Worth Watching: Bill Whittle, Stephen Green and Zo Rachel | Right Angle Lightning Round

Just when you think they couldn't pack any more wisdom into one video, they do another Lightning Round.

I tagged this post with Kakistocrat of the Year, because I'm pretty sure Uncle Joe is gonna be the one.

All Hail Diversity, Except for Intellectual Diversity

Censorship, cancel culture, mask mandates, vaccination mandates, oppression and arrogance.

 

You Have Two Cows

I haven't posted in a while, but I found this on Facebook, and I thought, "Hey there's a lotta truth in that thar satire!"

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Charity

• You have two cows.
• You share some milk with your neighbor, 'cause one of their cows just died, and you want to help them until they can get back on their feet.

Socialism

• You have two cows.
• The state takes one and gives it to your neighbor.

Communism

• You have two cows.
• The State takes both and gives you some milk.

Fascism

• You have two cows.
• The State takes both and sells you some milk.

Nazism

• You have two cows.
• The State takes both and shoots you.

Bureaucrat-ism

• You have two cows.
• The State takes both, shoots one, milks the other, and then throws the milk away.

Traditional Capitalism

• You have two cows.
• You sell one and buy a bull.
• Your herd multiplies, and the economy grows.
• You sell them and retire on the income.

Royal Bank of Scotland (Venture) Capitalism

• You have two cows.
• You sell three of them to your publicly listed company, using letters of credit opened by your brother-in-law at the bank, then execute a debt/equity swap with an associated general offer so that you get all four cows back, with a tax exemption for five cows.
• The milk rights of the six cows are transferred via an intermediary to a Cayman Island Company secretly owned by the majority shareholder who sells the rights to all seven cows back to your listed company.
• The annual report says the company owns eight cows, with an option on one more. 
• You sell one cow to buy a new president of the United States, leaving you with nine cows. 
• No balance sheet provided with the release. 
• The public then buys your bull.

Surrealism

• You have two giraffes.
• The government requires you to take harmonica lessons.

An American Corporation

• You have two cows.
• You sell one, and force the other to produce the milk of four cows.
• Later, you hire a consultant to analyze why the cow has dropped dead.

A Greek Corporation

• You have two cows. You borrow lots of euros to build barns, milking sheds, hay stores, feed sheds, dairies, cold stores, abattoir, cheese unit and packing sheds.
• You still only have two cows.

A French Corporation

• You have two cows.
• You go on strike, organize a riot, and block the roads, because you want three cows.

A Japanese Corporation

• You have two cows.
• You redesign them so they are one-tenth the size of an ordinary cow and produce twenty times the milk.
• You then create a clever cow cartoon image called a Cowkimona and market it worldwide.

An Italian Corporation

• You have two cows, but you don't know where they are.
• You decide to have lunch.

A Swiss Corporation

• You have 5000 cows. 
• None of them belong to you.
• You charge the owners for storing them.

A Chinese Corporation

• You have two cows.
• You have 300 people milking them.
• You claim that you have full employment, and high bovine productivity.
• You arrest the newsman who reported the real situation.

An Indian Corporation

• You have two cows.
• You worship them.

A British Corporation

• You have two cows.
• Both are mad.

An Iraqi Corporation

• Everyone thinks you have lots of cows.
• You tell them that you have none.
• No-one believes you, so they bomb the squat out of you and invade your country.
• You still have no cows, but at least you are now a democracy.

An Australian Corporation

• You have two cows.
• Business seems pretty good.
• You close the office and go for a few beers to celebrate.

A New Zealand Corporation

• You have two cows.
• The one on the left looks very attractive...

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Thanks to Mary Beth for posting this on Facebook. 

My Income Redistributes Itself

Last month, my income was redistributed to Verizon Wireless, Puget Sound Energy, Frontier Communications, HostGator, Fred Meyer, Target, Amazon, Wal-Mart, New Egg, Haggens, my local Cruisin Coffee, my local Woods Coffee, Home Depot, my local Ace Hardware store, Best Buy, my local Dairy Queen... My voluntary endowment contributed to jobs for countless people, locally, nationally and worldwide (yes, including China¹), in exchange for goods and services rendered. Win - win!

