Free kibbles

North Korea fires 7 scud missiles that probably weren't meant to celebrate the 4th of July.

Foxnews suspects the same thing I suspect - Sarah Palin quit because she had to make money. The one thing that stood out in the part of her speech that I heard was that the cost of defending herself from liberal slander was a half million dollars. I suspect she intends to make a boatload of money and come back stronger than ever. Mark Steyn thinks the pressure pushed Palin into retirement. I hope I'm right, not Steyn. I would hate to think that she let the liberal slanderers win.

Jonah Goldberg itemizes the damaging, pork-laden policies Obama is trying to force down our throats.

Pat Buchanan asks, "Why are Obama and Hillary Clinton meddling in the affairs of a friendly country, to dump over a friendly government, to reinstate a friend of Hugo's, whose goal is to bring Honduras into his anti-American "Bolivarian Revolution."" If he really doesn't know the answer, he's an idiot. Obama is ideologically aligned with Chavez, Castro and Ortega. He's aligned with Iran's mullahs, not the Iranian freedom fighters. Obama hates America, he hates Americans other than his thug friends, he wants to do us harm, and he wishes he had the kind power to run roughshod over Americans that other tyrants have. We knew this before the election, it's obvious from Obama's record, and Obama relishes in proving it at every opportunity.

Naturally Paul Krugman calls for Obama to take more money from people by force to stimulate the economy because all the money government has taken so far and spent on the behalf of aristocrats has done such a bang-up job. Krugman is as much a blight on the Nobel Society as Arafat and Gore.

Lengthy essay on Lincoln, of which I've only read the first page so far, points out that Lincoln was neither a saint nor a monster, but a political animal. It makes the claim that only a supreme politician like Lincoln could have freed the slaves. When I read the rest of it, I want to answer the most important question that I've never heard answered about Lincoln: Was there a better way? To reform it: Did 600,000 people have to die to free the slaves? Funny how no other country with slavery had a bloody civil war to abolish it. That 600,000 men had to die to free the slaves in America and nowhere else defies reason. I think 600,000 died because Lincoln was the ultimate political animal. There's no evidence to support Lincoln fought the Civil War over slavery. He didn't make the Emancipation Proclamation until Sept. 22 1962, 18 months after the war started. Lincoln fought the civil war to preserve the government and power he worshiped over freedom and the lives of men. That kind of political animal is a monster. FDR fits that description as well. I look forward to reading the rest of this essay.

Japan considers abolishing money so it can set negative interest rates (i.e. set money of fire). The lunacy never ends.

Somebody besides me finally noticed the momentous import of the Sri Lanken military defeating the Tamil Tigers. Look for countries suffering from terrorists and insurgents to adopt the political strategy that enabled the military succeed - ignore the international community and fight to win. The US has sophisticated weaponry that enables us to kill the enemy while killing fewer human shields, but this writers advocacy of less sophisticated forces allowing insurgents to get away with human shields is wrong. That's the path to perpetual war. Beating and disappearing journalists should never occur, but if journalists go near the insurgents, but you can't avoid attacking enemy because journalists are with him. That's the way to perpetual war. And giving in to a holier-than-thou international community which isn't suffering perpetual war is the path to perpetual war.

Politicians decry the cost of doing nothing to grab power and expand government, but its rare anybody talks about the cost of doing the wrong thing. Reason analyzes some examples.

Christopher Hitchens argues the US should ban burkas. No.

Dick Morris is absolute right about this - only Republicans can save Obama from the consequences of his policies by compromising on him, and with the big-government Republicans especially in the Senate, they may very well do that.

In essay calling Obama's health care policy TonySopranoCare, author lists top 5 Obama lies about health care.

Pretty graph shows how insane the Fed has been.

Spoetzl Brewery in Shiner, Texas, maker of one of my favorite beers - Shiner - turns 100.