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Why Are You Worse Off?

The answer to our standard-of-living woes is a radical restructuring that would make education, health care, and energy look and behave much more like retail discount stores and apparel. What the American worker needs is more of what Wal-Mart offers and less of what the government offers. If we could then fix the Fed so that it would no longer water down the value of our money, we'd never have to worry about declining real wages again.

Drugs & Sports

One of the ironies of this current obsession with performance-enhancing drugs is that many of the old athletes didn't train at all. Babe Ruth often spent the night smoking, drinking, eating and carousing with women. He would show up at the ballpark hung over, eat 12 hot dogs and wash them down with six bottles of pop, then waddle out to the plate, his big belly emphasized by his spindly legs, and hit home runs. He had phenomenal eyesight, unusual depth perception, extremely good hand-eye coordination and lightning reflexes. Every one of those was a natural gift. You either have them or you don't.

The real solution to the drug problem starts with childhood. Americans have to get over this obsession that winning is everything. Children should be taught that there are things more important than winning, such as good behavior, honesty and the satisfaction of playing the game. Parents should teach children to be gracious in both victory and defeat. It is the obsession with winning that often drives young athletes to steroids and other drugs, and nine times out of 10 that obsession comes from demanding parents.

Winning is everything in a gunfight, but sports are just games to be played for enjoyment. It doesn't really matter who wins as long as both sides have a good time. The old Buddhist saying – Do your best, but don't worry about the outcome – applies to sports as well as to life in general.

Genocide

I'm not trying to be Debbie Downer or anything, just trying to point out how government officials have a long history of slaughtering their own people and others too.

by Eric Margolis

Five years ago, I wrote a column about the unknown Holocaust in Ukraine. I was shocked to receive a flood of mail from young Americans and Canadians of Ukrainian descent telling me that until they read my article, they knew nothing of the 1932–33 genocide in which Stalin's regime murdered 7 million Ukrainians and sent 2 million to concentration camps.

At the end of World War II, Stalin's gulag held 5.5 million prisoners, 23% Ukrainians and 6% Baltic peoples.

Almost unknown is the genocide of 2 million of the USSR's Muslim peoples: Chechen, Ingush, Crimean Tatars, Tajiks, Bashkir, Kazaks. The Chechen independence fighters today branded "terrorists" by the US and Russia are the grandchildren of survivors of Soviet concentration camps.

Add to this list of forgotten atrocities the murder in Eastern Europe from 1945–47 of at least 2 million ethnic Germans, mostly women and children, and the violent expulsion of 15 million more Germans, during which 2 million German girls and women were raped.

Ukraine stands out as the worst in terms of numbers. Stalin declared war on his own people.

Furious that insufficient Ukrainians were being shot, Kaganovitch "the Soviet Adolf Eichmann" set a quota of 10,000 executions a week. Eighty percent of Ukrainian intellectuals were shot.

During the bitter winter of 1932–33, 25,000 Ukrainians per day were being shot or dying of starvation and cold. Cannibalism became common.

The mass murder of 7 million Ukrainians, 3 million of them children, and deportation to the gulag of 2 million (where most died) was hidden by Soviet propaganda. Pro-communist westerners, like the New York Times' Walter Duranty, Sidney and Beatrice Webb, and French Prime Minister Edouard Herriot, toured Ukraine, denied reports of genocide, and applauded what they called Soviet "agrarian reform." Those who spoke out against the genocide were branded "fascist agents."

When war came, Roosevelt and Churchill allied themselves closely to Stalin, though they were well aware his regime had murdered at least 30 million people long before Hitler's extermination of Jews and gypsies began. Yet in the strange moral calculus of mass murder, only Germans were guilty.

Though Stalin murdered 3 times more people than Hitler, to the doting Roosevelt he remained "Uncle Joe." At Yalta, Stalin even boasted to Churchill he had killed over 10 million peasants. The British-US alliance with Stalin made them his partners in crime. Roosevelt and Churchill helped preserve history's most murderous regime, to which they handed over half of Europe.

How To: Fix Health Care in the U.S.

by Dr. Ron Paul

We should remember that HMOs did not arise because of free-market demand, but rather because of government mandates. The HMO Act of 1973 requires all but the smallest employers to offer their employees HMO coverage, and the tax code allows businesses – but not individuals – to deduct the cost of health insurance premiums. The result is the illogical coupling of employment and health insurance, which often leaves the unemployed without needed catastrophic coverage.

