Public goods
As any fule kno, the problem with us stupid libertarian ideologues is that we refuse to accept that there are certain things out there that people need, but that simply cannot be provided on the free market. The big one, of course, is roads — regardless of what clueless rubes say, there’s no possible way that free men acting on their own could figure out how to get a stretch of relatively flat, clear ground between you and Wal-mart. Also, can you even imagine a way that mail could be delivered without government? Impossible! Public safety is another one; who has more of the knowledge and incentive necessary to keep your neighborhood safe: your neighbors, or faceless bureaucrats in Washington D.C.? It’s the bureaucrats all the way, of course.
Put those three things together and you have an obvious no-brainer. Who can keep the roads safe so the government mail can get delivered? Only the government, obviously. It’s too large, too expensive, and too complex an endeavor for anybody else to manage. Well, anybody else except for PornHub, anyhow.
The adult entertainment site said it has more than two dozen trucks at its disposal, all outfitted with the Pornhub logo on the front of the plow.
Corey Price, vice president of the site, said it will use the plows to assist government services clearing streets and parking lots in [Boston, New York,] and New Jersey, where Winter Storm Stella hit hardest, reports Boston Magazine.
Oh no! It’s those evil corporations up to their same old nefarious schemes! No doubt PornHub is muscling in on the government’s lucrative turf so it can charge people money for things that we’re all entitled to as human rights. You know, things like other people’s trucks, plows, and gasoline.
Pornhub is offering to help people "get plowed" during the winter storm Tuesday, hiring a fleet of trucks to help clear snow for free…
The site is offering its snow plow services for clearing public streets and roads and to any small business looking for assistance.
Aha! Predatory pricing! So, okay, they’re not profiteering this time, but just you wait for the next storm. And in the meantime, while they’re setting up their horrible scheme, they’re advertising, which we all know is evil.
The government can plow the snow or PornHub can plow the snow; I guess either way it’s paid for by people getting screwed.
In the weeds
A lot of poor, misguided libertarians had high hopes for the 2016 Gary Johnson encore. Of course, Johnson was a huge bust, generally appearing completely unprepared for every interview he gave, and even finding new and creative ways of making himself look like a fool. Whatever could the problem have been?
In a recent candid interview, Johnson was quoted saying, "I’m pretty high right now". Asked to elaborate, he said "I’m going to be honest with you, I’ve been high pretty much constantly since the election. I ate a brownie right after I voted. Didn’t eat the whole thing because I knew I had to give some speeches and they had to make at least some sense, but I don’t think it really made too much of a difference anyways." He continued, "really if anything, it calmed me down a bit. I don’t think anyone noticed".
How on the entire Earth would anybody have noticed? If you saw Gary Johnson acting like a stoned weirdo, would that seem in any way unusual? What would be different? Would he stick his tongue out even farther? Would he possibly get confused and start demanding that the government force people to get baked at gay weddings? Would he find a way to nominate an even worse running mate? Your humble narrator is compelled to doubt that it’s possible to get high enough to be more of a weirdo than 2016 Gary Johnson.
Johnson says that he plans on being high for at least the next 4 years. When asked if he would have done anything different had the election gone the other way, he responded, "No. This was the plan throughout the campaign. I was either going to hold the highest office, or I was going be high in my office".
So between this clown and the naked guy, the Libertarian Party has certainly done a bang-up job of demonstrating why nobody takes it seriously. Good thing the party didn’t do anything crazy like nominate somebody with principles!
No, but, seriously: who will build the roads?
It’s like you stupid libertarians have never even thought about this. In your fairy-tale utopia, who will build the roads? Okay, fine, you overthrow the government and then you get a bunch of roads that were already built. Well then who’s going to maintain those roads, smart guy? It’s not like it’s possible for even the dumbest people alive to fix potholes without stolen money and slave labor.
Pitting the city’s two mottos — the unofficial "Keep Portland Weird" and the municipal "The City That Works" — against one another, a group calling itself Portland Anarchist Road Care says state neglect is to blame for the condition of the streets.
The group, working anonymously and with one wearing a mask in photos, only claims to have patched a handful of potholes on Southeast Salmon Street during an outing in late February. But an administrator of the Facebook page said the group is planning more actions. Part of the motivation, the group says on its Facebook page, is to squash perceptions that anarchists only break windows and block roads.
