Must Cowboy Poets Die for America to Live? PJTV's James Poulos Talks to Nick Gillespie about Debt Limits, Partisan Wrangling, & How Hate Mail is a Sign of the Libertarian Moment

Reason's Nick Gillespie talked with PJTV's James Poulos about the debt limit's impact on cowboy poets, whether John Boehner and Harry Reid are up to their jobs, and how hate mail is actually a sign that we've never been so free…

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Comments

[Au H20]

So... I've been reading Gawker. Y'know Gawker? Celebrities, sex, internet videos, gossip, that kind of shit. But Gawker has apparently gotten into politics more than I remember, and HOLY SHIT is the Left not dealing with the Tea Party thing very well.

I mean, I expect this kind of shit from Daily Kos, Huffington Post, and the New York Times (which says a thing or two about where the New York Times has gone in the last few decades). But the fucks at Gawker, who snark at Angelina Jolie, want to put the Tea Party people on trial for Fiscal Terrorism (for not raising the debt ceiling). And apparently, by not supporting Pell Grants, you hate poor people, as opposed to realizing that government spending contributes to the higher education bubble (yes, I know the idea of government contributing to the higher education bubble doesn't compute to these people, but seriously).

If they ever get around to rolling back the entitlement state, holy fucking shit is it going to get ugly.

[Old Salt]

The most interesting thing about the Tea Party is how it has exposed just how fucked up the Left truly is! They're just sooo fucking smug because they believe themselves to be the "enlightened" ones (with everyone else being too stupid to know better) but all that goes right out the damn hatch the second the Tea Party begins to whisper Constitutional Jihad! I'm going to college on the GI Bill and, while I realize that liberals have pretty much got academia on lock down, the pure irrational HATE that these "professors" direct towards libertarians is past the point of disturbing! The most common bitch I hear is that their "all just a bunch of racist old white men" and they CAN'T be convinced otherwise! These academics go completely ape shit when I point out to them that while whites are the majority of the Tea Party, most rallies have PLENTY of blacks holding up signs screaming for both Presidential and Congressional blood! I've even shown a few of the more belligerent educators a few choice pictures some of my Tea Party buddies have sent me and all that happened is that the professors engaged in "Mental Denial Gymnastics" that even a holocaust denier would call bullshit on!

Don't get me wrong, I think that the right is just as fucked up as the left and I wish a Sewer Pox on all of them, but at least conservatives can give you a half ass reason why they don't like something (if only because of the EWW factor)! No lefty that I've EVER tangled with at my college has been able to give me a legit gripe about the Libertarian/Tea Party that I wasn't able to disprove with a 10 second Google! Their entire stand against the Tea Party is based on pure emotion with little logic or facts to back it up!

The MOST annoying thing about the liberals I tangle with, other then the fact they can't stand someone who knows how to call shenanigans on their bullshit and twist their beliefs around until THEY'RE the Nazi's, is that the people who pick fights with me and the other non-liberals are all WHITE! I'll be in class minding my own fucking business when one of these HONKEYS will start bitching about whatever CNN told them to care about that day! Naturally, being a filthy beggar of a sailor who respects nobody who can't out yell or out violence me, I return fire until they're red in the face and screaming like fucking lunatics about how the Tea Party is responsible for Messiah Obama not yet ascending to heaven to take his rightful place next the New Age Testament God they all pray to whenever their standing in line at Starbucks and can't get a signal with their iPhones!

I've become semi-infamous among the campus faculty and my new line of reasoning seems to have REALLY rattled things this semester. I've been soap boxing that the WHOLE reason that ALL the WHITEYS who rule the Liberals are pissed off at the Tea Party is because Saint Obama was supposed to forgive them the sin of being born white but it turns out that a half-black president can be JUST as big an asshole as any white president and now they got nobody to pin their Liberal Guilt on anymore so the Tea Party is a great SCAPEGOAT for the great black hope not living up to their insane expectations!

