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Milton J. Madison - An American Refugee Now Living in China, Where Liberty is Ascending

Federalism, Free Markets and the Liberty To Let One's Mind Wander. I Am Very Worried About the Fate of Liberty in the USA, Where Government is Taking people's Lives ____________________________________________________________________________________________ "Extremism in defense of liberty is no vice. Tolerance in the face of tyranny is no virtue." -Barry Goldwater-

Friday, November 30, 2007

Some Common Sense On Global Warming....

As we know from global warming messiah and Nobel Prize winner, Al Gore.....

1. you are bad.
2. if you don't ride a bike you are bad
3. we have to control your wasteful ways
4. only the government can protect you from yourself
5. only we know what to do
6. we will regulate your behavior for your own good

Good that Al Gore will save us. The messiah has arrived to save man-kind. Jeesh.

I read this and this is the money-quote...
Messrs. Nordhaus and Shellenberger want "an explicitly pro-growth agenda," on the theory that investment, innovation and imagination may ultimately do more to improve the environment than punitive regulation and finger-wagging rhetoric. To stabilize atmospheric carbon levels will take more--much more--than regulation; it will require "unleashing human power, creating a new economy."
See, where I differ from the hysterical global warming crowd, is that i have faith in people. I see the technological improvement achieved over the past 150 years and think that we will continue to improve our ability to solve problems. I also think that by taxing or hurting some of the most dynamic economies that exist in the world, that we may reduce the capacity to solve problems. Technology and human understanding is geometric whereas our problems are multiplicative. Just ask Malthus.

Wednesday, November 28, 2007

Teddy Bear Anger...

I am angry too that someone would insult a Teddy Bear by naming it Muhammad!

Tuesday, November 27, 2007

This Is Just Another Example On How Stupid And Silly Muslims Are....

Muslims are so idiotic, claiming that following "slurs" Islam....
1. A teacher asks her 7-year old students to name a small teddy bear as part of their schooling.
2. The students name the teddy bear Muhammad as many people are named.
3. The police arrest the teacher and seize the teddy bear as evidence.
4. Young crazed Muslim men gather outside of the jail and chant to have her put to death.
5. She is charged with a religious crime and could be sentenced to 40 lashes, a large fine and jail time for her crime.
6. The school is shut down fearing violence and reprisals by religious zealots
There is no way that anyone does a better job at slurring Islam or making it look like an absolutely ridiculous religion than Muslims themselves as the light of reality shines upon this silly, worthless and stupid cult religion. It is a religion that is based almost solely on coercion to force people to conform to its juvenile behavior and it also attempts to force those outside to conform to the same asinine rules. The Muslim answer to even the smallest little problem is violence and death.

This arbitrary prosecution of an innocent school teacher that probably had several pupils named Muhammad [its one of the most popular names among crazed Muslims] shows that it will be very difficult to live in this world normally with these brittle hate filled religious zealots.

First Thanksgiving....

As some of you may know, last Thursday was the American holiday of Thanksgiving, where American give thanks to God for the bountiful harvest of the previous year. This purely American feast was founded upon the first celebration by the Puritans in Plymouth Massachusetts in the year 1623. One has to keep in mind that the Puritans landed in 1620 and were beset by starvation and disease for the time in between.

As I recently read, the original Puritan colony was a communal living arrangement and was unsuccessful at growing enough food or capturing the abundant wildlife to feed the small population. Until Governor William Brandford considered how to increase the production of food in order to feed the starving population, he put his thoughts in his diary....
"began to think how they might raise as much corn as they could, and obtain a better crop than they had done, that they might not still thus languish in misery. At length after much debate of things, [I] (with the advice of the chiefest among them) gave way that they should set corn every man for his own particular, and in that regard trust to themselves. And so assigned to every family a parcel of land."
A socialist economy gave way to private property ownership where the benefits of the production upon the land granted flowed to those that produced the goods. Therefore, the early puritans were able to produce enough food to feed themselves and were able to indulge in the first Thanksgiving feast. Thanks to the Puritans and to good capitalist principles.

