LibertyGuys

War Is The Fount Of Evil

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(Image from Prose Parsed, see the poem below it also)

We?have come to the realization that the evil that comes out of war, because of its very nature as organized mass killing, simply cannot be predicted. Even a conflict involving one or more nominally "moral" state actors cannot fail to produce evil results, often with very long-lived consequences.

A few days ago while reading war historian John V. Denson?s recent article on Non-Interventionism,?this frankly astonishing quote from Winston Churchill appeared about American involvement in World War I;

"America should have minded her own business and stayed out of the World War. If you hadn?t entered the war the Allies would have made peace with Germany in the Spring of 1917. Had we made peace then there would have been no collapse in Russia followed by Communism, no breakdown in Italy followed by Fascism, and Germany would not have signed the Versailles Treaty, which has enthroned Nazism in Germany. If America had stayed out of the war, all these ?isms? wouldn?t to-day be sweeping the continent of Europe and breaking down parliamentary government, and if England had made peace early in 1917, it would have saved over one million British, French, American, and other lives."

This would be stunning enough, coming as it did from a man whose entire career seemed to consist of constant agitation for war coupled with constant connivance to involve America in said wars.

Later the same day,?while doing some work-related research on Mustard Gas, this bit of information arose;

"Mustard gas was first used effectively in World War I by the German army against British soldiers near Ypres in July 1917 and later also against the French ? Second Army?…"

The timeline could be simple coincidence, or it could be that Germany realized that after the American entry into the war (against overwhelming popular sentiment, and in direct opposition to the "peace" platform Woodrow Wilson campaigned on) it would soon be fighting for its very existence as a nation. Germany could no longer rely on superior military training and skills or superior weapons, it was going to have to fight dirty.

Despite a few earlier uses of chlorine and phosgene by, at turns Germany and the allies, after the American entry into the war, Germany?s textile chemical industry stepped up to the plate by manufacturing a derivative of the textile-sizing compound thiodiglycol;

"Mustard gas did not need to be inhaled to be effective ? any contact with skin was sufficient. Exposure to 0.1 ppm was enough to cause massive blisters. Higher concentrations could burn flesh to the bone. It was particularly effective against the soft skin of the eyes, nose, armpits and groin, since it dissolved in the natural moisture of those areas. Typical exposure would result in swelling of the conjunctiva and eyelids, forcing them closed and rendering the victim temporarily blind. Where it contacted the skin, moist red patches would immediately appear which after 24 hours would have formed into blisters. Other symptoms included severe headache, elevated pulse and temperature (fever), and pneumonia (from blistering in the lungs)?…Death by mustard gas, when it came, was dreadful?…"

We can only speculate what will ultimately come out of the current wars.

The End Of Hillary Clinton, Or The Beginning Of The End?

(PHOTO: We Couldn't Resist)

Tim Russert is giving the eulogy for the Clinton campaign on MSNBC right now. With a big win for Obama in North Carolina, and an apparent dead-heat in Indiana,?tonight's?results?can only be interpreted as a win for him and a stinging defeat for the Clintons, despite the widespread media complicity in the Rev. Wright smearjob.

We have left the Clintons for dead before, however, only to be surprised by their resiliency and sheer bloody-mindedness, this classic scene?comes to, er,?mind.

(Photo from Jason Jeffrey's All Things News)

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Ethanol and Starvation: The Perfect Match

(PHOTO: Never have we been more sadly prescient)

From the Washington Post:

President Bush asked Congress yesterday to approve $770 million in new global food aid for the coming fiscal year, the centerpiece of an evolving administration response to a crisis that has sparked increased violence and hunger around the world.

The only way to end starvation is to allow the free market to feed everyone. Right now, US ethanol subsidies steer farmers away from food production making it more expensive here at home and inaccessible to those previously on the margins. Duh.

Unions and Terrorists: Both Bad for America

Not really sure what to think of their actions but one thing is for sure; we wouldn't be standing in solidarity behind the terrorists if they had done the same thing.

LOS ANGELES, May 1 (Reuters) - Ports along the U.S. West Coast, including the country's busiest port complex in Los Angeles, shut down on Thursday as some 10,000 dock workers went on a one-day strike to protest the war in Iraq, port and union officials said.

Let's wake up to the fact that the US has been held in a grip of fear ever since the Wagner Act was passed in 1935. Shutting down Washington would have had a much bigger impact. I could really get behind that one.

