Dissent is born from the simple reality that government must prove its case to us, NOT vice-versa.
--Dolly's current fave aphorism, stolen from Dante
Thursday, March 11, 2010
I Keep Wondering When...
SOMEONE WITH THE THROW-WEIGHT to -- you know -- actually do something about it will look at the BATFE and realize <v8bop> Here's an agency whose entire reason for living is to infringe upon supposedly inalienable rights. Why are we still funding it, again? </v8bop>
Mark Philip Alger
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Thursday, March 11, 2010
Memo to Pat Kennedy...
THE MEDIA HAS BEEN CARRYING your family's water for over fifty years. It might be considered intemperate to attack them at this precise juncture.
You self-important, spoilt-brat, petty, little parvenu prat.
Mark Philip Alger
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Thursday, March 11, 2010
John Adams?...
JOHN ADAMS!!!? Are you out. Of your. Fucking. Mind? I've got two words for you, asshole: Lynn Stewart.
Get the fuck out of my country.
Mark Philip Alger
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Wednesday, March 10, 2010
Quote of the Day...
So remember: Question 9 -- "Some other race" -- "American." Pass it on.
Mark Philip Alger
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Wednesday, March 10, 2010
Ladies and Gentlemen, I Give You...
Mark Philip Alger
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Wednesday, March 10, 2010
Been There...
DONE THAT Bought the T-shirt. I mean, what else can you think on getting this in your email?
On the other hand, there are peoples who, if you don't like them, there's something wrong with you. KInd of human litmus tests. Israelis are one.
Mark Philip Alger
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Wednesday, March 10, 2010
Listening to Karl Rove...
TUESDAY ON THE Rush Limbaugh show, I was struck by how wrong even the so-called heroes of the movement can be. On bipartisanship, he kept stressing the need to find common ground with the enemy the Democrats. And I kept being reminded of our masthead aphorism from Jesse Helms. If you're right, then compromising with evil is wrong. Instead of looking for things that all of the politicians can agree on to do, the government should be asking on any subject, "Is this a subject on which we are authorized to govern?" Unless a positive action is taken via repeal of unconstitutional measures, "doing something that is good for the country" is sophistry. Congress's job is not to "do the work of the American people" but to stay the fuck out of the way.
Mark Philip Alger
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Tuesday, March 09, 2010
Fall Guy for What?...
I'VE BEEN WONDERING for awhile if the whole healt care debacle wasn't some form of political kabuki -- designed to placate the base, generate significant sound and fury, but accomplish the approximate sum product of nothing.
In which case, perhaps the recent immolation of Rahm Emmanuel isn't not according to plan.
Karl Rove the other day retailed a story of how a White House aide in the Bush Administration calculated how long he could stand the pay cut and left the day it started to bite. Maybe Rahm has asked for a similar out.
Mark Philip Alger
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Tuesday, March 09, 2010
I Wonder If It Ever Occurred...
TO THE REVEREND Fred Phelps that maybe God hates the Westboro Baptist Church?
Mark Philip Alger
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Tuesday, March 09, 2010
The Oscars and the Diminishing...
IMPORTANCE OF HOLLYWOOD in American life.
Show biz used to have this saying -- a real home truth -- if you want to send a message, call Western Union.
Hollywood seems to have forgotten this in the rush to play with their bright, shiny message-sending toy. Now they've been supplanted in the American mind-space by people who get that it's about amusement, not incitement.
I thought the classiest act over Oscar weekend was Sandra Bullock's showing up to accept the Razzie. Class and a sense of humor the Razzie voters may not have expected.
Mark Philip Alger
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Saturday, March 06, 2010
What In The Wide, Wide World of Sports...
IF YOU WORK AS CLERGY in the "private sector," you earn, on average, $39,000.00 per year. But if you work as a cleric (NOTE: a religious minister to a church congregation) you earn $70-some-thousand per year.
While the comparison itself is odious -- what extra value does being a government worker provide that's worth the extra emollient? -- my question is: how is this comparison even possible!? Do we not -- as the statists never tire of reminding us -- have "separation of church and state"? What is the state doing employing churchmen?
Um... military chaplins?
Dunno. Mebbe so. Can somebody speak to the pay grades in the chaplain corps?
Reminds me of a chorus from Firesign Theater -- Government preachers/government cheese. Government preachers/government cheese.
She said, going off on a tendentious tangent.
Mark Philip Alger
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Saturday, March 06, 2010
Oh, Yeah...
