Free kibbles

MISC:

British company to build gravity tractor spacecraft to divert asteroids.

Free kibbles

ECONOMY:

Peter Schiff warns the worst is yet to come.

"Bernanke is being praised for avoiding a collapse in the financial system. While he has forestalled some short-term pain, he has in turn forsaken long-term gain. The "green shoots" that set the pundits alight are nothing more than the direct effects of massive monetary expansion. What we have is nominal growth in the unproductive service and consumption sectors. In short, Bernanke is being praised by the drug addicts for not cutting them off. But the thing about addiction is that the longer you stay hooked, the more deadly the withdrawal.
...
To get a sense of Bernanke's ultimate legacy, look no further than Argentina. Though many of the rich and powerful had moved their savings abroad, a currency collapse wiped out the middle class in that historically prosperous country. Is such an outcome worth the short-term comfort of avoiding the severe but temporary pain of unemployment and mortgage defaults.
Bernanke's re-nomination is a politically safe decision for President Obama, and at least Bernanke is a devil we know. However, this lack of a "change" for the better should squash any "hope" for a genuine recovery. If the Bush years were as bad as the Democrats claim, then it is curious that they are mimicking and magnifying the same mistakes. No one has been held accountable for a financial crisis that the professors, pundits, and politicians told us would not come. All the same players are running the game, always changing the rules so they stay on top. Real "change we can believe in" would be a return to our roots in the rule of law and a system of sound money – but it's hard to stay grounded when you're throwing money from helicopters."

Thank you Peter Schiff. How sick is it that the powers that be and their pundit mouthpieces ridiculed Schiff when he predicted this recession, and now those same powers that be and pundit mouthpieces are still ridiculing or ignoring him?

In Lew Rockwell interview, Robert Murphy compares Bush/Obama to Hoover/Roosevelt. I floated that comparison a year ago, and it's looking more apt every day.

HEALTH CARE:

Yet more on Ezekiel Emanuel, brother of Obama's Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel and Obama's adviser on health care oppression:

"Dr. Ezekiel Emanuel, health adviser to President Barack Obama, is under scrutiny. As a bioethicist, he has written extensively about who should get medical care, who should decide, and whose life is worth saving. Dr. Emanuel is part of a school of thought that redefines a physician’s duty, insisting that it includes working for the greater good of society instead of focusing only on a patient’s needs. Many physicians find that view dangerous, and most Americans are likely to agree."

With an intro like that, how can you not read it?

How to make using the toilet as expensive as health care in America. Too true.

POLITICS:

Of course now that Democrats are in charge, money is flowing to New Orleans. It was only those mean, evil Republicans led by George Bush that kept New Orleans from recovering. That undertone to this story is a crock. At least the article acknowledges that attempts at central planning were what held up progress and abandoning central planning ignited the boom.

"As a result [of Mayor Nagin's central planning failure], a legion of activists, residents and nonprofit organizations gave up on working with the mayor and instead launched their own recovery plans for New Orleans. Those efforts have become the backbone of the city's resurrection."

Everything positive about New Orleans's recovery from the day the hurricane hit has been done outside the government because government is an impediment to all progress.

GLOBAL WARMING:

It's 12:44 PM in August, and the temperature is 61 degrees. I have the door and windows open. I love global warming.

MISC:

For the first time in 54 years, Japanese voters kick out liberals and elect a party promising to reduce the size and scope of government. Let's see if it delivers. Liberals are being ousted all around the world by voters. Socialism is being rejected all around the world. Only in America, where Republicans governed like Democrats for 8 years, have liberals managed to take power and advance a socialist agenda. Of course in America, there is no major party that promises to reduce the size and scope of government. Both major parties are parties of ever-expanding government.

Cato makes case against software patents.

Ex-Israeli PM Olmert indicted on three charges of corruption. How come we don't indict every politicians in Washington on conspiracy?

Praising Ted Kennedy, done by both sides, is like praising a recently deceased bank robber for his wonderful technique and successful robberies. How hypocritical was Kennedy to have Obama hand deliver a note to the Pope before he died?

Golden parachutes for bureaucrats will sink us all.