A Victimless Crime...Until the Government Steps In

She never harmed anyone by supplying willing female companions to willing clients. But the feds force her to commit suicide anyway.

[Deborah] Palfrey, 52, was free while awaiting sentencing June 25 on federal racketeering charges. A federal jury convicted her April 15 of running a Washington area call-girl ring in the guise of "a high-end erotic fantasy service," rejecting her argument that she was unaware for 13 years that female escorts she employed were performing sex acts with clients for money.

Writers Dan Moldea, who interviewed Palfrey several times for a possible book about her experiences, said today that Palfrey told him three times that she would kill herself rather than return to prison. She had served an 18-month term in California in the early 1990s for running a prostitution service and told Moldea that it was "just a horrible, horrible period for her," the writer said.

So, by providing a win-win transaction for money, she's forced to be a prom date for murders in prison. It's just a shame that her scumbag, inside-the-beltway clientele don't feel quite so compelled to take the easy (only?)?way out as did Deborah. I guess now the feds can claim that prostitution does indeed claim victims.

Net Neutrality Legislation Still A Bad Idea

(PHOTO: Must...keep...fighting...network neutrality...)

This entrepreneurial young lovely aside, the entire pro "Net Neutrality" debate is mostly agitation for massive Federal regulation of the Internet, on whose behalf we can only guess (hint: it isn't you). The correct debate should be about completely deregulating and de-monopolizing the entire internet, particularly the 'last mile' between the consumer and his favored ISP over the monopolized wires of the local phone or cable company. If you ignore the disinformazia that abounds around the issue, some smart tech folks are realizing this, enough, we can only hope, to prevent a massive, permanent mistake.

Because there is a carefully nurtured myth that somehow this is impossible to do, despite many good arguments to the contrary, massive federal re-regulation is being sold as the only answer. This is utter hogwash. Re-regulation will do nothing except freeze the current structure and dominant players in amber, forever. Essentially what will be outlawed by any Net Neutrality legislation is competition. As we have seen in cases involving gambling, sex ,and drugs, increasingly, outlawing competition seems to be the core function of government.

The only reason unwinding the 'last-mile? monopoly is even slightly difficult is that big phone and big cable are hanging on to their government-granted rights-of-way like grim death. They, and massive companies like Yahoo and Google will be major beneficiaries of a cartelization of the Internet (in the name of 'Net Neutrality?), the rest of us will get screwed.

If the phone and cable monopolies won't get off of their cozy deals with states and municipalities for access to subscribers, wireless would be a ready workaround, completely ready with current technology. As an example, two years ago I built a 400 - duplex, 11mbps wireless network on a 2 square mile site in Oklahoma in about a week for under $10K, and I am a blithering tech idiot.

As retarded and unsustainable an idea as Municipal WiFi is (see Philadelphia's massively failed experiment with it), PRIVATE wireless networks, if allowed to compete head-on for last-mile access, would quickly provide a multiplicity of ISP choices for everyone. This would completely neutralize the one remaining argument for regulation (packet discrimination, which isn?t even occurring), since any ISP who was exposed as playing favorites would quickly be abandoned for those who didn't.

But complete federal regulation of the Internet to enforce 'Net Neutrality'? Forgive me, but it would be like going back to the bad old days of the Bell System monopoly - slow service, high prices, indifferent support, and zero infrastructure growth.

It isn't a bad solution, it's the WORST POSSIBLE solution.

(Photo / link from our pal violet)

Newest Olympic Sport: Thuggery

An amazing article in IHT about the worldwide debacle that is the Olympipc torch relay.

That figure didn't include the cost of a so-called "flame security team" provided gratis by the Chinese and made up of members of the same paramilitary unit that has been used with great effect to help crush dissent in Tibet. But just to be sure disruptions were kept to a minimum, as many as 20,000 members of the Chinese Students and Scholars Association were bused in from Sydney and Melbourne to help drown out and intimidate anyone with designs on protesting their homeland's record on human rights.

Despite detailed preparations and a security budget approaching $1.5 million in London, the torch relay had to be detoured several times and hustled onto a bus at one point. By the time it was over, there were 37 arrests, the mayor described the "flame security team" as "thugs," and Prime Minister Gordon Brown said he would join German Chancellor Angela Merkel in declining an invitation to attend the opening ceremonies. Right after that, organizers of the 2012 London Olympics said they were considering limiting their torch relay to British soil.

Sweet. Maybe we should have another Olympics here in the US so Blackwater can keep their people working. But wait! Aren't the Olympics supposed to be above politics? How could the Olympic torch relay have turned into such a symbol of fascism?

