the IDIOT

tyranny and the market

2009-06-30T15:34:00.003-04:00

oops! they don't go together. naturally.

via DUI Blog:

Plan to get drunks at drive-thrus falls flat

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.

YouTube resurrection

2009-06-29T05:29:00.003-04:00

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.

It's just such a catchy tune!

bwahahaha! now that is weird.

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the missing jury

2009-06-29T01:10:00.004-04:00

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.

narcissistic sloths at LRC

2009-06-28T21:49:00.007-04:00

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 wrote on 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.

craigslist for guns

2009-06-21T13:39:00.003-04:00

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.

zOMG, GPS!

2009-06-04T04:24:00.009-04:00

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.

wrong with no defense

2009-06-03T23:15:00.004-04:00

watch the mises.org fools get spanked. watch the mises.org fools have no rebuttal to their spanking:

S oliva:

[...] 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. [...]

mark:

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.

cooler heaven

2009-05-30T23:34:00.003-04:00

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.

Human Volkswagen Beetle Sound

2009-05-18T07:44:00.001-04:00

"My brother does a good impression of a volkwagen beetle."

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A Series of Unfortunate Events

2009-05-04T05:28:00.005-04:00

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.

what a list!

2009-04-14T00:41:00.005-04:00

steffy "the stooge" cantsellya's doing his normal rah rah psycho routine on a blog that apparently lets anyone spout. gotta see this:

Top 100 Libertarian Blogs and Websites
Posted by Stephan Kinsella at April 13, 2009 11:01 PM
As selected by "The Humble Libertarian," as noted on the blog Libertarian Leanings. Some of the more notable picks:
5. The Ludwig von Mises Institute
6. The Mises Economics Blog
19. The Independent Institute
20. The Beacon (The Independent Institute Blog)
31. RonPaul.org
32. Ron Paul's Perpetual Campaign for Liberty
46. RonPaul.com
51. Schiff2010.com
52. Rand2010.com
53. JudgeNapolitano.com
69. LewRockwell.com
78. Libertarian Papers
95. Ron Paul Blog

wow — imagine some "libertarian" sucking RP cock on a list.

steffy decided to not mention a few other "notables" (because it renders the list an even bigger joke than his edited version):

1. The Official Website of the Libertarian Party (U.S.)

2. The Official Blog of the Libertarian Party (U.S.)

3. The Cato Institute

4. Cato at Liberty (The Cato blog)
[...]
9. Reason Magazine

10. Hit & Run - The Reason Magazine blog
[...]
21. The Heritage Foundation

22. The Foundry (Heritage Foundation's Blog)

23. National Center for Policy Analysis

24. The Ayn Rand Institute (with apologies to Ayn Rand)
[...]
27. Bureaucrash
[...]
29. The Prometheus Institute
[...]
35. Cafe Hayek
[...]
38. Marginal Revolution
[...]
57. GOP for Liberty
[...]
63. The John Locke Foundation
[...]
86. The Volokh Conspiracy
[...]

that's some great "libertarian" company there, steffy the stooge. surprised the Mein Kampf blog wasn't mentioned.

apple slam of the decade?

2009-04-10T05:50:00.003-04:00

i'm no "microsoft or die" fanboy, but i also know that apple laptops don't do shit for me and my keyboard-shortcut-heavy ways. so i dig this money quote from an article about microsoft's new laptop-shopper ads:

Not everyone wants a machine that's been washed with unicorn tears.
~david webster, microsoft general manager for brand marketing

somewhere an apple bitch-boy is crying.

i admit freely, however, that unwrapping a new iPod is nearly a sexual experience, and that if the NSA blowjobbers weren't involved with the iPhone i'd have bought one long ago.

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President Obama: Government ignites surge in home mortgage refinancing

2009-04-09T23:25:00.003-04:00

In an economic round table with homeowners, President Barack Obama said Thursday that the government's efforts to drive down interest rates have fueled a surge in mortgage refinancing—putting money into many homeowners' pockets during the current crisis. [...]

the rest of the article is similarly horrific twaddle straight from the state's ass.

as usual, the question aching to be asked these stupid motherfuckers: if printing "money" creates wealth, why stop at x? fire up the presses, bitch. let's get rich.

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beyond words

2009-03-30T18:16:00.003-04:00

skin whore o' the goonited states:

[...] It is my hope that the steps I am announcing today will go a long way towards answering many of the questions people may have about the future of GM and Chrysler. But just in case there are still nagging doubts, let me say it as plainly as I can -- if you buy a car from Chrysler or General Motors, you will be able to get your car serviced and repaired, just like always. Your warrantee will be safe.

In fact, it will be safer than it's ever been. Because starting today, the United States government will stand behind your warrantee.

[sic] [...]

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tune the war drums, o-buh-mamba

2009-03-24T08:36:00.011-04:00

[bear in mind my standard caveat on predictions (ex post facto cherry-picking syndrome).]

fall 2007 i wrote,

i think there will be a mini-crumble within 3 years, leading to the rampway toward hyperinflation by 2025. won't it be fun if the dollar goes even farther into the toilet under president ron paul? oh, but that would be impossible.

what's needed is a bold, violent invasion of some other country.

with history as a clue, i fear an insane new war as the skin whore narcissist's castle collapses around his earthshakingly stupid and psycho ass.

i believe that growing predictions of nearby exceptional price inflation are correct. while this is taken as a given by sensible (non-lamestream) economics theory, the timeline is often disregarded, despite that being the fascinating part. the goonited states dollar value is illusory in the short horizon, and closer to objective in the far. i don't understand the dynamic of counterfeiting and how masses sense currency debasement, but it seems to be reliable. trends are looking damned sour for the dollar, and i predict its death by 2020 at the latest — ten years.

dunno about hyperinflation, but i think something close to that will begin spinning soon, domino style. the state's usual reaction to exposure of its heart: war. remember, "war saved america from the great depression". or was it FDR the bumbler maniac, stepping on his and everyone else's dick for over ten years? hard to keep the dogma straight, especially with robert higgs around.

lew rockwell, god of financial systems

2009-03-24T08:27:00.003-04:00

lew declares, "That's why the only appropriate global money is the gold ounce."

the only appropriate global money is the non-coercive money chosen via peaceful spontaneous order. gold religionists blow.

