Free kibbles

The FDIC, because it undermines the responsibility of bank customers to investigate the health of their bank, is exacerbating the financial problems of bad banks, and as a result the FDIC doesn't have nearly enough money to cover impending bank failures. Guess who's going to get stuck holding the bag again?

"The assets of those troubled banks total $220 billion, while the FDIC's deposit-insurance fund has fallen to $13 billion. Not to fear: the Treasury Department tripled the FDIC's line of credit to $100 billion in preparation for more losses. So, including the line of credit from taxpayers, the FDIC has just over two cents of reserves to cover each dollar it is insuring.
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'Americans seeking high yields on their money are causing deposits at struggling banks to mount in seeming lockstep with their troubles. The result is that banks that should fail are sticking around longer, making the cleanup when they do more costly.'
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Problem banks desperately need deposits to stay afloat and thus they pay the highest rates, "and many people apparently either don't know about the [bank's] troubles or, more likely, don't care," Condon writes, because the FDIC has committed to covering deposits within its insurance limits."

During the recent bailouts, Americans came to realize that privatizing profits and socializing losses is a bad thing. But the only function of the FDIC is to socialize losses of bank costumers while leaving the profits privatized. That's all it does, and that's all it has done for nearly a century. It's a permanent bailout. The FDIC is bad for business and bad for America.

Man with 21 kids.

Of these five arguments Karl Rove says Republicans must make to stop socialized medicine, only the fifth one will be effective, and only if it's phrased better. Do you want a health care cop standing between you and your doctor?

And the big winners in Obama's health care boondoggle - lobbyists.

Cato looks at RomneyCare in Massachusetts, which is just about the same thing Obama is proposing, and shows how it has failed to do what was claimed and is leading the state into full socialized medicine. You can't tell Romney apart from Hillary on health care, yet Republicans almost nominated him as their presidential candidate. Cato says health care reform must empower customers to reduce costs.

Analysis explains how government health insurance will put private health insurance companies out of business, which is exactly what Obama intends.

Americans aren't that interested in overhauling health care.

45 percent of Americans want Obama's stimulus boondoggle canceled immediately. Absolutely. Only 36 percent disagree.

44 percent of Americans say the Constitution doesn't put enough restrictions on government. Only 10 percent say it's too restrictive. Wow. Anti-government sentiment is growing fast.

Unions in major debt after spending so much to elect Obama, and another way Obama is rewarding them is cutting back enforcement of rules requiring unions to make their finances public. Obama loves his corruption (otherwise known as politics as usual in Chicago), and he's doing whatever he can to assist his supporters to be more corrupt.

GM's success hinges on a political strategy. In other words, if GM can manage to wrangle subsidies and waivers on regulations forever, GM will "succeed". Otherwise, it will fail. But politics has been eating away at GM for decades.

"The company never has been able to launch a model or close a factory without weighing the political consequences. It can't control its dealer network because dealers are a powerful interest group in every state capital. GM cannot market a car without first knowing how regulators will treat it for fuel-economy purposes, so GM can know how many it can afford to sell (if it's a big car) or how many it must sell (if it's a small one).

Most of all, GM cannot sit down with the UAW without knowing that Democratic politicians, on whom GM relies for help in Washington, will only be satisfied if the UAW (with its power over the re-election hopes of officeholders all over the upper Midwest) is satisfied."

The threat of a strike is bad enough, but political pressure comes to bear even before a potential strike, and it's a 1000 worse if there is a strike. But however badly government damaged GM in the past, it will do worse now.

Charles Krauthammer praises Foxnews and thanks his wife.

New York State Senate Democrats act like spoiled little children after losing a leadership vote. This is the kind of people we elect to power all over the country at every level of government.

The head of the TARP oversight committee still doesn't know if TARP is working. I know it's harming Americans because it's based on borrowing $700 billion and taking that money and interest from Americans by force to pay for it.