At this point, it seems fair to ask what possible benefits can be reaped from continuing. To be sure, it's a question that would have stumped the founders of the ancient and modern Olympics. The idea of a torch relay didn't originate with them. It's generally considered the invention of German filmmaker and propagandist Leni Riefenstahl, who then filmed the torch relay for a movie called "Olympia" with the blessing of the Nazi regime.

Oh.

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Steve Forbes Not Seeing the Forest For the Trees

I enjoy reading Forbes. I really do. But it's frustrating to hear a major player like Steve Forbes state, in essence, that he isn't as smart as me.

This is a misbegotten view of what central banking's main mission should be. The Federal Reserve should have two key tasks--and only two: preserving the integrity of the dollar and dealing vigorously with financial panics to limit unnecessary damage.

Wrong: the Fed cannot preserve the integrity of anything. The only money that will ever have integrity is gold. But then he went on to redeem himself...almost.

The most sensitive barometer of market mistakes is gold. During that time the yellow metal plunged to a low of $250 an ounce. Other commodities crashed, with oil dropping to nearly $10 a barrel. For a time the dollar became too dear, which contributed to the 2000--01 recession.

Yes and no, Steve. Gold is a baromoter which is why it MUST be used as money. Trying to imitate it with the dollar is a fool's errand. But Steve makes gold sound like a fickle mistress compared to the dollar instead of the other way around. The commodities did not crash, the dollar was adjusted away from market forces presumably to benefit importers over the rest of us.

Focused on trying to steer the economy, Greenspan ignored the flashing red lights, as did his successor, Ben Bernanke. In 2006 gold soared above $600 an ounce. After the credit crisis hit last August, the price kept moving up, breaching the $1,000 barrier in mid-March, before settling down to its current $900 range.

Ugh! Forbes' logic roller coaster is almost as exasperating as the Fed's. Again, to Steve Forbes, wild fluctuations commodity prices are somehow naturally occurring while it is implied that the dollar is the true guage of the economy. This is the exact opposite of reality. He never even questions why gold and oil seem to be somewhat pegged to each other. They're both commodities, that's why!

He also goes on to imply that bubbles in tech and housing somehow occur in nature further implying that the Fed must be there to do something about them. It was there, Steve. Where do you think these boom-busts came from in the first place?

Greenspan claims the Federal Reserve can't prevent bubbles, that these excesses of ebullience are part of the natural order of a free economy. He is right--as far as it goes.

Bubbles do happen, but this one was grossly inflated by the Fed's errors.

Here's yet another example.

A more normal bubble occurred in the personal computer industry in the early 1980s. Everyone suddenly discovered the value of these small machines, and numerous companies jumped in to produce them. Most ended up failing--remember Atari, Commodore and others? But the excess there pales in comparison to what happened in housing. The difference: In the early 1980s we were reducing inflation, while during this decade Greenspan and Bernanke have been fanning it.

You'd be hardpressed to say that the rise of personal computers was a bubble. There was a genuine example of an increase in productivity causing a new market to form. Competitors jumped in. Some succeeded while others failed. All without any input from the Fed. A completely organic (and, subsequently, very small) blip. A perfect example of market correction.

In all fairness, Forbes was jamming on Greenspan for exonerating himself from any wrongdoing and he's right for doing so. But Steve, go all the way and understand gold is the only true money!

Please Don't Do Us Any Favors

From the NYT:

THE plan of Treasury Secretary Henry M. Paulson Jr. to overhaul the financial system includes a crucial proposal: it would officially transform the Federal Reserve into a ?market stability regulator? rather than merely a banker?s bank.

To Serif Or To Sans Serif, That's the Question or We Have Seen TheOnion.com and He Is Us

Ah, if only life were like the movies. All one would need to do to overturn his evil overlord would be to capture the national teevee signal, show the truth to the people by exposing?his fraud and crimes?and then sit back and enjoy the uprising as was implied in Running Man. However, life is not like the movies. In fact, it's quite the opposite. The more the ugly truth is uncovered, the more enamored Boobus Americanus is with their overlords. Take Obama's campaign of 'everything for everybody.' It doesn't matter how ruthless and totalitarian of a government you propose, as long as you're using the right typeface, accourding to The International Herald Tribune.

NEW YORK: It doesn't matter where you stand politically, or what you think of them personally. Whether you prefer Barack Obama's policies to Hillary Clinton's. What you think of her electioneering tactics, or his pastor. Or if you'd dump them both for John McCain. When it comes to choosing the best-designed U.S. presidential candidate, there's only one contender - Obama.

