REPUBLIC REBORN

After said blimp gets loose and travels 100 miles. Washington Times

Reason’s Matt Welch demolishes Elite puff piece.

Given Trump and Hillary, the Libertarian Party has become a real option for all the people who hate those two candidates

The vaccine documentary that was pulled from Tribeca Film Festival by Robert De Niro recently premiered in NYC

US is militarizing the Pacific, and not taking questions

Obama: nuclear terrorist attack would “change our world”  (Ed: can’t help but commenting.  Yes, it would change our world, meaning it would usher in the total Police State that right outside the door.  A possible terrorist nuke would kill a million people, but the global government response would be far worse.  The “loose nuke” problem was created by governments who were too careless with their nukes, or who sold nuclear secrets to shadowy figures for some momentary gain.)

Intelligence Community Olive Branch on Data Sharing Greeted With Skepticism

Venezuela today looks like Zimbabwe 15 years ago

Protestors smoke weed outside of White House

…FBI, DEA, and others.  Any official surveillance reform is just a PR stunt, they’ll never willingly let go of that power. Tech Dirt

Again, quagmires are the health of the State.  Reuters

Connecticut is pushing back.  Now if only the state government has the fortitude for a prolonged fight with these parasites.  They could even go whole-hog and abolish public-sector unionism in their state and be done with it.  Why bleed taxpayers dry solely to fund public-employee pay raises and cushy retirement pension?

Trump.  Relevant chunks: “His critique of the political class is not that they meddle too heavily in the lives of individuals, but that they haven’t done enough. If they had, wouldn’t we have a 50-foot wall on the southern border? Wouldn’t all those manufacturing jobs come back from China? For Trump and his supporters, the problem with Washington is not the inherent disaster of a massive bureaucracy with no consequences for failure and a surplus of corrupting power. No, it’s lack of strident, Trump-like spirit: a lack of will.

In spite of his twitches towards a less militaristic foreign policy — in between suggesting the United States rip up the Geneva Conventions, bomb the hell out of Syria, and seize Iraq’s oil — there is nothing really consistent about Trump. He may or may not be worse in practice than the status quo, but there is no reason to suspect that he is the savior of anything except his own ego. Indeed, his view that the government is incompetent due to bad managers sounds more like progressive technocracy than anything conservative. But somehow his screaming fans have gotten their signals crossed or, more grimly, they are as disinterested in small government as he is.

Hating DC is fun, but it doesn’t magically translate to supporting liberty. And populism is a not principle — it has no policies, feasible or otherwise. It is raw emotion. It is preaching. It is the flimflam, finger-pointing, and impossible promises of traditional assembly-line politics, just stripped down to bare parts. Trump is the schoolyard version of everything Marco Rubio or Bill Kristol advocates. He isn’t flattering anyone’s intelligence with his policy acumen. He doesn’t think we’re terribly smart, but he also thinks those fancy pants DC elites are not as smart as they pretend. He’s right about all of that. It’s not as if politics is noble or deserves better than Trump. It is Trump.”

Huffington Post.  Once a stable, developed country, Libya is now a terrorist’s playground, ISIS safe haven, and general dumpster fire.

Including Assad in the new Syrian government would be a “non-starter” for the US Empire, even if Syrians want him.  Antiwar

Activist Post.  Autism rate is currently 1 in 68.