Last month, my income was also involuntarily redistributed to taxes. Originally, taxation was intended to cover the cost of doing the business of government. Presumably, people received services in return: Protection of our life, liberty and property though the military, police and the court system. The operation of the executive and legislative branches. The bare essentials.

Other things, such as fire protection, road and highway systems, water, sewer, trash pickup, could be done by private enterprise, but government has assumed these roles. This is partly due to the fact that they might be considered "natural monopolies". Lacking competition, a certain amount of regulation and oversight might be necessary (although I would argue that economic forces and public opinion might provide sufficient control). I will grudgingly accept government doing this, since I need these services anyway. However, funded by mandatory taxation, it does invite abuse and runaway costs.

For some reason, public schools, welfare entitlements, health care (including contraceptives and abortions, we now discover²) has been, or is being picked up by government. I would argue that these can and should be done by private citizens, charities or local communities (maybe local government in the case of school boards). I do not want my income being redistributed in this way. I want control over these functions -- they are individual responsibilities. I want to be able to redistribute my earnings to the ones that promote the kind of society I believe in, not the kind of society some president, or some bureaucrat, or some union dependent believes in.

Letter to Senator Murray: The Fiscal Cliff

Patti Murray sent me an email containing the following:

Last week, I returned to the Senate floor to continue to put pressure on my colleagues in the House to pass the Middle Class Tax Cut Act, which the Senate passed in July. The bill would extend tax cuts for 98% of workers and 97% small business owners, and would let the tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans expire as scheduled.  I also discussed Speaker Boehner’s recent proposal that would protect the rich from paying higher rates.  I believe the easiest way to raise revenue from the wealthiest Americans is simply to allow the Bush tax cuts for the top 2% to expire as scheduled. It would move us a long way toward the balanced and bipartisan deal we are aiming toward.

The remark about repealing the Bush tax cuts really galled me, and I'm not "rich". It doesn't affect me directly, but it does fly in the face of economic reality. So I just had to write back,

Dear Senator Murray,

Do you really think you can extract enough money from the so-called "rich" to finance your grand designs? You do realize that money redistributes itself, don't you? What do you think those rich folks would do with their money if you didn't tax it? Smoke it? No! They'd spend it! They'd invest it! And what do those activities have in common? They create new business, new jobs, innovation, and wealth. The only catch is, you have to work to participate. But jobs would be available in abundance if the government would quit erecting roadblocks and threaten the very people who are best situated to create jobs.

The simplest way to get the rich to finance your gargantuan government is to let the Bush tax cuts expire. Yeah, you just keep thinking that. You might as well try it -- the economy's already in the toilet -- and see how that works out for you (and the poor, tragically and ironically).

It's so sad to see my beloved country in a death spiral at the hands of people who haven't a clue about economics, prosperity, and liberty and justice for all.

Mitt Romney said, "I'll get this country working again!", and 51% of the electorate said, "Screw that!" I'm afraid we've passed the point of no return for a sustainable economy.

Sincerely,
Karl Uppiano

Twinkies Will Live On

Twinkies will live on. I predict that someone in China will make them, that's all. People keep blaming corporations and greedy capitalists for sending jobs overseas. Nope, it's the greedy 'progressives' who make doing business in America so unprofitable that no right minded businessman would embark on such a fool's errand.

People like to say "okay, maybe unions are too powerful now, but they filled a need at one time". Nope, anyone who understands the free market knows that wages and prices float to the optimal value for goods and services as long as there is competition for those goods and services.

'Progressives' point to sweatshops and child labor as justification for ignoring economic laws. Markets exist only if people are willing to participate in them. Markets represent opportunities as well as risks. When I was in high school, I was looking for child labor. I found farm work. I would have preferred factory work. A "sweatshop" if you will.

If an employer exploits his workers, there is a price to pay. It turns out, that price was the formation of unions and government regulation instead of the natural and inevitable market correction. I think those artificial measures were poor solutions, for which we are paying dearly now.