Every element of his visual identity has been masterfully conceived and executed to depict Obama as perfect presidential material. "It really is a treat to see graphic design applied so well," said the typography designer, Jonathan Hoefler. "Visually he is on message at every turn. I can't think of many corporations that use design so intelligently."

The whole article reads like The Onion. Is it time to expose the Obama campaign as a fraud? Or at least suggest that the American voter is getting hoodwinked by no-substance campaigns in general and Obama in particular?

Hooked On Obamics

Now that Ron Paul's primary campaign is all but over in a conventional sense and with it any hope of reverting back to a Constitutional administration, the media simply can't can't get enough of of Obama. Everybody loves the guy. Everybody wants him to be president...especially the first-time voting generation. But for the life of me, I can't get an Obama supporter to tell me what he is saying to make them think that way. Anyhoo, I just read the latest Fast Company and they shed some light on why people like him.

"Barack Obama is three things you want in a brand," says Keith Reinhard, chairman emeritus of DDB Worldwide. "New, different, and attractive. That's as good as it gets." Obama has his greatest strength among the young, roughly 18 to 29 years old, that advertisers covet, the cohort known as millennials -- who will outnumber the baby boomers by 2010. They are black, white, yellow, and various shades of brown, but what they share -- new media, online social networks, a distaste for top-down sales pitches -- connects them more than traditional barriers, such as ethnicity, divide them.

Oh, so he's a brand. I was starting to think that maybe his campaign was somehow viewed as simply more libertarian than the rest of the pack but I've been wrong before. By the way, the rest of the article is a hoot. and yes, he does have a race card in his pocket. As a matter of fact, it's admittedly the subliminal background music of his campaign.

Funny, though, right after I read this, I saw an article in my local paper (dead tree version) about his visit to a high school in my area and it was the only instance I could find of an Obama supporter who actually looked at his platform, compared it with his own values and came up with a rational decision about him.

Wearing a black jacket with a "Municipal Waste" patch (it's a band), Chris Del Roccili says Obama is aces with him.

"Personally, I'm a Marxist, so I believe everyone should be helped out with basic health care, food and housing so they don't have to worry about that stuff. Obama's ideas of combining the capitalist system with Marxist ideas is good."

I asked the very affable Chris how he came to his views.

"By reading the 'Communist Manifesto,'" he said, but also "by studying Lenin and stuff."

Personally, I think he wasted his time with that manifesto. He should have read this one.?

McCain Challenges Obama In Race To Brownshirt America

John McCain recently made a reference that Americans should look to a future of self-government but for some reason I don't believe he meant the Jeffersonian model of self-government.

"For too many Americans, the idea of good citizenship does not extend beyond walking into a voting booth every two or four years and pulling a lever ? and too few Americans demand of themselves even that first obligation of self-government," he said.

Geez, good thing we have Obama, huh?

MT. VERNON, Iowa - Democrat Barack Obama on Wednesday advocated a major expansion of the Peace Corps, AmeriCorps and other national service programs, saying "This will be a cause of my presidency."

Doh! Well, I guess Hillary is a safe bet.

Clinton?s most substantial proposal for addressing college costs was for ?two years of national service opportunity in order to be able to get grants to go to college.? Those who agree to this service would receive $10,000 a year in education grants.

With this in mind, are the insults flung at Ron Paul supporters who just want to be left alone really so justified?

The Fed's Fatal Overreach

(PHOTO: Where The Economic Arsonists Should [but probably won't] Be Staying)

Just when you think you have seen it all, a proposal has arisen from the Bush White House to empower the Federal Reserve to take over the entire US financial system.

Now right about now, anyone like us who has followed the Fed-inflated real-estate bubble, followed by the collapse of the housing market,?the?Fed origins of the mortgage crisis, and the Fed-caused recession?can be forgiven for making a gurgling noise as their head explodes from the unbelievable hubris, the BALLS behind such a move.

The prescient words of the great Ron Paul chill the spine at this moment;

We had missed the 5:30 Ferry, but the good people at Shepler's quickly boarded us on another boat and made a special run to take us and Ron Paul over to the Island..

...?I asked him how much longer he thought those guys in Washington could keep going before everything started to collaspe, and he said "Not much longer, things are starting to fall apart and this time they will not be able to stop it."

To singlehandedly destroy an economy, quickly steal away from the scene, then return with a flourish annoncing that salvation is at hand is exactly what compulsive arsonists do.

