Following in the footsteps of Douglas Mawson. As long as the ice permits.....

You'll never hear this discussed from the LameStream Media. 
There is a ship stuck in ice, somewhere around the south pole. 
It's a research project to study how much ice has disappeared in the last 100 years. 

Here's a comment by someone named "Rich" on the story. 
If Rich ever comes to Fort Worth TX, his bar tab is on me. 

Consider this: 74 Global warming scientists and advocates, plus the ships crew, went to Antarctica in an ice-strengthened ship to prove to the world that Antarctic sea ice had disappeared because of manmade global warming (caused by CO2 they claim.)
This was done in celebration of the trip made 100 years ago and to follow in the footsteps of explorer Douglas Mawson. They got stuck in ten foot thick sea ice they claimed melted away from global warming.
A hundred years ago, the entire region, right up to the shore, was completely clear of ice. Explorer Douglas Mawson got within 50 yards of shore in a wooden ship with only a sextant, and was only stopped because of low water. He then traveled 300 miles inland.
Those on board the Academic Shokalskiy with GPS navigation, on-board Internet, radar, and satellite communications only got within miles of shore. Here they waited in their heated ship to be rescued. First a rescue ship gets within 3.7 miles (pictures on the internet) and the trapped scientists frolic and play and send pictures home in the good weather rather than walking the few miles to the rescue ship. That ship can get no closer so it leaves.
Then a second rescue ship tries and gives up.
 Finally a third tries, to no avail again, and now waits for weather suitable for a helicopter evacuation.
Sounds like a good Discovery Channel documentary as to why the globe is getting warmer.

It IS getting warmer.  ALL of the scientists (those who have skins in the game, anyway) say that it's getting warmer.  But the ice is spreading wider and getting thicker. 

By this standard, I've spent 3 million dollars at Amazon.com

I like to go to Amazon, EBay, and other sites and fill my shopping cart with things that would be great to own. 
I rarely pull the trigger on a purchase. 
I have a somewhat addictive personality and if I ever start bringing stuff into the house from the intertubes I'll go broke.  Quickly. 

It looks like Obamacare shoppers do the same thing.  They make it through the website hurdles and find a policy that, if purchased, will keep them from being fined by the IRS.  They put it in their online shopping cart. 

And then they go to Amazon, Ebay, Craigslist, and Big Mama's House O' Midget Lesbian Porn and do the same thing without ever finalizing any sales. 

Here's Allahpundit:

 Obamacare administrators are counting people who've browsed the website and placed a plan in their virtual shopping cart -- but who never finished the process by checking out -- as "enrolled." That's a bogus metric. 

So what percentage of people have actually paid money to a real live Obama partner in this scam insurance company?

“There is also a lot of worrying going on over people making payments,” industry consultant Robert Laszewski wrote in an email. “One client reports only 15% have paid so far. It is still too early to know for sure what this means but we should expect some enrollment slippage come the payment due date.” Another consultant Kip Piper, agreed. “So far I’m hearing from health plans that around 5% and 10% of consumers who have made it through the data transfer gauntlet have paid first month’s premium and therefore truly enrolled,” he wrote me. “It naturally varies by insurer and will hopefully increase as we get close to end of December and documents flow in the mail,” added Piper, a former official at the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services. “But overall I’m hearing it’s a small portion so far. And that, of course, is a fraction of an already comparatively small number of people who have made it through setting up an account, getting verified, subsidy eligibility determined, plan selected, complete and correct data transferred to the insurer, and insurer set out the confirmation with invoice for consumer’s share of the first month’s premium.”

Let's assume that getting an account set up and throwing a plan into your online shopping cart has been easy.  (It hasn't.) 
Let's assume that effectively transferring your choice and your money (safely) to the corporate cronies insurance companies will be the hard part.  (It is.) 

Since the website has been a disaster, unfortunate people are going to be showing up at hospitals with nothing but a website I.D. number. The insurance companies will have no record of them.  The patient will say "Hey, I paid.  I signed up."  Some will be lying, of course.  Sometimes the insurance companies will lie. 

But this thing is so screwed up, it's going to take decades, and squadrons of lawyers, and billions of dollars to sort it out. 

This man could f*** up a two-car funeral.  (If you are in Britain, please translate that to mean "this man couldn't organize a piss-up in a brewery".) 

 

Schadenfreude - Fun Quotes On A Miserable Failure

Here are a few of Politico's best quotes on the ObamaCare website.  Go here for the complete collection.  (And BTW, I love the "snipping tool" for photos that comes with the Windows 7 package.)

And here's my favorite, and I don't know where I found it. 
They no longer have the "countdown to deadline" feature on the site, do they?  LOL. 

 

Did Jimmy Carter create the Beer Boom?

There's been a little storm "brewing" (LOL) on the internet about whether Jimmy Carter's deregulation of the beer industry led to the incredible diversity of brew that we now have in the USA. 

There may have been 5 or 6 varieties of beer in the convenience stores of my youth. 

Fifty year later, the typical Stop'n'Shop now carries about 75 varieties of beer, most of which you've never heard of. 

Here's Eric Kain of Balloon Juice:

If you’re a fan of craft beer and microbreweries as opposed to say Bud Light or Coors, you should say a little thank you to Jimmy Carter. Carter could very well be the hero of International Beer Day.
To make a long story short, prohibition led to the dismantling of many small breweries around the nation. When prohibition was lifted, government tightly regulated the market, and small scale producers were essentially shut out of the beer market altogether. Regulations imposed at the time greatly benefited the large beer makers. In 1979, Carter deregulated the beer industry, opening the market back up to craft brewers. As the chart below illustrates, this had a really amazing effect on the beer industry:

Here's your chart. 

Good stuff, right?  We deregulated, little guys brought competition to the marketplace, and a plethora of brews were brought to a thirsty public.

 Here's what Reason magazine had to say on the subject:

I personally find it particularly meaningful that government and industry and (I presume) anti-drinking scolds colluded to criminalize a behavior that wasn't just victimless, but downright awesome; and that the removal of that appalling bit of illiberal nannyism helped usher in a phenomenon I would have bet the house against two decades ago: a thriving and variegated American industry of delicious beermaking.
And given that, what's wrong with making deregulation a "starting point"? (A concern of the original article) Imagine for a crazy moment a world in which the default expectation would be for government not to flop its grotesque belly onto the forehead of various industries, not to meddle in the affairs of pre-pubescent drink vendors, not to redistribute $20 billion a year (give or take) of our money to mostly well-heeled agriculture companies just to make sure they don't face competition from poor people. I'm not talking about no regulation here, but rather the idea that if such-and-such activity isn't hurting anybody it shouldn't be subject to governmental micro-managing, license-imposing, winner-picking, and even arrest.
One of the common misconceptions about libertarian enthusiasm for deregulation is that it's some kind of (presumably paid-for) philosophical cover for wanting the very richest Corporates to be even richer. Speaking as a libertarded conspiracy of one, my favorite bedtime deregulation stories are about stuff like beer, air travel, and talking about politics on radio and TV, where after you lifted restrictions that in retrospect sound like they came from another planet, people do what the normally do when left alone—create all kinds of interesting new artifacts, businesses, and even ways of life. Regulations so often piss me off because they so often fall disproportionately on the backs of the little guy, while the big guy—even/especially the one whose misconduct precipitated the regulation in the first place—walks off with a well-lobbied exemption. Generally speaking, the fewer activities are illegal, the freer us opposable-thumbs types are.

Damn.  I wish I'd written that!

But wait....there's more. 

After publishing some of these findings about Jimmy Carter's involvement in the beer boom, James Fallows had to issue an in absentia retraction for Mr. Kain, based on the research of a reader namedTom Hilton:

While I have immense admiration for President Carter, and would love to see him get the credit he deserves for all sorts of things (and who knows; now that Obama has officially supplanted him as History's Greatest Monster, maybe he will), but E. D. Kain's claim that Carter "deregulated the beer industry" (in Kain's words) is grossly inaccurate. What Carter did sign was HR 1337, which legalized homebrewing "for personal or family use, and not for sale"--'deregulating' individual, not commercial, behavior. The legalization of homebrewing did contribute to the growth of the craft beer industry (according to Charlie Papazian, 90% of the pioneer craft brewers started out making homebrew), so President Carter certainly deserves credit for that...but it just as certainly isn't "beer industry" deregulation. 
IMO, the step that really touched off the craft beer explosion was the legalization of brewpubs in various states--WA and CA in 1982, OR in 1983, with others following shortly thereafter. This is consistent with the graph, which shows a leap in numbers from 1979 to 1989 (meaning the growth could have started at any point during that decade); according to the American Brewers Association, the low point was 1982, meaning the turnaround actually began in 1983 (not 1979). Also: of the 1500 breweries in existence today, 2/3 are or began as brewpubs.

That would change everything, wouldn't it?  There's a huge difference between homebrewing and operating a brewpub and operating a full-blown distillery. 
So Eric Kain, who started the discussion, jumped back in. 

Your reader is quibbling over the definition of deregulation. Removing a barrier to entry to any market is an act of deregulation whether or not access to the market is direct or indirect.

If, for instance, people were not allowed to bake their own bread without a license from the government and strict adherence to a number of regulations, then this would effectively crowd out a lot of people who would otherwise become bakers. One doesn't need to legalize the sale of home baked bread in order to deregulate the bread market, they simply need to legalize the baking itself which provides people with basic access to the craft as well as to the supplies necessary to pursue that craft. Likewise, regulating away home bakers would also crowd out a lot of suppliers who would otherwise provide baking goods and information to home bakers. Soon only bakeries with access to lots of cash and influence would have any market share at all, regardless of whether or not smaller bakeries were legal.

The same phenomenon applies to home brewing. In the pre-Carter days there was little or no access to home brewing supplies, very little knowledge base for do-it-yourselfers to draw from, and far less experimentation with home brewing, making it effectively impossible to gain entry to the beer market for non-corporate brewers. Carter's deregulation essentially stripped away all these barriers to entry, making it possible for a number of people who would otherwise not have entered the market to do so. Did deregulation of brewpubs also help lead to the craft beer explosion? Certainly. But as your reader notes, 90% of craft beers began as home brews. Without Carter's deregulation, the brewpubs themselves would never have taken off. 90% of the craft brews we now have would never have existed. Even if this didn't allow home brewers to directly sell their beer in the wider market, it allowed them to gain the skills and information necessary to do so.

Removing these barriers to entry can rightly be understood as deregulating the beer industry. It's just semantics to suggest otherwise.

My head is starting to hurt from trying to figure this out.
 
Here's what I do know.  Somewhere, based on this Tempest In A Brewpot, the deregulation of the beer industry brought diversity and competition to the market.  The same thing happened in the airline industry, the deregulation of my own trucking industry, and in every other area where nanny-staters, busybodies and other parasites have decided to get the hell out of your way.  And Jimmy Carter had something to do with it. 

The guy is still alive, you know, but nobody will ask him exactly what happened because once he starts talking he doesn't stop. 

Freedom is good.  As long as you're not hurting anyone else, your freedom is a good thing.  Heck, it's a great thing.  It's the most undervalued asset on this planet.  Nobody planned on me being able to drink a Shiner in a East Fort Worth bar this afternoon.  There is no beer czar.  Therefore, the beer industry isn't screwed up. 

We do have a Drug Czar, an Education Czar, and for all practical purposes, a Healthcare Czar, and therefore those industries are as f***ed up as a soup sandwich. 

Let's deregulate healthcare and education.  We have no idea who will step in to make us happy for less money.  And in the meantime, raise a Shiner Bock in praise of Jimmy Carter, and thank the gods that we don't have a beer czar. 



 

The Greatest Collection Of Libertarian Links EVER

A genius called Nobody25864 over at Libertarian Reddit has put together the best collection of Libertarian links that I've ever seen.

It's a monument to unselfish generosity. 

And since there is no such thing as generosity without a recipient, I have stolen it and posted the entire thing here so I can find it later for my own selfish self. 

It would've been the perfect reading companion to fill up the sober moments of my Labor Day weekend, had I seen it sooner. 

