Donate to Reason! Because We Let You Fling Your Monkey-Poo at Us on Live Television!

Hey, pssst, do you know what tonight is? Do ya, do ya? Yes, it's the merciful end (as of midnight, anyway) of Reason's record-breaking annual Webathon, in which we somehow separated you from two hunnerd large for the noble cause of better, stronger, and faster libertarian journalism (keep on giving until the gong strikes 12, people!).

BUT! It's also the one-year anniversary, the toddler's birthday, of your very favorite nightly cable television news program, The Independents! That's right, one year ago tonight, Fox Business Network let a weirdo libertarian news show starring former MTV fave Kennedy, myself, and some rando Rothbardian (j/k) Kmele Foster go on air, where we have not done too shabbily in the network's ratings among the targeted demographic.

Looking at the comments string on that first night, we can already see the stirrings of what would soon be great. No, not the show, but the fashion reviews:

GILMORE|12.10.13 @ 11:28AM|#

Someone keep track of Matt's ties.

I suspect the producers at Fox will not let the black shirt/yellow tie combo slip in anymore.

Oh, Gilmore, will you never win?

Look, some people respond to gaining a foothold in cable news by putting on airs, going apeshit about guns, or just dancing like a fool. While these reactions are all more than morally justified, let the record show that I helped (or at least did not throw up an obstacle against) Reason commenters just taking the piss out of our hard-fought efforts. Ladies and gentlehobbits, I bring you Bernie Maxsmith and Two Minutes Hate:

Please tell me what other opinion magazines give you that kind of Fan Service (OH THAT'S RIGHT LA LA LA I CAN'T HEAR YOU.) And yes, in an hour or so hence, we'll have tonight's Independents open thread as well. So DONATE RIGHT THE HELL NOW! And thank you!

Comments

[Ken Shultz]

No one can say no to Lobster Girl.

[The Laconic]

How about "no, don't stop"?

[mr lizard]

You know who else separated a bunch of people from a lot of money?...

[GILMORE]

I swear, I expected the link in this sentence....

"we have not done too shabbily in the network's ratings among the targeted demographic"

...to go to something more like that

[GILMORE]

"GILMORE|12.10.13 @ 11:28AM|#

Someone keep track of Matt's ties"

It seemed important at the time.

[Episiarch]

I thought for second you were going to post a Two Minutes Hate that didn't quote me, Matt. Then I would have had to stop payment on my donation today. Oh, and fuck you GILMORE for getting more Two Minutes Hates quotes than me.

[BakedPenguin]

They didn't use mine, so I'm not giving this year.

[Episiarch]

Seems fair to me. In fact, they should pay you!

[Fist of Etiquette]

The most recent one featured me thrice. That's right, THREE TIMES. < i The Independents knows who can go all night.

[Episiarch]

PIX OR GTFO

[Ted S.]

The Independents knows who can go all night.

I thought you slept alone.

[JW]

I thought you slept alone.

And?

[Sevo]

..."where we have not done too shabbily in the network's ratings among the targeted demographic."...

Damned if I can find it; got a hint?

[DK]

#99 or 101 in all, #87 of 101 in 25-54, though it's the #2 show that FBN airs behind Stossel. The embedded Scribd's are searchable, so you can search for Independents.

[Sevo]

Found it; thx.
From the description, I was looking more toward the top.

[angus]

A "2 minutes" of hate segment lasting more than 3 minutes is very libertarian.

[Steve G]

Sure looks like that rain gauge is maxed out. Can we cease the panhandling now??

[Steve G]

Nevermind; scrolled down to the 6:43 post.

[userve32]

Dude this is why we have to let it go.
Anon-Rocks.tk

[Francisco d'Anconia]

Hey Anonbot, you SFed the link.

[Irish]

My mom already doesn't like Kmele despite agreeing with everyone he said during the segment I showed her.

^ Racist

[sarcasmic]

I could see how his confidence and exuberance could be interpreted as arrogance, and who likes an arrogant person. I mean, people hate me only because they mistake my confidence and exuberance for arrogance. Right? Right? It's them, not me. Right? Right?

[Zeb]

OK, happy now? Now where's my hat?

[Heroic Mulatto]

Fan Service? FAN SERVICE? You let a show on Arbor Day go without a rendition of the Arbor Day song and you have the chutzpah to talk about fan service? Just for that, I'm making a negative contribution. That's right. As of now, you owe me money, motherfucker.