And the people should rise up and put them in exactly the same place as arsonists - in prison, every last one of them.

Clintons' Claws Are Out

(PHOTO: What Mrs. Clinton looks like up close, get used to it folks, from All4Humor)

Hillary Clinton's fading electoral fortunes are not the end of her campaign for one reason. While Obama (and McCain) desire power for power's own sake, she and her husband positively lust for it.

Consider the events of the last two weeks of the race between Clinton and Obama for the nomination;

?- Non-stop airing on all the major networks of contraversial remarks by Obama's retired pastor (remarks that in context are both understandable and not all that very?evil), forcing Obama to expend a major speech defending himself and distancing himself from Reverend Wright,

?- The ongoing "Super" delegate travesty, a uniquely undemocratic Democrat system whereby the people who control the party can decide their party's nomination despite what those pesky voters want,

?- A revelation this morning that at some point during the last week (we are told) the Pennsylvania online registration system "may have been compromised", and was taken off line in the face of an unprecedented number of new Democratic registrations. The governor of the Democrat-controlled state is none other than "Fast Eddie" Rendell, former chairman of the Democratic National Committee and ardent Clinton supporter (duh)

?- Another revelation, that three State Department employees / contractors were caught accessing Obama's passport file

?- The implosion of efforts to hold primary re-votes in Michigan and Florida, where momentum might provide Obama with a delegate boost, despite the efforts of some to spin it differently

...And many others.

The Clintons clearly still have political juice, and they are calling in all favors. I called this back before the aforementioned primaries where all candidate's names but Clinton's were withdrawn from the Michigan?and Florida primary ballots. This was never going to be a clean and fair nomination, it is quite apparent now.?

The claws, ladies and gentlemen, are out.

But...But...I'm Just a Photographer

Try getting this sucker past the TSA.

In the 1880s, French scientist ?tienne-Jules Marey wanted to learn how birds fly, so he invented a photographic gun, which uses a rotating glass plate to take 12 consecutive pictures per second!

More at Neatorama.

Do We Need a Megan's Law for Politicians?

A while back I knew a girl who worked a summer off from college as a White House page in the Clinton administration. As she told us her stories, she would hint of the personality quirks of those she was supposed to be serving. It was then I wondered if parents knew what they were sending their kids into as they proudly shipped them off to Washington. Apparently, I was right.

CNN apologized today for getting on-air analysis of Gov. Spitzer's legal options from a former U.S. Attorney who resigned after being accused of biting a stripper.

Washington is an oozing sore of depravity. If the US government wasn't the biggest bunch of perverts in the country, then why do so many prostitutes take up residence there? With this said, would you still trust your kids to these degenerates?

Reported by Boing Boing.

The Eliot Spitzer Lesson We Won't Learn

(PHOTO - "I was THIS CLOSE to 'Julius Caesar' Level!")

The very worst thing that could happen to us regarding the Spitzer affair is if it goes down in history as a joke. Like Jim McGreevy and Larry Craig before him, Spitzer, rather than doing the honorable thing and resigning immediately upon learning of his exposure (for patronizing this lovely but expensive bint), instead made a most crass and base calculation. He did not ask himself the question 'did I forfeit the public trust', but rather the more Clintonian one, 'can I win?'

It will be an awful tragedy for New York, and for America if his story is successfully framed as one of just an all too human human being rather than one of an arrogant, hubristic, totalitarian thug whose brazenness was only undone by an even more totalitarian Federal government.

The former assessment gives further credence to the widespread malign conspiracy to portray government officials as brilliant-but-flawed supermen incapable of intentional, genuine evil, the latter shows?that our government at all levels has gone completely off the rails.

The exposure of official hypocrisy by government officials used to good sport, and great fun, but it stopped being funny, and started being deadly serious just after 9/11. We can't keep electing people to increasingly powerful offices who cannot keep from behavior they prosecute and jail others for.

Foreign Policy for Kids...and Neocon Apologists

Pirates and Emperors

Anyone old enough to remember Schoolhouse Rock will appreciate the video. Safe for kids, too. Oh, and don't expect Obama to change this any time soon.

A Policy Only Sister Doris Gormley Could Love

I just saw this article, Norway?s New Quota: Corporate Board 40% Women Or Else! and wondered if anyone there ever heard of TJ Rodgers or his 1996 closing of this matter which made history every place where profit makes a difference in whether or not a company survives.

