FoxNews has a good anti drug war piece by Radley Balko. This piece does a good job tearing apart the argument that buying drugs neccessarily funds terrorists. The author underestimates the amount of drugs that come in from Afghanistan. I remember going to a decriminalization conference in New York a few years ago and hearing about how the poppies for heroin was making it into the U.S. through Europe. Other than that is a good short attack on the drug war. Worth a read.

I am glad the music industry is feeling the results of putting out and pushing crappy music. It is no surprise the ratings for the grammys have reached a six year low. I hope the music industry will learn that if you put out over-produced, over-hyped music that the fans "don't believe the hype" as Public Enemy would say.

Mike Bloomberg wants to put the Brooklyn bridge up for sale and add tolls to other bridges. Bloomberg argues that creativity is needed in economic hard times. If the proposed tolls are for hard times, Bloomberg should be able to make the proposal with a sunset law but of course he doesn't really want to do that.

DaveyD reports that Universal Pictures will be making a movie of Russel Simmons autobiography Life and Def : Sex, Drugs, Money, and God. Russell Simmons is one of the few music industry execs that has been willing to admit that there is a problem with the stuff they have been putting out in the market.

DaveyD reports that OJ will be in Cincinati to host a hip-hop concert. The artists doing a concert where OJ is involved must be really desperate. Good for O.J. going against the economic boycott in Cincinati that black leadership is trying to impose on Cincinati. I don't get it. How is an economic boycott going to stop the police from going over handed?

The New York Times has an article on John Mayer who played at Roanoke College about a week ago. The New York Times description of his music as sounding like the Dave Matthews band without "Mr. Matthews's taste for musical adventure..." Personally, I didn't like his music that much although his cover of Ja Rule's Always on Time was pretty entertaining.

The New York Times article does mention how he supported his fans bootlegging his CD's. I have noticed a lot of other artists encouraging their fans to download the group's music from the internet. I think every band I saw at the Warped Tour this summer encouraged bootlegging.

Teenagers are drinking a lot of alcohol. What else is new? The 25% figure is probably a lot higher than in most other countries where the drinking age is 18 and not 21.

When you have to start recruiting kids who are four years old, it is a clear sign no rational person wants to fight for your cause. (I'm talking about the Palestinians of course.

Osama got hustled. Bin Laden was stupid enough to be duped into buying a fake nuke bomb.

Bill Maher had a bunch of black artists and a on his show talking about MP3s. All the artists said bootlegging was no big deal because to them it is nothing new. Bootlegging has been going on in the cities for a long time. Ja Rule was smart enough to say that if they lower the price, consumers will start buying the CDs again.

Is the proposed studio audience for CNN's soon-to-be, hour long Crossfire because they realize the political discussion is a joke. It would make sense. Carville on a nightly show might be entertaing enough to watch.

Ken Layne tears apart the music industry in this Fox News column.

Instapundit is right Andrew Sullivan does have the best article on blogging to date.

The "war on terrorism" is costing more than the Pentagon thought it would. I guess original projections did not include the possible boondoggle against Iraq.

The Columbian rebels would not be a large scale problem if the U.S. just ended the war on drugs. If we take away the profit potential for the Columbian rebels and extremists around the world, they will have no way to pay for their violence. I can hear the argument now: "But that is why we need to stop the drug trade completely." Wrong. That is an improbable task and the government should not be telling people how to live their lives.

The New York Times has an article on the blogging phenomenon but they forget to mention warblogs.

The Supreme Court announced recently that they would hear a case dealing with whether or not the Sony Bono Copyright Term Extension Act is unconstitutional. Since Congress is allowed to extend patents in the Constitution I don't see how much of a constitutional issue arises from this law. The case for repealing the 20 year patent extension that came with the Sony Bono Copyright Term Extension Act has been clearly made by all the arguments in favor of MP3s.

I am glad the music industry is suffering. They have been stagnant for too long putting out over-marketed and over-produced music. One of the reasons consumers have been downloading MP3s is because they are unhappy with the products on the record store sales.

It has even taken the music industry a while to defend itself with CDs that can not be read by computers, thus, they wil not be able to be burned. This will piss off consumers who use their computers as a CD player. What the music industry does not realize is that, unlike the airline industry, they can not continue to piss off customers without a clear drop in sales.

One of the best disses Nas has of JAYZ on his Stillmatic album has got to be when he says KRS-ONE already had an album called "The Blueprint."

A lot of the strong antagonism of Bush, that existed in the hip-hop community, has been almost non-existent since Septemberr 11th. The only exceptions are the extreme far left radicals. Chuck D even wrote 9-1-1 ain't no joke.

