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Posted on 08.25.10 by Thomas L. Knapp
Update, 08/26/10: Thanks to longtime RRND/FND supporters JM (whose $25 contribution yesterday got us to our $2,083 fundraiser goal), TH (whose $20 was icing on the cake), and to Jon Jay Ray who contributed $100 yesterday … for the second time this week! You’ll notice that I used one person’s full name. I normally identify our contributors by initial only on the assumption that unless they say otherwise they’d prefer to remain anonymous. However, Mr. Ray dropped me a line allowing as to how he’d be willing to donate another $100 above and beyond what he’d already sent if I’d mention to y’all that he runs Gun Watch (gunwatch.blogspot.com), an excellent source of news on armed self-defense. I immediately added Gun Watch to our sidebar links and stuck a text ad in the “sponsors” section of our email edition templates. These are things I’m happy to do on request for any of our financial supporters (the text ads on a “space available” basis); and I also let Mr. Ray know that I’d be happy to mention his site whether he sent another $100 or not. And then he did it anyway. So it should go without saying that we think a lot of Jon Jay Ray around here. Visit his site! Ladies and gents, this fundraiser is OVER. We’ve received $2,203 in value returned for the freedom movement’s daily newspaper, $120 more than our goal. Thanks to all of you who helped out, and I’ll shut up about fundraising now until AT LEAST October - TLK —– It’s that time again … fundraising time. I’m taking the “one swell foop” approach and putting up a fundraiser for the entire 3rd quarter of 2010, set to put at us at the $1,000/month revenue target I’m always mentioning. At present, our “subscribing contributors” — those of you who send us something each month, from a buck to $20, and we love you guys (click here to become one!) already have us at nearly 1/3 of the way to target: $305.50 per month, $916.50 for the quarter. That leaves us $2,083.50 short of the goal, and ChipIn doesn’t do partial dollars, so I’ll take a 50 cent pay cut and call it $2083. As usual, I’ll ping you with daily updates and quote all kinds of interesting statistics, etc., until this thing ends. It ends — the graphic comes down, this fundraising appeal stops topping your daily edition every morning, etc. — as soon as we make the goal. Here are some quick statistics to get the ball rolling: - If we make our revenue goal of $1,000 a month, myself and my fellow editors will take home about $4 an hour. - RRND/FND has a total of 3,915 email subscribers, 3,456 Twitter followers, 1,176 social network members/subscribers, and probably somewhere upward of 2,000 daily web readers (in June, RRND averaged about 1,400 unique visitors per day; I don’t have web stats for the ISIL Freedom News Daily page). Going with only the verifiable web numbers, that makes for an estimated total of 9,947 readers of RRND. Let’s assume huge overlap (people who follow us on Twitter and get the email, or follow us on Facebook and visit us on the web, etc.) — call it 33.3x%, reducing the number of individual people who read RRND/FND each day by 1/3 to 6,631 (and a third of a person; sounds painful). All those stats boil down to this one: We’re trying to shake each reader down for a whopping 15.x cents per month, 47.x cents per quarter, $1.89 per year. Keep that in mind if you think that your contribution would be “too small to matter” (or if you’re one of those who has actually apologized (!) for “not being able to send as much as I’d like”): If we got a little less than two bucks a year out of each reader, you’d never have to fidget through these damn fundraisers. So … let’s get over that line ASAP so that I can get out of your face, and thank you in advance for supporting the freedom movement’s daily newspaper! Yours in liberty, Filed under: Feature Articles and RRND News and Twitter-Worthy | |
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Posted on 07.03.10 by Thomas L. Knapp
For more information: Wrights forms presidential exploratory committee BURNET, Texas (July 4) – R. Lee Wrights, a former Libertarian Party national vice chair and the editor and co-founder of Liberty for All online magazine, announced today he is forming an exploratory committee to lay the groundwork for a possible bid to seek the Libertarian nomination for president in 2012. “The Libertarian Party faces a critical test in 2012 and I want to make sure that we’re up to the challenge,” Wrights said. “The Libertarian message in 2012 must be loud and clear – Stop the Wars! Stop the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, stop the war on drugs and alternative lifestyles, stop the war on civil liberties.” Wrights said that it’s time to stop supporting politicians, regardless of party, who don’t even come close to fulfilling their campaign promises. “President Obama was elected on a platform of ending the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan,” Wrights said. “Instead of supporting the troops by bringing them home, he has sent thousands more young men and women to die needlessly to prop up a corrupt government in Afghanistan.” “Now he’s wavering on his promise to bring the troops home by July 2011,” Wrights said. “He calls the war in Afghanistan a ‘war of necessity.’ It is no such thing. It is unnecessary, irresponsible and a dishonor to the founding principles of our republic.” The president has also reneged on his promise to reverse the trampling of civil liberties which began under the Bush Administration. “He’s done just the opposite,” Wrights said. “He’s expanded federal power to invade our privacy and curtail our rights. He might not call it the ‘war on terror,’ but President Obama still uses 9/11 as an excuse to justify voiding the Bill of Rights.” Wrights said he is most appalled by the way the president turns every issue he faces into a war by labeling anyone who opposes him as an enemy. “Not content with just warring with the Republicans in Congress, the president has turned the Gulf oil spill into a war on oil companies. He’s used the financial crisis, which was largely caused by government regulation, interference and incompetence, to continue waging war on banks and financial institutions,” Wrights said. “Even after his major victory in ramming through a massive health care bill which imposes federal government bureaucrats into our most intimate and personal health care decisions, President Obama continues to wage war on insurance companies and health care providers,” Wrights said. “Now, he’s opened a new front in Arizona over that state’s attempt to deal with an illegal immigrant situation his administration has failed to address.” “Where will it end?” Wrights asked. “Is anything or anyone safe from being labeled an ‘enemy of the state’ and incurring the wrath of the federal government’s war-making power?” Wrights pledged that 10 percent of all donations to his campaign will be given to the LP for ballot access. “Whoever is the 2012 Libertarian nominee for president, we must take our message to all 50 states and our message must be clear and unequivocal – Stop the Wars,” Wrights says. -30- Filed under: Feature Articles and Twitter-Worthy | |
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Posted on 07.02.10 by Thomas L. Knapp
Guest Column by David Fanelli The 4th of July is a dedicated day of remembrance. A day not only to remember the sacrifices our forefathers endured to free us from the yoke of tyranny, but also for us to recall how significant our Declaration of Independence and Constitution were for all of humanity. These documents, even with all the flaws of human nature self evident, were the strongest declaration of individual freedom ever created. Because of the freedom these documents provided, America became the wealthiest nation in the world. Look at us now. A people in fear of their government, a government that has striped away our freedom, and makes us fear being kidnapped and tortured for any form of dissent, a government that places itself above the rule of law, but takes 1200 pages of legal mumbo jumbo to explain to its citizenry its Health Care policy, a government that no longer listens to the wishes and hopes of its people, a government that creates for its people a reputation for oppression and injustice internationally that makes us all ashamed, a government which feels no shame in indebting our children and our children’s children to the few making vast profits from war. A government that totally disregards the wishes of its citizenry only does so thru tyranny and although their attempts to shred our most sacred documents has been aggressively blatant, our Constitution and Declaration of Independence still stands. All Americans need to recall one of the most profound messages contained in that document which reads:
Well, we tried to do this thru elections and it hasn’t worked. Perhaps it is time to try what the French people did to their government, after we successfully overthrew the tyranny of England. Now I’m not suggesting, this 4th of July, we place guillotines on the steps of Congress or the White House lawn; our consciousness has grown, ever if their’s hasn’t, over the past 200 years, and would not allow us to behave in such a barbaric manner. So perhaps “A Water Boarding Setup” would be appropriate. I mean it’s not like it’s torture or anything, right? Just a little fun and games, for those who oppose our wishes, by voting against our best interests. People should not be afraid of their government, governments should be afraid of their people. Filed under: Feature Articles and Guest Columns and Twitter-Worthy | |
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Posted on 06.07.10 by Thomas L. Knapp
