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Recent Tweets 9.18 to 9.24

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It’s not going away anytime soon A primer on the Milwaukee County “John Doe” investigation @ Dane101 bit.ly/r0GMCj
23 Sep

Corruption probe easily WI story of the day/week/month Those not there are nowhere JSOnline bit.ly/of3z3p

JS hits state corruption probe again: Governor’s spokesman granted immunity bit.ly/of3z3p

Nothing but the big themes – Chris Rickert: Butter is better, especially in Wisconsin bit.ly/mZXClu
State Journal makes MacIver’s Day: Wearing out their welcome: Protesters still at Capitol, irking lawmakers bit.ly/qVeNTC

The real target: Is Scott Walker John Doe? bit.ly/ozUlmQ

Lawful elections or deadly disease? It’s all the same to GOP’s Robin Vos – Vos says recalls ‘like a cancer’ bit.ly/pYgqk9
Unemployment actually UP Deceptive Headline of the Day™: Most Wisconsin Counties, Cities See Unemployment Drop bit.ly/p26afm

AP analysis: Six-thousand jobs Walker Admin touts available for unemployed actually in other states bit.ly/okEXyF

2nd topic’s even bigger: state wants to withdraw Walker aide’s affidavit on exemptions from collective bargaining law bit.ly/o0Wcsi

Boston University study: patent trolls have cost innovators half a trillion dollars bit.ly/nfKUVF

The IMF Expects the U.S. Economy to Get Worse – anemic growth 1.5% ’11, 1.8% ’12 bit.ly/qVx3eq

Lead Balloon Alert™: Beloit considers referendum to prevent tax *decrease* bit.ly/oOCInv

Voters in WI reject curtailing collective bargaining rights to achieve state budget reform – on.wsj.com/nhtirV

Oddly low-key Thompson announcement on running: Thompson tells WTMJ he filed papers for U.S. Senate run bit.ly/qWR6wk

This Week: Great Music from Ben Sommer bit.ly/qTrsOR

If politicians already had solid plans, they wouldn’t need summits: Gov. Walker plans jobs summit bit.ly/qFxeLB

Incipient fire sale: U.S. Postal Service move would delay mailbit.ly/nsysgh
more >>

Law, Laws/Regulations, Liberty

Legislator responsible for Transportation Security Administration says dismantle, privatize the agency

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Indeed. Long, long overdue. The agency is one of America’s greatest contemporary mistakes.

They’ve been accused of rampant thievery, spending billions of dollars like drunken sailors, groping children and little old ladies, and making everyone take off their shoes.

But the real job of the tens of thousands of screeners at the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) is to protect Americans from a terrorist attack.

Yet a decade after the TSA was created following the September 11 attacks, the author of the legislation that established the massive agency grades its performance at D-.

“The whole program has been hijacked by bureaucrats,” said Rep. John Mica (R. -Fla.), chairman of the House Transportation Committee.

“It mushroomed into an army,” Mica said. “It’s gone from a couple-billion-dollar enterprise to close to $9 billion.”

As for keeping the American public safe, Mica says, “They’ve failed to actually detect any threat in 10 years.”

“Everything they have done has been reactive. They take shoes off because of [shoe-bomber] Richard Reid, passengers are patted down because of the diaper bomber, and you can’t pack liquids because the British uncovered a plot using liquids,” Mica said. It’s an agency that is always one step out of step,” Mica said.

Via HUMAN EVENTS.

Music

I Married a Prostitute from Ben Sommer’s Super Brain

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Earlier this week, I wrote about the premiere of a track from Ben Sommer’s Super Brain here on FREE WHITEWATER. That’s not, in fact, set for today (I was ahead of things), but I’ve the first video from the album that I will embed. Thanks much to the readers who’ve written with positive comments about Ben’s album.

By the way, for those who are wondering, Ben offers his view of the song:

Now…before the prudish sour pusses among you make a single comment please do the following:

Take the lemon out of your mouth
Go get a funny bone, and
Relax

No – I’m not really married to a prostitute – and I’m not even the “I” in the song title. Clever how that works, eh?

