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"I rode from the Veteran’s for Peace Convention in Dallas on the 'White Rose,' a bus that had a huge ‘IMPEACH’ written on the side of it. On the bus was a picture of Sophie Scholl and her brother Hans and some of the quotes of the series of 5 leaflets that the Society spread denouncing Hitler from June 1942 to February 1943, when they were caught and executed. They were an obviously brave and moral group of wide awake Germans who sacrificed their lives to try and change the horrible direction that their nation was going in."
http://www.commondreams.org/archive/2008/01/01/6102/
"[W]hy do I take any interest in the trite popularity contest now being staged by the two major political parties to pick their candidates for president of these over-governed states? If the ultimate winner is nothing more than a prettied-up tribal chieftain who will use political power to shed blood and crush freedom, why bother to pick a favorite? Well ... because if you know that somebody will be cracking the whip, it really does matter who has the whip hand."
http://www.tuccille.com/blog/2008/01/wading-into-muck.html
"Journalists with the corporate press are enthusiasts of war, empire, global capitalism, political correctness, Leviathan statism, and other respectable projects of the Power Elite. Such things are the antithesis of Ron Paul."
http://counterpunch.org/taylor01022008.html
"When we are at the point in history where we cannot change the electoral system, then we need to think tactically about what we can do right now. What will a Paul victory in the primaries do? Not whether a vote for Paul in the Republican primaries endorses his decentralizing philosophy on reproductive choice. President Paul will not be writing legislation."
http://www.dissidentvoice.org/2008/01/ron-pauls-revolution/
"The American police have never prevented crimes. In olden days, the police solved crimes by finding the guilty party. No more. In our time, the police create crimes. And that is why the US prison population is twice the size of China's, an authoritarian country with a population four to five times larger than America's."
http://www.counterpunch.org/roberts01022008.html
"Part of the problem is the mentality that comes with this kind of legislation. The gambling ban seems to have been supported by two similar approaches to governance that, although they come from opposite sides of the political spectrum, are generally quite similar. From the right, many feel that if they're personally morally opposed to a particular consensual activity, it ought to be banned for everyone. From the left, it's the mentality that because some people can't engage in a particular activity responsibly and without harming themselves, that activity ought to be banned for everyone. One is moral paternalism. The other is Nanny State paternalism. But the result is the same. The government makes your decisions for you."
http://www.reason.com/news/show/124193.html
"[W]hat if the federal government is actually less financially responsible than the American public? Could it be that the average mall rat, with all of his or her excessive spending and credit card debt, is actually a better steward of resources than the Washington bureaucrat?"
http://www.acton.org/commentary/423_fiscal_responsibility.php
"[M]y heart is bleeding that the lowest paid federal judge is 'only' making $165,200 a year, which Mr. Roberts thinks is insufficient anymore, probably for the same reason that everybody else has for being dissatisfied with their salaries, too; prices of things are up so high! The salary of Supreme Court members, in case you were wondering, is $203,000, and Roberts himself makes $212,000. More than a million bucks every five years. I probably don't need to remind you, but I will anyway, that these salaries are almost 500% more than the average HOUSEHOLD income!"
http://www.dailyreckoning.com/Writers/Mogambo/DREssays/MG010408.html
"Each and every one of us is to some extent acting hypocritical - this is a necessary condition in a society so totally entrenched with state control and state power. What separates the hypocrites from the non-hypocrites is whether the advocate for liberty makes sure to act as little as possible in the political realm or not."
http://www.perbylund.com/blog/?p=36
"Gun ownership by itself is in the long term incapable of changing the power of the government. What society needs are intellectual weapons instead. There is nothing more disarming than the desire to be free. Opposition and resistance by millions is worth more than a few armed rebels. The role of the armed rebels is important, of course, but they can only thrive when the majority of the population supports the ideals of liberty, otherwise they would themselves be seen as criminals."
