Trash talk
Former governor of New Mexico Gary Johnson won the Libertarian Party presidential nomination last week, beating out John McAfee, Austin Petersen, and a host of other people, most of whom were vastly more libertarian and all of whom were vastly more entertaining than Gary Johnson. I’ve had unkind words for Austin Petersen in the past — and no doubt will again in the future — but in the aftermath of Johnson’s victory, he was all class, pledging to support the nominee anyhow, and presenting him with a fine gift: a replica of George Washington’s personal flintlock. A clearly emotional Petersen informed Johnson that "you have my sword, and you have my gun" as he delivered the gift, in a touching moment no doubt intended to unify a Libertarian Party fractured by an unusually acrimonious primary season.
Gary Johnson then threw the flintlock in the trash.
Apparently, Johnson was "frustrated" that Petersen only pledged him unconditional support and also gave him a valuable and symbolically-charged keepsake and also clearly attempted to unite the party behind the nominee. This, in Johnson’s eyes, was insufficient penance for Petersen’s great sin: he is skeptical of Johnson’s hilariously unlibertarian running mate, former Massachusetts governor William Weld.
Weld was a subject of intense debate at the convention. Johnson, who won the Libertarian Party’s nomination for a second straight election cycle, had to hustle to get the party to unite behind Weld as his running mate.
Even then, Weld’s nomination was met with a mixed chorus of cheers and jeers from the rowdy crowd. Many in the party’s ideological base had argued Weld’s positions on foreign policy and gun control were out of step with theirs.
It’s no secret that Petersen was among those knocking Weld.
Weld, of course, has a history of supporting what he still today describes as "some modest restrictions on certain types of firearms," supported John Kasich (the biggest warmonger in the field) in his bid for the Republican nomination, and says that one of his "Bibles" is Friedrich Hayek’s The Constitution of Liberty, a book in which Hayek expresses his support for the full panoply of socialist "safety net" programs. So other than supporting gun control, war with Russia, "more than special forces in Libya," a no-fly zone over Syria, "ripping up" the Iran nuclear deal, Social Security, Medicare, and food stamps, Weld is totally libertarian! Geez, Petersen, what is your problem?
Also, Gary Johnson, your communications director really really really needs to have more of a clue than to allow the words "what he did with the gun was pure frustration" to come out of his mouth when speaking to a reporter. Is that truly the sound bite you want getting out?
Big Brother is trolling you
Let’s just jump right into this one:
The European Commission has today announced a partnership with Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and Microsoft in order to crack down on what it classes as "illegal hate speech" while "criminaliz[ing]" perpetrators and "promoting independent counter-narratives" that the European Union favours.
Why, there’s nothing sinister or totalitarian about that at all! Before anybody writes in to complain: yes, I’m quite well aware that Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and Microsoft are private entities that can allow or disallow the use of their services however they please. There’s nothing unlibertarian about Facebook censoring certain posts per se. Of course, when one considers that Facebook is being instructed to do so by the bureaucrats in the EC, that does put a different spin on things, as does that little snippet about "criminalizing perpetrators." What do you suppose that means? The only clue provided in the hilariously condescending "Code of Conduct on Countering Illegal Hate Speech Online" is a brief snippet calling for "a robust system of enforcement of criminal law sanctions against the individual perpetrators of hate speech." Fortunately for me, "worthless bureaucrat" is still not a "protected" class, so it’s legal hate speech when I say these are the most horrid human-like creatures ever to be excreted onto the Earth, and I would be overjoyed if they were all bitten by radioactive spiders, but not the kind that gives you super powers — this is the kind that just makes you die of really painful radioactive spider bite.
The other best part about this is the call for centralized government agencies to "promot[e] independent counter-narratives." Your humble narrator is at least 60% sure that if the Central Narrative-Promotion Agency generates and circulates these ridiculous "narratives," they are "independent" in no way whatsoever.
Big Brother is stalking you
It’s no big secret that the government was embarrassed by the Manning and Snowden leaks. When you combine that embarrassment with the kind of self-centered technocratic groupthink the government specializes in, and add a dash of unlimited budget, what do you suppose you get? That’s right: a magic computer system designed to aggregate all the data about absolutely everybody with a security clearance, and predict which ones will leak information so they can be punished for their pre-crimes.
A review of the 2013 Washington Navy Yard shootings found that the department still lacked "a centralized hub" to obtain a holistic view into potential threats, Defense spokeswoman Linda Rojas told Nextgov in an email.
Now, the Pentagon is establishing a team of "cross-functional experts" trained in cybersecurity, privacy, law enforcement, intelligence and psychology — aided by the new workflow technology — to help fill that gap, she said.
It’s clear that they’ve already increased their buzzword budget. At least there’s no possible negative fallout from this amazing new monitoring system!
But some civil liberties advocates say this Defensewide insider threat analytics system could create a culture of mutual suspicion that silences whistleblowers.
What? How could this be? In all honesty, "some civil liberties advocates," this system is explicitly designed and implemented by the United States government for the express purpose of silencing whistleblowers. It’s a pretty safe bet that’s the one thing it won’t be able to do.
I’m fully expecting this to be another gold star on the government’s stellar record of using magical machines to detect traitors.
Look! Up in the sky!
Not plane nor bird nor even froggle, it’s just little old me: army boondoggle. If you remember the hilarious bit last autumn when an experimental army defense blimp broke free of its moorings and caused way, way more damage than the nonexistent threat it was designed to protect us from, well, now the army’s roiling with consternation at the fact that congress refuses to steal another forty-five million dollars from the innocent taxpayers and spend it continuing to develop this crazy thing.
While three of the committees left some spare change in the program, presumably to close it out, the Senate Appropriations Committee took the most severe route, zeroing out funding for the Joint Land Attack Cruise Missile Defense Elevated Netted Sensor System (JLENS) in its fiscal 2017 spending bill approved Thursday.
My first thought is that only through the magic of government could a program be called "Joint Land Attack Cruise Missile Defense Elevated Netted Sensor System." Did the guy in charge of naming this thing have a seizure and start typing random gibberish into the name field? Did he just decide to flip through the dictionary and pick one thing from each letter?
My second thought, of course, is that only through the magic of government could it be determined that "Joint Land Attack Cruise Missile Defense Elevated Netted Sensor System" could possibly be abbreviated as JLENS. What?
The lack of funding in 2016 means the Army has to store the system this year rather than continue its operational exercise meant to determine whether JLENS should be fielded and additional systems should be procured.
Yeah, they should definitely "procure more systems." I bet there are still some power lines somewhere that haven’t been knocked down yet.
Big Brother is… really really creepy
Apparently this is the ceremony that was held last week when the Gotthard Base Tunnel — an eleven billion euro tunnel dug through the mountains in Switzerland over the course of seventeen years — was finally opened. Many heads of state and other such muckety-mucks were present.
What? I’ve head other commentators claim this is an Illuminati ritual dedicated to the worship of Satan; I don’t really desire to go down that crazy path, but, having watched it… it’s not hard to see where that’s coming from.
Whatever the purpose, this is the kind of concentrated weird that you can only get at a cost of seventeen years and eleven billion euros. Congratulations, looted tax chattel of Europe!