A recent (and substantial) donation made to the Canadian Trucker GoFundMe seems to have Musk’s fingerprints on it. The donation came from the name “www.liar.com” (which redirects to Justin Trudeau’s Wikipedia Page) for the amount of $42,069. 

Musk has had an affinity for pairing the numbers 420 and 69 together, previously slashing the price of the Tesla Model S to $69,420. Musk’s birthday is on June 28th, exactly 69 days after 4/20. 

However the donation no longer appears on the GoFundMe campaign since GoFundMe decided to freeze the campaign funds, and Canadian officials are attempting to have those funds turned over to the government instead of the truckers. Whoever the donor was apparently had the donation refunded in light of those developments. 

Musk has also been critical of the Biden Administration for refusing to acknowledge Tesla as an EV Leader. Biden has instead lavished praise on Ford and GM for being the EV Leaders, who have developed and sold far fewer electric vehicles than Tesla. Musk praised journalist Sara Eisen, who pressed Brian Deese, White House Director of the Economic Council, on their refusal to say the word “Tesla.”

A petition has also been circulating to compel the Biden Administration to acknowledge Tesla.

While online petitions are popular, realistically they achieve little or nothing. The Tesla community, much like Musk himself, value results.

Tesla owners appear to be brewing a plan to force the Tesla name on the Administration by making it unavoidable. This plan is to flood DC streets with an army of Tesla vehicles until Biden can say the word “Tesla.” While this appears to be in the beginning stages, many Tesla owners appear to be supportive. Some have floated the date 4/20 for DC arrival.

The post Is A Tesla Convoy Army Heading To DC? appeared first on The Libertarian Republic.

Musk went on to mock those in attendance by stating any Chief position, like CEO or CFO is a made up position. He stated that the only positions that matter when filing for a corporation are the titles of President, Secretary and Treasurer.

Elon also stated in the interview that the Federal Budget Deficit is “insane” and called for President Biden’s Build Back Better Plan to be “deleted.”

But the real highlight came when Elon stated that the government allocates capital very poorly, and capital allocation should be done by private people who can do it properly. He then described the government as a corporation with a monopoly on violence, a phrase that is popular with libertarian thinkers.

While in past years Elon Musk has described himself on Twitter as having socialist tendencies, it appears he’s had a degree of reconsideration. Especially considering socialism is heavily reliant on this monopoly of violence.

This shift in thinking was very noticeable during an exchange Elon Musk had on Twitter with David Beasely, the Executive Director of the UN’s World Food Programme. 

After claims that $6 billion of Elon’s money would solve world hunger were made by CNN, Researcher David Eli inquired why the UN couldn’t solve world hunger last year when it had amassed more than $6 billion. Elon replied that if the UN could prove how $6 billion could solve world hunger, and be transparent about how funds were used, that he would immediately sell $6 billion worth of stock and donate it.

David Beasely with the World Food Programme chimed in stating that CNN’s claim was not accurate (no surprise there), but essentially stated “it’s a start” while seemingly not accepting Elon’s condition of transparency and accountability.

Elon then replied “What happened here?” and linked an article about UN Peacekeepers forcing children in impoverished countries to perform sex acts on them for food.

Apparently government programs are only not very good at resource allocation, but they’re also incredibly sinister about it.

Watch the entire interview with Wall Street Journal below.

The post Elon Musk: “Government Is A Corporation With A Monopoly On Violence” appeared first on The Libertarian Republic.

The only word that describes the Biden administration is “absurd.” We have a “Government of the Absurd.”

The U.S. government spins its every statement in the hope citizens believe what is not true. Its political language is doublespeak. Words used by politicians no longer have meaning. There is no longer any communication between us and those running our government.

With 338 million people in the U.S., we elected a man described as “Sleepy Joe Biden.” He is gaffe-prone— decades of gaffes insulting blacks, Indians, women, disabled, to name a few. He also has a lifetime of plagiarism starting with law school papers and continuing onto the Senate floor and presidential campaigns. He refuses to answer questions from the press so he does not embarrass himself. Worse, when he finishes whatever he has to say, he turns his back not only on reporters but the American people as he leaves the room. When he does answer questions on policy matters, e.g., the infrastructure deal with Congress, his staff makes later announcements to “clarify,” i.e., “reverse” his “statements.”

These are his good days. On his bad days, he gets lost walking around the White House. And worse days may come as Russia builds its military forces on the Ukrainian border and China develops a hypersonic missile capable of surprise attack on the U.S.  And, while China patiently waits for the winter Olympics to be over, experts predict it will soon take over Taiwan.

The only person saving Biden from the Constitution’s 25^th Amendment (inability to discharge duties of the Office) is his vice president who seems even less “with it” than he. Recent polls find her approval rating at 28%, which is lower than Dick Cheney’s when he was waging war with the world. Even Democrat’s do not support her to run for president in 2024 or ever. Fortunately, for “Cackling Kamala,” she follows Mark Twain’s sage advice, “It is better to keep your mouth shut and appear stupid than to open it and remove all doubt.”

A few of Biden’s policies illustrate his befuddlement in addressing human events.