[Au H20]

Ugh. I just got out of college. One of my favorite exchanges came during a class I was taking on the 20s and 30s:

We were doing the New Deal, and the teacher was going off about how capitalism inevitably fails without the government because it overproduces on its own. He began citing the example of how farmers drown their chickens after the AAA was passed, and how pissed the common man was because here were people drowning their chickens when some people couldn't eat.

I simply asked, "Well, professor, isn't that more of an example of the failure of price controls than the failure of government?"

The hemming and hawing afterwords was priceless.

[anarch]

failure of price controls

The hemming and hawing afterwords was priceless.

I see what you did there.

[The Commentariat Life]

Au H20|7.30.11 @ 3:09PM|#
Ugh. I just got out of college

Duly noted. Handy confession for future exchanges.

[heller]

Tiresome troll is tiresome.

*yawn*

[The Commentariat Life]

HAHAHAHAHA....wait, this is tiresome too.

Yawn.

[heller]

Brilliant. That was brilliant. Bravo.

[The Commentariat Life]

I know. Not that you are not tiresome in calling me tiresome and then yawning.

Yawn.

 

Dammit!

[JorgXMcKie]

I had a course on Economic Policy [back in the 60s] and the prof told us all that the Farm Program at that time was a good deal for farmers. [Price supports of, as I remember $1.10/bu corn and $2.50/bu for wheat] I pointed out that those were *exactly* the same price as farmers got in 1910-1914 and that my grandfather [who farmed in that era] got by only by quadrupling his productivity between 1910-14 and 1960-14.

Therefore, it seemed obvious that it would be a good deal to pay professors the same per course as in 1910-14 and just have them teach 4 times as many courses.

I think I got a D in that class. ;->=

[BakedPenguin]

Old Salt - The mental gymnastics "liberals" are doing to keep the Obama love flowing is amazing. They don't even need to be told that we've always been at war with Eastasia. They're volunteering it after praising Obama for increasing the wine ration from 30 ounces to 500 mL.

[MNG]

It seems similar to what happened with Clinton. Both Obama and Clinton governed in ways that disappointed liberals, but they felt they must rally behind them because they were convinced that was all that stood between them and the Gingrich Republicans/Tea Partiers eating their children...Ironically the liberals should take a page from the Tea Partiers who just got fed up with being always offered the lesser of two evils and started to demand their candidates live up to their ideals, and became willing to vote and act accordingly. But as a person who leans liberal himself I don't see them learning that, they will continued to be played like a fiddle by Obama in the same way Clinton did to them...

[BakedPenguin]

Well, until and unless they man (or woman) up and start demanding follow through on things like transparency, wars, civil liberties, etc., they're going to get fucked. And they will deserve it.

That means voting for someone else. If they're pissing themselves about Teamageddon, they need to realize that continuing to elect clusterfucks will just encourage the growth of both the Tea Party and libertarian movements. Five idiots giving Obama $5000 each so they can sing to him isn't going to cut it.

[Mr. FIFY]

So... Obama and Clinton failed to live up to liberals' expectations is, what, exactly? Being too conservative?

If so... what the fuck WILL satisfy liberals?

Wait, I know the answer. Never mind.

[Steve Martin]

"...all-encompassing power over every living being in the entire universe..."

[SFC B]

Trains and shipping off people who don't agree with them so that they can learn how wrong they are.

And all-encompassing power over every living being in the universe.

[sevo]

"Ironically the liberals should take a page from the Tea Partiers who just got fed up with being always offered the lesser of two evils and started to demand their candidates live up to their ideals,..."
Wanna tell us what those "ideals" might be?

[Pol Pot]

[cough!]

[KenB]

"Wanna tell us what those "ideals" might be?"

The big ones would be limited government and fiscal responsibility. We want freedom from an oppressive nanny and regulatory state that suffocates the economy, and we want to quite charging nice-to-haves to our grandchildren.

