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Quick Jots: October 2022



Germans stockpiling firewood
#energy #germany #environmentalism
Germany is now in an energy crisis after the government decommissioned nuclear power plants, pushed all the chips in for green energy, and failed to compensate with a fossil fuel backup. Now that Russia has turned off natural gas, its citizens have been reduced to stockpiling firewood for the winter months. Are they still a first-world country, when they have to stockpile wood for the winter, lest they freeze? Burning wood is, somewhat ironically, a much dirtier method of heating than natural gas. Oh, and Germany is also now importing coal from South Africa.

Three Los Angeles Councilmembers and a Labor Official
#racism
Just reading the occupation of those four subjects, we already know their political leanings. In a leaked audio recording, one of the councilmembers, Nury Martinez, was caught making racist derogatory remarks about her fellow white councilmember's black son, calling him a "changuito", Spanish for "little monkey". Not only that, but she also made derogatory remarks against Oaxacans, Armenians, and Jews. This is how these unimpressive, power-hungry people behave when they think they're not being recorded. 

Nury Martinez resigned following the fallout, with a nice, sincere, apologetic resignation letter. She mentioned all of her accomplishments, claimed it was all on a selfless desire to represent her community, complained about how hard it was, and thanked her staff and family. Oh, wait. There was only one apology and it was to her staff that it was "ending it this way". It actually reads like half a campaign letter and half a resignation letter. No mention of her fellow council member or her son to whom she made some of the worst comments I've ever heard. No apology. No mention of regret. She signed off with the bizarre sequence of saying her deceased father will always be her inspiration (not sure that's a compliment following what she did), hoping she was an inspiration to all little Latina girls across the city (to be a racist asshole?) and beg for space and privacy while she "reflects" (please, I don't want to own up to what I said and please don't make me!).

Interestingly, the entire point of the leaked recording was not to capture these racist remarks but to showcase the conspiracy between the city council and big labor. So in a way, the racist remarks were a distraction to the real issue, but to me, it's kind of like...are we really surprised that unions conspire with the government? I thought this was common knowledge for decades. Not to say that it's no good to release this information, but it's a bit dismaying that it would be a surprise to people.

No on pot legalization?
#drugwar #libertarianparty
The Missouri Libertarian Party declined to endorse a pot legalization measure on the ballot, citing overly burdensome laws. This sent a rift through libertarians, but the reasoning was that the laws would create a worse environment than what it is today. Years ago, the California Libertarian Party declined to endorse a proposition for pot legalization for the same reason (two or four years after an actual good proposition failed to pass). Today, there are widespread problems in the pot industry in California. A multitude of legal growers and distributors have given up on the state as black markets still reign due to the regulation and high taxes. 

Best SCOTUS brief ever
#scotus #freespeech
In response to Ohio Police officers arresting someone who parodied them on Facebook, The Onion filed the best amicus brief in Supreme Court history. Hell, the best brief in all judicial history. With a start like this:

The Onion is the world’s leading news publication, offering highly acclaimed, universally revered coverage of breaking national, international, and local news events. Rising from its humble beginnings as a print newspaper in 1756, The Onion now enjoys a daily readership of 4.3 trillion and has grown into the single most powerful and influential organization in human history. 

...and an argument like this:

The Onion’s business model was threatened. This was only the latest occasion on which the absurdity of actual events managed to eclipse what The Onion’s staff could make up. Much more of this, and the front page of The Onion would be indistinguishable from The New York Times.  

...followed up with an argument like this:

The Onion regularly pokes its finger in the eyes of repressive and authoritarian regimes, such as the Islamic Republic of Iran, the Democratic People’s Republic of North Korea, and domestic presidential administrations. So The Onion’s professional parodists were less than enthralled to be confronted with a legal ruling that fails to hold government actors accountable for jailing and prosecuting a would-be humorist simply for making fun of them.  

...there is no rival.

I would know. I've read every amicus brief ever to have been written.

Biden throws away toys, laments that others have more toys than he
#energy #joebiden
Joe Biden pleaded with OPEC to increase oil production as gasoline prices had spiked in the past year. Some may remember that Biden had issued oil lease moratoriums and buried several other domestic oil projects in response to climate change. To summarize, he doesn't allow the production of gas domestically so that we can have other people produce the gas for us, resulting in worse emissions (due to differences in regulatory environments), and burning fossil fuels to ship all that fuel overseas to America. These are the people we're supposed to look up to?

