Liberty Drip

No, not the lockdown. In some ways, that will never end without a serious uprising, and when I say serious, I'm talking about the real people in the world, not the basement-dwelling Ivy League commies pooping in the streets of Portland. But I digress. I mean, when are we going to cancel the cancel culture? Every day we hear more stories about a celebrity or a CEO or even some poor schmuck being cancelled because of something he said or did a lifetime ago. A museum curator was fired for saying he would collect the works of white painters. He didn't say he would exclusively collect white painters, he mentioned that he would buy Caucasian canvases in addition to the works of oppressed minorities. That's it. His crime was to say he would do what the Cancel Commandos claim to want to do: include all people regardless of race or whatever other labels these no-labels hypocrites stick on people. I have to wonder if anyone has really looked into who the cancelers are. I wonder if th...

There is more than one way to burn a book. - Ray Bradbury I recently listened to a conversation between authors Michael Chabon and Neil Gaiman. The talk eventually turned to the issue of banned books. Chabon asked Gaiman if he'd ever had a book banned. Gaiman said he nearly did. Where did this happen? In America.  Of course. The land of the free. Sad how we take that freedom and waste it on ignorance. Gaiman explained that the uproar was over a book he'd contributed a short story to. He had written a story based upon a gruesome Old Testament passage. The religious wrong right wanted the book banned. He, of course fought it. Eventually, the wrong right relented and the book was not banned. What changed their mind? Someone actually took the time to read the bible passage. Gaiman's story was faithful to the source material. I have always been amazed that there is such a thing as a banned book anywhere in the world but particularly that such a thing would exist in the United St...

I was in the third grade the first time someone called me a Cuban and meant it as an insult. One of my classmates showed up to class with two broken arms and no front teeth. He’d been in an ATC accident. In case you don’t know, ATC stands for All-Terrain Cycle. They were similar to the big four-wheeled ATVs that are popular today but had only three wheels. They were tricycles on steroids. They became illegal at some point because people were getting hurt. Thank you, Big Brother, for always keeping us safe. I asked the kid if he fell and he said, “I ain’t no Cuban. I flipped!”  To which I replied, “At least I have all my teeth and both my arms.” This kid was a jerk. He and I would continue to have run-ins throughout the rest of the elementary years. I don’t think I ever saw him again after that. I sure hope his teeth grew back. My junior high (middle school to you youngsters) was a private school in a predominately black section of Dade County known as Carol City. Most of the kids i...

Joe Biden’s recent assertion that “...if you have a problem figuring out whether you're for me or Trump, then you ain’t black." has set off the usual, “Oh, that’s good old crazy uncle Joe,” from the left, and “see, he’s unfit for office,” from the right. Both sides are correct. Crazy uncle Joe is not fit for office. What I object to is that it is being characterized as a gaffe. If it happens once, it’s a gaffe. Twice is a screw up. A lifetime of these offenses is a pattern of behavior that Biden’s sycophants defend at their own peril. Are we overreacting? Are people too sensitive these days? I don’t know. I tried to do some “man on the street” interviews but there were no men, or women, on the street. Apparently there’s a quarantine going around. The bigger issue, which is being ignored, is that Biden’s statement exposed the fact that the democrats take minority votes for granted. This was not a gaffe, it was a statement of belief. The democrats feel they are the owners of min...

Graduation season is in full swing as economically illiterate Hollywood celebrities belly up to university lecterns across the country inspiring graduates with optimism and hope that will propel them into the real world.  The celebrity speeches may not help prepare these grads for adulthood but, at least, they’ve only wasted 15 minutes – a better investment than made by those who watched the Emoji movie or majored in Kardashian Studies or the like. I’ve come across surveys that show a significant majority of Millennials hold a favorable view of socialism.  The favorable viewpoint is highest in the 18-24 year-old age demographic although many of these young proponents have difficulty defining socialism.  In my highly unscientific surveys of 20-somethings, the definition often boils down to, “I want free stuff. I want others to get free stuff”. How is this generational amnesia possible?  After 17 years of schooling, these 20-somethings do not know that free stuff...

Imagine a business. We'll call it L Corporation. There are employees and a product everybody wants and they have locations everywhere. In spite of the locations and all those employees, the business seems incapable of attracting enough customers to grow and the competitors, whom we'll call R Corporation and D Corporation, whose product is vastly inferior, own 90% of the market. In fact, the only customers this business has are, by and large, the employees of this business. And all they do is complain about the business and try to prove they are the only true customers  and the only loyal employees while the others are just browsing and taking coffee breaks. The business has a CEO and other C-level executives. They seem to care and be genuinely interested in the success of the enterprise as do the line employees. But this is one of those cases of too many chiefs and too few Indians. The CEO doesn't want to tell the employees how to behave or what to believe. There is no op...

Lord High Commander of the Echo Chamber By Adolfo Jimenez It’s been approximately a year since I joined the Libertarian Party of Broward County. I jumped in with all my enthusiasm because I knew I had found my political home. I knew these were people who believed what I believed. I threw myself into learning the philosophy and the language of libertarianism. I became an evangelist. I wear a Gadsden Flag lapel pin and I have a “Libertarian” bumper sticker on my car because they are great conversation starters. I want to tell as many people as possible about what I’ve found in the LP because I truly believe everyone can benefit from it. If only every member of our beloved party felt the same. I have, in my short time in the party, been personally attacked. I have witnessed the kinds of palace intrigue that the writers of “House of Cards” would dismiss as too far from reality to work as good fiction. And worst of all, I have been trapped in the Libertarian Echo Chamber. Too...

It’s about 6:45 AM and I’m in the gym on a treadmill jogging along at 4.3 MPH. I don’t tell you this to impress you. I’m a little embarrassed so let’s just say I’m on a treadmill before the sun has risen and pat me on the back for that. I am not here for vanity, but for health. I read the crawl on CNBC intently, knowing that I’ll have forgotten most of what I read before the market opens nearly three hours from now. Another million slips through my fingers. Below where the TV is mounted is an eight-foot window that spans the length of the workout room and affords us speedsters views of the basketball court. For the last few minutes, an older lady, probably in her late 60’s, has been playing a little one-on-none. She makes some shots, misses others, and runs awkwardly after the ball when it bounces away. She returns to her comfort zone and takes another shot. CNBC is talking about a pharmaceutical company reporting better-than-expected earnings. The crawl on the bottom of the screens te...