Sunday, September 30, 2007

a nation of children....to be protected from ourselves

"The president sees America as we think of about a 10-year-old child."

A chillingly telling quote from a Bush adminion during the run up to the 04 election. Can you imagine the grandiose sense of political holiness that goes along with this sort of mindset? Not only by the prez himself, but of the various staffers who, in a nutshell, help craft the policies destroying our civil freedoms daily.

http://reason.com/news/show/122716.html

Great interview with David Harsanyi about his new book THE NANNY STATE 911, about the pathetic bunch of lardass bedwetters we've become.

Wednesday, September 26, 2007

The War on Rogue Cyclists!

Just read about some politician's effort to earmark a million bucks to promote cycling as a viable alternative to carbon-based transportation (cars, busses, trains, planes, etc).

Now, IF (intentionally capitalized) I thought it would do any good at all, I MIGHT not object to such a pointless exercise in flushing (yet more) taxpayer dollars down the federal shitter. But, unfortunately, sadly, pathetically, embarrassingly, by and large, Americans are just too freaking lazy to give a damn, much less ride a bike.

And the few who do give a damn? Well, most of 'em are already riding bikes, walking, jogging, using public trans and driving their Priusses (Priuii?) to work.

The rest? They're still hurling their abuse (and their empty McCoffee cups, Big Gulps and beer cans) at us lycra-clad "faggot" cyclists for hogging "their" roads.

But, the REALLY sad part of this whole farce is that Americans really could make a huge dent in the so-called "energy crisis" by utilizing some EXTREMELY low-tech solutions, most of which are pretty much FREE.

However, as in all fantasies, there's an evil witch that just has to screw thing up. In this case it's the feds. You see, once the nanny-state bureaucrats (Democrats AND Republicans alike) get their claws into it, they'll regulate it (to death, if given the chance).

Pretty soon we'll be required to have a federal bicycle licensce; for two "obvious" reasons:

A) how else will they be able to give us our $20 dollar "tax break" unless they have some method of tracking our activity?;

and B) How else will Homeland Security be able to track the terrorists who ride bicycles in an effort to stay under the radar?

Of course, along with the federal bicycle license will be the requisite inspections, software upgrades, GPS tracking chips installed in the bottom bracket, retina-scanning I.D. locking mechanism (again, for DHS' war on terrorism), and the universe-only-knows what other ludicrous forms of regulation they'll cook up once they're up'n'running in the "War on Undocumented Cyclists."

(They won't call it a bicycle license, of course; it'll something catchier: a Two-Wheeled Adventure Pass!!, or some such politcobullshit designed to mask the simple, ugly reality that it just yet another tax)

That said....go ride your bike and pray the feds fail to get their toxic claws into one of the last vestiges of (relatively) unregulated activity in America.

Jefferson