Free kibbles

North Korea launches rocket. US and allies respond with harsh glares. That'll show 'em.

The US, population 300 million, commits 21,000 additional troops to Afghanistan. The rest of NATO, the EU population is 500 million, commits 5,000 additional troops. That 5,000 is considered a big deal. Why isn't it obvious to every thinking person that NATO is waste of US resources?

Obama's economic adviser Larry Summers received $5 million last year from a hedge fund and made $2.77 million more speaking to Wall Street firms. Wall Street loves Democrats, and Democrats love Wall Street, and Wall Street got its money's worth for all the tribute it paid to Democrats. The accomplice press just lies and lies about it.

Mises scholar's criticism of the FairTax is basically that it's a tax. It's a shame he can't get past that point and do an analysis of the FairTax versus the Flat Tax versus our current income tax. We can't teleport from where we are today to a system with no taxes. There has to be a path to get to a small government that has no taxes, and we need real proposals to get us there. This criticism doesn't help. The FairTax offers a far bigger lever for libertarians because any president who passed the FairTax would have tremendous political capital because of the tremendous boost to prosperity that would follow passing it to dramatically cut the size and scope of government.

This is an impressive story of an amazing bank owner who saw the entire financial collapse coming, stopped making or buying loans in 2004, sold off assets to get a lot of cash, and is now buying up bargains like crazy. Needless to say he was hassled by regulators for not following the bad behavior they wanted him to follow.