May 16, 2011

The news

By the time the media get done riding the tale of this sicko IMF clown  we'll be so  exhausted with it that an updated mortality report on Michael Jackson will constitute welcome relief.
'

Why we're broke

Nwamkpa was a good runner in college, got a lot of press. Then he became a teacheroid. Finally he figured out how to earn $1,056 by taking kids to a two-hour movie.

Then the heartless auditors nailed him for Medicaid fraud to the tune of about $140,000 and, in a plea bargain, he got off with probation and a little community service.

But the mean old judge also ordered Nwamkpa to pay restitution of $15,000, about 11 cents on every tax dollar he swiped. Meaning that his movie outing with the troubled youth earned him a mere $940. Hell, for that kind of money I might even go see a Will Smith movie myself.

The told the reporter he was a victim of selective presecution, didn't do anything wrong, and was pleased to learn that he wasn't banned from offering further services to Medicaid eligible youth.

Isn't that a nice public option?
.
Even a fool as great as I knows better than to get involved in friction among people he admires and who, in his opinion, create one of the brightest quarters of libertarian thought on the internet.

But I will comment on a side issue.

A  court made a despicably statist ruling.  Apparently, a raft of email to one of our friends called it a casus belli, real belli. Storm the American Bastille. Blow stuff up.

Frustration followed.

---

Look, if we shouldered our bugout bags, strapped on the custom Baers, and loaded our rifles every time some f-cked-up decision came down from the courts or the congress or the White House, the United States of America would, in short order, find itself a New-World Somalia. Blow-flies on skinny corpses. Swap you an hour with my sister for a pint of figs.

The temptation to go gunning for statists, especially the Checka.  is understandable. But we are a greater people because because we find it in ourselves to take a long breath and use the greater weapons  -- discourse, reason, aggressive political  action, satire, outright ridicule, and even the flawed system itself. Yes, it's slow and uncertain. But also yes, it keeps a lot of four-year-olds from getting shot down in the crossfire between loyalist forces and a hundred thousand rebels whose thought processes begin and end with SHTF movies.

May 14, 2011

Huckabee bails; Iowa Caucuses 2012

The Rev. Mr. Mike Huckabee of Arkansas -- preacher, ex-governor, and Fox teevee star -- says he could probably win the GOP nomination but won't run anyway. His heart says "no," and it is certainly un-Christian of me to suspect that his personal accountant endorsed the decision.

I won't miss him, despite his undeniable personal affability. I find it harmless enough that Arkansas Baptist preachers undertake to give us final, definitive, and absolute truth about God and His universe. It is only when they claim they're smart enough  to administer the American civil system -- in part because they get a daily briefing from God --  that I draw the line.

This reduces to 17 the number of competing geniuses on the TMR broad-form list of caucus pests, which has been updated to reflect Huckabee's prayerful decision to keep getting richer on commercial teevee.

---

Huckabee won the 2008 caucuses with about 34 per cent of the vote. You will see unbelievable huffing and puffing to attract these Iowa "values" voters. Our status as a leading wind-energy producer is safe for at least eight more months.