The Cobb Blog » Society, Cultural Issues, and Miscellaneous

Barak Hussein Gump

jbcobb — Tue, 09 Mar 2010 19:01:10 +0000

Barak Obama’s ignorance regarding insurance is astounding. Did anybody hear his remarks comparing his automobile insurance in Illinois to the state of health insurance in America? Surely, if any of you were paying attention, you would have thrown something at your radio or television while spewing obscenities.

BHO explained how his auto insurance in Illinois wasn’t “real insurance”, and that the company laughed at him when he asked them to repair his car, following an accident. He continued to explain that the insurance was only set up to meet minimum state guidelines. Well, duh, Albert Einstein Obama somehow fails to understand the difference between liability insurance and full coverage, or he makes the false assumption that the average citizen fails to grasp the difference. Given the past mistakes of this idiot, I am inclined to the former. We thought W was the epitome of Oval Office ignorance. Comapred to Barak Gump, Bush is a super-genius.

Happy Birthday, Mr. Libertarian by Jeff Riggenbach

jbcobb — Tue, 02 Mar 2010 17:55:51 +0000

Today — March 2nd — is Murray Rothbard’s birthday. Had he lived, he’d be 84 years old today. And there’s sadness in that, because 84 in the world of today, though still a “ripe old age,” is not really all that old. Lots of people live to be 84. Even libertarians do it. Both Ludwig von Mises and Friedrich Hayek lived to be 92. Milton Friedman lived to be 94. Henry Hazlitt lived to be 98. In Radicals for Capitalism, his important 2007 book about the history of the modern American libertarian movement, Brian Doherty centers his story around what he describes as “[f]ive thinkers … without whom there would have been no uniquely libertarian ideas or libertarian institutions of any popularity or impact in America in the second half of the twentieth century … Ludwig von Mises, Friedrich A. Hayek, Ayn Rand, Murray Rothbard, and Milton Friedman.”

“Four men and one woman,” Doherty writes, “four Jews and one Catholic; four economists and one novelist; four minarchists … and one anarchist … two native-born Americans and three immigrants; two Nobel Prize winners and three who remained not only aloof from most professional and intellectual accolades but generated a heated hostility from cultural gatekeepers.” Doherty makes no mention of it, but there’s yet another facile point of comparison he might have used in discussing his five major figures — their longevity. For of his five major figures, three (Mises, Hayek, and Friedman) lived into their 90s. The other two — Rand and Rothbard — never made it to 80. Rothbard never made it to 70. It’s almost as though radicalism makes you die young. Mises, Hayek, and Friedman were minarchists — classical liberals, to be more precise.

JB: To read the rest of the article posted byB.K. Marcus, or to listen to audio podcast by Mr. Riggenbach, go to the mises.org website, the best site in the world!

Quoth the Raven

jbcobb — Tue, 19 Jan 2010 22:23:22 +0000

Nevermore. Considering the typical tone and substance of my postings, you’d guess that I was referencing my trust for the government or the next time I will vote for anyone who toes the line of one of the two major parties. But, not today, not yet anyway. Even though today could be a monumental day in Massachusetts, and indeed, all over America. This could possibly be the day the healthcare reform music dies, or at least begins to fade. But, nobody should be that optimistic or giddy, because we are talking about Massachusetts….Cambridge and Boston, or Bahstahn, if you are a fan of Kennedy or Will Hunting. These are the stomping grounds of the Camelot crowd (even the stupid fat drunk one), old school socialists like Tip O’Neill, short socialists like Michael Dukakis, and Munsteresque socialists like John Kerry. This great home of old patriots and the NE Patriots, has most recently been home to some of the reddest of pinko politicians in all of American history. Additionally, it is home to perhaps the greatest incubator of socialist chicks, Harvard University. Of course, there are a few like Jeffrey Mirron, a libertarian professor at the Big Red, sorry, Crimson school who is beating himself up, trying to decide whether to vote for a libertarian named Kennedy (is this some kind of twisted joke?) or Scott Brown. Hopefully, he will make the right decision…whatever that might be…actually, as long as Coakley loses and healthcare reform dies, I believe Dr. Libertarian will be feel a bit happier tonight.

Ummmm, it seems this entry turned out to be about politics after all. Yeah, about the Raven thing…for the first time in sixty years, the annual anonymous birthday visitor to Edgar Allan Poe’s grave, who deposited three roses and a bottle of Cognac at the tombstone, did not make the pilgrimage last night. That is about the same time the last non-socialist was elected to statewide office in the Bay State. Maybe he/she was a resident of Massachusetts. Some things are more important than others, quoth the raven.