Curling is not as easy as it looks.

Dave Barry believes the Olympics have brought moral decay to Salt Lake City. The moral decay may not be such a bad thing. (via Ken Layne

Ed Mazza has a post attacking Bloomberg for taking the weekend off without notifying the media. I was afraid this was going to happen. This is one of the potential problems of electing wealthy elites. Is delegation really such a bad thing? (via Ken Layne

Steven Den Beste has a good language on how languages are actually thriving. (via Ken Layne

Welcome, Norway, Iceland, Canada, Brazil, Belgium, Switzerland, The United Kingdom and The Netherlands!

Since I know the Social Security Administration is looking at my site: Scrap Social Security Now!

Micheal W. Lynch is right to criticise Bush's budget and conservative support for it.

Jonah Goldberg has a good piece tearing apart Pat Buchanan and Conservatism. One of the problems I have always had with conservatism is "the negation of ideology," as Russel Kirk put it.
UPDATE: O.K. Goldberg doesn't intentionally tear apart conservatism, but he does take down Buchanan. He does show that conservatism has no grand view not necessarily of solution, but of what conservatism has for a goal.

I am against vouchers because I believe government should shrink and not grow. If vouchers were implemented, eventually the strings of government involvement would wind up providing the same stifling that has aflicted the public schools. Besides from giving a partial alternative to government education, vouchers do not directly cut government.

Another problem I have with vouchers is they do not provide actual dollar for dollar competition. A true competitive voucher system would send money to any school public or private otherwise the public schools are just working with less money and do not have the incentive to improve. Though, maybe, the goal voucher advocates have is to completely elimenate public schools and move the funding toward private schools.

Charles Krauthammer has an article in Wendsday's Washington Post complaining about the Olympics.

Do we really need the men's short-track speed-skating gold medal?

No, but sports aren't really needed at all. Krauthammer needs to lighten up. Sports are supposed to be fun. He complains about the U.S. winning everything. Hmmm... I thought success was good.

Kathy Kinsley has moved me down her site to the still on Blogspot list. Maybe Blogspot has been pretty bad lately, but it is the most convenient option that I see.

The Washington Times reports that Virginia is trying to expand its program of voluntary tax donations for the Department of Transportation. This is actually a good idea. I believe Ayn Rand even suggested this idea in one of her nonfiction books. Dave Hollist, a bus driver from California, tried to get the Libertarian Party presidential nomination running on this idea. It would be an even better idea if it was more specific and people could contriibute to which roads or programs they thought deserved to be funded. Plus, it is the easiest way to get coercion out of government. (via NextRight

The AP reports that 1000 people had to be rescreened at the Louisville International Airport because a security screener had fallen asleep. The other security workers must not being paying attention to notice someone was asleep while 1000 people walk through. I am glad the security workers are working so much harder now that they are federal workers with their new raise.

The New York Times has an article of how New York City Mayor Mike Bloomberg was "missing" over the weekend. He was not missing he was on vacation, probably in Bermuda. I do not think there is any problem with the mayor taking a formalized style rather than a more direct style of being directly involved in every issue that is made. Hopefully, the mayor will have people on his side to whom he can delegate instructions and power.

What is the big deal of the new Office of Strategic Influence? The Department of Defense has been involved in putting out propoganda programs for a long time. Various agencies similair to this have existed for a long time and just go through reorganizations. This is just an excuse for the anti-Bush partisans to have something to protest.

I saw Krush Groove on VH1 Sunday Night. Krush Groove is one of the early hip-hop movies that in a rush to get the culture right skips over even attempting a plot. This is true of the other two great early hip-hop movies Beat Street and Wild Style which are also devoid of plot. (Although most of the hip-hop movies with a plan are really awful such as Who's The Man or Belly. With the notable exception of Juice)

Krush Groove deals with a real problem in the hip-hop music industry of the criminal elements of startup labels. In the movie Krush Groove records is seriously in debt to some loan sharks that the Russell Simmons charachter had borowed money from. This is comparable to the startups of Ruthless Records, Death Row Records and Rap-A-Lot Records of which all were at least partially funded through drug money.

For real hip-hop fans Krush Groove is quite enterntaining at the very least for the classic Run DMC, L.L. Cool J, Kurtis Blow and Fat Boys performances.

Wired has a post on blogs commenting on the fact that some blogs are boring. So what? Some people are boring in real life and there is no reason why their blog should be any differint. My blog may suck but that does not stop me from doing it. I guess Wired has joined the crew of mainstream journalists who are afraid of the new power of the blogs.
But as Ken Layne points out, the article totally misses the growth of warblogs since September 11th. Blogs have provided an oppurtunity for anyone to spread their thoughts to the world.