http://www.strike-the-root.com/81/lora/lora1.html
"The problem comes down to a failure to understand that scarcity is a pervasive feature of the world and the need for a system that rationally allocates scarce resources to socially optimal ends. There is only one system for doing so, and it is not central planning but the free-market price system."
http://www.mises.org/story/2831
"If there is a rule, I am apt to follow it without thinking about it. I wouldn't dream of trying to get through the express lane at the market with one too many items."
http://emergencybackupdog.blogspot.com/2008/01/authoritarians-for-anarchy.html
"Clearly, we have entered a time of massive, sweeping political changes, with all sides shifting alliances and everything up for grabs. The Establishment is just barely keeping the whole thing suppressed just now, but their hold—witness the Ron Paul campaign—is beginning to weaken. A proposal like this could ride the wave of those changes, sweeping old things away, clearing the field for new things."
http://www.ncc-1776.org/tle2007/tle449-20071230-02.html
"The vaunted Clinton machine is sure to rev up its operations to salvage Hillary Clinton’s political future – and the Bush Family’s Republican Establishment likely will settle on an acceptable GOP representative to protect the status quo, possibly John McCain."
http://www.consortiumnews.com/2008/010408.html#When:10:35AM
"Fizzled news story of the day: A group of Lakota Indians have withdrawn from treaties with the U.S. and announced plans to form their own nation. Apparently the Lakota are unhappy with a $1 billion settlement offered to them by the U.S. government for land it took from them back when the U.S. was busy creating a country based on the ideals of liberty and democracy by slaughtering and starving all the previous inhabitants."
"I turned 90 in the year that government finally collapsed, so if anyone had cause for concern about that decapitation of the health care system, I was the one. At this age, one's good health assumes an importance never considered in the carefree days of youth and prime."
http://www.strike-the-root.com/81/davies/davies1.html
"[O]ur most powerful and well-connected elite are free to break the law with impunity, exempt from any consequences. While exempting themselves, these same figures impose increasingly Draconian 'law and order' solutions on the masses to ensure that even small infractions of the law prompt vigorous prosecution and inflexible, lengthy prison terms."
http://www.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/2007/12/30/oligarchy/index.html
"The claim that the assassination was an attack on democracy and freedom is dubious because Bhutto’s two spells as prime minister of Pakistan were not notable for either one. Whether it was an attack on the United States depends on what that means. It certainly was not an attack on the American people. How could it be construed that way, unless one has such an imperialist notion of 'our interests' that nothing can happen in the world without impinging on them?"
http://www.fff.org/comment/com0801a.asp
"In terms of statutory protections and privacy enforcement, the United States is the worst country in the 'democratic world' and is outranked by both India and the Philippines on overall privacy protection. The U.S. has fallen into the 'black' category reserved for countries with 'endemic surveillance'."
http://www.news.com/8301-10784_3-9838743-7.html
"[I]n every country where ID cards have ever been introduced, they have changed the relation between the individual and the state in a way that has not proved beneficial to the individual. I am not just talking Nazi Germany, but everywhere."
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/opinion/main.jhtml?
xml=/opinion/2008/01/01/do0101.xml
"Both legally and politically, it's hard to imagine a more significant scandal than the President and Vice President deliberately obstructing the investigation of the 9/11 Commission by concealing and then destroying vital evidence which the Commission was seeking. Yet that's exactly what the evidence at least suggests has occurred here."
http://www.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/2008/01/02/obstruction/index.html
"Why is anyone surprised that the upcoming 'debate' in New Hampshire - co-sponsored by the GOP and Fox News - would exclude Ron Paul? Such a decision only adds evidence for the proposition that the major political parties and mainstream media are a unitary system employed by the corporate-state establishment to maintain its authority over the nation."
http://www.lewrockwell.com/blog/lewrw/archives/018115.html
"How nice to be moved, while holding the proxy of all humankind, by the sight of Heartland Americans measuring our politicians against the nation's shared values and ideals. Just what those shared values and ideas might be -- if they exist at all outside the inflated, self-deluding rhetoric of our comforting myths and unexamined assumptions -- is left unsaid here. "
http://www.chris-floyd.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=1396&Itemid=135
"Nick Gillespie appeared on Fox News Channel's The O'Reilly Factor on January 2, 2008 to discuss the Ron Paul phenomenon and American interventionism in the Middle East."
