LibertyGuys

All-American Anheuser-Busch, Taken Over By Furriners? NO!

Fri, 13 Jun 2008 04:13:17 GMT

Belgium-based InBev, brewer of Stella Artois and Beck's Beer has launched a hostile takeover bid for St. Louis MO-based Anheuser-Busch. The politicians and business pundits are outdoing themselves in an attempt to utter the most xenophobic, jingoistic, autarkic, mercantilist statement possible;

Sen. Claire McCaskill, D-Mo., said she was "nervous" about the deal, and planned to send a letter to Anheuser-Busch's board of directors asking them not to allow the deal to move forward.

"On behalf of me and all my friends that like nothing better than a Bud Light every summer, it makes us very upset," McCaskill said.

Yes Claire, those eeevil Belgians want nothing more than to steal your single Bud Light from your summers forever after, which is why they want to spend $47.5 BILLION to aquire it. Opportunist.

Sen. Kit Bond, R-Mo., sent a letter Thursday to Attorney General Michael Mukasey, asking him to closely scrutinize the acquisition.

"The proposed foreign acquisition of Anheuser-Busch is troubling to me because it potentially raises antitrust issues under existing law by putting a significant market share of the U.S. in the hands of fewer competitors," the letter said.

The same Kit Bond who voted to let the telecom companies get off scot-free after helping the Bush Administration destroy the 4th Amendment wants the so-called Justice department under Torturer-General Michael Mukasey to persecute InBev. How consistently unconstitutional!

Missouri's Republican Gov. Matt Blunt said he opposes the deal and has directed the state Department of Economic Development to see if it can stop it. Blunt's former chief of staff co-founded a Web site called SaveAB.com that has passed an electronic petition opposing the deal to federal lawmakers. The site promises to hold anti-InBev rallies in the downtown St. Louis Busch Stadium.

Aw, too bad Matty Blunt, you are about to lose all that juice with the big brewer that you spent $45 million in taxpayer money to buy!

And I can't find an online link to the financial blowhard I heard talking about how this "quintessentially American company" is going to be snatched away by those awful Frenchy Belgians. He continued (correctly, shockingly) on to identify the weak dollar (due to Fed inflation) as a principal reason US companies are such takeover targets for european companies, before he launched into a xenophobic tirade about how bad these deals will be because our children "will all be working for these foreign companies instead of for American companies".

Ahem. I'm old enough to remember the 1980's when the fear these idiots propagated was over the impending takeover of the US corporate sector by the Japanese. I mean, where are the Japanese today? Oh, wait,

(PHOTO: May 13, 1985, The Righteous, Effective Philadelphia Police Department Liberates Osage Avenue)

Mayor Nutter and the Philadelphia police department have a serious problem. No, it isn't that the rash of brutal beatings of suspects by uniformed officers is a problem per se, it's that it happened so publicly, (careful, Fox might have it pulled, WTF?) and comes at a very inconvenient time.

You see, The Next Mayor is in the midst of a court battle over his Draconian package of anti-gun laws, ostensibly aimed at curbing the city's malignantly metastasizing murder problem, but in reality another lever of control of the populace.

Because Pennsylvania is (other than in Philadelphia and its upscale suburbs,) a very pro-liberty and pro-gun state, Nutter's laws face tough sledding. If he cannot seriously remake the image of the traditionally brutal (article removed, printer-friendly version still there)and vastly ineffectual Philly PD sufficiently, his task will be that much harder. Despite the City's well-known reluctance to prosecute cops, the recent beating incidents have given the mayor no choice but to terminate liberally, no matter what the police union says.

The more typical slap-on-the-wrist reinforces the image of City cops as corrupt and ineffective, not an image you want in the minds of the public as the the legal system ponders your move to strip them of the right to self-defense. To fool the citizens of the Commonwealth into believing that the department is a moral and effective protective force, sufficient to cause the citizenry at large to take leave of their senses, and cede the residual responsibility for protection of their persons and property to the vicious-yet-ineffective PPD, he needs to polish this constabulary turd into something resembling a righteous force for freedom and civility. Errr...

All we can say is - Good Luck!

The Department of Energy Is Nothing But A Gigantic Confidence Game

Fri, 30 May 2008 10:36:01 GMT

(PHOTO: The Department of Energy's Only REALLY Successful Project)

BoingBoing yesterday pointed us to this post about the many ways that energy production and use in the US has become terribly distorted over the past 30-odd years. In "The Costanza Energy Policy: 25 Ways to Drive Oil to $150", Barry Ritholtz correctly identifies many of the factors responsible for driving up the dollar price of oil (the Fed's monetary inflation IS mentioned), without actually closing the loop and asking why these things exist.

