Three Brazillians Dead in Iraq

Submitted by Bill St. Clair on Mon, 2005-10-03 07:00.
From geekwitha.45:
"Son, they can take your life, your property, and everyone you love from you. The only thing they cannot take is what you know. Therefore, learn everything you can, every time the opportunity presents." -- GeekWithA.45's Dad

# From BuckFush.com via clairefiles:

Brazillians

For the search engines... The image is a photograph of George Bush, Dick Cheney, another guy whose name I should know, and two guys in military uniforms. Bush is standing at the podium saying, "I've been informed, 3 Brazillian soldiers have died in Iraq... a brazillian is way more than a million, right?"

# Doug Thompson at Capitol Hill Blue - Bush's Depression: Been There, Reported That - as Mr. Thompson reported over a year ago, Bushnev is a depressed lunatic. [jomama]

"It's like working in an insane asylum," says one White House aide. "People walk around like they're in a trance. We're the dance band on the Titanic, playing out our last songs to people who know the ship is sinking and none of us are going to make it."

...

Thomas went on to report "Bush can be petulant about dissent; he equates disagreement with disloyalty. After five years in office, he is surrounded largely by people who agree with him...Late last week, Bush was, by some accounts, down and angry. But another Bush aide described the atmosphere inside the White House as "strangely surreal and almost detached." At one meeting described by this insider, officials were oddly self-congratulatory, perhaps in an effort to buck each other up. Life inside a bunker can be strange, especially in defeat."

# Scott Bieser - At last, Serenity - movie review, with spoilers. [bieser]

So did I like the movie? Yes I did, very much. It's not the greatest libertarian flick of all time -- that has yet to be produced. (I have hopes for the screen adaptation of Robert Heinlein's The Moon Is A Harsh Mistress now being penned by sometime Whedon partner Tim Minear.)

But Serenity makes some very strong statements about the evils of a powerful central government. It makes a statement about the evil that can happen when "do-gooders" try to improve humanity. It makes a statement about the evil that can happen when, as the unnamed Alliance agent/assassin shows, one suspends one's own sense of responsibility for one's actions, and places his moral agency in the hands of a collective.

# The Libertarian Enterprise starts this week a tenth anniversary month of issues. Ken Holder outlines its history, and it includes two articles by L. Neil Smith, to one of which I have linked below. [tle]

# L. Neil Smith at The Libertarian Enterprise - An Open Letter to Robert K. Dornan - reprinted from 1997. Still intensely relevant. [tle]

Now you tell me: do Republicans and Libertarians desire the same thing? Are we fellow travellers standing shoulder to shoulder? Or, in terms of what America's all about, is there no discernable difference between Socialist Party A, the Donkey Boys, and Socialist Party B, the Elephant Men? Aren't you just the little gang of vicious collectivist thugs we can do something about before we're strong enough to take on the big gang of vicious collectivist thugs?

# BBC News - Sub-$100 laptop design unveiled - MIT Media Labs chairman and founder, Nicholas Negroponte, plans to ship 15 million machines within the year. He wants to get them into the hands of the world's poor children. Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney "plans to start buying them for all 500,000 middle and high school pupils in the state." [clairefiles]

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