TUCSON, Ariz. — A plan by the Pima County Sheriff's Department that would have stationed deputies at fast-food joints to sniff out drunken drivers appears to have fallen flat.
The department had hoped to target drunken driving by putting undercover deputies inside 24-hour fast-food restaurants to spot impaired drivers placing their orders. If deputies spotted someone with classic symptoms of impairment, they were to call a uniformed deputy stationed outside to pull the driver over.
But sheriff's Lt. Karl Woolridge says the department asked various fast-food chains if they'd agree to be a part of the program, but all of them declined. [...]
the magic line of protection: when your customers aren't corralled via the truncheon, you must watch your ass.
the crazy trend of "let's play" vids on YouTube has extended to games i worked on. ha!
surprised to see some comments that people like the music, so cheesed up by the technology that i always figured most people would turn it off immediately. instead, one guy went this far:
I first played this game waaaay back, like '95 or so.
Then roughly 12 years later (a few months ago) I woke up with Grundy's theme song in my head, and reinstalled it.
having recently been "charged with a crime" by an official crime syndicate (its members calling themselves "sheriff's deputies" and similar filth), i understand the instinct to demand a "jury". voluntarists, however, may not ethically participate in the enslavement of ostensibly peaceful others, nor should they consider wrongfully coerced decisions valuable.
it's easy to lose this perspective when threatened with kidnapping by the sanctimonious criminal squad. i have heard arguments opposing my "no standard jury" opinion, but nothing winning. the inability to compose a jury is stronger evidence that the house is on fire — that voluntarists must not suffer the pretense of a "justice system" in the goonited states, nor participate in congratulating such fantasy after a "win". all "wins" in goon courts are a net loss. a "win" after having encouraged mass enslavement for your liberty cannot erase what you've done.
in one of the more ludicrous preens from the LRC/LvMI disgrace, steffy P cantsellya advertised his retarded ruminations on gay marriage as if they're instructive — as if him being a dolt on the subject for years pales when held aside his now illuminated position. today, wanker-in-residence anthony gregory refers to this elongated pile of bleh (check secondary links) and says it's his position as well. funny stuff. BTW, anyone using seriously the execrable fiction "positive and negative rights" should be shunned. surprised he didn't say "talking points" and "effect change" in the same paragraph.
though hardly the first to hold the correct position, as a comparative newbie to the ethics of liberty i asserted it without hesitation on the LRC blog in 2003 (my posts now deleted on my request):
re: Privatize Marriage?
Posted by Charley Hardman at July 6, 2003 01:41 AM
Michael Kinsley's article nicely sums up two contrary wish lists of coercion: "Having just gotten state governments out of their bedrooms, gays now want these governments back in. Meanwhile, social-conservative anti-gays, many of them southerners, are calling on the government in Washington to trample states' rights and nationalize the rules of marriage, if necessary, to prevent gays from getting what they want."
"And in this corner" it appears that for some on the LRC Blog non-aggression depends on whose sensitivity ox is being gored, and that "we" should fight for continued government interference in something which isn't, never should have been, and will never be its business.
I'm surprised (on the heels of the Malkin weirdness even) to see the arguments used to support the position. Government "benefits" for any social practice is social engineering we must do without. Yes, there's a dilemma; gays are a state-protected class and should not be. I don't see how liberty can be served by supporting one flavor of coercion (marriage "benefits") because a supposed balancing coercion (special protections for gays) will probably not go away despite our opposition. Isn't that scheme the very definition of leviathan's food supply?
There is also the implication that it is the state which gives weight to the "moral" sanction of the church. That is highly disturbing even to this pure agnostic. How much more so should it be to Christians? Oppose the rampant favoritism shown by the state toward gays by strengthening the marriage of your chosen private institution, and work to reduce government "benefits" for everybody. If it's benefits that gays are after, and you don't like, for whatever reason, gays to be gay, then why not help stamp out their alleged strongest incentive for corrupting the beloved institution of heterosexual marriage?