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Geithner to Ask Congress for Broad Power to Seize Firms

2009-03-24T08:20:00.004-04:00

and congress will go where in the US constitution to find this power?

sub headline by the state's house organ: "Goal Is to Limit Risk to Broader Economy"

the goal is power. and no matter how much suck the state applies, those criminals know they profit from failure. private company fails? private company fails. state fails? state grows.

that's what happens when your "marketing" ends at the muzzle of a gun. and the moron horde still doesn't get it.

hop stoopid ale

2009-03-21T21:20:00.008-04:00

big fan of ale with extry hops, and always on the lookout for something that does it crazy. i also generally dislike india pale ales, which makes asking for pale ale somewhat a pain in the ass at a bar. my go-to is sierra nevada pale ale, but that has been eclipsed by perhaps the world's stoopidest hoppy hop-crazed hop-OD'd ale.

almost busted out laughing after my first swig. it's just insanely hoppy, and real real good.

sanity on trade unions

2009-03-21T18:49:00.003-04:00

adam carolla sometimes asserts abominably statist positions that belie his natural intelligence. he got it mostly right on trade unions though, in a recent podcast with tom arnold.

unions are the curse of my love for movies and TV shows, for they infect nearly everything. had my fill of SAG/AFTRA tyrants when in the early 90s i briefly entered that aspect of the entertainment field (at the lowest level). sadly, carolla feels he must associate with these sanctimonious protectors of mediocrity and entitlement.

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whipping up the masses for helmet mania

2009-03-21T17:47:00.004-04:00

the religion of helmet enters its newest phase:

TRAGIC star NATASHA RICHARDSON turned down a £6 rented ski helmet which could have saved her life, it emerged yesterday.

naturally, illogic is the prime speaker.

a more fitting remembrance of a superior actor.

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LSM and the meaningless US constitution

2009-03-21T17:39:00.003-04:00

a lamestream media jackass declares "Courts Unlikely to Strike Down AIG Tax Law, Legal Experts Say". read the article and search for the words "ex post facto".

hint: not there.

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exception that proves the rule

2009-03-19T09:15:00.005-04:00

few phrases identify dumbasses so readily as "exception that proves the rule". anytime you hear this mating call of the damned used regarding contravention of a supposed rule, the emitter may safely be written off as the usual unobservant lemming/clod who attempts to corral nonsense for his cause. the phrase is used correctly fewer than once per hundred hurls. standard moron version:

"Driving at night is far more dangerous than during the day."

"Oh, I don't know about that; my uncle does most of his driving at night, and he's never had an accident."

"He's the exception that proves the rule."

underlying premise: "evidence running counter to my assertion supports my assertion."

such is the acuity of the average man.

however, "exception that proves the rule" is a valuable concept, especially in law. for example, if a building owner posts a sign stating, "Guns prohibited on premises between the hours of 09:00 and 17:00", he's implying that guns are allowed all other times — proof enough if contested. the exception is outside the rule it implies, not a contravention of an explicit rule.

'political power never leads to good'

2009-03-15T05:15:00.002-04:00

waited to see if lew rockwell deleted this post. he hasn't. continuing a long line of duplicity — rules for the RPBomber, rules for the unanointed — the chief cheerleader for a US presidential campaign now asserts, "By the way, political power never leads to good."

cronyism, however, abides like the dude.

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pics of fender super reverb filter caps

2009-03-12T21:14:00.008-04:00

just replaced the power supply filter capacitors for a friend's '68-ish silver-face fender super reverb, and hadn't found any guts pics online. here are two showing the wiring that's hidden when assembled. click to zoom.

was running behind and forgot to take pics of the new caps installed — muck cleaned off the black pads, solder shiny and new. looked nice. shown are originals, obviously.

man, did that amp sound good with new filter caps; much more improvement than i estimated. also changed the 2-prong AC cord to 3-prong, using this helpful pic/schematic. caps bought here.

[insert usual warning about electrocuting yourself when working on tube amps with charged capacitors, etc.]

BTW, after semi-thorough research, i didn't use a variac to bring the new caps up slowly. i suspect that's mostly dated hype applicable to parts as made decades ago.

In Romania, bribery is a health problem

2009-02-13T16:15:00.003-05:00

oh yeah, it's "bribery" that's the problem. WTF — two pages of elephant-in-the-room nonsense, followed by this:

Liviu Manaila, Romania's secretary of state for health, said in an interview that the system of informal payments was depriving doctors of their dignity and needed to be stamped out. While the government's budget is too strained to raise doctor's wages, he proposed revamping Romania's socialized medical system so that patients took on a greater burden of the costs, which could then be translated into higher fees for doctors.

the problem, of course, is that socialism wasn't applied "properly". that's all. the article's a monument to the brainwashing and rampant self-destruction possible once language is corrupted; kill liberty, then naturally bubbling attempts to resurrect it become the ailment. right. freedom is slavery.

a curse on every blind stupid motherfucker.

read the article. see if you can make it three paragraphs in without screaming.