, it has to be tens of millions, BTW.)

George the 1st had a preliminary Iraq excursion, but it was in-and-out and over too quickly.
 
Reagan spent money like a drunk cowboy, with the stated goal of bankrupting the Soviets.  He did well for his supporters.  He gets an honorable mention, but was no more than a John The Baptist wandering in the wilderness telling the politically connected to get ready for the real thing. 

Carter?  He created the Department Of Energy, which is a sort of venture capital firm that loans out your money to companies willing to paint their machinery green.  Carter truly paved the way, rolling out the red carpet for the Teleprompter Jesus.  Carter is first runner-up. 

But Obama has retired the trophy. 

If politicians are to be judged by the pounds of pork, slop, loot and graft they can hand a supporter, and this seems to be the standard for most voters, then Barack Hussein Obama is the greatest president who ever lived. 

Go here.  Hit that link.  It's beautiful.  (And green.)  Fans of Chicago-style graft, kickbacks and corruption will get down on their knees and thank God they were alive to experience something like this.  Seriously.  Here's THE LINK again.  Hit it. 

The definition of a boondoggle came from here.  The picture of a boondoggle came from here. 

We will never see another one like him, and we should enjoy this while it lasts.  We are like beginning musicians getting to watch Beethoven compose symphonies, or amateur artists watching Van Gogh paint.  Because you are lucky enough to be alive at this moment, you can tell your grandchildren that you got to watch Barack Obama hand out money.

Veterans Day

Happy Blogoversary To This Site

Please allow me to pause for a moment of gratitude ! 

Happy Blogoversary To This Site ! (here's the hits per day for the last 3 years)

Happy Blogoversary To This Site ! (here are the hits per month, and you can see where I had to shut 'er down for a while this summer....)

This has been lots of fun....(hits per year, and the year ain't over yet.)

Happy Blogoversary To This Site ! 

I first took this site out for a spin three years ago today.  I had absolutely no idea what I was going to write about, and I still don't.  In the words of the greatest man I've ever known, "I just let the day come to me." 

It's been fun, and the hits per day are starting to get there.  If the readers keep doubling every year and none go away, I'll catch up with Instapundit in the year 2019.  Circle it on your calendar.     

Thank you Cash For Clunkers, Congressman Hank Johnson, The Southern Baptist Convention, Macaulay Culkin, Dr. Brett Younger, Cedric Katesby, Dr. Ralph, Fembuttx, Libertarian Reddit, Denny at The Grouchy Old Cripple, the stimulus package, the damn dachshunds, Counting Cats, Dr. Rober Atkins, Texas Republican Ballot Proposition #4, Milton Friedman, Al Gore - The Goracle Of Music City Tennessee, The Aggie, Cal Thomas, Whoever wrote the last 8 verses of the Gospel Of Mark, Obnoxio, Harper, Thomas Sowell, Joe Biden, Ron Paul, John Jay Myers, John Spivey, The Criplets, Brent Rinehart, David Nolan, Jay at Subdujour, and most of all, President Barack Obama.  I don't have time to link everybody, so Google "Sepulchre" and any name or topic in the list above.  You'll find 'em. 

Thank you all for providing inspiration, opposition, confirmation, and debate topics.

Especially President Obama.  Seriously.  Can you imagine anything more bland than a rant about John McCain? 

Thank you Jesus, for calling the Pharisees "Whited Sepulchres". 

Oh, and thanks to this guy for the Blogoversary Headline pic.

What is the sound of one hand clapping?

Found on Reddit.

A Libertarian Hymn

I made it to Broadway Baptist Church for their pre-Thanksgiving dinner last Sunday night. I've been taking an extended leave of absence from BBC for about 6 months now, but when I do stick my nose back in the door, there's usually something to surprise or inspire me.
My friend Dr. Ralph, agent provocateur of this site, was also there. Go here for The Doctor's Thanksgiving post. We tried to sit and eat together, but higher authorities intervened.

This is the hymn that the music ministry folks chose to end the service. As soon as I read the words, I stuck the text into my pocket....please pay particular attention to the second verse:

Praise God for the harvest of orchard and field,
praise God for the people who gather their yield,
the long hours of labour, the skills of a team,
the patience of science, the power of machine.

Praise God for the harvest that comes from afar,
from market and harbour, the sea and the shore:
foods packed and transported, and gathered and grown
by God-given neighbours, unseen and unknown.

Praise God for the harvest that's quarried and mined,
then sifted, and smelted, or shaped and refined:
for oil and for iron, for copper and coal,
praise God, who in love has provided them all.