[Derpetologist]

So I found Gruber's written statement. As you might expect, it is full of lies.

I did not draft Governor Romney's health care plan, and I was not the "architect" of President Obama's health care plan.

The videos suggest otherwise.

It is never appropriate to try to make oneself seem more important or smarter by demeaning others. I know better. I knewbetter. I am embarrassed, and I am sorry.

Lie. Those are the only things weasels like Gruber do.

I have a long-standing and well-documented belief that health care reform legislation in general, and the ACA in particular, must include mechanisms forresidents in all states to obtain tax credits.

Lie.

I behaved badly, and I will have to live with that, but my own inexcusable arrogance is not a flaw in the Affordable Care Act. The ACA is a milestone accomplishment for our nation that already has provided millions of Americans with health insurance.

Bullshit.

[Sevo]

"I have a long-standing and well-documented belief that health care reform legislation in general, and the ACA in particular, must include mechanisms for residents in all states to obtain tax credits."

Dunno, D, it may not be a lie. But if it isn't, it remains irrelevant.
Regardless of any personal "beliefs", the law he helps write was specifically written to deny those subsidies to those signing up through the fed gov't for reasons he has clearly stated several times.

[Notorious G.K.C.]

Leave him alone in a room with the three Ps - pen, paper and a pistol. He'll know what to do.

[Suthenboy]

Before making a comment about how that reads like something written by the KGB for a soviet dissident to read in front of cameras (with mussed hair and a black eye while their voice shakes) just before being put in front of a firing squad I had to check and make sure it was real and not just Derpetologist making fun of the guy.

Yep, it's real. Holy shit. We are in real banana republic territory now.

[GILMORE]

Also = I'd like to add that I consider the headline description comparing carefully-considered commentary by readers of this magazine to, "Monkey Poo", to be extremely unfair and inconsiderate toward Monkeys.

[Slumbrew]

I know, right? Just limiting it to poo would be a de-escalation.

[darius404]

going apeshit about guns

A few people here have mentioned the commenter Brian before, and how he shows up from time to time and demolishes the "logic" various trolls use here. By chance I checked out the comments to the gun article linked here, and found a delicious instance of mtrueman (again) being schooled by what seems to be the Avatar of Reason, Brian.

Trueman basically argues that slavery in the U.S. was successful because of the 2nd Amendment, and claims that slave labor didn't exist in Egypt because they didn't have guns.

It's surprising that a Brit wasn't more familiar with the role of slavery in US history, and how guns made it possible. Or how the second amendment to the constitution was sought by fearful slave holders who needed a guarantee that they had the means to enforce their regime on a population who vastly outnumbered them....

They now figure that the labour force was voluntary. Unless the Egyptian overseers had something more than whips and spears, they didn't have the wherewithall to force so many into doing the things that bugged Heston so much, like working until they dropped dead from exhaustion. Guns would have done the trick.

[darius404]

Brian shows up, and in characteristic fashion, politely shows mtrueman to be an ignoramus:

The reason that there are not black populations in the east, despite the slave trade, is because of how much more brutal slavery was in the east. Castration was frequently popular, and the children of slaves were frequently murdered.

The institution of slavery did not begin with guns....

....Further, I don't see how one can make a case that slavery is impossible without guns, without also making authoritarian dictatorships and tyranny in general impossible without guns.

If you can't enslave a group of people to do your bidding without guns, how do control them, in general? Is it impossible to run an autocracy without guns?

This would seem to imply that human beings were largely uncontrollable without guns, making all of history before guns one big, free market history, until guns came about.

Is this the way we look at history?

[darius404]

Finally, mtrueman tries to backtrack, and it goes poorly, because the thing you post in a public comments section are (SURPRISE!) readable by the people you're arguing with:

mtrueman|2.28.14 @ 12:23PM|#

" I don't see how one can make a case that slavery is impossible without guns"

Straw man.

Brian|2.28.14 @ 6:29PM|#

Mtrueman:
"They now figure that the labour force was voluntary. Unless the Egyptian overseers had something more than whips and spears, they didn't have the wherewithall to force so many into doing the things that bugged Heston so much, like working until they dropped dead from exhaustion. guns would have done the trick."

If your point isn't that things must have been voluntary until guns came about, or that Alavert couldn't have happened without them, then you should probably not say so.

[BakedPenguin]

Considering the role that the KKK played in getting some of the earliest gun laws in this country enacted, that is a profoundly ignorant statement.

