Posted by BigZ85020 on 05/31/09

I spend a lot of time reading some Liberal Blogs like Daily Kos and FireDogLake. That's because I was one of those who originally came from the left to join Ron Paul's Campaign. I've always been a steadfast Libertarian in my beliefs, it's just that I used to think the Democrats were the more Libertarian of the two parties. Ron Paul's internet following is pretty impressive but at this point, the Democratic presence on the Internet can still kick our Ass, and judging by the huge Democratic Netroots influence, I believe it is a major source of Obama's power. However, unlike a traditional campaign infrastructure, Obama really has no control over this machine. Whether or not Obama is successful in using this to advance his agenda really depends on the actions of a whole bunch of isolated individuals who can be persuaded. I believe that most of Obama's supporters are smart, rational, honest people who are just hoping that Obama actually is what he promised he would be. Many of them are disappointed. Lots of Democrats who get their news from some of the more "Red Pill" type news sources like Keith Olbermann or Jon Stewart actually lean Libertarian and despised Bush for his War, Corporatism, and attacks on Civil Liberties. They are winnable to our cause but they currently reside as the source of Obama's Power. They are being led astray by the media to believe that Obama supports the same things they support. Just as Obama is betraying some of the principles of liberty that Republicans claim to espouse, he is also trashing the same Libertarian streak that the democrats have. As knowledgeable activists, we should be able to point this out to the lefties out there who might be disappointed by Obama but still support him because at least he's not Batshit Insane like those Bible-Thumping, Warmonger, Fascist Republicans.

We as Constitutionalists need to face the facts that the Republican Party has for the most part been discredited. Republican wingnuts like Sean Hannity, Bill O'Reilly, Rush Limbaugh etc. as well as political leaders like Mitt Romney and John McCain have no credibility at all because they've been caught in lies over and over again and this has circulated through the blogosphere all over the place. The last thing we would want to do if we wanted to reach out to Obama's base of support and undermine his agenda is to regurgitate some of the same talking points as these clowns. I realize that our message really hasn't changed but rather that they're just shifting their message more in our direction to try and get some of their credibility back, but let's not forget who they are: discredited, corporate propagandist scum, and we don't want to be seen holding hands with them.

For example, the media tries to portray the debate of Free Markets vs. Wealth Redistribution as an argument where the Free Market guys say you shouldn't take away some of the profits of rich people in order to help the poor. Whereas the Wealth Redistribution guys say rich people should have more compassion. It's perfectly plausible to take the right wing volantarist argument on this and say that charity should never be shoved down someone's throat. However this argument is based on an imaginary dreamworld that doesn't even exist, a world where the government takes from the rich and gives to the poor, an utterly preposterous notion. And also, it doesn't get us anywhere with Obama's base. It just makes us sound like we're defending the rich. I'd much rather see us as libertarians take a leftist class warfare argument in favor of Free Markets. Whoever said Welfare was for poor people? If it were, that'd be great. The problem with Wealth Redistribution is that it tends to end up in the hands of the Wealthy. We need to support the Free Market so that money ends up in the hands of those who worked for it, not those who lobbied for it.

I see this happening more and more lately with our movement. We say something where we end up sounding like Sean Hannity and those on the Left end up seeing us as the enemy rather than as the ally. Just think about the Sonia Sotomayor appointment to SCOTUS. The media is trying to tell everyone that Sotomayor is a female, minority, who has "empathy" for the poor and is willing to bend the strict interpretation of the law if it means giving someone who is disadvantaged a fair shake. Well gee, that'd be great for a change. The problem up to this point is that the whole legal system has been controlled by corrupt corporate puppets who were perfectly content to trash the constitution if their masters desire it so, yet somehow managed uphold it when it meant the little guy would get screwed. So there you see Sean Hannity attacking Sotomayor for being a reverse racist and the next day, Peter Schiff, on his Vlog, repeats these exact same right wing talking points. And then you wonder why Ron Paul gets mistaken for a White Suppremacist.

Come On guys!!! We're better than this. We had the forsight to see that Obama wasn't really anti-war. We knew that he wasn't really against Torture. We knew right from the beginning that Obama would totally piss on poor people seeing as how he was bought and paid for by the big banks who were robbing poor people blind. There has to be someone in the freedom movement who recognizes that Obama isn't really going to appoint to the Supreme Court someone who has "empathy" for the poor and is willing to bend the strict interpretation of the law if it means giving someone who is disadvantaged a fair shake.