However it's sliced, those supporting continued state "benefits" for marriage are simply empowering the state. Count me out on that score as with any other government interference in private matters. I had decided long before all this recent homo debate to have my marriage be purely a bond between me and whatever woman I'm able to disorient long enough for her to agree to marry me. Witnesses? Would love to have them. State, church, or private institution participation? Not a chance. If a man and woman's words are worth nothing, all of the window dressing in the world won't change that.
My bond will be solely with my wife. Argument that I may not have that freedom and joy without the penalty of disincentives, in whatever coercive form, is merely the crime of parenting without license. Haven't we had enough of that?
takes little thought and no hand-wringing. i was refuting, among others, marcus epstein — an obvious latent queer and obedience fetishist then at LRC, who advocating state opposition to gay marriage wroteon the LRC blog, "This is one issue that we actually have a good chance to win. At the very least, we ought to put up a fight."
what's this "we", king wasabi?
the downfall of LRC was its club mentality, wherein a monstrous demonstration of intellectual deficiency is pointed to as a desirable prototype. steffy cantsellya, one of the stupidest psychos at LRC/LvMI, is regularly sucked up to by others there. obvious reason: they see lew do it. what of intellectual power has steffy created? nothing. his one-trick-pony "IP" ranting, as with most such stuff at LvMI, centers on destructive utilitarianism — terrible, and wrongly supposed an advance in thinking on the subject (while he prosecuted, and may still, pro-"IP" cases at his day job).
weighed by ASCII character, cantsellya produces megatons. he and his bastard cousin ian at "Free Talk Live" remind me of the quote attributed to stalin:
Quantity has a quality all its own.
spew enough stupid shit regularly, and your audience will emerge. audience of fools. something happens to the average man when exposed to a bigger audience, and this something encourages more of what brought it.
since gun sales are prohibited on craigslist.org, is there a "craig's list for guns"? several, but my fave is gunlistings.org. sure, for years there's been gunbroker.com, but that's an eBay for guns, and a tad squirrelly, IMO.
posting at gunlistings is fast, simple, and free. doesn't even require registration; they send you an email with links for editing and deletion. pain in the ass if you're a dealer, but smooth for anyone selling only a few items. you can upload 3 pics under 2MB each, damned good resolution for the format.
the morons of the lamestream media are outdoing themselves in the rush to say something stupid about the loss of air france flight 477 — now with help from one of the dumbasses at reason foundation. in an article titled "Common GPS could help better track airline flights",
"It's a crude system they're using now," said Robert Poole, an aviation expert with the free market-oriented Reason Foundation. "For 100 dollars, you can run down and buy a GPS system, put it in your car and know exactly where you are. But planes don't have it."
typical loudmouthed fool. plenty of airliners have GPS. the plane knowing where it is isn't the problem ostensibly being discussed; it's having that information updated regularly to ATC hundreds of miles away. using the example of a car, or even an iPhone location prog, has no potential literal transfer to transmitting transoceanic aircraft location data regularly to ATC.
count on the deadline-centric liars from the dying media to screw that pooch. when discussing guns or aviation, they're wrong normally. the writer of the article simply attempts to stir up disgust at the apparent stupidity of airline operators who're obviously too stupid or cheap to go to best buy and throw down $100 for each of their planes. the noive!
who do these decrepit donks think were the first users of GPS? aviation before cars, of course. and decades before GPS there was INS, a standard feature on big airliners providing remarkably precise location estimates — to the crew.
[...] It's certainly tempting to say the states should be bound by the second amendment. But the language was clearly written to limit the federal government. [...]
Oliva claims "the language [of the Second Amendment] was clearly written to limit the federal government." Is he reading the same Second Amendment I have in my copy of the Constitution? The First Amendment begins "Congress shall pass no law...". Clearly, the First Amendment was intended to limit the power of the Federal government. The Second Amendment never limits its restrictions to Congress. [...]
S oliva:
"[T]he Constitution is the highest law of the land, and in the case of the Second Amendment, it recognizes a natural right of the people and protects the people from any infringement of that right by any level of government."
So you're arguing the second amendment is an affirmative grant of power to the federal government that allows it to overrule the acts of state and local governments? I don't see how the text can be read that way.
