Free kibbles

The movement of people who don't believe that Obama is a natural born US citizen, birthers, is gaining steam. Press Sec. Gibbs was forced to refute the claims again today, but every time he does so, he gives the movement more credibility. Gibbs claimed that Obama has proved his citizenship multiple times and had released an official document on the internet proving his citizenship. Both comments are lies. The unofficial document posted on the internet by Obama proves nothing. If Obama had nothing to hide, he could have produced an official document for judicial and expert review. Obama either refuses to do so or cannot do so. He's offered no other evidence of his citizenship except hearsay comments from allies. Obama is hiding something. I don't know what it is, but it's devastating to him. Congress should pass a law demanding all national candidates in all future elections prove they meet the constitutional requirements for office. Note to Gibbs: there is no more important issue in the US than following the Constitution - the rule of law.

Hawaiian official claims Obama's birth certificate is real, but in doing so forces Americans to wonder why Obama won't produce it. His statement is meaningless. We have no idea if he's lying or has been mislead or misinformed. Producing a certified copy of a birth certificate for examination by experts would end this discussion, but Obama won't do it.

Darth Hammertime.

Barack Obama: Putting the Rx in Marxism. How funny. I don't know where this came from originally, but I got it from Boortz along with a great quote explaining why our health insurance is so expensive:

"David Gratzer, a physician and senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute, says that regulation is in fact our biggest problem with healthcare. Here's a peak:

"Take two very different states: Wisconsin and New York. In Wisconsin, a family can buy a health-insurance plan for as little as $3,000 a year. The price for a basic family plan in the Empire State: $12,000.
The stark difference has nothing to do with each state's health sector as a share of its economy (14.8 percent in Wisconsin as of 2004, the most recent year for which data are available, and 13.9 percent in New York). Rather, the difference has to do with how each state's insurance pools are regulated.
In New York State, politicians have tried to run the health-insurance system from Albany, forcing insurers to deliver complex Cadillac plans to every subscriber for political reasons, driving up costs. Wisconsin's insurers are far freer to sell plans at prices consumers want.
The gulf in insurance-premium prices among American states is a sign that too much government intervention--not too little--is what's distorting prices from one market to the next."

"

It's just that simple. The solution to the problem of high insurance rates and the large number of uninsured Americans is to get government payments, subsidies, regulations and mandates out of our of health care business. Knocking down trade barriers between the states, the barriers to competition that keeps prices so high in big government states like New York, would make this health insurance issue a non-issue. We should go further and than that though, and completely extract government from our health care business to obtain the highest quality care at rock bottom prices.

Boortz also breaks down the ranks of the uninsured. Many are illegal aliens. Many are young people who think they are immortal. Many are between jobs. Many are eligible for Medicare and Medicaid. Few are people who want insurance but can't afford it.

Great essay by John Stossel highlights the arrogance of lawmakers who think they can redesign one sixth of the US economy by August. Redesigning our health care sector isn't hard, but it will work a lot worse. Making it work better through central planning is impossible no matter how much time it takes.

Pelosi thinks she has the votes to pass Obama's health care oppression plan. Fortunately the Senate doesn't.

As usual, stupid Republicans are trying to compromise on health care, i.e. team up with Democrats to take our money, our rights and our power from us. With leaders like this, who needs enemies? I'm glad Hatch withdrew, but why was he trying to compromise in the first place? You can bet those two Maine senators are involved.

House health care proposal included provision for lawyers to file suit against third parties in injury cases on behalf of the government without permission from the government. That's the opposite of tort reform.

"It gets worse. Language in the bill would permit the lawyers to file at least some sorts of Medicare recovery actions based on "any relevant evidence, including but not limited to relevant statistical or epidemiological evidence, or by other similarly reliable means." This reads very much as if an attempt is being made to lay the groundwork for claims against new classes of defendants who might not be proved liable in an individual case but are responsible in a "statistical" sense. The best known such controversies are over whether suppliers of products such as alcohol, calorie-laden foods or guns should be compelled to pay compensation for society-wide patterns of illness or injury."