[EVL29]

Liberals want those things?

[R]

Classical liberals, anyway. Not those dickheads that call themselves liberals these days, though.

[notsure]

well done sir.

[crypticguise]

Excellent comments, oldsalt! I've considered going back to college (I'm retired) if only to harrass the liberal IDIOTS with logical dissertation.

[Mike K]

I did go back to college about 15 years ago to get a masters after I'd retired. It was interesting but one professor down graded a project of mine because I was coming up with an alternative to the Clinton Plan that used a free market approach. This was a health policy course at Dartmouth. I told him to his face that he was biased. I got a "pass" in the course.

[Charlie]

It's not going to get "ugly", unless you mean a bunch of bug-eyed hippies jumping up and down, and they're already doing that (yeah, that's ugly all right).

Those pussies couldn't work up a beer fart in a sand storm.

Charlie

[Mike K]

Just avoid public transit lines that go to the ghetto. It will be ugly when the "undeserving poor" realize the gravy train is over. Apologies to Alfred P Doolittle, common dustman.

[Doc Merlin]

Any organization not explicitly conservative (or libertarian) will become leftist. Its an intractable rule of organizations

[jhp2]

No kidding. Seeing the same thing on FB groups. Once these people start a meme, it spreads like wildfire. Not a whole lot of independent thought from that lot. And yes, if we ever actually reform govt. spending, they will raise holy hell!

[SIV]

Congrats on the Instapundit link

[Mark Simon]

Yep, spot on.. We have a lot of people in this nation who live off government. When we come for their money expect all he'll to break loose.

[GelidusV]

Hey Nick, I love ya, but I know a lot of people who take cowboy poetry seriously. Mind you, every one of them believes it should not be at all government-funded and hates Harry Reid.

[joshua corning]

From Wikipedia

Contrary to common belief, cowboy poetry does not actually have to be written by cowboys

Such bullshit.

[Mr. FIFY]

Why the fuck is cowboy poetry so goddamn important, it can't survive without taxpayer funding?

This is also applicable to ALL of "the arts". If you can't make a buck off your shitty wrought-iron sculptures, then get a fucking real job.

[Zuo]

Libertarians ain't gonna "save" shit. All we can do is be prepared to pick up the pieces in the aftermath, seize the void, and deny them to the statists at all costs.

[Old Salt]

More like scavenge salvage from the aftermath a la "Mad Max" or "Fallout 3"!

[joshua corning]

I like Poulos's monologue at the end.

"you may be a libertarian but you need a republican to lead."

HA!!

Funny stuff.

"We can beat Canada"

Careful Nick. You may start an epic post, and no one wants that.

[Lorenzo]

A cowboy poet named Baxter Black has a column published in my local crappy paper. As one might expect, he is always extolling the self-sufficiency, adaptability, and rugged individualism of the cowboy. Hey dude, where's my check?

[Slap the Enlightened!]

Q: What do cowboy hats and hemorrhoids have in common?

A: Sooner or later, every asshole gets one...

[Isaac Bartram]

Baxter Black used to have a gig at NPR too.

I don't know why he doesn't any more. I haven't heard from him in a long time.

His views on gun rights were not popular with the NPR crowd but I believe he only brought it up once.

His views are pretty typical for a Democrat from a western state. Pretty much, "entitlements and subsidies are mostly OK, but don't think about taking my guns away."

[joshua corning]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hsDwEUJPlSU

Holy shit i didn't even know this happened.

Was cowboy poetry invented by the government just like the internet was?

[heller]

And Pad Thai. Never forget Pa Thai.

[spencer]

I thought it was Chop Sui.

[heller]

[Pad Thai] was first made popular as a national dish by Luang Phibunsongkhram when he was prime minister during the 1930s and 1940s, partly as an element of his campaign for Thai nationalism and centralization, and partly for a campaign to reduce rice consumption in Thailand. The Thai economy at this time was heavily dependent on rice exports; Phibunsongkhram hoped to increase the amount available for export by launching a campaign to educate the poor in the production of rice noodles, as well as in the preparation of these noodles with other ingredients to sell in small cafes and from street carts.

