Free kibbles

Because Obama ran roughshod over corporate bond holders of GM and Chrysler, the bond market has collapsed. Investment firms suggest buying corporate bonds, but who would take that chance? If Obama gives you the thumbs down, you go broke. You can't invest in an environment like that.

Because of the relentless encroachment of government in the auto industry year after year, decade after decade, GM files for bankruptcy. Surely management and union leaders share in the blame, but it was the use of force by government that finally made it impossible for GM to survive. (US unions are a product of government force granting them the power of coercion.) The New York Times refuses to acknowledge the root problem.

What the government aristocrats said would never happen, could never be tolerated, was in fact orchestrated by the government. While many of us said GM bankruptcy was inevitable and government should not get involved, government officials perverted the system so they and their union buddies could steal GM from its owners. Obama's attack on bondholders and banks corrupted this bankruptcy into a lawless affair that left stockholders, bond owners and every creditor but the government and UAW holding the bag.

This is the kind of stuff you see in Nazi Germany or modern Venezuela, and we should have never allowed it to happen in the US.

When Lord Geithner assured Chinese economic students that their investment in US bonds and the dollar was safe, the Chinese students broke out in laughter. The rest of the world is pointing at us and literally laughing as our government destroys us. We are pathetic, and we did this to ourselves by electing the same to destructive parties every single election. We have to stop allowing these aristocrats to pretend we're free, because they're giving a freedom a bad name just like Bush the destroyer of free markets gave free markets a bad name.

Jonah Goldberg recounts a wonderful insight from Albert Jay Nock that very people seem to understand:

“Man tends always to satisfy his needs and desires with the least possible exertion.” And for Nock, the state is the foremost instrument of Epstean’s Law, allowing powerful men to feed off the creativity, productivity, and labor of others under the veneer of legalisms. Every state, according to Nock, was born in conquest and exploitation. In other words, the state “claims and exercises the monopoly of crime.” This is why Nock had such contempt for businessmen claiming the language of free enterprise even as they petitioned and cajoled the state into rigging the system in their favor: “The simple truth is that our businessmen do not want a government that will let business alone. They want a government they can use.”
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There’s a reason the 19th-century progressives referred to it as the “God-State” (a term borrowed from Hegel): They believed that it was the sole agency for material and spiritual redemption. But Nock understood that the state is not the “proper agency for social welfare, and never will be, for exactly the same reason that an ivory paper-knife is nothing to shave with.”

I talk a lot about the religion of liberalism and how liberals, and conservatives in response, have undermined religion by projecting the government as the solution to all our problems in the way people used to look for religion. It's not an accident I call President Obama Pharaoh Obama. But I had no idea that the original progressives, modern liberals, had gone so far to call the government the "God-State". No wonder they're so hostile to religion. This is a great essay, but it's bizarre how at the end Goldberg asserts that statism has been reversed. Apparently Goldberg doesn't recognize statism when it's practiced by Republicans, only Democrats. Apparently Nock is more libertarian than Goldberg.

I remember this documentary of the Waco massacre, but I'm going to watch it again. This is a reminder that guns don't kill people - governments kill people.

Mises scholar analyzes the costs of tax and trade legislation and shows that supposed benefits are nearly non-existent.

Here's how Obama will destroy the car industry - by giving tax breaks to car companies that the government owns but not the others. The same is going on with Wall Street. Look for this in other industries where the government nationalizes companies.

After being proved fantastically wrong with their prediction of a strong solar cycle 24 a couple years ago, NASA has finally revised it forecast to a weak cycle. Only government could take that long to acknowledge the obvious. Fortunately, a couple of cycle 24 sunspots have shown up, so maybe we won't have the inactivity and associated frigidity of the Dalton Minimum. But some scientists have already predicted that solar cycle 25 will be 30 to 50 percent stronger than cycle 23, which would be impressive. But the cooling effect is taking its toll already as the growing season in Canada has been shortened. Freeze warning in New York. Wattsupwiththat blasts the MIT claim that the planet could warm by 7 degrees Celsius by 2100.

Kofi Annan admits that UN report claiming 300,000 deaths from climate change per year already today is a sham.

Corporations support Obama's tax and trade scheme because the higher costs will stifle competition. Corporations always support bigger government and more government regulations because it gives the corporations more power, and they don't have to be accountable to their costumers any more, only the government aristocrats to whom they pay enormous tribute. Bigger government always means bigger, worse, corporations, but despite seeing it with their own eyes, liberals never believe that.

Yet another example of how Obama and his staff work to control speech, this time to limit criticism of his stimulus boondoggle. Obama's assault on freedom is breathtaking.

Sonja Schmidt from Pajamas Media takes on the media for its double standard regarding Elizabeth Edwards compared to Mark Levin, and she takes on Elizabeth Edwards herself for supporting John Edwards. She throws political correctness on the ground and stomps it to death in this video. Very well done. Since Schmidt is black, I predict the media will attack her mercilessly and try to destroy her in the future after she gains more audience.

Mises scholar blasts simplistic graphic purporting to show how Obama's tax and trade scheme will create jobs. This is another example of the broken window fallacy. Investment in carbon reduction technology mean less investment elsewhere, and since elsewhere is what the people want in a voluntary economy, the carbon reduction investment makes our economy less efficient, making us all poorer.