http://www.reason.tv/video/show/220.html
"The first thing to note that is no advocate of free international trade ever contended that competition from low-wage countries doesn't create difficulty for someone. Life is change, and change requires adjustment. The changes wrought by free trade of course may require some people to alter their job plans. But world trade is hardly the only source of change. Domestic competition and innovation also require workers to make adjustments. Ask the slide-rule and typewriter makers."
http://www.fee.org/in_brief/default.asp?id=1794
"Do you want Americans making little flags to sell at circuses, or do you want them to be available to take higher-paying jobs that require more education? If you want to stick Americans in those unskilled jobs, I’ll bet that there will be Chinese scientists and Indian engineers and Pakistani computer scientists who will be more than eager to take your “American” jobs."
http://www.fff.org/freedom/fd0710f.asp
"Prescription drugs only mimic a single isolate and rely on a single mechanism of action for effectiveness. Their non-toxic, plant based predecessors contain a multitude of active substances. And instead of depending on one single method of protecting the body, they work in unison to increase the power of the whole immune system. This is the 'adaptogenic effect.' Whether you are fighting flu, getting over whooping cough, or warding off the next Super Bug, adaptogens are your key to beating them! "
http://www.newswithviews.com/Ellison/shane34.htm
"As the major labels abandon DRM, it becomes increasingly likely that new distribution channels will rise up capable of challenging Apple's market-dominating iTunes Store. Amazon's DRM-free store, for instance, offers variable pricing. Social network sites like Facebook and MySpace could also potentially provide outlets for the sale of DRM-free songs as well. The record labels want that type of flexibility, which Apple has been reluctant to provide."
http://blog.wired.com/underwire/2008/01/drm-free-future.html
"The truth is that there's always an overruling purpose that can be invoked to trump freedom -- just this once, because the stakes are so high. It might be the environment, or health costs, social cohesion, public order, or your immortal soul. Just about everybody you know has a bug up his butt about some issue that's just too important to leave to people to decide for themselves. For the collective good, decisions must be made from the top down."
http://www.tuccille.com/blog/2008/01/thomas-edison-gets-boot.html
"Presidential election years usually are not recessionary but next year will be an exception. Several economic factors are colliding in an almost perfect storm to markedly slow the general economy and the stock market."
http://www.mises.org/story/2805
"This 'everybody takes a small hit', instead of a few people taking a large hit, is the whole freaking point behind derivatives, you ignorant morons! The stupid theory is that risk has been spread around, and now everybody suffers a little misery, instead of the scumbag banks and the Wall Street sharpies having to absorb all the losses themselves, even though it seems fair since they made all the damn money!"
http://www.dailyreckoning.com/Writers/Mogambo/DREssays/MG123107.html
"Today, we're all lab rats in an uncontrolled, unregulated mass human experiment the results of which are unknown. The risks from it are beyond measure, it will take many years to learn them, and when they're finally revealed it will be too late to reverse the damage if it's proved GM products harm human health as independent experts strongly believe. Once GM seeds are introduced to an area, the genie is out of the bottle for keeps. ... They're produced and sold to consumers because agribusiness giants like Monsanto, DuPont, Dow AgriSciences and Cargill have enormous clout to demand it and a potent partner supporting them - the US government and its agencies, including the Departments of Agriculture and State, FDA, EPA and even the defense establishment."
http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=viewArticle&articleId=7716
"History is clear: Over and over again, the U.S. government places fascists in powerful positions. Once in office, they exploit wars and national tragedies to roll back hard-won freedoms. They're Democrats as well as Republicans."
