Efenant Party Time 2012

So, the GOP is having another nominating convention, and as is becoming the tradition, we here at YPS Manor have mostly ignored it in favor of spending a little quality time with each other and some old and new friends. Aside from a bit of comedy provided by the Paulbots, nothing of import was going to happen. Seriously, efenants, Mittens? That's the best you can come up with?

Neither party is serious about addressing the problems our country faces, so why should I be serious about paying attention to them? The clowns have taken over the circus, and are determined to drop the tent on everybody as the final act. The screaming and wailing and gnashing of teeth is going to be epic when it finally collapses.

Step Right Up

I love the internet. I can now, in mere seconds, become aware of the whining of some wanker who's mad because other people don't think/act exactly likes he thinks they should. While you might think this would be a bad thing, I like because it lets me mock people.

Today's winner is one each Kevin McCullough. He writes books, and he got his panties in a wad about CPAC. In his mind, there's only one way to be a conservative. All these nasty unconservative people showed up at CPAC and made a mockery of what CPAC should be.

Instead, being a disrespectful libertarian, I'm just going to point and laugh at the silly man. Hell, disrespect of people that are unacquainted with the concept of liberty is pretty much what we're all about, and I've got buckets of disrespect handy to sling around. But, hell, what does he expect of "the worst form of political affiliation in the nation"? Manners?

I'd like to point out a few facts to Mr. McCullough. It isn't libertarians who shredded the Constitution to chase executive power and justify whatever crack-addled legislative scheme was briefly popular. It wasn't libertarians who kept expanding social welfare programs and the DOD budget. It wasn't libertarians who eviscerated federalism. I don't recall us agitating to sell out our grandkids for benefits now. Every major problem the country faces right now was brought about with the active complicity or passive collusion of the GOP he thinks, against all evidence, is conservative. Yet, somehow, libertarians are the problem.

I only have one question for Mr. McCullough: When the causes you champion and the politicians you support get crushed at the ballot box, will you blame all the disrespectful libertarians then?

Shock The Vote 2010

So, early voting in Montgomery County starts today. Get your vote on here, if you are inclined to vote early.

As always, I will try to convince you of the correct way to vote. Based on historical evidence and election results, most of you will ignore me. Whether or not that's good is subject to debate. I will point out things wouldn't be any worse had you followed my advice.

My rules of thumb this year: vote against the incumbent and against donks. Now, this may not leave you much to vote for, but many races in Montgomery County have alternate selections (read that as LP) on the ballot. Review and consider your choices.

I'm going to highlight a few notable races and leave you to exercise my rules on the rest. First off is US Representative for District 8. Kevin Brady is the incumbent. Kevin Brady voted for TARP, therefore he should get sent home to contemplate his sins. I'm reasonably sure Kent Hargett will be no better on the subject of fiscal restraint. I know a lot of hardcore efenants have problems with libertarians in general and the LP in specific. However, if you send back to Congress anybody who voted for TARP, next time push comes to shove they'll spend another couple hundred billion dollars of your money. I can guarantee any libertarian that manages to get into office ain't voting for half the stupid crap the efenants and donks have managed to pass off as necessary. Vote for Bruce West.

Next up: Governor of the State of Texas. Vote for Rick Perry again, and keep getting what you've been getting. Sweet. Vote for Bill White and get yet another donk with no concept of fiscal restraint and a penchant for interesting accounting. There's a great idea, on both counts. Again, I advise you all to try LP.

I will now take a moment to advise you on the tactical issue of voting LP. If you efenants in the audience really do feel like a donk may win in a close race, feel free to vote GOP yet again. I only want you to do so in the full and certain knowledge the GOP will not change if you do. If you continue to vote for the GOP when they misbehave, they'll continue to misbehave. A sharp uptick in the LP numbers will send a signal to the GOP that something is wrong, and they need to recalibrate. Incentives matter, and the GOP needs to learn they can get unelected right quick if they continue to be the party of less big government.

Moving slightly further down ballot, David Dewhurst can choke on a bucket of fail. I'd like to say I don't care who is the Lt. Governor as long as ain't him, but I'd be lying. There's a Green Party candidate in this race. A dead weasel is a better choice for elected office than anyone who runs as a Green.