Afghanistan

Biden secretly withdraws our troops protecting Bagram Air Base without telling the Afghans or our allies, surrenders Afghanistan to the Taliban, and orders the withdrawal of military troops before removing the civilians they are protecting. Biden’s secret withdrawal leaves thousands of Americans and our allies at the mercy of the Taliban. After a public outcry, a day later, he sends troops back to Afghanistan to airlift Americans and Afghan supporters out of the country. The airlift is chaotic, taking anyone the Taliban would let into the airport, not necessarily those who helped us. Biden’s goal is a press release puffing his feat as the biggest airlift in history.

In the middle of the chaos, the Washington Post reports the Taliban offered the U.S. control of the city of Kabul until the Americans left. This offer would have allowed U.S. soldiers to evacuate all Americans and Afghans who wanted out. General McKenzie, with orders from Biden to secure only the airport, refuses the offer and secures only the airport.

These actions are all in addition to leaving tens of billions in equipment for the Taliban; thirteen fallen heroes and several hundred Afghans dead at the airport.

Tony Blair, former prime minister of Great Britain, termed Biden’s withdrawal, “imbecilic.”. Even the Democrat propagandist, The Washington Post, called “This a moral disaster…”

Immigration policy

According to the US Department of State, “the United States accepts more legal immigrants as permanent residents than the rest of the world combined.” The U.S. has thousands of pages of policy on how citizens from other countries can legally enter the U.S. Rather than following U.S. law, the Biden administration abandons all legal procedures and encourages chaotic, illegal, immigration at the southern border.  Biden also puts the entire $53 billion per year cost of food, shelter, health care for up to two million illegals on the American people.

The open border allows immigrants to self-select who will enter the U.S. and empowers drug cartels to determine who they will help immigrate to the U.S.  Also contrary to U.S. criminal law concerning the illegal distribution of drugs in the U.S., the open southern border is a green light for drug smugglers, resulting in a 233% increase in illegal drugs from Mexico, Central America, and China.

Surrenders’ energy dominance

At the end of the Trump administration, the U.S. was the dominant energy producer in the world. Trump embraced expanding the nation’s production of fossil fuels, oil and gas exports to our allies, lower energy prices, drilling on federal lands, and imposed sanctions on Russia’s proposed Nord Stream 2 pipeline to Germany, thereby preventing Russia from selling its oil in Europe.

In Biden’s first days in office, he terminates the Keystone pipeline, and drilling on federal lands, while removing Trump’s sanctions on Russia’s Nord Stream pipeline. Biden so greatly restricts the production of U.S. oil and gas he is forced to beg Saudi Arabia and OPEC to increase production to avoid serious economic disruption. Biden’s cuts in oil and gas production increased the price of gasoline by 40% in seven months. Worse, sanctions on the Russian pipeline allow Russia to enter the European market. If Biden cannot make U.S. energy policy more aburd, he is now, in the middle of high energy prices and less production, considering shutting down the pipeline from Michigan to Canada, which will also directly impact supplies in  Michigan, Ohio, and Pennsylvania, as well as Canada, this winter.

Masks— To wear or not to wear, that is the question!

Biden’s Center for Disease Control (“CDC”) tells us masks are not needed. Then it recommends we all wear masks. Then tells us if we are fully vaccinated, we do not need to wear masks. Then abruptly recommends vaccinated, unvaccinated people, and school children need to wear masks. Finally, Biden orders all federal employees, except postal workers, and employees of large businesses are vaccinated or be fired.

The constantly changing CDC guidance and mask mandates leaves the public confused, irritated and some rebellious, while our great Democrat leaders, who imposed the mask mandates, hit the birthday dinner circuit (Gov. Newsom)’ Obama’s birthday bash;  a $29,000 per person campaign dinner (Speaker Pelosi); a hair salon (Speaker Pelosi); White House events (Speaker Pelosi), and participate in large protests  (Chicago Mayor Lightfoot), all without wearing masks. Most telling is AOC in her white gown, people lifting her dress up a staircase, at the Met Ball, which should be referred to as the Hypocrites Dance. She is not wearing a mask but all the staff and waiters are masked so as not to harm the “dignitaries.” It Seems the government mandates are for us commoners, not the “Big guys” Who always have an excuse for not wearing a mask.

Biden proves his contempt for our dead heroes.

During the solemn ceremonies at Dover Air Force Base where the bodies of the fallen heroes were repatriated, Biden is photographed checking his watch as each body is taken off the plane. A father of one of the heroes stated “In reference to the checking of his watch, that didn’t happen just once. That happened on every single one that came out of that airplane. It happened on every single one of them. They’d release the salute, and he’d look down at his watch – on all 13 he’d look down at his watch.’

When stupidity turns into absurdity!

“The National Archives Records Administration has placed a ‘harmful language alert’ (trigger warnings) on records in the website’s catalog concerning the nation’s founding documents (i.e., the Constitution, Bill of Rights, and Declaration of Independence).”

The NARA statement warns readers our founding documents contain “…some content that may be harmful or difficult to view.”  The language “… may reflect outdated, biased, offensive and possible violent views and opinions.”

When the Constitution of the United States becomes an offensive document to the President of the United States, the person constitutionally responsible for executing the laws of the nation, we certainly have a government of the absurd.

When absurdity turns to killing civilians!