There is no way that wages would ever float to zero. Think about it: Employers need workers to produce their product. Smart workers will naturally find the employers who will pay fair market value for their services. Stupid or lazy workers might keep working for sub-standard wages, but the employer gets what he pays for, doesn't he? And it's an incentive for the stupid or lazy workers to get smarter and become more industrious.

If the fair market value for labor ever went to zero (or even if it went below the ridiculous and arbitrary minimum wage set by government in complete ignorance of the fair market value), the work force would literally die off, or leave the country, and employers would have to start paying more if they wanted to stay in business. It is simply economic reality that they would ignore at their peril.

Similarly, it is also economic reality that wages may be lower than workers might want. They can try to ignore that reality by forming unions, striking, and using other strong-arm techniques to blackmail employers into paying more for their services, but reality doesn't take a vacation. Sometimes, reality bites. And now, reality has taken a big bite out of Hostess Twinkies.

The employer, overburdened with government regulations, including ObamaCare, union demands and a down economy, has gone under, resulting in the loss of an employer, the loss of thousands of jobs nationwide, including -- eventually -- secondary and tertiary ones in related businesses. And it has deprived millions of people of the simple, if unhealthy pleasure of eating a Twinkie. The union could have helped prevent this by accepting reality and reducing its demands. Instead, it killed the goose that lays the golden eggs, and for what?

Economic laws are as real as the laws of thermodynamics, which say there is no such thing as perpetual motion. Economic laws say there is no such thing as a free lunch. But not a day passes in which some 'inventor' claims to have invented a perpetual motion machine, or some 'progressive' claims to have discovered a free lunch. Economic stimulus, strikes, and minimum wage are the same as giving the perpetual motion machine a spin. It will coast for a while, but it soon grinds to a halt. It. Doesn't. Work. I blame the schools. Way to go, 'progressives'!

Romney's Free Market vs. Obama's Socialism

Thanks to Dave for sending me this.

Obama's Kill List, And Mine

Barack Hussein Obama has a kill list. Kill lists are for tyrants. That is all I have to say about that.

I too, have a kill list, but it is predicated on time travel, so I probably don't fit the description of a common tyrant. I would use time travel to go back and kill the following people at birth, or at least before they became powerful enough to defeat me. Using advanced technology, I would locate them in time and space, and dispatch them with weapons not available in their time:

• Mohammed - dictator, tyrant, warrior, pedophile, false prophet. Invented a religion as a form of crowd control. He and his religion are responsible for much death and destruction since its inception. 
• Vladimir Lenin - political theorist, revolutionary, tyrant, dictator, communist, father of the USSR. He and his ideology and regime are responsible for much death and destruction since its inception. 
• Josef Stalin - politician, dictator, bureaucrat, communist, successor of Lenin as premier of the USSR.  He and his ideology and regime are responsible for 20,000,000 deaths since its inception. 
• Adolph Hitler - politician, dictator, tyrant, national socialist (Nazi), fuhrer of Nazi Germany. He and his ideology are responsible for much death and destruction during World War II. His regime killed 6,000,000 Jews. But WWII claimed approximately 66,000,000 lives. Hitler was responsible. 
• Mao tse Tung - politician, dictator, tyrant, communist, premier of Communist China. He and his ideology and regime are responsible for 40,000,000 deaths since its inception. 
• Pol Pot - terrorist, dictator, tyrant, communist, leader of Kmer Rouge in Cambodia. He and his ideology are responsible for approximately 1,650,000 deaths during his reign of terror from 1975 ~ 1978.

I saved the worst for last:

• Karl Marx - political theorist, invented communism (and communist lite -- socialism), he and his ideology is responsible for much death and destruction since its inception (61,650,000 deaths, if you add up the deaths from all major communist regimes -- double that if you include Hitler's "contribution"). Also responsible for much pain and suffering in this country from around 1913 to the present time, due to the perversion of our constitutional government by his socialist followers in the US. 

Oh, and if I had a time machine, I'd stop and see if I could get Beethoven to play me a piano sonata if I gave him a ride in my time machine.

You Are the Merchandise

If you're not paying for something, you're not the customer; you're the product being sold. ~ blue_beetle, Metafilter discussion.

Any time you think you're getting free stuff, think again. There's no such thing as a free lunch. Free radio, free TV, free email, free health care, free education. Forget it. It isn't free. You're being sold.