While many in Congress are happy to criticize HMOs today, the public never hears how the present system was imposed upon the American people by federal law. As usual, government intervention in the private market failed to deliver the promised benefits and caused unintended consequences, but Congress never blames itself for the problems created by bad laws. Instead, we are told more government – in the form of “universal coverage” – is the answer. But government already is involved in roughly two-thirds of all health care spending, through Medicare, Medicaid, and other programs.

For decades, the U.S. healthcare system was the envy of the entire world. Not coincidentally, there was far less government involvement in medicine during this time. America had the finest doctors and hospitals, patients enjoyed high-quality, affordable medical care, and thousands of private charities provided health services for the poor. Doctors focused on treating patients, without the red tape and threat of lawsuits that plague the profession today. Most Americans paid cash for basic services, and had insurance only for major illnesses and accidents. This meant both doctors and patients had an incentive to keep costs down, as the patient was directly responsible for payment, rather than an HMO or government program.

Prophetic "Isolationists"

In terms of forecasting, it has been the "isolationists" who have been way more accurate than the "they’ll throw roses at our feet" hawks who stubbornly refuse to ever admit that perhaps they were wrong.

No, the answer is not to sit in a corner and suck our thumbs, and at least those of us Right-Libertarian "isolationists" are not really isolationists at all. We’ve never once promoted the idea of withdrawing from the world. That charge is patently false and dishonest. We simply believe that giving a people a taste of the free-market, the spread of wealth, the freedom of ideas, trade, etc. are more effective in changing countries than socialistic wars that destroy wealth, destroy lives, hinder free trade, and inflame global hatred. And, sorry Randians, I would add to that spiritual revival, though many of my Christian friends who still apparently haven’t shed the old medieval crusader mindset seem to be more infatuated with the idea of WWJB (Who Would Jesus Bomb) than WWJD.

We believe as George Washington did. No entangling alliances, war with none if possible, and trade with all. The United States is indeed a great country and instead of being viewed internationally as a belligerent schoolyard bully, we should use our power, wealth, influence, and ideas to promote trade, peace and stability. I understand that these are hippy words to the "realists" who believe that protectionist sanctions and destructive wars are the only way to change society, but we see what a truly great job they’ve done since the end of World War II and how they stubbornly refuse to acknowledge reality in the present.

Armadillo World Headquarters

I love the way this guy, Fred Reed, from LRC writes. He really has a way with words and he often writes about Austin.

You gotta understand. Austin in the Seventies was the great symbiotic corn-fed Texas-plus-hippy evolutionary musical weirdness center, with these blond strong kids from the fields who came in from the farm and hit the freak years, ker-blunch. Young America, the part that mattered anyway, was wobbling around the continent like carmine particles in some sort of macroscopic Brownian-motion. I’d drifted in from – either it was NYC or it wasn’t: I’m sure of it – to see a friend who lived in a cardboard shack mostly up on Montopolis on Crumley Lane, I think. Or somewhere else. It was not a factually fastidious time.

Now, Armadillo World Headquarters – this is getting difficult. You probably didn’t know that armadillos had a headquarters. Well, they did. They’re more organized than you think. It was an open-air music-and-lotsa-beer joint where wild bands played seditious music for dirty rotten anarchistic hippies, like me, and all these Texas gals, the which there ain’t no better on this or any other earth, except maybe in Arkansas, (well, or Alabama, or….) wandered around in tight cut-offs and the music soared and flew and flapped and you hollered “LSD!” at the waitress, who brought you a whole mug of it. (It meant Lone Star Draft. At least during working hours.)

Actually, the ‘Dillo wasn’t alone. There was Soap Creek Saloon where you’d get pitchers of beer and listen in thumping dark to some really good band, which Austin crawled with like ticks on a backwoods dog, and girls would jump on the tables and dance to the twang-and-whoop – we’re talking banjos here, five strings and twelve fingers – because in those days it was still America.

Bush, Not All Bad

Just when you thought he couldn't do anything right, Bush pardons a moonshiner. Now if he would just pardon all the non-violent drug offenders that are overcrowding our prisons.

Bush Upset He Can't Spy on Americans

Any Libertarian in America could have told you that Bush's wiretapping of our phone calls without a warrant violated the 4th amendment. It's great to see that a federal judge finally agrees with us. And many thanks to the A.C.L.U. for bringing this case to court.

And it reminds me of a quote from Ben Franklin, "They that give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety."

A federal judge in Detroit ruled on Thursday that a National Security Agency program to tap the international communications of some Americans without a court warrant violated the Constitution, and she ordered it shut down.

Judge Taylor ruled that the program violated both the Fourth Amendment and a 1978 law that requires warrants from a secret court for intelligence wiretaps involving people in the United States. She rejected the administration’s repeated assertions that a 2001 Congressional authorization and the president’s constitutional authority allowed the program.

