Feeling Gassy

Have you ever heard an elder reminisce about 25-cent gas? Silver's at $28 per ounce.

Wikileaks Threatens the State Dept's Ability to Continuously Operate in Exigency Mode

It's no fun when bureaucrats don't even try anymore.

Publication of documents of this nature at a minimum would:

* Place at risk the lives of countless innocent individuals -- from journalists to human rights activists and bloggers to soldiers to individuals providing information to further peace and security;

* Place at risk on-going military operations, including operations to stop terrorists, traffickers in human beings and illicit arms, violent criminal enterprises and other actors that threaten global security; and,

* Place at risk on-going cooperation between countries - partners, allies and common stakeholders -- to confront common challenges from terrorism to pandemic diseases to nuclear proliferation that threaten global stability.

Why? Because the information to be released is supposedly frank about bureaucratic and political corruption.

Anticipating the fallout from the latest publication, U.S. Ambassador to Germany Philip Murphy wrote a letter to the German Sunday weekly Bild am Sonntag that the WikiLeaks revelations would be an embarrassment.

"Regrettably we will soon have something new to see: alleged confidential diplomatic messages from U.S. embassies around the world, including mine. It's hard to say what effect it will have, but it will at the very least be uncomfortable -- for my government, for those mentioned in the reports, and for me personally as American Ambassador to Germany."

The newspaper reported that some German politicians were severely judged in the reports.

On Friday, U.S. Ambassador to Iraq James Jeffrey told reporters he was worried about the documents coming out.

"WikiLeaks are an absolutely awful impediment to my business, which is to be able to have discussions in confidence with people," he said.

Just so the score is straight here, to fight people who would use violence to achieve political and economic goals, people who use violence to achieve political and economic goals have to work with other people who use violence to achieve political and economic goals, but in secret. And, with corruption. And, your money.

Otherwise H1N1 will be unleashed.

Now Call me a Whore!

Mark Ames:

Anytime anyone says anything libertarian, spit on them.

Anything libertarian like this? "I will not initiate force or fraud against any person or property."

FYI, Mark, that means that no matter how wrong, hurtful, or hate-filled you are, I will never advocate for or condone any attempt to silence you. I will condemn any attempt by anyone else to silence you.

Now, spit on me so we can begin the lesson on a libertarian response to initiation of force.

Libertarians are by definition enemies of the state

True and false. The vast majority of people who call themselves libertarians are actually very big promoters of the state.

[Libertarians] are against promoting American citizens’ general welfare

False. Libertarians are for promoting everyone's general welfare. To the extent that everyone includes "American citizens" (whatever that is) libertarians are for promoting their welfare also.

[Libertarians are] against policies that create a perfect union.

A perfect union of what? Royalty? No. Voluntary human cooperatives? Libertarians are very much in favor of those policies.

Like Communists before them, they are actively subverting the Constitution and the American Dream, and replacing it with a Kleptocratic Nightmare.

If the non-initiation of violence entails subversion of "the Constitution and the American Dream" (whatever those are) and replaces them with a kleptocracy, so be it. This very much assumes facts not in evidence, but, as such an outcome is self-defeating, not alarming in the least. What is alarming is the thought of someone with your brand of authoritarian sociopathy initiating force against your political and ideological enemies.

[HT to Glenn Greenwald]

Yep

Understatement:

Once bureaucrats get the bit in their teeth they take absurdity to its logical conclusion. - Paul Craig Roberts

Junk Man

I'm sure there are a lot of reasons to like John Tyner in addition to his outstanding poise when dealing with officious bureaucrats.

But, I'm going to say the best thing about Tyner is his ability to get the entire country talking about touching their junk in nationwide media outlets.

Immature Punks

Now that all the seasonal political attention whores have gone home, or their caves, or wherever it is they go when they are not making post-season baseball a sickening experience to watch, the news has turned to more substantive subjects: cat fights between full-time political attention whores.

Really? There's nothing better to talk about than what this state mouthpiece said about that state mouthpiece?