Anyway – this song dates back to 2002, when I spent an autumn week in solitude at a family friend’s hill-top Vermont home, writing songs all day, hiking in the afternoon, then cooking dinner and getting blitzed by myself on pumpkin beer while I listened to some crappy jazz on the local NPR station. This was pre-cell phone, pre-broadband, pre-kids – pre-everything. So, though I appreciate those things I have now, this song (and the last one – Young Turks) makes me nostalgic.

Sue me.

Now I listen to lots of jazz (great stuff that no one plays anymore, radio or otherwise), and I think this is a great song. This free-speech, liberty-loving blog proudly highlight’s Ben’s music.

Enjoy.

Music

Ben Sommer’s fifth and sixth tracks from Super Brain

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Here are links to the fifth and sixth tracks from Super Brain:

Militarism and Cadaverism are available online as mp3s with accompanying lyrics. (Ben Sommer, voice). Original September premiere at Young Americans for Liberty.

Ben describes the songs:

Militarism. The inspiration for this piece was the 2000 presidential debates, where George Bush said “don’t mess with Texas”. I was living in Amherst, MA (yes, I ended up at lowly UMass). The town has three colleges and – not surprisingly – a tiresome, leftist group-think atmosphere. But the morning after the debate, a contrarian friend at the time showed up at the coffee shop with a custom-made t-shirt saying “Don’t mess with Texas”. George Bush was cute and harmless back then, so when he turned out to be the biggest monster since Lyndon Johnson, I had to set those words of his to music.

Geoff Chirgwin’s martial trumpets (5 of ’em) provide the background for my overdubbed nasal vocal duet.

Cadaverism. This track came last, and is the silliest. It proves that I’m so bad at death metal, no matter how hard I try. I think it took 15 minutes to scribble down, and about that long to record. Hopefully it gives a chuckle. Unlike the first two tracks in this set, the lyrics are worth a read, as long as you appreciate dadaist humor. There’s also a mean thrash guitar solo that would do Kirk Hammett proud.

Enjoy.

Visit Ben’s official website at BenSommer.com.

Beautiful Whitewater, City

Seven Days, Twenty-Three Hours

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Here’s a press release with more info on the October 1st Pork in the Park event at the Cravath lakefront. The release – with info on the day’s happenings – can be enlarged or printed from the link immediately below the embedded image.

Please note that some events begin before the regular 10 a.m. start time

Downtown Whitewater, Inc., UW-Whitewater and the City of Whitewater present the first annual “Pork in the Park” BBQ Festival October 1, 2011 located at Cravath Lake Front Park. This fun filled family event is loaded with activities for everyone, a BBQ cook off competition, pig roast and corn boil, live musical entertainment featuring local bands, pig-asso & crafts, inflatables, local wine and beer tasting, a motorcycle show and much more for all to enjoy.

Start your day bright and early with W3 and take part in the Be Active Today 5K Trot or the Fit Kid Shuffle for just the right amount of exercise, and whole lot of fun! Registration for the Trot and Shuffle begins at 6:30 am if you have not already registered. Start time for the 5K Trot is 8:00 am and the Fit Kid Shuffle starts at 9:30 am.

Bring your family, friends and loved ones to the park and engage in the Safety Fair, eat the delicious Corn and Pulled Pork BBQ. Taste the robust flavors of local Wine and Beer from Staller Estate Vineyard and Winery along with Randy’s Fun Hunter’s Brewery. Shop the Pig-Asso Arts & Crafts, learn some history with the Civil War and Fur Trading, giggle and play some games with the children in the Pig – Pen and enjoy a Horse drawn wagon ride through the downtown and stop off at the Armory to visit the Quilting and Fiber Arts Show. You will find beautiful handcrafted Quilts and Fiber Arts that have taken hours and hours to complete and created with amazing designs and color. For all you Motorcycle enthusiasts the festival will showcase bikes, a Parade of Pipes, a burn out pit and you can vote for people?s choice award.

If you like to try different desserts you will want to check out The Sweet Spot Cafe and their signature line of Bacon Maple Buttermilk and Chocolate Covered Bacon Cupcakes. Vanilla and chocolate cupcakes will also be available for those who are less adventurous.

