Free kibbles

Job losses continue to rise contrary to what the "experts" keep telling us. Isn't it funny how none of them have yet to admit they aren't nearly as expert as they pretend?

California pays bills with IOUs. Naturally the IOUs went to taxpayers instead of the leeches in government. This is unbridled liberalism in action.

Private health care is booming in Canada. Yet liberals want us to emulate Canada's socialized medicine system, and it's on the verge of being forced down our throats. We have to be the stupidest people in the world. We just have to look to Canada to see how bad socialized medicine is, yet we've empowered a bunch of weirdos to force it on us anyway.

Obama is trying to cut the price of his health care plan below $1 trillion, thinking voters will go for it then. Since Bush and Obama made us numb to spending hundreds of billions, he may be right.

How liberals and labor unions pressured Wal-Mart into supporting mandating businesses provide health care coverage.

Germany is lowering its income tax to spark the economy. It's smarter than we are.

More on the Honduras counter-coup. And more on Obama's reaction to the counter-coup. Both these articles make the case that the Obama administration is hypocritical for involving itself in Honduras politics but not Iran's politics, but this shows these writers have yet to understand Obama - who is 100 percent consistent. Obama always supports tyrants over freedom and the rule of law. To understand Obama, just imagine we elected Vladimir Lenin. If you ask yourself "What would Lenin do?", you'll understand what Obama will do. Honduras interim government shuts down programming at broadcast stations friendly to ousted president. Not a smart move for a government trying to illustrate its legitimacy.

How Al Franken stole the senatorial election in Minnesota.

"While Mr. Coleman's lawyers demanded a uniform standard for how counties should re-evaluate these rejected ballots, the Franken team ginned up an additional 1,350 absentees from Franken-leaning counties. By the time this treasure hunt ended, Mr. Franken was 312 votes up, and Mr. Coleman was left to file legal briefs."

The Republicans better figure out how to stop Democrats from continuing to do this. You'd a think they would have learned after Florida in 2000 and Washington in 2004.

Now Obama wants to escalate the border war by sending the National Guard to patrol our southern border. Apparently escalating the war in Afghanistan isn't enough for him. What's really odd about this is that illegal immigration has virtually stopped because our economy is so bad. If Obama really is the strong man, and every week it seems more likely he is, this is just preparation to use troops against Americans as the secessionist movement and economic protests grow.

Vice-President Biden, who famously wanted to split Iraq into three countries and a man never known for consensus building, is now going to oversee political reconciliation in Iraq. That makes about as much sense as a cow having wings. You have to wonder if this isn't an attempt to sabotage success in Iraq, but that doesn't help Obama. Maybe it's just Obama's stupidity showing.

Michael Jackson fans committing suicide? I wonder if this is true. Maybe if it's only 12.

Interesting take on Madoff's punishment. While I agree that Madoff is no threat anymore, any work he did would be monitored to the tiniest detail, I disagree that his life is over. I have no doubt that some firm somewhere would still find value by hiring Madoff and hiring somebody else to shadow his every movement. I think a better punishment would be just to take all his income for the rest of his life over a subsistence level for restitution. That way he could be a benefit to society instead of a burden as Tucker suggests.

The Declaration of Independence declared independence from big British government, but our government is more oppressive than the British government at the time.

"But what was at the heart of many of their complaints and grievances against King George III were the economic controls that limited their freedom and the taxes imposed that confiscated their wealth and honestly earned income.

The fundamental premise behind the mercantilist planning system was the idea that it was the duty and responsibility of the government to manage and direct the economic affairs of society. The British Crown shackled the commercial activities of the colonists with a spider’s web of regulations and restrictions. The British government told them what they could produce, and dictated the resources and the technologies that could be employed. The government prevented the free market from setting prices and wages, and manipulated what goods would be available to the colonial consumers. It dictated what goods might be imported or exported between the 13 colonies and the rest of the world, thus preventing the colonists from benefiting from the gains that could have been theirs under free trade.

Everywhere, the king appointed various “czars” who were to control and command much of the people’s daily affairs of earning a living. Layer after layer of new bureaucracies were imposed over every facet of life. “He has erected a multitude of New Offices, and sent hither swarms of Officers to harass our people, and eat out their substance,” the Founding Fathers explain.

In addition, the king and his government imposed taxes upon the colonists without their consent. Their income was taxed to finance expensive and growing projects that the king wanted and that he thought was good for the people, whether the people themselves wanted them or not."

Sounds awfully familiar.