"The essense of the second amendment is the retention of the right of the people, as stated in the Declaration of Independence, to overthrow by force a government that has exceeded it's mandate and become tyrannical. It doesn't distinguish between states and the federal government in this regard."
Except that it's an amendment to a *federal* constitution. I find it difficult to argue that the adopters of the amendment -- which included the state legislatures that ratified it -- intended it to apply to state acts, given the lack of express language.
I thank both commenters for their insights.
"lack of express language"? try the supremacy clause. along comes jeff "light in the loafers" asshole tucker to "elucidate" with his usual faerie dust horse shit saying nothing:
Oliva is exactly right: the Bill of Rights was to pertain to the federal government, not the state governments. I don't see how anyone can doubt this as a matter of intention and history. This principle was distorted in the 20th century in order to make room for the building of Leviathan: the whole principle of federalism was turned on its head. I'm not Constitution fan (the federalists were all liars, so far as I'm concerned) and I only dabble in constitutional history but I do know that there is nothing about the Bill of Rights, which was imposed on the bad guys whom the moderates did not trust, that was supposed to give the central state extra power over lower orders of government.
try the 10th amendment, dumbass from hell. it states explicitly that the states may by the constitution be prohibited powers.
fuck mises.org, some of the biggest wrong posers on the internet — so long stewing in their precious dogma that they can't see truth.
i love keeping a cooler in my car. have stopped going to restaurants with "waiters" (who mostly suck), and rarely do anything but eat meals i prepare with my portable kitchen — two containers of utensils, spices, etc., including perishables most people wrongly assume must or should be chilled once cut into (e.g., tomatoes, onions).
a small cooler with only 10 pounds of ice can keep food fresh for days in the summer. the drawback is the water; if efficiency's your thing, the water must stay until it hits the 50s. but water tends to ruin some food. today, i may have found the answer, and it is LOCK & LOCK, baby!
big fan of the usual "disposable" plastic containers (that i almost never throw away), but they all leak. L&L doesn't leak (so far). i can let my cooler go full waterlogged without my preciouses seeing a drop. nice.
got my intro set at harris teeter, but they're apparently available plenty of places. surprised i haven't seen before. appears it's the best solution for the cooler crowd. go forth and get waterlogged.
though so far i can speak only of the first seven novels in the series by lemony snicket, mark me as an enthusiastic fan. surprised i've not heard more for these books in liberty circles. hell, book seven — The Vile Village (2001) — is nearly a frontal assault on the "it takes a village" ninny talk of the sadly not bygone clinton parasite squad. throughout each book "adult" bureaucracy is mocked, children left to exercise skill and solve problems (albeit in the extreme). the absurd recurrence of the same villain throughout the series (first seven books at least) quickly transcends predictability, into joyful expectation, and the presumed child audience is always treated intelligently. have busted out laughing plenty of times. some tire of the repeated shtick (e.g., words used are often defined, sometimes humorously), but i dig it okay.
doom, doom, and more doom. you were warned. you are warned every few chapters. nobody to blame but you, reader.
oh, and — unlike me — give lemony snicket as reader a fair chance if you get the audiobook version. for a few books he replaces temporarily the nearly perfect tim curry, and it's a shock to make the transition. stick with it though, because he has some wacky voices that later make up for his, erm, sorta bleh read. it's even worse when you don't know he's the cool daddy-o behind the series. man, was i bummed at first. then after returning to curry a few books later, i sorta missed the ol' LS. gloomy music of The Gothic Archies is cool, regardless.
is this site negative? not fundamentally. here's an explanation. some people are able to fight negative forces with a positive attitude. i'm not usually one of them. the point is that i would love to be positive. may i?
[my email address isn't offered freely, because i don't want to hear from you. you're the lawyer for someone who croaked and left me $5M? still don't want to hear from you. and yeah, that means you too. like one of my articles? don't like one of my articles? don't care. old friend who wants to get together and reminisce? do it without me; don't want to hear from you.]