[SIV]

It's like my internet experience all went to shit at once. Google is trying to force me to login just to turn off their shitty Instant search-spam so I find yet another work-around and my Yahoo mail fucks up and I have to go back to the old one unless I "upgrade" to Firefox 5. Now I've already "downgraded" from the non-functional Firefox 4 so there is no way I'm going to switch to something that prolly doesn't work w/o a minimum of 8 gigs of RAM and disables all the little add-on tools I'm used to.

[Zuo]

I feel that.

[joshua corning]

I hear Chrome has a reason comment add-on.

Also remember back in the day when Netscape got more and more buggy, crash prone and slower with each new release.

Think of Firefox's 4.0/5.0 stupidity as a form of nostalgia for the bad old days.

[The Commentariat Life]

Dude.
Good times.

[SIV]

Chrome is Google.I'm trying to limit the information I provide to them which is why I won't login to use their search and prefer to refuse their cookies.

Firefox 3.whatever works just fine except with the "new" yahoo. If anything, I'll switch to Opera if I can block ads in it.

[dbcooper]

Try a nightly build of FF8 or an "Aurora" dev build of FF7 - much better/lighter memory management.

http://nightly.mozilla.org/

http://www.mozilla.com/en-US/firefox/channel/

[Jaybird]

Don't level up Aeris.

[Al Wayswright]

Get Ghostery for Chrome. It blocks all Javascript and cookie trackers, including those of Google itself.

[Al Wayswright]

Ad blocker exists for both Chrome and Opera.

Opera has ad blocking built-in, but you must manually block ads to set up blocking masks.

[for opera]

https://addons.opera.com/addons/extensions/details/opera-adblock/0.46/

you can also right click and "block content" on most things

[ZekFoo]

Should be interesting to see how that all works out. Wow.

http://www.privacy-tools.no.tc

[Jim Treacher]

The wind through the sagebrush
As night is descendin'
Can't be put into words
Without government spendin'

The jingle of spurs
And the creak of old leather
Without your tax dollars
They'll be gone forever

A saddle, a rope
Stetson cocked at a slant
One man rides alone
With his government grant

He's tough and he's rugged
Never needing assistance
Now you evil teabaggers
Want to end his existence

Let you varmints remember
That old cowboy creed:
"From each per his ability
And to each per his need"

So don't tighten those purse-strings
As you 'baggers are prone
'Cause without your tax money
He can't ride alone

[Isaac Bartram]

🙂

[Masturbatin' Pete]

Treacher wins the internet.

[tory burch reva]

I'm confuse now, if i should keeping using chrome.

[Firehand]

To repeat a line: "A tax-supported artist is a government whore". No matter what kind of hat he wears.

Au H20, there's a bunch of people I know I no longer even try to discuss or argue with; they're True Believers.
If only gummint would raise taxes ENOUGH on the evil rich, if only people were smart enough to realize the progressives and unions know best for you, if only people realized all the REAL scientists agree on AGW, and so on. Disagree with any of it, it means you're either stupid or evil and get all your information from Faux News(they seem unable to call it Fox) and ignore the REAL science, and so on.

[Tommy Shanks]

I bow in Treacher's general direction.

[Allan E.]

Google started out doing good and then went to the dark side. Every person I know who uses Yahoo has had problems with all the extra crap Yahoo pas put on their computer. I did not care for Firefox 4.0. Firefox 5.0 is much better. Thunderbird 5.0 is much worse than the earlier versions of Thunderbird and trying to go back to an earlier version does not work very well.

[Jim]

Everyone over-builds and over-thinks. Everyone. The difference is that private enterprise is eventually forced by customers to pair back from time to time.

The government? Not so much.

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[professional thesis writers]

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