According to Rand Paul, and presumably his Tea Party backers, private business owners have an absolute right to determine who may & may not patronize their establishment.  If this means a "No Blacks Allowed" sign, so be it. 

So...how many teabaggers do you think are standing by Portland, Oregon's Red&Black Cafe & their "No Uniformed Cops" rule?

...and here's why.  Follow the fallout in reverse:

A large part of the bets that the big financial behemoths blew up on involved housing.  When the bubble popped & home values sank, it cut into what was the top asset for many people, which they borrowed against.  The combination of ridiculous home values & loose credit made financing living expenses with debt seem rational.  Cost of living outpacing wages made debt as a permanent consumption cushion inevitable for much of the population, and it's obvious why wages stagnated: the deliberate neutering of organized labor, and with it the obliteration of the very idea that workers have interests too.

In reference to the discussion over whether the Audit the Fed amendment would end up in any financial reform bill, I've seen people argue against it with snide remarks along the lines of "would you rather have a credit freeze?", referring to the outcome they imagine if the Federal Reserve didn't funnel trillions to megabanks above & beyond what TARP did.  To answer that: actually, I'd rather have an economy that doesn't so tightly depend on credit in the first place. 

Now that you've allegedly come around to the view that politicians have no business forcing people to buy health insurance, how about applying that same logic to forcing us to fund murder?

(BTW: in case it isn't obvious, I'm referring to what "our" military apparently does, as seen here.)

At CPAC, Glenn Beck gave his usual rant about The Coming Apocalypse to an enthusiastic crowd.  Along the way, he mentioned that he learned what he "knows" (LOL) at the library.

Cue realization of contradiction for comedic effect in 3...2...1...:

"Glenn, the library isn't free! It's paid for with tax money. Free public libraries are the result of the Progressive movement to communally share books. The first public library was the Boston public library in 1854. It's statement of purpose: every citizen has the right to access community owned resources. Community owned? That sounds just like communist. You're a communist!"

-John Stewart

Good for a chuckle, but there's a larger tell of what this says about the Right & its incoherence.  It's obvious why Shouty Glenn didn't realize what he was saying with that line: he, like myself & like most reasonable people, sees nothing particularly bad about public libraries (hell, I used to work for one).  No one but the most absolutist of Randroids would have collective access to books factor into a critique of government.

Now, since Beck & presumably most other right-wingers in the U.S. aren't including libraries on their list of Absolute Collectivist Evil, they can't possibly be as purely anti-collective as their rhetoric suggests.  Of course, we already know this because they hold sacrosanct even more such things as the public army, public police forces & public national bouncers AKA "immigration agents".  Their true argument, as a result, is haggling over what should be collectively provided for & what shouldn't -- making them no different than the people they scream about on the means.

As if that wasn't enough, we have the fact that government is not the only way to do collective provision of goods.  Besides charity there has been co-ops, mutual aid associations, various cultural organizations, myriad methods of providing something to and as a group.  If something is a collective outside of government then there is no grounds, political or moral, to interfere.  Approve of it?  Then join.  Disapprove?  Then don't.  Simple.

Sure, there's the hypocrisy of using anti-collective rhetoric when you don't have a problem with collectivism for things that you personally like.  But I would go further & say that we're all collectivists to some extent.

In the long run, I desire a day when "public" actually means the public rather than the state, which makes me a radical.  Others, though they acknowledge their collectivism, don't make that distinction, so they're part of the mainstream.  Those who make arguments that suggest the mere idea of commons is downright wicked, when their true reasoning is "my collective is wonderful, yours is evil", have a more appropriate label: dumbass.

For one thing, it isn't as if big business wasn't already getting damn near everything they wanted.  The regulations clearly didn't do what they were intended to do, regardless of the constitutional issues.

Speaking of which, here's the real problem: corporations are not people.  The corporation is a legal construct, a grant of privilege by government that can be rescinded.  Rather than scream about the end of the campaign finance regulations, do something about corporate status itself.

Of course, I'd recommend abolishing it entirely, but I'm nuts.  What say you?

Say, hypothetically, that the appearance of people with guns outside of those town halls caused enough outrage to encourage new gun control legislation.  Someone proposes it, it gets passed and signed into law.  As a result, what Chris & William did is now illegal.  Handguns are pretty much banned, & public display of rifles is banned.

Here's the question: why would people like that actually comply with such a ban?

Seriously, where's their incentive to not defy the law?  Wouldn't the result just be that they have firearms but people who disagree with them don't?  Suppose some of their fellow travelers come unglued, doesn't that make it easier for them to potentially kill people?

This is one reason among many that I favor an armed Left.  Another reason would be the frequency with which cops abuse their power (click here & scroll for some examples), and my resulting skepticism of the idea that the police deserve to be trusted with firearms more than anyone else.

Thoughts welcome...