State of the ULTRASOUND

Posted on 27. Jan, 2010 by OHC in United Kingdom

Cato has published a blog wish list ahead of Obama’s first State of the Union address tonight. Obama’s first year in office was crap. Absolutely crap. The only redeeming feature is that he’s been so crap that he hasn’t been able to impose Obamacare on America. If he implements these simple policies, we promise his second year will be a lot better:

1. Abandon Obamacare
2. Forget Cap and Trade
3. Reject the Card Check Bill
4. Withdraw from Iraq and Afghanistan
5. Legalize Drugs
6. Scrap the tax code and replace with a flat tax
7. Expand free trade and immigration
8. Stop the bailouts
9. Cut spending
10. Cut spending
BONUS – Cut spending

Can’t say fairer than that! We bet you anything Obama doesn’t listen to a single one of these policies. But that’s the downside of being so frigging ultrasound.

Rhyme-off of the century

Posted on 26. Jan, 2010 by OHC in United Kingdom

Freddie Von schools Maynard Keynes in the rhyme-off of the century. No prizes for guessing which side gets our vote. Or the vote of reality. But maybe the fact there are no prizes on offer is why the politicos never pick it…

Breaking news: Poll puts Tories 14% BEHIND!

Posted on 12. Dec, 2009 by OHC in United Kingdom

14% behind the libertarians in Alberta, that is! We called it here a month ago, but we’ll just say it again: Canadian libertarians are really sticking it to their leftist and social conservative rivals.

Check out the most recent poll from Alberta. There, the libertarian Wildrose Alliance looks set to boot out the Progressive Conservatives (Ed: not the good kind), who have grossly mismanaged the economy (Ed: that is, they tried to manage it).

The surging Wildrose Alliance party would form the next provincial government in Alberta if an election were held tomorrow, according to a new poll of decided voters that gives the right-of-centre party a double-digit lead in popular support over the long-ruling Tories.

A new Angus Reid Public Opinion survey of 1,000 Albertans suggests 39% of voters would cast a ballot for Danielle Smith and the Wildrose Alliance.

The fledgling party is pulling away from Premier Ed Stelmach’s Progressive Conservatives, who were tied with David Swann’s Liberals for second place with the backing of 25% of decided voters province-wide, according to the poll.

39% for a new party? 14 points ahead of the party that’s been in government for 38 years? That’s what happens when Conservatives turn to the Red Tories.

Good Charlotte Gore

Posted on 01. Dec, 2009 by OHC in United Kingdom

So it looks like the Lib Dems’ socialism has finally got to poor Charlotte Gore. She, alas, is one of the last few good Lib Dems left. It was always going to be an uphill struggle to persuade a left-wing grassroots to accept free markets, but they made a decent stab at it.

Along with Mark Littlewood stepping away from party politics to head up the IEA, it looks like the Lib Dems are liberty-less. Hopefully, we can move on together to form a truly freedom-based movement around a Conservative government, and let the Lib Dems rot into an appendage to Labour.

You know, Sara, if you’re feeling lonely tonight in the Lib Dems… there’s always the Conservative Party.

Clutching at straws

Posted on 03. Nov, 2009 by OHC in United Kingdom

Tory Bear highlights Obama stumping for Jon Corzine in a desperate attempt to save the corrupt governor from defeat in a neck-and-neck race in New Jersey. In recent days, Obama, Bill Clinton, Joe Biden, and just about every other top-draw Democrat has poured into the Garden State to help save the former banker’s political skin.

But whilst it’s not the only race today, it’s the only one the Democrats stand a chance of salvaging any respectability from. In Virginia, which voted for Obama last November, the Republican gubernatorial candidate holds an 18-point lead. In a stunning upset, New York’s 23rd Congressional District is set to be picked up by the Conservative Party, having been vacated by a moderate Republican. And New York City will surely confirm quasi-libertarian former Republican Michael Bloomberg as its mayor the the third time, sparking yet more rumours of a presidential run in 2012.

His health plan are tattered, and his candidates soon to be scattered, once-invincible Obama is now clutching at straws.

The right winning – where it goes libertarian

Posted on 02. Nov, 2009 by OHC in United Kingdom

ConservativeHome has posted an excellent piece about the ‘pussy-footing’ Conservatives in Canada. Whilst the Tories have had a minority government since 2006, they’ve done very little in power since then, or their renewed election victory in October ‘08. Result? There might as well not be a Conservative government at all!