Real anarchists, of course, are the exact opposite of people who "only break windows and block roads." Unless it’s your window or your road, breaking or blocking it is an aggressive action — i.e., a state action — and the sort of thing anarchists don’t do, since anarchy is peace. Of course, the kind of anarchists who tend to form civic organizations in Portland, Oregon probably don’t know what they’re talking about. What do you suppose are the chances?
"As anarchists, we seek to bring about a society in which coercive hierarchies, such as government and capitalism … no longer exist," a member of the group told The Oregonian/OregonLive in an email. "To be exceptionally clear, anarchists do not desire chaos, we desire freedom and equality."
Oh, how surprising: clueless lefty "anarchists" declaring contradictory goals. A moment’s reflection should suffice to inform one that freedom and equality cannot coëxist (even inasmuch as "equality" can exist at all), but that’s apparently too much deep thought for the kind of person who wears a mask to go fill in holes in the road.
God stuff
You can tell that religion is phony because the Bible says that God created man "in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them," whereas clearly God would have created society first, and then society would have created gender, because that’s the science way! I’m sure Bethel University agrees.
One general guideline states that employees should “avoid using masculine terms to refer to people who may be either male or female,” urging them to "use a substitute for words like ‘man or ‘mankind’ when you mean a more inclusive term" and suggesting several "adequate substitutes."
"Although the lack of an inclusive third-person singular pronoun in English is sometimes awkward," the guide says, "words like ‘humans,’ ‘humanity,’ ‘beings,’ ‘people’ and ‘all’ are often adequate substitutes."
Now I can’t possibly be the only one who’s noticed that not one of the Bethel guidebook’s suggested substitute singular pronouns is actually singular. One would think this would be a relatively high-priority attribute for a singular pronoun! Turns out I was right all along: this is the exact sort of rot I’ve been warning you that your brains will develop if you overexpose them to the wretched and incorrect "singular they." So everybody stop doing that.
The age category, for example, tells employees to avoid "stressing the needs and experiences of separate age groups" and instead point to a "common experience through the life span."
With regard to class, the document suggests choosing words "that reflect that human worth is not measured in terms of economic status or employment," while also cautioning faculty not to "assume that lack of formal education is synonymous with ignorance, illiteracy, lack of intelligence, character, worth, or drive."
I’ve written a browser plugin that automatically scans passages of text to determine whether or not they actually mean anything. I’m not going to spoil anything here — preferring to leave it as a spooky exercise for the reader — but I’ll give you a hint: those two paragraphs are highlighted in red. And blinking. And set to self-destruct in ten seconds.
Of course, the best part of this whole foolish guidebook is its insistence that "our goal is to encourage a humble and Christ-like use of language," which goal apparently can be met by arrogantly refusing to use language the way Christ himself did.
Last Week in Red Scare
Congress has always been a bag of idiots, but the congressional blue team has really stepped up its game since the abject failure of Her Royal Majesty to defeat a seventy-year-old ill-mannered circus clown in even a hopelessly gimmicked election. There are Russian agents everywhere, we’re told! They’re seeking to steal all of our elections and all of our democracy and our apple pie and mother and probably also they want to stop us from building our roads! Now here’s the kicker: senatrix Jeanne Shaheen, whose name was given to her by the weirdo maraca guy from The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, has introduced a bill calling for an investigation into potential ties betwteen RT and the Russian government.
"We have good reason to believe that RT News is coordinating with the Russian government to spread misinformation and undermine our democratic process," Shaheen said in a statement.
She said her legislation "provides the authority needed to request documentation of RT News and find out who they’re accountable to."
Dear senator Shaheen: "RT" is an abbreviation for "Russia Today." It is a news agency created and funded by the government of Russia through the "TV-Novosti" corporation, which is the successor organization to RIA Novosti, the official Russian state news bureau. Yes, senator, RT has ties to the Russian government, which secret information one can find in about two seconds on its own web site. This is not half as secret as, for example, CNN’s deep ties to the United States government, which it still to this day pretends not to have.
Anyhow, I’d like to propose that all the money you were planning to appropriate for this ridiculous investigation be sent to me, since I just did all your work for you. Really, you clowns. You have aides! Ask them to look things up for you!