Even worse, he then makes the statement that the next president should create a "blue-ribbon panel" on energy policy, as if energy policy itself, and the drivers behind it, are somehow not to blame. Then in the comments section, readers write in to bemoan how Reagan cut the budget of the Department of Energy from (some outrageous figure) to (some still-outrageous figure in the kajillions of dollars), and how if we only funded this federal agency properly, we'd all be on the way to solar-powered, zero carbon footprint bliss.

Ahem.

The US Department of Energy, created by Jimmy Carter out of the "assets" of the Atomic Energy Commission, which originated in the Manhattan Project is a sprawling, tax-eating bureaucracy of the worst kind, interfering with and destroying incentives in every possible aspect of energy research, production, use, transport. It operates a huge network of sites that are by far the most dangerously polluted facilities on the planet. It interferes in the oil, gas, coal, and electricity markets, in particular making safe, clean nuclear energy a dim possibility. And it enables the unconscionable waste of funds on things like the Superconducting Supercollider and the recent fusion program debacle at Princeton University.

Sex In The City? Pah! Girls With Guns!

Thu, 29 May 2008 04:27:37 GMT

Our pal Violet Blue brings this awesome vid to our attention;

Host and writer Samantha Henig is a gun n00b who goes to the only gun range in Manhattan, interviews the really interesting proprietor, and then she has her first go with a rifle. She’s a little bewildered, but what’s great about this video is that Henig somehow managed to visit the range at the same time as a group of women who are there on an outing dressed to the nines, complete with sky-high stiletto spike heels. Not only do they look *hot* but they’re freakishly skilled with their firearms. So. Excellent. I want to do a show like this…

Seriously, these girls are ELECTRIC, and can really shoot, single NY guys with half a brain should be hitting this place hard, LOL!

Setting Liberals Straight

Tue, 20 May 2008 03:03:05 GMT

Eugene Robinson writes in TruthDig;

The Reagan era in American politics is about to end, and we have George W. Bush to thank for its demise.

In this respect, it doesn’t matter who wins the Democratic nomination or even who wins the general election in the fall... (r)egardless of who takes the oath of office in January, the paradigm that reigned for nearly three decades—the notion that government is useless, if not inherently evil—is no longer operative.

All three of the remaining presidential candidates propose a far more activist role for government. Even John McCain, who tells conservatives he’s a Reagan disciple, proposes far-reaching government action on issues such as climate change, high energy prices and the mortgage crisis—problems that are supposedly better left to the cruel genius of free markets, according to the old paradigm that Bush has pushed to absurd extremes.

It took a leader of the Decider’s uncommon gifts to kill the philosophy he worships. To be fair, there is one area in which he has been the most proactive of presidents, to our nation’s lasting discredit: violating the basic rights of citizens and noncitizens alike in the name of his “war on terrorism.”

Otherwise, he has interpreted Reagan’s small-government mandate as an excuse—or an instruction—to abdicate government’s most fundamental responsibilities.

My response;

We are not living under some kind of ‘cruel genius’ of free markets. We live under a system of corporate-state collusion that far surpasses the fascism of Mussolini.

George Bush, far from implementing the rhetoric of Reagan on government, has inflated and engorged the government by every possible measure - spending, taxing, entitlements, military aggression, the destruction of civil liberties, all in the name of national security, and all funded by stealthy theft - the Federal Reserve’s criminal printing of money.

We have a budget defecit of over $270 billion, we have a debt of over $10 TRILLION, and unfunded liabilities of $60 - $70 TRILLION. This is what you call an exemplar of minimal government, free-market conservativism?

The free market died in this country in the 1930s, when Roosevelt drove the New Deal, like a gigantic rusty stake, through its heart.

The free market exists now solely in the realm of small business, period. Oh, and in, of all places, China.

War Is The Fount Of Evil

Fri, 9 May 2008 12:07:54 GMT

(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 blisterin

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

Wed, 7 May 2008 04:15:16 GMT

(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)

Ethanol and Starvation: The Perfect Match

Fri, 2 May 2008 13:29:54 GMT

(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

Thu, 1 May 2008 21:50:44 GMT

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

Thu, 1 May 2008 21:37:36 GMT

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

Fri, 25 Apr 2008 04:00:09 GMT

(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

Fri, 25 Apr 2008 01:30:23 GMT

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.

Steve Forbes Not Seeing the Forest For the Trees

Tue, 22 Apr 2008 19:54:50 GMT

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

Mon, 7 Apr 2008 00:09:21 GMT

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

Sun, 6 Apr 2008 16:06:24 GMT

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?