Been Ladin

Ron Paul has been getting a lot of flak for saying he wouldn't have ordered the SEAL raid that killed OBL. Well, retired US Army Ranger John T. Reed (one of my heroes) also would not have ordered the raid, for several reasons; instead, he said it should have been done by the Air Force with three 2,000-pound bombs spaced 30 seconds apart. A "SWAT-type" raid (as he aptly describes it) was irresponsible grandstanding by our Incompetent-in-Chief.

The SWAT approach was simply too risky—again, assuming the fix was not in with the Pakistan Air Force and that the U.S. knew there were only three guys protecting Obama and they were not well armed and booby trapped and all that.
If I were in the military now and were offered the chance to be on or command this operation, I would have said, "No way. This is totally unnecessary. It’s strictly an Air Force operation."
Bin Laden was a symbolic military mission, not a valid military target like, say, Adolf Hitler would have been during World War II. Bin Laden was a financier and leader back in the day, but lately he seems to have evolved into a sort of elder statesman/philosopher with a Just-For-Men colored beard and an intermittent, lame TV show on al Jazeera. You do not risk men’s lives to kill such a person. If the chain of command wanted not only me but also my men to go on this mission, I would have gone to war with my chain of command fighting all the way to the president if necessary and resigning my commission in protest. I went to war with my chain of command over a lot less when it came to mistreating my men when I was an officer.

Kenesaw Mountain Chicken Droppings

To the tune of "Kenesaw Mountain Landis" by Jonathan Coulton:

Kenesaw Mountain Landis was a scumbag and a bigot
and shouldn't even be immortalized in funny songs;
he should be mocked and ridiculed forever
for keeping baseball segregated for so long . . .

Not to mention all the First Amendment vi-o-lations
at the trials of dissidents that he presided at;
while I love Jonathan Coulton I hate Kenesaw Landis
(although he had a cool name)
and that is all that I have to say about that!

Hear, Hear

"The party's over. Neither I nor anyone else in government has a right to anything you earn or own. And you have no right to anything that I or anyone else earns or owns.

"It's okay to love your neighbor, but I have no right to force you to take care of his medical needs ... or support him money if he loses his job ... or hire him at a wage that I deem to be fair ... or help him financially, or otherwise, in any other way.

"From octomoms in California to welfare bums in Massachusetts ... from environmen-talists in Oregon to heroine addicts in New York City ... I have no right to force you to accommodate their desires just because they call them needs. And by no stretch of the imagination are anyone's "needs" rights. The only rights an individual possesses are those given to him by God."

Placeholder Post

David Friedman (and others) talk about the Stupid Party and the Evil Party.

I believe it was H. L. Mencken who said "Each party claims the other is unfit to rule, and they're both right."

Here's a YouTube video from one party about the other.

"How I Became A Libertarian" by Michael Shermer

I'm a big fan of skepticism and skeptics, and my heart breaks and bleeds when I see how many of them are gullible followers of left-wing pseudoeconomics. One of the brightest lights of skepticism is Michael Shermer, who has written a blog post called "How I Became a Libertarian."

Burn Notice

I just posted this conundrum at www.safercampus.org in response to a post entitled "Stealth Conservatives At It Again":

Ashley:
I'm very curious what would persuade you that FIRE is not "a far right organization." I see they have defended (among others) Ward Churchill, as well as a professor who posted an anti-religious cartoon on his office door, and a student who was expelled from school for his environmental activism.

Alternatively, maybe you consider defending free speech for all to be a "far right" viewpoint. Does that mean you think that the "left-wing" viewpoint should be in favor of censorship or political inequality?

Or, you might say something like "Yes, they defend free speech for everyone equally, which is a Good Thing, but they are still mostly right-wing in the rest of their lives." In that case, I would suggest that you should be glad that you and they agree on at least some things, such as freedom of speech and equal legal rights. (I also suggest the same things to my right-wing friends when we discuss the ACLU!)

[Oh, when I say I posted it, I mean I tried to post it, but apparently they didn't accept it. Apparently they are biased against logic and the truth.]