We'll start on a light note. It'll go downhill fast from there.

Six game road trip starts at Montana -- Go Rabbits!

Site News: I'm contemplating a migration from the current platform (Geeklog) to Wordpress. Might start taking that on after the new year. Also, there's some travel journals that need posting--these should be forthcoming "real soon now."

Now, on with the whip:

Honest -- A web comic. Truth.

When you're too lazy/otherwise occupied to actually post an article, what do you do?

Link dump!

First, links with snark/pithy comment:
Thank Wal-Mart for your new bank card fee -- The title should be: "Thank Wal-Mart And Senator Dick Durban For Your New Bank Card Fee" -- it wouldn't have happened without government intervention in the market.

Gunwalker: Under White House Control?- New documents reveal extensive White House communication with the ATF head behind the scandal. - Like Watergate, except an office break-in is a bit different than handing out guns to killers who then go out and kill, isn't it?

Sunday Reflection: Changing the Constitution -- I like the idea of banning U.S. Senators from seeking the Presidency . . .

Economic Growth, Not Income Redistribution, Is What Helps Us All -- Well, yes, that's what has worked since the 1600's, not that the "progressives" have noticed . . .

Koch Brothers Flout Law With Secret Iran Sales -- A classic, textbook hit piece. See if you can divine the author's agenda. "Telling the truth" isn't it.

The Lazy, Uncategorized version:

Debt-ceiling bill passes the House -- "By a margin 269 to 161, with 66 Republicans voting no and 95 Democrats voting yes, the House passed the debt-ceiling increase with the accompanying package of cuts." Note that "cuts" in Washington, D.C. aren't really cuts at all, in the sense that you and I would consider a cut. If your employer chops your salary by 5%, that's what we in the real world call "a cut." If your employer raises your salary by 5%, that's what we in the real world call a "raise." But in the fantasyland that we call Washington, D.C. it would be a "5% cut" if you expected a 10% raise and only got a 5% raise instead. Keep that in the front of your mind the next time you hear somebody complaining about the eeeeevil Republicans and their plans to barbecue and eat Granny.

TODAY'S FEATURE ARTICLE

The Winner of the Power Line Prize Is…


Five minutes of common-sense win.

I remember why I quit doing these. They take a while to assemble.

CLASSICAL LIBERALISM

Libertarianism & Power -- A fundamental tenet of classical liberalism is that concentrations of power are generally unwise. The most unwise and dangerous of which are concentrations of governmental power, and concentrations of outlaws, brigands, thugs, thieves, and the like--for the identical reason: because throughout history, the remedies for such concentrations usually involve killing people--or at least, the aggressive use of overwhelming force. Remedies for concentrations of power in other spheres of human activity generally require less drastic remedies.

Andrew Breitbart on The Undefeated


"PROGRESSIVES" AND OTHER ANTI-LIBERALS

Wisconsin isn’t over

Yes, I’m Questioning Your Patriotism

How the Titanic sank radio freedom

Postrel: Public Works Built on Rosy Scenarios

Wisconsin schools buck union to cut health costs

New Hampshire Judge Caught On Video Ordering False Arrest: Incident sparks court order banning cameras in courtroom -- I think I know someone who needs to be reminded in no uncertain terms that judges are not kings . . .

The Whip makes a surprise appearance, on a whim.

(The post title is of course a play on Benjamin Franklin's comment to a passing woman in Philadelphia in 1789 who inquired of the elderly statesman "Well, Doctor, what have we got—a Republic or a Monarchy?" Franklin replied "A Republic, if you can keep it.")

The term "republic" is not synonymous with "democracy." In fact, the American Founders were deeply distrustful of a pure democracy--nearly as distrustful of that form of government as they were of monarchy. They were concerned with the tyranny of the majority as they were concerned with the tyranny of a single man, or any group. This was the uniquely American innovation: a form of government so divided that no single institution was entrusted with the power to become tyrannical (the term "tyranny" meaning government by a person or group which is unconstrained by any law--in essence, the modern word for a tyranny is "totalitarian.")

The beneficence or cruelty of a totalitarian government is not the identifying feature of a tyranny--it is simply the disregard for the rule of law which marks a government as being tyrannical.

The problem with kindly tyrannies is that they can turn cruel upon--literally--a whim.

What kind of whim, you ask?