Tulsi Gabbard leaves Democratic Party
#tulsigabbard #democrats
Tulsi Gabbard has left the Democratic Party, calling the establishment "an elitist cabal of warmongers driven by cowardly wokeness". 

I'm not quite sure how to feel about this. On the one hand, I cheer the comments. On the other hand, who is left in the Democratic Party to really fight the fight? Jared Polis? Ron Wyden? Who else?

She mentioned on the Joe Rogan podcast that she would be independent. I imagine Andrew Yang is going to try to court her into his new ironically directionless Forward Party. I know libertarians that would like her to be in the Libertarian Party, but honestly, it wouldn't be a good fit, given her economic issues. She is a great Democrat, but not a good libertarian. So I wish her well as an independent.

Imagine if we had her as president now, instead of bumbling Joe Biden. The Russia-Ukraine war would have been over months ago. So many Ukrainian and Russian lives would be saved. 

Michael White destroys debate field
#libertarianparty #elections
Michael White, a Libertarian Party candidate for US Congress in Arkansas, destroys the field in a televised debate. The Democrat didn't seem to be able to even muster a coherent response to any question.


Shane Hazel debate
#libertarianparty #elections
Shane Hazel, a Libertarian Party candidate for governor in Georgia does solidly in his debate as well. He perhaps did not do as well as White, as he stumbled a bit through the question about China buying swaths of land in Georgia, but did extremely well in the other questions. Unsurprisingly, both Reuters and the local channel put the Democrat's and Republican's names in the title but left his name off. An innocent omission, I'm sure.

Paul Pelosi attacked
#democrats #republicans
Nancy Pelosi's husband was attacked by a deranged individual with a hammer in late October. When I first heard about it, I thought about the recent commotion about Nancy Pelosi objecting to the uprising against government officials making out like bandits in the stock market by trading political insider information. Given the timing, I thought the culprit might be a socialist, though it could be anyone sick of the establishment profiting off oppressing people, which means, well, anyone. I mean, look at the preceding link. It's not to OANN. It's to Jacobin. Predictably, however, the corporate news pundits and Democrats immediately pointed the finger at Republicans, never learning their lessons of the past. It turns out that the attacker was a member of the Green Party and eventually became involved with QAnon. Mostly, though, he seems like just an unstable person. Now Republicans are getting into it with a smattering of conspiracy theories, some of which are, well, QAnon-like.

Leaked documents from DHS show intent to quell "misinformation"
#nationalsecurity #freespeech
The Intercept published a report that revealed the Department of Homeland Security was inspired to quell speech by pressuring social media companies due to concerns about Russian interference in the 2016 election and began its plans in 2020, with a particular focus on the presidential election and the COVID-19 pandemic. Interestingly, though perhaps unsurprisingly, the establishment narrative, in other words, the narrative the DHS was pushing, was wrong on all three. The Russian interference in the 2016 election was negligible at best, with the ultimate report showing that there was no evidence of Trump-Russia collusion. The FBI suppressed the Hunter Biden laptop story, manipulating the election far more than Russia ever could have hoped to. For COVID, in particular, the reports focused on the origins of the virus and vaccine efficacy. They suppressed the lab leak theory until 2021 when even corporate news media quietly admitted the lab leak theory was likely and pushed that vaccines were "can't catch COVID if you get the jab" to "okay, you can catch COVID, but you can't transmit it" to okay, you can transmit it, but you won't die from it" to "okay, you can die from it, but you are less likely to die from it". 

Tech companies routinely met with national security agencies, likely to discuss censoring its userbase. This is clearly unconstitutional, but then again, so was the Patriot Act, and that is still around. Nevertheless, with this report, the Zuckerberg leak on FBI pressuring Facebook, and the revelation that the FBI was censoring the Hunter Biden laptop story, it's pretty clear that some libertarians were wrong on this - it was not tech companies doing whatever they wanted. It was the government pressuring tech companies to censor its users. Thus proving the overall libertarian point - more government leads to less trust, less freedom, and a dumber populace.

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