Half of UK doctors refuse swine flu shots because they haven't been tested enough or because the swine flu is so mild.

It's hard to imagine any more blatant failure of government than the southern California wildfires year after year after year. Forest management is not that hard. Can you imagine a private company allowing its land to catch on fire year after year and burn down houses and kill people? It's unthinkable. Only government could be that incompetent.

These fires are not only a foreseeable event, they are a certainty. It's the responsibility of anybody who lives in this area to be prepared and deal with the consequences. Don't whine if your house burns down.

India about to complete a stealth fighter built mostly in Russia. That means Russia has stealth fighters too.

Stimulus Boondoggle in Dayton

I've written a lot about the wasteful construction projects in Dayton, so the least I could do is document them. Today, Sat. August 29, I took pictures of the major construction projects going on within a two mile radius of my house.

First is the Dayton View Bridge. I call this Dayton's bridge to nowhere. They tore down the old, one-way bridge from downtown about a year and half ago, and the new bridge still isn't finished. Neither the nice Main St. bridge upstream nor the nice Salem St. bridge downstream ever have traffic backed up, even during this construction. I'm sure the bridge will save a handful of commuters a couple of minutes of driving time each day, but that's not worth building a new bridge for. Note that nobody is working on the bridge and the heavy equipment, much of it not pictured, is idle.



Next is the Riverview Bridge. I'm no bridge expert, but I drove over the old bridge numerous times and walked under it even more, and I saw no problems with it. It was much newer than the Dayton View Bridge, which was still in operation when they tore it down. The area around the Riverview Bridge was ugly, and they're making it better looking, but that's no reason to destroy a working bridge. Note that nobody is working on the bridge and the heavy equipment, much of it not pictured, is idle.



This sign shows you when construction started and when it's projected to be completed.



Next is construction on the corner of 2nd and Wilkinson. Note that nobody is working on the project and the heavy equipment is idle.



Because of new buildings that went up at Monument and Main and across the street at 1st and Main, that one block of Main St. has been blocked by construction off and on for a year and a half too. But as soon as those buildings were done, the city starting tearing up five blocks of Main St. from Monument to 5th St. Main St. is the main drag in Dayton, and it's been under construction now for four months or so, and completely blocked to traffic for about two months.

This picture shows Main St. looking from 2nd toward Monument. Note that nobody is working on the project and the heavy equipment is idle.



This is Main St. looking from 2nd toward 5th. Note that nobody is working.



This is the view of 1st and Main from 1st showing how much trouble the construction causes motorists.



Here's the new bus terminal that runs from Main to Jefferson in the alley between 3rd and 4th. If somebody had asked me to invest in this project, I would have done so voluntarily.



There's tons of little construction projects on downtown corners. This is one of the bigger ones that had no equipment by it on the corner of 2nd and Patterson.



Here's a few other small projects with idle equipment.







Here's the Riverscape Park construction project with no workers and eight idle pieces of heavy equipment.



Like the Dayton View Bridge, the I-75 construction began before Obama's stimulus boondoggle was passed. Here's the I-75 Bridge construction with no workers and idle equipment.



The I-75 Bridge over N. Main St. No workers.



The I-75 Sound Wall next to McKinley Park. No workers.


I'm sure proponents of stimulus boondoggles would claim I cheated by taking these photos on a Saturday. Nobody works on Saturday. Leaving aside the fact that I was working on Saturday (I have an anti-government agenda, so I don't count), other people do work on Saturday. Here's a couple pictures of construction workers working at two downtown banks on Ludlow between Monument and 1st.





Here's a picture of some bricklayers fixing a private brick walkway along the river by Main St.



Note that none of these government construction projects have lights for night work either. I see some of these projects every day and most of them several times a week during the day and evening. In general, nobody works on them. Occasionally I'll see one or two guys doing some work on one or two of them. All the heavy equipment sits idle most days and most hours on the days it does get used.

