Hate and Discrimination

Posted on 2015-05-31 by MamaLiberty

By MamaLiberty

Do you like anchovies? How about girdles, tight neckties, a leak in your shoe? Personally, I hate them, and quite a few other things.

Or is “hate” too harsh a word? Maybe so. What does the word “hate” mean to you?

Hate means different things to individuals, but there is a widespread campaign to impose ever changing and increasingly destructive political correctness on everyone, both with and without the force of law.

So, it seems important to start with definitions. Continue reading →

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Libertarian Commentary on the News, 26 May 2015, #15-21C: European Unity threatened?

Posted on 2015-05-29 by TPOL Nathan

By Nathan Barton

Four stories this week point out that the European Union is showing definite signs of cracking up. Among other stories, the Global Economic Analysis Blog discusses the defeat (“Heavy regional losses”) that angry voters handed Spain’s ruling party, voting for a variety of “new parties,” and no doubt making Madrid wonder if they shouldn’t have let Catalonia hold its vote on independence recently. The Spanish economy will supposedly grow at three percent. The bad news is Spanish unemployment is well over 20 percent and is also expected to stay that way. Polish voters elected a Eurosceptic as president, as disenchantment with Brussels spreads, according to the Blog. Andrzej Duda outed president Bronislaw Komorowski, the pro-Brussels incumbent centrist Civic Platform party president, in an election over the weekend. Komorowski was expected to win.  Also according to the Global Economic Analysis Blog, one way or another the crisis in Greece is highly likely to come to a head in June. The country’s interior minister says that Greece will default on the June IMF repayment, and this further heightens the likelihood that Greece will split off. Continue reading →

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The Extra Gnome

Posted on 2015-05-27 by MamaLiberty

By MamaLiberty

Linda loved her garden. The entire back yard was planted to roses and other perennials, beds of bulbs and annuals in their seasons, herbs and berries and some vegetables in rows at the rear. A small square of carefully maintained lawn in the center showcased a few brightly painted cement statues. The brown and white doe with two fawns was the oldest, and a full antlered silver stag had been added just the year before, but the new one was already her favorite. A whimsical gnome holding a rake and shovel had tickled her fancy just the last week when she visited the big nursery down the hill, and she’d taken delivery of it only that morning.

But now after lunch, there seemed to be two of them…. Continue reading →

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Institutions of the State ARE Institutions of Slavery

Posted on 2015-05-27 by TPOL Nathan

By Nathan Barton

It is increasingly obvious that all the institutions of the state, from the smallest special district’s organizations to those at the state and federal level (and increasingly at the international level), are nothing but institutions of slavery: organized gangsterdoms that exercise control over people to some degree similar to that of traditional slavery in America before 1865 and in societies throughout ancient history.  Stories this week demonstrate this.

No liberty in state-run higher education:  The Foundation for Individual Rights in Education reports that Ohio’s Youngstown State University leads censorship of “Straight Pride” posters in a bizarre example of trampling on people’s liberties in the name of “diversity.” “Last month, flyers advertising ‘Straight Pride Week’ were posted at Youngstown State University (YSU) in Ohio, asking students to celebrate thusly: ‘Just … go about your day without telling everyone about how ‘different’ you are.’ Reporting at the time indicated that the Student Government Association got in touch with administrators in order to receive permission to take the posters down, but email correspondence recently obtained through a public records request suggests that the YSU administration initiated the censorship itself.” Continue reading →

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Libertarian Commentary on the News, #15-21A: Weather and other odd things

Posted on 2015-05-26 by TPOL Nathan

By Nathan Barton

Just whom do we believe?  Nearly every day I read some mainstream media news story, or something from a variety of special interest groups (especially but not only environist and liberal-political and government sites), to say nothing about the awful pronouncements by the guy squatting at 1600 PA, about how we are now beyond hope regarding manmade global warming (or climate change) and how the seashores are going to drown and every odd weather circumstance (such as the recent raining and flooding across the Great Plains, now moving east into the Old South, including the Hill Country of Central Texas which got ten inches of rain so far) is all due to carbon-dioxide and methane and other greenhouse gas emissions.  But at the same time, now and then I read an article like Matt Vespa’s recent summary in Townhall, which points out that all the indicators cited five to twenty years ago as “proof” global warming was going to destroy the world as we know it have turned out to be wrong.  Whom do we believe?  Continue reading →

