Strike The Root Blog

Evil be damned, wars unjust
Eight years we’ve had, o what a bust
Economy dead, lying afoul
Victim of a man with head in bowel
But o the praises do we sing
For he who would be our righteous king
Holiness on high, saintly thus
Saint Obama, pray for us
On a pedestal we prop you
Our media can never drop you
Build up the expectations
And Keillor’s bilious expectorations
Our savior has come, the party has won
“Four years of perfection,” you’ll all have claimed
Not a mark on his record, not a soul who’s been maimed
On Barack’s watch, may he be ordained!
A Luddite fantasy world, a world free of “them”
No fouling of air (except Keillor’s phlegm)
How righteous of us, how morally prudent
We’re never wrong, Democrats strident
On Barack’s watch, may he be ordained!

The judge said to us, “Only free people are lucky enough to perform.” He was speaking to a group of fifty of us who were about to go through the long, tedious motions of voir dire in a Ft. Worth criminal court. I tried not to laugh out loud.

Not being registered to vote, I was surprised to have received a jury summons in my mail six weeks prior. After cursing about it, I found out that in Texas, they grab people from the drivers license rolls, since there aren’t enough registered voters otherwise. No wonder–even if I didn’t view voting as an act of violence, I wouldn’t risk going through the horrid experience of jury duty again by daring to vote.

I read through the list of disqualifying questions, looking for an out. No dice, either I would have to lie, which I will not, or I was stuck going. Now, I do happen to believe in the merits of a legal system, just not one enforced by a government; I would have been much more willing to acquiesce were it to be a civil trial.

Instead, I ended up in front of a man being tried for narcotics possession. Geez, what a waste of taxpayer money, but at least that provided me with my out. When asked if anyone would be unwilling to sentence the individual, I was the second one with my hand up (the first guy said, “no, I know guys in prison, and no one deserves that horror”). “I don’t believe in drug laws,” I said, and was allowed to sit down, and eventually went home, not having to serve on the jury.

But that was after two days. I had to drive 22 miles each way, and after a full morning the first day waiting in a sea of voters and drivers, I was told to come back the next day and report to my appointed criminal courtroom. That’s 88 miles, or roughly 4.5 gallons in my old Explorer, about $16 of gas money at the time. I had to take off work both days. In Texas, your employer doesn’t have to pay you a thing; I’m fortunate to work for someone who did, and I’m very thankful for that. For my involvement, I got paid $6 for day one, and $40 for day two, which technically does not even cover the expenses of lunch and mileage. Seems like blood money, too.

Despite the judge’s words, I felt anything but free while enduring this onerous obligation. I was forced to abandon my job for two days, forced to drive a long distance, forced to go through a metal detector and proceed, unarmed, into an area full of armed guards. I could not communicate with the outside world, nor could I speak my true mind for fear of further imprisonment. There were no clocks and no windows within the courtrooms. The court administrator threatened us, indicating that armed men would show up at our doorstop if we neglected to return the next morning.

I felt badly for the defendant, but was far more interested in extricating myself from imprisonment, and that’s perhaps the worst crime of all. Some of the people that the defendants need most on the jury are doing everything they can to get out.

The war whores are upset that billions won‘t be flying their way:

Time to put Algore in his place:

Dead (non-American) children are no longer considered relevant to US crusaders:

There’s nothing more entertaining than watching a state tyrant caught with his pants down:

The Emperor pleads for still more Hispanic bodies to fight his wars. He‘s working hard, selling them on the romance of killing:

The demonic force meets the immovable force:

It’s party time:

A war criminal’s hands can never be cleaned:

The “new” Abe is just as ugly and even more worthless:

Johnny Mac claims he can run the world but seems incapable of combing his own hair:

Those ballots look heavy. Why not just vote with your feet and your money?

Tibetans resist the occupying Chinese thugs. Will wimpy Amerikans ever show the same courage to resist their occupiers?

The Emperor greets one of the few with a comparable resume:

Showing pics of the kids- back home and safe. Too bad these young’ns are in the line of fire:

“It was a time of great exulting and excitement. The country was up in arms, the war was on, in every breast burned the holy fire of patriotism; the drums were beating, the bands playing, the toy pistols popping, the bunched firecrackers hissing and sputtering; on every hand and far down the receding and fading spread of roofs and balconies a fluttering wilderness of flags flashed in the sun…..”

Grillin’ for Peace. There‘s no time for war when you‘re busy feedin‘ your face- or helping others to do the same:

Queen Hillary is all ears. Do you think she would listen to those who just want to be left alone?

The innate wisdom of a child. Voting booths are no place to be:

Kiddie Qaeda? Or just more US propaganda?

Talk about being taken to the cleaners!

With his war criminal credentials intact (and confirmed by the Vietnamese), Johnny Mac makes a large grab for the White House. More bloody glory for The Empire is assured!

There’s a pot of gold at the end of the rainbow for anyone willing to prostitute themselves:

Once the Iraqi genocide is complete, nothing will remain but the lowly canine.

Today is the “Super Tuesday” of presidential primaries, during which people in half the states (or something like that) go to the polls and cast their votes for a new Commandant-in-Chief. My fellow Illinoisians are among those scheduled to exercise the precious privilege of choosing who will fleece them and everyone else, bully and imprison people for all sorts of harmless “crimes,” and kill who knows how many others over the next few years.

