Last week, Bob Barr, a former Republican congressman from Georgia was on the Hannity and Colmes show on the Fox News Network.  Congressman Barr has launched a Presidential Exploratory Committee for the 2008 elections, and Hannity and Colmes wanted to take the opportunity to criticize Barr about his decision.  What had Sean Hannity’s tighty whiteys in a knot was that  Congressman Barr plans to run as a Libertarian.

    Both Sean and his toady Alan Colmes peppered Barr with questions attempting to marginalize him and the Libertarian party:  “Would you vote for the legalization of heroin or crack?”  (Barr responded no, but added that drugs were an issue “better handled by the state than the Federal government”, as the never-ending War on Drugs would indicate).  When the hosts allowed Barr to answer a question free from annoying interruptions he noted that the Libertarians were not a single-issue party, but a party whose overriding doctrine is to “maximize individual liberty and minimize government power”—much like the framers of the Constitution had in mind.

    The Republican Party was once the party of small government and individual liberty, but it has devolved into a megalith of social conservatism (occasionally boarding on theocratic dogma), a behemoth sized government and an eradicator of civil liberties.  Libertarians want a country where, as long as force or fraud is not involved, individuals are free to do as they wish; much like the old Republican Party.  The problem for Libertarians is raising public awareness.  Barr’s name recognition  would go a long way to raising that public awareness--something that would spell disaster for the Republican Party.   And Hannity knows it.

    Hannity told Barr that if Barr pulls three percent of the vote from McCain, Hillary or Obama will win the election, Hugo Chavez will be Attorney General and Alec Baldwin will be Secretary of State.  Ok, I just heard the Chavez/Baldwin comment in my head, but Hannity’s voice was tight with fear when he said Barr might “steal” the election from the Republicans.  If the imaginary theft occurred, Hannity said he would hold Barr personally responsible. Oooooo scary.   Barr’s response was if the Republicans were not strong enough to win by more than three percent that was hardly his fault.

    The chances of a Libertarian winning in November, even one with as much name recognition as Barr, are about the same as Florida counting its votes right the first time.  Barr and Hannity both know that.  What Hannity and the rest of the Neocons fear are traditional and centrist Republicans defecting to the Libertarian party.  It is in the best interest of the Republican leadership for the public to see the Libertarians as dope smoking ex-hippies who want to privatize the sidewalks.  Neocons do not want you to think of Libertarians as the last bastion for resurrecting civil liberties.  They do not want you to see the Libertarians as the party who will bring the troops home and station them on the US boarders.  They do not want you to see Libertarians as the party who believe the best person to decide what to do what your money is you, rather than a bloated Federal Government with a voracious appetite for your income.

    Libertarians tend not to get involved with ideological wars without an exit strategy.  A Libertarian will ask: are we winning the War on Drugs or are we just growing an ever-expanding bureaucracy of upper level DEA managers?  A Libertarian will say that rather than some phony War on Poverty—which actually creates more dependency on the Feds—let’s keep the money in the private sector where jobs can  be created for the poor.  A Libertarian will wonder how can we win the War on Terror if we do not know when it is over.   Perhaps we should end these other wars and start a war on war slogans.

    While the democrats will tell you the government programs are the solution to all our problems, and Republicans believe government program growth is necessary in this time of slogan wars, Libertarians believe the only good government program is the one that just ended.  The unalienable rights of the individual to pursue life, liberty and happiness in whatever way that individual defines (barring force or fraud), those terms are paramount to the Libertarian party and most government programs that run counter to that end.  Regardless of Bob Barr winning the election, or even the Libertarian nomination, he can carry the Libertarian message to the people.

    And that is why Sean Hannity is so angry.

    By now you’ve seen or heard about the six teen-aged cheerleader girls (read that as: felonious loons with no sense of  good or evil) and their two trollish male look outs who beat an unsuspecting teen with a savagery usually reserved for clashes between the Chinese militia and Tibetan monks.

    The reason?  The victim wrote something that hurt the fragile egos of the cheerleaders on her MySpace page.  Let’s hope that the state of Florida tries these criminals as adults.

    None of this would have happened without the Internet and YouTube.  Before you send my editor crazed emails, hear me out. Thanks to the egocentric narcissism that compels these loons, they believe that no matter how heinous their particular crime, it is worthy of public viewing on a video sharing site.  Had this attack occurred five years ago, the victim would have had to prove these troglodytes were her attackers.  No doubt each would have lied for the other rather than face certain prison time and possible Karmic retribution.  Now, the victim can just point to the video when her vision heals.  The victim was beaten so badly that she (as of this writing) still has hearing and vision problems.

    But there are those who will blame The Internet, YouTube and Myspace when the  blame lies with the little criminals who committed the atrocious acts and, to a lesser extent, their parents.  I had violent influences when I was growing up, but I can honestly say that I never tried to eye boink my friends, push them off cliffs or drop anvils on their heads.  There was the one summer when I acted like Baretta and walked around with an unlit cigarette behind my ear, but upon returning to school in September, Mother Superior broke me of the habit by smacking the smoke from my ear and leaving me with a aural ring for three days.  I did not tell my mother about the incident because she would have assumed that, if Mother Superior has whacked me I must have deserved it.   The point is, even as young children, my friends and I knew that the things the Three Stooges, Buggs Bunny, or the Coyote did were fantasy and shouldn’t be replicated in the real world.

    The parents of these hoodlums also share some culpability. Not as much, but some.  The cheerleaders and their accomplices were certainly old enough to understand the difference between right and wrong.  While I don’t know any of the parents personally, I will go out on a limb and say they probably never said ambushing a defenseless teen and beating her into a concussion is bad, but I am sure the parents implied that in some of their lessons. The parents are certainly financially responsible for their children, as future civil suits will no doubt bear out, but I am torn on the suggestion that criminal charges against the parents are necessary.  Unless raising a thug is a crime. 

    Christina Garcia, mother of one of the thugs, I mean girls, had the audacity to blame the victim.  According to news reports, the victim made some comments on her Myspace page about the girls.  Ms. Garcia, who will never win Humanitarian of the Year, said, “I just don’t see why [the victim] would do that if she didn’t have the nerve to back it up, what you’re saying.”  She did admit later thather daughter should have called police.Ya think?

    These monsters had ample opportunities to prevent this crime.  At every stage during the planning process one of the more highly evolved among the primates could have said this is bad idea.  The person holding the camera could have put it down or, at the very least, stopped recording and suggest they release the victim. Instead the little vigilante holding the camera said, “There is only 17 seconds left, make it good.”

    One of the accomplices, an 18-year-old high school student, was standing by the door planning to run interference if anyone tried to interupt.  He could have gone for help at any time, but choose to be a thug.  A word  to that particular troglodyte: you are just as guilty as the girls who perpetrated the beatings. You will be tried as an adult, as I hope the the rest of the pack is; and, if found guilty, you will end up in the big boys’ prison.  Keep in mind that someone will be standing outside your cell making sure no one interrupts your welcoming committee.

    In a magnanimous move by the government in an attempt to stimulate the economy, millions of taxpayers can expect to receive a rebate check of $300 to $1500 dollars next month.  The cynic in me says ‘This must be an election year’. The realist in me says, to paraphrase the commercial, ‘It’s my money and I want it now!”.  Turns out the cynic and the realist are both correct.

    It is my money because the government does not earn its own money.  The Feds acquire their money either by printing more (thereby devaluing the dollar thus contributing to inflation and slowing the economy), or taking it from us by threat of force and prison via income taxes.  Returning our money to us and calling it “rebate” is not really increasing the amount of money in the economy it is just shifting the money from the left pocket to the right pocket.  As far as we the taxpayers are concerned this is not a ‘rebate’; it is more like the mugger who stole our wallet returning it and saying, “Sorry, this is yours.”

    To stimulate the economy, the best thing the feds could do is create permanent tax cuts.  These tax cuts would necessitate cuts in federal spending, and that is where our gluttonous government, collectivists, and statists rage into apoplectic dementia and babble delirium drabble like “We can’t cut government spending, it’s an investment in our future”.  Puh-lease.  Government spending is always a demand for payment on you or your children’s future.   Regardless of what the President and all the little would be presidents say, or how many plans they pontificate, the government cannot grow an economy.  Only the private sector has that ability.

    Think of our market economy as a car in which you, the consumer, are driving.  When comfortable with the road, you control the economy with a judicious application of gas (your demand for goods and services) and brake (your need to save for future purchases) and everything runs the way it should. Now, if we want to imagine the economy under control of the government, step out of the car and let a crash test dummy drive.

