Libertygibit

There's nothing more insufferable than a self-professed libertarian. That's because these days, if you're above the age of, say, 19 and you consider yourself a libertarian there's a pretty good chance you're just an asshole -- an asshole who tries to pompously wrap himself in the cloak of an impressive-sounding political ideology because it's better than just admitting that he's, again, a childish, selfish asshole whose views don't deserve to be lent an ounce of respect or credibility.

Watch as Bill Maher thoroughly takes apart the movement he used to consider himself a part of but which he now can't abide.

"Here's To Ben"

Daily Banter overlord Ben Cohen made a nice little appearance on RT News's Thom Hartmann Show late last week to debate the Daily Caller's White House pretend reporter Neil Munro -- you'll remember him as the jackass who heckled President Obama during a Rose Garden press briefing last year -- and libertarian columnist Marc Harrold.

It not only features Harrold right off the bat living up to the stereotype of today's libertarians as conspiracy-spouting anti-government lunatics who live and die by the drivel Alex Jones spouts, but there's a lot of Ben's adorable British accent (which always makes me swoon). Given how much RT loves Ben, I'll have to ask him one of these days if he ever nailed Alyona Minkovski. Because, if so, awesome for him.

By the way, you know, Ben -- Munro is Irish. I think you're allowed under British law to seize his seat and arrest him if he gives you any crap.

(Yes, I know, I know. Almost every crack I've made in this post could be considered sexist or racist. As always, feel free to direct your complaints here.)

Quote of the Day

"I’d also like us to encourage people to gang rush shooters, rather than following their instincts to hide; if we drilled it into young people that the correct thing to do is for everyone to instantly run at the guy with the gun, these sorts of mass shootings would be less deadly, because even a guy with a very powerful weapon can be brought down by 8-12 unarmed bodies piling on him at once."

-- Megan McArdle writing at The Daily Beast

I've tried my best to completely ignore politics and the often idiotic rantings of those who make a living proffering right-wing political opinions since last Friday. I honestly feel like that kind of pettiness should have been put to shame for at least a little while. I don't know, I guess it just seems like it's beneath all of us right now.

But this was unavoidable because Megan McArdle is apparently a very special brand of idiot. It's already been well established that her views are the worst kind of insipid libertarian drivel and that they come from an intellectual featherweight -- why anyone actually pays her to try to think is one of the universe's great mysteries -- but her most recent column crosses the line from dumb into unthinkably offensive.

For most of its painful 4,000 words, it's standard McArdle -- a lot of the-government-can't-do-anything nonsense backed up by arguments a 5th grader would be able to knock holes through -- but then comes the above quote. I never thought I'd be one of those parents, but I guess I am: There's no fucking way humanly possible that Megan McArdle has a child (and if she does, the state she dislikes so much should step in and take him or her away immediately). If you can come up with a worse idea, a more jaw-dropping disaster of a response to the Sandy Hook shooting, than to suggest to your six year old and his or her friends that they should say "let's roll," get into attack formation, and undertake a kamikaze run at a guy armed with an assault rifle, I'm open to hearing it -- although you'd probably be too high to talk.

Ben wrote a really good piece on this today over at Banter and my favorite part about it is that he acknowledges what I kind of alluded to about McArdle, namely that she's such a joke that she barely deserves being mentioned and only gets the honor today because rarely has she herself proven it so spectacularly.

John Stossel: Asshole

My latest piece for the Daily Banter is up -- and it has to do with John Stossel.

Really, that's all that needs to be said.

Here's the opening shot:

"A couple of weeks back, Bob Cesca and I each put together a list of the people in cable news we disliked the most, then ran down our respective choices on our subscription-only podcast After Party. A couple of the names we both came up with were obvious — the O’Reillys and Hannitys of the world — but we did actually try to stay away from easy political targets and were for the most part successful... A couple of days ago, though, I was reminded of a huge oversight on my personal list of the worst of the worst on cable news..."

Read the Rest Here

Paul Maul

The Quote of the Day is actually an entire conversation. Behold, just a small part of a larger exchange between the Huffington Post's Sam Stein and anti-federalism, anti-entitlement, Godfather of modern hardcore libertarian purity Ron Paul.

"STEIN: A bit of a personal question then, are you on Social Security? Do you get Social Security checks?

PAUL: I do.

STEIN: Well, I mean, is there -- you just told younger generations that they should ween themselves off this social contract.

PAUL: That is true.

STEIN: But you haven’t done it yourself... Don’t you think you chould have set a good example for the future generations. You’re not the wealthiest man in congress, I know that, but you have enough means to take care of yourself in retirement... Couldn’t you have set an example?

PAUL: No. I think the programs are so designed, just as I use the post office too, I use government highways, I do that too, I use the banks, the federal reserve system, but that doesn’t mean that you can’t work to remove this in the same way on Social Security."

It would be easy to just write this off as a case of "Do as I Say, Not as I Do" hypocrisy, but really there's something much deeper at work here. The fact is that libertarian ideaologues like Paul -- as with objectivist clowns like Ayn Rand before them -- secretly realize that their belief system is impossible to put into practice. It all looks great on paper, but it's unfeasible to run a unified country or a moral society without realizing that everyone within it will have to at least partially accept responsibility for his or her fellow man. What's more, Paul's cop out that the system is in place so therefore he falls back on it -- that the temptation is just too much to take and apparently robs him of his burning desire to live truly independently -- is almost impossible to listen to without laughing out loud. For the record, Rand herself, talented grifter that she was, did the same thing, only she tried to hide it; unlike Paul, who comes right out and admits he's full of shit, Rand received both Social Security and Medicare as she became old and infirm, only she collected it under her husband's last name.

This is why the modern right, bolstered by a neo-Randian philosophy of which most conservatives understand pretty much nothing other than a few bumper sticker slogans, hates the notion of, say, single-payer healthcare: they're afraid of it; afraid that the temptation will be too much and that people will want to use it; even people who normally breathe fire at the mere mention of government assistance. The difference, of course, is that some of those people -- people like Ron Paul -- can afford to not be a "parasitic burden" on the system while others actually need the help just to eke out an existence.

But I guess when you get old you earn the luxury of being able to issue loud, ex cathedra rulings declaring that no one else is entitled to federal assistance -- while sucking as much as you can get from the government teat.

(via Cesca)

Beyond Thunderdome

You're probably going to hear quite a few iterations of the word "ghoulish" tossed around today. That's pretty much the best way to describe the response by Tea Party sociopaths in Tampa last night to the idea of letting someone die if he or she doesn't have insurance and can't afford to pay medical bills.

Chances are by now you've seen what I'm talking about, but in case you haven't yet, here it is: a hypothetical question posed by Wolf Blitzer, moderator of CNN's Tea Party debate among the GOP candidates for president, to crazy old man Ron Paul. Listen for the audience reaction; that's the gold.



Now it's worth pointing out that Blitzer -- who proved throughout the debate why you shouldn't listen to him while driving or operating heavy machinery -- predictably telegraphed his punch by making the hypothetical patient in question a guy who chose not to pay for health insurance rather than, you know, one of the millions across the country who can't afford insurance. Regardless, this is the second time in as many weeks that we've seen a crowd full of presumably fiercely pro-life Republicans unable to contain their orgiastic bloodlust at the idea of killing somebody. You'll remember that the audience at the Reagan library last week -- Simi Valley suburbanites, all of them -- just about had the largest non-gangbang porn-related mass climax in history when Texas shit-kicker action figure Rick Perry bragged about executing 234 people, at least one of whom was very likely innocent.

Here's the important thing to keep in mind, though -- the basic message of the Tea Party jackasses like the ones that grow up out of the ground in a place like Tampa: They get to decide who lives and who dies. Who's worthy to live or die.

Are you a fetus, even one that's the product of rape or incest, or who's almost doomed from the start to be unloved and to eventually choke the state system -- child protection or penal -- that many on the right believes is the only legitimate recourse? Congratulations, you live -- no matter what. Are you somebody who, ironically, committed a vicious crime as an adult or who was at least convicted of doing so, or maybe even just some poor idiot who made a really bad decision about his or her life and who now stands to pay for that mistake with that very life? Sorry, fuck you, parasite -- you die.

That's really what it comes down to: The sickening Randian "producers vs. parasites" horseshit ethos that can be distilled down to a battle-cry-ready slogan with almost no effort, one that fits really nicely on a bumper-sticker. The problem, of course, is -- who decides who's a producer and who's a parasite? I'm terrified of leaving a decision like that to people who diabolically cheer death like Romans at the Coliseum.

My favorite part of last night's monster truck rally in Tampa, though? That Wolf Blitzer actually lauded the whole thing as evidence of a substantive debate on the issues. Unless CNN actually set out to give the Tea Party and its vile philosophy enough rope to hang themselves on national television, what we witnessed was nothing more than the continued elevation of a relatively small, shockingly ignorant group of pretend freedom fighters simply because they make for good TV. They're splashed across your screen, over and over again, precisely because they're guaranteed to do ridiculous shit like shout for the deaths of those who disagree with their view of the world.

In the end, the Tea Party and its ilk amount to nothing more than the ultimate reality TV show.

Quote of the Day

"We should be like 1900. We should be like 1940, 1950, 1960. I live on the Gulf Coast; we deal with hurricanes all the time. Galveston is in my district. There's no magic about FEMA. They're a great contribution to deficit financing and quite frankly they don't have a penny in the bank. We should be coordinated but coordinated voluntarily with the states. A state can decide. We don't need somebody in Washington."

-- Ron Paul, speaking yesterday in New Hampshire

I swear, sometimes I actually feel bad holding Ron Paul up to ridicule or even bothering to take anything he says seriously. First of all, he's obviously suffering from dementia; secondly, while he's an entertaining diversion and one that inexplicably inspires cult-like devotion among both the tiny "intellectual" arm of the Tea Party and America's early-20-something stoner community, he doesn't stand a chance in hell of winning a thing beyond his congressional seat. The only way Paul will ever see the inside of the Oval Office is if he's invited there by whoever happens to be president. And that's partially because he can stand up in front of a group of people and honestly say, without a hint of irony, that this country needs to return to the way it was 111 years ago. I get that today's Republicans tend to fetishize the 50s, but at least everyone had electricity by that point.