Just out of college, I was the chief engineer for a radio station. The radio station had a sales department. Did the sales department go door to door, soliciting listeners? No, the sales force went business to business selling listeners, selling time to advertisers to propagandize the listeners. Sure, there is some kind of symbiosis between listeners, advertisers and the radio station. The station needs listeners in order to sell their time to the advertisers, so the radio station provides useful services and entertainment to the listeners, because more listeners means higher ratings, which translate into more advertising dollars.

Listeners don't like advertising all that much, but they tolerate it for the free music and news. But make no mistake, the listeners are the merchandise. If you watch free television, or use free services on the web (Google maps, Google mail, etc.), then you, your activity patterns, and your privacy are being sold. Someone has to pay for all that free stuff. And it's you. Oh, right -- it's the advertisers. But who pays the advertisers? You do. In response to their propaganda advertising.

What about public broadcasting? Aren't PBS and NPR supported by viewers like you? Aren't their programs made possible by grants from The Ford Foundation, or The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation? Or Mobile? Well, maybe insofar as individual viewers do make a pledge now and then, yes. But the foundations? The commercial supporters? Those are mini-advertisements. And, PBS and NPR have to keep doing what those foundations like, or they'll stop supporting public broadcasting. It's still propaganda.

Which brings us to government grants for public broadcasting. Everything up until here has been voluntary. Listeners who don't like being sold can turn off their radio. You don't have to patronize the advertisers, or contribute to NPR, or the foundations and corporations making public broadcasting possible. You can opt out at any time. Except when it comes to your taxes. The government taxes you, and you have no recourse but to pay -- under penalty of law -- without any significant say in how your taxes are spent, even if it goes against your beliefs (no taxation without representation -- are your beliefs being represented? Anything? Hello?)

When the government buys listeners from NPR and PBS, they are buying your eyes, ears and mind, and NPR and PBS are selling propaganda time. Public broadcasting is always in need of cash, and the government has tremendous power over them, because it can withdraw its grants any time it doesn't like what the network says or does. You say it can't, or doesn't happen in America. Really?

If men were angels, no government would be necessary. If angels were to govern men, neither external nor internal controls on government would be necessary. ~ James Madison (Federalist 51)

Yes We Can! (When Government Says We Can)

From an email circulating on the Internet:

This video is fresh (for the public). It was made just six weeks ago in the Atlantic, just off Newport News (Hampton Roads), Virginia .

These are the latest sea trials of the F-35B on the USS Wasp. They were very successful, with 74 VL's and STO's in a three week period. The media and the program critics had predicted that we would burn holes in the deck and wash sailors overboard. Neither of which happened. You will notice a sailor standing on the bow of the ship as the jet rotates. That was an intentional part of the sea trials.

The USS Wasp is an amphibious assault ship designed to embark a Marine Expeditionary Unit. It is capable of simultaneously supporting rotary and fixed wing STOVL aircraft and amphibious landing craft operations. For this test deployment the USS Wasp was outfitted with special instrumentation to support and measure the unique operating environment as the F-35B conducted short takeoffs and vertical landings.

No catapult... No hook...

The shape and scope of warfare – worldwide – just changed.

Okay, but forget about warfare for a minute: That aircraft is amazing! Sure, we've had VTOL before, but watch the grace and precision with which this thing moves. This is what Americans can do when we put our minds to something. Imagine what we could accomplish if we didn't need so much government oppression approval and regulation for things to be "Made in USA".

The Road to Serfdom

I'm reading The Heritage Foundation edition of The Road to Serfdom by Friedrich A. Hayek. I ran across this passage, which should be of interest to OWS as well as Tea Partiers. According to Friedrich A. Hayek,

Great danger lies in the policies of two powerful groups, organized capital and organized labor, which support the monopolistic organization of industry. The recent growth of monopoly is largely the result of a deliberate collaboration of organized capital and organized labor where the privileged groups of labor share in the monopoly profits at the expense of the community and particularly at the expense of those employed in the less well organized industries.