It seems to me this is an example of government stimulus preventing the efficient reallocation of capital and labor (though maybe not much labor) to profitable business ventures that keeps us mired in recession. Not only that, government stimulus was intended to provide full employment, but despite all these projects, Dayton's unemployment rate is steady at 13.7 percent. Montgomery County's unemployment rate is slightly up at 12.5 percent. This illustrates to me that arbitrary government make-work projects can't create full employment because locales don't have the right mix of idle workers with the proper skills for the projects. And if for the sake of argument we accept that every one of the projects is worth the money being spent on them, because they're being planned and run by the government, they're inefficient and wasteful of resources anyway. I imagine that Dayton would look very similar if it had been the target of an air raid that targeted downtown bridges and streets. The city keeps tearing up more stuff without finishing anything it starts. It's more likely this is another example of the broken window fallacy.

Free kibbles

ECONOMY:

Atlanta Fed Chief reports the real unemployment rate is 16 percent. Sometimes we hear truth from power. But where does this claim that Obama is resisting calls for more stimulus come from? He was leading the charge.

HEALTH CARE:

Here we go again. Americans have to sacrifice for the good of the aristocrats. That's bass ackwards. It's about time we make the aristocrats sacrifice their power so we can live better lives.

Charles Krauthammer advises Democrats on how to pass Obamacare-lite. He's advising outright fascism (as opposed to the fascism-lite we have now). Thanks Charles. Krauthammer shows once again that he's another big-government conservative who would lead America to destruction just slightly slower than Democrats. We need to kill all versions of health care oppression and embrace health care reform by extracting government from our health care system.

So ABC turns itself into an infomercial for Obamacare a couple months back, but now, along with NBC, it refuses to run an ad critical of Obamacare. I'm sure liberals will see no bias here.

John Stossel explains how third party payer systems make it hard to control costs because nobody knows the prices.

Using social justice as an excuse to support Obama's health care plan illustrates that it's really a health care oppression plan.

I don't see why this is some kind of revelation. We know trial lawyers are big supporters of Democrats and therefore Democrats don't support tort reform.

Michael Tanner explains how the regulations in both the House and Senate health care oppression bills will force over 100 million Americans off of their current health care plans, contrary to what the Liar-in-Chief keeps telling us.

Reason highlights Obama's cynical manipulation of religion to sell health care. The left brutalized George Bush for less.

Explaining why US infant mortality rates are higher than in some other countries.

Now Democrats are going to want to mandate circumcision.

Obama is teaming up with special interests like the AMA and using Bush's divisive tactics to push health care oppression.

Ann Coulter takes on Democrats' health care lies and calls for more real, market competition. About time. Ann Coulter is a meticulous researcher.

"Tiny little France and Germany have more competition among health insurers than the U.S. does right now. Amazingly, both of these socialist countries have less state regulation of health insurance than we do, and you can buy health insurance across regional lines -- unlike in the U.S., where a federal law allows states to ban interstate commerce in health insurance.
...
It's the famous liberal two-step: First screw something up, then claim that it's screwed up because there's not enough government oversight (it's the free market run wild!), and then step in and really screw it up in the name of "reform.""

That's funny and accurate, but conservatives do the same thing when they interfere in the economy. They just do it slightly less than Democrats. Part 2.

"These are Trojan Horse bills. Of course, they don't include the words "abortion," "death panels" or "three-year waits for hip-replacement surgery."
That proves nothing -- the bills set up unaccountable, unelected federal commissions to fill in the horrible details. Notably, the Democrats rejected an amendment to the bill that would specifically deny coverage for abortions."

Pretty good.

WAR:

US troops are going to be more likely to kill the enemy than capture him thanks to Obama releasing them.

LIBERTY:

Australian criminologist calls for Australian government to force Australians to obtain a license before buying first computer. For their own safety, of course.

Congressman demands a constituent show ID before allowing him to speak at a town hall. That sounds like abrogation of rights to me, not that Obama's Justice Dept. would ever prosecute a Democrat.

POLITICS:

More corruption from Obama's Justice Department. Somebody please tell me how our government is different from a banana republic.

Charlie Rangel finds at least half a million dollars he previously didn't know he had. This guy is as corrupt as they come.

Here comes the pension plan bailout and seizure of 401Ks and IRAs.