This is amazing. Fortunately Republicans stripped this provision from the bill for the time being.

Contrary to Obama's lies, his health care plan will harm small businesses.

Regulator on congressional mailings is censoring Republican mailings to favor Democrats.

Peggy Noonan offers and insightful analysis from a political point of view of why Obama's health care oppression is failing. Too bad this quality from her has become so rare.

Thomas Sowell describes how Obama uses distractions to mislead the people into supporting bad policies.

CNNMoney (yeah that CNN) lists 5 freedoms Americans would lose under Obama's plan including the freedom to keep your own plan and the freedom to choose your own doctor. That's health care oppression, not reform.

Robert Murphy predicts that government spending will double as a percentage of GDP over the next decade. He predicts monetary policy will be worse. What a disaster.

"If fiscal policy is a disaster, monetary policy is even worse. Unfortunately, the issues here get very complicated, and so it’s difficult for the layman to know whom to trust. Not only do left-wingers like Paul Krugman say that we need more inflation, but even (alleged) right-wingers like Greg Mankiw are saying the exact same thing. With all due respect, those guys are crazy."

How's Krugman's monetary policy working out for Zimbabwe?

St. Louis Fed president wants plan to control inflation, but Bernanke and the others aren't interested.

Cato calls for Bernanke's ouster, which is great, but spouts nonsense about the global savings glut. Global savings is a great thing because it provides a pool of money for investment. Low interest rates resulting from high savings are not our problem. Artificially low interest rates coupled with irresponsible fiscal policy are our problem.

"[Bernanke's] obsession with slaying the Great White Whale of Deflation provided intellectual cover for the Fed's ignoring and contributing to the housing bubble."

That's for sure. It's like Bernanke wanted to create a crisis so he could go down in history as having saved us from that crisis. At best, Bernanke's crippled by fears of deflation like the Bush administration was by fears of another terrorist attack. At worse, Bernanke's evil, and he's trying to burn the country to the ground. Either way, I doubt it will end well for him or us. It's unfortunate this essay implicitly supports the Fed and it's role as central planner of our economy coming from a supposedly libertarian think tank. This is hugely important observation:

"That is not ambiguous is that the Fed, under Bernanke, has transcended monetary policy and bank supervision and gone into the world of fiscal policy. Over the course of the financial crisis, the Fed more than doubled the size of its balance sheet, from under $900 billion to over $2 trillion. Just as important, the Fed greatly shifted the composition of its balance sheet, from almost exclusively Treasury securities to a mix of various assets, including over $500 billion in mortgage-backed securities. Congress has over the years established a variety of lending and loan-guarantee programs, from mortgage insurance to small-business lending programs. Every one of the Fed's 14 new lending facilities could have been created by Congress and administered by an executive-branch agency. Unlike the panic-driven bailouts of AIG and Bear, these lending facilities were not created as one-off responses to fix a single crisis."

Under Bernanke, the unaccountable Fed has become a parallel government. Think about it. Congress need never pass a bailout law again. The FDIC is obsolete. No need for silly political battles, finding a consensus, following the will of the people and accountability. Like a good tyrant, the Fed does it all without the muss and fuss. Don't forget that the Fed chief can remove the management and boards of financial firms if he wants, as we learned when Paulson threatened to have Bernanke remove Bank of America's management and board if it didn't buy Merril Lynch like Paulson ordered. We need to kill this monster.

The Federal Reserve deserves more authority like an arsonist deserves more matches.

Fred Barnes made an interesting observation Special Report tonight. Obama has united Republicans in a way nobody thought they could be united this quickly, and he's divided Democrats. Just like Bush did on the other side. We keep electing the worst possible candidates.

On a related note, Romney and Huckabee are leading Republican potential candidates. These are two big-government Republicans, neither of whom supports freedom, in the mold of George Bush. The two parties are the most anti-American organizations in the country. We'd be better off if the communist party was running against the anarchist party because neither are dominated by aristocrats.