On the podcast this week, Bob and I talked about the school district in Pennsylvania that's now using sheep to cut the grass at one middle-school because it says they save money that would otherwise be spent on, you know, a guy and a lawnmower. Cesca's comment about the story earlier in the week on his blog was freaking priceless: "We’re seriously a few more sheep and a Thunderdome away from becoming Bartertown."

But that's apparently what guys like Ron Paul want.

I've been over this before so I'm not going to repeat myself at length. Suffice it to say, though, that this Randian asshole, every-man-for-himself brand of libertarianism that Paul and his monkey son espouse -- and which seems to have found an audience among the craziest sliver of the electoral pie -- is exactly as advertised. I'll give Paul this, he makes it perfectly clear what he's all about and doesn't hedge one bit; he wants you to know that he doesn't give a rat's ass about you as an American or about this nation as a world leader or superpower. About to get slammed by a hurricane? Tough shit, pal -- you're on your own. It's your fault for living where the hurricanes are and it's certainly not my problem or responsibility. The rest of the world's gonna laugh at this once-mighty country if we allow ourselves to regress to the point of being, basically, a Third World feudal society peppered with frontier towns and no centralized government to speak of? So be it.

Again, there's a point to be made that it's a waste of time and copy-space to give Paul's ramblings any more credence than those of the recently released Bellevue patient who's now staked out a soapbox in the middle of Central Park. For Christ's sake, in 1977 Jimmy Carter implored this country to make the tiny sacrifice of dropping the thermostat a few degrees and wearing a sweater -- and he was publicly castigated for it. You think Americans are gonna go for the abandonment of entire swaths of the country and its people every time a disaster like a monster hurricane hits? You're even more of a lunatic than Ron Paul -- and that's not easy.

Quote of the Day

"I'm so disgusted. I mean, no, I don't know what you do in the face of that kind of intransigence. So, my heart does go out to the President. He is dealing with a lot... The wealthy are paying less than they paid at ay time else, certainly in my lifetime, and probably in the last century. I don't know what we were paying in the roaring 20's; it's criminal that so little is asked of people who are getting so much. I don't mind paying more. I really don't mind paying more taxes. I'd rather pay for taxes than cut 'Reading is Fundamental' or Head Start or some of these programs that are really helping kids. This is the greatest country in the world; is it really that much worse if you pay 6% more in taxes? Give me a break. Look at what you get for it: you get to be American."

-- Matt Damon

If you haven't seen it yet, take a look at Damon's populist tear during an appearance at a Save Our Schools rally over the weekend. Not only did he give voice to the frustration a lot of Americans are feeling in the wake of the shameful debt ceiling fight and equally shameful deal, but he verbally smacked down a reporter and photographer from Reason TV. The two took the typical neo-libertarian asshole position that only the traditional free-market drivers -- like the fear of being out of work -- would lead someone to want to excel at his or her job, whether that job is as an actor or a teacher. That letting the free-market Sword of Damocles be a constant threat over your head makes you try harder and that that's what matters most. Damon wasn't having any of it, and let them know in no uncertain terms.



Do not fuck with Jason Bourne.

My favorite thing about that exchange: I promise you, you have no idea how much the guy with the camera hated being called a "cameraman." In the world of broadcast journalism, it's like calling a flight attendant a stewardess. That's why whenever you hear a photographer referenced on a news show it's as a "photojournalist" or some other impressive-sounding, politically correct title aimed at keeping him or her from pitching a hissy.

By the way, while we're on the subject, if there's one thing I'm absolutely through abiding in this country it's these idiots who embrace Ron Paul as some sort of messianic figure come to save our great nation from itself. The draconian brand of libertarianism that Paul and his monkey son espouse is intrinsically anti-American because it reduces the notion of a "United States of America" -- particularly as a world leader -- to an afterthought, one that can and should be sacrificed in the name of each person doing whatever the hell he or she feels like with no sense of a collective responsibility to each other or the country as a whole. If Paul's vision for America had been in place since our nation's inception, America never could have accomplished the myriad astonishing things that made us a superpower.

The free market is not America. It couldn't fucking care less about America; it exists simply in the service of itself. It has no loyalty to anything but its own perpetuation and notions like patriotism don't even enter into the picture. Say what you will, but a government of duly-elected officials is the only system beholden to no one but the people. In theory, anyway. While I'm not sure our current model is working -- precisely because so many of our leaders are on the take in one way or another -- I hold tightly to the belief that the citizenry can actually change that situation for the better. We have the power, but only if we act in concert as Americans -- not strictly as individuals who don't give a crap about the other people who make this country great.

Ron Paul and his neo-libertarian acolytes want an America with no sense of cohesion; one that's at the mercy of a system of government that's no real government; one that doesn't care much what happens to you because it's either none of its business or it simply isn't cost-effective to give a damn; one that in many ways resembles a Third-World country.

Fuck that.