After the wacky surrender in Afghanistan, our fearless commander-in-chief needed to prove his manhood by proving he could take on terrorists. So, from “over the horizon” he launches a drone attack on high-level “state terrorists.” He brags for days how he “took action.” A week later it turns out  Mighty Joe Biden killed at least “10 Afghan civilians, including seven children—but not an Islamic State terrorist.”

The Biden administration is full of surreal characters whose worthless purpose in life is to foster their illusions of self-importance to America.  The beliefs of the president and his advisors, do not correspond to life experienced by Americans.  The Biden administration is a staged event. Nothing about it is real. There is no president. There is only some unknown person behind the screen, huffing and puffing to create the perception America has a president.

Perhaps the Biden administration is not a Government of the Absurd, it is the real Theatre of the Absurd and we have three years more of drama.

Image: Gage Skidmore (modifications by TLR).

The post The Government of the Absurd appeared first on The Libertarian Republic.

“No amendment to the Constitution is absolute!” President Joe Biden declared during an April address to Congress–and he means it.

If you ask the President, the Constitution contains no hard limits on the power of Washington, D.C. and no absolute guarantees for the freedoms of the people. Biden’s vision for America is one where everything is relative to the whims of the political class. That’s apparently why, over the course of his long political career, Biden has led the charge to systematically dismantle the Bill of Rights, from privacy to free speech to the Second Amendment.

An unapologetic proponent of the Patriot Act, Biden repeatedly took credit for writing an early version of the bill, which laid the extra-constitutional foundation for warrantless mass surveillance of American citizens in violation of the Fourth Amendment. Eight years ago, under the Obama Administration, NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden exposed the depths of these secret surveillance programs to the public. These programs were so secret that Obama’s Director of National Intelligence, James Clapper, committed perjury by lying under oath to Congress about their existence. Federal courts struck them down as unconstitutional last year.

Despite these well-publicized crimes, the only person facing prosecution is the man who exposed them. As Vice President, Biden was hands-on in the pursuit of Snowden for the speech “crime” of exposing government crimes, pressuring foreign leaders to deny asylum to the whistleblower.

Biden is taking a similar approach with journalist Julian Assange, calling him a “high-tech terrorist” because his disclosure and reporting of government secrets have ”done damage” and “made it difficult to conduct our business with our allies and our friends.” Biden seeks his extradition to the U.S for charges carrying potential penalties of 175 years in prison.

With the continued rise of social media, however, every American is a potential Snowden or Assange, threatening the constructed political narratives used to corral American voters into an illusion of political choice. In 2016, this threat became fully realized. The American people rejected the Bushes, the Clintons, and all their imitators, instead electing the unpredictable and uncontrollable Donald Trump.

The Washington power structure was aghast. They dragged the CEOs of social media companies before Congress, threatening them until they initiated censorship programs to reduce the influence of those who build large audiences by challenging establishment narratives.

The 2016 election was a warning that half of America is frustrated with the neoconservative and neoliberal directions of the party establishments. Rather than address or appease those concerns, new Democrat majorities in Congress are running in the opposite direction, seeking to fix the system so they don’t have to listen: overhauling election laws, scrapping the Electoral College, packing the Supreme Court, and stuffing the Senate.

Since the end of Reconstruction, America has held together under the shared agreement that we can make change through the ballot box. The election meddling and disinformation campaigns waged against Trump over the last four years have made many Americans believe their votes don’t matter. New proposed laws to disenfranchise red states could further undermine faith in this social contract.

John F. Kennedy once warned, “Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable.” Joe Biden must know this, which might explain why the Second Amendment is his next target.

In his April address to Congress, as Biden declared our once-unalienable rights to be totally alienable, he announced the most ambitious gun control agenda ever proposed by a sitting President, including a plan for sweeping bans on commonly-owned rifles, prohibition of homemade firearms, and “Red Flag” gun confiscation to target and seize firearms from “potentially dangerous” Americans with no notice or due process.

Considering the prosecution of Snowden and Assange for free speech over the past decade, one must wonder what previously legal exercises of our constitutional rights will the Washington establishment label as “potentially dangerous” in the years ahead.

Eric Brakey is the senior spokesperson for Young Americans for Liberty. Brakey served two terms in the Maine State Senate and as senate chairman for the Maine Health and Human Services Committee.

The post The Future Fallout of Biden’s Deadly Record on Civil Liberties appeared first on The Libertarian Republic.

“President Joe Biden formally raised the nation’s cap on refugee admissions to 62,500 this year, weeks after facing bipartisan blowback for his delay in replacing the record-low ceiling set by former President Donald Trump,” the Associated Press reports. For context, a “refugee” is formally defined as  “someone who has been forced to flee his or her country because of persecution, war or violence.” 

The president quickly took to Twitter to defend his decision.

“The U.S. Refugee Admissions Program embodies our commitment to protect the most vulnerable,” Biden said. “It’s a statement about who we are, and who we want to be. That’s why today, I revised our annual cap from 15,000 — a historic low set by the previous administration — to 62,500.”

In response, some Republicans decried the move as dangerous and misguided.

“The only thing Biden’s consistent on is caving to the radical Left and putting our safety last,” tweeted Congressman Brian Bain, a Texas Republican. “Inviting in tens of thousands of unvetted refugees—including those from terrorist hotbeds—is insanely irresponsible and will lead to another crisis.”