I recently saw a little bit of the Rachel Maddow show and Rachel was making a rebuttal against Hannity's talking point about how Sotomayor is a reverse racist. She cited some court cases where Sotomayor sided with the Corporate powers over the little guy and even went above and beyond the letter of the law to give a B.S. ruling. In one of her examples she talked about a case concerning the victims families of TWA flight 800 where she ruled in a dissenting opinion on a panel of 3 to clear the airline of any liabilities because of some safety regulations it violated, and she made the ruling on a technicality: because the airplane was out of U.S. Airspace when it crashed, thus clearing it of jusistdiction for liability in the United States. Why can't we attack her for that. There's plenty more where that came from. We need to help the left see these things more clearly. Barack Obama is not a bleeding heart liberal, he's a crooked corporate shill. Same thing goes for Sotomayor. That's what they should be scolded for. Whenever I go argue with liberals on some of their blogs, I always attack Obama from the Left. I call him out on his expansion of war, his failure to prosecute Bush/Cheney for War Crimes, his Corporatism, his trashing of the Bill of Rights etc. I even go so far as to call him Bush's Third Term. These are the arguments I make because I read their comments, and clearly it's not going to get us anywhere with Obama's base if we just parrot Sean Hannity's talking points. He's discredited already. Dr. Paul sees this. He's said that if we have a true intellectual revolution it should infiltrate both parties and there are plenty of smart, freedom loving individuals still residing in the Democratic Party like I used to be. These people can easily be won over to our cause with just the right rhetoric and some good intellectual exercise.

Posted by BigZ85020 on 03/07/09

Check out this article about the spread of communication technology around the world.

It's For You...Over Half The World's Population Now Use Mobile Phones

March 03, 2009 | by Christopher Nickson

A new UN report reveals that 4.1 billion people, over half the world's population, now use mobile phones.

Considering that it's barely 25 years since the first mobile phone call, the growth of the cellular phone has been spectacular. If they seem ubiquitous, it's probably because they are, a fact dramatically highlighted by a new UN report from the International Telecommunications Union (ITU).

The report reveals that 4.1 billion people around the world - half the global population - now have mobile phone subscriptions. That's a sharp rise from the one billion reported in 2002, and represents about 60% of the world's population.

The greatest growth has been in Africa, where figures have risen from 2% to 28%, but developing countries in general account for around 66% of all mobiles in use. Everywhere, mobiles have surged ahead, leaving landlines in the dust - figures for them have just risen from one billion to just under 1.3 billion in the last seven years.

The ITU said:

"The spread of mobile cellular services and technologies has made great strides towards connecting the previously unconnected."

The report also noted the swift rise in Internet use, growing from 11% globally in 2002 to 23% today, although there was a discrepancy between the developed and developing countries. Globally, fewer than 5% have fixed line broadband access at home, although in the developed countries that stands at 20%. In Africa it was 0.2%.

It remains to be seen whether mobile broadband can help bridge the digital divide, but the report remains hopeful:

"Despite the economic downturn, current global ICT developments are unlikely to change drastically, given the pervasive nature of information and communication technologies."

Posted 04/15/09 Elysiumboy Billericay, United Kingdom

The proposal that they can search your hard drive without permission or suspicion tells you everything. They do not like the freedom we have, but there are a million excuses they can give you to restrict the web. These are where the loops in their idiotic running occur: Paedophiles run riot on the internet so they claim they should restrict net movement to solve the problem, when we all know the solution is to inject them with a poison, plain and simple.

Posted by BigZ85020 on 09/11/09

Today is the eighth anniversary of the Attacks on September 11th 2001. Ever since then, The United States has fought the long and perpetual War on Terror. After eight long years, it's time to look at how this war has gone through an objective, unbiased perspective and if we do that we can come to some conclusions about who has won and lost this war.

When this war started, the United States was the sole superpower in the world. It had the enormous wealth of a well functioning economy. The dollar was the unquestioned reserve currency of the world and was still thought of as being as good as gold. And the United States dominated the world in the size and strength of it's military.

At the same time, Afghanistan was a wretched wasteland. It didn't have much except for a few caves to hide in. The United States should have been able to just march in and obliterate the Al-Qaida and march home victorious just like when we took on Germany, Italy and Japan at the same time and came out victorious. Compared to that Afghanistan seems like a cakewalk right?