http://www.countercurrents.org/rall050108.htm
"The last two presidential elections were complete abominations that would have been condemned out of hand as skewed, corrupted and fatally flawed processes had they taken place in some other country – such as Ukraine, say, or Kenya. (And the presidential elections are just the tip of a large slushy iceberg in our [dysfunctional] democracy.) But beyond the electoral monkey business there is the aforementioned fact that only those who pay [obeisance] to the voracious American war machine are allowed to contend seriously for power. In similar fashion, only those who paid [obeisance] to Marxist-Leninist doctrine were allowed to contend for seats on the Soviet Politburo."
http://www.chris-floyd.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=1395&Itemid=135
"How is the press interpreting the assassination of Benazir Bhutto in Pakistan? ... The newspaper [Wall Street Journal] says it is boosting McCain and Giuliani’s candidacies. They are identified as anti-terror and national security candidates."
http://www.lewrockwell.com/rozeff/rozeff188.html
"Isn’t possible that the US allies decided to cease their violence and ethnic cleansing in Baghdad to give the impression that President Bush’s genius ‘surge’ strategy has paid off, thus discrediting all of his detractors, both at home and abroad? Is it not ingenious that the Iraq ‘success story’ is now, retrospectively, associating such upbeat and positive terminologies - security, peace, safety, hope - with a most sinister act, that of military invasion of a sovereign country and the subjugation of its people?"
http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=viewArticle&code=BAR20080105&articleId=7731
"Perhaps one reason that Voltaire's Philosophical Letters created such a backlash from the leviathan French state was that the logic [of] its arguments, if carried beyond religion, struck a blow at any attempt by government to impose common values or common practices on the people. Indeed, Voltaire's argument against homogeneity continues to have deep implications for the centralized policies of all governments."
http://www.ifeminists.net/e107_plugins/content/content.php?content.287
"A deeply unpopular government, in Pinson’s words, facing a unified opposition in parliament just plowed ahead as if it had the mandate of heaven, as it could and did command majority support among the people it governed. Despite whatever popular sentiment existed against Bismarck as chancellor, there was no popular sentiment against the state. And the political culture of Prussia did not allow for any opposition to either government or state."
http://www.lewrockwell.com/featherstone/featherstone72.html
"Let's turn for a moment to the popular Depression. Yes, the United States was still on the gold standard at the start of it, and FDR took the United States off the standard in 1933. So from Frum's interpretation, one would expect that the unemployment rate shot up to its highest levels in the first year — he said 'overnight' after all — and at the very least, started falling quickly after 1933 once FDR installed the shock absorbers. The only problem is that history looks nothing like this narrative. "
http://www.mises.org/story/2824
"The first asteroid is discovered by Italian astronomer Giuseppe Piazzi. Piazzi, who christened it Ceres Ferdinandea (later shortened to Ceres when King Ferdinand IV fell out of favor, as monarchs have a tendency to do), at first thought he’d discovered a fixed star, but then detected it moving among the background of stars and decided it was a planet."
http://www.wired.com/science/discoveries/news/2008/01/dayintech_0101
"For years the U.S. has attempted to mold Pakistan. The result is not pretty: an unstable, undemocratic state which possesses nuclear weapons, border provinces which offer safe haven to Taliban and al-Qaeda forces, and people who loath the American government. The murder of opposition leader Benazir Bhutto is merely the latest blow to Washington's plans."
http://www.antiwar.com/bandow/?articleid=12154
"No veteran wants Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD). In fact most will fight it for years, and when things really get out of hand, they have to go through the embarrassment of asking the Veterans Administration for help."
http://www.fff.org/freedom/fd0710e.asp
"In the classic Shakespearean sense there has been much sound and fury over the status and intent of Iran's nuclear program, but not a whole lot of light has been shed. Much the same can be said about Ahmadinejad."