“Increasing the refugee admissions cap will put American jobs and safety at risk,” GOP Senator Tom Cotton concurred. “The Biden administration should be focused on getting Americans back to work.”

While it’s understandable that some may worry about potential security threats from accepting refugees, we already have an extensive vetting system in place. Our system of refugee acceptance is incredibly safe. 

Research from the Cato Institute’s Alex Nowrasteh has found that “the chance of an American being murdered in a terrorist attack caused by a refugee is 1 in 3.64 billion per year.” To put that figure in context, you’re significantly more likely to die from your clothes melting or catching fire than to be killed by a refugee.

And the economic argument against refugee resettlement doesn’t hold water, either. 

It’s true that refugees are eligible for and consume more taxpayer-funded welfare than other types of immigrants. But the solution to that is to make them ineligible for those programs, not to lock desperate people outside of our shores. Plus, in the long run, immigrants create more jobs than they “take” and are a net positive for our economy.

I never shy away from criticizing Biden. Yet when it comes to the president’s decision to accept more refugees into the US, the simple truth is that it’s not just the moral thing to do—it’s a win for everybody involved.

This article was originally published on FEE.org. Read the original article.

Image: Fibonacci Blue

The post Why the GOP Backlash to Biden Admitting More Refugees Isn’t Justified appeared first on The Libertarian Republic.

by Aubrey Wursten

“A single mom in Texas wrote to me. She said when she couldn’t work, this [COVID] relief check put food on the table and saved her and her son from eviction.” – Joe Biden

Few tactics in war are more effective than surreptitiously creating a crisis for an unwitting enemy; then convincing them that you are not just their best friend, but also wise and their only hope for survival. 

The current left, and in particular the more progressive brand gaining popularity, markets itself as the savior of the disenfranchised, including women. In order to maintain the monopoly on that reputation, leftist politicians must consistently craft subversively oppressive policies (or just imply that existing policies are somehow damaging to women), and blame the oppression on the other political team. Then, they simply use political sleight of hand to convince women that progressive policies are the only way out of their oppressed state.

This topic could obviously consume an entire book. Fortunately, Joe Biden’s recent speech to Congress provided a concise set of quotes illustrating these tactics, so going through just a few of those should serve as a good example of the general principle.

“Madame Vice President. No president has ever said those words from this podium… and it’s about time.”

Few people are likely upset at all that the current vice president is a woman, and beginning his speech by pointing out that he chose a woman as his running mate (although he’s not even the first candidate to so) comes across as pandering. Typical of politicians? Of course. An eye-rolling start to a speech that just pandered harder as it progressed? Also yes. 

More concerning, obviously, is why Biden came to recruit Kamala Harris, of all women, to be his second in command. Harris has been open about the fact that she believes women who have accused Biden of touching them inappropriately. Yet, she evidently had no hesitation about working directly for him and singing his praises once in position. Harris has a troubling history of harsh criminal justice practices that incarcerated non-violent single parents, 80% of whom were women, thereby breaking up families. And her supposed change of heart on some of those issues hardly seems adequate to hold her up as a champion for women now. 

For these and numerous other reasons, many people understandably suspect that Biden chose Harris not for her qualifications, but as yet another in an annoyingly long list of virtue signals aimed at women. It’s an insufferable practice that is fast becoming his trademark.

“Two million women have dropped out of the work force during this pandemic… We’ve already sent more than 160 million [COVID relief] checks out the door.”

Biden has made much ado about how he is certain he could have handled the pandemic better than his predecessor, with all 200,000 initial deaths apparently directly due to Trump. And now he is seemingly creating money out of whole cloth—or paper—to cure the economic crisis caused by the draconian lockdown measures he enthusiastically supported. Model after model after model has been proven incorrect, and numerous experts have made clear that destroying the economy through shutdowns had at best a negligible effect on the spread of the disease. What it did spread was avoidable poverty, much of it hitting women. And the one person who spread it now wants to take credit for stopping it.

One fan praised his policies, “He talked about the American Recovery Plan which would extend unemployment, which would help me and women like me.” Her use of the term “extend unemployment” is an accurate one, although it is clearly not what she intended to imply. He is indeed extending the actual state of unemployment, as it is more lucrative for some people to remain unemployed—or at least turn down higher-paying jobs—to keep collecting “stimulus” money taken by force from fellow Americans (including women, naturally).

It would be difficult to conceive of a more effective way to keep women unsuccessful than by paying them to be so. They can either work hard and starve, or they can do nothing and receive enough stolen money to survive. One can hardly blame them for choosing the latter, but one can certainly blame progressives for forcing people to choose between two terrible options.

“Let’s raise the minimum wage to $15. No one working 40 hours a week should live below the poverty line. We need to ensure greater equity and opportunity for women.”

Again, the leap to “for women” seems a tad misguided, as it has long been illegal to pay women less simply on the basis of their sex. Maybe we could finally let that dead economic theory horse rest in peace. 