    Other than permanent tax cuts, the best thing the feds can do about the economy is what they do best, nothing.  To extend the car metaphor, imagine you are driving along at good clip when suddenly a brick wall appears in front of you.  That brick wall is government economic interference at its worst: think the Jimmy Carter years or the Soviet Union just before its collapse.  At its best, government economic interference is still bad.  Instead of a nice smooth blacktop on which to drive, think of an old decrepit road littered with trash and potholes.  To avoid damage, you and the rest of the consumers must drive slowly, performing driving acrobatics just to keep you and your car safe.  The roads may become so infested and dilapidated that you opt to stay home.  The economy slows and then grinds to a stop.  Those government created potholes are confiscatory taxes; corporate welfare; bailouts; protectionism; trade barriers; subsidies, and a slow moving semi-trailer full of regulations and restrictions.  For a glaring example of the feds economic shrewdness one only need consider the Social Security System.  That Ponzi scheme is expected be bankrupt around the year 2042. 

    Will a rebate stimulate the economy? Maybe, (but it is still our money and we want it now).  Permanent solutions however will only arrive when you contact your representatives and say—“about that economic policy thing, fix the roads, shut up and let me drive”.

    Last week, Democratic presidential hopeful Senator Barack Obama showed us why he is just another smarmy politician and not the Great Unifier as some have named him. In a disingenuous speech, marginally designed to distance Obama from his whackado minster Reverend Jeremiah Wright, the Senator managed to turn the issue from the anti-American rantings of Reverend Wright to a thinly veiled condemnation of those calling out the Reverend's words. At the heart of Obama's speech is the theme that the Reverend isn't wrong, but that everyone else needs to pay more attention to race. The Senator's exact quote, '...race is an issue that I believe this nation cannot afford to ignore right now'*. When have we ever ignored race in this country? If anything, we are so obsessed with race that we see racial slights in the most mundane and inconsequential events. Obama's slickness however, isn't that he re-framed the question to be about race rather than anti-American ramblings by his Black Separatist pastor, but how he was able to talk for 20 minutes and never really say anything of substance.
    In ten pages of text, Senator Obama never distances himself from Wright, if anything, the speech is almost a defense of the Reverend. Obama said “I can no more disown him [Reverend Wright] than I can disown the black community”.  One clearly cannot disown his race, but you can drive to a different church on Sunday. When the Senator says he disagrees with some of the more inflammatory comments (though he never actually says which comments he disagrees with: that the AIDS virus was created by the government to wipe out the black community; that the chickens have come home to roost in reference to 9/11; or that God should damn the USA) he is quick to add that we've all heard things from our “pastors, priests, or rabbis with which you [we've] strongly disagreed.” You are correct Senator, but when I found myself 'strongly disagreeing' with something my priest said, I left the church. I didn't continue to go there week after week, year after year, giving implicit endorsement by my presence or financial endorsement through my offerings.
    The Senator believes that we still need to march to a “more just, more equal, more free, more caring, and more prosperous America”. What the Senator doesn't do is tell us how we will know when we get there. Does 'more equal' mean a level playing field in which one isn't given preferential treatment based on skin color, gender, sexual orientation or family ties? If the answer is yes, then the Senator should say so and let the discussion begin. If the answer is no, then the Senator wants to have the same old arguments about race—the lectures in which whites must listen but are not allowed to contribute. Obama then goes on to say that we need to move on about race, but spends two paragraphs defending why Reverend Wright is still stuck in the fifties and sixties with regards to racial relations.
    Supporters and apologists for Senator Obama have called him an 'inspirational speaker'. The New York Observer wrote an article about Obama's delivery essentially calling him a cross between Dr. Martin Luther King and John F. Kennedy (“What Makes Obama a Good Speaker?”, http://www.observer.com/2008/what-makes-obama-good-speaker), and no one can deny Obama's oratory skills. The content of this speech however, is more like a Bruce Willis movie than a JFK speech, all flash and no substance.
    Reverend Wright is certainly free to say what he believes. Though he may want to cover the original sin concept again. According to Obama, “it [the Constitution] was stained by this nation's original sin of slavery”. Technically, according to Christian cannon, original sin was man's violation of God's law. Just saying. Scriptural inaccuracies aside, Reverend Wright's job is to shepard his congregation as he sees fit. Senator Obama also has every right to attend the church of his choice. The Senator is asking us to use his past judgment as a benchmark to award him the presidency of the US. I agree. Twenty years of support to a vehemently anti-American pastor tells us quite a bit about the Senator's judgment.
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*All quotes unless indicated otherwise are from the Remarks of Senator Barack Obama, “A More Perfect Union” Speech. Given at the Constitution Center, Tuesday, March 18th, 2008, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.