On another related note, the majority of the country feels we're going in the wrong direction. The majority of the country felt we were going the wrong direction during the Bush era too. The people were right then, and they're right now because both parties are parties of big-government and enemies of freedom, personal responsibility, severely limited government and the tremendous prosperity that accompanies that.

I still can't get over Obama's idea, leaked by Clinton, to allow Iran to develop a nuclear bomb, arm our so-called allies in the Middle East in response and extend our nuclear umbrella over those countries. If you wanted to instigate a nuclear war in the Middle East, this plan would be about the best way to do it.

As if they haven't done enough damage to Michigan especially minorities, state Democrats want to raise the minimum wage to $10 and put even more people out of work.

Ailing couple married 54 years commits suicide together.

I don't see the big deal between intelligence agencies briefing the entire intelligence committees or the gang of 8. This isn't a case of "shut up and trust the executive branch." The gang of 8 are briefed. What exactly what does Cato think will be gained? It hints that it fears the gang of 8 might not blow the whistle on illegal activities, but it bases that on the bogus claim that Bush's CIA did illegal interrogation. We have no evidence to support that claim, and there's no reason to believe that briefing the entire intelligence committees would improve the operations of the CIA, but there's ample evidence that more intelligence would be leaked to our enemies because that's happened many times before. I would love to see every congressmen briefed, but those idiots can't be trusted to keep the information from our enemies. Cato also makes the bogus claim that the president had no power to wiretap suspected terrorists even though the declaration of war against al Qaeda gave him that power.

I never liked data mining emails, but that's been going on since the Clinton administration at least. And the debate should be honest. You can't blame just Bush, and you can't claim email is private. Every email is immortalized on computers all across the country. So what's the argument for stopping the government from data mining it? I also don't understand the secrecy about CIA operatives assassinating al Qaeda leaders. Killing the enemy is the goal of war. Why should that be secret? I'm sure al Qaeda was aware American forces were trying to kill them, so that was being kept secret from Americans, not al Qaeda. Cato should recognize the Constitution does not divide power to wage war. It places that power solely in the hands of the president, and everything discussed here is about waging war. Cato conveniently neglects to mention that.

Any intellectually honest libertarian criticism of the war on terror must call for revoking the president's Constitutionally granted war powers, not pretend they haven't been invoked or are limited by Congress.

Obama's failure of leadership on trade policy is allowing the US to slip toward protectionism.

Cato breaks down the numbers on not very high speed rail, and we don't want to pay $1,000 per taxpayer for somebody else to ride 58 miles.

"Not only will you pay $1,000 for someone else to ride the train, that someone probably earns more than you."

And these trains are bad for the environment:

"The Department of Energy says that, in intercity travel, automobiles are as energy-efficient as Amtrak, and that boosting Amtrak trains to higher speeds will make them less energy-efficient and more polluting than driving."

Like everything else government does, this isn't about transportation or the environment. It's about power. It's about taking money from us by force for aristocrats to buy votes.

I never understood how the White House could claim its visitor logs were private. That house is the people's house.

Obama staffer accuses the CBO of overestimating costs and underestimating savings. Yeah. Show me one instance where the CBO overestimated the cost of a government program.

Taxing gold-plated health insurance plans. What a lovely idea. If you make enough money to buy something nice, something special, you get to pay a nice, special tax. That'll make people want to work extra hard to get rich. This is robbery. These crooks are so shameless, they actually publicize their theft.

So now taxpayers are paying for the pension plans for the UAW's Delphi workers.

Obama eases lobbyist restrictions. This is another distraction anyway. The lobbyists are not our problem. The aristocrats are our problem. The aristocrats are selling our money and our power to the highest bidders. Naturally, when money and power is for sale, buyers will appear to buy it. When we take back our money and power from the aristocrats, they will no longer have it to sell, and the lobbyists will go away.