You can't make stuff like this up, so I'm just going to quote it:

"A budget review released by the White House on Tuesday says that President Obama has “reoriented the Nation back to a path toward fiscal discipline” and then reveals that the administration is planning for the federal government to run cumulative deficits over the next decade of $9.05 trillion, meaning the average annual federal deficit will be $905 billion."

That's the audacity of the world's most successful liar. Only the world's most successful liar would say something like that and expect to get away with it.

Obama's new approach to the war on terror: release terrorists; attack interrogators. That'll be effective. Dick Morris says Obama is throwing his radical leftist base a bone. Holder's prosecutor is a special prosecutor. That means the genie is out of the bottle. Nobody has any control over him. This is going to dominate our politics for a decade, and the distraction will enable both our government and the terrorists to do far more damage than they otherwise would.

INFLATION:

The rise and fall of the US dollar. This makes it so clear.

MISC:

If replacing roads with solar panels was a good idea, private investors would voluntarily invest their own money in the project. Instead, the government is taking money from people by force to invest in it.

Brit wants to use taxes to destroy what he deems socially useless.

Of course it's absurd that the government could take a child from a mother because the mother doesn't speak English, but that's not an argument for legalizing illegal aliens. That's an argument against allowing birthright citizenship to the children of illegal immigrants.

The US Constitution does not prevent a state from establishing a religion. The first amendment specifically restricts Congress for doing so. The fourteenth amendment doesn't change that.

David Boaz suggests subject for a new book: Tax Tips for Democrats. How funny.

Robert Murdoch's son criticizes BBC for offering free news. Now I refuse to pay for news, and I enjoy reading the BBC, but Murdoch has a point: government subsidized entities offering free news can't be matched by the private sector and will kill the market for independent news producers.

Headline says Kennedy had to overcome own curses. Can you imagine mainstream paper writing a headline like that about George Bush? And George Bush didn't drown anybody. Or drop his pants in front of women (at least not while he was an elected official). But he won the presidency twice. That headline about Kennedy is just an apologist's view for a deadly creep who should never have been privileged with support from the Massachusetts people. Ted Kennedy was a disgrace to Massachusetts and America.

Cato calls to privatize the Postal Service.

The left's ugly history of racial violence. We're on the verge of seeing a repeat.

Manipulation of evidence in one case to support the Lockerbie case.

Reason pours cold water on fears of racism.

I strongly disagree with this sentence regarding interrogations from Reason,

"It seems clear that waterboarding, which involves both "severe physical or mental pain or suffering" and "the threat of imminent death," violates the federal ban on torture."

It makes me wonder if the author watched any of the same videos of waterboarding I've watched. No subject in any video I saw showed any signs of physical or mental pain or suffering and every one of them knew they were not going to die. If they hadn't known that, they wouldn't have volunteered. They jump right afterwards and rationally discuss the experience, obviously no worse off for it. Terrorists also know they won't drown from a little water dripping in their mouth. The technique takes advantage of the body's instinctual fear of drowning, nobody rationally thinks they're going to drown. Interrogators wouldn't be able to get info from dead terrorists. From what I've seen, there's nothing about waterboarding that meets the definition of torture.

The threat of imminent death part of the law seems stupid to me too, but it is the law, and it must be followed. According to this article, it's also illegal threaten the life of another. That's just ridiculous. Obviously those things shouldn't be allowed for criminal prisoners or enemy combatants following the Geneva Convention, but they are not torture and should be available for interrogators of terrorists. That law should be changed. But that's the future. No legal justification can circumvent the current law. I was just following orders is no defense.

Reason says we need a security warning system to warn us of threats from our government. No kidding.

Praise for Glenn Beck. Beck is doing impressive work. I only wish somebody had done the same for to Bush, but I think Beck has created a new genre. It just goes to show what I've always said - the people are crave in depth analysis, not superficial bull that the typical accomplice press gives us. He's doing the kind of stuff I've been saying needed to be done for 10 years. To all those people who claimed Americans didn't have the attention span for in-depth, meaningful news, Beck has proved you wrong.