Worse, in his supposed desire to improve the situation of women at large, he is taking from them, by force and at risk of government sanction or violence, the opportunity to build their own careers on the terms they find best for them. A woman with little experience in her hoped-for profession would be happy with a low wage as she builds her skills by starting at the bottom rung of the ladder, instead of paying thousands of dollars to a college that probably would not leave her with a fraction of the job skills her internship or initially low-paying job would garner her. But President Biden believes that women are not capable of forging their own path, and they desperately need him to ride in on his white horse to save them.

“We’re keeping people from being evicted from their homes.”

Joe Biden is going to finance their rent from his own deep pockets? That IS generous, and I’m certain that both renters and landlords will be pleased with this arrangement. Everybody wins!

Sadly, I’m given to believe that as passionately as Biden cares about tenants’ rights, he is not going to use his own money to pay the monthly rent check. Rather, he will simply prevent the landlady from evicting non-paying tenants who are squatting on her property. So, the landlady, who was likely barely making ends meet before, is now destitute and has no income—although she does have a slew of friendly strangers living awkwardly next door. In her house. However, she can be sure that Biden has a very woman-friendly proposal up his sleeve that will save her business when he determines the time is right to share it. As a woman, she should probably just stop asking for answers to questions concerning her life, because Biden obviously knows what’s best for her.

“My American Families Plan guarantees four additional years of public education for every person in America, starting as early as we can.”

Moms, the terrible public school system through which you suffered has rendered you useless to teach your own children. Logically then, Biden feels that the best solution to this is to put them in those same public schools from even younger ages, so the state has four more formative years to teach them in even more ineffective and devious ways than they once taught you. 

Your daughters, like Kamala Harris, can wade through the public school propaganda for which you are forced to pay whether you approve it or not. And they can then grow up to be told by self-righteous progressives that they are incapable of succeeding on their own.

Some people might protest that the left has no particular hatred of women, and that calling this particular strategy a war on women is both inaccurate and hyperbolic. And it is indeed likely true that the current attack is not based on hatred so much as it is on a desire for political power. But should the reason matter when the attack is real? And is an attempt to destroy the independence of a whole demographic of people not a war? Unless they are willing to call the situation what it is, women are going to become the next casualty of the soft bigotry of low expectations.

Aubrey Wursten is a political satirist who occasionally dabbles in real news writing. She holds a degree in University Studies (which is every bit as useful as it sounds), and she is currently studying to become a nutrition coach. Her work can be found on many websites, including her proprietary satire page, fakenewsyourway.com.

The post Joe Biden’s Subversive War on Women appeared first on The Libertarian Republic.

On Thursday, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration announced that it was moving to ban menthol cigarettes and flavored cigars. Though the rumors had been swirling for months that this might happen, I was still somehow shocked to see them actually do it. I mean, it’s not like they already have their hands full with controversial COVID-19 vaccines or anything, right?

My instant reactions brought two well-known memes to mind.

First, this rather ancient one:

(In my defense, it really was the stupidest fucking thing I’d read all day. Maybe all year. We truly are in the dumbest timeline.)

The other meme I thought of was from the video game Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas:

Here we go again, indeed.

This move is profoundly imbecilic on so many levels that I honestly feel kind of bad even writing about it. It’s like beating up Peter Dinklage. Or drag racing a short bus. There’s really no sport in it. It’s low-hanging fruit. Or in this case maybe it’s… low-hanging mint?

As a libertarian (though not a “real” one), I am against the banning of almost everything. In my perfect world, you’d be able to buy black tar heroin from a vending machine and then go get a drive-thru abortion. (Watch out for those cloth seats!) So going after cigarettes seems rather pointless; flavored cigarettes, doubly so.

The FDA’s logic, if I understand it, is that menthol cigarettes and flavored cigars target children and black folks. (Think about casually lumping those two together for a moment and you realize how condescending these people are.) There is some truth to both of those things, however poorly the bedside manner is of those making the argument.

Black folks, for whatever reason, do smoke menthols far more often than other ethnic groups. Who knows why. Who cares?

Menthols are also a “gateway” cigarette for younger folks. How do I know? I smoked cigarettes for many years, and I started on menthols. I remember specifically being told that you wanted to try those first because they were a little easier on beginners.

You can accept these two things as fact and still not give a shit. Which is where I come down (obviously.) Whether these cigarettes are favored by black people or youngsters (or young black people), banning them is horrendously misguided. The FDA is basically saying: “Don’t you silly Blacks know what’s good for you?” Which brings to mind the old Ronald Reagan quote: “The nine most terrifying words in the English language are: I’m from the Government, and I’m here to help.”

Everyone knows that cigarettes are bad for you. There is really no argument there. I have lost a family member to lung cancer that was almost certainly related to smoking and it’s no joke. But whether your bad habit kills you in forty seconds or forty years, it’s really not my concern either way. Unless we have national health care and I’m being forced via taxation to pay for your bad decisions. (Which is actually a better argument against national health care than against your bad decisions.)

But despite crazy rumors floating around for years that menthols were worse for you because they were filled with fiberglass or some such shit, or that they were intentionally made that way to kill off minorities, no one has ever actually proven that they are any more dangerous than regular cigarettes. And the FDA really isn’t even trying to argue that. So this isn’t about health per se. If that was the case, the FDA would ban all cigarettes and cigars. (Which I would also be against.) It’s more of a nanny state thing. You are being penalized not for wanting an inherently dangerous product; you are being penalized for wanting that inherently dangerous product to taste better. Or, at least taste better to you. This somehow becomes a social justice issue or an attack on a protected class. The logic escapes me.

