We are developing the social individualist meta-context for the future. From the very serious to the extremely frivolous... lets see what is on the mind of the Samizdata people.
Samizdata, derived from Samizdat /n. - a system of clandestine publication of banned literature in the USSR [Russ.,= self-publishing house]
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Radley Balko has an article in Fox News today on a subject near and dear to my heart. Senator Fritz Hollings is at long last ending his dismal career.
This is the same Senator who in 1986 attempted a media grand stand play over the graves of the seven Challenger Astronauts. He is the luddite who can not deal with the modern world of technology and information and who wants us to return to a post-WWII world of backbreaking labour. He is the Senator who wants to make the internet safe for Disney and the RIAA.
For decades he has been the best Senator money can buy. I’m sure someone will miss him, but it certainly will not be me.
If I was a Californian I would be wary about expecting too much from the newly-elected Governor Schwarzenegger. Events may prove me wrong but I rather doubt that he will have much impact on life in California. Or even that much impact on politics in California for that matter.
Some people, however, are expecting the worst. Below is a selection on unedited posts from the forum of the Democratic Underground and I give you my assurance that these are far from being the most lurid:
This nation is jam-packed with starfuckers, let’s face it. No one seems to give a damn about issues that affect their own goddamn wallets, but “it would be soooooooo cool to have a movie star for governor, woo-hoo!!!!!!!!”
There are dozens of reasons why Colly-forn-eeya went for Arnie, but don’t underestimate the power of the starfucker vote. It is very, very closely linked to the booger-eatin’ vote.
But who will speak for the ‘booger-eaters’ if not Arnie?
No way in HELL was that recall legit. NO WAY. I don’t care what anyone says, FIX.
We all know the 2000 Pres. election was a FIX, I’d bet the farm that Jeb being re(s)elected was a fix too (keep in mind this state’s election process is brought to you by…KKKatherine Hairass). And there is NO WAY in hell that such a liberal state like California would vote for a roid freak, sexist, Nazi…unless…IT’S A FIX.
Do you honestly imagine that Arnie would work without a script?
what things would these kind of people do to us?
whenever something like this happens the innocent people always suffer first. it is not just a political enemies thing. hitler did not just go after his rivals, he went after defenseless jews. when bush and rove and that gang finally get the power they need what will happen to normal american citizens?
Ze Democrats vill be deported. California vill be ‘democratrein’. Ze pure-blooded Californian Aryan folk must haf ze lebensraum.
DU is a great place, but it would be too easy to be infiltrated and contaminated here. We need someplace online that is well-encrypted and secure from prying eyes to do our serious planning. We also will want to get in touch with ANSWER and MoveOn, work with them, maybe set up some kind of rebel high command.
And while you’re about it, get in touch with Al-Qaeda and Saddam Hussein. They’ve got a score to settle too.
Oh come on, chaps. Stop trying to put a brave face on things. You’re a bit upset, aren’t you. I can tell. I can always tell.
It is over. Arnold basically has kicked in the teeth of the opposition with a margin of nearly a million votes over his nearest competitor, former Hispanic secessionist Cruz Bustamante.
Through the use of our secret Illuminati time communication technology (Codename Peabody), the Samizdata Editorial staff prepared deep cover for its two covert agents in California well ahead of time.
With a libertarian intelligence matter of such extreme importance facing us – regime change in one of the largest economies on this planet – we have unstintingly sent two of our finest undercover agents: Perry “007” deHavilland and Adriana “Lara Croft” Cronin to look into the matter.
They have left these shores and are expected to remain ‘in theatre’ for several weeks. We hope they will uncover details of the new governor’s purported Weapons of Mass Employment (WME’s).
Good luck and good hunting!
Agent 007 practices laying down protective covering fire…
…while Agent Lara handles team self-extraction from maddened hordes of LA socialists
I was given the names and details by an unnamed high Samizdata administration official who will remain unnamed but should of course be the target of a lengthy Blogosphere investigation so long as it is damaging to the administration and no one dares ask me any questions.
Matt Drudge is predicting a comfortable Ah-nie victory in California.