Most of the other down ballot races I'm not incensed enough to berate you over. I note CISD has several positions open, and they are contested. Here's the relevant summaries if you live in CISD.

As always, be kind to your poll workers and if you don't bother to educate yourself, stay home.

Better On Nothing

If you, like me, are not a partisan of either donk or efenant, occasionally some well-meaning rabid supporter will attempt to convince you the proper place for you is on their side. This is usually a tough sell for many, many reasons, but even more so in the current political climate. My sympathies lie slightly towards the efenant side, since they seem a wee tad bit more determined to let me keep my guns and more of my money. Given the rest of my political sympathies, this sometimes baffles the donks I know. After all, I'm for gay marriage, drug legalization, less militarization of the police, criminal justice system reform, and a whole host of other issues that liberals and progressives supposedly support.

Here's the issue, and it applies to the R as well as the D. I can't go by what the boot-licking sycophants tell me some politician would do or would like to do. I have to go by what the honorable Random Weasel actually does. On that note, both of y'all's parties suck. But since the donks are currently in the Whitehouse, let's pick on them.

So, let me ask about a few issues supposedly important to you liberal and progressive types. Did the DEA stop cracking down on medical marijuana? Made any progress on slowing down the Drug War either? Hey, did your shiny hopey changey President get Gitmo closed? How about that PATRIOT Act that was gonna get revised? We stop bailing out huge corporations with taxpayer money yet? How's the whole increased transparency coming along? Damn, the answer to all that is still no?

And finally, the issue that started this post: warrantless wiretaps. The Obama declared he was gonna put an end to that nonsense. Oh, wait. Maybe not. Let's expand it, instead.

So, somebody on the left clue me in. On what rational basis do you claim your side is better on any issue I give a damn about? Either make some progress on liberty or admit your half of the donkelphant is just as awful as the other half. In the meantime, don't seriously expect me to believe I belong with either side.

You First, Skippy

So, the somewhat less than lustrous Senator from the great state of Deseret Utah, Orrin Hatch (R-Cupholder) has proposed a law. If you receive any form of government assistance, he wants you to pee in a cup. Orrin is apparently offended by the thought of you low-lifes getting high with tax money.

There are some arguments against this that flow from first principles, but since we've rendered the 4th Amendment into a sad, pathetic joke, I won't go into them. I'll start by pointing out a fact of my misspent youth. During my tenure in the Army, we were regularly asked to take tests to tell if we were on drugs. Tellingly, the people who control the military are not asked to do any such thing. Us guys with the boots on the ground might do something wrong if we were high. The folks deciding where we should go kill people and break things are apparently immune from poor decisions while stoned, since they don't take whiz quizzes.

Additionally, I note Orrin's salary and bennies are paid by the federal government. He's taking taxpayer money, too. It strikes me that to be philosophically consistent, Orrin should pass a bill requiring him and 534 of his closest fellow legislators to take random drug tests. When he steps up and does that, maybe I'll think about supporting drug tests for welfare recipients. In the meantime, if he's not going to require Congress to take a drug test he needs to have a nice hot cup of STFU.

Disintermediation Strikes Again

So, Terry Lowry has come up on our radar again. This time, he's trying to claim being a precinct chair means you have to pass Terry's litmus test before you can be considered to be a real Republican or some shit. Doesn't this get shot down every time it comes up at the state convention? Shouldn't that be a clue? I have to admit, having watched and participated in way too many "No True Scotsman" debates with my fellow libertarians, watching the Republican party engage in the same pointless wrangling is pretty funny.

What's even funnier is watching Mr. Lowry desperately try to cling to his power and influence. He's very obviously still working off of the old media model. He had a platform, both through his radio show and his newsletter, that was not available to most people. Through the use of his platform, he could influence things. So candidates, attracted by his platform, would come to him and try to get their message out. It's the only reason he has any use at all to politicians. At some point, he apparently began using his platform as a bargaining chip to get money to continue his newsletters. Right there, his credibility went out the window.

What he's failed to realize is that his role as a gatekeeper is dwindling every election cycle. Why does J. Random Candidate need to deal with Terry Lowry? Mr. Candidate has the internet. Anybody with any snap who is involved in local politics has web access. So J. Random can bypass Terry completely and put his message to the electorate directly. What value is Terry Lowry adding to the process? If you answered "none", you'd be correct. There are ways he could add value, as he does appear to have some level of access most people don't have, but he doesn't grasp how to use the access positively.