Well after eight years of a war that lasted twice as long as World War II, we can see the results. The United States' status as sole superpower is quickly being challenged by China. The economy really hasn't grown since 2001 and is mired in a recession that is approaching two years long.
The dollar is teetering precariously on the edge of collapse as creditors are scrambling to cash in their Treasury Bonds.

Afghanistan on the other hand is hanging in there while they are getting rich off the Opium trade. Osama Bin Laden said that his strategy to take on the United States was to draw them into hostile territory and bog them down in a long and costly war that eventually bankrupts the infidels. It looks like everything is going according to plan for the terrorists. True that the United States have only suffered a couple thousand deaths while the death count for the Afghan people is probably in the millions but to be fair, the life of one American is worth the lives of a thousand brown foreigners. And in case you haven't noticed, the rate at which Americans are dying is increasing.

So there you have it. The United States has been roundly defeated by a bunch of brown people living in caves on the other side of the world. It's a shocking unbelievable upset, I realize. It's right up there with the Miracle on Ice or Appalachian State taking down Michigan. However, we really shouldn't be all that surprised considdering that the Taliban did the same exact thing to the Soviet Empire.

So what now? Is the U.S. going to keep flailing away, like a sore loser, at Afghanistan hoping to change this pathetic outcome or is it going to finally show some good sportsmanship and admit defeat. The United States has been outwitted, outgunned, and outlasted by the Taliban in the eight long years of war since September 11, 2001. Now let's just back out of this fight before we really get hurt.

Posted by BigZ85020 on 08/29/09

Central planning of the species doesn't work just as central planning of the economy doesn't work. Only Capitalism could have produced the amazing biodiversity that nature exhibits.

Posted by BigZ85020 on 07/27/09

If you use your imagination, it's not that hard to imagine a business model where you can completely privatize the fire departments.

Right now, there are already companies like ADT which sell home security systems that alert the fire department in case of fire or high carbon monoxide.

You also have GM which has their ONSTAR feature, so that if you're in an accident they'll automatically send in emergency roadside assistance.

You also have many car insurance companies which offer emergency roadside assistance as one of the features on their insurance policies.

What if you create a business model with a home insurance company, just like an auto insurance company, that is connected electronically to a home security system, so that if there is a fire, they'll respond automatically. The home insurance companies could then contract with privately owned fire fighting businesses. The fire fighting businesses would then have to compete with each other for the best response times, the best survival rates, the best safety records, the lowest cost, etc. in order to successfully obtain contracts from the insurance companies. The consumers could then use internet websites which keep track of these things and rates insurance companies on their performance in order to make sure they have access to the best firefighters and the lowest cost, and they could probably save money this way because they wouldn't need to pay taxes for the firefighters.

The only thing you would really need from the government to make sure that all of the people who are affected by a catastrophe are covered by insurance, is to mandate that every home owner must have an insurance policy that has a certain amount of minimum coverage for fire, just like how the government mandates minimum coverage for liability for every car owner.

It's kind of a problem that I see that the idea is a little coercive since it forces consumers to give their money to a coorporation, but it's also coercive for the government to force someone to pay taxes so that's kind of a draw. The big advantage to this would be that it would bring competition to fire fighting so that you'd get lower cost and better quality. The idea for having a government mandate fire coverage just gets back to the debate about whether you think it's the governments responsibility to protect people from themselves. However, the privatization of the fire department is entirely doable. I would love to see some entrepreneur somewhere give this idea a try.

Posted 07/28/09 AeroNumen Atlanta, GA

Good thought. I would say, though, that you wouldn't need the government to mandate that insurance companies provide a minimum for fire damage. I can't imagine a policy actually being sold that wouldn't cover that! Perhaps also it would give someone a chance to opt in or out of fire protection in an insurance plan and just choose to be careful. The catch is that a house catching on fire has the potential to damage property around it, so I could see a semi-valid argument being made for having insurance companies include fire protection for the protection of private property.

Posted 07/28/09 Jason H ATL Austin, TX

This is a good description about how private emergency services would work. Also, I don't believe fire insurance/protection needs to be mandated by the gov't. Car insurance companies sell 'uninsured driver coverage' which is additional insurance for you in case an uninsured driver hits you. I imagine one could purchase similar coverage in case your neighbor doesn't have fire insurance. Plus, you could hire a fire fighting company to come and protect your property if your neighbors house is on fire. If you are feeling generous you could pay your company to save your neighbors house.