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Little Republican Party History

Protectionist, big government "New Deal" type policies, are a few apat descriptions of the original elephant party. The Republicans of Clay and Lincoln resemble the Democrates today, so is it any surprise that it appears that the Republicans are returning to their roots???


The flurry of laws, regulations and bureaucracies created by Abraham Lincoln and the Republican Party during the early 1860s is similar to that of Franklin D. Roosevelt’s “New Deal” for their volume,scope and questionable constitutionality. In fact, the term “New Deal” was coined in 1865 by Daniel Elazar, a newspaper editor in Raleigh, North Carolina, with the objective of putting Lincoln and the Republican Party platform in a favorable light and persuading North Carolinians to rejoin the Union. Protectionism was Job One for the early Republicans. They passed the Morrill Tariff, which raised levies on manufactured imports to extremely high levels. The policies of the early Republicans, like those of their presentday counterparts, yielded large budget
deficits.

How, then, did the Republican Party gain the reputation as a free-market, limited-government party? In part, because Democrats upped the ante with the anti-market policies of Roosevelt’s New Deal. Another reason is that historians confused Republican support for the cowboy capitalism of the 19th-century robber barons with pro-market policies. But allowing a free market in government favors is hardly the sort of laissez-faire policies
favored by free-market economists or libertarians.

Fatboy Slim - Weapon Of Choice

Check out the link, just cause it is kind of cool. A Stick Figure Nija project.

Wired News: Burning Man Never Gets Old

Another piece on burningman, the reason I am not in LA this weekend, tanks to one of my friends attending the event. After reading all about it, I can't wait to hear the stories. Plus I am just delaying my trip to LA till later in the month.

Ask any participating "burner" what Burning Man is, and you're likely to hear the same response: The event is more than the sum of its art cars, kinetic sculptures or suntanned bodies clad in body paint and glitter (and sometimes not much else).

You just have to experience it in person, they always say.

"I can't explain it," replies Dimitri Timohovich, the licensed pyrotechnician responsible for the burning of the Man, who has as an entertainment industry pyro-effects day job in Los Angeles. "It's what you make of it. I just enjoy going out there, seeing all the cool stuff and doing the show."

Electronic Frontier Foundation co-founder John Perry Barlow has been making the yearly pilgrimage since 1997.

"The important thing about Burning Man is that it is the most experiential phenomenon I can think of," says Barlow. "It can't be turned into data in any useful way. You can't informatize it by blogging it, filming it or taking pictures of it, because so much of it can't be translated into information."

Burning Man volunteer Jim Graham isn't fazed when he hears the event derided by some as "Girls Gone Wild" with extra helpings of sand and drugs.

"Any time someone makes that kind of generalization, I say 'Yeah! It's exactly like that,' and smile. In the beginning, I came for the spectacle. Now, I come back for the opportunity to interact with so many people who possess such mind-boggling creativity."