But we at KeepRightOnline don’t think all is lost. Out in Alberta, PM Stephen Harper’s oil-rich and virtually tax-free home province, the Progressive Conservatives are dominant, but are being pressed from the right by the erstwhile Wildrose Alliance. The battle for the leadership of that party was won by the libertarian (and pro-choice) Danielle Smith over the social conservatives – proving that the right-wing in Canada isn’t as beholden to the religious lobby as the Liberals would like you to believe.

As a result, it’s not nearly as likely to ostracise itself as the religious right did the GOP down south of the border – and stands a good chance of actually winning outright the next general election. Actual conservatives in charge? Now that’s an idea.

Danielle Smith: the future of Canadian conservatism?

The libertarian rap

Posted on 22. Sep, 2009 by OHC in United Kingdom

Those that remember the Young Cons’ rap will be pleased (Ed: really?) to hear more political rapping from the right side of the tracks, in the form of I Own Me, a libertarian rap by Neema V. Explicit lyrics warning, etc.

Sound, and definitely pretty sick compared to the Young Cons. But that suit and tie in a rap video? Nah, mate…

Glenn Beck converts to libertarianism?

Posted on 21. Sep, 2009 by OHC in United Kingdom

Fresh from his success in spearheading the 9/12 Project marches that rallied up to a million people to the streets of Washington DC, Fox News megastar Glenn Beck continues to go from strength to strength.

On his radio station a few days ago, Beck apologised to libertarians for his wayward ways, acknowledged the importance of limited government back in America to achieve American foreign policy objectives, lambasted American ‘imperialism’, and really broke up the monopoly that interventionists have on Fox News’s top line-up.

We all want the same policy outcomes: we want our people to be as prosperous as possible and as free and safe as possible, from both our enemies overseas and our government back home. The best way to do that, we believe, ought to be debated, rather than cast into left vs right, MSNBC vs Fox, Lib Dems vs the world terms.

At the very least, if the neo-conservatives win that discussion, their actions will have a greater legitimacy. If converts like Glenn Beck do, perhaps we’ll be freer, safer, and more prosperous as a result. What do you think?

Bucking(ham) the trend

Posted on 17. Sep, 2009 by OHC in United Kingdom

More political news that slipped under the blogosphere radar last Sunday comes from an unlikely place: the Sunday Times University Guide.

Yeah, yeah, we all know who tops the list: Oxford, Cambridge, Imperial, UCL. None of that should come as a surprise to anyone. But there’s one new entry in the charts at #48: the University of Buckingham.

Why is that a political story? Because it was set up under the aegis of the Institute of Economic Affairs as a libertarian experiment, was fostered by Margaret Thatcher when she left Number 10, is still staffed overwhelmingly by free marketeers, and remains the UK’s only private university. And they receive not one penny of government funding.

Any chance those free market folks at the university will be backing Farage?

Despite not taking government money, the rankings reveal:

• It has the highest student satisfaction in the country.
• It has more faculty per student than any other university.
• It has the lowest graduate unemployment rate in the country.
• It has the top record for preventing student drop-out.
• It is the only university to complete degrees in two years.
• It takes over 90% of its British students from the state sector.

Those rankings are pretty frigging cool, especially when you consider Buckingham received 0 for research, because it didn’t participate in the rating scheme. If it received the same for research as the university just below it (Brunel), it would have finished twentieth! And all for zero cost to the taxpayer.

And, yet, some people are still harping on about top-up fees as if they harm universities and student experience. Now do they believe us? The free market in education: we’ve seen the future, and it works.

Nailing our colours to the mast

Posted on 07. Sep, 2009 by OHC in United Kingdom

Spurred on by those doyens of soundness at the Libertarian Alliance, Jonathan Isaby asks readers if a libertarian can also be a Conservative.

We think the question is rendered the height of absurdity by discussing who grassroots members call their political heroes, most of whom are libertarians: Baroness Thatcher, Dan Hannan, Boris Johnson (Ed: enough said). Whilst those that think libertarians have no place in the party can pour their adulation on Ted Heath, the Wintertons, and John Bercow. Lucky them.

The free market is certainly no longer all that unites the party. Since David Davis’s stand last year, we haven’t heard a Conservative member sincerely advocate NOT rolling back Labour’s authoritarianism. And, particularly amongst young members, the permissiveness and acceptance of other peoples, belief systems, and lifestyles is dominant. If Michael Rock, Patrick Sullivan, and Christian May be for it, who can be against it?

Despite the laudable (but limited) attempts by Liberal Vision to turn the Lib Dems away from socialism, no other major party offers hope for libertarians. Thus, we’d go as far as to say that, if they want to be taken seriously politically, libertarians have no other option but to be Conservatives.

Keep Conservative, and Keep Right.

Unleash a libertarian revolution, my Conservative Comrades!