Thomas Sowell warns of the consequences of externalizing every issue and advocates personal responsibility.

More on Obama's plans to seize control of the internet. Free speech in America is on the verge of being quashed forever. Naturally Rino Olympia Snow is a cosponsor.

"[S]ome wags have begun to wonder why a government that receives failing marks on cybersecurity should be trusted to instruct the private sector what to do."

Duh.

Free kibbles

HEALTH CARE:

The week Obama was inaugurated, I warned that he would probably cause the violent explosion of the Democrat Party.

"But only the most radical liberals will support Obama as our economy tanks. At some point Obama's attack dogs will turn on him. The knee-jerk response of the radical left will be to call anybody who criticizes Obama, even more moderate liberals, a racist. Liberals have called conservatives racists for so long that it's meaningless, but when liberals start calling each other racists again like they did in the primary, the country will either rise above knee-jerk accusations of racism and accept harsh criticism of Obama at face value or the Democrat coalition will disintegrate. Or explode."

That essay is well worth a second read if I do say so myself. ;) Now we have Democrat Rep. Pete Stark calling moderate Democrats "brain dead" only seven months after Obama was inaugurated. Obama's plan is working amazingly well. He wants to see the streets erupt in violence, and he's well on his way to making it happen. I like the term Medicoup too.

FEDERAL RESERVE:

Mises scholar blasts recently renominated Ben Bernanke on multiple instances of duplicity between his rhetoric and his harmful actions. Here's one:

"Bernanke's other primary goals included stable prices and moderate long-term interest rates. A focal point of his 2007 and 2008 opening remarks at the Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City's Economic Symposium, held at Jackson Hole, Wyoming, focused on price-stability maintenance. His press release of August 25 thanking President Obama for his nomination reiterated his desire "to help provide a solid foundation for growth and prosperity in an environment of price stability."
And yet the consumer price index (CPI) at the end of last year was 5 percent higher than the year before. It was the first time in more than a decade that the American CPI had increased on this scale. At the same time as inflation was increasing, Mr. Bernanke justified keeping the federal-funds rate low, even though this policy increases inflationary pressures. Nowhere was the conflict between Bernanke's previously sought-after goal of price stability reconciled with this newfound goal of financial-system stability."

Bernanke might just be the most dangerous man in America over the next four years.

INFLATION:

Mises's life experiences and inflation.

"Mises realized that inflation hurt some people at the expense of others. Those who were industrious, conscientious, and responsible, who worked hard and saved, were "losers," as the inflation eroded their savings. Those who borrowed to live beyond their means and spent lavishly were "winners," as they were able to repay their creditors with worthless paper money."

Sound familiar? In a natural economy, one based on voluntary exchange with sound money, prices slowly fall over time. Because humans get more efficient year after year and produce more goods and services with the same amount of labor, prices steadily fall in a natural economy. This is the natural economic response to human advancement and makes us all wealthier. So every year, people's savings become more valuable. Every year, people on fixed incomes become more wealthy. But because government perverts our economy and inflates our money supply, we suffer inflation and loss of wealth year after year. And not just the price inflation we can see, but we also lose the natural reduction in prices that would make us all wealthier.

Mises also explains the reason that communism must always end in totalitarian government by a monster:"Mises shocked his contemporaries with a book Socialism, in which he explained that if the Communists did away with private property, they would be unable to calculate and thus unable to plan production. In a Communist society, he said, in which all property was communally owned, the planners would have to rely on soldiers and hangmen to enforce their edicts.
Without private property, there would be no private owners bidding for goods and services, and no exchanges among real owners. Without private owners, each guided by the desire for profits and the fear of losses, there would be no market prices to indicate what people wanted and how much they were willing to pay for it. Without market prices, there would be no competition and no profit-and-loss system. And without a profit-and-loss system, there would be no network of interrelated, consumer-directed, independent producers. Without private property, competition, market prices, and a profit-and-loss system, the planners would not know what to produce, how much to produce, or how to produce it."

MISC:

Boortz thinks the Glenn Beck boycott will expand to include all major talk radio hosts. I don't think many companies are that stupid. A corporation would have to be run by idiots to wage economic war against Rush Limbaugh's audience. A few are. Most are not. Glenn Beck's advertisers will return soon enough too.