This early example of the failure of socialism being solved by individual work effort illustrates the troubles associated with what economists call "the tragedy of the commons." This is.....
The Tragedy of the Commons is a type of social trap, often economic, that involves a conflict over resources between individual interests and the common good.

The "Tragedy of the Commons" is a structural relationship between free access to, and unrestricted individual demand for a finite communal resource. The term derives originally from a comparison noticed by William Forster Lloyd with medieval village land holding in his 1833 book on population. It was then popularized and extended by Garrett Hardin in his 1968 Science essay "The Tragedy of the Commons". However, the theory itself is as old as Thucydides and Aristotle, the latter of whom said "that which is common to the greatest number has the least care bestowed upon it."
Even Aristotle, 2,000 years ago recognized the inherent problems in socialism. Socialism is an interesting and attractive offering to those that identify social ills and problems that appear to exist without easy solutions. However, it has proven to be difficult to administer and nearly impossible to be effective. At the end-of-the-day, who is the caretaker? Who is the one that decides to whom scarce resources are allocated? As Milton Friedman so eloquently explained below [see the youtubes], even the government's or benevolent dictator's self-interests take precedent over the interests of the population in general. Also, as modern socialists desire, they lazily identify a problem, assign the problem to a government to solve and tax someone else to pay for it. All the while thinking that they have done some good. I argue that liberalism is laziness and that problems need to be solved by the communities that face them.

My feeling is that socialism solves a near-term problem but creates longer-term less attractive problems that prove to be even more difficult and costly to get rid of. Its a cheap short-term answer to a problem. Also, socialism ignores simple principles of rewards being tied to effort to produce them. Greater-and-greater handouts have to be created to satiate the lazy. For an example of this, just look at the popular Social Security program in the US, where working people are taxed to pay benefits to the wealthiest generation of people that ever lived. This illustrates that what was originally designed to solve poverty in the elderly in the 1930's has now transformed into a Frankenstein monster and one that will prove to be an impossible problem to solve equitably. This current inequitable redistribution of wealth, from working people to those that live in leisure, will collapse without fundamental changes in benefits. People will not get what they think that they have been promised and furture receipients most likely will ultimately pay much more for what they will get then what they could have achieved investing on their own. However, current recieptiants receive the handouts that they never deserve. Government should nover be in invloved in utopian wealth distribution programs no matter how popular or in need they are.

Monday, November 26, 2007

I Have Been Thinking About Natural Rights As Of Late...

What is a 'natural right?' Debate through the 17th and 18th century proposed that rights of all men (and obviously women) are those that flow from being alive and human. Just the act of being, concurred on all individuals the right of life, liberty and enjoyment of their own property (Pursuit of happiness as penned by Thomas Jefferson in the Declaration of Independence).

One of favorite wild-man thinkers, Thomas Paine, also further clarified that a natural right CANNOT be concurred or granted by any government or charter upon an individual since this implies that they can also be revoked by the same governments and that therefore those rights granted by governments are simply privileges.....
It is a perversion of terms to say that a charter gives rights. It operates by a contrary effect — that of taking rights away. Rights are inherently in all the inhabitants; but charters, by annulling those rights, in the majority, leave the right, by exclusion, in the hands of a few. ... They...consequently are instruments of injustice.

The fact therefore must be that the individuals themselves, each in his own personal and sovereign right, entered into a compact with each other to produce a government: and this is the only mode in which governments have a right to arise, and the only principle on which they have a right to exist.
In other words, if a government confers upon you the 'right' to continue living, then it reserves the right to reverse course and take the life from you. Seems to be something that very few people would want; someone else having the absolute right to eliminate your life by fiat. This is how kings and emperors ruled in the days of old and sometimes one's life could be cut short arbitrarily though the actions of these individuals.