A SWAT team can break down a harmless elderly couple's front door and terrorize them for hours, simply upon the say-so of some shady underworld informant who gave the police the wrong address--and the SWAT team not only is not constrained to obtain a search warrant, the members of the SWAT team and the officials overseeing the team and ordering the lawless attack are never punished or disciplined effectively for the error.

That kind of whim.

The Whip:

A Father's Fiery Rage Against the Cold Machine--The family law system performed exactly as intended—and a despairing father set himself aflame.Tragedy? Or tyranny?

Politics Versus Reality -- The irreplacable Thomas Sowell:

It is hard to understand politics if you are hung up on reality. Politicians leave reality to others. What matters in politics is what you can get the voters to believe, whether it bears any resemblance to reality or not.

Not only among politicians, but also among much of the media, and even among some of the public, the quest is not for truth about reality but for talking points that fit a vision or advance an agenda. Some seem to see it as a personal contest about who is best at fencing with words.

Give Peace a Chance: Why does the media keep downplaying the violence at left-wing protests?

Pursuing Liberty -- from author Sarah Hoyt. I haven't read one of her books yet, but she just won an award for her latest. She blogs at Classical Values among other places. I may have to give her fiction work a look.

The French – and most other revolutionaries – fought for ideals of an abstract and high nature “Liberte, fraternite, egalite.” It doesn’t seem to have occurred to any of them – Lafayette included – that by mandating fraternite and egalite they were denying the liberte. And the fraternity and equality one being a lofty feeling, and the other an absolute measurement always prone to more and finer adjustment, both could be used as levers for the new upper classes to get more and more tyrannical power, until you could be executed as an “aristo” because you knew how to read or you wore glasses. Or you had one plate more than your destitute neighbor.

Americans, on the other hand, based their revolution on life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. You are free to pursue happiness. You have equality under the law on your right to pursue it.

No one guarantees you will catch it or that you’ll be happy when you do it. Well, at least we didn’t use to. In the twentieth century the statist excesses have infected even the US, and we’ve regulated more and more how equal you have to be and how much happiness you can attain and how much is “good for you.” This is a wrong path.

The more people know about science, the less they believe in global warming. -- The Instapundit, Glenn Reynolds, links to an academic study funded by the National Science Foundation, the lead author of which is from the Yale Law School. The conclusion does not "support the narrative" that "the science is settled."

The riddle of the missing US ambassador as London toasts Ronald Reagan centenary -- When all you see is politics, then everything becomes fair game. No behavior is outré, if it conforms to the appropriate political narrative. You can snub, shout down, or beat down your political opponents with wild abandon. Because they're ignorant, wrong and stupid. And you're intelligent, right, and care more than they do. Because "good guys" are never tyrants--at least in their own minds. They always have good and adequate reasons for the horrible things that they do.

If you don’t like the Casey Anthony verdict look in the mirror -- This will be the only mention of this case which will ever appear here at Medary. Because it simply isn't that important in the greater scheme of things. This case was, more than anything else, fodder to feed the insatiable 24/7 cable news channels' ratings. Outside its immediate locale, and outside the family involved, it has no value other than lurid, prurient, semi-pornographic emotional stimulation.

Obama really might have made it worse -- $278,000 per job created by the "Stimulus?" Yeah, I could have done better. Nearly anyone could have done better. But then, Obama has never spent a day working for a private company, has he?

The Difference Between Retaliation and Nation Building: About 10 Years

OK, I'm done here. I have to go pour off the homebrew into the secondary fermentation carboys. And see about the service indicator thingie on the car. And other stuff. That darn reality, you know.

I'm going to (attempt to, once again) shut down the daily drip-drip-drip of the political/economic/world news, including and especially the daily recitation of the fundamental stupidity of Obama and the Washington Democrats. That stupidity is readily apparent to any rational, thinking person who bothers to pay attention, and it is useless to try to reach people who are not paying attention, who are irrational, and who do not choose to think. I have little patience with such people even when I am in the best of moods, anyway.

So, I'm going to focus future Whips more on descriptions and apologia for classical liberalism, along with links to sports, science/science fiction/writing, and other miscellaneous articles I come across that amuse me for one reason or another.

I've said all I really need to say about the political situation here. Additionally, author Larry Correla expands and extends many of my thoughts, perhaps more coherently and slightly less angrily than my post does. That's why this post is:
TODAY'S FEATURE ARTICLE
HAPPY TAX DAY!