If you think you have what it takes to be the BBQ King or Queen then Bring it On! The BBQ Cook-Off Competition is still accepting applications and you have until 5:00 pm on Wednesday September 28 to turn in you information. Winners from the cook off and bike show will be announced at 3:30 pm on the stage along with handing out the best of the best trophies. Music will be playing all day on the Cravath Lake Front Stage with Jesus Riders, Blackwater and Nothing but Trouble. These performers are sure to be crowd pleasing, so be sure to stop by and listen to their unique sounds while enjoying some pork in the park!

Applications for the art and craft show, cook off contest and bike show are all available on the Pork in the Park website along with a full festival schedule and more detailed information.

porkinthepark.info

Daily Bread

Daily Bread for 9.23.11

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Good morning.

It’s a partly cloudy day in store for Whitewater, with a high temperature of fifty-eight. It’s the first day of fall, and growing a bit darker each each day, with recent days having about two minutes less daylight than the previous ones.

Comment Forum’s off this weekend, but back next Friday. For this weekend, a post featuring a musical premiere, among others.

I’ve warned readers before about the dangers of chimpanzees, and there’s yet more evidence of how truly rotten they are: Unlike Humans, Chimpanzees Don’t Enjoy Collaborating. Forget all those silly videos where they ride tricycles, or wear a coat and tie – they’re not only violent, they’re even uncooperative with their own kind:

When it benefits them, chimpanzees willingly work together. Otherwise, they can’t be bothered. For humans, collaboration is rewarding for its own sake, a behavioral split that may underlie key differences between human and chimpanzee societies. Primate researchers, working with semi-free ranging chimpanzees at a sanctuary in Uganda, found chimpanzees recruit a helping partner only if it gets them more food than they’d get alone. The study, described in Animal Behavior, Sept. 7, is part of a current trend in primatology to unpick how motivation and mental state affects an animal’s interactions.

For more on chimpanzees’ many dangers, see my earlier post, Chimpanzees: Cuddly Primates or Vicious Killers? Vicious Killers! more >>

Books, Free Markets, Liberty, Planning

Luskin on Atlas Shrugged, Paul Krugman, and Crony Capitalism

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Donald Luskin’s spent years criticizing Krugman, not as much for Krugman’s economic accomplishments (Krugman’s a Nobel laureate) but for his subsequent politico-economic columns in the New York Times. Krugman is Luskin’s white whale, but that obsession isn’t as interesting to me as Luskin’s observation (toward the end of the video) that Atlas Shrugged is, principally, an attack on crony capitalism.

He’s right about Atlas Shrugged – it is precisely that sort of attack. We don’t live in a world of mere government planning, we live in a world of government planning directed toward politicians’ favored businesses, friends, and preferred means to their own advancement.

Pro-business is neither as efficient nor as conducive to prosperity as is a pro-market policy, but favoritism toward certain businesses is far more conducive to scheming office-holders’ and bureaucrats’ careerist ambitions.

From the description accompanying the video —

What you really have in Atlas Shrugged is an unholy alliance of corrupt crony capitalists and corrupt government.” says author Donald Luskin. “Now that isn’t a narrative that conservatives like to tell, [but] that ought to be a narrative libertarians like to tell.”

In his newest book, “I Am John Galt: Today’s Heroic Innovators Building the World and the Villainous Parasites Destroying It,” Luskin finds modern parallels to Ayn Rand’s characters. From Bill Gates to Paul Krugman, Luskin analyses the Randian heroes and villains of today and examines the impact of Rand’s ideas on America.

At FreedomFest 2011, Reason’s Matt Welch sat down with Luskin to talk about his book, his crusade against Paul Krugman and the resurgence of Ayn Rand.

Held each July in Las Vegas, FreedomFest is attended by around 2,000 libertarians and advocates of limited government. Reason.tv spoke with over two dozen speakers and attendees and will be releasing interviews over the coming weeks.

About 6:08 minutes. Shot by Zach Weissmueller and Jim Epstein and edited by Meredith Bragg.