The whole thing is also rather awkward because, in a post-George Floyd world where white folks are finally realizing that police have in fact been screwing black people over for decades, this gives police another tool to screw over those very same people. We even have a fairly recent example of a black man being killed by police over cigarettes in the Eric Garner case. (It would be ironic, in retrospect, if they were menthols.)

Oh, sure, the administration says they’re only going to target manufacturers and not consumers. How’d that work out in the drug war? Or Prohibition? I think you know.

A black (no pun intended) market will almost certainly develop overnight. First, people will start to hoard the current stocks of Newports, Kools, Salems, and so forth. After those are gone, people will start making their own menthol cigarettes. Stores will sell these menthol additives with a wink and a nod, kind of like how head shops have been selling bongs for years but labeling them as “exotic tobacco pipes.”

When a commodity is driven underground, prices skyrocket and quality suffers. Who benefits from that? Not your average law abiding citizen, that’s for sure.

Also, think about how this is also taking place against the backdrop of more and more states legalizing recreational marijuana. Or, as I call it, “the only good reason to set foot in Illinois anymore.” The juxtaposition is stunning. The optics are shit. Why would any level of government care what you were smoking in the first place, much less legalize one thing while criminalizing another? If you’d have told me twenty years ago that pot would be legal but menthol cigarettes would be banned, and that Democrats would be the ones pushing the menthol ban, I’d have asked you what you were smoking. (Spoiler alert: probably pot.) Have we surrendered in the “War on Drugs” only to start a new “War on Mint?”

(As a side note, I don’t think marijuana legalization has really been driven by any real thirst for freedom, or a recognition that people should be able to do what they want. It’s mostly because people just like marijuana. The thought process starts and stops there. Those same people often don’t think twice about banning other things because they happen not to like those other things.)

Why are we banning menthol cigarettes while you can walk into any liquor store and buy twenty different flavored vodkas? (Thanks, Burnett’s.) Or fifteen different kinds of Bud Light Lime-A-Ritas? (Whose motto should be: “It’ll take some hair off your chest.”) Or thirty kinds of crappy favored seltzers? Aren’t wine coolers still a thing? Isn’t Boone’s Farm still acting as a gateway booze for young tipplers? Speaking of flavors, you can drive across the bridge here over to Illinois and buy many different flavors of cannabis gummies. (At least, that’s what I’ve been told.)

Are we also going to ban flavored beers? Or malt liquors and fortified wines because they’re allegedly too strong, while also being popular in low income areas? Surely, no one would be silly enough (or perhaps racist enough) to try something so absurd, right? Think again. Meanwhile, Whitey McWhiteperson or Cracky McCrackerson is still free to buy his Busch Light and Marlboro Reds pretty much anywhere.

Instead of meekly going along with a menthol cigarette ban, will the tobacco companies fight? Or at least try and pull off a second “Tobacco Settlement”, in which they basically pay a bribe to the FDA (or the various states) in exchange for being left mostly alone? That worked well enough in 1998. Sure, it resulted in the absurdity of tobacco companies paying to advertise against themselves, and the settlement costs were passed along to smokers in the form of steep price increases, but Big Tobacco greased the palms that it had to grease.

I quit smoking twenty-one years ago. Not out of any serious concern for my health; one look at my monthly expenditures at Liquor Warehouse would attest to that. It was because smokes were just getting too damned expensive and I didn’t want to pay for them anymore. But when I did smoke, I was a brand-hopping tobacco whore. I tried about everything. I tried Salems, Kools, Newports, Marlboro menthols, and even weird stuff like Bel Air and Alpine back in the day.

I don’t often crave cigarettes anymore, but on the rare occasion that I do, it’s usually a full-strength Salem I’m jonesing for. Those suckers packed so much menthol punch that it was like French kissing a little jar of Vicks VapoRub.

I’m tempted to start smoking again, and specifically to start smoking menthols, just to stick it to Uncle Sam. I want to fire up a Salem, take a big gnarly drag of that minty goodness, and extend a middle finger in the general direction of the District of Columbia.

The Libertarian Republic’s fearless leader once famously said:

Would a world where gay black married couples are free to protect their menthol cigarettes with fully automatic machine guns also be too much to ask?

TLR image composite source: LibertyLover2 Instagram

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Obama Derangement Syndrome was also real, and it had a distinct racial tint to it. It was kind of hard to miss, what with all the birther/secret Mooslem conspiracy crap flying around. Nobody would try and pull that shit with a hypothetical President McCain or a President Romney. A lot of folks on the right weren’t so mad at Obama’s policies as much as they couldn’t believe a black guy was running circles around them. I know this because as a native of outstate Missouri (not the most tolerant place in the world,) I heard racial slurs tossed around when referring to our 44th president several times in casual conversation. Obama broke the brains of many rural Americans.

Trump Derangement Syndrome was also real, and I may have even had a little touch of it myself. But unlike the other two, I think quite a bit of “TDS” was justified.