Hayek also says that it is bad government policy that allows monopolies to develop and flourish. I think OWS is missing part of the picture, and I think some conservatives are in denial about crony capitalism and government. Of course, if our politicians would follow The Constitution, these problems would be much less severe. Unfortunately, politicians being a product of the government education system, know bupkis about the founding principles or The Constitution. So nothing will really change until we fix the ignorance problem.

Hayek wrote this book in 1944, and things certainly appear to be much worse now than they were then.

Quantitative Easing Explained

This has become quite viral on many conservative blogs, so I figured I'd throw my hat in the ring:

I Don't Hate Linux or Microsoft

Here's a very interesting video called "Why Linux (Still) Sucks (And What We Can Do to Fix It)". Having recently settled on Ubuntu as my non-Windows test platform for my multi-platform software development (both for my job and as a hobby), I tried installing several other distributions (distros). I was not impressed with most of them in terms of usability, installability, the level of knowledge and research necessary to get them working. So this video comes at a good time. Technically, it is good. But I have a few quibbles with the presenter on some fundamental principles:

1. The fact that Apple and Microsoft would not make these mistakes is because PEOPLE VOTE WITH THEIR DOLLARS. Sure, if Linux is free, it doesn't set very high expectations. The fact that it is good as it is, speaks well of the quality of the developers that are working on it, but they are not responsible to their customers. It is still a hobbyist-enthusiast-haxxor's platform.
2. The fact that video card manufacturers have stopped supplying Linux drivers for their hardware doesn't make them "bad people". They have limited resources in a very competitive market. It is very expensive to design and build cutting edge video systems. They have to focus their limited resources where they can get enough return on investment to not get left in the dust and go out of business. It's a matter of survival.
3. I'm glad he does mention funding. People just have to eat. Proprietary software isn't evil.

I might like to design video cards, or drivers, operating systems or weather software for free and the pure enjoyment of it in my spare time, but I have to feed my family. Even if I think the government can feed me and my family, somebody has to produce the goods and services for basic human survival. The free market and a currency system is how we establish the exchange rate, and place value on those goods and services, including video drivers, operating systems and computer hardware.

Free software is an anomaly, made possible by the amazingly high level of prosperity and standard of living that capitalism and the free market provides. If we did not have this level of prosperity, nobody would have the leisure time to produce software for free. We'd all be busy digging in the dirt for food, avoiding being eaten by wild animals, fighting disease, and trading food for shoes or something.

The best way to get open-source software to "work" is to work with human nature. Presently, it works against it. Human nature is motivated by profit. One of my progressive friends said "the free market is motivated by greed". Maybe so. But if you work against human nature, you will fail. If you work with it, you will succeed, to the benefit of all, regardless of motivation. That's what Thomas Jefferson was referring to when he wrote "the laws of nature and of nature's God" in the Declaration of Independence.

Richard Stallman might not like it, but it is a fundamental, non-negotiable fact of life, like gravity and the speed of light, or the value of PI - whether you prefer Barack Obama or Glenn Beck.

If Government Were Less Intrusive, Politics Would Be Less Divisive

One of the reasons that politics has become a blood sport in the last several decades, is because of the extent to which government has inserted itself into our daily lives. Government redistributes our wealth and it regulates practically everything we do.

It pits the haves against the have nots as it takes wealth from those who earned it, and gives it to those who have not. That isn't charity; it's slavery. It pits special interests against We the People, as special interests use the force of government to ram their agenda down our throats.

The original idea was that we all mind our own business, voting for our own best interest with our dollars every day of the week in a self-regulating free market. The first amendment guaranteed freedom of speech and of the press, so we could freely argue all sides of an issue with no fear of government reprisal.

The policy of the American government is to leave their citizens free, neither restraining nor aiding them in their pursuits. -- Thomas Jefferson

Government provided a minimal set of laws and services to provide for a civil society in which We the People were at liberty to lead our individual lives. It wasn't until the idiotic idea of "social justice" replaced "liberty and justice for all" that we began our downard spiral into oligarchy and strife.

If government were less intrusive, politics would be less divisive. We need an impartial government that once again guarantees liberty and justice for all.

What It Means To Be a Tea Partier

I posted a little rant over at the Bellingham Tea Party Web Site.

