strippers for ron paul

One stripper, at least, supports him:

Since my main interest in politics these days is financial, I’m a fan of Ron Paul. I believe he would be good for the economy and (most importantly) for my wallet...If Ron Paul gets elected I will be able to put off my plan of eventually fleeing to Malta for at least four years. That’s a chance worth taking, in my estimation.

Read the rest here.

an interesting fact

I've never read much about health care issues and it's always made me squirm that socialized medicine seems to work. E.g., countries with nationalized healthcare seem to have higher life expectancies than the U.S. How could the free market fail us? Well, apparently, it didn't. In a blog post over at Cato At Liberty, Michael Cannon points out that "once one controls for fatal injuries and homicides, our life expectancy stats come out better than all other advanced nations’".

This is only one measure of a healthcare system, but it's important to carefully examine each stat before rushing headlong into a Cuba-style healthcare system, especially since we are quite far from a free market in medicine right now.

more on hiroshima

Justin Raimondo has a good column today on the continuing relevance of the murderous attack on Hiroshima. In "Hillary, Hiroshima, and Hubris", Raimondo notes:

Hillary's blanket statement about never making blanket statements regarding the use (or "non-use") of nukes is in line with the policy of American presidents stretching all the way back to Harry Truman. The U.S. government has never rejected the first use of nuclear weapons. The North Atlantic Treaty Organization has followed a similar policy, and this is the default position of the "responsible" sectors of the foreign policy commentariat: Hillary is merely following in the footsteps of husband Bill and his postwar predecessors.

I'm often stumped as to why the Democrats feel the need to be even more murderous than the Republicans. In what fevered imagination is America put at even the tiniest risk of attack merely by forswearing a nuclear first strike?

thomas sowell: anarcho-capitalist?

I'm a big fan of Thomas Sowell's work, but sadly he has been using his gifts over the past few years to defend the awful Bush administration, no matter how awful it gets. Today, however, Sowell turns in an excellent column on privatizing bridges:

A company that has to get the money to build and maintain bridges or other infrastructure through the voluntary actions of people in the financial markets, instead of being able to extract money from the taxpayers, is going to find financiers a lot more finicky about what is being done with their money. People who are putting their own money on the line are going to want to have their own experts taking a look under the bridges they finance, to see where there are rust, cracks or crumbling supports.

When people know that the lawsuits that are sure to follow after a bridge collapses are going to drain millions of dollars of their own money -- not the taxpayers' money -- that keeps the mind focussed.

Those who like to think of the government as the public interest personified may be horrified at the idea of turning a governmental function over to private enterprise.

If only Sowell would turn his critical eye to the Bushies instead of defending the War Party at all costs!

the monster truman

It was sixty-two years ago today that the United States dropped an atomic bomb on Hiroshima. I've posted on this the last two years as well, but it was such a monstrous act that it's worth remembering every year. Antiwar.com reprints last year's column by economist David Henderson, "Remembering Hiroshima". It's an excellent column that deserves to be re-read.

the simpsons movie

The girlfriend and I went to see "The Simpsons Movie" last night and I give it a big thumbs up. It was very funny and had some great anti-state moments. Anthony Gregory gives a good libertarian overview of the movie in "The Federal War on Springfield":

In terms of both rough yet classic comedy and roughly classical liberalism, The Simpsons movie delivers as well as the series’ best. In the movie, the federal government stars as the chief enemy of the Simpsons family and their beloved town Springfield. We might concede that our antihero Homer, in all his bad judgment, is Uncle Sam’s one indispensable ally. But the evil and heartless federal bureaucracy overreacts to Homer’s admittedly terrible shortsightedness with calculated cruelty and heartlessness.

My only beef with the movie is that a key plot turn that some might interpret as the key message of the movie is unabashedly collectivist. The good news is that leftists are unhappy with the movie. Ben Adler from Campus Progress whines that it's "disappointing to see the hilarious new Simpsons movie engage in some weirdly illiberal gags."

The Simpsons takes aim at all authority and leftists can't bear that. How dare anyone question the wonder that is the FedGov?