As fate would have it, I’ve been laid up at home with quite a humdinger of a cold. But I would not be participating, regardless of my state of health, in keeping with a solemn vow I made once upon a time. My well-being and self-interest is not contingent upon pressing a button on a computer screen, or punching a piece of paper and dropping it into a box (or however it is they do it around here these days). Certainly, neither is my freedom. If it were, then I would be a slave, and I’ve vowed never to be one. This isn’t to deny that, unfortunately, there are others who do wish to enslave me and millions of others and who make every attempt to do so, but I’ll be damned if I’ll concede moral ground to these criminal usurpers. Neither should anyone else.

In between drinking jags of hot tea and supping on the odd bowl of hot soup (I’m quite partial to Wolfgang Puck’s chicken tortilla soup right now), I’ve been perusing Strike-the-Root’s non-voting archive, as well as Lew Rockwell’s non-voting archive.

I’d say it’s been a pretty productive day, ill health notwithstanding. Don’t know if I could say as much for my voting neighbors.

See also: RadGeek.com: “WWLSD?”

Palestinians escape from their cage, though temporarily:

The Emperor gives a wink and a nod to his $3 trillion spending spree:

Johnny Mac looks forward to more wars. After all, if he wasn’t a war “hero” no one would even know who he is (war hero: defined as one who bombs innocent men, women, and children from the air, incinerates homes and families. This action may produce the side effect of (justifiably) squatting in a cage for several years in payment for said crimes as you moan and whine about how “evil” the enemy is):

Of course the rodent saw its #%!&* shadow! There’s TV lights all around him!

Cheetah (no, not that cheetah) is set is to publish his memoirs.  It’s got to be better reading than any of these losers:

Fellow gangsters share a laugh over how easy it is to dupe the public:

New wheels for the legions. What would Jesus drive?

Finally, a sensible candidate appears:

There is no wall so high the human spirit cannot scale:

Q. How do I know things are royally screwed up in the US political system?

A. Because the voters care.

Every election, things seem to get more shrill. More chicken-little screaming, uglier campaign ads, threats, accusations, and so on. The number of voters increases. Over 120,000,000 voted in 2004 for the president (but note, that figure includes duplicates, the deceased, non-citizens, and other fraudulent votes).
Elections mean more to people today than ever. That importance engenders a lot of anxiety and hostility. Voters fear the election of the candidate with opposing viewpoints. “My God, we’ll all die if X gets elected!” Certainly, the wrong president can make the difference between life and death. But I contend that we’ve already had that, not just with Bush but with virtually every modern president (and many more to boot). They’re all bad, and they’ve all caused unnecessary death and pain.
What if our federal government actually followed their own rules, ones they put in place a few hundred years ago? The president, as originally intended, wouldn’t be such a powerful bloke, nor would Congress or those in the supreme court. But power leads to excuses as to why those rules don’t apply to “us,” or why something is a special circumstance that requires us to break the rules.

If the president wasn’t so powerful, and couldn’t do things like send troops to foreign soil, spend billions on unconstitutional programs, usurp power from the states, voters really wouldn’t care so much.

Pitifully, however, far too many think that it’s government’s job to make sure their lives run smoothly. And thus they unwittingly grow government, and in turn care more when that government no longer meets all of their selfish demands.
To those who believe in democracy: understand that the act of voting itself is the source of your own pain.

Brad Spangler directs our attention to two great online pieces that I highly recommend.

In the wake of all the latest debate taking place throughout the libertarian blogosphere over the issue of whether or not any libertarian should support the Ron Paul presidential campaign, Spangler has posted “The Damnation of Bill Bradford,” an excellent condemnation of voting written by the late Samuel E. Konkin III. Konkin’s piece was a response to the late Liberty editor Bill Bradford’s article “Voting Is No Sin”, which itself was a response to Wendy McElroy’s “Why I Would Not Vote [Against Hitler].”

The other piece to which Spangler provides us a link was written by Charles Johnson (he of RadGeek.com): “Scratching By: How Government Creates Poverty As We Know It.”

Contrary to many decades of liberal welfare-state apologist propaganda and conservative preaching about “individual responsibility” (a line eventually co-opted by Clintonian liberals), the state is indeed the enemy—not the friend, not the ally, not the protector nor the benefactor—of the poor. As Charles Johnson eloquently illustrates, the state should just GTF out of their way and let them do what they need to do to live.

The always sharp and perceptive Root Striker Stefan Molyneux recently taped a great discussion with Brad Spangler and Wendy McElroy on the topic of the “Ron Paul Revolution” for Molyneux’s Freedomain Radio series. There are some really excellent points raised by everyone involved. This should be of particular interest to longtime veterans of the libertarian movement who are supporting and planning to vote for Paul.

(And there’s some other great stuff discussed besides the Paul movement.)

Thanks to Brad Spangler for the link.

Join the military and get to play with some cool equipment:

The blind leading the blind:

Oh no! Who will now write the crap that fills the television airwaves? (OK, OK….I do miss my daily dose of Dave):

Voters were scarce this week. Let’s hope it continues:

Benny Hinn may soon be looking for healing.  That’s what happens when you sleep with the devil:

The Christo-fascists settle on a candidate:

Working hard to win hearts and minds (the book title says it all):

Sweet meat:

What can be accomplished when a people constructively spend their wealth, resources, and talent- rather than squander it on war making and empire:

It’s confirmed- The Emperor is a leg man: