How do blondes print a Word document?

I stole this from Harper's site.  She's kinda blonde (literally, not figuratively). 

The Great Trendline Experiment

Here's a fun experiment for those who believe that government regulation is the answer to all of our ills. 
This is a U.S. Census chart showing the poverty level by age group.  It goes from sometime in the past to sometime not too long ago.  I've removed the dates. 

Can you tell when LBJ began his War On Poverty?
Can you tell when the welfare state kicked in?
When did we create the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare?   

Please remember....if the programs and institutions listed above were founded anywhere near the center 75% of the chart, doesn't that mean that poverty was going away nicely on its own before government intervened and prolonged the problem? 

You can go here and see the original chart with the dates included. 

This is an experiment recommended by Charles Murray in his classic "What It Means To Be A Libertarian". 
You can do the same thing by charting workplace accidents, removing the dates, and asking when the government created OSHA.  Your audience will be baffled. 
You can chart highway fatalities, remove the dates, and have people look in vain for the 55 miles per hour speed limit, seat belt requirements, air bag requirements, and the like. 
Ditto for air quality and the birth of the EPA. 

Your government at work.  You can't see the results, but damn, they're busy. 

Missouri SWAT team raids home, shoot two dogs in front of 7-year old, find "small amount" of marijuana: Mission Accomplished ! !

Back in March, I linked to a Radley Balko post about a nasty incident in Missouri where a SWAT team broke into a family's home, shot and killed one of their dogs, and then shot an injured their Corgi. All in front of a 7-year old.

Those Corgis, you gotta watch out for them.

Since Obama's goon squad discovered a misdemeanor-level amount of marijuana on the premises, they were able to charge the homeowner with possession and child endangerment.

In the words of Mr. Balko:

So smoking pot = “child endangerment.”

Storming a home with guns, then firing bullets into the family pets as a child looks on = necessary police procedures to ensure everyone’s safety.
Just so we’re clear.

My take on Obama's Boys In Black went as follows:

Yeah, you can argue that the police were just doing their job. And the courts, when they convict someone of marijuana possession, they're just doing their job. So are the jailers, the social workers, the prison guards, the prison construction lobby, and the drug cartels that depend on our laws to preserve their monopoly.

When are we going to stop paying people to do this job?

We now have the Gestapo's Swat Team's video of the incident.  Imagine this is your home.  It's your yard.  That's your son, and those are your pets. 
The homeowner is named Jonathan Whitworth.  His reaction at the 2:50 mark is heartbreaking. 



How much longer are we going to put up with this? Especially when our last three presidents have affirmed that they've smoked marijuana?  Or in Obama's case, used cocaine? 

First they came for the Corgis, and I did not speak up....

Please email this post to every drug warrior you know. 

Reaction to Oil Spill

Marvel Variants has a blog

I've missed two days of posting in the last two weeks, and that's enough to have people wondering if I'm burning out.
Not the case.
If I'm burning out on anything, it's my shipping/logistics/warehousing gig at Jukt Micronics.
We're going 7 days a week until, well, until we don't have to any more.

The villain behind this Capitalistic Frenzy is my boss's boss, known to long-time readers as Marvel Variants.

Mr. Variants started cashing in on his childhood comic collecting skills years ago, and just recently got his own website, Bronze Age Marvel Variants. 

To understand what a "variant" comic book is, go here.  

You can also hit the "Marvel Variants" label at the bottom of this post to read his other appearances on these pages. 

To learn about the Big Daddy of all variants (attention: Star Wars geeks): go here. 

This post explains how the comic book mania can afflict a person. 

This comic book cover was not done by Marvel, and is not a price variant, but I think it is funny.

So do me a favor.  Hit all the links above and give Mr. Variants some traffic, help his website get a Google ranking, let him make lots of money selling comic books, and maybe he'll retire and I can get some days off. 

Please.  Hit the links.  It's for the Libertarian Bloggers ™.

Why "Kick Ass" is one of the best Libertarian movies EVER

1) The police in the movie are portrayed realistically.  They're ineffective.  (One of my truck windows was vandalized a couple of nights ago.  I didn't even bother to report it.) 
2) "Kick Ass", the male lead, gets tired of being hassled, mugged and assaulted and decides on his own to do something about it. 
3) "Hit Girl" is home schooled. 
4) The public school that Kick Ass attends is portrayed realistically.  In the opening sequence, he has to go through a gauntlet of metal detectors just to get in the door. 
5) "Red Mist" smokes some weed but maintains his ability to drive. 
6) The mandatory SUV that the villains use to pursue Kick Ass and Red Mist is a GMC.  (Government Motors Corporation)
7)  Hit Girl is a poster child for gun control.  She hits what she aims at. 
8)  If you don't think a Personal Jet Propulsion Pack (with twin Gatlin guns) is cool, well, stay home.  Watch Dancing With The Stars.