It's possible. But it's going to take more than one article for me to make that judgment. And it's going to have to say things that haven't been jokes a million times over on Will and Grace. Battlepanda losing her shit over this doesn't surprise me. Dan Savage's even more over the top reaction does, since he typically exhibits a thicker skin than most.
Of course, everybody's entitled to their opinion, and mine must be weighed by the fact that I love A Prairie Home Companion and grew up with it. It's not just funny and entertaining in a gentle way; it reminds me of childhood, honestly. So bear that in mind whilst I defend Garry's honor.
Battlepanda is incensed by the way Keillor has supposedly legitimated gay bashing:
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I love these five albums. In no particular order. This is not a favorites list (I can't do that, I'm too wishy washy) or a "these are the best albums evah" list. I'm just acknowledging these great works of art:
- Anodyne by Uncle Tupelo
- The Soft Bulletin by the Flaming Lips
- Rift by Phish
- The Life Pursuit by Belle and Sebastian
- Deltron 3030 by Dan the Automator, Del the Funkee Homosapien, and Kid Koala (among others)
I thought it would be cool to just take five minutes and list five albums that I remember and that mean a lot to me. This ain't no tagging spree, but I'd be interested in your answers. Like I said, this isn't about the best albums or your favorite, but something in between that.
Oh, remind me to review the new Arcade Fire soon. And the new Son Volt.
Agorist Action Alliance (A3). Turns out the heir of Samuel Edward Konkin III's estate has decided to act in decidedly anti-libertarian ways - such as needlessly moderating content on the Left Libertarian Yahoo! Group and supporting the current colonial crusades against so-called "Islamofascists" (the dumbest and most ironic way to describe militant radical Islam, given the corporatist agenda provoking the entire show-down with the Muslim world). Kevin Carson took the initiative to organize a second Yahoo! Group while Brad Spangler moved to create a new organization after the "heir" claimed copyright / trademark / etc. infringement (a privilege expressly rejected by Konkin).
Pursuant to the call for action issued by Spangler, I will be organizing the Richmond Left Libertarian Alliance (or whatever we want to call it) to propagandize against the State. Keep watching for website details, but go ahead and contact me if you're interested - either comment here or write me at my first name at 6thdensity period net. The group, like A3, is open to all sorts - agorists, mutualists, geoists, georgists, you name it. You'll probably enjoy yourself more, though, if you're actually a left libertarian (ask Neil).
Update: Here's a logo I whipped together on GIMP.
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Ryan Daigle spoke at the Central Virginia Ruby Enthusiasts Group March meeting on REST & ActiveResource. It was a great presentation that made many of the core concepts of REST far more concrete than they were before. You can download a PDF of the presentation here. Also, check out ContactsAPI, which is a project Ryan started to demonstrate the ways ActiveResource can be used to achieve RESTful Rails models.
Bookmarker project done in time for the April meeting so I can give a short announcement / demo so that people can start banging on it. There's even talk of a training course and documentation materials for it. All I can say at this moment is that I'm trying to keep my eyes on the prize.
Also, plan on attending May's meeting, where CVREG will be partnering with the Richmond Java Users Group to host a presentation by Stu Halloway on the subject of his new book, Rails for Java Developers.
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I was very pleased to read Robert Russo's excellent article at RichmondLiberty.org, Freedom in the Workplace. It's nice to know that another Richmonder sees libertarianism as the realization of the true proletariat revolution, as Roderick Long says. Russo expresses a crucial left libertarian insight when he takes on the authority of privileged, favored corporate interests. The state allows them to give workers an unfair deal:
We are the only party, if any, that disagrees with the basic structure of the working world beyond fruitless personal complaints reserved for the home. We know the end result will be a company-state. We know the benefits of having just one corner in this market: authority relinquishing, accountability toward people instead of profit. I'll never forget applying to a foundation known for turning down people with Masters degrees for summer internships, saying I was used to small private foundations and the reply "we are a private foundation". Big business is not a private enterprise, it is an institution riding on the coattails of privacy and abusing rights that belong to individuals. It is an opponent to all personal sentiments. The price we pay is time, a majority of our lives spent in a controlled environment where we are not citizens.
