It looks obvious

Not all is lost, and if things like this still happen the core of this country is still healthy:

Nobody’s going to tell Kerry “Paco” Ellison’s customers they can’t smoke at his bar.

The Black Hawk Saloon is Ellison’s bar, and he’ll run it as he sees fit.

“If I don’t want to pray, I don’t go to church,” Ellison said. “If you don’t want to smoke, don’t come in here.”

Today, Ellison and at least a dozen other bar owners across the county defiantly encouraged their patrons to smoke in violation of the Kanawha-Charleston Health Department’s six-week-old smoking ban.

It is actually extremely simple concept - the bar owner, the bar employees and the customers all engaged in voluntary transactions. None of those who enveloped in these transactions should be forced to buy or sell involuntarily; and yes, if the bar owner is racist and don’t want to serve a group of people he/she shouldn’t be coerced to act differently.

via disloyal opposition

The biggest problem with the 3 year old children is not the lack of training regime. Apparently, if you are doing the mistake and listening to the National Children’s Bureau in England, its those 3 years old children who are saying “yuk” to unfamiliar foreign food:

The National Children’s Bureau, which receives £12 million a year, mainly from Government funded organisations, has issued guidance to play leaders and nursery teachers advising them to be alert for racist incidents among youngsters in their care.

This could include a child of as young as three who says “yuk” in response to being served unfamiliar foreign food.

[...]

The guide goes on to warn that children might also “react negatively to a culinary tradition other than their own by saying ‘yuk’”

I didn’t realize it before, but it is really dangerous world for the 3 years old…

Light bulbs are externally serious matter! So serious that the federal government has to regulate almost every aspect of using them. We are cannot be trusted to decide which kind of light bulb we prefer to use, and how to replace them when needed, and therefore those who cannot run a restaurant efficiently should use their monopoly on the means of coercion to make sure we are doing the right thing.

(via)

In november the American voters will have to choose between this:

“serving a cause greater than self-interest.”

[…]

“We are fast becoming a nation of alienating individualists, unwilling to put the unifying values of patriotism ahead of our narrow self-interests,” Mr. McCain warned in a speech during his 2000 presidential campaign. He added that “cynicism threatens to become a ceiling on our greatness.”

and this:

“We can’t drive our SUVs and eat as much as we want and keep our homes on 72 degrees at all times … and then just expect that other countries are going to say OK,” Obama said.

A poor selection indeed.

Do you care about American football league? I happened to not care about it even a little bit. But I was mistaken because apparently professional NFL games, and all that involve with them are extremely important. Otherwise how can you explain the need of the federal government to check if one team was spying on another and by that breaking, or not, some rules of the league association. This is obviously should not be handled by the league, which the last time I checked was private organization, but by no other than the mighty Arlen Specter.

After all once you allow cheating in football games, it is a short way to complete ceos. No, I’m not joking if the federal government will not act expediently to solve this crisis we are going to face a major problem with the values of are youth:

“They are enormous role models for everybody,” Specter said. “If you can cheat in the NFL, you can cheat in college, you can cheat in high school, you can cheat on your grade-school math test. There’s no limit as to what you can do. I think they owe the public a lot more candor and a lot more credibility.”

If we are busy changing the names of things, why should we try to hide their true meaning instead of calling them for what they are: Armed Rubbery? The suggestion is as ridicules as the believe that people despise taxes because of the name, and not because of what they are paying. This is so typical for the newspaper which believed that if we will not call Mugabe for what he is, a dictator that brought disaster on his county, he will become the romantic figure some desired him to be.

The fact is that if taxes were as great as the columnist suggest he wouldn’t need the verbal and intellectual impressive flexibility he demonstrated. But they aren’t - they are immoral and inefficient tool to take one’s property to the use of the ruler - may it be a king, the mob or a group of power grub professional busy bodies.

Who in his or her right mind would choose to elect a tyrant that, when in office, will start dictating things like:

…government programs to help people “quit smoking, to get more exercise, to eat right, to take their vitamins.” 

The only parental tyranny acceptable is my mother’s, and even she knew at some point to lay off and let me make my own decision. The believe that the government’s proper role is to be a Paternal Tyrant combined with well documented approach of “The goal justifies the means” should be a major factor in a decision not to vote for such candidate.

We know big government does not have all the answers. We know there’s not a program for every problem. We have worked to give the American people a smaller, less bureaucratic government in Washington. And we have to give the American people one that lives within its means.

The era of big government is over. But we cannot go back to the time when our citizens were left to fend for themselves. Instead, we must go forward as one America, one nation working together to meet the challenges we face together. Self-reliance and teamwork are not opposing virtues; we must have both. 

