Tuesday, June 28, 2016

Brexit Stage Left: Is the economy stupid?

Our cousins in Britain voted to leave the European Union last week. I expect we'll see EU soldiers landing on the beaches of Dover soon to put down this insurrection. After all, “The Union must be preserved.” If Britain is allowed to leave, other countries might get the idea to leave, too. (In fact, they already have: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2016/06/23/the-brexit-contagion-how-france-italy-and-the-netherlands-now-wa/ ) In the interest of all parties concerned, any means necessary should be used to dispense with this foolishness.

What's that, you say? A state that willingly enters into a contract with other states can also willingly abolish that contract? Surely you jest. Any government derives its power solely from the consent of the governed? What a quaint notion. It is the right of the people to abolish a government if they deem it destructive to their self-interest? A recipe for anarchy.

Everyone knows that governments at every level exist for one reason and one reason alone: to further the interests of the banking class. In headline after headline, we have seen dire predictions for the British, European, and world economies should Britain vote Leave. None other than currency speculator extraordinaire George Soros has warned (threatened?) Britain against leaving the EU:


Never mind the fact that these predictions are largely self-fulfilling: By stoking fears of the economic fallout of Brexit, those in the financial sector basically assure that stocks will be sold off and markets will plummet. Who stands to benefit in the long run no one can say. After all, someone is buying all of those stocks, and the companies are run by the same people the day after the vote as the day before the vote. What I do know for sure is that there is no old man behind the curtain pulling the levers, and anyone who dares suspect otherwise is clearly a xenophobic, racist, anti-capitalist troublemaker!

Sarcasm aside, the case against Brexit, made here by a decidedly anti-Brexit publication, The Economist, in fact illustrates exactly the case FOR Britian's leaving:

Thursday, June 23, 2016

Thoughts on Orlando

I've been disappointed in how we as a country have reacted to the Pulse nightclub shooting. A violent sociopath murdered 49 of our fellow Americans, 49 of our fellow human beings, and it seems like our first response is to blame each other. I have some things I need to get off my chest about this.
The Left blames "gun nuts," "toxic masculinity," and "homophobia."
The Right blames "gun-free zones," "radical Islam," and the President's refusal to utter the words "radical Islam."
I see article after article on my news feed every day demanding new restrictions on guns, just like I saw after Newtown and San Bernardino. What I don't see is any credible evidence that increased gun control would have prevented these specific incidents, which leads to only two possible conclusions: Either people are using tragedy to advance a preconceived agenda (as I strongly suspect is the case with the President, who took to the podium to lecture us about guns as quickly as possible); or people are reacting emotionally rather than logically (celebrities such as Whoopi Goldberg and Seth MacFarlane boldly stating that automatic weapons should be banned, not realizing that automatic weapons are already illegal; people talking about "assault rifles" when they have not the faintest clue what that actually means, which is: very little.) The latter is understandable, if ignorant and misguided; the former is inexcusably cynical.