It is not government alone but all authority we must combat, and thankfully sometimes we are enabled. This could mean refusing to rat on a colleague, tweaking a client's eligibility for insurance, or contacting a qualified applicant who was rejected. Perhaps one day we will have a workers union. This link is an excellent window into how Richmond truly operates and who pulls the strings.
This is about empowering people, not just disempowering the government. It's about saying that individuals deserve the opportunity for life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. That right trumps the interests of abstract entities, insurgents of minority opinion who want to impose their special interest will, and most of all, institutional corporate behavior. I'm particularly happy to see mainstream libertarian support for the concept of real unions that pursue authentic worker interests (though most unions work hand in glove with the corporate bureaucratic establishment, unions like the IWW maintain the right of individuals to strike and bargain on their own terms).
Many thanks to Russo for an argument well made!
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leftlibertarian.org is an aggregator for left libertarian blogs. I pulled contributor feeds off the top of my head, so any exclusions are totally unintentional. Just let me know if you'd like to be a contributor: I can give you a login so you can write exclusives for leftlibertarian.org, or I can syndicate your feed.
If you have a feed for a specific category that is more relevant, let me know as well! You may even want to create a custom tag or category leftlibertarian.org can subscribe to. Thanks to left libertarian Rad Geek for his excellent FeedWordPress plugin.
Also, if you have any ideas on how to make this site better or more useful to left libertarians, holla. I may change this over to a Mephisto installation at some point. I could also install a forum if people think that would be useful. Long term, I may try to use my custom ThreadSpinner web application with it, but I promise I won't squash any content you create!
As always: my first name at sixth density dot net.
I found your disc golf driver at Dorey Park. Contact me if you want it back - the phone number isn't working.
Radley Balko pretty much sums up my feelings on this case:
...
President Bush's use of the pardon power to this point has generally been to exonerate people for crimes committed decades ago -- crimes they've admitted to and have repented for. He hasn't used it for the reasons it was intended -- as a final check on real injustices that may have slipped through the system. If Bush suddenly decides to use the pardon power to correct a prosecutorial overreach only on the occasion when the person being prosecuted is a formerly high-ranking official in his administration, his critics have every reason to cry foul.
Amen. These episodic scandals are distractions from the real political issues. We shouldn't expect consistency in this particular case where we haven't decried its absence elsewhere.
I'm a big fan of RadRails for doing Rails development. This is probably because I started out on my first Rails project using RDT in Eclipse, and coming from using Eclipse for Java development it already made sense. I like the idea of everything being one place: browser, testing, rake, generators, EVERYTHING. It's the way I'd like to do development ideally.
Most Rails developers are wedded to TextMate (the fact that it's Mac only and therefore automatically hip has nothing whatsoever to do with it). TextMate is a great text editor. It can do some cool Subversion stuff (though it pales in comparison to Subclipse). I'm using it for Bookmarker because it's a great way to write code if that's ALL you want to do with it. And a lot of Rails devvers have no problem going to the terminal or browser when needed, and that's fine for them.
But I'm very attracted to the idea of an open source IDE. TextMate is not that, and RadRails is very close to being there (it's got a lot of issues, such as flakiness with the Rake integration, not to mention the problems vanilla Eclipse has always had). Unfortunately, the RadRails guys aren't going to be able to do a lot of work on it anymore. I'm going to put my name out there as a willing helper but I don't know if I'll be able to learn Eclipse dev quickly enough, or if I'll even be able to commit to participating at all. I've got so many other projects to work on, but RadRails is important to me. So we'll see.
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Studies in Mutualist Political Economy by Kevin A. Carson is back in print on Amazon.com (of all places to sell a book arguing against artificially consolidated capital). This is the book that started it all... for me. Though not for the weak of heart, it comes with my highest recommendation if you are serious about confronting the mechanism by which the modern world still lingers in oppression and injustice. I have yet to give the book the attention and credit it deserves from me personally, let alone from the rest of the world.
Carson begins with a historical and theoretical analysis of many of the key arguments and controversies in the fledgling world of 19th century economics. He demonstrates that on many questions, the debate was never truly resolved, leaving much of (state monopoly) capitalism's self-proclaimed victory in serious question. The foundation of his argument is a new twist on the Labor Theory of Value that integrates the economic insights of the last century. Though this first part is quite challenging for the amateur economist, it is wonderful to see a radical, individualist tradition explored and reexamined - especially for this libertarian who didn't know he had ideological family back then.