What I Believe
i do not own other people. i have no right to "vote" to run their lives. i may not inflict myself on anyone. voluntary interaction is a wonderful thing; when i see people lining up to buy ice cream from a neighborhood entrepreneur, i smile. my smile doesn't lessen just because the company gets bigger.
the state is evil. its members prohibit and crush voluntary human cooperation in the name of humanity. they are a lie. those who link themselves to the state are evil. those who worship and tie their happiness and livelihood to it enable most of life's misery. most people are brainwashed by the state through constant exposure and are unable to see liberty as anything good. to get around this problem in america, the state — official crime syndicate — merely changes the definition of liberty, raping the word's meaning while wringing from it the last part of positive association. "liberty" in america now means control by violence monopolists — the mafia with a twist (piety and flags).
any proposal that involves one man inflicting himself on another, taking his property, or otherwise demonstrating through aggression that his life is more important, must be opposed. to neglect that fight is to succumb to hate and surrender to inferiors. there are men who mean to be your masters. what does that make you if they succeed? a patriot?
"But whether the Constitution really be one thing, or another, this much is certain—that it has either authorized such a government as we have had, or has been powerless to prevent it. In either case, it is unfit to exist."
~Lysander Spooner, 1870
"I have ceased to regard Federal America as my country, sir. I lost my nationality at Appomattox."
~vampire Edgar Poe, 1918 — The Bloody Red Baron
"If it is really necessary for Congress to force (that is what legislation is about) food makers to confess that they use eggs or peanuts or whatever, in order to prevent people from dying who would otherwise croak on a crumb, if it is really essential that the coercive apparatus of the state, which George Washington compared to a fire and the whole liberal intellectual tradition warns is up to no good, be used, if this is really necessary, then there is no case for freedom at all. If government needs to do this, it needs to do everything. If the market fails here, it fails everywhere, and we need the total state."
~Lew Rockwell, 2003
"Freedom and honor! For ten long years Hitler and his coadjutor have manhandled, squeezed, twisted, and debased these two splendid German words to the point of nausea, as only dilettantes can, casting the highest values of a nation before swine. They have sufficiently demonstrated in the ten years of destruction of all material and intellectual freedom, of all moral substance among the German people, what they understand by freedom and honor. The frightful bloodbath has opened the eyes of even the stupidest German — it is a slaughter which they arranged in the name of 'freedom and honor of the German nation' throughout Europe, and which they daily start anew. The name of Germany is dishonored for all time if German youth does not finally rise, take revenge, and atone, smash its tormentors, and set up a new Europe of the spirit."
~The White Rose, 1943
"It is not difficult to discern that the practical man in social reform is the same animal as the practical man in every other department of human energy, and may be discovered suffering from the same twin disabilities which stamp the practical man wherever found: these twin disabilities are an inability to define his own first principles and an inability to follow the consequences proceeding from his own action. Both these disabilities proceed from one simple and deplorable form of impotence, the inability to think."
~Hilaire Belloc, 1913
"In the end, we don't need to prove the superiority of consequence of living free. Coercionists need to prove they have the Right — not the 'authority' — to cause us to live otherwise."
~NTA, 2007
"I find adherence to fantasy troubling and unreasonable."
~Tojamura, late 1900s
"The older I get, the more I admire and crave competence, just simple competence, in any field from adultery to zoology."
~Henry Mencken, according to Alistair Cooke, according to George the Pill
"Hillary will be the Democratic nominee once the Obama fantasy subsides. Bet the ranch on that one."
~James Ostrowski, 2007
"besides, why would i want to leave Serenity?"
~Inara Serra, 2002
"[...] & each
In others count'nance red his own dismay
Astonisht: none among the choice and prime
Of those Heav'n-warring Champions could be found
So hardie as to proffer or accept
Alone the dreadful voyage; till at last
Satan, whom now transcendent glory rais'd
Above his fellows, with Monarchal pride
Conscious of highest worth, unmov'd thus spake.
O Progeny of Heav'n, Empyreal Thrones,
With reason hath deep silence and demurr
Seis'd us, though undismaid: long is the way
And hard, that out of Hell leads up to light; [...]"
~John Milton, 1667
