The Wanna-Be Vice Dictators
Posted by Anthony Gregory at 08:12 PM

They both want more regulation, more totalitarian “oversight,” more national socialism. So far, the only debate is centered around a lie perpetuated by both sides: That the Republicans are for smaller government.

McCain Is a Socialist, Too!
Posted by Anthony Gregory at 08:15 PM

Palin argues that McCain is anything but laissez-faire. After all, he’s for campaign finance censorship and tobacco nanny statism.

She’s Getting Away With It
Posted by Anthony Gregory at 08:19 PM

The key for McCain is to somehow run against the status quo, to run against his own party’s recent legacy. Palin says that we shouldn’t trust national health care, unless we have been happy with the way the feds have been handling things lately. Of course, she is right. Those who hate the Bush legacy — meaning, total statism — should logically oppose socialism too. But the McCain/Palin administration would be more of the same, more Bushism, more socialism. This severe ideological confusion helps both parties, and creates the illusion that there is a difference between the two.

Biden is getting away with it too, blaming the Republicans for shrinking the state. I can’t stand either one.

The Elephant in the Room
Posted by Anthony Gregory at 08:23 PM

They both support the fascist bailout. They both support a trillion-dollar foreign policy and a multi-trillion dollar corporate/entitlement state. They are debating over millions when the state they wish to run spends trillions. Even assuming the greatness of mass democracy, this is a grave injustice. They should be debating big, real issues. Not this trivia.

Meanwhile, the McCain campaign continues to campaign on the fact that for a few days they nominally stopped campaiging.

The GOP’s Embrace of Autarky
Posted by Anthony Gregory at 08:30 PM

When, by the way, did the Republicans and almost all conservatives come to champion the frightening and economically ludicrous concept of “energy independence”? What they mean, of course, is autarky and socialism: All energy produced within America, and every single form of energy — solar, coal, oil, nuclear, wind, etc. — subsidized massively by the federal government. Even the Alaska drilling issue isn’t conceived of with anything approaching market reasoning. “We,” as in the federal government, should drill.

(Although the Republicans are more skeptical of the global warming zeitgist, they seem willing to champion big government programs such as carbon emissions limits to address climate change. Hey, environmentalists, with all the Republican leaders and corporate state adopting this line, you know it’s wrong.)

Biden Just Admitted It
Posted by Anthony Gregory at 08:39 PM

Obama’s Iraq withdrawal plan is the same as Bush’s. Biden does say, however, that the Dems will end the war, eventually. Palin doesn’t even make this much of a promise. On foreign policy, the Dems still seem slightly better than the Repubs.

On the other hand, “Pakistan already has nuclear weapons,” Biden points out, and so, I guess, we should be at war with them.

A Relief
Posted by Anthony Gregory at 08:54 PM

Well, at least both say Israel must be protected at all costs, that nothing is more important, and that Iran is the greatest threat ever. Indeed, they both accuse the other of being insufficiently determined to keep the Persians in line.

They also agreed on gay marriage, just as Bush and Kerry did: More equality under the law but no marriage for homosexuals. Same exact position. Different emphasis.

http://odeo.com/show/19322633/view

MP3

On Memorial Day, 2008, author and radio host Gardner Goldsmith decided to take a different tack. He delved into the fallacies underlying many American beliefs about the Civil War and WWII

Check it out!

And look for Gardner’s new book, “Live Free or Die” at amazon.com!

I don’t believe in any of my posts on my ongoing census ordeal I’ve claimed the census was the official decennial census. However over at the MLP’s blog Serf City I had and was asked how it was I got a 2010 census request in 2008.

It really hadn’t dawned on me to look into how they go about collecting the census and while the law says they can have other surveys the pamphlet they gave me [page 4,5] says “United States Census 2010″ on the front lower right. I figured “The American Community Survey” title was just some fancy thing used to get more people to fill it out. “It’s for the community! To help the children and fix the roads!” type guilt trip. Turns out I was incorrect. The ACS according to Wikipedia:

The American Community Survey (ACS) is a project of the U.S. Census Bureau that replaces the long form in the decennial census. It is an ongoing statistical survey, and thus more current than information obtained by the long form. Many Americans found filling out the long form to be burdensome, intrusive, and its unpopularity was a factor in the declining response rate to the decennial census. In 1995, the Bureau began a process to change the means of demographic, housing, social, and economic information from the census long form to the ACS. Testing began in 1996, and the ACS program began producing test data in 2000, 2001, and 2002. The full program is expected to be implemented by 2010.