So this argument, in fact, pursues a line of thinking that since these rights 'naturally' exist and all already enjoy these rights, that these same people have the right to govern themselves within this framework and this is the only environment that a government is sanctioned to exist. This is the plain and simple argument against government's intervention into the daily lives of all humans. The implication of this intervention by government is that it may be arbitrary or beneficial of one citizen vs. another.

If we can hold that natural rights are those that either flow from natural law or are founded on natural law, then we need to think about the implication of natural law. Natural law prescribes that law flows not from the state or the involvement in the state in human's social enterprise but that the law exists due to what we are... human. Those that argue for the existance of natural law look to such examples such as gravity, there is no need to prove or force its existance but just to observe that it does exist and inarguably has effects. We also know that killing another human is wrong not due to the laws of the state but from our own desire to continue to live and the implication that if other fear arbitrary death at your hands, that oneself may be in a more precarious position then if this situation did not exist. In other words, people would more likely to defend themselves agaisnt threats, real or perceived if they thought that you may arbitrarily kill them. Also, who hasn't accidentally or intentionally killed a bug or some other insignificant creature and felt a pang of regret or remorse for the action? This is not illegal on its face as per the state but one that is not acceptable from a human standpoint and one that is not acceptable on a wholesale scale by the human society. However, killing is justified in many circumstances. Just a few being pursuing life itself in such things as slaughtering animals for food.

However, this desire to live does not give us free reign and permission to kill other humans for gain but does not exclude us from defending ourselves; our life, family, community and property. So therefore, man has decided to take these natural laws and rights and codify it so that all know the limits to these rights and so that all know what others expect from these rights. Its a a measure of communication between and for all people within this society.

Crazy Muslim Justice.....

When a woman gets raped by 7 men in Saudi Arabia, what do the Sharia courts do? They punish the woman with 200 lashes and they punish her defense attorney. Islam is a weird religion and one that doesn't deserve our respect.

Friday, November 23, 2007

Juvenile Chinese Officials Spoil Thanksgiving For Hundreds Of American Sailors....

I have known about the plans for the last trip through Hong Kong of the last of the diesel powered American aircraft carriers the Kitty Hawk for months. However, Chinese officials, always too smart for themselves, denied permission for landing privileges for the crew of the carrier. Many of the families of the soldiers arrived in Hong Kong ahead of the scheduled arrival in order to celebrate what I consider the most important American holiday, Thanksgiving.
China blocked a long-planned Thanksgiving visit to Hong Kong by a U.S. aircraft carrier group, then abruptly changed its mind on Thursday.

But it was too late to save the holiday visit. A U.S. official said the trip has since been scrapped and the ships continued steaming to their Japanese base.

The USS Kitty Hawk group and its 8,000 airmen and sailors were expected in Hong Kong on Wednesday, but the U.S. State Department said the visit had been refused by China.
This action was an overt action that had to be planned and in no way could have been an oversight since this trip has been planned for months.

This kind of behavior on the part of China and their brain-dead officials is absolutely silly. Why deny entry to thousands of sailors planning to meet their families and those other thousands that come to spend money and buy Christmas gifts here? It hurts Hong Kong's merchants and is heartless when it comes to the families that were planning on meeting their moms and dads for this important festival and feast? I think that it is because Chinese officials are largely idiots.

It amazes me how these little juvenile antics by the leaders of the 'great China' [not so great if they have to play these childish games is it?] are allowed to go without comment by American officials. The State Department just announced facts of the denial to come to the port. Why don't they call it what it is? A temper tantrum by the babies that run China?

Wednesday, November 21, 2007

Price of Gas?

Its very interesting to me. Although the press has tried to make the price of gasoline a big issue in the US, it really hasn't taken hold as a major issue with the American public as much as I would have expected. Most people in the US go to the gas pump at least once a week and the prices paid are noticed when it costs so much to fill one's tank.

Where is the outrage?

Chuck Schumer tried to play this card a while back with calls to start releasing fuel from the national strategic petroleum reserve with thinking that this veritible drop in the bucket in world demand would do anything. Chuck Schumer's idea is all form over substance. Americans yawned. Bill O'Reilly wrongly accused oil companies of being behind the price rises ignoring market forces that cause the price to rise. Americans yawned and both dropped their blathering on the issue.

