Free kibbles

Great essay by Mark Steyn blasting Nancy Pelosi and liberals for using waterboarding as a political tool. Steyn is much better when he's blasting liberals than when he's defending conservatives.

President Obama resists John Kerry's desire to bail out newspapaers. Good for Obama. If there's one issue that shows liberals have no respect for the Constitution and American values, it's their desire to control the newspaper business like they now control Wall Street, banks and auto makers. Freedom of the press is so fundamental, it's in the First Amendment, and liberals hate that.

According to Rasmussen, only 32 percent of Americans are willing to pay higher taxes for government supplied universal health care. Whenever poll questions include the price of programs, the American people reject them. If those 32 percent knew how much damage they would be doing to their fellow Americans if their ideas became law, only a handful, the hardcore America haters like the Obamas, would still be for it.

Michael Steele's strategy for resisting gay marriage is to claim it would cost small business money for health insurance. This guy is a loon. Republicans have elected another idiot to lead them. Republicans should be arguing against employers being forced to supply health care for anybody, not trying to use oppressive government as an excuse for more oppressive government.

Denying firearms to known terrorists sounds like a great idea until you remember that Homeland Security considers anybody who wants to limit the power of the Federal government as a potential terrorist. That's always the problem with giving government any power - it always turns around and uses that power against the people. I don't want A.G. Holder determining who can and cannot buy firearms.

Hugo Chavez shutting down last TV station which has the temerity to oppose him. Democrats are taking notes.

Economic analysis explains why journalists deserve low pay and offers suggestions to change the newspaper business model to make more money for newspapers and reporters. I like the suggestions for how papers can make more money, but I think both authors, in the essay I linked at the original that author linked, hint at the root problem, but don't express it clearly. Newspapers regurgitate the news instead of adding value to it. The obvious example lately is article after article regurgitating Obama's speeches. Those articles don't add any value above the speech itself. What's missing from journalism, imo, is investigative stories, especially at the national level. I think that's why local news does so much better in newspapers than national news. I like the original author's ideas on specialization - the Houston Chronicle would be a natural for oil, natural gas, maybe all energy specialization. A section like that could add value and along with local news subsidize the rest of the paper.

On the declining value of a bachelor's degree.

Mises scholar calls Obama's foreign policy "empire with a smiley face". This foreign policy stance has been the boilerplate Democrat foreign policy for a century. It's amazing how much Obama's policies mirror Bush's, who's foreign policy was also boilerplate Democrat foreign policy. Obama is like Bush's bigger, meaner twin, but more skillful at reading and pretending to be moderate.

Mises scholar shows how Obama turns out to be just like Bush on Guantanamo, but he thinks that's a bad thing. I don't understand this desire people have to turn enemy combatants loose in our court system. Don't these people think about the consequences? Do they really want 100,000s of thousands of foreign troops in our civilian court system in the next big war or do they have such hubris that the think that no future enemy could every seriously threaten us? We should all hope for the best, but insuring the best happens requires we plan for the worst. There's nothing libertarian about giving enemy combatants lawyers. It's foolish no matter what ideology you champion. It's literally giving aid to the enemy. To remain a free country, we have to win our wars, and we should fight them as effectively as possible.

Obama endorses indefinite detention without trial for some detainees. No way. There is no way this can be allowed. This is truly frightening, and clearly unconstitutional (unless we have indefinite war, which we cannot allow either).

"Following the military defeat of the Tamil Tigers, the talk now is of employing democratic means to address Tamil concerns. That goal could be tested, however, by a growing number of young expatriate Tamils who have become radicalized by the oppression of Tamils in Sri Lanka."
Maybe they should have tried employing democratic means before they tried 26 years of civil war. Radicalized by oppression? They're fellows have been waging civil war. Naturally, the response was oppressive. Talk about blaming the victim. Sri Lanke has to resettle the Tamil refuges ASAP or risk terrorism.

This entire article on a homegrown American terrorist cell fails to mention they are Muslims.

Congress rebuffs Obama on closing Guantanamo. Obama is already transfering an al Qaeda operative who helped bomb US embassies in Africa from Guantanamo to New York for trial. Those bombings occurred in 1998, before we declared war on al Qaeda, so it makes sense to try him for those instead of subjecting him to military tribunal. One out of seven detainees released from Guantanamo return to terrorism. That's lower than I would have expected.

Markets are showing signs of Bernanke's destruction of the dollar. More signs - China and Brazil want to use their own currency for trading instead of the dollar.

Mises scholar suggests the resounding rejection of yet higher taxes in California was the first shot in a new tax revolt. It's definitely the first tangible result of the same movement that powered the Tea Parties.

Liberals give more commencment speeches than conservatives.

