A Romney takeover of the White House might well rival Andrew Johnson’s ascendancy to the presidency after Abraham Lincoln’s assassination in 1865.
Let’s dispense with something right now. I am not asserting that, in the unlikely event President Obama loses, the result could be chalked up to his being black.
Yes, race still matters in America, as Romney surrogate John Sununu recently reminded us with his slur regarding Colin Powell’s endorsement of Obama.
A Romney win would be worrisome, however, because of his strong embrace of states rights and his deep mistrust of the federal government — sentiments Andrew Johnson shared.
And we know what that Johnson did once in office.
His sympathy for Confederacy holdouts, and his distaste for Washington, led him to retreat from Reconstruction and avert his gaze as Southern states enacted Jim Crow laws, many of which lasted until the 1964 Civil Rights Act.
There is nothing in Romney’s record to suggest that he would be any stronger than Andrew Johnson in resisting the blandishments of his most extreme supporters, especially regarding federal enforcement.
Johnson stood by as Southern states enacted “black codes,” which restricted rights of freed blacks and prevented blacks from voting.
Romney stood by last year as Republican-controlled state legislatures passed voter-identification laws, making it harder for people of color, senior citizens and people with disabilities to exercise their fundamental right to vote.
Fuck you, you race baiting piece of shit. When you have an argument that even slightly resembles one with intellectual integrity that addresses actual policy positions, rather than simply calling anyone who might agree with any semblance of limited government a fucking racist, get back to me. Until then, fuck off, asshole.
Comments Off on Rational Discourse ::
Share or discuss
::
2012-11-03 ::
madlibertarianguy
Saturday 3 November 2012
-
Filed under
Uncategorized
Obama supporters in reaction to Obama policies attributed to Mitt Romney.
Team players. For the fucking loss. People don’t care about what policies are enacted, or how horrible they might be; they only care about who is in charge when these policies are enacted.
Comments Off on Team Players FTL! ::
Share or discuss
::
2012-11-03 ::
madlibertarianguy
Saturday 3 November 2012
-
Filed under
Uncategorized
Why is this not considered some form of child abuse? Indoctrinating 9 year olds with this kind of shit is what breeds hatred and continued ignorance, not some form of political insight. This kind of political education closes the doors to rational discourse. Fuck this kid’s dad with a porcupine.
More than 100 business owners jammed into a standing-room-only meeting Thursday afternoon in the Red Hook neighborhood of Brooklyn to hear New York City officials describe the relief assistance available to entrepreneurs who saw their restaurants, stores, warehouses and other businesses devastated this week by Sandy’s flooding.
Over and over, city representatives repeated one word: loans. The U.S. Small Business Administration offers low-interest disaster loans of up to $2 million over terms as long as 30 years. The loans are financed directly by the government and capped at a 4% interest rate.
For a business loan, it’s a remarkably good deal, and it’s one of the federal government’s main tools for helping small businesses survive crippling disasters. Red Hook’s local congresswoman, Nydia Velazquez, repeatedly urged attendees to look hard at the SBA program. New York City is also offering bridge loans of up to $10,000 for area businesses that need working capital fast.
But the assembled crowd reacted to that word — loan — like it was a four-letter epithet.
“Most of us are deeply overextended as it is,” said Monica Byrne, the co-owner of local restaurant Home/Made. “We’re all shut down. We have staff we can’t pay. We really need some support that’s not about loans.”
But why are these folks so hard up for non-loan cash?
It will be an uphill fight to get any of it from their insurers.
“No one in this room has flood insurance,” said Jackie Summers, gesturing at his fellow business owners.
That’s not for lack of trying. Red Hook, an industrial waterfront community, sits squarely in the kind of high-risk zone insurers won’t touch.
Ikhmies said he carries fire, theft, liability and other coverage on his 13-year-old printing business. But when it came to flood insurance, the only coverage he could find had sky-high premiums and a too-small coverage cap.
“They only went up to half a million,” he said. “The equipment cost $4 million, $5 million. What good would half a million do if things got damaged?”
So these people, unlucky as they are, willingly chose to open a business in an area that insurance companies, companies which are in business and survive based on their ability to assess risk, wouldn’t insure because the flood risk was too great and that it would not be financially feasible, yet they somehow expect to be bailed out anyways? Don’t get me wrong, I sympathize with their plight. I know exactly what it is to survive a storm. But when you make purposeful choices, you must pay the consequences which stem from those choices. If you can’t get insurance because the risk has been assessed to be too high, yet you willingly open shop anyways, you don’t deserve a goddamn dime to rebuild. You made the choice knowing full well that there was a greater risk than normal of sustaining heavy damage from flooding. Now it’s time to live with that choice.
Fuck off.
Comments Off on Risk Assessment ::
Share or discuss
::
2012-11-03 ::
madlibertarianguy
Utility workers from Alabama, touted by Governor Christie as coming a great distance to help restore power, were reportedly turned away from New Jersey because they did not belong to a union.
So we have millions of people without power, and those tasked with getting the power back up are more concerned with those who have traveled hundreds or thousands of miles to help showing their union cards than with getting the power running again. I’m sure that those middle class workers without power in NJ really fucking appreciate it.
Comments Off on The Middle Class ::
Share or discuss
::
2012-11-03 ::
madlibertarianguy
Thursday 1 November 2012
-
Filed under
Uncategorized
Can someone explain to me why we need teachers who have unions that insist the only way to teach children is by spending ever increasing amounts of money (despite our currently spending more money per student than ever before)? Dvice:
What happens if you give a thousand Motorola Zoom tablet PCs to Ethiopian kids who have never even seen a printed word? Within five months, they’ll start teaching themselves English while circumventing the security on your OS to customize settings and activate disabled hardware. Whoa.