The reality is, that fuel prices are priced globally. There is a world outside of the US and demand from other countries such as India and China -where the price of fuel is subsidized and controlled therefore creating artifically high demand- has been rising dramatically and classic economics tells us that when demand rises without being met with counteracting supply, prices will naturally rise.

There is little that any national politician can do to impact the price of fuel other than long-term things that creates investment in the sector such as limiting regulations that have hamstrung investment for decades int he US.

The other reason that people are not as excited is this illustration....



As the above illustrates, fuel has become a much lower component of everyday life and therefore is not the issue that it was 20 years ago.

Back Of The Entry/Departure Card In China



How is one supposed to identify what authorities are competent and can one actually find an authority in China that is competent? They may be competent in taking bribes but I doubt if one would ever accuse Chinese authorities as being competent or even wanting to be competent.

Tuesday, November 20, 2007

I Guess Its Not Good When The Front Falls Off Of A Ship...

Friday, November 16, 2007

Fox News....

Not just digestible news, as opposed to the poorly shrouded leftist drivel that we get from traditional media such as CNN, MSNBC, The New York Times, etc., Fox News offers us excitement beyond other news sources in the form of Fox News porn....



I am so happy that we have Fox so that I don't have to be indoctrinated in leftist drivel....

Tuesday, November 13, 2007

Beijing Figures Out New Way To Spy In Taiwan.....

At least 1,800 hard-drives were produced and then sold to Taiwan that were infected with a Trojan horse...
Portable hard discs sold locally and produced by US disk-drive manufacturer Seagate Technology have been found to carry Trojan horse viruses that automatically upload to Beijing Web sites anything the computer user saves on the hard disc, the Investigation Bureau said.
Apparently, a China based subcontractor infected the hard-drives during production. An interesting way to to spy on unwitting foes, but now Taiwan should be able to spam these servers in Beijing with all kinds of goodies.

Uncle Milton Agains Expleins Why Socialization Through Government Is Bad, Bad, Bad.....

Milton Friedman.....

Telling us that greed is good and not to trust the idea that governments can be trusted to perform for the greater good. Governments, politicians and bureaucrats act in their own self interest not in others self interest....



Always sensible to listen to this genius before making a big mistake on socializing medicine or other initiatives foisted on us by Democrats looking for votes.

101 Inventions That Changed the World...

The full list (In alphabetic order) from the British newspaper Independent:

1. Abacus, AD190
2. Archimedes Screw, 700BC
3. Aspirin, 1899
4. Atari 2600, 1977
5. Barbed wire, 1873
6. Barcode, 1973
7. Battery, 1800
8. Bicycle, 1861
9. Biro, 1938
10. Blackberry, 1999
11. Bow and arrow, 30,000BC
12. Bra, 1913
13. Button, 1235
14. Camcorder, 1983
15. Camera, 1826
16. Cardiac pacemaker, 1958
17. CD, 1965
18. Clockwork radio, 1991
19. Compass, 1190
20. Condom, 1640
21. Credit card, 1950
22. Digital camera, 1975
23. Digital TV recorder, 1999
24. Digital watch, 1972
25. Drum, 12,000BC
26. Dynamite, 1867
27. Electric shaver, 1928
28. Eraser, 1770
29. Fax machine, 1843
30. Fibre optic cable, 1966
31. Fire, 590,000BC
32. Fish hook, 30,000BC
33. Floppy disk, 1971
34. Flushing toilet, 1597
35. Fridge, 1834
36. Gore-Tex, 1972
37. GPS, 1978
38. Guillotine, 1792
39. Gun, 14th century
40. Internal combustion engine, 1859
41. iPod, 2001
42. Kettle, 1891
43. Laptop, 1982
44. Laser, 1960
45. Lawnmower, 1830
46. Lead pencil, 1564
47. Light bulb, 1848
48. Locks, 2000BC
49. Machine gun, 1884
50. Mechanical clock, 1092
51. Microchip, 1958
52. Microscope, 1590
53. Microwave oven, 1946
54. Mobile phone, 1947
55. Mouse, 1964
56. Nintendo Gameboy, 1989
57. Noise-cancelling headphones, 1988
58. Paper clip, 1892
59. Paper, AD105
60. PC, 1977
61. Plough, AD100
62. Pneumatic tyre, 1845
63. Pocket calculator, 1971
64. Polaroid camera, 1947
65. Pop-up toaster, 1926
66. Post-it note, 1973
67. Printing press, 1454
68. Qwerty keyboard, 1868
69. Radio, 1895
70. Robot, 1921
71. Rubber band, 1845
72. Saddle, AD200
73. Safety razor, 1895
74. Sellotape, 1937
75. Sewing machine, 1830
76. SMS, 1992
77. Spectacles, 1451
78. Stethoscope, 1819
79. Swiss Army Knife, 1897
80. Syringe, 1844
81. Telephone, 1876
82. Telescope, 1608
83. Television, 1925
84. The internet, 1969
85. The match, 1826
86. The Pill, 1951
87. Thermometer, 1592
88. Tools, 2,600,000BC
89. Toothbrush, 1498
90. Transistor radio, 1953
91. Transistor, 1947
92. TV remote control, 1950
93. Umbrella, 2400BC
94. Vacuum cleaner, 1901
95. Velcro, 1948
96. VHS recorder, 1976
97. Vibrator, 1902
98. Walkman, 1979
99. Weighing scales, 5000BC
100. Wheel, 3500BC
101. Zip, 1913

Monday, November 12, 2007

November 11th And November 12th.....

Why is November 11th such an important day in the western world? It was the day that a ceasefire went into effect in 1918 ending World War I. It was called Armistice Day in the US till 1952 and is still called that in France and Belgium. In the Commonwealth, that includes the UK, Canada and Australia, the World War I armistice is called Remembrance Day. Since it fell on a Sunday this year, Monday is the bank holiday in the US but it is not an official full fledged holiday, the stock market is open.
Military Casualties in World War I
1914-1918

Belgium 45,550
British Empire 942,135
France 1,368,000
Greece 23,098
Italy 680,000
Japan 1,344
Montenegro 3,000
Portugal 8,145
Romania 300,000
Russia 1,700,000
Serbia 45,000
United States 116,516
Austria-Hungary 1,200,000
Bulgaria 87,495
Germany 1,935,000
Ottoman Empire 725,000
The 10 million military deaths are dwarfed by civilian deaths estimated in the 10's of millions. Additionally, the world suffered from 10's of millions of deaths caused by the Spanish Influenza that preyed upon soldiers living in close conditions and this spread into the general population easily.

The War drove the world to consider a new governance association, The League of Nations....
The League of Nations was an international organization founded as a result of the Paris Peace Conference in 1919–1920. The League's goals included disarmament, preventing war through collective security, settling disputes between countries through negotiation, diplomacy and improving global welfare. The diplomatic philosophy behind the League represented a fundamental shift in thought from the preceding hundred years.
but this proved ineffective and did not alleviate the problems that led to World War II.

Sunday, November 11, 2007

At Least Its Kosher....

Jones Soda Company's offerings for this holiday season include these curious flavors...
The Christmas pack will feature such flavors as Sugar Plum, Christmas Tree, Egg Nog and Christmas Ham. The Hanukkah pack will have Jelly Doughnut, Apple Sauce, Chocolate Coins and Latkes sodas.
At least they claim that the Christmas Ham flavor is Kosher. How does that work?

German Humor.....