LATEST EXIT POLLS SHOW 59% VOTE ‘YES’ FOR RECALL, TOP CAMPAIGN AND MEDIA SOURCES TELL DRUDGE REPORT, 51% FOR SCHWARZENEGGER, 30% FOR BUSTAMANTE, 13% MCCLINTOCK….
My prediction: the Guardian will denounce the result as an ‘illegitimate power-grab’ before the end of the week.
Over at Hit & Run, Jesse Walker notes that Robert Anton Wilson is a candidate in the California election, and reprints one of his position papers:
GUNS AND DOPE PARTY POSITION PAPER #23
Little Tony was sitting on a park bench munching on one candy bar after another. After the 6th candy bar, a man on the bench across from him said, “Son, you know eating all that candy isn’t good for you. It will give you acne, rot your teeth, and make you fat.”
Little Tony replied, “My grandfather lived to be 107 years old.”
The man asked, “Did your grandfather eat 6 candy bars at a time?”
Little Tony answered, “No, he minded his own fucking business.”
All these dreadful things I never knew about Arnold Schwarzenneger.
First off, he’s a ‘sex beast’:
The actor, who hopes to be voted in as Governor of California in next week’s election, apologised after six women accused him of sexual harassment between 1975 and 2000, in an article in Thursday’s Los Angeles Times.
And allegedly he’s also a ‘closet Nazi’:
Women’s groups and religious leaders worked feverishly Friday to galvanize opposition to Arnold Schwarzenegger after he acknowledged treating women badly and responded to reports that he told an interviewer he admired Adolf Hitler.
I never gave Ah-nuld much chance of winning this election. Unlike California Democrats who are clearly convinced that they cannot beat him.
The Free State Project is a group in the USA looking to get at least 20,000 liberty oriented activists to move to a single state in the USA so that they can have more political impact somewhere rather than be lost in the sea of Republican and Democrat statists by being scattered across the country.
And the result of the vote to see which part of the USA they would all move to is… New Hampshire.
Godspeed to you all. I shall be watching this project with great interest.
You just could not make this stuff up. Schools that won’t tell parents their kids have lice because it will hurt their feelings. Fraternities run through re-education camp equivalents for theme parties and such some thin-skinned zealot found offensive. Towns councils threatening to fine parents for allowing their children to play with toy guns… and even advising against allowing them to play in camo-gear. Schools that ban superhero costumes. The list just goes on and on.
It is time for an all out anti-idiot offensive. Parents in idiot-enclave towns and students in moron-managed colleges must set out consciously to seek and destroy the legitimacy of the PC army. No one can take a laughingstock seriously, so we must laugh at them and share the laughter with our friends, neighbors and classmates.
Public humiliation is a powerful weapon and it is easy to make fools of these people. They have already done the hard work for you.
Harsh satire and extreme exaggeration work nicely. I once ran a guerilla theatre troop in Pittsburgh. We would appear suddenly at an appointed location in downtown or on campus with costume, leaflets and a prepared “theatrical production”. Our theatrical shock tactics were timed such we’d be on our way before anyone thought about it.
It worked well. I only got kicked in the arse once.
You will find a lot of the details on PC gone mad referenced here.
Today’s entry from Mark Steyn surveys the incompetence and general fecklessness of big gubmint and the quasigovernmental NGOs, in terms to warm any libertarian’s heart.
One of the reasons I’m in favor of small government is because there’s hardly anything the government doesn’t do worse than anybody else who wants to give it a go. Usually when I make this observation, I’m thinking of, say, Britain’s late unlamented nationalized car industry. But when the government of a G7 nation can’t run a small marijuana sideline as well as a college student with a window box, that seems to set an entirely new standard for official underperformance. Big government goes to pot, in every sense.
. . .
[E]very do-gooding cause eventually floats free of whatever good it was trying to do and becomes a self-perpetuating business all of its own. The racism industry, for example, is now so large and lucrative and employs so many highly remunerated people from the Rev. Jesse Jackson down that it has a far greater interest than the Klu Klux Klan in maintaining racism.