[. . .]
This experiment began earlier this year, and what OLPC really want to see is whether these kids can learn to read and write in English. Around the world, there are something like 100,000,000 kids who don’t even make it to first grade, simply because there are not only no schools, but very few literate adults, and if it turns out that for the cost of a tablet all of these kids can simply teach themselves, it has huge implications for education. And it goes beyond the kids, too, since previous OLPC studies have shown that kids will use their computers to teach their parents to read and write as well, which is incredibly amazing and awesome.
Completely illiterate children teaching themselves and their equally illiterate parents to read all on their own. No teachers, or huge sums of money, necessary. Wonderful.
Comments Off on Teachers ::
Share or discuss
::
2012-11-01 ::
madlibertarianguy
A Texas state trooper who fired on a pickup truck from a helicopter and killed two illegal immigrants during a chase through the desert was trying to disable the vehicle and suspected it was being used to smuggle drugs, authorities said Friday.
The disclosure came a day after the incident that left two Guatemalan nationals dead on an isolated gravel road near the town of La Joya, just north of the Mexico border.
State game wardens were the first to encounter the truck Thursday. After the driver refused to stop, they radioed for help and state police responded, according to Parks and Wildlife Department spokesman Mike Cox.
When the helicopter with a sharpshooter arrived, officers concluded that the truck appeared to be carrying a “typical covered drug load” on its bed and was travelling at reckless speeds, police said.
After the shots were fired and the truck’s tires blown out, the driver lost control and crashed into a ditch. State police said a preliminary investigation revealed that the shots fired from the helicopter struck the vehicle’s occupants.
Eight people who were in the truck were arrested. At least seven of them were also from Guatemala. No drugs were found.
And nothing else happened.
Comments Off on Shoot First ::
Share or discuss
::
2012-10-30 ::
madlibertarianguy
Though in my experience, most of those who self-describe as a progressive are little more than hacks who want to empower politicians to force their own sense of social and economic morality on others, it does seem that the few truly principled progressives, though many of their remedies to social ills may be antithetical to freedom, are abandoning Obama. Robert Prasch at Translation Exercises:
My point is a simple one: a betrayal has indeed occurred. It was not instigated by Glenn Greenwald, Matt Stoller, the Black Agenda Report, or any other progressive voice. All these writers have done is put these betrayals before the public. The people who betrayed the once-vibrant and hopeful 2008 coalition that elected Barack Obama president are lodged in the White House. Their betrayal was not a consequence of circumstance. It was the inevitable playing out of decisions taken before January 20th, 2009. The above list of appointments amply affirms that Barack Obama and his leading advisors knew, at the moment that the oath of office was taken, that their priorities and agendas would be in many, if not most, instances antithetical to the priorities and agendas of its supporters. There was to be, neither then nor later, a glass “half-full” or even a “quarter-full.” If anyone tells you otherwise, just ask him or her to show you the glass.
The fact is that the Obama Administration, like the Clinton Administration before it, knowingly engaged in a cynical wager. They bet that they could pursue a host of policies fundamentally odious to their core supporters and yet be reelected. The calculation depended on the premise that rank-and-file Democrats would have no other option. Unsurprisingly, the Obama Administration and its surrogates have invested considerable time and energy convincing its former supporters that there is no option.
[. . .]
Well, here’s some news: He’s just not that into you. We’re adults. It is time to get over it. You owe him nothing because he has done nothing for you and plans to do nothing for you – unless you count the positive harm of cutting Social Security and enacting the Trans-Pacific Partnership. If voting for such a person “rocks your boat,” feel free. But surely it can be understood why more than a few people may feel differently.
The quicker that people realize that voting their own conscience, rather than the supposed “lesser of two evils” or being a team player, is the ONLY way to affect real change in America, the better. Voting third party is the ONLY moral choice that can be made.
Comments Off on Dumping Obama ::
Share or discuss
::
2012-10-30 ::
madlibertarianguy
When people actually believe that government can control the movement of animals that have been making these movements for millennia, we need to re-evaluate our expectations of what government is capable of. This is more than simply a case of an incredibly stupid woman (although this woman is incredibly stupid), but one that exposes what we, as a society, are taught about the capabilities of government action. People don’t have these expectations by accident; people are taught to hold these expectations. And we need to fucking stop teaching people that government is capable.
Comments Off on Government as God ::
Share or discuss
::
2012-10-30 ::
madlibertarianguy
Thursday 25 October 2012
-
Filed under
Uncategorized
According to the Obama administration, the sins of the father can be paid for by the son (even after the father had already paid for said sins). Obama mouthpiece Gibbs in response to a question concerning killing an American (born) citizen who is a minor:
I would suggest that you should have a far more responsible father if they are truly concerned about the well being of their children. I don’t think becoming an al Qaeda jihadist terrorist is the best way to go about doing your business.
So now American minors can be droned indiscriminately without a shred of the due process guaranteed them by the Constitution simply because their father allegedly did things that the Chief Executive doesn’t like (but which are too secret to expose).
Obama is a murderer, plain and simple. And he will never face the consequences he richly deserves.
Comments Off on The Sins of the Father ::
Share or discuss
::
2012-10-25 ::
madlibertarianguy