Kevin Holtsberry makes some faulty assumptions and arguments against libertarianism.

Libertarianisms rejection of faith and religion is to me one of its greatest weaknesses. Faith is too crucial of an issue and too large a part of the accumulated wisdom of the ages to be rejected out of hand as unscientific fantasy. The harshness of many libertarians on this issue is particularly off putting to those conservatives who agree with libertarians on other issues.

This is not neccessarily the case. In 2000, The Libertarian Party of New York ran John Clifton for U.S. Senate who espoused strong Christian values. This is the only example I can think of right now but I am sure there are more examples. Part of the reason libertarians are weary of religion is because of fear of enforced religion.

Their view of the state as the great oppressor, particularly their view of government as the state as the enemy. While conservatives often share the libertarian's concern over bloated and inefficient government, libertarians take this view too far. They often seem to join with Marx in seeking the withering away of the state. Conservatives realize that government is necessary for an ordered liberty.

True Marx was in favor of the withering away of the state but this is far from what has been desired in most modern socialism from a practical standpoint. Most libertarians do realize that the government is a necessary evil.

Kyle Still has a neat blog with some good Enron coverage. (Thanks for the link)

There is a comment on my post on Chuck D and by extension on MP3s that has some statements I feel the need to challenge.

In a previous post yousuggested that downloading free MP3 over napster was theft of private property and therfor against libertarian principles which sanctify respect for private property as the foundation of law and civilization.

Downloading MP3's from which you have not paid for the rights to own is theft.

When you buy a copy of War and Peace at Amazon, Tolstoy's descendants do not get a royalty even if you do if I order through the link on your site.

Yeah, the copyright protection has expired. Just because there are statutory limits on a law does not mean the law is bad.

Part of the value of a CD is the plastic packaging, the distribution in other words. In an earlier time there was high cost to the physical distribution of music, recording studios, A&R men, vinyl pressing equipment, physical distribution of the LPs to distributors and then to stores, cost of the shelf space in the stores, cost of the radio shows etc you get the idea . Musical artists had to sell their work to the record labels for pennies per listener to reach an audience There is nothing wrong with that. The artist and the label evaluated the risks and made a deal.

To sell records in large numbers the promotion needs to be there. This is an investment that the record companies can still put in the artist if they want to assure record sales. Sure, a certain number of sales can exist by fact of word of mouth but artists will struggle to succeed without large industry support. This deal does leave the artists with only pennies on the dollar that they earn for the record company, but that was the contract they agreed to. There is a growing dissagreement between artists and the management who own the masters. The old structure is still here until a new structure is agreed upon. Part of the reason I mentioned Chuck D in the previous post was because MistaChuck has a new proposal to change the system instead of just violating the music industry's rights.

Alex Knapp of HereticalIdeas argues that Memento deserved to be up for several academy award nominations. The main reason Memento did not get any nominations is fear. Hollywood is afraid of change. Hollywood conciously or subconciously is going to look favorobly to movies that stick to the status quo. A movie that goes back and forth in time is too much for Hollywood to handle.

David Carr asks: What has technology really done for us?

From watching CNN Headline News I noticed that they have picked up Lindsey of MTV's Real World Seatle fame to do an entertainment segment. Probably a smart move to pick up a younger audience which Headline News has been trying to do since they changed their image and structure less than a year ago. Entertainment news has never had much journalistic integrity.

Despite the dire predictions of The New York Times, I believe that Paypal will survive and be a profitable company. Sure, it will not be overnight. But no company becomes profitable instantantly. The only things that will succeed in the current internet era are companies with a solid consumer base. Paypal has the base necessary for success especially since it has become a near standard on Ebay.

Reason.com has a hilarious cartoon on how far Congress could go on taking this war on terrorism.

The New York Press also has an interesting interview with the talented Chuck D of Public Enemy fame. Chuck declares JAYZ the winner on the JAYZ vs. Nas battle, questions post September 11th patriotism and declares the music industry dead. Chuck is right on target as far as the music industry goes. Chuck realizes the old paradigm of releasing albums is going to be pushed out the window. Chuck D is one of the few people that have learnt to embrace MP3's on his sites RapStation.com and SlamJamz.com where he actually sells MP3's. Chuck D has decided to accept the future rather than stop it like the major players in the music industry.

The NYPress has an amusing article on working as a DJ at a strip club.

The story about the Republicans trying to shut down EnronOwnsTheGop.com lacks of taste from the Republicans. I guess the G.O.P. forgot about a little thing in the Constitution called the 1st Amendment Some people in this country seem to have no sense of humour.

