What bothers me about FCC Chief Julius Genachowski is not that he supports Boston ...

... but that anybody thinks the FCC has ANY say at all in what someone says on a live mic in a baseball stadium ...

Comments

Yeah, an expletive hardly seems worth the trouble and out of bounds for government involvement. What bothers me about baseball games occurs prior to every game: playing the national anthem. The custom is to rise during the national anthem to show allegiance with the nation--a nation I and others can't feel allegiance to when it drops drones on weddings and houses where it is known children are present, a nation that uses my tax dollars for hegemonic purposes and privileging the interests of wealthy elites and large corporations against the interests of the working class. Why should and I and others even have to make a political statement and risk reprisal from a patriotic nutcase by refusing to stand at a baseball game? (And don't forget that quite often local tax dollars were used to build that stadium.) Furthermore, the expectation and risk of reprisal serves as coercive force that is just as effective in its influence as direct coercive methods used by explicit totalitarian regimes at similar events. The coercive control of the USA government has reached a level of sophistication and subtlety unmatched by explicit totalitarian regimes because the government instigated and can now rely on patriotic control being enforced culturally and not explicitly by the government.

April 23, 2013 at 8:34 AM

The Obligatory Libertarian Tax Day Post

The most disturbing factoid that I learned on Tax Day was that the average American must now spend a full twenty-four hours filling out tax forms. That's three work days. Or, think of it this way: if you had to put in two hours per night after dinner to finish your taxes, that's two weeks (with Sundays off). I saw a talking head economics professor on some Philly TV channel pontificating about how Americans procrastinate. He was laughing. The IRS guy they interviewed actually said, "Tick, tick, tick." You have to wonder if Governor Ruth Ann Minner and her cohorts put in twenty-four hours pondering whether or not to give Kraft Foods $708,000 of our State taxes while demanding that school districts return $8-10 million each?

New Warfare: I started my posts with a discussion.....

.....on Unrestricted warfare . The US Air force Institute for National Security Studies have developed a reasonable systems approach to deter non-state violent actors who they label as NSVA's. It is an exceptionally important report if we want to deter violent extremism and other potential violent actors that could threaten this nation and its security. It is THE report our political officials should be listening to to shape policy so that we do not become excessive in using force against those who do not agree with policy and dispute it with reason and normal non-violent civil disobedience. This report, should be carefully read by everyone really concerned with protecting civil liberties while deterring violent terrorism and I recommend if you are a professional you send your recommendations via e-mail at the link above so that either 1.) additional safeguards to civil liberties are included, or 2.) additional viable strategies can be used. Finally, one can only hope that politici

More of This, Please

Or perhaps I should say, "Less of this one, please." Or how about just, "None of them. Ever again. Please....For the Love of God." Sunshine State Poll: Grayson In Trouble The latest Sunshine State/VSS poll shows controversial Democratic incumbent Alan Grayson trailing former state Senator Dan Webster by seven points, 43 percent to 36 percent. A majority of respondents -- 51 percent -- disapprove of the job that Grayson is doing. Independents have an unfavorable view of him as well, by a 36/47 margin. Grayson has ignored the conventional wisdom that a freshman should be a quiet member who carefully tends to the home fires. The latest controversy involves his " Taliban Dan " advertisement, where he explicitly compares his opponent to the Taliban, and shows a clip of Webster paraphrasing Ephesians 5:22 -- "wives, submit to your husbands." An unedited version of the clip shows that Webster was actually suggesting that husba

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