I don’t think there will be a Biden Derangement Syndrome. The only derangement of note would maybe be his own. Plus, he’s just not worthy of getting all that worked up over. He is largely seen as a genial (if befuddled) placeholder president serving as a transition between the constant outrage of the Trump years and…whatever comes next. Could be President Harris. Could be something else. No one knows. Think of Biden as a bandage; but even a bandage can do damage if poorly applied.

I do think that another phenomenon is taking place, though—call it Biden Regret Syndrome.

To that end, I wrote in a prior piece:

“I’ll risk taking a few licks on policy in exchange for knowing our president isn’t a total piece of shit and a garbage-tier human being.”

Well, we have a president who isn’t a total piece of shit and a garbage-tier human being. Congratulations. But now the hard part—the licks on policy. They’re coming.

The most obvious problem with the new administration is the absolute balls-to-the-wall spending frenzy. As Rep. Thomas Massie (R-KY) noted on April 5:

Granted, a lot of this started during the last administration and was fueled by the COVID-related economic meltdown. But jumpin’ Jesus on a pogo stick, the spending has really hit the fan now. President Biden doubled down on the “stimulus” beeswax.

But wait, there’s more!

An ongoing joke in never Trump circles was that every week was “infrastructure week.” But now, we’re going to get a real infrastructure bill, and we’re going to get it good and hard. Cost estimates on this latest round of profligate spending may run up to two trillion dollars. That’s trillion with a “t.”

And just like the stimulus bills got hung up on what was really stimulus versus what was just part of the omnibus, the infrastructure thing is going to get bollixed up by arguments over what the word “infrastructure” means.

To most folks, the word conjures up images of roads, bridges, waterways, railroads, utilities, and such.

At the end of the day, “infrastructure” will end up meaning whatever progressives want it to mean. Everything they like will be infrastructure and everything they dislike will be racist, bigoted, homophobic, misogynistic, and so forth. You know the drill.

Meanwhile, as any decent economist could have predicted, when trillions of dollars are printed and dumped into the economy, inflation is on the rise. CNN acted completely surprised at this turn of events, leading to this delicious headline:

You don’t say? Meanwhile, the U.S. government is doing an Urkel, asking coyly: “Did I do that?” Why, yes. Yes, you did. We aren’t at Weimar Germany or Zimbabwe levels of inflation yet, but maybe you can see it from here. I’ve been meaning to paint the inside of our house; maybe we’ll just paper everything over with greenbacks instead.

Speaking of spending— the only Biden cabinet-level nominee who has been shot down so far was Neera Tanden. That’s doubly ironic, because never before has the Office of Management and Budget been more useless. I mean, we don’t really do budgets anymore. Budgeting requires saying “yes” to some things and “no” to others. “No” isn’t in the current budgeting vocabulary.

As Coolio might say if he was a policy wonk:

Been spendin’ most their lives
livin’ in the Keynesian’s paradise

At the same time, interest rates remain at rock bottom for as far as the eyes can see, rewarding spending and punishing savings. This is contributing greatly to the current housing bubble. I have a money market account that is paying, I shit you not, .03%. That’s .0003. We’re this close to having negative interest rates.

At least the Biden administration isn’t talking about using executive orders to roll back gun rights. Oh wait, yes it is. The usual boogie men are targeted: red flag laws, ghost guns, and…stabilizing braces? The president also nominated a gun control advocate to head every libertarian’s favorite convenience store, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms. I’m sure that’ll go over well.

There is even talk of reforming, or getting rid of, Senate filibusters. I have mixed feelings on that. Filibusters have been abused by both major parties for the last twenty years with no end in sight.

Last but not least (for now) is the specter of “court packing.” In the run up to the November elections, Democrats, enraged by Trump’s nomination and confirmation of three Supreme Court justices during his term, floated the idea of expanding the number of justices on the court. Then-candidate Biden was a little wishy washy when pressed on the issue before finally coming down against it (kind of) in October.

(Many people don’t know that, like the filibuster, the size of the Supreme Court is not mentioned in the Constitution. The filibuster is a special Senate rule, while the size of the court is set by statute.)

Lo and behold, on April 9, the Oval Office announced the formation of the ominous sounding “Presidential Commission on the Supreme Court of the United States.” One of the agenda items, not surprisingly, is “the membership and size of the Court.” Whatever do you think their findings will be? The suspense is killing me.

The whole idea is B-A-N-A-N-A-S for several reasons:

• Even FDR couldn’t successfully pull off packing the Supreme Court.
• No state has a Supreme Court of its own with more than nine members. So any argument that U.S. Supreme Court is overworked is probably bupkus.
• Most importantly, even if they could add (say) four liberal justices to the court, that would only be good for a generation. At some point those “extra” justices have to retire or croak like all the rest, and who knows who’ll be in office to appoint their replacements. So this would be a whole lot of trouble for what amounts to a fairly short term gain.

Luckily the idea of packing the court appears to be dead on arrival. That’s coming from no less an authority than Speaker Pelosi.

Will that hold in the future, however? Would Speaker Ocasio-Cortez, for example, have such qualms? Right now the “grown ups” are allegedly in charge, but only barely.

What we need more than anything right now is a strong opposition party. We certainly do not have that in today’s GOP. Not only are they more focused on posturing and riling up their base than governing, they don’t have the numbers to stop much of anything right now.