Having Fun With The Fascists

The continually self-parodying Metropolitan London Police, not content with a surveillance state that looks as intimidating as the one in "V For Vendetta" but?as effective as the one in "Brazil", have come up with a new ad campaign that basically equates photography with terrorism.

We won't dignify the original here, but BoingBoing has a couple of beautiful parodies, the ones in the comments are a scream too, here are a couple of our favorites;

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One for Joe;

http://www.ou1.com/bb/photo_fix_it.jpg

...and one for doc;

?http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2314/2312810016_6b1b442ac4.jpg?v=0

and another for Joe;

http://www.flickr.com/photos/edrabbit/2313365852/

Chester PA - A Police State Before Police States Were Popular

From the Delaware County Daily Times, Feb 6, 1958:

Teen-agers attending Chester schools are carrying identification cards that police have been instructed to demand to see ?if they feel the boy or girl is acting suspiciously.?

Obamessiah

I can't even describe this site. You gotta see it to BELIEVE it.

No, I Will NOT Thank a Vet for My Freedom

Why not? Because no living veteran of any US foreign military incursion has done anything to protect a US citizen. "Gee, Joe, you're a heartless bastard. How can you say that?" Because no US?war since the Revolutionary War has been a just war. And an unjust war is nothing other than another government program because:

It benefits a very few elites at the cost of the rest of us.
It is?unnecessary.
It is?obscenely expensive.
The US goes to war specifically to plunder its citizens.
The plunder goes to those how are well-connected as opposed to those who can get the job done.
The government fabricates lies in order to institute a program of war.
Like any other government program, it is unlikely to ever end completely.

I could go on forever. And that is before I even read Inside the world of war profiteers. Not that I or anyone else couldn't have guessed that this was happening.

One subcontractor, Public Warehousing Co., took Peleti and another top Army official to the Super Bowl, a defense investigator said in court Wednesday. The firm has denied wrongdoing. Khan also bribed Peleti to influence LOGCAP contracts with cash. Peleti was arrested in 2006 while re-entering the U.S. at Dover Air Force Base with a duffel bag stuffed with watches and jewelry as well as about $40,000 concealed in his clothing.

...

In the absence of oversight, some Middle Eastern businessmen would offer "Rolex watches, leather jackets, prostitutes, and the KBR guys weren't shy about bragging about the fact that they were being treated to all that stuff," said Paul Morrell, whose firm The Event Source ran several mess halls as a KBR subcontractor.

Gee, nice work if you can get it. Meanwhile, the best the hapless slob on the front line can hope for is to get a little photo op with the Bullshitter in Chief doing laps around the White House on his brand new prosthetic legs.

So when McCain or any other career military goof-off tries to tell you how proud he is of the common infantryman, kick him in his friggin' shins because he's lying to you. But then again, that asshole's been in government his entire life so he probably thinks all of this is just fine.

Hazardous Spy Satellite: Part 2

Ok, it's now the next day and the Navy has saved all of humanity from deadly rocket fuel. But did they? More frm our resident rocket scientist:

I read the reports this morning of the hit yesterday, and found some things interesting.

From AP report:

?Alluding to a video clip of the missile smashing into the satellite, which he showed at the news conference, Cartwright said, "We have a fireball, and given that there's no fuel (on the tip of the missile), that would indicate that that's a hydrazine fire."?

As there is no air in space, a hydrazine fire would be as realistic as the fireballs in ?Star Wars? (the real one, not Reagan?s dream). If the nitrogen-tetroxide tank and the hydrazine tank had been exploded (not just hit by an inert missile), there would be a fireball.

He also comments on the danger of the hydrazine falling to earth and posing a health hazard.

?Cartwright said the hydrazine alone was justification for undertaking the unprecedented effort to use a Navy missile interceptor to attempt to destroy the satellite in orbit.?

Hydrazine is essentially kerosene. Now, you wouldn?t want to have a cocktail party and serve it to your guests, but compared to the nitrogen-tetroxide, this stuff is pretty mild.

If there was danger involved to the public, it would be the nitrogen-tetroxide they need to worry about. Essentially, when it comes in contact with water, it becomes fuming nitric acid (this is why it is such a great oxidizer for hydrazine). So, think about the percentage of water which makes up your lungs, along with the air in your lungs. Combine this with n-tetroxide and your lungs become a jellied mess in about 1 breath. It would also do not favors for the rest of your body, but the lungs are most susceptible, and n-tetroxide is a gas at standard temperature and pressure.

