Where Did the Neanderthals Go?

Where Did the Neanderthals Go?

Easy. They went nowhere. They just kept hiding in our homes, behind furniture, all the time.

But now they come creeping out of the woodwork:







And that's the problem.

But this gentleman knows how to treat varmints like those:



Bob Barr. Keeping the Neanderthals from the door.

Spaceship 2, Government 0

Reason and Liberty Central extends its heartfelt congratulations to SpaceX on the launch of the first orbiting spacecraft not developed with stolen money.

A French Objectivist

Received wisdom has it that in collectivist countries like France and Germany, there are few Objectivists or Libertarians. Yet today I met a French Objectivist.

How do I know he's an Objectivist? He always kept going, "Roark! Roark! Roark!"

How do I know he's French? Well, he's a frog.

Quote of the Day

"I despise mediocrity above all things. I fear it, yet I know some of my performances have been mediocre. I also know that I have turned in half a dozen good performances. I call myself a bum; but I have been working hard most of the days of my adult life."

— Errol Flynn

Whatever Happened to Rosie O'Donnell?

Speaking of horror, fascists, and moronic gun control freaks… What's up with Rosie?

The ruins of her face somehow imploded further. I thought that was physically impossible.

Thar she blows:


Image courtesy of David Shankbone, licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License.

Serious self-tanner malfunction? (LOL, I just typed "elf-tanner." Obviously not a product Rosie would use.)

No, I guess she just crept into an oven to get at the cookie batter before it solidifies into cookies. So stick a fork in her: She's done!

Before, it was bad enough:



Image courtesy of Jason Chatting, licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 License.

Now, no doubt due to the same hormone imbalance that caused her hoplophobia, she felt compelled to slap on ten times the amount. Clearly, this knocks her from a 2 down to a 1.

(Yes, of course I've seen a 0. I tried to take a photo of her, but she broke the camera. No joke.)

Or maybe she's such a hoplophobe 'cause every time she passes a mirror she's tempted to improve her looks and state of mind by shooting herself? Anyway, Rosie, you are not allowed to spook folks with that mug of yours, and if you do run around without your bag on, I think you should go to prison.

Man, it'll be a sad day in Heifer County when Kelli Carpenter decides to have her eyesight restored… 6+1= Major mismatch.

"I mean would you want to wake up next to that? … Would you want to kiss that face?"

— The Donald

True in 2006, twice as true now. The Donald rules.

His comb over, you say?

"I don't say my hair is my greatest strength in the world, but it's not terrible," says he.

I agree. That puts him head and shoulders over everybody's favorite gun control freak.

Now, you wonder, what could poor Rosie do to escape comments like these? In fact, there are two things.

First, she could eat less — about a ton a day. Second, she could stop making light of other folks' right to self-defense.

Gun Control Is Bad for the Environment

Gun control freaks will tell you that the lead in bullets is bad for the environment. But did you ever consider how many people that drive to work now would dare to commute by train if only they could get a carry permit so they know they can defend themselves when walking between the train station and their place of work?

Texas Annexed by Krautistan

The Texas state government seems to have settled on the dirty trick they want to use to deprive innocent people of the ruins of their properties.

Hundreds of people whose beachfront homes were wrecked by Hurricane Ike may be barred from rebuilding under a little-noticed Texas law. And even those whose houses were spared could end up seeing them condemned by the state.

…

Worse, if these homeowners do lose their beachfront property, they may get nothing in compensation from the state.

The reason: a 1959 law known as the Texas Open Beaches Act. Under the law, the strip of beach between the average high-tide line and the average low-tide line is considered public property, and it is illegal to build anything there.

Over the years, the state has repeatedly invoked the law to seize houses in cases where a storm eroded a beach so badly that a home was suddenly sitting on public property. The aftermath of Ike could see the biggest such use of the law in Texas history.

So the government can steal your land just because it happens to be under water now.

The former state senator who wrote the law had little sympathy.

"We're talking about damn fools that have built houses on the edge of the sea for as long as man could remember and against every advice anyone has given," A.R. "Babe" Schwartz said.

At least now we know what he thinks of his peons.

"And whether you like it or not, neither the Constitution of the United States nor the state of Texas nor any law permits you to have a structure on state-owned property that's subject to the flow of the tide."

What is the saying? "In America everything is permitted except for what is prohibited by law. In Germany everything is prohibited except for what is permitted by law."

Isn't that patently un-American? What's become of "a government of limited and enumerated powers"? Looks like it took only two hundred years to turn into a dictatorship where people have only limited and enumerated rights.