Praise God for the harvest of science and skill,
the urge to discover, create and fulfil:
for dreams and inventions that promise to gain
a future more hopeful, a world more humane.

Praise God for the harvest of mercy and love
from leaders and peoples who struggle and serve
for patience and kindness, that all may be led
to freedom and justice, and all may be fed.

That's the version found at hymnsUK.com , anyway. My instinct lately has been to trust the British versions of everything.
Dr. Ralph found me as we were leaving. "That was quite a libertarian hymn," he said, and I wholeheartedly agreed.
If you don't understand the point I'm trying to make, hit some of the links. I can't believe someone actually wrote a hymn that 's good enough to cause Dr Ralph to stop twirling his villain moustache and take notice.
Verse two stands alone nicely, no links required. A song in praise of Supply Chain Management.

....foods packed and transported, and gathered and grown
by God-given neighbours, unseen and unknown.

If you're still unclear on the concept, here's The Boston Globe's token libertarian, Jeff Jacoby, explaining why we should be grateful for a certain economic principle which, if you live in the U.S., allowed you to eat some turkey sometime this week:

The activities of countless people over the course of many months had to be intricately choreographed and precisely timed, so that when you showed up to buy a fresh Thanksgiving turkey, there would be one -- or more likely, a few dozen -- waiting. The level of coordination that was required to pull it off is mind-boggling. But what is even more mind-boggling is this: No one coordinated it.

No turkey czar sat in a command post somewhere, consulting a master plan and issuing orders. No one forced people to cooperate for your benefit. And yet they did cooperate. When you arrived at the supermarket, your turkey was there. You didn't have to do anything but show up to buy it. If that isn't a miracle, what should we call it?

Adam Smith called it "the invisible hand" -- the mysterious power that leads innumerable people, each working for his own gain, to promote ends that benefit many. Out of the seeming chaos of millions of uncoordinated private transactions emerges the spontaneous order of the market. Free human beings freely interact, and the result is an array of goods and services more immense than the human mind can comprehend. No dictator, no bureaucracy, no supercomputer plans it in advance. Indeed, the more an economy is planned, the more it is plagued by shortages, dislocation, and failure.

It is commonplace to speak of seeing God's signature in the intricacy of a spider's web or the animation of a beehive. But they pale in comparison to the kaleidoscopic energy and productivity of the free market. If it is a blessing from Heaven when seeds are transformed into grain, how much more of a blessing is it when our private, voluntary exchanges are transformed - without our ever intending it - into prosperity, innovation, and growth?

Well said, Mr. Jacoby. Here's one last verse for that hymn; this one composed by Yours Truly. I don't think it's going to appear in a hymnal any time soon....


Praise God for our system of sweet Liberty,
The framework of freedom which feeds you and me.
Praise God for the scholars and writers who've shown
More people can prosper if just left alone.

The Beginning of Climategate

Sometimes you wake up in the morning and everything has changed. A gear has slipped in the planet. This is going to be a big, big deal.

I was too busy yesterday to listen to much radio, so I didn't get any of this until reading Glenn Reynold's Instapundit. Holy Data Manipulation, Batman ! Look at this stuff ! ! !

You can go here or here or here or here or here for more info, but let's start with The Telegraph (UK). As usual, they have the best summary of what's been going on. My apologies to author James Delingpole for scraping his entire article. I had no other choice, since perfection really can't be edited. Hit the link on his name for his other recent work. Lord have mercy, that boy can type. Here's Jimmy :

If you own any shares in alternative energy companies I should start dumping them NOW. The conspiracy behind the Anthropogenic Global Warming myth (aka AGW; aka ManBearPig) has been suddenly, brutally and quite deliciously exposed after a hacker broke into the computers at the University of East Anglia’s Climate Research Unit (aka Hadley CRU) and released 61 megabites of confidential files onto the internet. (Hat tip: Watts Up With That)

When you read some of those files – including 1079 emails and 72 documents – you realise just why the boffins at Hadley CRU might have preferred to keep them confidential. As Andrew Bolt puts it, this scandal could well be “the greatest in modern science”. These alleged emails – supposedly exchanged by some of the most prominent scientists pushing AGW theory – suggest:

Conspiracy, collusion in exaggerating warming data, possibly illegal destruction of embarrassing information, organised resistance to disclosure, manipulation of data, private admissions of flaws in their public claims and much more.

One of the alleged emails has a gentle gloat over the death in 2004 of John L Daly (one of the first climate change sceptics, founder of the Still Waiting For Greenhouse site), commenting:

“In an odd way this is cheering news.”

But perhaps the most damaging revelations – the scientific equivalent of the Telegraph’s MPs’ expenses scandal – are those concerning the way Warmist scientists may variously have manipulated or suppressed evidence in order to support their cause.