“It was never the intent of the framers to give the president such unfettered control, particularly when his actions blatantly disregard the parameters clearly enumerated in the Bill of Rights,” she wrote. “The three separate branches of government were developed as a check and balance for one another.”

Aspartame - The World’s Best Ant Poison

...aspartame (Nutrasweet) was actually developed as an ant poison and only changed to being considered non-poisonous after it was realized that a lot more money could be made on it as a sweetener than as an ant poison, I decided to give it a try.

How does it Work: Aspartame is a neuropoison. It most likely kills the ants by interfering with their nervous system. It could be direct, like stopping their heart, or something more subtle like killing their sense of taste so they can’t figure out what is eatable, or smell, so they can’t follow their trails, or mis-identify their colonies members, so they start fighting each other. Not sure what causes them to end up dying, just know that for many species of ants it will kill them quickly and effectively.

As with any poison I recommend wearing gloves and washing any skin areas that come in contact with this poison, and avoid getting it in your mouth, despite anything the labeling may indicate.

A&M Follow Up

"Texas A&M beats out the University of Texas at Austin."

"As well as Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Stanford, Duke and Rice universities."

Aggies

We're not all stupid.

Check out this ranking guide by Washington Monthly, based on the "student achievement ability" ranking of colleges.

Washington Monthly Ranking	University *Public University	State	U.S. News Ranking **Unranked
1	Massachusetts Institute of Technology	MA	7
2	University of California, Berkeley*	CA	20
3	Pennsylvania State University, University Park*	PA	48
4	University of California, Los Angeles*	CA	25
5	Texas A&M University*	TX	60
6	University of California, San Diego*	CA	32
7	Stanford University	CA	5
8	Cornell University	NY	13
9	South Carolina State University*	SC	**
10	University of California, Davis*	CA	48
11	University of Wisconsin, Madison*	WI	34
12	Yale University	CT	3
13	University of Notre Dame	IN	18
14	University of Chicago	IL	15
15	University of Washington*	WA	45
16	University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign*	IL	42
17	University of Texas, Austin*	TX	52
18	University of Michigan, Ann Arbor*	MI	25
19	College of William and Mary	VA)*	31
20	University of Virginia*	VA	23
21	University of Rochester	NY	34
22	University of California, Riverside*	CA	85
23	Duke University	NC	5
24	Alabama A&M University*	AL	**
25	Case Western Reserve University	OH	3

I Got Mine...

I hope you got yourself a gun.

If You Got It, Flaunt It

I have amazing boobs. They're just perfect. At school, my boobs were bigger than all my friends and I was afraid to show them.

Now, I feel they make my outfits look better. They're like an accessory.

Bill Hicks - One Night Stand - 1990

Bill Hicks is probably my favorite comedian of all-time. If you have an extra 30 minutes to waste, watch this video. Very funny.

Republican Slogans for 2008

This is from the LRC Blog.

"Bomb, Bomb, Bomb, Kill, Kill, Kill. Vote Republican. We're the last best hope of earth."

"Sometimes liberty must be destroyed to protect liberty. Vote Republican. We're the Party of Lincoln."

"Get rich while faking a moral crusade. Vote Republican. We're the Party of Lincoln."

"Nuke Iran. That's what Lincoln would do. Vote Republican."

"Nuke Syria. That's what Lincoln would do. Vote Republican."

"Bush is our Lincoln. Vote Republican." (The first sentence was actually the title of a WorldNetDaily article by one of Jerry Falwell's Liberty University faculty members).

"Vote Republican and we'll bomb them Ay-Rabs into the stone age. With malice toward none and charity toward all, of course."

"Hey, don't blame us. The war came. Vote Republican, we're the Party of Lincoln."

My personal favorite:
"Bomb, Bomb, Bomb, Kill, Kill, Kill. Vote Republican. We're the right-to-life party."

No Soda for Me

An extra can of soda a day can pile on 15 pounds in a single year...

a single 12-ounce can of soda provides the equivalent of 10 teaspoons of table sugar, the Harvard review says

OU Cheaters

It's safe to say most Oklahoma fans were shocked last week to find out quarterback Rhett Bomar had been part of a payroll scam at a local car dealership. It turns out some Texas A&M fans first heard about Bomar's transgression way back in January.

Go Bernard!

The day after Ben Bernanke raises interest rates for the 18th time, Bernard von NotHaus, noted Monetary Architect, will present a $50 Gold Federal Reserve Note for redemption as specified on the Note and guaranteed by the Constitution, at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York at 33 Liberty Street in lower Manhattan.