Peruvian Nights and Jamaican Days

STRINGCHEESECAKE

Yesteray Jenn cut 2 inches of hair off of my shaggy head, and I cut 2.2 inches off my shaggy chin. Feels weird. Looks weird, too, apparently.

-m

CONTINUED..

Upon further inspection, I see that they also have ranked the 2004 presidential candidates as seen below:



This does make me sort of doubt this Political Compass thing. I mean, there's no way that John Edwards is further right and more authoritarian than Lieberman...Lieberman is virtually identical to George Bush, in almost all matters. Also, I can't believe there isn't more north-south distance between W. and the field of Dems. I mean, we're talking about a guy who is in favor of legislating abortion, marriage rights, etc, not to mention that his administration has essentially lopped chunks out of the constitution. Shouldn't he have marginalized all those militia-types by now?

OK then...I'm voting for Sharpton (is he really more liberal than Kucinich?!?) See, Haddock, we're actually not that disparate, politically. Bet you didn't know you were a social anarchist..

-m

THIS IS WHAT I MEAN BY SOCIAL ANARCHIST..

So you can take a political test at this place. I took it, and my results are below:

This is how mine came out. Far left = total control of economy by government, far right is total laissez faire economy, up is authoritarianism, down is anarchy...


I'm pretty far from three of the most evil people in history, Stalin, Hitler, and Margaret Thatcher...


I guess I fit somewhere in between Ghandi, the Dalai Lama, and Nelson Mandela. I guess I'm OK with that.


Here's the deal, though - if we are talking about a truly free market economy, where our government not only doesn't have control of production, etc., but also where our government doesn't give out billions of dollars of subsidies (read: welfare for crappy businessmen) to big corporations, small businesses, farmers, military contractors, etc, in the form of money, and to ranchers and mining and logging interests in the form of highly subsidized resource extraction and exploitation, then I'm all for free market. But I'm sick of people whining about taxes and people on welfare and their money being spent to educate illegal immigrants, when these are the same people who are the biggest recipients of governmental welfare. I don't know how many times I've heard farmers and ranchers bitch about 'big government.' Shut up, dipshit, you'd be out of bidness if it wasn't for your regular government welfare check. Same goes for small business owners who get all kinds of incentives from the government, and double the same goes to big corporations. A-holes.

So I think the whole concept of left and right political affiliations being based on how you feel about free market vs. government-controlled economy is bogus. #1 - ours must be one of the least free markets in all of the world, what with all the subsidies, corporate law, political campaigns that are bought and sold by the Fortune 500, etc. #2 - As I explained, I am all for free market economy, but my definition of this is obviously different than, say, fake president Bush's. #3 - I might also ask that since nowhere in our constitution does it say anything about capitalism, profit margins, shareholders, etc., why is that pretty much the sole focus of our government? In some ways, I'm sort of Jeffersonian-style anarchist ('Don't mess with people unless they be messin' with other people'), but I am way way far away from the Jeffersonian party of today.

So for now, I'll stick with social anarchism. I'm the party's candidate for the 2004 election. I nominated myself, as sole party member.

In an unrelated topic, I store my images for this blog at this old site of mine, which just never got very far along. There are some decent pictures of Banff, Wyoming, etc., though, on there, if you're interested.

-m