MEANT TO JOIN the chorus yestiddy. Marko Kloos has a very, very good story up, called Lucky Thirteen. I hope I'm not jinxing it to predict a Campbell Award in this young man's future. He's that good. If it's a true sample of the quality of his work overall, the Campbell will be... well, not a cakewalk, because the competition is always stiff, but... yeah. Not unreasonable to expect it. Watch for the novel.
Mark Philip Alger
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Saturday, March 06, 2010
Oh! You Mean...
NATURAL GAS? Shocka! How long has this been goin' on?
MILLyuns of years, bay-bee. MILLyuns of years. And yet... global warming? Man-made?
Idiots.
For the clueless: In the Gulf of Mexico, there are places where natural gas escapes from the earth's crust in volumes exceeding the hydrocarbon (so-called "fossil" fuels) use by humanity for all time -- IN A SINGLE YEAR. Natural gas, again for the clueless, is mostly methane. And yet...?
What? Are you so innumerate you can't DO the math?
(Hat tip: Vanderleun)
Mark Philip Alger
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Friday, March 05, 2010
Quote of the Day...
"There exists no alternative energy source, no combination of alternative energy sources, and no system of combinations of alternative energy sources that can fully replace a single, coal fired electric plant built with 1930s era technology," she writes. "Yet many want to make this group of functionally useless technologies the primary energy sources for our entire civilization."
Another point which frequently gets missed. The network effect fairly dictates that you get energy prices that are unconscionably high UNLESS everybody uses the same fuel. There are two fuel types available to us*: 1) hydrocarbons and 2) nuclear. The cheapest, most abundant hydrocarbons are petroleum, coal, and natural gas. That's why everybody uses them. And they're cheapest because everybody uses them -- the two conditions go hand-in-glove.
So whatever -- scorn quotes -- "alternative" you care to try to replace 1) and 2) above with must scale up to provide a significant portion (i.e., greater than two-thirds, I'd say) of the existing demand as well as projected increases. If it can't, it's a non-starter.
And one of the most frequently-mentioned so-called "alternatives" is biofuels. And no matter how your brain fart pipedreams imagine they might be provided, eventually, you are going to have to produce them in a large-scale, systematized manner. Which, in biofuels, leads almost inevitably to cropping them.
I did the math once, just to satisfy my own curiosity. There is not enough arable land on the planet to cover the INCREASE year-to-year in gasoline demand in the United States. So-called "alternative" fuels are a losing proposition going in. It's not even close.
And the guys you call idiots in Washington know it.
Think about that next time you contemplate the so-called energy crisis.
(* Don't even try. Fuel means something you get energy out of. All those others you're about to mention in comments are energy STORAGE mechanisms. So don't bother.)
Mark Philip Alger
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Friday, March 05, 2010
Kevin Baker Has a New...
COMMENT THING Maybe not all that new, but this was the first time I'd encountered it. I'm sure he thought he had to do it. Probably to get a bit more control over the trolls and spammers. Pretty much any blogger has had to deal with those at some length. But me I don't deal well with change, and I was comfortable with Kevin's old system. And, after about five minutes of trying to log on, I gave up and brought this over here.
The Quote of the Day is from a guy commenting somewhere else (you can follow the links at Kev's place if you're interested). The guy appears to be engaged in a conflation fallacy and uses straw man arguments to make the point that -- apparently, yes -- you can impose democracy on someone.
I could be wrong, but that's how it looks to me.
Mark Philip Alger
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Thursday, March 04, 2010
Quote of the Day...
It seems to me that large segments of the world's political class are getting too big for their britches.
Whatchoo mean, "GETTING"? Seems t' meeee the political class is by daffynition too big for it's britches. It's made of of windyviduals who're too big for their britches. They're constitutionally unable to close their zippers.
Nature of the beast, eh?
Something like that.
Gabrielle Francesca "Dolly" East
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Thursday, March 04, 2010
I’m Sorry, But When...
I HEAR SOME STATIST TOOL spouting about "reasonable regulation" of a civil right, I want to take to the streets or something. Lady, your reasonable regulation is my infringement. And the Constitution, at least, doesn't allow for -- scorn quotes -- "reasonable regulation."
"...the right of the people to ... shall not be infringed..." means that nowhere within the boundaries of the United States shall any actor -- public or private -- attempt to circumscribe the exercise of that right.
Seems pretty clear to me: "reasonable regulation" in't in it.
Mark Philip Alger
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Thursday, March 04, 2010
Back When I Was Poor...