Like most old media types, he hasn't figured out in the brave new networked world your credibility is the only thing you have to offer your readers. If you've already sold your credibility, you've got nothing. Yeah, the information presented may be true and useful, but if your readers don't trust you, they won't come back. You've got to be a lot more upfront about your conflicts of interest and your support for candidates than Mr. Lowry has ever been.

There's been just absolute bucketfuls of information on this around the web and in print, and Terry Lowry has ignored all of it. So, he deserves to go the way of the dodo. I hope he's enjoyed his run at being influential, because it's coming to close.

Legitimacy

So I didn't listen to Debra Medina on Glenn Beck live this morning, unlike J. Instead I got the endless replay from Michael Berry on the way home. Apparently Mr. Berry has his knickers in a twist because Ms. Medina answered "I don't know" when asked if she thought the US government had any involvement with the 9/11 attacks. Apparently the only correct answer to the question is "no" or else Glenn Beck will mock you and the former city councilman will pile on.

First off, the irony of Glenn Beck mocking someone for not believing the official version of events should be lost on no one. How much time did Beck spend asking questions about a birth certificate? None, right?

Secondly, let's discuss some of the more glorious moments in the history of the United States. Shall we list the times the FBI illegally spied on citizens for expressing different political opinions? All 2000+ of them over 15 years? There are the multiple documented cases of the FBI killing citizens for no real good reasons. Fred Hampton and Vicki Weaver might have something more to say about that if they hadn't been shot dead. We could also discuss some of the more gruesome medical experiments the government decided to conduct on its citizens. Maybe I'm cynical, but given the government's past willingness to visit barbaric indignities upon innocent citizens and then try to cover it up I can see how someone might not believe the feds when they claim innocence.

Finally, I'll ask a reasonable doubt question. There were, in 2001, approximately 1.6 million federal employees. Neither Glenn Beck or Michael Berry or anybody else can say with absolute certainty none of those employees had anything to do with 9/11. If they did, they sure as hell wouldn't admit guilt after the fact, now would they? The evidence would have been shredded before close of business that day.

Now, I don't have any good evidence the government had any direct involvement. I don't think they did; however, I'm not willing to rule the possibility out either. I don't know if there was direct involvement or not, but apparently that's not an acceptable answer if you want to be a "legitimate" Republican candidate. Not being a Republican, it's not really my problem.

Now, admittedly, I'm a cynical bastard with a low opinion of the political process. Given that, you'll excuse me if I think this is yet another attempt to protect the mainstream candidates from insurgents outside the traditional party power structure. Team affiliation trumps principle for too many people anymore. It is more important to elect someone with the right letter after their name than someone who shares your beliefs and principles. I wish the GOP in Texas the best of luck with this approach, but I would think the entire Tea Party phenomenon has pointed out a significant subset of the electorate is sick of it.

Fuck the Free Market

So, the bailout plan proposed by Henry Paulson, et al.? Give us a whole pile of money to spend and let us be completely unaccountable in doing so. Don’t believe me? Here’s the relevant subsection:

Sec. 8. Review.

Decisions by the Secretary pursuant to the authority of this Act are non-reviewable and committed to agency discretion, and may not be reviewed by any court of law or any administrative agency.

Excuse me, what? We’re talking about spending $700 billion here. That’s $700,000,000,000 dollars that have to come from somewhere and these ignuts want the decisions to be unquestionable? If you have any kind of a brain in your head, you should realize the magnitude of the colossally poor decision being discussed here. It should concern anyone with functioning brain cells when the government tells you it wants to spend this kind of money and avoid answering any questions about the details.

Let’s review: a bunch of dumb people borrowed money they couldn’t pay back from a second group of morons. Somehow, the poor decisions by the collective idiots in the crowd means we, collectively, have to pony up the entire GDP of the Netherlands or Turkey. Instead, we could buy Vietnam 10 times over.

I’d also like to note the proposal came from the efenants in DC. Let me quote you some choice tidbits.

Republicans will attack wasteful Washington spending immediately.

If billions are worth spending, they should be spent in the light of day.