If the general public knew that this was going up with every satellite launch, there would probably be some worry going around. Therefore, no mention of this by sat producers.

Joe: Seems to me, judging from what what I now know, a much bigger threat to humanity is the US Navy messing with missiles.

Hazardous Spy Satellite: Part 1

Just so happens I have a friend who is an actual rocket scientist. He had some interesting things to say about the proposed shoot-down of the oh-so-hazardous satellite by the Navy.

If there was a failed launch of a spy satellite, we would not know, nor ever know, anything about it.

The fear of the satellite remaining intact enough for the fuel storage tanks to survive to the ground is bogus. I think at most, around 200 gallons of nitrogen-tetroxide, and 200 gallons of hydrazine would be thrown into the upper atmosphere. When I worked with Hughes, this was the amount of fuel used on the larger satellites for a 15 year geo-stationary mission.

The chances that telemetry contact with the sat is completely lost, would be astronomical. When a satellite was being end-of-lifed at Hughes, a command is given to fire the main thruster to drive to a fiery death in the atmosphere. There are many times a launch fails to place a satellite in the proper location for geo-orbit, and if there is not enough fuel to boost the satellite to geo, and still have a useful life, the fuel is used to kill the bird.

The fact that the defense dept. would care enough for the safety of it?s citizens to spend more than 60 million dollars to protect them (and admit to a spy sat. failure), is BS

So, bottom line, it Star Wars beginning to come into fruition. Personally, I?m not sure how many spy sats Al-Qaeda has that we need to take care of, but I guess we?ll feel safer after this test. (Unless, of course, our government manages to ?accidentally? land the missile on a friendly).

Hmmm, a little more skeptical than the taxpayer-funded Bad Astronomer.

On the Scalability of Power and Corruption

Wow, this is pretty freaky but entirely predictable (read Why We Banned Legos). In an effort to teach fairness, equity and communal values, teachers had their students build Legoland, a town made of Legos. The teachers unwittingly taught them about the evils of Marxism and the Tragedy of the Commons.

Occasionally, Legotown leaders explicitly rebuffed children, telling them that they couldn't play. Typically the exclusion was more subtle, growing from a climate in which Legotown was seen as the turf of particular kids. The other children didn't complain much about this; when asked about Legos, they'd often comment vaguely that they just weren't interested in playing with Legos anymore. As they closed doors to other children, the Legotown builders turned their attention to complex negotiations among themselves about what sorts of structures to build, whether these ought to be primarily privately owned or collectively used, and how "cool pieces" would be distributed and protected. These negotiations gave rise to heated conflict and to insightful conversation. Into their coffee shops and houses, the children were building their assumptions about ownership and the social power it conveys ? assumptions that mirrored those of a class-based, capitalist society ? a society that we teachers believe to be unjust and oppressive. As we watched the children build, we became increasingly concerned.

Sounds like the Open Spaces debacle going on in my own township where our "leaders" take my money to buy ground to be preserved as open space when in reality it allows The Many to pay for property controlled (and in essence owned) by The Few. Anyway, the story initially shocked me but later I felt that it may not be a bad exercise to do with kids when they are young. You see, the teachers did not fail. It was the communal system that hindered private property ownership and competition that was the failure. And it's amazing how quickly things degenerated. I tend to think this would be an excellent teaching tool for kids too young to get their heads around Mises and would be a great way to prep them for it in high school. Maybe they'd understand that the Obamanomics they're begging for is simply a Soviet-style redistribution system.

On an unrelated but no less freaky note, this story reminded me of another social experiment involving school students gone awry over three decades earlier.

Neatorama Gets It Wrong on Property Rights

I frequent Neatorama.com because it's usually good for a chuckle. But this particular entry makes me wonder about the integrity of their research.

Is It Possible to Own Property on the Moon?

That depends on what your definition of is, is. According to the 1967 Outer Space Treaty, countries can?t own lunar real state. However, the Treaty doesn?t say anything about the rights of individuals to claim land.

Enter Dennis Hope, a California entrepreneur / ventriloquist who?d exploited the loophole to its fullest. In 1980, Hope announced his ownership to the moon (and, incidentally, the rest of the solar system) and promptly started selling off plots through his company, Lunar Embassy.

Space-faring nations vehemently denied the legality of Hope?s business, pointing to the 1979 Moon Treaty, which forbids individual interstellar land investment. Finding yet another loophole, Hope countered by nothing that none of the space nations ever actually signed that treaty after the U.S. and Russia both refused.

