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I spent Thanksgiving as I usually do, with family, all of whom live nearby. This year it was at my parents house in Woodstock. I have never hosted a holiday dinner, since being single and with no “responsibilities” means there are no familial expectations demanded of me. I don’t wrap presents, or if I do, they are wrapped with newspapers and duct tape. Not having endorsed/validated the family idea yet, by creating my own, I’m simply not liable. Those game rules do not apply. But I still love to parasite off the holiday meal trough: vegetables of any sort to counter a not very nutritional bachelor’s diet. Plus they pity me like a hobo, or rather, an utterly, incomprehensibly free man.

This year we managed to talk about politics at the dinner table without anyone having an embarrassing explosion. It was strange. Of course, we’ve all changed over the years… I hardly ever read The Nation, and my father has either hidden or thrown away the signed photo of George and Laura Bush. Although while his disenchantment is real, I don’t think he’d ever vote for a Democrat. In fact, one thing everyone seemed to agree on was the ineptness of the Bush administration. Hardly news these days, it’s downright boring to catalog the many wrong turns of Dubya. It’s so bad no one cares…we’ve all gone hopelessly apathetic. But we also agreed that we didn’t like many of the candidates for the next go around, but then disagreed on our projections of the inevitable Clinton vs. Giuliani deathmatch. I brought up Ron Paul and thought it was interesting that while everyone claimed to “like him,” no one takes him seriously as a contestant for American Idol: President. I thought depressingly to myself that America is not ready to talk about fiat money or blowback, that despite our losses they have not been great enough as to have us question the actual status quo itself. We still prefer the popularity contest, the confetti, some “tough talk” on terror, millions of dollars wasted in ads and marketing, and some juicy wedge issues thrown in just to keep the culture wars exciting, and everyone distracted.

Another good BBC documentary. Sartre…philosopher, playa. That picture of him with Robert Plant hair as a child kills me.

Have not checked out one of my favorite libertarian screed sites in quite some time…Sheldon Richman asks in War is a Government Program:

So why aren’t people who claim to be suspicious of other government programs suspicious of war? I can see only two reasons, neither of them flattering: power lust or nationalistic zeal.

I’ve always thought the warfare – welfare connection is something Republicrats have deliberately failed to comprehend.

War is useful in keeping the population in a state of fear and therefore trustful of their rulers. H.L. Mencken said it well: “The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary.”

Word. Call me a hobgoblinphobe.

Finally on the bureaucracy enabling aspects of war he quotes Madison:

Most unappreciated of all is that war is the midwife of intrusive bureaucracy. James Madison understood this. “Of all the enemies of true liberty, war is, perhaps, the most to be dreaded, because it comprises and develops the germ of every other. War is the parent of armies; from these proceed debts and taxes; and armies, and debts, and taxes are the known instruments for bringing the many under the domination of the few…. No nation can preserve its freedom in the midst of continual warfare.”

Now, even if you don’t believe the government should be involved in public education or health care, this is still money that could be spent elsewhere. In other words, it’s your money, beeyatch! Wake up! See “What $1.2 Trillion Can Buy.” Imagine if this money had been spent on national defense? We could have one of those utopian missile defense programs or even individual apocalypse-proof bubble suits. I’m more in favor of the latter, as it allows for travel.

The implementation of capital punishment is flawed, both morally and logically. Everyone understands the emotions of revenge, no matter how self-serving and ultimately futile they are. We’re human after all. The problem is that the legal system kills and jails innocent people at staggering numbers. So revenge comes at the price of further innocent death. Ironic vicious circle, anyone?

As many have argued, why would you put the government, who can’t even fix holes in roads, in charge of deciding who lives or dies? The result of course, is that our legal system has put many innocent people to death, and locked many thousands more away. This is the moral contradiction CP supporters just can’t get around. Supporting capital punishment, is supporting a system that has jailed and put to death thousands of innocent people. That’s where the Innocence Project comes in, working with DNA evidence to exonerate the thousands of wrongly convicted. As you can imagine, death row gets priority.

There’s a good and quite emotional documentary on The Innocence Project, called After Innocence. Highly recommended on awareness raising factor alone. It’ll haunt you. It should haunt you…depending on your state, your tax money kills innocent people.

Not really surprising that out of the 2008 Presidential Candidates the Democrats are leading what in my estimation is the most important polling metric, the Myspace friend count. Democrats have always been slightly hipper…or had more time to waste on Myspace.

Barak Obama 113270
Hilary Clinton 50364
John Edwards 40566

Now what is really surprising is that Ron Paul, a libertarian running as a Republican, is nowhere on the “official” polls, but hugely popular on the internet. I thought it odd that McCain was ahead of him but then realized the McCain-Myspace debacle of a few months ago probably got McCain a lot of unintentional “friends,” fudging the numbers. Plus, Paul is smoking McCain on Facebook, which might say something interesting about younger voters, and he has more Youtube and Meetup subscribers than any other candidate, Elephant or Donkey. “Dr. No” as supporters lovingly refer to him, is definitely getting the Howard Dean style grass-roots-internet-monster momentum going. Good thing we all know how that can turn out.

John McCain 37451
Ron Paul 33904
Mitt Romney 25273
Fred Thompson 6070
Rudy Guliani (profile set to private!)

Politicar2, originally uploaded by anewvoice.

Ron Paul will never win the Republican nomination because he’s too mild mannered and rational to win the Big-Dumb-War-Fox-News-Gay-Hater party nomination. The “conservative” party has come to mean anything but, and they should be ashamed of it. Might I suggest Seppuku, losers? If he had a little more fire in him I think he might have a chance, but I’m afraid that the reality of it is that the presidency is still just another American Idol variant.

“When the zombies get out of hand…”

Christ, I wish someone would hurry up and remake Logan’s Run. Damn those Wachowski brothers and their Speed Racer!

It occurred to me that Logan’s Run is perhaps little more than the dystopian imagining of the uber-welfare/warfare state gone slightly awry. After all, we may not have Sleepshop, the public sporting-extermination of those over 21, but we always seem to have a convenient war for them. Thou shalt be wary, very wary, of government intentions.

I really want to make a good joke about Deepwater or Blackwater, but it’s just eluding me. Let’s see…Deepwater…What do you get with loads of “free” taxpayer money, no oversight, and several colossal bureaucracies? Nah, just depresses me.

But you heard about Deepwater, right? Part of the program was to lengthen already existing Coast Guard boats to the tune of 10 million per boat. Yes, I said lengthen. Apparently, you can lengthen boats, just like you would, oh, trick out an El Camino. Of course, it didn’t work, and the government is blaming the contractor, and taking the project over, but something tells me only the government could get itself in such a stupid situation in the first place.

Now if we can only take some of this genius technology and widen the planet, we’ll have some more room for all the babies in China.