Bill Clinton - The State of the Union Address 1996

On the one hand this is really not that important, just another bill that nobody really notice. But its significance is in its mere existence. Government become so intrusive, so involved in areas it should never been involved with, that such bills doesn’t seems evil (or at least ridiculous) as they truly are. It is sad to acknowledge that it is now acceptable in the “Era of small government” to use the government monopoly of the mean of violence to ensure the existence of toilet papers in restaurants… 

A proposed law currently making its way through the Florida legislature might help you with what can be an embarrassing problem. Here’s the bottom line, the bill would be a mandate that all eating establishment must have enough toilet paper when you go into the restroom.

The only problem is the bill doesn’t dictate how much toilet paper is "enough."

The question is obviously not the technical question of what constitute “enough” toilet paper, but when will we say enough!

(Via LRC)

One of the problems with Business people becoming politician is that the failed to see the differences between the business world and the political system. It is easy to see the similarities - management to large systems, Producing results and so on. But these similarities are often deceiving. While running a business is often about the “Bottom line”, achieving the desired results, political systems should be about the process. Successful business people often desire to fix the inefficiencies of the political system and failing to understand that those inefficiencies, the compromises, the political pressures and the many different interest groups are crucial for the health of liberal democracy.

And when the business man, turn to be politician, is by nature an authoritarian the results are:

Doubtless the Mayor is still pondering the question. Since he took office six years ago, Mike Bloomberg’s record is, among other things, a study in finicky prohibition. Not only is Bloomberg certain of what’s best for you, he knows you to lack the good sense to choose it. In order to ensure the well being of his charges, the Mayor has instituted a few laws about which he has said, “People will adjust very quickly and a lot of lives will be saved.” Has an American politician ever expressed a more vitally un-American sentiment? Dubious claims of life-saving aside, American citizens aren’t to be schoolmarmed into compulsory purification. 

Yet, in 2002, brushing off a few cranky editorials, Mayor Mike instituted a smoking ban that covered every public New York City workplace including all restaurants, bars, cabarets, and pool halls. In 2007, he enacted the country’s first municipal ban on trans fats in restaurant food. With their appetites regulated and a chunk of their free choice under lock and key at Gracie Mansion, denizens of the vice-free five boroughs have been, presumably, “adjusting.”

Without doubt Mayor Bloomberg is one of the more efficient Mayors NY City had, the price of “making the trains run on time”, however, of is much to high to pay.

Wal-Mart, the giant retailer which many like to hate, using its market share to force lower prices on music: 

The major music companies have been resistant to lowering their price on CDs, but now they may be dragged to that point: Wal-Mart, the largest retailer of music with an estimated 22 percent market share, has proposed a five-tiered pricing scheme that would allow the discounter to sell albums at even lower prices and require the labels to bear more of the costs. 

According to sources, the Wal-Mart proposal would allow for a promotional program that could comprise the top 15 to 20 hottest titles, each at $10. The rest of the pricing structure, according to several music executives who spoke with Billboard, would have hits and current titles retailing for $12, top catalog at $9, midline catalog at $7 and budget product at $5. The move would also shift the store’s pricing from its $9.88 and $13.88 model to rounder sales prices.

One of the clearest examples of the weakness of central planning, and the evil results it usually generates is the Farm Bill. This story is only one additional example:

IF you’ve stood in line at a farmers’ market recently, you know that the local food movement is thriving, to the point that small farmers are having a tough time keeping up with the demand.

But consumers who would like to be able to buy local fruits and vegetables not just at farmers’ markets, but also in the produce aisle of their supermarket, will be dismayed to learn that the federal government works deliberately and forcefully to prevent the local food movement from expanding. And the barriers that the United States Department of Agriculture has put in place will be extended when the farm bill that House and Senate negotiators are working on now goes into effect.

[...]

The commodity farm program effectively forbids farmers who usually grow corn or the other four federally subsidized commodity crops (soybeans, rice, wheat and cotton) from trying fruit and vegetables. Because my watermelons and tomatoes had been planted on “corn base” acres, the Farm Service said, my landlords were out of compliance with the commodity program.

[...]

Why? Because national fruit and vegetable growers based in California, Florida and Texas fear competition from regional producers like myself. Through their control of Congressional delegations from those states, they have been able to virtually monopolize the country’s fresh produce markets. (my emphasis)

And the final link for today is much funnier. If you think that government monopoly on the legal means of violence is limited to live people - think again!:

The mayor of a village in southwest France has threatened residents with severe punishment if they die, because there is no room left in the overcrowded cemetery to bury them.

I guess that this kind of story couldn’t come from anywhere on earth but France