But Moon Treaty or not, an individual can still only own land through the jurisdiction of his or her home country, and if nations can?t own it, then people can?t own land through them.

Tenuous as his argument is, Hope has still managed to inspire some serious investors. To date, the Lunar Embassy has made more than $1.6 million. If you?re interested, plots go for as little as $30, but don?t spend all your money on moon land: mental_floss has some contacts with beautiful oceanfront lots in Arizona and we?d love to get you in on the ground floor.

Bzzzzt! Wrong! In a state of nature, whoever homesteads the land (improves it through labor and investment) owns it. Murray Rothbard put it best.

Land in its original state is unused and unowned. Georgists and other land communalists may claim that the whole world population really "owns" it, but if no one has yet used it, it is in the real sense owned and controlled by no one. The pioneer, the homesteader, the first user and transformer of this land, is the man who first brings this simple valueless thing into production and social use. It is difficult to see the morality of depriving him of ownership in favor of people who have never gotten within a thousand miles of the land, and who may not even know of the existence of the property over which they are supposed to have a claim.

Ya see, it is not available for sale by anyone who does not already own it let alone anyone who has never set foot on it. Nor is it legitimate for a government who does not own it to deny ownership to anyone else. No government necessary. We The People institute government to protect the rights we already enjoy.?After all, a government doesn't legitimately own it until it kills a few thousand Indians first, right?

Jesus Said "Love Your Enemies"

(PHOTO: John McCain - Stark, Raving Mad, And Coming To An Executive Mansion Near You!)

I used to think this was funny, that these people were just clowns in a circus.

But?now I hate?them with all my being for what they have done to my country.

Sorry, Lord.

I tried.

Andrew Jackson Makes the Cut

Andrew Jackson rarely makes anyone's list of great presidents due to the fact that he may have actually made the government smaller while in office...most notably by crushing the central bank and every Hamiltonian within a ten-mile radius of it.

So it was refreshing to see him listed in The 5 Most Badass President's of All-Time by the unscholarly Cracked.com. But even though, we could sure use another badass president right about now.

Not-So-Scientific American Gets It All Wrong

In The Social Welfare State, beyond Ideology, faux economist Jeffrey D. Sachs at Scientific American tries to explain away economic freedom as a criteria of success in a society.

On average, the Nordic countries outperform the Anglo-Saxon ones on most measures of economic performance. Poverty rates are much lower there, and national income per working-age population is on average higher. Unemployment rates are roughly the same in both groups, just slightly higher in the Nordic countries. The budget situation is stronger in the Nordic group, with larger surpluses as a share of GDP.

Not sure what criteria they used or what study they read but according to the 2008 Index of Economic Freedom, no Nordic country (as mentioned in the article, "Denmark, Finland, Norway and Sweden")?scores higher than 11 (even the evil US is above that). Indeed, their poster child, Sweden, ranks 27 behind The Bahamas which by my own reckoning is dirt poor. Meanwhile, Norway ranks 34 behind El Salvador. By reading the Sci-Am article, you'd think that nationalized R&D spending was a more important criteria than the freedom to not be murdered by roving death squads. Indeed, a benevolent dictatorship is what they suggest to be the best possible scenario.

The Nordic countries maintain their dynamism despite high taxation in several ways. Most important, they spend lavishly on research and development and higher education. All of them, but especially Sweden and Finland, have taken to the sweeping revolution in information and communications technology and leveraged it to gain global competitiveness. Sweden now spends nearly 4 percent of GDP on R&D, the highest ratio in the world today. On average, the Nordic nations spend 3 percent of GDP on R&D, compared with around 2 percent in the English-speaking nations.

What I'm seeing here is a government that picks winners and losers and politicians have a poor track record there no matter which country they hail from.

The chart above illustrates Joe's First Law of Economics: "If you give stuff away, don't be surprised when people line up for it." Presumably, the 6.3% unemployment rate doesn't bother anyone at Sci-Am. However, I'd bet an ever-shrinking Swedish Krona that number will continue to rise. But even at that, Sci-Am may conclude that paying citizens not not work is a sign of an enlightened society.

In a nutshell, I think the advantage of which they speak might lie in being small. After all, the countries at the top of the list, Hong Kong, Singapore and Ireland, along with the aforementioned Nordic countries, are too small to support an obscenely expensive, militaristic foreign policy and there's something to be said for that.

Note: I know the article in question is from Nov 2006 and has been appropriately ripped many times since then but I'm bored and couldn't find anything better to do.