Congressmen call for Obama to use bailout funds to bailout black broadcasters, but not white ones. Unbelievable that such overt racism is accepted in America.

Obama wants to borrow $100 billion more from China to give to the IMF for welfare.

I'm glad to see 5 of these cops have been fired for beating this unconscious man.

The WSJ calls Pharaoh Obama's new mileage standards nuts. Great Pharaoh plans to get away with this by destroying the dollar and restricting domestic energy development, which will drive gas prices well over $4 per gallon again. More on the damage that would be caused by Obama's mileage dictates.

This questioning of Lord Geithner shows why central planning can never work. This guy is a wannabe dictator, just like his boss.

I should have known that the Federal government would have a regulatory czar. The Russians approve.

Chrysler creditors filing suit to stop Chyrsler's preprepaired at the point of Obama's gun bankruptcy.

Obama flip-flops and releases bailout money to California.

The farcical nature of government never ceases to be on display. To stall Obama's tax and trade bill, Republicans are threatening to have the entire bill read aloud. It seems to me that every bill should be required to be read aloud before every committee and floor vote already. But Democrats are prepared to deal with this delaying tactic by having a speed reader on hand who can read the bill so fast, nobody could understand him. This is nothing but a stupid power game to these aristocrats, and they make first graders on the play ground look mature by comparison.

The Heritage Foundation lists the tremendous costs of Obama's tax and trade scam. Reason calls for the tax and trade scammers to stop lying about this scam costing nothing and creating jobs.

Air quality improved significantly under the Bush administration. That's because air quality is driven by wealth, not government regulation. The richer we are, the more clean we demand our environment to be. Obama wants to make us poorer, and the environment our health will suffer for it.

Illegal border crossings are down by 27 percent, but for the wrong reason. Our failing economy has reduced the economic incentive, and that's a bad thing.

Mises scholar contrasts Austrian perspective on dealing with recessions with Keynesian proposals. He also analyzes past recessions from a private sector only perspective and shows how the Keynesian approach has created 3 American super-recessions - periods of recurring, strong recessions: 1907-1921, the Great Depression from 1929-1945, and Great Stagflation from 1970-1982. Based on this analysis, he predicts we're entering America's fourth super-recession. The problem is, this time we also face the far bigger problem of the collapse of Social Security and Medicare and of our credit rating at the same time. On the plus side, our economy is far bigger and more diverse than it was during any of these previous periods. I didn't realize Rothbard had independently developed my contention that every dollar government spends costs us twice that amount.

UK is in danger of losing its credit rating. Wonderful.

John Stossel reports that Medicare is unsustainable and a Ponzi scheme.

Michael Barone says the India election increasing the majority of the pro-American Congress party creates a tremendous opportunity for the US to develop closer ties to India.

Obama goes back on promise to renegotiate NAFTA. Obama failing to deliver on a campaign promise? I'm shocked.

Card check is stalled. For now.

Obama's head henchman Rahm Emanual is caught up in Blagojevich corruption. Sounds more like he was a victim in this case.

Tax. Tax. Tax. That's all Democrats can think about to pay for their health care boondoggle.

Using stimulus money to hype the stimulus. I bet none of these signs say "Government seized this money from you and your children to pay for this project, leaving you without money to buy food and clothes for your family. Tough crap for you."

Democrats have always been masters at playing word games to fool the American people, but Obama has taken "rebranding" to a whole new level.

It looks like Dick Cheney upstaged Obama today. That can't be good for Great Pharaoh, being upstaged by one of the most unpopular politicians in recent history. It feels weird to be on the same side of an issue as Dick Cheney, but on this issue, he's right. The worm has turned on this Guantanamo thing, and it's going to bite Obama and Democrats in the ass. They can't get rid of this issue to push their radical agenda now. You got to give Cheney credit for not allowing Obama to run roughshod over him like he's run roughshod over everybody else. He kept this debate focused on the effectiveness and results of the techniques while straightforwardly denying they are torture. Unlike every Republican in power, he didn't run scared from Obama. Note to Republicans. As I tried to tell John McCain, the way to best Obama is to take him on head on with clarity and intelligence on the substance of every issue. Don't back down. Don't cede any ground. Dick Cheney gets it. Newt Gingrich gets it. Why can't Republicans in power get it?

Reason recommends that greedy government aristocrats in need of more money to buy votes should legalize drugs, prostitution and gambling to tax them. Reason doesn't want to let this crisis go to waste either. Doing the right thing for all the wrong reasons.

"The U.S. administration is confident that Pakistan will not use a planned sharp increase in U.S. aid to strengthen its nuclear arsenal, U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said on Wednesday." I am not comforted by Hillary's confidence.