January, 2012 archive
The Libertarian Code, Reprise 0
As I mentioned yesterday, Libertarianism is the latest iteration of attempts to create innocent-sounding ideologies to serve as sheep’s clothing for wolfish treatment of others.
Leonard Pitts, Jr., cuts to the chase (emphasis added):
Maybe, it’s easy to make freedom an issue of “property rights” when you have never been the property.
Click to read the rest.
Everybody Must Get Fracked 0
The latest earthquake, registering a magnitude of 4.0, was centered five miles northwest of Youngstown and very close to the 9,000-foot-deep Northstar No. 1 disposal well owned by D&L Energy, which receives most of its brine and fracking wastewater from Marcellus Shale drilling operations in Pennsylvania.
The fracking industry, of course, is claiming that it’s all for public safety, this was an isolated event, it wasn’t even home, it didn’t see anything, it was in a sports bar watching a football game or a parade or something and someone must have slipped it a roofy.
The Libertarian Code 1
I’m a Southern boy. I can translate the code.
The Booman is not a Southern boy, but he translates it quite well in a long post over at his place. Essential to understanding the translation is putting the words of the code code words into context.
Here’s a couple of snippets from the Booman:
(snip)
Did anyone seriously think that these kinds of attitudes could be legislated out of existence? Or that a significant number of people wouldn’t resent the Federal Government for sending in enough troops to force the Southern people to break down segregation? Naturally, those attitudes persisted. But they persisted in less overtly racist ways. Ron Paul’s newsletters occasionally delved into the former style, but that’s more of a slip-up than a regular practice. People know better these days than to say white people are a superior race. The coded way to say that is to insist that the Civil Rights Act of 1964 was an unconstitutional overreach that actually made race relations worse.
Because, you know, under Jim Crow, race relations were just fine.
Aside:
I suspect that much of the appeal that Libertarianism and Ron Paul seem to have for some college-age males is the youngsters’ ignorance of Libertarianism’s lineage.
The rest of the appeal is likely Libertarianism’s glorification of selfishness: it legitimizes their desire to pursue any and every woman as they congratulate themselves for the Galtian purity and exemplary idealism that guides their so doing.
You Can Run, but You Can’t Hide 0
Wherever you go, the admen will find you:
“If people know where you are, they can push to you offers that are unique to your Advertisement location,” said Rob Enderle, principal analyst with San Jose-based market researcher Enderle Group.
The flacks are claiming that this electronic tracking has safety overtones. One of them calls it “a personal OnStar” and cites extremely farfetched “what-ifs” (“I’ve fallen and I can’t get up”) to persuade you to turn your cell phone into a personalized surveillance drone for the marketers.
A vision: Walk into a mall and get electronically assaulted with ads for stores you never visit.
Walk into a bar and get ads for all those trendy drinks with premium vodka (which is, as I’ve said before, an oxymoron and a triumph of marketing over reality).
Walk into a bathroom and get an ad for Charmin.
Bowling for Dollars, Reprise 0
In the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, Charles Clotfelter wonders who is responsible for the corruption in college sports and nominates a culprit. The nugget:
For universities with big-time sports programs, sports have always been a core function, right up there with research and teaching. For reasons uniquely American, college football and basketball not only enjoy widespread popularity, they take on tremendous importance for trustees, alumni and other university stakeholders. These leaders want successful teams, in part because they believe that athletic success will bolster their institutions’ academic mission, but mostly because they value athletic success for its own sake.
If you wonder why NCAA “reforms” and “self-policing” continually fail, try rephrasing the question.
The question is actually why the window dressing keeps falling off.
Make TWUUG Your LUG 0
Learn about the wonderful world of free and open source.
What: Monthly TWUUG Meeting.
Who: Everyone in TideWater/Hampton Roads with interest in any/all flavors of Unix/Linux. There are no dues or signup requirements. All are welcome.
Where: Lake Taylor Transitional Care Hospital in Norfolk Training Room. See directions below. (Wireless and wired internet connection available.)
When: 7:30 PM till whenever (usually 9:30ish) on Thursday, January 5.
Directions:
Lake Taylor Hospital
1309 Kempsville Road
Norfolk, Va. 23502 (Map)
Pre-Meeting Dinner at 6:00 PM (separate checks)
Uno Chicago Grill
Virginia Beach Blvd. & Military Highway (Janaf Shopping Center). (Map)
Speaking in Tongues 0
Shaun Mullen translates John Boehner.
Bowling for Dollars 0
Dan Gillick offers a new method for handicapping college football bowl games.
Meanwhile, Joe Nocera examines the hypocrisy of the NCAA. A snippet:
Yet, in Indianapolis a few weeks from now, a home-grown cartel will hold its annual meeting, where it, too, will be working to collude and fix prices. This cartel is the National Collegiate Athletic Association. The N.C.A.A. would have you believe that it is the great protector of amateur athletics, preventing college athletes from being tainted by the river of money pouring over college sports.
In fact, the N.C.A.A.’s real role is to oversee the collusion of university athletic departments, whose goal is to maximize revenue and suppress the wages of its captive labor force, a k a the players.
I have gotten so disgusted that I’ve watched only a piece of one football game,* semi-pro college or professional, and that was a Broncos game, to see what all the fuss was about Tim Tebow’s antics. I saw no antics.
Facebook Frolics, Britain’s Finest Dept. 0
Bobbies booted.
. . . officers’ misdeeds included boasting of having roughed up members of the public during recent protests/riots, attempts to befriend victims of crime, inappropriate comment on “others’ wives”, and harassment of former partners and colleagues. That perennial Facebook favourite, inappropriate pictures, also led to many bobbies’ downfall.
The Voter Fraud Fraud, Full Court Press Dept. 0
In a timely counterpoint to my previous post, Mike Papantonio details the Republican strategy to keep out the vote and the obstacles to overcoming it.
Virginia Republicans Rally To Protect Their Own 0
In Republican World, election rules one-way things: they exist to keep Democrats from the polls.
Republicans would hold themselves exempt.
“Hundreds of thousands of Virginians who ought to be able to have their choice among the full field of presidential primary contenders now only have a choice among two,” he said. “Virginia owes her citizens a better process.”
Meanwhile, in a visit to History Land, Shawn Day of my local rag reminds us that even Fred Thompson (remember Fred Thompson?) qualified for the Virginia ballot eight years ago. Furthermore, the Republican Party repeatedly reminded the candidates of the rules:
Only former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney met that threshold. U.S. Rep. Ron Paul submitted slightly fewer than 15,000, and party staffers validated at least 10,000.
“RPV officials encouraged candidates repeatedly, through both counsel and field staff, to submit 15,000 or more signatures in an abundance of caution, so that they would meet the legal requirements,” the party said in a statement about the petition certification process.
“Candidates were officially informed of the 15,000 rule in October 2011, well in advance of the Dec. 22 submission deadline. The rule was no surprise to any candidate – and indeed, no candidate or campaign offered any complaints until after the Dec. 23 validation process had concluded.”
I cannot judge whether the Virginia primary requirements are “onerous” or not.
I can judge that the antics of the Republican Party to avoid its own rules set new standards in cynicism and venality.