Here are a few tasters. (So far, we can only refer to them as alleged emails because – though Hadley CRU’s director Phil Jones has confirmed the break-in to Ian Wishart at the Briefing Room – he has yet to fess up to any specific contents.) But if genuine, they suggest dubious practices such as:

Manipulation of evidence:

I’ve just completed Mike’s Nature trick of adding in the real temps to each series for the last 20 years (ie from 1981 onwards) amd from 1961 for Keith’s to hide the decline.

Private doubts about whether the world really is heating up:

The fact is that we can’t account for the lack of warming at the moment and it is a travesty that we can’t. The CERES data published in the August BAMS 09 supplement on 2008 shows there should be even more warming: but the data are surely wrong. Our observing system is inadequate.

Suppression of evidence:

Can you delete any emails you may have had with Keith re AR4?

Keith will do likewise. He’s not in at the moment – minor family crisis.

Can you also email Gene and get him to do the same? I don’t have his new email address.

We will be getting Caspar to do likewise.

Fantasies of violence against prominent Climate Sceptic scientists:

Next time I see Pat Michaels at a scientific meeting, I’ll be tempted to beat

the crap out of him. Very tempted.

Attempts to disguise the inconvenient truth of the Medieval Warm Period (MWP):

……Phil and I have recently submitted a paper using about a dozen NH records that fit this category, and many of which are available nearly 2K back–I think that trying to adopt a timeframe of 2K, rather than the usual 1K, addresses a good earlier point that Peck made w/ regard to the memo, that it would be nice to try to “contain” the putative “MWP”, even if we don’t yet have a hemispheric mean reconstruction available that far back….

And, perhaps most reprehensibly, a long series of communications discussing how best to squeeze dissenting scientists out of the peer review process. How, in other words, to create a scientific climate in which anyone who disagrees with AGW can be written off as a crank, whose views do not have a scrap of authority.

“This was the danger of always criticising the skeptics for not publishing in the “peer-reviewed literature”. Obviously, they found a solution to that–take over a journal! So what do we do about this? I think we have to stop considering “Climate Research” as a legitimate peer-reviewed journal. Perhaps we should encourage our colleagues in the climate research community to no longer submit to, or cite papers in, this journal. We would also need to consider what we tell or request of our more reasonable colleagues who currently sit on the editorial board…What do others think?”

“I will be emailing the journal to tell them I’m having nothing more to do with it until they rid themselves of this troublesome editor.”“It results from this journal having a number of editors. The responsible one for this is a well-known skeptic in NZ. He has let a few papers through by Michaels and Gray in the past. I’ve had words with Hans von Storch about this, but got nowhere. Another thing to discuss in Nice !”

Hadley CRU has form in this regard. In September – I wrote the story up here as “How the global warming industry is based on a massive lie” – Hadley CRU’s researchers were exposed as having “cherry-picked” data in order to support their untrue claim that global temperatures had risen higher at the end of the 20th century than at any time in the last millenium. Hadley CRU was also the organisation which – in contravention of all acceptable behaviour in the international scientific community – spent years withholding data from researchers it deemed unhelpful to its cause. This matters because Hadley CRU, established in 1990 by the Met Office, is a government-funded body which is supposed to be a model of rectitude. Its HadCrut record is one of the four official sources of global temperature data used by the IPCC.

I asked in my title whether this will be the final nail in the coffin of Anthropenic Global Warming. This was wishful thinking, of course. In the run up to Copenhagen, we will see more and more hysterical (and grotesquely exaggerated) stories such as this in the Mainstream Media. And we will see ever-more-virulent campaigns conducted by eco-fascist activists, such as this risible new advertising campaign by Plane Stupid showing CGI polar bears falling from the sky and exploding because kind of, like, man, that’s sort of what happens whenever you take another trip on an aeroplane.

The world is currently cooling; electorates are increasingly reluctant to support eco-policies leading to more oppressive regulation, higher taxes and higher utility bills; the tide is turning against Al Gore’s Anthropogenic Global Warming theory. The so-called “sceptical” view is now also the majority view.

Unfortunately, we’ve a long, long way to go before the public mood (and scientific truth) is reflected by our policy makers. There are too many vested interests in AGW, with far too much to lose either in terms of reputation or money, for this to end without a bitter fight.

But if the Hadley CRU scandal is true,it’s a blow to the AGW lobby’s credibility which is never likely to recover.

All this, just in time for the big Hopenhagen summit in Denmark. When saying your Thanksgiving prayer next Thursday, remember to express your gratitude to God for creating hackers.