If you skip the first part, I think you miss out on the payoff after all that somewhat dry and arcane argumentation. The second part is a historical look at the state capitalism and the monpolies and schemes by which it has consolidated control and wealth while claiming the opposite. A solid grounding in mutualist labor theory provides the reader with the theoretical context for the historical thesis. Events like the enclosures movement become more than just sad episodes - they take on signficance by fitting directly into the logical progression of the state from feudalism to capitalism.
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"Sad part of it is, we used to make shit in this country. Now we just put our hand in the other guy's pocket."
- Frank Sabotka, from The Wire
Just for the record, I think Rick Santorum makes a lot of legal sense in this video, and future generations may vindicate his reasoning somewhat. That doesn't mean I agree with his particular opinion, nor do I agree with his politics. But I think he's at least consistent - chillingly, frighteningly consistent - especially in the following passage, where he defends himself from accusations of disparaging homosexuals (some of Santorum's comments are hard to make out, but the gist is below):
What I talked about was: when the courts make decisions, unlike the Congress - if we want to outlaw sodomy, we can do so. If we want to legitimize polygamy, we can do so. We don't have to be consistent. Why? Because we're an elected body, and we can make decisions for a number of reasons that... courts can't do. Courts make decisions based on the law, and the law has reasoning, and reasoning has consequences.
He's right. While the courts have at least the open standard of legal reasoning to which they must adhere, Congress can pretty much do whatever it damn well pleases. The last hundred years have demonstrated that Congress can act in the most arbitrary ways. Whether it's reassigning war-making authority to the President, giving unelected bodies the power to create regulations with the force of law, or micromanaging the country via committee and hearings, Congress has clearly not seen the law as any sort of check on its activities.
It's not just that Congress claims unrestrained power to run people's lives - though it does, as Santorum proclaims. It has furthermore redefined what its role is based on a political agenda. Far from defending even the tepid doctrine of "states' rights", the Republicans have been the key opponents of federalism, and not just through sticking the State's nose where it does not belong. By farming its authority out to regulatory agencies and even the President, it has abdicated what little authority is mandated in the Constitution. It has cleverly avoided the consequences of consistency at our expense.
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OM Trio drummer Ilya Stemkovsky. More than most bands, BP was built on group dynamics, with interplay between the musicians playing an integral part in their performances. Even among the faithful, there was severe doubt the band could survive this.
As theoretically perfect and technically competent a fit as Ilya was, the unique chemistry of BP - honed over six years of relentless touring and improvisatory electronica excursions - seemed likely to be stunted for the next year or so. Indeed, many of my fears were confirmed during the two shows I attended on last year's fall tour. Still in the middle of learning both the extensive BP repertoire and fitting his style in with the other three players', Ilya played well but had a hard time complementing the sound to which we fans have grown so attached. I even knew people who swore off the group out of abject despair.
However, the awesome performance on Saturday night was undoubtedly the product of far more than simply low expectations. It was clear to this amateur musician that Ilya and the band had worked hard to refine his style into something resembling the more minimalist beats of his predecessor, while still demonstrating amazing chops that Rick never had. The cues were hit, the jams worked (Ilya nailed the four-to-the-floor riffs), old songs incorporated recomposed parts, and we even got three or four new songs. As a veteran musician, Ilya obviously was able to figure out the energy of BP and saw where he was needed. On Saturday he demonstrated more than just being a great replacement drummer for BP; he demonstrated a mastery of group performance and musical subtlety that confirms his legend.
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Note: this article was originally posted at the Center for a Stateless Society website, which appears to be down for reasons unknown. If anybody knows what's up please contact me!
UPDATE: Roderick says things at C4SS.org should be back to normal.
As the United States' military engagement in Iraq approaches the four year mark, public support continues to deteriorate. Despite this turning tide, politicians and pundits critical of the war continue to adhere to a curiously cautious ritual: qualifying their critique with assurances that they "support the troops". Many war advocates dismiss this rhetoric as duplicitous, and for once they're (unintentionally) correct.
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I don't know why this cracks me up so much, but the greeting on this obvious spam email does:
Hello,
Compliments of the day to you, I believe all is well.