Regarding the oil spill, which is totally dominating our lives right now. Follow this link: http://www.wwl.com/View-all-12—Spill-Cam—video-feeds/7381402 This is the link from WWL radio to all 12 robot cameras being used by BP. As you can see, oil is GUSHING out in humongous amounts. The federal government gave a lowball figure of 12,000 to 19,000 barrels a day gushing out of the well. Then, BP puts this cap on and claims they are getting 10,000 barrels a day. If all these numbers were correct, there would be a noticeable diminution in the amount of oil that we see. But, in fact, for those of us who are living this shit every day, we cannot tell ANY difference in the flow. There are several possibilities: 1) Our eyes deceive us. I pick #3. It is entirely possible that BP is getting 10,000 barrels a day from their cap. But there is no way in hell that well is putting out only 17,000 barrels a day. Independent analysts have reported they believe as much as 100,000 thousands barrels a day is coming from this well. If this is the case, then BP is retrieving only about 10% of the oil that is gushing out. I believe that such a rate is a total failure. BP and the government are totally scamming the media. Here in South Louisiana, we aren’t buying it, not for one damned second. Please don’t send out stories with these idiotic numbers, or at least put in an editorial blurb. These flow rates are complete and utter bullshit. Elizabeth Higgs editor’s note: We try not to make a habit of buying government or corporate promo numbers here at Rational Review. I’m posting this letter from one of our readers/supporters for our readers’ benefit and so that I have a handy link reference to append to our future links to stories related to the spill - TLK] Filed under: Guest Columns and Twitter-Worthy | |
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Posted on 05.24.10 by Steve Trinward
I’m really empathizing with Rand Paul these days. Thanks to a comment he made to Rachel Maddow on MSNBC last week (one apparently in line with a similar observation before the Louisville Courier-Express Editorial Board back in April), Dr. Paul may have endangered his chances of being the next U.S. Senator from Kentucky, despite his victory as GOPer in Kentucky, a state that hasn’t had a Demoncrap in the Senate since… Wendell Ford retired in 1999. (Thankee, Wikipedia; I’d thought it much further back!) When asked about his opinion of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, prohibiting discrimination against Black people by ANYONE – including restaurants, bars, hotels or other establishments serving the public, Dr. Paul made the mistake of assuming some degree of enlightenment on the part of his interviewer(s). He said that, although he supported the intention of that legislation, as well as the main of its results, he was concerned about the encroachment it represented on the First Amendment right of individuals to freedom of association, encompassing as it did the PRIVATE sector of both business and housing. The comment, while perhaps somewhat ill-advised politically speaking, was (I believe, as does Dr. Paul seem to, if you bother to read his follow-ups) delivered with the honest intention of provoking serious consideration of the limits of government power in the lives and conduct of peaceful citizens in this alleged free republic. It was emphatically NOT intended to present Dr. Paul (or his supporters) as “racists” or as bigots in any sense of the term. Unfortunately, thanks to the mainstream-media jackals (at both ends of the alleged political spectrum?), the comment was presented in exactly that way. Ms. Maddow (sadly, in this writer’s estimation, since she often does show promise, in spite of her biases and agendas) chose to pursue the more unsavory implications of the statement, rather than to consider the larger questions involved: (1) how far should the scope of government extend into the lives of peaceful individuals? (2) should not the First Amendment apply to even the most distasteful opinions, as well as those we approve of? (3) Is enforcing equal treatment truly equivalent to creating equal opportunity? That’s the gist of the Rand Paul situation. Why then, you may ask, do I feel such empathy with the man? I take you back, some 30-plus years, to 1977. I was at the time not only a Libertarian Party (of Mass. mostly) activist, heading for San Francisco as a delegate to that year’s LP National Convention (back then they happened pretty much every year). In addition, I was also Managing Editor (by title; Editor in Chief by actual duties, assisting the semi-literate Publisher) for a biweekly Boston tabloid by the name of Esplanade. This periodical served the Boston gay community, covering entertainment both local and regional, promoting gay-community businesses and boasting a staff of writers and photographers who created a variety of features both verbal and visual. I was mostly in charge of overseeing that lot, as well as penning my own feature articles, interviews, reviews and most of the paper’s editorials. Filed under: Feature Articles | |
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