WHICH IS TO SAY I'm not now, which might be debatable... Back when I was poor, we used to drink a coffee substitute called Pero, which was a European affectation with roots back in wartime shortages and black markets and all that. It was made of roasted (read: burnt) bread crumbs and what-not, and is referred to worldwide as ersatz coffee.
Fake coffee.
First it was astroturf, now it's ersatz kaffeeklatschen.
And neither the politicians nor their myrmidons get the fundamental ... issue ... with mendacious attempts to gen up a false appearance of support for their positions.
Prolly think they're being clever.
Probably do.
Mark Philip Alger
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Thursday, March 04, 2010
Tomayto/Tomahto...
YOU SAY, "Leave of absence." I say, "Flight from prosecution."
Mark Philip Alger
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Tuesday, March 02, 2010
The Constitution Requires...
THAT THE STATES guarantee their citizens a republican form of government, and itself describes one in laying out the form of the Federal government.
So I have a question.
Does that make Democrats unconstitutional?
Mark Philip Alger
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Tuesday, March 02, 2010
Dutchman Has...
A MOVING POST about the Three Percent at Sipsey Street. Kinda reminds me of Heinlein's story "Free Men."
Mark Philip Alger
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Sunday, February 28, 2010
We Really Need To...
READ IDIOTS LIKE -- such as (evennn) -- Lindsay Graham (Duh - SC) out of the party. Here's the bird-brain himself quoted by Thomas Friedman in the NYT:
It is early evening on Capitol Hill, and I am sitting with Senator Lindsey Graham, the South Carolina Republican, who, along with John Kerry and Joe Lieberman, is trying to craft a new energy bill — one that could actually win 60 votes. What is interesting about Graham is that he has been willing — courageously in my view — to depart from the prevailing G.O.P. consensus that the only energy policy we need is “drill, baby, drill.”
... What brought you around, I ask? Graham’s short answer: politics, jobs and legacy. We start with politics. The Republican Party today has a major outreach problem with two important constituencies, “Hispanics and young people,” Graham explains:
“I have been to enough college campuses to know if you are 30 or younger this climate issue is not a debate. It’s a value. These young people grew up with recycling and a sensitivity to the environment — and the world will be better off for it. They are not brainwashed. ... From a Republican point of view, we should buy into it and embrace it and not belittle them. You can have a genuine debate about the science of climate change, but when you say that those who believe it are buying a hoax and are wacky people you are putting at risk your party’s future with younger people. You can have a legitimate dispute about how to solve immigration, but when you start focusing on the last names of people the demographics will pass you by.”
... And for those Republicans who think this is only a loser, Senator Graham says think again: “What is our view of carbon as a party? Are we the party of carbon pollution forever in unlimited amounts? Pricing carbon is the key to energy independence, and the byproduct is that young people look at you differently.” Look at how he is received in colleges today. “Instead of being just one more short, white Republican over 50,” says Graham, “I am now semicool. There is an awareness by young people that I am doing something different.”
Five more G.O.P. senators like him and we could have a real energy bill.
“We can’t be a nation that always tries and fails,” Graham concludes. “We have to eventually get some hard problem right.”
(Hat tip: Tom Nelson.)
It's almost like he hasn't been paying attention over the past four months. Let alone the entire duration of the AGW panic.
I seem to recall Graham being good on some topics -- though specificity would come at more effort than I care to ... to effort -- but the overwhelming sense is that his Different Drummer is Animal from the Muppet Band.
Mark Philip Alger
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Saturday, February 27, 2010
And the Pep Band Plays “Tequila”...
WHILE THE BLONDES in short skirts and color coordinated underpants dance and shake their pom-poms. GO OHIO! YAY!
Mark Philip Alger
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Saturday, February 27, 2010
Have I Not Said This?...
THE POSITION of liberty-lovers and other folk in the Right MUST be one of demanding repeal. Repeal of the income tax. Repeal of the 17th Amendment. Repeal of the Harrison Act, et sequelae. Repeal of the Social Security Act. Repeal of Davis-Bacon. Repeal of the right of tax-supported workers to unionize. Repeal of the Great Society and all its follow-on programs. Repeal most especially (should it pass in any form) of Obamacare. Let the progressive bastards bitch about our wanting to "Roll back a century of progress." That's alright, Fool. Your progress was in the wrong direction. Merely a sharp correction now to forestall disaster down the road.
As Andy McCarthy points out at NRO.