Congress has a fundamental duty to conduct meaningful oversight on the effectiveness of government programs

We believe government should tax only to raise money for its essential functions.

We do not support government bailouts of private institutions. Government interference in the markets exacerbates problems in the marketplace and causes the free market to take longer to correct itself.

All of these quotes are from the RNC Platform. I guess Paulson and Bernanke didn’t get the fucking memo, huh?

Inspired Choice

Okay, so I'm still not voting for John McCain. I'm making that clear right now. He could have picked James Madison's ghost as his running mate and I'd still pass. I won't vote for somebody who has demonstrated not only a complete misunderstanding of the Constitution but an active hostility to same. So McCain, no matter who he picked as VP, was not getting my vote.

Having said that, Sarah Palin was possibly the best pick he could make given the need to shore up his support among the base. Let's face it, both McCain and Obama were not going into the fall with the complete support of their respective 30%. Sarah Palin is one of the few people he could have picked that would get him a lot more support among the efenant base. Really, I have to give big points to the McCain team for this one. They may still lose the race, but they're playing smart politics.

Fun with the RNC

So J forwarded to me a listing of the scheduled happenings at the RNC. Once again, it’s a hearty round of patting each other on the back for the obvious wisdom in choosing John McCain as the nominee. Unless he subsequently loses, in which case they'll invent some convoluted reason why it's not their fault.

In that vein, each day of the convention has a theme of one of John McCain’s values or virtues or delusional self-aggrandizing traits. Something, anyway. Each day is kicked off in the schedule with a quote from everybody’s favorite crazy old man, JMcC. Of particular amusement to me is the quote for day 2: Reform.

If you find faults with our country, make it a better one. If you are disappointed with the mistakes of government, join its ranks and correct them.

I guess if you view the drastic expansion of the federal state as a problem, you’re supposed to fix it by… participating in the expansion of the state? I think the portion of my brain that handles logic just exploded. Besides that fundamental issue, isn’t it telling that his Senatorialness thinks the only way to fix government is to join it? Apparently all of us citizens out here going about our lives shouldn’t expect other people to reform the government for us. Other people like THE FUCKING IGNUTS WE ELECTED TO RUN THE GOVERNMENT, PERHAPS? Pardon the outburst, but this is a rough election season for me. I guess he thinks one can't do anything to effectively reform the government from the outside. Should I be surprised he missed the whole petition for redress of grievances part of the amendment he hates the most? Probably not.

I also find amusing the RNC’s insistence McCain “has dedicated his career to taking on special interests and the status quo”. I can dismiss this particular bit of blatherskite with two simple words: Charles Keating. Additionally, we can note that Johnny Mac has no problems gutting the First Amendment to aid a particularly small special interest group of which he is a member. One might also, and I will, note the absolutely implausible idea of a guy who has spent the last 20 years in the U.S. Senate being a fighter against the status quo. McCain hasn’t quite ossified into his chair like others I could name (Byrd, Inouye, and Kennedy for starters) but he’s part of the freaking status quo. I have a voting age person in my house who wasn’t yet born the year he took office, but he’s gonna fight the status quo! I hope he starts by slapping the shit out of himself and Russ Feingold. I'll buy tickets for the PPV broadcast.

Moving on, day 3 is going to be a lecture on “Prosperity”. Given that McCain has so far in the election displayed the economic understanding of an incontinent tree frog, I can’t imagine how he thinks he’s qualified to discuss prosperity. A guy who has spent his entire life completely insulated from any real job market is perhaps not qualified to explain the American Dream and the achievement thereof to the rest of us. We can’t all spend our entire adult lives working for the gummint, John. Also, bringing out Carly Fiorina to talk about prosperity is kind of ironic, isn’t it? Should I call my buddies who lost their jobs after the HP-Compaq merger to ask their opinions? Or is the 50% drop in share price during her tenure as HP CEO sufficient evidence without resorting to anecdote? Again, we can’t all get millions of dollars in severance after running a multi-billion dollar company into the ground.

I’m glad I’m not going to Minneapolis for the convention, because my liver can’t take the amount of booze I’d have to drink to make it through. Listening to this crap sober for four days would make me wanna cockpunch (or crotchpunch, to be gender-neutral) every sumbitch wearing a GOP pin.