[sarcasmic]

Or how the second amendment to the constitution was sought by fearful slave holders who needed a guarantee that they had the means to enforce their regime on a population who vastly outnumbered them....

Wow. There's a whole lot of stupid right there. The thing these lefty idiots are unable to understand is that slavery is a legal construction that is enforced by government. Doesn't matter if the slaveholders or government had guns. The organized violence that is government is what enforced slavery, not the slaveholders. Government didn't end slavery; it stopped enforcing it. Wow. That guy is numb.

[Irish]

Wow. There's a whole lot of stupid right there.

Mtrueman is the one who wrote a blog post claiming that hackers are modern luddites.

He literally does not know what the words he's using mean. It's like arguing with a man who has a vague conception that words have meaning, but has never quite been able to figure out what those meanings are.

[sarcasmic]

I think I've had a conversation or two with him. They were short.

[sarcasmic]

Organized violence will always conquer individuals. Doesn't matter if organized violence has guns or fists. It always has the last word.
Slavery is enforced by government which has one and only one tool: organized violence.
Slavery doesn't require guns to exist; it requires government.

[Irish]

In fairness, in that instance Brian had a pretty easy mark. Mtrueman is one of the dumbest people I have ever spoken with.

I don't know how on Earth that idiot thought slavery wouldn't work without guns. Slavery existed throughout all of human history and was only eliminated after firearms were introduced. Now guns obviously didn't end slavery, but the fact that slavery existed before guns and ended after guns is proof that guns cannot rationally be considered a cause.

Here's mtrueman:

I remember reading how historians today question our view of the ancient world. We've all seen Charlston Heston, (coincidentally a gun advocate) slaving away in Egypt building pyramids. They now figure that the labour force was voluntary. Unless the Egyptian overseers had something more than whips and spears, they didn't have the wherewithall to force so many into doing the things that bugged Heston so much, like working until they dropped dead from exhaustion. Guns would have done the trick.

Cool, dipshit. Then how do you explain the Spartan Helot class? Or the hundreds of thousands of people used as galley slaves by the Spartans?

When you have a trained army and the slaves have no weapons, you can butcher them in their millions even if you don't have firearms.

[Irish]

Or the hundreds of thousands of people used as galley slaves by the Spartans Ottomans?

[Sevo]

Irish|12.9.14 @ 8:30PM|#
"In fairness, in that instance Brian had a pretty easy mark. Mtrueman is one of the dumbest people I have ever spoken with."

He makes no bones about lying to advance an 'argument'; he admits it and has been caught at it several times.
There is no reason to engage anyone who will simply lie when he has no evidence to support a claim.

[sarcasmic]

As John pointed out, before guns all one needed was a force of soldiers and any town was game. Not so much if the people are armed with guns.

[Irish]

Anyone who thinks guns made violence and oppression by the government easier is an idiot.

Tamerlane killed so many people that it's estimated one out of every 20 people alive during his reign died in wars that he personally started - and they took a shitload of slaves, too.

[Suthenboy]

The Egyptians did not have slaves. 'They' now figure the work was voluntary. Who is 'they' and how did they arrive at that conclusion? Let me guess, because the Egyptians didn't have guns. Therefore only guns make slavery possible.

Excellent reasoning. I will buy that.

*Please MrTrueman, kill yourself*

[hamilton]

HOLY SHIT ITS LOBSTER GIRL.

And I donated already, so fuck you people. When do we get our edit button?

[LynchPin1477]

So does May fancy himself Lobster Girl and us the lobster? Or vice versa? If given the choice, I want to be the one with boobs.

[The Laconic]

I MISSED HER SO MUCH

[IceTrey]

LOBSTER GIRL!

[Paul.]

Ahh. Lobster Girl, you've been missed. But your absence has made the reunion all the sweeter.

[Charles Easterly]

So that's the Lobster Girl I've seen referenced in the comments section.

Now I understand.

[creech]

Yes, for all intensive porpoises, we've towed the lion for Lobster Girl lo these many years.

[Charles Easterly]

I don't doubt you, creech.

I'd be tempted to give up half my Two-Lined Monocle Breams to be her Mono but I'm concerned I'd go Batfish crazy if another man looked at her for too long. Call me shellfish but I'd give him a look that could Krill.

That wouldn't violate the NAP, would it?

[ronaldbarrkem]

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