I'm glad Republicans have held firm, but let's not be under any illusions about what that means. In the Democrat leadership, we are not dealing with conventional politicians for whom the goal of being reelected is paramount and will rein in their radicalism. They want socialized medicine and all it entails about government control even more than they want to win elections. After all, if the party of government transforms the relationship between the citizen and the state, its power over our lives will be vast even in those cycles when it is not in the majority. This is about power, and there is more to power than winning elections, especially if you've calculated that your opposition does not have the gumption to dismantle your ballooning welfare state.
(Hat tip Insty and The Barrister at Maggie's.)
Mark Philip Alger
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Friday, February 26, 2010
The Shell Game...
Mark Philip Alger
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Friday, February 26, 2010
Listening to Sound Bites...
FROM THE HEALTH care summit on the radio, I get the impression that the Democrats are suprised that the Republicans are as fesity as they are. I think they thought they could steamroller them. Obama in particular seems unable to deal with resistance.
That said, I still maintain that the GOP congresscritters are taking the wrong tack. Strategically, once you start arguing minutiae, you've conceded the enemy's case -- that there is a legitimate cause to be legislated on, here. And there is not.
I think the case could be made to Mr. and Mrs. America (and all the ships at sea) like thusly:
When you and your family play a game of Monopoly around the kitchen table on family game night, the rules are printed inside the lid of the box the game comes in. And you play by those rules. You may agree among yourselves to amend those rules. I never knew any family that played games together who didn't. But you do that beforehand. You don't change the rules willy nilly in the middle of the game. That's not fair play. It's un-American.
The Constitution is the rules in the boxtop for the game of America.
And the Constitution does not permit Congress to legislate on matters such as health care, and it does not permit Congress to require the People to purchase any product.
And what Congress is not permitted to do, it is forbidden to do.
What Congress is bent on doing is against the law. It is in violation of the rules of the game. It is cheating. If Congress wants to legistlate on health care, it must first amend the Constitution.
Mark Philip Alger
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Thursday, February 25, 2010
Quote of the Day...
...[I]nstead of being ideologically greedy and ignoring good science and economics, we can start being wise and truly concerned about our children, and their children, and the society in which they will live.
Yeah.
Good luck with that.
Mark Philip Alger
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Thursday, February 25, 2010
Fire That Idiot!...
RADIO COMMERCIAL pushing the statist take on the -- scorn quotes -- "Health Care Summit" or "Jobs Summit" or whatever photo op, and circus is upcoming Thursday.
Ends: "Great public schools are a basic right for every child."
Signed: The 3 million members of the National Education Association.
FAIL!
By that statement -- almost irrelevant to the matter at hand -- the sponsors of the message sign themselves as unqualified -- DISqualified -- to hold the title "teacher" in any decent school, public or private.To ensure you learn the lesson, write ten thousand times:
A "right" cannot require that someone else provide it for you.
A "right" cannot require that someone else provide it for you.
A "right" cannot require that someone else provide it for you.
A "right" cannot require that someone else provide it for you.
A "right" cannot require that someone else provide it for you.
A "right" cannot require that someone else provide it for you.
Mark Philip Alger
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Wednesday, February 24, 2010
By the Way...
MEANT TO MENTION this earlier. I meant to say, I love the pun in the headline here.
Mark Philip Alger
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Wednesday, February 24, 2010
Reading of the Rules...
DO NOT come at me with the obvious objection as though I haven't thought about it. That's just stupid. Of course I've thought about it, and dismissed it as either inconsistent with or irrelevant to a counter-argument.
That's not -- I say again, NOT -- to say that Ragin' Dave is stupid here, when he raises a seemingly valid counter to the call to cease drug prohibition, to whit: what about the costs of medical care for addicts? Is there not an unfair burden to be born by taxpayers should sanctions be lifted?
And, for that matter, since there's no indication of it, and for all Dave is a regular reader of BTB -- and thanks for that -- there's no reason to believe he writes in response to my earlier post.
Dave is considering from his perspective an aspect of reality. I merely differ in that I believe his perspective is flawed in two wises. First, as relates to reality-as-it-is-and-not-as-we-would-it, the costs of medical care for drug addicts already fall on taxpayers, so some extent. I see that, to the extent that the public covers these costs, to be a fault of the prohibition. I do not see, therefor, that the lifting of prohibition will change much.
Second, and I believe more important: we're talking matters of principle, here. Of course it's wrong that the costs of drug addicition should be born by the taxpayer. In fact, it's wrong that taxpayers should subsidize medical care for anybody, so the righting of that wrong will take care of the other.