I keep saying that we should plant more trees. Trees scrub our air and produce oxygen, which is kind of important. Now Purdue University shows that the American chestnut tree, a hardwood that grows unusually fast, provides an excellent carbon sink. If Al Gore and his fellow frauds were serious about reducing atmospheric CO2, they would be pushing programs to plant more trees - chestnut trees - instead of trying to force us into poverty with their oppressive policies.

Obama is forcing US soldiers to give terrorists captured in Afghanistan Miranda warnings. Next he'll have US troops running around with CSI kits and getting shot while trying to collect evidence. Will somebody please explain to Obama what a war is and how to win one? Great video showing Obama mock Sarah Palin for claiming he would make the military read terrorists their rights. According to Special Report, Gen. Petraeus says FBI is delivering the Miranda warnings and only in limited cases.

Attacks in Afghanistan highest since 2001. Trying to replicate the Iraqi surge in Afghanistan sounds foolish to me. Why are we there anyway? We kicked al Qaeda out of Afghanistan.

WHO calls the swine flu a pandemic. Apparently the criteria to call a pandemic is remarkably low.

Obama's tax and trade scheme is devastating for farmers and therefore devastating for our food supply. Obama doesn't care. It's all about power and punishing Americans.

Sotomayor couldn't compete on a level playing field with her peers and needed affirmative action to get into Princeton. Not only is she lawless and dishonest, she's also not very smart. This is Obama's vision for all of America.

Why is this Holocaust Museum shooter still in the national news? All that does is inspire more freaks to shoot up places. The best way to quash his white supremacist lunacy is to get it out of the news.

In part 3 of Cato's three part commentary on the GM deal, Cato explains that Obama can't let GM fail but GM can't succeed, and explains one way government harmed GM for decades:

"But the government has never been good at inducing carmakers to produce vehicles that people want to buy. If anything, government policy has encouraged auto producers to make vehicles that people don't want to buy. Fuel efficiency standards have induced producers to make costly, high-mileage vehicles over the years and sell them at no profit or at a loss because of limited demand. Accordingly, government policy is one of the reasons for GM's collapse."

Yet another Cato scholar says we should just allow Iran and North Korea to become nuclear powers and be nice to them. I don't get it. Why are they more afraid of an unlikely conventional war, unlikely because a war would cost both regimes their power, than nuclear blackmail or a nuclear holocaust?

John Bolton analyzes potential consequences of an Israeli strike on Iranian nuclear facilities. It looks like Obama refuses to take responsibility for stopping Iran from getting nuclear weapons too.

Reason explains why the Second Amendment applies to the states.

US Chamber of Commerce launches campaign to promote capitalism. About time.

Americans' net worth fell $1.33 trillion in Q1.

Thomas Sowell describes the dangers of doing nothing, especially while pretending to do something.

Congressman William Jefferson is finally on trial four years after the FBI caught him with marked money in his freezer.

Dennis Prager highlights some of the positive statements in Obama's Cairo speech. Good for him. These need to be acknowledged for a rational analysis of the speech.

CIA still believes bin Laden is in Pakistan.

Another article wonders how dumb Obama thinks we are.

In a great essay, Pat Buchanan slams Obama as the anti-Reagan for his derision of America. Every time Obama goes overseas and opens his mouth, he makes it obvious he hates America, and that's why he's intentionally as much harm to Americans as he can.

The right did remarkably well in Europe because those who voted understand we're in the predicament we're in because of big government.

"But how is it possible that the European right is doing so well—and so much better than their U.S. counterparts—during what is widely described as a crisis of global capitalism?"

Widely described by the liberal mainstream media, but nobody who uses their brain falls for that baloney. If we had had a parliamentary process in America, we'd have certainly empowered a small government party after the big government destruction of George Bush. But because the 2 parties have a monopoly on our political process, we have virtually no political freedom, we didn't have that option. So to punish Republicans we ended up with the most damaging, biggest government president in American history.

How the Fed has painted itself into a corner just like it did in the 70s.