Free kibbles

ECONOMY:

Over 400 banks are in trouble, more than since 1994.

The Pleasures and Sorrows of Work in a recession.

MSNBC is excited that the economy only shrunk by 1 percent. Since Obama's in the White House, apparently this is good news.

HEALTH CARE:

Injecting abortion into the already passionate health care debate might make it incendiary and backfire on conservatives. Abortion protesters are the right's version of Code Pink. They have a long, ugly history of loosing their cool and turning violent.

This story sounds like a veiled political threat to me. Democrats claim that since Teddy Kennedy died and he was such a great compromiser, that the Democrats will force through a more radical health care bill bypassing the filibuster. I think that's hogwash. I think Democrat leaders always planned to force through the most destructive bill they could achieve with one or two Republican votes. This is just hot air designed to try and get those couple of Republican votes.

When I think of Ted Kennedy, I think of radical leftist. Not quite so radical as Obama, but close. Great compromiser doesn't come to mind, though I'm sure to senators, almost all of whom from both parties are more liberal than not, it seems that way.

Pass health care for Ted Kennedy! Hell no.

KKK Byrd wants to rename the health care bill after Kennedy. I think this idea would backfire on him. The American people have no love of Ted Kennedy and this move would appear as the cynical ploy to take advantage of Kennedy's death that it is.

Democrats' health care focus groups aren't as smart as the American people. The people saw through the rhetoric to the substance and resoundingly rejected it.

Democrats are forcing insurance company executives to appear in front of Congress to bash them in front of cameras. Government is force.

The Liar-in-Chief says Obamacare won't cover illegal immigrants. Unfortunately for all of us, the actual legislation in the House has no provision preventing illegal immigrants from receiving care.

GLOBAL WARMING:

The US Chamber of Commerce wants the EPA to hold hearings on the scientific evidence supporting global warming. A search for the truth? They must still believe in Santa Claus. Al Gore told us this debate is over.

WAR:

Taliban killing Afghan voters.

FOREIGN POLICY:

German Chancellor Merkel joins French President Sarkozy in threat of sanctions against Iran. This might have been effective five years ago, but liberals were in charge of Germany and France then. Now Iran has already mastered all the technology to build a bomb. This is like an Air Marshall who shows up late to a hijacked flight. It's worthless. Iran will just build a bomb and nuke Germany since it doesn't have any nukes of its own.

LIBERTY:

Obama's FCC Chief Diversity Officer, like Obama and Hillary Clinton, is a student of Marxist Saul Alinsky. Raise your hand if you're surprised.

MISC:

Don't you just love when scientists say something shouldn't exist? Their first inclination is to think nature's wrong, not their understanding of nature. It's a symptom of the hubris that is part of human nature. Leftists undoubtedly blame this planet's existence on George Bush.

Greensboro, N.C. offers job to Dayton's City Manager. Why? Dayton is a wreck. Do they want all their roads torn up for years on end with virtually nobody working on them too?

Remember that handout government gave you for destroying your old car? Now government has a gun to your head and its hand in your pocket.

Stimulus money is being doled out based on political favoritism. Of course it is. All government spending is based on political favoritism. If Democrats force this health care bill down our throats, health care will be doled out based on political favoritism just like it is in every country where government controls the health care system.

The House of Representatives is paying bonuses to top aids.

"House officials defend the change as a job-related benefit necessary to keep the government competitive in the hiring market - the same argument corporate chieftains used to defend their own pay scales."

Maybe they forgot that Democrats and Obama are against those bonuses in the private sector.

How's this for objective reporting from the mainstream media: Kieth Olbermann calls Foxnews viewers "tin foil hatters, conspiracy theorists, paranoids and racists."

Cato calls for the Department of Homeland Security to be abolished. I haven't seen anything to justify its existence.

Afterbirthers demand to see Obama's placenta. That's funny.

Free kibbles

Ted Kennedy died. I wouldn't wish anybody to suffer from brain cancer.