. . .
The humanitarian touring circuit is now the oldest established permanent floating crap game. Regions such as West Africa, where there’s no pretense anything will ever get better, or the Balkans, which are maintained by the U.N. as the global equivalent of a slum housing project, suit the aid agencies perfectly: There’s never not a need for them. But in Iraq they’ve decided they’re not interested in staying to see the electric grid back up to capacity and the water system improved if it’s an American administration at the helm. The Big Consciences have made a political decision: that it’s not in their interest for the Bush crowd to succeed, and that calculation outweighs any concern they might have for the Iraqi people.
Nothing to argue with there, but go read the whole thing.
With that, I am off for a week or so to hunt for the noble mule deer in the wilds of southern Wyoming. Complete written report on my return.
On BBC 2 last night there was a programme in the series ‘Seven Wonders of the Industrial World’.
This particular episode was on the building of the Transcontinental Railroad in the United States.
As one would expect the show did not present the companies involved (the Central Pacific and the Union Pacific) in a very positive light. And the BBC have a point – the companies were subsidy grubbing, brutal and corrupt.
However, it was also clear from the programme that the the Central Pacific was less brutal, less corrupt and more effective than the Union Pacific.
Some things the programme did not mention (for example the Central Pacific’s policy of ‘buying off’ Indians – rather than just getting the army to kill them). But it did show that although the Central Pacific Railroad were ruthless they were not the killers (of Indians and Whites) that the Union Pacific were. The programme also showed that the owners of the Central Pacific actually cared about their company (rather than just considering an object to be looted as Durant of the Union Pacific did).
Furthermore it was clear that the Central Pacific overcame vast physical obstructions to the building of a railroad and that its people (White and Chinese) showed creative thought and vast physical effort in overcoming these obstructions.
In the end the Central Pacific won the race to get to the rendezvous point decreed by Congress – and had to wait for two days for the Union Pacific to turn up.
Fantasy presents conflicts as being between good guys and bad guys. However, in real life conflicts are more often between bad guys and worse guys (although later in American railroad history J.J. Hill does appear to have been a genuine good guy).
It was good for the soul of America that the bad guys (rather than the worse guys) won the race.
It sticks in the craw to say it, but Hillary is the only one of the Democrats who sounds Presidential. The rest of them are dwarves with limited understanding of the requirements of the job for which they are auditioning.
She and her significant other have consistantly backed Bush on the WMD issue. By admitting they saw the same intelligence reports and by taking responsibility for policy initiatives they set in motion, they appear as statesmen. They have a solidness and class that is severely lacking amongst the Democratic candidates.
I rather look forward to a Condi v Hillary match in 2008. That is an election for which the cemeteries really would get out the vote.
John Fund of the Wall Street Journal Online has an excellent look at the seamy, sleazy side of the California recall election, and specifically the role of Indian gambling money. If you want an accounting of how politics really gets played in the US, this is a pretty good vignette. Discliamer: John is a pretty loyal Republican, for the most part, but I have met him and I can assure you he is savvy and knows his politics.
There are all kinds of lessons in this article. I will leave you with a few to chew on:
Note the brazen contempt for campaign finance law by the Bustamente campaign. Where politicians can’t get the money they need through various kinds of gray-market loophole-oriented money-laundering operations designed to evade these laws, they just violate them outright because they know that no enforcement will occur until after the election.
Note the heavily cynical and strategic use of political money to build up politicians that the contributors actually want to lose the race, because these dark horses will strip votes from a real rival to the preferred candidate.
Money and power will always find each other. The only solution to the kinds of influence peddling activities on display in California is to strip power from the state.
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We are also a varied group made up of social individualists, classical liberals, whigs, libertarians, extropians, futurists, ‘Porcupines’, Karl Popper fetishists, recovering neo-conservatives, crazed Ayn Rand worshipers, over-caffeinated Virginia Postrel devotees, witty Frédéric Bastiat wannabes, cypherpunks, minarchists, kritarchists and wild-eyed anarcho-capitalists from Britain, North America, Australia and Europe.
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