Thursday, May 08, 2003

India Says It Won't Get Rid of Nukes [AP World News] Days after reaching out to his rival neighbor, Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee said Thursday that India would not accept Pakistan's offer for mutual destruction of nuclear arsenals. That's wise of them. India doesn't need nukes to deter Pakistan--their superiority in conventional military power is more than enough for that. India does need them to deter China and the United States, though. 11:41:26 PM    comment () If Iraqis Revolt, Hezbollah May Join [AP World News] Somehow I doubt that Hezbollah's Syrian sponsors would be too happy about that, since the Crusaders would almost certainly use it as an excuse to conquer Syria. 11:16:55 PM    comment () We Are All Liberals Now. I thought only liberals condemned those who disagreed with them as evil. Disagreeing with liberals meant that you, personally, are racist, sexist, homophobic, etc. In the fall of 2001, Attorney General Ashcroft stated, "To those who scare peace-loving people with phantoms of lost liberty, my message is this: Your tactics only aid terrorists." Today, when you disagree with someone who calls himself a conservative, you are liberal, anti-family, pro-drug, pro-terrorism and so forth. I use the phrase "calls himself a conservative", as there are very few Americans - let us just say four percent -- left who seriously want to conserve those principles enshrined in the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution. Democrats are at least honest when they say they believe that oppressive taxes and intrusive government are good things. Republicans say they believe that oppressive taxes and intrusive government are rotten things, unless they are in charge. Then, government becomes the grooviest thing in the world. There is no serious constituency for limited government and individual freedom today in either government or the media. We have known for a long time that the schools and universities are quagmires of socialism. Government and media are about the same any longer. No matter who gets elected, taxation remains oppressive and government grows larger and more heavy-handed. When Bill Clinton was at the helm of the socialist superstate, there were some folks on talk radio opposing and exposing the advancement of tyranny in America. But now that GWB is in charge, and tyrannizing us even more, these folks sing the praises of every new encroachment upon our liberty. [Strike The Root] 1:24:25 PM    comment () Prescription Entheogens. John Horgan, author of Rational Mysticism: Dispatches from the Border Between Science and Spirituality, tries to rehabilitate the reputation of LSD and other entheogens over on Slate. Alas, he settles on the heinous prescription model--"Risks could be minimized by making these substances available only through licensed therapists, who can screen clients for mental instability and advise them on how to make their experiences as rewarding as possible. Some people might be prescribed entheogens for a specific disorder, such as depression or alcoholism. And just as drugs such as Prozac and Viagra are prescribed not just to heal the ill but also to enhance the lives of the healthy, so might entheogens." It's a sad thing in the drug freedom debate that even most of those who present themselves as its defenders don't really believe in drug freedom. [Hit & Run] I think it's because many of those "defenders" are liberals. It's not that they don't believe in drug freedom--they don't believe in any freedom. 10:31:31 AM    comment () Warning over vitamin doses. People who take large doses of some vitamins risk permanently damaging their health, a watchdog warns. [BBC News | Front Page | UK Edition] That would explain why the people I know who are obsessed with taking dozens of vitamin pills every day are always in such poor health. 10:23:11 AM    comment () Elite Opinion. Radley Balko notes an interesting difference between the reactions of cultural conservatives to the Bennett and Santorum controversies. (via The Agitator) [Hit & Run] As a libertarian, I really don't buy into the "No Guardrails" way of thinking. I don't believe in collective rights (affirmative action, for example), or in collective morality. I think that left to their own devices, people will generally make decisions that are in their own best interests. Let each pursue his own happiness, so long as he doesn't hurt anyone else. But if conservatives are going to toe the "No Guardrails" line, it seems to me that they ought to be consistent about it. It's preposterous to argue on the one hand that two adults engaging in nontraditional sex behind a closed door will lead to a breakdown in heterosexual marriages across the country, but that America's foremost spokesperson for virtue and morality spending millions at casinos across the country bears no influence on the 5.5 million people his own organization has identified as "problem gamblers." If the elites do indeed set the guardrails the rest of us need to stay the course, as conservatives often insist, then they ought to admit that William Bennett just tore one of those guardrails down. Of course the conservatives' defense of Bennett is actually based entirely on partisan politics, with a thin layer of rationalization over the top. It's just like the National Organization of Women's defense of Bill Clinton. 10:14:04 AM    comment () Al Lorentz at Prison Planet - Police State: The Patriots Code of Silence - don't tell cops anything. Ever. [patrick] In SERE school (Survive, Evade, Resist and Escape), we learned that if you started talking, instead of the enemy going lighter on you, they would come down on you much harder. Further, anything you said would not only be used against you, it would be used against your friends. If you share even the slightest bit of information, the enemy will take that information, add to it the things that they already know and then use it to break your friends down. Many people unwisely try to talk themselves out of an arrest or a ticket. Unless you are the slickest salesman on the face of the earth, the chances of talking your way out of a ticket are slim to none. Once you are arrested, there is absolutely no need to try and talk your way out of the arrest. Once arrested, the cop has shown that he fully intends to book you or take you to the police station where charges will be preferred against you. When you are arrested, the best thing you can do is KEEP YOUR MOUTH SHUT. Push your teeth together, seal your lips and breathe through your nose. Say nothing except the following "I want an attorney please". Answer every question, regardless of how ridiculous your answer may seem with that statement or something almost identical to it. ... NEVER trust a federal agent. I am not alone in this view, I know many veteran cops who will say exactly the same thing. My cop friends, when talking to the feds have a common answer to anything a Fed says to them, even simple things such as "hello" elicit the response of "talk to my attorney". [End the War on Freedom] 9:25:03 AM    comment ()

© Copyright 2006 Ken Hagler. Last update: 2/15/2006; 1:54:12 PM.