Monthly Archives: January 2012

As in THE Dream.

THE REEM SEASON 2 EPISODE 10: REDEMPTION from THE REEM on Vimeo.

You won’t see any posts here tomorrow because I’m joining the SOPA protest. If I had the technical ability to actually black-out DuelingBarstools, maybe put up a picture of me flipping the government the bird, believe me when I say I would. Unfortunately the best I can do is post this message expressing my wholehearted, vociferous opposition to SOPA and other bills of its ilk. NDAA, SOPA, and the year is very young. NO HALF MEASURES. Gary Johnson, Ron Paul, or BUST. Because those are the only two candidates who won’t let this kind of bullshit fly.

In light of the following article, which you should read in its entirety, consider joining me on the Gary Johnson, Ron Paul, or BUST wagon. THE TIME FOR HALF MEASURES IS LONG GONE. (A vote for Romney is a half-measure, in my view.)

Here’s law professor Jonathan Turley’s top ten reasons America is no longer the land of the free.

The column addresses how the continued rollbacks on civil liberties in the United States conflicts with the view of the country as the land of the free.  If we are going to adopt Chinese legal principles, we should at least have the integrity to adopt one Chinese proverb: “The beginning of wisdom is to call things by their right names.”  We seem as a country to be in denial as to the implications of these laws and policies.  Whether we are viewed as a free country with authoritarian inclinations or an authoritarian nation with free aspirations (or some other hybrid definition), we are clearly not what we once were.

Read the whole thing.

In case you’re not aware, I hail from Waimea, Hawai’i, which is one of the world’s most beautiful places. Unlike most travel worthy places, including other Hawaiian locales, there is no single iconic photo encompassing Waimea’s grandeur. Fact. (For instance this is facing south. From a cattle pasture in low in the saddle between Mauna Kea and Kohala. From Waimea’s higher elevations you see (google the following wahi pana (placenames)) east towards Waipi’o Valley, Kohala to the North, and much of the western portion of the Big Island of Hawai’i, on which exist 12 of the planet’s 14 climate zones.)

Waimea’s farmer’s market, which is awesome, now has a website. And you can order from it. I especially recommend the vendors’ wares. and all of them.



NO ONE who actually believes in the principle of self ownership, and other basic tenets of individual freedom, much less the Constitution as written, would sully him/herself by voting for Mitt Romney a candidate who is pro NDAA, Patriot Act, War on Drugs, Interventionist Foreign and Military Policy, State Health Care (much less with an individual mandate), and is an outright Social Conservative. All of the foregoing, which are only the most prominent of the GOP field’s (save for Paul) liberty shortcomings, are deal-breakers. Therefore the moral choice–and by moral I mean most consistent with the principles of non-coercion and basic respect of each human’s natural rights–is Gary Johnson, and secondarily Ron Paul.

If Ron Paul is the GOP nominee I back him. If anyone other than Ron Paul (or Buddy Roemer) is the GOP nominee I will back Gary Johnson’s Libertarian Party bid. (Oh what I’d give for Gary Johnson to break the 15% polling mark (he’s 9% now) and be on the major debates. I’d buy that shit on pay per view.)

I’m all in for Gary Johnson or Ron Paul. That’s the 2012 wrap. Glad politics is out of the way.

ps: The speculative word is that if Romney enters the RNC with more delegates than Paul the “deal” Romney will offer Paul (to get his delegates) is to appoint Paul Secretary of the Treasury, which would be fucking awesome (except for Romney being President). On the other hand Ron Paul would have to utter an endorsement for Romney, who stands for nearly everything Paul rightly opposes. I can’t see a Romney-Paul horse trade. In that case Paul joins Gary Johnson in third-party wonderland and this time a miracle occurs. Gary Johnson-Ron Paul versus Obama in November. That’s my prediction.

Via:

I don’t know what percentage of Democrats and left-leaning Independents loathe the Republican Party because they believe it is characterized by people like Rick Santorum (as opposed to Gary Johnson), but you can add me to the list of people absolutely terrified of a Rick Santorum presidency. I’d rather have Palin.

Who are the assholes considering this man for President? Here’s Santorum on individualism:

One of the criticisms I make is to what I refer to as more of a libertarianish right. You know, the left has gone so far left and the right in some respects has gone so far right that they touch each other. They come around in the circle. This whole idea of personal autonomy, well I don’t think most conservatives hold that point of view.

In other words, “no true Scotsman”…

Some do. They have this idea that people should be left alone, be able to do whatever they want to do, government should keep our taxes down and keep our regulations low, that we shouldn’t get involved in the bedroom, we shouldn’t get involved in cultural issues. You know, people should do whatever they want.

Yeah, that’s the trend these days–see the Republican Liberty Caucus. More individual freedom and equal treatment now. Period.

Well, that is not how traditional conservatives view the world and I think most conservatives understand that individuals can’t go it alone. That there is no such society that I am aware of, where we’ve had radical individualism and that it succeeds as a culture.

No successful individualistic “culture”? Not even the one called America? Is America not characterized by individualism, its Constitution not specifically designed to enshrine the life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness  every individual as the Declaration of Independence boldly declares? Now the shark is officially jumped.

If only Santorum would carry on and enlighten me as to the many successful cultures premised upon radical collectivism, which is the inverse implication of his terrible reductio ad absurdum assault on “argument” against individual freedom. Of course he won’t, because radical collectivism (e.g. Communism) was an abject failure that cost hundreds of millions of lives in the 20th century alone, and American individualism is hardly “radical” because each state is (and always has been) possessed of absolute police authority over individuals.

In addition to wrongly conflating government with society, which error is the root source of Santorum’s anti-Constitutional views (see also Huckabee, Mike), Santorum apparently operates under the impression that conservatism is a set of values rather than a sound political philosophy of abiding by limiting principles. The trouble with Santorum, like many other Republicans, is that his limiting principles, which he believes are divinely inspired, contradict the basic principles of self-ownership and individual freedom that inspired, however imperfectly, the Constitution and Bill of Rights.

I’ll look forward to the day when the Santorums of the GOP are relegated to crazy uncle status.

[Updated and Edited Jan 3, 2012, because it needed it.]