Images - Inspirational quotes, cartoons, memes and funny pics

---

30 Day Reading List Challenge - A good collection of libertarian articles to get you familiar with theory!

---

Principles
The Law by Frederic Bastiat - A fantastic look at the proper place of the law and how it has been perverted into legal plunder, as explained by Bastiat in 1850. Highly recommended.
Anatomy of the State by Murray Rothbard - An explanation of what the state is not, what it is, and how it functions. Highly recommended.
The Science of Justice by Lysander Spooner - Spooner talks of some implications of self-ownership.
The Adventures of Jonathan Gullible - Libertarian morals broken down into kid stories!
The Philosophy of Liberty
The Philosophy of Liberty: Property
The Philosophy of Liberty: Plunder
Pirates and Emperors
George Ought to Help
You Can Always Leave
The Non-Aggression Principle
Make Mine Freedom
Milton Friedman - Greed
I, Pencil
For a New Liberty: The Libertarian Manifesto
The Ethics of Liberty.

---

Anarcho-Capitalism
The Production of Security by Gustave de Molinari - The first anarcho-capitalist book ever written. Highly recommended.
No Treason by Lysander Spooner - Possibly the greatest argument for anarchy ever written. A scathing attack on the Constitution, Spooner reveals how the Constitution fails all the requirements for a legal contract, concluding that it is a Constitution of no authority. It does presume a bit of familiarity with legal principles though. Highly recommended.
The State is Not Great by Jacob Spinney
The Market for Security by Robert Murphy
The Tale of the Slave by Robert Nozick - Does voting turn slaves into free men?
If You Were King
Law Without Government - Highly recommended.
The Machinery of Freedom: Illustrated Guide - Highly recommended.
Why Libertarianism is Dangerous - The "horrors" of anarchy!
Top 10 Reasons Why the Mafia Would Be Better Than the State
But Wouldn't Warlords Take Over?
Common Argument Topics

---

Economics
How an Economy Grows and Why It Doesn't by Irwin Schiff - A comic about cavemen that invent economic interaction, going from there to developing a more modern economy, and how the government messes this all up. Highly recommended.
Economics in One Lesson by Henry Hazlitt; Video series version (currently ongoing!) - Inspired by Bastiat, Hazlitt explains the economics behind some key political issues.
That Which is Seen and That Which is Not Seen by Frederic Bastiat - The article that inspired the above.
The Candlemaker's Petition by Frederic Bastiat - Bastiat writes a fake petition from the producers of light in France for the government to ban the sun.
Defending the Undefendable - Block looks at different occupations that are frowned upon in society, but are consistent with libertarian principle.
Lessons for the Young Economist by Robert Murphy; a high school textbook for austrian economics.
Economics for Real People: An Introduction to the Austrian School - Brought in by comment by /u/LetThemEatWar32's suggestion! As the title says, its an introduction to the Austrian School.
Capitalism in One Lesson - An explanation of what capitalism is with tons of resources to learn more.
Praxgirl - A cute girl explains basic praxeology.
Fight of the Century: Keynes vs. Hayek Round Two (this is a sequel to "Fear the Boom and Bust" a Hayek vs. Keynes Rap Anthem)
Deck the Halls with Macro Follies
Trade is Made of Win
The Broken Window Fallacy
-Methodological Individualism
That Mitchell and Webb Look - Football - A comedy sketch explaining what's wrong with the excessive use of the word "we".
Friends - A Selfless Good Deed - A clip from Friends in which Joey explains why all purposeful action is selfish as everyone necessarily acts to complete the goals they value most highly, even when this end is normally dubbed "selfless" or "altruistic".
- Money
What Has Government Done to Our Money? by Murray Rothbard - Rothbard explains what money is, how government messes it up, and gives a brief history of money in western civilization. Highly recommended.
What is Money? by Frederic Bastiat; audio version - Bastiat explains in dialogue form the many evils that come from confusing money with wealth.
The American Dream - A cartoon looking at the problems of the Federal Reserve and fractional reserve banking.
- Austrian Business Cycle Theory
"Fear the Boom and Bust" a Hayek vs. Keynes Rap Anthem
The Austrian Business Cycle Explained
America's Great Depression by Murray Rothbard - A bit more lengthy, but definitely worth looking at if you're interested in a simple explanation of business cycle theory and a history lesson on the causes of the Great Depression.
-TEH ROADS?!?!
The Privatization of Roads and Highways by Walter Block
Streets and Roads by Murray Rothbard
- Environmentalism
Law, Property Rights, and Air Pollution
Can Hunting Endangered Animals Save the Species?
Tragedy of the Commons
Ghostbusters Hates the EPA and So Should You
-Intellectual Property
Against Intellectual Property
History of Copyright
- Healthcare
How Government Solved the Healthcare Crisis
A Four-Step Healthcare Solution by Hans-Hermann Hoppe
Healthcare as a Right
- Minimum Wage
Edgar the Exploiter
How the Minimum Wage Creates Unemployment
Jeff's Story
Critique of Objectivism
Ayn Rand on Libertarianism
Mozart was a Red by Murray Rothbard
The Sociology of the Ayn Rand Cult by Murray Rothbard