http://www.cato.org/pub_display.php?pub_id=8873
"It is also the historical legacy of every single public figure and presidential candidate who fails to stand up -- right now, today, and every single day-- and demand that this abomination come to an immediate end, and that its perpetrators face the full measure of justice for what they have done. Who gives a damn about Obama's 'elevating rhetoric' or Hillary's 'tough fight-back' in New Hampshire -- or any of the other soul-rotting bullshit of the presidential campaign -- when this innocent blood drenches us all, day after day after day? "
http://www.chris-floyd.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=1398&Itemid=135
"His book brought permutation groups into a central role in mathematics and ... this work provided the foundation on which the whole subject [group theory] was built. It would also be fair to say that group theory was one of the major areas of mathematical research for 100 years following Jordan's fundamental publication. ... Jordan is best remembered today among analysts and topologists for his proof that a simply closed curve divides a plane into exactly two regions, now called the Jordan curve theorem."
http://www-groups.dcs.st-and.ac.uk/~history/Biographies/Jordan.html
"Matisse never made a didactic painting or signed a manifesto, and there is scarcely one reference to a political event - let alone an expression of political opinion - to be found anywhere in his writings. Perhaps Matisse did suffer from fear and loathing like the rest of us, but there is no trace of them in his work."
http://www.artchive.com/artchive/M/matisse.html
"Reed would endure the sort of staid, boilerplate film making that characterized British B movies until he left this behind with The Stars Look Down (1940), his second film with Michael Redgrave, and his openly Hitchcockian Night Train to Munich (1940), a comedy-thriller with Rex Harrison."
http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0715346/bio
"He saw the misery of the civilian population afflicted by the war atrocities and even the murder of Jews. In April 1942, he was assigned to the Second Students' Company in Munich, in order to continue his medical studies. In mid-June of that year he met Hans and Sophie Scholl, Alexander Schmorell, Christoph Probst, Jurgen Wittenstein and, at a later date, Professor Kurt Huber. "
http://www.jlrweb.com/whiterose/willi.html
"The story is set in 1957, and this time Dr. Jones goes up against cold-blooded, Cold War Russkies—led by Cate Blanchett in dominatrix mode—instead of the Nazis he squashed like bugs in previous installments. Making a return alongside Ford is Karen Allen, as Marion Ravenwood, Indy’s pugnacious true love...." [Oh yeah, I like that.]
http://www.vanityfair.com/culture/features/2008/02/indianajones200802
"What, ultimately, is the movie about? The ultimate threat to us is the State, and especially the collusion between State and Corporate Big Business. Maybe we should be paranoid about them. They certainly don't have our best interests at heart. What does it celebrate? The important things – family, friends, fireplaces, snowy Christmases."
http://uncabob.blogspot.com/2008/01/presidents-analyst-one-of-most.html
"New Year's Eve is a time of review and renewal and resolutions, and I share some of my big plans for Ought-Eight in between fun shtuff...."
http://unclewarrensattic.blogspot.com/2007/12/uwa-46-new-years-rockin-attic-ii.html
"With more than 90,000 titles available in its DVD library, delivering movies through the mail is expected to remain Netflix's primary money maker for years to come. Nevertheless, Netflix has spent about $40 million on the development of its streaming service during the past year."
"The state is swarming with thousands of campaign workers, political consultants, pollsters, journalists, lunatics and Romney sons. The candidates are shaking every voter hand they can. Sometimes, in the dead of night, a voter will feel a strange sensation and wake up to realize that his or her hand is being shaken, right there in the bedroom, by a major presidential contender. This is why many New Hampshire residents lock their front doors at night, although of course that's no defense against the Huckabee campaign. Yes, it's an exciting, historic time for New Hampshire."
http://www.miamiherald.com/campaign08/story/367940.html
"In the wake of her disappointing third-place finish in the Iowa caucuses, there was consensus among Mrs. Clinton’s campaign aides that her presidential bid needed to be rebooted, but few party professionals expected her to change her race and sex with only five days to go until New Hampshire."