Yesterday, I went to local wine tasting and was served the following Italian red wine....
Montepulciano d'Abruzzo Vigna Corvino
The conversation went some thing like this....
Server: This is a nice little wine called Montepulciano d'Abruzzo Vigna Corvino
Me: Oh good that is easy to pronounce and remember.
Server: [Total silence].... [and then] Excuse me?
Me: I said that that name was is easy to pronounce and remember.
Server: [Total silence]..... I am sorry, I do not understand.
Me: The name, its so long and difficult, so I made a joke that it is easy to pronounce and remember. My comment was designed to induce laughter.
Server: Sorry I am a German and we have no sense of humor. Sorry.
His comment was funnier than mine!

Saturday, November 10, 2007

A Quick Visit....

Went to New York for a surprise visit and took my Mother out for her birthday to Sammy's Romanian Restaurant on the Lower East Side of Manhattan.



After a long flight, I find this kid of food a little too rich for me, but I have to say, the chopped liver was spectacular. I couldn't eat the steak since I felt way way too full.

A few choice Yiddish words for the curious...



(Click to get a bigger sized picture) The Yiddish words are not actually the real translations and are really for people that understand what the actual words actually mean.

Wednesday, November 07, 2007

Tricks In China....

A friend of ours relatives returned recently to Zhuhai from a couple of months in Australia and found that their apartment had seemingly shrunk in size. Apparently, the neighbor, who was renovating the adjacent apartment, must have known that they were going away for a few months and took advantage of the situation. The neighbor, built a new wall in the apartment, around 5 feet further in, moved their furniture and painted the new wall to look like the other ones, incorporated the new space into their now enlarged flat.

Imagine how difficult it would be to legally fight this incredibly bold move in China!!!!

Global Warming Already May Be Killing People....

Actually, derangement caused by global warming fanatics may already be causing starvation and death in some poorer countries. In the tiny African country of Swaziland, around 40% of the population are facing acute food shortages and receiving food aid.

So what do the corrupt government officials do in this bad situation? They dedicate food stocks towards the creation of biofuels for export to the guilty, probably fanatical European countries, to meet their insatiable demand for the politically correct fuel...
So what has the government decided to export? Biofuel made from one of its staple crops, cassava. The government has allocated several thousand hectares of farmland to ethanol production in the district of Lavumisa, which happens to be the place worst hit by drought. It would surely be quicker and more humane to refine the Swazi people and put them in our tanks. Doubtless a team of development consultants is already doing the sums.
so instead of a crazy Charleton Heston running around shouting "Soylent Green is people". So in Europe, it will be "your car's gas is people".

20 Muslim Terrorists Captured In Europe....

20 Muslim terror suspects were taken into custody in Europe today, suspected of planning attacks. they have been under surveillance for around 5 years before being arrested....
The raids in Italy uncovered remote electronic detonators and poisons, as well as instructions on guerrilla warfare techniques, ANSA said.

Investigators also found evidence of psychological training, according to Milan anti-terrorist prosecutor Nicola Piacente.

"During a telephone call there was a conversation in which a person pretended to be in a car full of explosives," Piacente said
We will continue to face these challenges in the West as crazy Muslims feel that it is necessary to kill innocent civilians to promote their sick religious ideology.

Sunday, November 04, 2007

Al Qaeda.....

So what does it mean to be a an Al Qaeda Militant? Of course it means to kill those opposed to your sick and deranged way of life. But if those people are not available to you, then of course the neighborhood folk are always available to you...
Gunmen killed a woman principal at al Mustakbal primary school and wounded a woman principal at Um Qassir school, both in the southern Baghdad district of Saidiya, police said.
These deranged people still walk the streets. And there are still deranged people, those of the Moslem faith, that continue to support them through their silence. Hello. Is anyone home? It not Americans that are killing these people, its Muslims with some sicko and wacko philosophy. No outrage? Of course not since Islam is a sicko religion. Not worthy of humans but a religion of dogs. Every Muslim ids a pig and a dog. Every Muslim bears this responsibility. If we as Americans have to continuously review our leadership and criticise them, no matter how weak the pretenses, then you have to also. But you continue to turn a blind eye. Therefore, every single one of you are evil and unworthy.