End the War on Freedom

# It occurred to me on Tuesday, while I was looking at that new Marlin 1894P that for less money I could get a brand new AK-47. Further thought revealed that I don't want an AK-47, no matter how practical it might be for defensive purposes. I like American lever guns a lot better. What can I say. I grew up in cowboy country. I remember my father singing "Ragtime Cowboy Joe" (283K MP3 of UWyo marching band).

Ragtime Cowboy Joe (chorus)

"He always sings
Raggy music to the cattle
As he swings
Back and forward in the saddle,
On a horse - a pretty good horse!
He's got a syncopated gaiter,
And you ought to hear the meter
To the roar of his repeater;
How they run - yes run! -
When they hear him come,
Cause the western folks all know,
He's a high-falootin', rootin, tootin',
Son of a gun from ol' Wyoming,
Ragtime Cowboy
Talk about your Cowboy,
Ragtime Cowboy Joe."

# Bob Wallace at The Price of Liberty - The Way It Should Have Been - how 9/11 would have gone down had Americans not been trained and required by "law" to be helpless victims. [price]

Hijacker: This is a hijacking! I have a boxcutter!

Grandma: I have a .45! Now reach for the sky, or I'll put a hole in that diaper-hat on top of your pointy little head!

Hijacker: What?! I did not know Americans were allowed to carry handguns on airplanes! I thought the liberals took away your firearms and your gonads!

Grandma: What alternate universe do you live in? This is America, land of the free and home of the brave! And the armed!

Bureaucrat: Everyone put away your handguns and surrender! Do what they tell you! There won't be any trouble if you just act like sheep!

Grandma: Shut up you, you worthless idjit! (Smacks bureaucrat on top of his head, which causes him to cry like a girl.) Anyone who listens to anything said by anyone from the government deserves exactly what they get!

Billy Beck at KimDuToit.com - here's the full text of Mr. Beck's comment on Kim's Delta Sunset article (search for "gig"): [kimdutoit]

For more than six years now in my current gig, I've been flying exclusively instead of rolling around the country on a tour coach. Having shitloads of experience pre and post-9/11, I'm just about astonished that any airline exists in this country since TSA.

I've never had any illusions about the proletarian culture of air travel. I'm old and experienced enough to recall when the concept of "the jet-set" reflected a reality long gone, trampled underfoot by doddering herds of cattle without the least clue how to conduct themselves though the experience, nor even how to learn how to do it. Honest to god: I walk through airports with seething contempt for every idiotic slug in sight, which means: every human being in the joint. Bless their hearts: they are the lamest thing I ever saw.

This is true, however: without the revolution in air transport economics that has fostered that whole mess, my job simply would not be economically feasible.

The worst of all of it is TSA. Every time I approach those rotten bastards, I fully expect to be arrested at any moment. That's because it is utterly impossible for me to conceal my hatred of them, and I am not interested to try. Every single chance I get, I look 'em right in the eye and tell 'em they're utterly worthless assholes. Their hair stands up, they call out supervisors and the National Guard (you think I'm kidding?), and I cooly inform them that they don't have to like me, but they only have to try to fake their idiotic jobs enough to rationalize the waste of my valuable time.

"Have a nice day, sir."

"Not on your word, moron."

"Sir, why do you have to be so nasty about this?"

"I'll tell you why. It's because I remember what commercial flying was like before it was overrun with assholes like you. Just shut the fuck up."

I have no earthly idea why I haven't had my photograph posted at every terminal in the country, with a standing order to shoot me on sight. But I know this: if they ever get around to it, it won't be because I'm a danger to the flight. Quite the opposite, in fact. The men on my team are explicitly agreed: Jesus help the fool who attempts anything sinister while we're aboard. The instant he's within arm's reach, he gets my Parker pen in the middle of his throat as far as I can jam it, and the fight's on.

I could live with the cattle. I'll never stop hating my so-called "protectors", who are doing everything they can to beat the last life out of an industry that would find a way to serve me in a culture not begging for the government whip, from CEO's right down to the fucking idiots who make the evening news with their viddie-bites about how this horseshit makes them "feel safe".

That's my story and I'm stickin' to it.

# Ronald Neff at Strike the Root - No Special Features; No Alternate Ending (moved here) - Mr. Neff recommends purchasing a DVD of Reagan's funeral in order to put yourself face-to-face with the utter horror of the Cult of the state. [root]

At first you may gasp and cry out with Chief Brody, "We're gonna need a bigger boat!"

But it's not a bigger boat you need. You need to get out of the water. We swim in the water of the State all our lives; but it is not until such a display as this funeral, when we momentarily glimpse the monster, its arresting, cloacal beauty inspiring us at once to gasp with awe and to gag with nausea, that we see at last it is not armed with stingers or teeth as we had thought. We see it commands tentacles that writhe in the heart of the sea and stretch throughout it, over its floor and into it, their girth dwarfing Yggdrasil, the knots they create Gordian. Only then can we come to our senses and say, "This is no place for a man."

# Joel Miller at Lew Rockwell.com - The Jailor State and the Drug War - why the war on some drugs makes gang violence worse, much worse. An introduction to Mr. Miller's book Bad Trip: How the War Against Drugs is Destroying America. [lew]

When two dogs are fighting in the backyard, do you (a) start fighting with them, or (b) distract them from the fight by turning the garden hose on them?

The surest way to leave gangs soaking wet is to take the drug trade out of their focus and concern. Laws against drugs noticeably increase crime on our streets and violently endanger the lives and property of people trapped in the middle by making the drug trade lucrative to thugs. If we want to see the killing stop, we've got to change tactics. Legalize, decriminalize -- whatever you call it, we need to get the State to butt out.

# Richard Edwards at This Is London - Steaming gang's terror reign - a gang of punks has been surrounding bus and train travelers in London and robbing and beating them. They have been captured by the police, but appear intent on continuing their behavior while out on bail. If only the English hadn't decided to be a nation of helpless victims. One bullet to the head of one of these punks from one of their intended victims would stop the whole thing in a British minute. [pournelle]

# Kurt Nimmo at Counterpunch - The Bush-Kerry Conundrum: The Only Choice is the War Party - on the essential equivalence of the two wings of the Boot on Your Neck Party. [grabbe]

So, in November, you can vote for a Republican warmonger or a Democrat warmonger. Oh, you can vote for Ralph Nader on principle, or not vote at all, but the forgone conclusion is that the War Party will be in the White House -- either Republican or Democrat flavor, no difference -- for another four years. Meanwhile, the neoliberal war against Islam and the third world will continue. The Wall Street neolibs may get a new CEO, but the game plan will remain essentially unchanged. It's all about management style -- the charter remains rock solid.

We have little choice but to sit back and watch the empire crumble. It may take a year, or it may take 20, but sooner or later the empire will disintegrate -- as all empires eventually do. In America, the criminally insane rule and the rest of us, or the vast majority of the rest of us, either do not care, do not know, or are distracted and properly brainwashed into acquiescence.

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