And, I guess, the overarching principle here is that arguing against the ending of one evil practice because another evil practice exists independent of the first is not a winning tactic.
Cross-posted at Eternity Road.
Mark Philip Alger
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Wednesday, February 24, 2010
OK. So Now...
ACCORDING TO LEFTISTS in Congress and the bureaucracy, squirming under the microscope, as the polarized light of truth reveals their fraudulent prior statements, are trying to say that previously-cited evidence of GLOBAL climate change -- GLOBAL, remember -- no longer matters. What matters now is what American organizations (not yet as thoroughly discredited as the international ones) say. (Who cares if they quaff from the same data set?) So, now, instead of the danger being GLOBAL climate change, it's LOCAL climate change.
The whole rationale
out of their own mouths:
vanish.
A puff of blue smoke.
Sunlight hits the mirrors.
Game over.
Mark Philip Alger
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Wednesday, February 24, 2010
This’ll Be All Over...
BUT AS A BIT OF fan -- er -- reader service, here are the lyrics.
A caller to Beck’s show asked folks to reference this in reflection of Obama.
"You Haven't Done Nothing"
We are amazed but not amused
By all the things you say that you'll do
Though much concerned but not involved
With decisions that are made by you
But we are sick and tired of hearing your song
Telling how you are gonna change right from wrong
'Cause if you really want to hear our views
"You haven't done nothing"!
It's not too cool to be ridiculed
But you brought this upon yourself
The world is tired of pacifiers
We want the truth and nothing else
And we are sick and tired of hearing your song
Telling how you are gonna change right from wrong
'Cause if you really want to hear our views
"You haven't done nothing"!
Jackson 5 join along with me say
Doo doo wop - hey hey hey
Doo doo wop - wow wow wow
Doo doo wop - co co co
Doo doo wop - naw naw naw
Doo doo wop - bum bum bum
Doo doo wop
We would not care to wake up to the nightmare
That's becoming real life
But when mislead who knows a person's mind
Can turn as cold as ice un hum
Why do you keep on making us hear your song
Telling us how you are changing right from wrong
'Cause if you really want to hear our views
"You haven't done nothing"!
Yeah
Jackson 5 sing along again say
Doo doo wop
Doo doo wop - oh
Doo doo wop - co co co
Doo doo wop - sing it baby
Doo doo wop - bum bum bum
Doo doo wop - um
Sing it loud for your people say
Doo doo wop - um um um
Doo doo wop - stand up be counted, say
Doo doo wop - co co co
Doo doo wop - ow
Doo doo wop - bum bum bum
Doo doo wop - ah hum
--Stevie Wonder
Mark Philip Alger
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Tuesday, February 23, 2010
Why I’m A Libertarian...
AND NOT A conservative -- put as simply as I can.
Conservatives understand that "Guns don't kill people; people kill people," but seem to miss the point when it comes to "Drugs ruin lives."
Conservatives, confronted with the libertarian demand that drug prohibition cease, miss the point. It's not about an abdication of individual, personal responsibility. It's about limits on the scope and power of the state, and the kinds of sanctions the state should be permitted to enact and enforce. It's about a focus on the actual harm done others and the proximate nature of the acts -- the mala in se -- to be punished. It's about limiting the "collateral damage" of unrestrained state action.
Conservatives swerve into trouble when they assert, "There's no right to privacy in the Constitution," but have no trouble using the Ninth and Tenth Amendments as a rhetorical blunt instrument against the Federal government. No cognitive dissonnance there. Oh, no.
I should have liked it a lot better had the founders been a bit more explicit. They thought it should be self-evident, but reckoned without idiots and those of ill intent. There should be in letters of fire over the gates of the place, "These things are forbidden the state; all which is not expressly mandated here is forever beyond its purview." And across the way, "These things are permitted the people; to others do no harm, otherwise, do as you will."
Mark Philip Alger
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Tuesday, February 23, 2010
Watch the Pea...
BECAUSE, TRUST ME it's not being taken off of the table. It'll just be tucked under another shell -- sleight of hand maneuver -- and get shuffled around until the con man thinks you've lost track of it.
Mark Philip Alger
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Monday, February 22, 2010
Nothing Really Different...
THAN HE PREACHES on his radio show. Nonetheless, Glenn Beck scores a testimonial home run at CPAC. (VIdeo at link.)
Well worth the hour to watch the whole thing.
Mark Philip Alger
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Previously on BabyTrollBlog...