TechReview.com has an article on the impact of blogs which it sheds a pretty positive light on blogs overall.

Blogger keeps eating my posts.

Dale Amon argues correctly that punk rock can take on the EU any day. He is right that there is no way the EU will be able to enforce the 83 decibel limit. This will probably be another uninforced law on the books that will be pulled out when the thugs, i mean government, decides they want to shut an establishment down.

Time Magazine has a great article on how farmers in Kentucky would like to grow hemp in Kentucky. Farmers have been pushed out of the tobacco industry by the wide effort to make tobacco illegal. I thought the administration cared about the "family farmers." Isn't that what all the farms subsidies are for? Wait, here's an idea let people grow what they want and they will not need lots of government handout.

The Rallying Point is right on track with his thoughts on Creed:

"...Someone please do something about Creed. Make them go away. I can't wait the 6 months until they're officially forgotten."

Brian Micklethwait says he backs drugs in the war on drugs but I one could say this is a statement that misinterprets the libertarian position. Most libertarians are against the war on drugs because they believe in the freedom of choice as well as other reasons.

I wonder if any ecstasy pills have been made since September 11th with an American flag emblem. It wouldn't be that much of a surprise.

I urge you all to sign this online petition calling for the end to the draft. (You don't have to be a libertarian)

Steven Den Beste points out that the 9th circuit has recently declared California's 3 strikes and your out law unconstitutional when applied to shoplifting. This was a good decision by the 9th circuit in my opinion. It must be remembered however that the 9th circuit is a little, eccentric in their decisions and their decision does not neccesarily lead to any precedent.

Kinsley resigns as editor of Slate (via Ken Layne

Update: Daily Pundit points out that the real story is that Kinsley will be starting a blog for Slate. The article cited above refers to it as "The Corner."

Surf the web WayBack.

QuasiPundit's Above The Fold has its own blog now. This site gives a good briefing from the major daily newspapers. Recomended daily reading.

Want a good wrap-up of the Blogs? Check out QuasiPundit's Blog Watch 2

The New York Times reports that Ohio Schools are going over a debate of evolution/intellgent design. This is a debate that will never be solved. I do not think that the government should be saying anything about creation, for or against. This is one of the many problems that government involvement in anything creates a debate over values. If the government were to get itself out of the education business, values questions like these would not exist. The more involved in everyday affairs the government gets, the more it winds up determining our values getting itself in conflicts of interest.

Versace must be copying hip-hop style for a reason.

"(W)e ought to be asking ourselves why corporations and interests groups are willing to give politicians millions of dollars in the first place. Obviously their motives are not altruistic. Simply put, they do it because the stakes are so high. They know government controls virtually every aspect of our economy and our lives, and that they must influence government to protect their interests.

Our federal government, which was intended to operate as a very limited constitutional republic, has instead become a virtually socialist leviathan that redistributes trillions of dollars. We can hardly be surprised when countless special interests fight for the money. The only true solution to the campaign money problem is a return to a proper constitutional government that does
not control the economy. Big government and big campaign money go hand in hand." -Ron Paul

I'm glad my President knows more about Cheetos and the Austin Powers movies than about Leo DiCaprio. Bush's aides should learn it is ok for the President to have a sense of humour. The administration seems scared to embrace the fact that Bush is, gasp, a real person.

A lot of the arguments for keeping drugs illegal are just idiotic. Drug war advocates that marijuana should be illegal, at the very least, because it is a gateway drug. I thought of another gateway substance which should be made illegal under the same logic: water. A very large percentage of crack and heroin users have had at one time or another used water before they went on to harder drugs. This argument I have made makes sense logically but that does not mean it is not an idiotic argument. Water should be legal and so should marijuana.

According to Davey D reports that Nas dissed The Roots, calling them hypocrites for backing up JAYZ on his MTV Unplugged session. Nas pointed out that not too many years ago The Roots did a video for "What They Do" where they made fun of the fast bling-bling style that JAYZ personifies. I think JAYZ has grown and matured though. His new album, The Blueprint is a lot closer to being a concious rap album than any kind of a gansta rap album. The Roots can criticise Jay-z for those things while at the same time respecting JAYZ as an artist. The real deal on the "What They Do" video was that they were dissing all kinds of rap cliches in the video as Black Thought pointed out on Hot 97.

Nas also dissed Roc-a-fella records for putting out "State Property" and said the movie was a step backwards and the era was over of walking around talking like gangstas. It almost sounds like Nas is going to become a concious rapper or something. What's going on? Some of this might be a reflection Nas has had after his long beef with JAYZ this summer.