http://www.borowitzreport.com/archive_rpt.asp?rec=6813
"How many awards can Al Gore win from his worldwide coterie of sycophants? In the spirit of international political correctness, the former vice president was awarded the Nobel Has-Nothing-to-Do-with-Peace Prize for emitting toxic pollutants into the atmosphere from his worldwide jet-setting to lecture everyone else about halting global warming by adopting medieval lifestyles while he 'offsets' his own carbon footprint by screwing fluorescent light bulbs into the foyer of his energy-hog mansion. "
http://www.rcreader.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=12453&Itemid=42
"Don't look to Ben Bernanke, chairman of the Federal Reserve, for answers, because that clueless, neo-Keynesian halfwit has no idea what in the hell he is doing, which I prove by noting that he is on record as saying on May 17 that 'We do not expect significant spillovers from the subprime market to the rest of the economy or to the financial system.' Hahaha! How wrong can you be? We're freaking doomed!"
http://www.dailyreckoning.com/Writers/Mogambo/DREssays/MG010208.html
"Yep, idleness—true idleness, not soccer games or cocktails by the pool, but absolute, true Just Doing Nothing—can be so boring you can almost hear your fingernails grow. This is exactly— precisely!—when idleness begins to get good. Just stay right at that spot. Don't go turn on the TV set. Don't call up a girlfriend. Don't busy yourself in the woodshop (although later, much later, the woodshop may, for other reasons, become a place of joyful idleness). Just be bored for now. It isn't fatal. Eventually something, you can be sure of it, will bubble out of this deadening of mind and body. You'll recall some old dream you never followed through on."
http://www.backwoodshome.com/articles2/wolfe109.html
"While the Lockean property concept, often championed by 'the right,' distributes rights to property 'forever and ever' and 'without limits' to how they are used (except for regulation through state coercion) , the Proudhon possession concept is extremely volatile and temporary. Is there no Aristotelian 'golden mean' or 'middle way' between these concepts?"
http://www.perbylund.com/blog/?p=37
"Optimism is a feeling or an emotional point of view, which is consistent with a positive outlook for the future. It is something that I've felt strongly at various times in my life. It is strange to discuss reasons for an emotion. Emotions are not rational. However, if you are sometimes able to choose a mood, or set one, it might be reasonable to consider why optimism could be justified now. So, my task here is to set forth some reasons I see for feeling good about the future. "
http://www.ncc-1776.org/tle2007/tle449-20071230-09.html
"The current problems in the housing market suggest that we are reaping the rewards of easy credit. Increases in the money supply eased consumers' ability to borrow money and increased lenders' willingness to take on otherwise-questionable risks. Investments that would not have been made had the market reflected the correct interest rate will be made in an environment of incorrect prices in capital markets; all of the attendant distortions in the structure of relative prices will ensue, and the necessary correction may take some time to reveal itself."
http://www.mises.org/story/2812
"My new video asks you all for your New Year’s Resolutions! ... I will feature some of them in an upcoming video… as well as give you mine!"
http://www.hotforwords.com/2008/01/01/write-your-new-years-resolutions-here/
"And as for silver? I'm glad you asked! He thinks, 'Silver will clear $30 in 2008, as the (gold-silver) ratio falls below 40. A $1200 gold price and 40-to-1 ratio puts the price of silver at $30. Silver is the best play for 2008, but silver is never a smooth ride.' And if you think that silver could go to its rough 15-to-1 long-term ratio to gold, then a $1,200 per ounce gold price would mean an $80 per ounce silver! Wow! The stuff is selling for 15 bucks right now!"
http://www.dailyreckoning.com/Writers/Mogambo/DREssays/MG010308.html
"The vote gets hacked. Electronic voting machines used in the 2008 [presidential] election will be hacked. But we'll only find out after Dwayne 'The Rock' Johnson is declared the winner in a landslide. The wrestler-turned-actor will vow to serve faithfully and muscularly, and a bitterly divided nation will embrace him (because, at this point, anyone else would be an improvement)."
http://weblog.infoworld.com/robertxcringely/archives/2008/01/microsoft_apple.html
"2008 won't be the Year of the Linux Desktop, but we can clearly look forward to seeing more rapid growth in the mobile and embedded markets as Linux-based phones and ultraportable products emerge and gain popularity. "
http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20080104-evaluating-prospects-for-linux-growth-in-2008.html
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