Not surprisingly Ron Paul has commented on this:

You may not have heard of the American Community Survey, but you will. The national census, which historically is taken every ten years, has expanded to quench the federal bureaucracy’s ever-growing thirst to govern every aspect of American life. The new survey, unlike the traditional census, is taken each and every year at a cost of hundreds of millions of dollars. And it’s not brief. It contains 24 pages of intrusive questions concerning matters that simply are none of the government’s business, including your job, your income, your physical and emotional heath, your family status, your dwelling, and your intimate personal habits.

The questions are both ludicrous and insulting. The survey asks, for instance, how many bathrooms you have in your house, how many miles you drive to work, how many days you were sick last year, and whether you have trouble getting up stairs. It goes on and on, mixing inane questions with highly detailed inquiries about your financial affairs. One can only imagine the countless malevolent ways our federal bureaucrats could use this information. At the very least the survey will be used to dole out pork, which is reason enough to oppose it.

Keep in mind the survey is not voluntary, nor is the Census Bureau asking politely. Americans are legally obligated to answer, and can be fined up to $1,000 per question if they refuse!

I introduced an amendment last week that would have eliminated funds for this intrusive survey in a spending bill, explaining on the House floor that perhaps the American people don’t appreciate being threatened by Big Brother. The amendment was met by either indifference or hostility, as most members of Congress either don’t care about or actively support government snooping into the private affairs of citizens.

[more]

The Wikipedia entry links to  a World Net Daily article from November, 2007 which reads in part:

Another month is coming, and another 250,000 forms are being mailed out in the U.S. Census Bureau’s perpetual American Community Survey, which demands responses to personal questions about a family’s lifestyle, housing accommodations, work schedules, physical and mental disabilities, income and the like.

That means roughly 250,000 times recipients will see the warning that participation is required by law, and there are penalties including fines for not answering each question. But, in fact, U.S. Census Bureau officials say they’ve never had anyone prosecuted for refusing to provide those intimate details to the government.

“The Census Bureau has never prosecuted anybody,” spokesman Clyve Richmond told WND. “We try to work with people and explain how useful the information is.”

The very next line is:

As WND has reported, the U.S. Census Bureau switched from the surveys once every 10 years, called for in the U.S. Constitution, to annual surveys sent to three million households, to keep the government’s data more up-to-date.

So maybe I wasn’t all that off. They’ve moved the (IMO) unconstitutional long form component from the decennial census to a rolling survey and plan on getting rid of the long form for the 2010 head count census.

http://thirdpartywatch.com/…

minutes after losing the V.P. nomination to Wayne Root on Sunday, Steve Kubby spoke to an angry crowd of about 100 near the Radical Caucus booth challenging them to stay in the LP and work to make it stronger than ever.

http://thirdpartywatch.com/…

Christine Smith, who recently sought the Libertarian Party’s presidential nomination, has left the party.

Following a very angry C-SPAN interview on the convention floor in Denver, which followed an angrier concession speech targeting Bob Barr, Christine Smith wrote the following:

Two very different responses. I understand Kubby’s but I feel more like Smith’s. At least at the moment. After this I can understand her anger. The Barr/Root ticket may have name but it doesn’t have principle. They have till November to convince me otherwise.

Free Talk Live’s Monday show was practically a postmortem of the convention and a lot of ranting and raving about the end of LP. I find it difficult to disagree.

http://www.c-spanarchives.org/…

Thomas DiLorenzo spoke about his interests in economics and Abraham Lincoln, and his investigations into the two areas through his books, The Real Lincoln: A New Look at Abraham Lincoln, His Agenda, and an Unnecessary War (Prima Lifestyles, 2002); and Lincoln Unmasked: What You’re Not Supposed to Know About Dishonest Abe (Crown Forum, 2006). He spoke about his research and methods, as well as many of the results he uncovered during the research. Professor DiLorenzo not only criticizes President Lincoln’s handling of the Civil War, he also criticizes current day historians who, he says, belong to the “church of Lincoln.” Those include James McPherson, Harold Holzer, Harry Jaffa, Eric Foner, and Doris Kearns Goodwin. Professor DiLorenzo also contends that academic historians critical of Lincoln have difficulties getting university level jobs.

An hour long but pretty good.

2nd vote:

Root: 289
Kubby: 255
Williams: 14
NOTA: 6

1st vote:

Root 276
Kubby 209
Williams 40
Burns 20
Lightfoot 14
Schwartz 1

Bob Barr had endorsed Root for VP. It will go to a second ballot.