End the War on Freedom

"I think that on Independence Day instead of hanging bunting and flags every lamppost in America should be decorated with a hangman's noose." -- eots

From kaba:

"If a nation values anything more than freedom, it will lose its freedom, and the irony of it is that if it is comfort or money that it values more, it will lose that, too." -- Somerset Maugham

Seen on a bumper sticker (I don't agree that Bush has done anything that threatens forests, but I appreciate the wit):

From brianf:

PolicitalHumor.About.com - Funny Bush Pictures - Click on the "Slide Show" link and have a few laughs at GW's expense. Hehe. My favorite is below, but don't miss Bush Resigns or Skull & Bones Members Bush and Kerry. [brianf]

# The remnants of Hurricane Frances reached the Berkshires last night. Steady rain all night long. Ivan appears to be about five days from landfall in Florida after cutting a swath through western Cuba, and Jamaica, and Granada . It is projected to still be category IV when it hits the U.S.. Not that anybody can tell where or how quickly it's gonna travel...

# Jeff Head - Dragons Fury - Eagle's Talons is available in Adobe and Microsoft eBook formats. My copy of Adobe Reader 6.0 would not download anything, so I got the Microsoft Reader version. I like Microsoft Reader much better than Adobe. It starts up quickly and works well for reading with just the page up and page down keys. I haven't tried Adobe's eBook Reader since it was integrated into Acrobat (and won't, since the damn thing doesn't work on my machine), but with the old reader, in order to make the text large enough to comfortably read on the screen, the page was too big to fit, so I had to scroll each page up and down. Microsoft's reader puts less text on the screen in large font mode, making it much more usable. Looking forward to reading the last book of the series. The front pages advertise a "collector's edition" with "all five volumes in a single finely-bound hardback", slated to ship for Christmas 2004.

# weebies at Strike the Root - Liberal vs. Conservative from a Free Market/Freedom Perspective - on the non-difference between Kush and Berry. Includes a diagram of the "Free Market" splitting apart into "Original Liberal" and "Original Conservative", splitting even more into "Liberal Left" and "Conservative Right", getting closer together as "Neo-Liberal" and "Neo-Conservative", and finally merging into a "Totalitarian Police State". That's where we're headed, folks, if we don't get the monkeys off of our backs. [root]

Let's be perfectly clear. There is only one major difference between Bush (Republicans) / Kerry (Democrats): Bush prefers to do all the murdering, destruction, and looting by himself, only looking for international support when his crimes fail; Kerry prefers to internationalize his crimes by getting others to join in the murdering, destruction, and looting from the start, but will not make that a requirement that would prevent any bloodletting rampage he desires.

Note that Kerry's policy is actually a return to the traditional warmongering policy of the first Bush and Clinton regimes. Kerry's is the actual "conservative" position. GWB's policy of unilateral preemption, or more properly naked war of aggression, is actually a departure from the traditional way, and is the "liberal" position. See how confusing trying to use the label conservative/liberal really is?

...

The solution to ending this madness is for people to realize that the state is an obsolete, unnecessary evil. We do not need better people, or a different party, a liberal or conservative, at the head of Leviathan; we need the rampaging beast defeated before it destroys us all. The free market, and free choice, is the answer. Only then will we have the freedom that all people desire.

# Harry Browne - Goebbels Rallies the People - a speech that would make any nazi proud. Unfortunately, it was (mostly) given by Zell Miller at the Republican National Convention. [smith2004]

# George Paine at Warblogging - Young Republicans - a protester who wore an anti-Bush T-shirt inside the Republican Convention was kicked by a young republican while being held down by Secret Service agents. The kicking was caught on a WABC-TV video. The protecter faces felony charges. The assaulter has not been, and probably won't be charged. [warblogging]

# Mike (in Tokyo) Rogers at LewRockwell.com - Say It Loud: I'm Communist and I'm Proud - Mr. Rogers contends that America is increasingly a communist country. I'd call it more like fascist, but the two are so hard to tell apart... [lew]

In America, this is called "Democracy." It's called "Democracy" because it is an "easier sell" to the average American. But what exactly is this "Democracy"?

It is and always has been sold to you as a way to "level the playing field." Whether that field be in business or in your child's education or any number of other areas. It sounds really good: Share the wealth; there's plenty for everyone! A chicken in every pot.

But when you get right down to it, "Sharing the wealth," is in no uncertain terms, Communism. Think about it: What else could you possibly call it? What else could you call penalizing people with money to pay for people who don't have it? And you've got it America; it didn't come from Russia either. It came straight to you from Washington D.C. and The Communist Party of the United States of America; or as Americans would say, "Democrats or Republicans" have brought it to you and are laying it right in your lap and you are eating it up.

When are you folks going to wake up? The Communist government of the United States has been tearing away at your civil rights slowly, but consistently for decades. Yet, most Americans live under the illusion that they live in the freest country in the world. Laughable.