Divided government was a distinct possibility right up until the GOP blew both of the U.S. Senate elections in Georgia. The Lincoln Project, a controversial never-Trumper group, had some entertainment value right up to the point where Trump actually lost. I figured with him gone, they’d do a “mission accomplished” and ride off into the sunset. But no, they had to go after Georgia Sens. Loeffler and Perdue too, thus helping to hand the Senate to the Dems by the thinnest of margins. Thanks for nothing, Lincoln Project!

Trump-hating libertarians (both small and big “L”) will have to ride out the Biden presidency as best we can, hoping that whatever damage he does is less than Trump would have done. Only time will tell.

Image: TLR composite, Gage Skidmore (Biden)

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“White passing” is a loathsome, offensive phrase. No one is responsible for the physical cues that others take from one’s appearance, and you’re not obligated to sport a sandwich board itemizing your racial breakdown.

Fredi was a strikingly beautiful mulatta and exceptional actress, yet Jim Crow segregation barred her from playing non-black roles. The Chicago Defender quoted her in 1945: “Frankly, I do not ascribe to the stupid theory of white supremacy and to try to hide the fact that I am a Negro for economic or any other reasons. If I do, I would be agreeing to be a Negro makes me inferior.”

By identifying solely as Negro, she did tacitly endorse supremacist ideology’s assertion that one-drop of Negro blood disqualifies one from entering the realm of “pure” whiteness. Yet Fredi had no choice; no mixed-race option existed for her to embrace, and that surely would have led to “Trying to be white!” accusations. White passing charges endure even now, as humanity evolves.

The 2020 Census allowed multiracials to again choose multiple boxes, though the government often collapses those responses to reflect exclusively minority race tabulations. That nuanced application of the “one-drop rule” notwithstanding, latter day Fredi Washingtons, like former actress and British royal Meghan Markle, unflinchingly avail themselves of identity choices independent of the societally imposed black/white binary.

But during the 2020 election, political expediency prohibited Kamala Harris from publicly embracing her Asian heritage, and the media’s current insistence on capitalizing “Black” and “White” reinforces the boundaries between supposedly mutually exclusive races. It’s regressive, part and parcel of a campaign that can best be described as willful resegregation.

Consider ABC’s “mixed-ish“ 2019 sitcom about an ‘80s interracial couple and their three kids relocating from a hippie commune to suburbia. The parents struggle with their new life’s challenges; their kids negotiate public schooling in which classmates have difficulty pigeonholing them racially. The family’s encounters typify the struggle in finding one’s identity when the larger society can’t determine to which sociopolitical bloc you belong.

The initial episodes entertained; I even chuckled at installment one’s slave ship joke. Considering Mixed-ish is a prequel spin-off of the popular Black-ish, the writers pleasantly surprised by not overly insinuating one-drop commentary into the dialogue — until the third episode’s treatment of “black hair.”

Then, they let loose with what you had to know was coming. The three siblings are unquestionably black, and their desire to wear their hair au naturel is a sign of their black pride.

Academia’s most notorious one-drop devotees, critical race theorists, have scant objection to Mixed-ish, yet a particular Marxist critique on a Facebook group dedicated to positive mixed-race identity caught my eye. Brother Karl would ostensibly view the show not through the lens of an interracial family, but via proletarians abandoning their communalist ideals to embrace a bourgeois lifestyle centered on careerism and consumerism.

America’s problems do primarily manifest along class lines, but neo-Marxists cannot abandon race, to their detriment. They critically reinterpret Marx’s class conflict meditations into one wherein history is primarily the dramatic struggle between colonialist, oppressive white racists and exploited groups “of color.”

After eight years of the first mixed-ish president marginalizing his MulattX heritage and propagating identity politics, enough working class whites perceived Democrats as hostile to their concerns and swung the 2016 election to Donald Trump—who expertly exploited their fears. 45’s inept handling of the COVID-19 epidemic combined with Black Lives Matter’s proletariat insurrection following George Floyd’s murder combined to deny him reelection, though.

The response that BLM’s impressionable disciples cannot rebut is “All Black Lives Should Matter.” Gangbangers kill far more blacks than do white cops, but that doesn’t fit BLM’s narrative. Even considering the significantly fewer incidents of police shooting and killing unarmed minorities, we need to honestly acknowledge the cause-and-effect relationship in play. Some degree of perceived police brutality is more about unacknowledged biases cultivated through overexposure in high crime areas than naked racism.

Narratives outweigh facts, though. Economist and erstwhile Marxist Thomas Sowell argues that progressives have no interest in creating black wealth—only with the imperative to redistribute what exists, e.g. slavery reparations.

Psychological manipulation compelling kneeling and confessing white skin privilege confirms that what many cannot cultivate through the internal work necessary for individual spiritual growth, they attempt to appropriate from others and redistribute to the collective via repugnant guilt-trips.

Blackness and whiteness are both value-neutral, yet for years I wandered in the darkest mental ignorance before discovering that my purpose on this planet was not as a loyal servant to “woke” racial identity politics. Would that Fredi could have realized the same.

Charles Michael Byrd is a freelance opinion writer whose pieces deal with racial identity politics and religion. He is of white, black, and Native heritage. He lives in Queens, N.Y.. You can follow him on Twitter @ChasbyrdM.

Image: Gage Skidmore

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