This is exactly what those Founding Fathers who opposed a Bill of Rights feared: That some future government running amok would turn it into a finite list of the few rights the government has granted to the people.

Of course, no constitution can ever be a final arbiter. Even if a constitution did grant a government the power to pass a fundamentally unfair and cruel law, that wouldn't make that law right. It would only make that constitution wrong.

And what if some flood deposits sediment on a public beach? Do local landowners get to keep the land so created?

No? The law doesn't cut both ways?

As always: rulers and peons, rulers and peons.

Go Get the Guilty Government Goons!

Re American International, Stalin, no, Hitler, no, Roosevelt, no, congress critter

Barney Frank, the influential chairman of the House financial services committee, told the New York Times: "This is one more affirmation that the lack of regulation has caused serious problems. That the private market screwed itself up and they need the government to come help them unscrew it."

As I said before:

Early twentieth century: Fed cuts rates, causes stock market bubble of the roaring twenties, bubble bursts, renowned power brokerage Roosevelt, Hitler, Stalin & Co. claims capitalism has failed and needs to be saved and/or replaced by their plans advertised as "The New Deal," "Fascism," and "Communism."

Early twentieth-first century: Government forces lenders to lower lending standards, causes housing bubble, which bursts into subprime mortgage crisis, big government moon bats claim the free market has failed and needs more government regulation.

Am I saying that American International should have been allowed to fail? No way.

But it should not have been bailed out with taxpayer money. The money should have come out of the personal fortunes of Bush, Bernanke, Frank, and all those politicians and bureaucrats who are responsible for the existence of the Fed and for trying to micromanage and regulate (read: centrally plan) the economy.

If, for instance, a central bank arrogates itself the power to regulate the money supply, those responsible for the central bank should be held responsible for the actions of said central bank, including a too high or too low money supply distorting markets, and any bubbles and bankruptcies resulting from that. Of course, those monies should have been taken from said culprits as simple damages, without giving them any AIG shares.

Lesson: The Moscow communists could not centrally plan the economy of the Soviet Union, Washington cannot micromanage the US economy, and the Fed cannot replace banks and the free financial markets in supplying money.

Sheeple and Heroes

This speaks for itself:

True Grit: well I never doubted that Mrs. Isaacks at 81 would show that. I asked her granddaughter, now that we know she is ok what do you think she doing? She said... she out helping to clean up the mess… and sure enough that's what you tell us in your report. I had the pleasure of being her guest last summer on High Island. I saw the damage from Rita, she had just completed putting her house back on its foundation. What a difference from what I experience here in Marshall at the shelter. These people lay around all day on cots, demanding service and complaining that nobody is helping them take care of their children. They better be glad Mrs. Isaacks isn't here. She would have them organized and working to help themselves. The WalMart employees are telling me that these evacuees are rude to the staff, they come into the store on busses and go thru the store like termites… buying [cosmetics] and complaining about the shelter being nasty. Hey... wait a minute, who making it nasty? You can't keep up… these people are slobs and they wont' do the simplest things for themselves. They complaining that by now FEMA had already given them their $2000 checks… and on and on...while on High Island Mrs. Isaacks and her neighbors are simply cleaning up and trying to stave off a government determined to remove them permanently from their Island. Who do I admire? the High Island people. But who does our government honor? the lazy slugs laying up in the convention center complaining.

A Deal with the Devil

It looks like reason and liberty are prevailing on the Bolivar Peninsula — for now.

"We can get through this; we have for many storms, although this is probably the worst," said firefighter Orbin Thompson, who along with EMS coordinator Robert Isaacks, persuaded authorities Tuesday not to force residents off the island.

...

Isaacks said the deal with the higher authorities isn't without caveats.

"If we leave, we can't come back," he said.

That means no one can go out to get supplies.

"We're working on a plan to address that," he said. "We got gasoline today and we're pooling resources for food. We'll find a way."

Still, it looks like government agents are making life hard for the heroes of Bolivar, instead of helping them. Of course, 250 residents driving to buy supplies in 250 trucks on a highway already half blocked by debris might interfere with a cleanup. Yet, what harm can one man in one truck do if he drives out for supplies, to sell, trade, or gift them to his neighbors?

How much of the government bureaucrats' obstructionism is due to wanting to go ahead with the cleanup, and how much is due to the sadistic pleasure of using force against people, while being able to appease the world and their own conscience: "I'm doing it because it's in their best interests"?