On a related note, author claims Americans had it better before we declared independence. But he didn't mention that Britain is even worse today. Just because the Constitution has been abandoned by our government doesn't mean it's a failure. The failure is of the people, not the document.

This essay prompted me to post my recent thoughts on hereditary rule versus our system of I've been thinking that maybe hereditary rule isn't so bad after all. In a system of hereditary rule, the only people who can become aristocrats are those born into that system. They are educated into a system that reminds them every day that if they ruin the lives of their subjects, their subjects will rebel and cut off their heads. This puts some limits on their abuses. And statistically speaking, the worst people in the country will be excluded from government because they are most likely in the general population, not the aristocracy.

In the US form of government, anybody can become an aristocrat. And since government by its very nature attracts the most power hungry, selfish, narcissistic, greedy, mean and nasty people to it, it attracts people with personality traits similar to serial killers. That means we end being governed by the worst people in the country, people who could never gain power in a system of hereditary rule.

I'm not advocating a system of hereditary rule, but I am advocating abolishing aristocrats, professional politicians, in the US.

A movement in Briton calling for abolition of the Bank of England is smarter than Americans too:

"Leaving a team of 'wise men' to set interest rates is absurd. Market forces will always do it better.
...
Interest rates are simply prices for borrowing. As with all prices, they should be determined by supply and demand in a free market. When they are fixed by a wise man, or by a wise committee, they no longer carry information about the preferences of consumers and the scarcity of resources. On the contrary, no matter how wise the dictator, interest rates set by diktat are sure to be a kind of misinformation, leading those who act on them into error.
...
The role of central banks means that, at its core, we did not have a free market financial system. We had a command economy."

This article does a fabulous job explaining interest rates and why they should be left to the market. This guy offers a more easily understood explanation of central banks, interest rates and what created the current credit crisis than any I've read even at mises.org. The sole function of central banks is to manipulate interest rates based on political influences instead of economic influences, and that's why central banks can only do harm to our economy.

Yet another study shows patents don't promote innovation.

Great parody of Mark Sanford. You know in general, Republicans resign after they're busted and Democrats do not. Eliot Spitzer was a Democrat exception that highlighted the rule. Mark Sanford is the Republican exception, so he deserves this.

Foxnews has 10 out of 10 of the top rated news shows. They were already kicking the other networks' butts. As good as Karl Rove was for Democrats, Obama is for Foxnews.

Helen Thomas may be a died in the wool liberal, but I appreciate her blasting Obama for staging news events and townhalls.

The House trade and trade bill admits that it will cost Americans jobs in a section allowing Social Security and Medicare to tap funds in the general pool to cover the lost revenue from those lost jobs. The tax and trade bill also has an entire section marked as reserved, i.e. to be written later. The House passed a bill that has yet to be completely written. These Democrats are unbelieveable. Where does the Constitution give the House the power to pass a bill that hasn't been written?

Article contrasts glowing coverage of Obama's golf trips to critical coverage of Bush's golf trips. "Can Obama make you better in bed?" I don't know because I'm not enough of a loser to read that article. As sad as that article must be, it only got published because there's an audience for it, which is far sadder.

Cato shatters Obama's claim that he "actually would like to see a relatively light touch when it comes to the government."

Senator convinces regulator to bail out bank he started and which has all his savings in it.

Obama's Sec. of misEducation was a terrible director of Chicago schools.

Ostensibly replacing a fuel tax with a mileage tax is to keep revenue up as cars get more fuel efficient, but that could be done just by raising fuel taxes. I think this movement is really about government wanting to look inside every car.

Americans are just now noticing the Democrat party is too liberal? Better late than never, I guess.

One of 11 questions Cato wants Obama to answer about his health care proposal:

"You have said, "Making health care affordable for all Americans will cost somewhere on the order of $1 trillion." Precise dollar figures aside, isn't that a contradiction in terms?"

Part of another question:

"Should the government have launched its own software company to compete with Microsoft?"

Too funny.

Cato gives us the skinny on the 46 million uninsured claim, and reminds us that it doesn't matter how many are insured, government has no business getting involved.

Cato says the US government should stay silent on Iran's elections. Of course, but we should not stay silent while the Iranian government shoots protesters in the streets. That was Obama's mistake.

Alarmism about swine flu won't go away.

Ann Coulter says Sotomayor ruled to the left of Ginsberg in the Ricci case overturned by the Supreme Court. Why am I not surprised that Sotomayor worked for an activest group tied to ACORN?