Entries from November 2008 ↓

Via The Liberty Sphere comes this piece about the “fairness doctrine” by my old pal Jack Thompson. It’s actually a pretty good article detailing how the incoming administration might hide “fairness doctrine” flavored censorship behind buzzwords like “localism” and “diversity.” That said, I nearly fell out of my chair laughing at the opening sentence.

Get ready for an unprecedented government assault upon the First Amendment.

This, coming from Jack Thompson? The man who considered it a “badge of honor” to be called Censor of the Year back in ’92? The man who has spent the last nine years trying to have games like America’s Army, Halo, and GTA censored/banned because they somehow “train” people to use guns? But now he decides to care about the First Amendment after attempting to sell Hillary and friends the rope to hang us with?

Words fail me.

But I guess Obama putting the Clintons back in charge of the White House may have been something of a wake-up call for him. Should be interesting to see how he handles fighting alongside us “libertarian thugs” instead of against us. Now that would be Change You Can Believe In When You See It™!

I went to vote around 11am today, and only had to wait in line inside the building for like an hour. Seemed like a long time until reading about some of the lines in other districts nearby. Some of which were outside in the rain. Sucks to be them.

But, yea, voting for John McCampaignFinanceReform made me feel kinda.. dirty, so I headed down to the fun shop after lunch and picked up some more zombie repellent to cheer me up. Traffic on the way there was bad due to some car being flipped over. In the middle of a rather straight street, and coincidentally right in front of another polling place. Weird..

Sadly, they were out of PMAGs and the selection of 7.62 was limited, so I didn’t get much. But the visit to the store was amusing by itself. Guy who was there before me had about a dozen AR mags on the counter. I just had the three for the Kalashnicopy and three for the AR. Then a third guy walked in, laughed, and asked jokingly why we were both wearing “I voted” stickers and shopping for thirty round mags. He had a sticker too, and was apparently there looking for a new EBR.

An now for the fun part of election day: waiting for poll results.

Meh. I’m not happy at all with the choices facing us in the election tomorrow. John McCain has a quite a nasty statist streak in him, but Barack Obama is a statist through and through.

Originally I was planning on voting Libertarian this year, but Bob Barr’s record isn’t much better than McCain’s, and Virginia is apparently a swing State this year. Now, to be perfectly honest, this might not bother me so much if we were going into this with a clear, Republican majority in Congress on the other side of tomorrow. Yea, Obama could still make quite a mess with just one branch, but partisan gridlock would have limited the damage he could do.

With the Democrats expected to have a substantial majority in Congress, however, there’s only one conclusion to draw.

Obama must be stopped. Even if it means voting for John McGunShowLoophole.

The Senator has lots of good intentions, to be sure. And, hell, I’d even go so far as saying some of his ideas sound nice in theory. The problem is, though, they won’t work on paper; namely the Constitution. Even if all his plans could somehow work in practice, creating more government powers not delegated by the Constitution only serves to undermine the rule of law.

And regardless of whether the results might feel good in the short term, the expansion of government power which Obama seeks will ultimately lead to tyranny. Whether or not he’s the one to crush liberty once and for all, his plans would set the stage for the final act.

Then of course there’s the fact his party has even grander plans than he does. Plans which, if passed in Congress, he would almost certainly sign into law..

Again, McCain was never my first choice, but at the very least he would slow the growth of the Federal Leviathan. And on the bright side, McCain might be able to appoint a few appellate judges and a Supreme Court Justice or two who could push back. Even if it’s only a few inches, it would give us some chance to regroup.