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Libertarian Commentary on the News, #15-20C: Poor News Reporting and Commentary

Posted on 2015-05-22 by TPOL Nathan

By Nathan Barton

By now, you’ve probably read or heard a lot about Jade Helm 15, and the hype about it.  But now we see more things popping up, such as this video at Freedom Outpost.  This strikes me as bogus and obviously faked: amateurs pretending to be FBI agents and two guys obviously well-scripted to present their views on this operation.  Supposedly this took place in Colorado, but there is just a lot that doesn’t feel or smell right. Is Jade Helm real, hyped, or the severe threat that so many groups claim it is?  I don’t know, but watching either the mainstream media or the “independent media” and trying to learn the truth is getting to be harder and harder.  Don’t believe anything either side is telling you without proof. Much of what I see available about Jade Helm comes from such suspect sites as PrisonPlanet.com and InfoWars.com, and then is endlessly quoted by the alternative media. Continue reading →

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Libertarian News & Commentary #15-20B, 21 May 2015: Government Dictates and Stupidity

Posted on 2015-05-21 by TPOL Nathan

By Nathan A. Barton

The hubris of government is awesome indeed: the dictates of the state are usually foolish and based on myths and warped perception of reality.  Consider this: The Guardian reports that Los Angeles is the largest US city to raise the minimum wage to $15/hour, to be done in steps through July 2020.  The City Council ignored decades of data showing that the minimum wage damages the well-being of marginal workers and the very people it is “supposed” to help.  Sadly, even relatively conservative jurisdictions have bought into this garbage, creating problems for their own people.  South Dakota voters, for example, last year approved an increase, part of which the legislature ameliorated with a law establishing a lower minimum wage for minors, which otherwise would have been priced out of the essential summertime tourist industry jobs with which hundreds of thousands of South Dakotans have started their working lives.  Expect more of this sort of nonsense, which together with ever more demanding regulations will further damage American businesses and the economies of cities, regions, and states. Continue reading →

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Libertarian commentary on the news, #15-20A: This and that

Posted on 2015-05-19 by TPOL Nathan

By Nathan Barton

After a very lengthy illness and hiatus in this commentary, I am attempting to resume it at least part time!

According to Libertytalk.fm two of the Silk Road lead investigators who brought down the supposed Dread Pirate Roberts have been charged with money laundering.  Funny how the feral and state goons can commit crimes time and time again in their efforts to catch the “real” criminals.  We have an elite “ruling class” (bureaucrats and thugs) who are not just above the law, but working hard to break basic moral and ethical laws. Continue reading →

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Silly Season

Posted on 2015-05-16 by MamaLiberty

By MamaLiberty

Unfortunately, Nathan is still not well enough to write the commentary. I’m missing his droll opinion on the start of the “silly season” for the 2016 elections.

Wouldn’t it be easier to list all the politicians who are NOT running for president this time? The primary ballots will have to come in bound volumes, I think – or at least for the Republican side.

You have to wonder just what they’re all trying to prove. One thing is clear to me… They are a bunch of control freaks, who think their personal opinions should be imposed on the world. And the world needs more of that? Continue reading →

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Book Review: Brightsuit MacBear

Posted on 2015-05-03 by MamaLiberty

By MamaLiberty

L. Neil Smith is unique, far as I’ve discovered, in believing that almost any living creature in the universe can be, or modified to be, a sentient, sapient being. This makes all of his stories exceptionally interesting, almost always hilarious, and occasionally philosophically very challenging. In a universe like that – with an infinity of alternate universes – finding something to eat might become very difficult unless one eats rocks or plasma from the sun. The carrots and peas might just begin arguing semantics or pull a gun…

But, as Neil says so often, I digress.

Brightsuit MacBear is a story of a young man, from a less than helpful family situation, who nonetheless has the integrity and intelligence to “smell a rat” and decide to do whatever it takes to make things right, even though he is singularly unprepared physically to actually carry that out. Continue reading →

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