. . .I’d like to talk about our nation’s current budget issues. You see, we face difficult times, and our noble president says that we are just going to need to give up just a little more.

ARE YOU FREAKING KIDDING ME, YOU STUPID LYING GREEDY SACK OF CRAP?

Government can’t balance a checkbook. They’re idiots. I know finance math. I do it for a living. And when I look at the numbers involved here, (and the interest!) it makes my head swim. Okay, for you non-accountants, when they start bandying numbers about on the news of 4 trillion such and such, and a hundred billion this and that, I know that your eyes glaze over. You think to yourself, “Oh, it is just the same old same old, bunch of politicians spending too much money, blah blah blah.”

NOOOOO!

Saying that this is the same old same old, is like saying that gophers digging up your lawn is the same level of disaster as Krakatoa. Over the last couple of years we’ve reached a whole new level of crazy. Our spending has gone insane. We’re spending more money, faster, than all of mankind, throughout all of recorded human history. Economists aren’t sure what’s going to happen, because this has never happened before. Ever. On Earth. We’ve strayed into strange new territory here and there are many possible outcomes if we don’t stray the hell back out. And don’t for a second think that any of those possible outcomes are remotely good. No. They range somewhere between the Great Depression and Mad Max.

I got some anger to work out here. Sorry about this, but somebody's gotta say it.

TODAY'S FEATURE ARTICLE
Obama’s charity state

Democrats refuse to peer down the road and see the damage they are doing. While accusing Republicans of somehow taking something from others, Democrats have no qualms about stealing from future generations that have only the Republicans looking out for them before they even arrive.

Readers may have noticed a recent change in tone, here. Because Obama's speech this week pretty much flipped a switch for me. He's a dangerous demagogue. He is a son of a bitch. He is a bastard--quite possibly literally a bastard. He needs to be politically defeated and thwarted at every turn up to and including the 2012 election. Otherwise our children and their children and their children will be paying for our failure in the next year and a half to realize that Obama and the Democrats don't give a damn about anything other than arrogating to themselves raw, naked political power to control every single God-damn part of your life. And you will either see that, or you're a fool, or you're a dangerous psychopath who probably is not only voting Democrat but donating and/or working for the bastards. I'm done arguing about it. He needs to go. And if you disagree, you need to go, too.

This doesn't mean that the Republicans are "all that." They're not. They're Democrat-Lite. They're better than the Democrats in the same sense that having both of your legs broken is better than having them chopped off. With the one, you'll probably be able to walk again on your own two feet, once you heal from the injury. With the other, you won't, unless you get two artificial legs. And the Democrats intend to have the government provide you with both artificial legs and tell you when you can and can't use them.

So, the Republicans just want to break your legs, then sell you the wheelchair and crutches. The Democrats want to chop your legs off at the knees and then "compassionately" help you as you flop around, begging for help--and maybe, maybe, if you're very, very good generously provide you some artificial legs--if you conform to their bizarre notions of "social justice."

Which do you prefer?

Neither? You'd rather have them just leave your legs alone in the first place?

Welcome to the Tea Party.

TODAY'S FEATURE ARTICLE
‘Excessively Partisan, Dramatically Inaccurate and Hopelessly Inadequate’ -- I suspect it takes a lot to make Paul Ryan angry. Barack Obama supplied that "lot" by the truckload in his utterly mendacious, deceitful, lying speech at George Washington University.


Is Paul Ryan the only adult in Washington, D.C.? It sure seems so.

TODAY'S FEATURE ARTICLE
Is actually the introduction of a new topic title:

CLASSICAL LIBERALISM
Which used to just be called "liberalism" (if not "enlightenment") before leftists and radicals hijacked the term and transformed it to be a synonym for "neo-feudalist welfare-statism"
Constitutional Refuseniks: Stewart Rhodes on his controversial group the Oath Keepers and the orders they won't obey

Interviewing Thomas Sowell About Economic Facts And Fallacies

Economics at AoSHQ U: Part 1 - The Economy -- Something that distinguishes classical liberalism from, well, pretty much every other intellectual system devised by mankind, is that classical liberalism is based on the world as it is, with a minimum of value judgments regarding The Meaning Of It All. That's what religions like "progressivism," Marxism, Islam, or Christianity are for (and some of those are more benign than others--Buddhism for instance tends to be quite benign, at least when it isn't spreading enervating apathy . . . but I digress . . .)