---

Comedy
TAKE JURY DUTY!
eEconomics and the rest - A fantastic video series
Be a Cop
Clint Webb
Crack
Pledge of Allegiance
Teachers Union
Moon Bears
Nerf Nuke
- Yes Prime Minister
Leading Questions
If the Right People Don't Have the Power
- Penn and Teller
Corn Subsidies
On the Second Amendment
Wealth Redistribution

---

Fiction
Harrison Bergeron by Kurt Vonnegut Jr. - The horrors of egalitarianism. For a bit of expansion on it, read Rothbards' Egalitarianism as a Revolt Against Nature
1984 by George Orwell - The ultimate in dystopian literature.
Animal Farm by George Orwell - An allegory for the rise and fall of soviet communism.
Anthem by Ayn Rand - Miraculously, Rand did produce a short fiction story that has a nice look at individualism. A man in a socialist world rediscovers the lightbulb.
The Moon is a Harsh Mistress by Robert A. Heinlein - A science fiction story of the moon revolting against the rule of Earth.
Time Will Run Back by Henry Hazlitt - The world has been taken over by socialism, and the son of the dictator of the Won World Government is suddenly thrust into a position of power in which he accidentally rediscovers capitalism step by step.

---

Just the Recommended Ones
The Law by Frederic Bastiat
Anatomy of the State by Murray Rothbard
The Adventures of Jonathan Gullible
The Philosophy of Liberty
The Production of Security by Gustave de Molinari
No Treason by Lysander Spooner
How an Economy Grows and Why It Doesn't by Irwin Schiff
Economics in One Lesson by Henry Hazlitt
What Has Government Done to Our Money? by Murray Rothbard

Stuff saved from reading the Internetz

I've been too busy making a living to write anything.  I hope you enjoy all of these in the meantime! 

The Greatest Website In The History Of Everything

So many links...so little time. 

Libertarian News.  Go here.  Bookmark it. 

Simon Jester is back !!

The Simon Jester blog is back. 

Go here. 

Always good stuff. 

A typical example of their fine work.... (I woulda said "and the 12-year-old behind you has to pay for it", just to increases the guilt, but hey, it's still greatness.) 

Best Libertarian Election Pics from Facebook, Emails, Reddit, Mom, etc.

What if the 9-11 events had happened elsewhere? And the response had been equally screwy? 

This is my truck bumper.  All the cool kids have one now.

I'll go ahead and say it....The President Of The United States isn't very smart.  Google his college transcripts from Occidental and Columbia. 



A vote for Romney is a vote for Obama.....

fOward !! fOward !! Wear it proudly !!

For the love of God and all things holy, where else does Romney want to put military bases??  The Vatican?  Loch Ness?  Euro Disney?? 

Give a copy of this to everyone you know between the ages of 6 and 18.  Tell them to start working, learning Mandarin Chinese, learning how to clean woks, etc.  They have a huge debt to pay off, and the older generations have a certain lifestyle to support.   

Here's a pic of our Nobel Peace Prize Winner with some of his victims. 

And do you wonder which of our major political parties is considered "the lesser of two evils" by this kid??

Here's the infamous Paul Ryan budget, the one that's supposed to cause economic upheaval.  He spends almost as much as Obama.  Sheesh....  And which one is supposed to be the small government party? 

But in a Libertarian society, who would build the roads???

From the Libertarian Party float in the Alan Ross/Gay Rights Freedom Parade....