Campaign Against Cap & Trade

Nancy Pelosi is trying to force the Waxman-Markey Cap & Trade bill to a vote tomorrow. The following members of congress still need to be convinced that Cap & Trade is a bad idea:

Republicans:

• Bartlett (MD)
• Bono Mack (CA)
• Castle (DE)
• Dent (PA)
• Ehlers (MI)
• Frelinghuysen (NJ)
• Gerlach (PA)
• Inglis (SC)
• Tim Johnson (IL)
• Kirk (IL)
• Lance (NJ)
• LoBiondo (NJ)
• Petri (WI)
• Platts (PA)
• Ros-Lehtinen (FL)

Democrats:

• Altmire (PA)
• Bright (AL)
• Dahlkemper (PA)
• Drieshaus (OH)
• Ellsworth (IN)
• Kissell (NC)
• Kratovil (MD)
• Kanjorski (PA)
• Minnick (ID)
• Teague (NM)

You can call them at at 202-224-3121 and say something like:

I am not in your district, but as an American, I will be directly affected by your vote on the Waxman-Markey Cap & Trade bill. I cannot vote for you in the next congressional election, but I can contribute to you or your opponent -- depending on how you vote. I am going to keep track, and contribute aggressively.

With that in mind, please consider my most emphatic opposition to the Waxman-Markey Cap & Trade bill that is being stampeded through congress this week. This bill will have a minuscule impact on our climate, and a devastating impact on our economy and our individual liberty. It will give the federal government unprecedented influence over production and commerce. A statist would like that, but a classical liberal definitely would not. Please listen to the voters, and reject this bill.

If you call, use your own words of course, and include your own concerns. The only encouraging thing about this is that Cap & Trade can be repealed easily, whereas a new entitlement program like nationalized health care (the next big assault on our liberty) cannot. One thing at a time, I guess.

Defining and Avoiding Tyranny

One definition of tyranny is special interests using government to force their agenda down your throat. It doesn't matter if it is the religious right or the loony left. Environmentalists, Wall Street, feminists, oil companies, gays, labor unions, auto manufacturers -- all do it. When we have an activist federal government that regulates our lives and doles out favors and free stuff, you will have special interests lined up around the block, all trying to get their agenda enacted into law, or make the government their benefactor in perpetuity.

After the Tea Parties, one leftist that I correspond with asked me why nobody was this stressed out when the Bush administration was spending like there was no tomorrow, and shredding the Constitution. Many of us were stressed out, but both sides -- all sides -- are guilty of this. Under the circumstances, it is a matter of political survival. It doesn't seem so bad as long as our side is the "in group". But when the "other side" gets in, we get mad as hell. The acrimony will not subside until the federal government returns to the Enumerated Powers specified in the Constitution.

The federal government was originally designed to be a lightweight framework to tie together the various member states, providing basic common services, such as a monetary currency, and diplomatic and military protection. As far as I can tell, the individual states can do pretty much whatever they want, as long as they don't get crosswise with the Bill of Rights. This diversity provides We the People the liberty to move to a state where the weather and the politics suits our clothes.

This Is a Good Sign

From a Tea Party somewhere. Stolen from/courtesy of http://www.sondrak.com/

Elections Have Consequences!

I was sitting in a company-wide staff meeting today, having a briefing with my remaining co-workers about how we go forward following a massive layoff yesterday -- the second one in three months. One of my co-workers asked what assurance we have that the same thing won't happen again in three months. I had to bite my tongue to keep from saying "Stop voting for big government, anti-liberty, anti-capitalist politicians! Elections have consequences!"

The Intolerance of the Left

A local business had volunteered space for a non-partisan sign making party for the non-partisan Bellingham Tea Party, until a large number of (leftist?) customers called and threatened to boycott. The business was forced to withdraw their offer or risk financial ruin.

Now, even though the sign making party and the Tea Party are non-partisan events, it is obvious that the values expressed are primarily conservative. However, I do have to ask: Do those in opposition to the sign making party and the Tea Party approve of the government spending our children's and our unborn grand children's earnings? Do they approve of less individual liberty and more government control? Do they believe that everyone should be forced by government to adopt their agenda against our will?