CIA probe harms interagency trust. Ya' think? But is interagency trust a good thing? We should never trust our government and when departments don't trust each other, that's probably a good thing. I think this investigation is wrong-headed, but the CIA is a borderline rogue agency that often is at odds with the political leadership. That should never happen. I would like to see that Cold War dinosaur abolished and replaced with a small, nimble, effective intelligence organization designed to meet today's intelligence needs. But I think AG Holder is going to regret picking this battle with the CIA. Obama versus the CIA compares CIA interrogation techniques to New York juvenile detention officials.

A little sanity in the CIA coverage:

"Now that we've had a chance to read the reports, it's clear the real story isn't the few cases of abuse played up by the media. The news is that the program was thoughtfully developed, carefully circumscribed, briefed to Congress, and yielded information crucial to disrupting al Qaeda."

Rare honesty and accuracy from the mainstream media.

Obama fakes a coup to get out from under US debt. Pretty funny.

Doctor on the phony claim that health care is a right:

"In reality, these types of so-called "rights" are offered to groups of Americans by politicians in exchange for votes. Claims of humanitarian concerns are merely a fig leaf over a naked power grab by the state. The fact that some physicians may willingly participate in their own enslavement does not alter this fact."

And...

"Imagine how expensive auto insurance would be if the only policy you could buy due to government decree was one covering tire rotation, oil changes, windshield wiper replacement, etc., as well as liability? It is ludicrous to blame the insurance companies for the resulting — and inevitable — increase in the number of people choosing not to purchase any insurance."

Wonderful essay.

Another Andy Stern sighting: the head of the SIEU is named one of the top 10 most powerful people in the health care debate.

Britain importing doctors because British doctors won't cover evening and weekend shifts.

I didn't know that Republicans have offered three alternative health care bills. Thanks for informing us, media.

In article criticizing Obama's health care agenda, Thomas Sowell makes a wonderful quote:

"The idea that government officials can play God from Washington is not a new idea, but it is an idea that is being pushed with new audacity."

Nice.

Do we really need an article to explain that Obama's health care oppression plan is really a huge wealth transfer program? That it's really all about buying votes? That it's really all about seizing power? That it's really a welfare program? Yes, we do. We need all those kind of articles we can get.

Religious argument for a free market makes perfect sense:

"In his Disputationes de justitia et jure, published in 1642 in Lyon, the Spanish cardinal Juan de Lugo (1583–1660) wrote that the "just price" depends on so many factors that it can be known only to God."

That's a fact. How come conservatives don't use this argument, among others, to force Republicans to support free markets? The market price is the natural price. And this gets back to my contention that central planning itself is evil. It's based on the idea that one benevolent dictator and his handful of advisers are smarter than all the people combined, or as they Jesuits put it, smarter than God. But to force the central plan on others, the benevolent dictator must use force, which is evil. Because it's evil, because it depends on force, central planning inevitably brings the strong man to power as Hayek described.

Author links Judiasm and the principle that all men have a special link to God and all are subordinate to God including rulers, with the development of liberty. This essay gives a new meaning to Judeo-Christian values.

"Nearly every man was learned in this law, and also deeply involved in the religious relation to God in which the law was rooted — and liberty was a precious by-product of these conditions. Establish these conditions — that is, widely held religious values in which God is regarded as the source of authority and justice, superior to any earthly power — and they provide a firm foundation for political liberty.
...
Collectivist regimes, in the nature of things, must be profoundly irreligious, even to the extent of pressing a corrupted religion into service to shore up tyranny. Genuine religious experience entails the recognition of an inviolable essence in men, the human soul. It inculcates a sense of the worth and dignity of the person and breeds resistance to efforts to submerge individuals in the mass."

Here's another reason Leftists hate religion:

"Men whose personal experience convinces them that they are creatures of God will not become willing creatures of the state, nor attempt to make creatures of other men. For them, God is the Lord, whose service is perfect freedom; and Caesar is the ruler, whom to serve is bondage.
...
So long as men accepted the basic affirmations of religion — that there is a God of all people with whom each individual has a personal relationship — our liberties were basically secure."

I don't agree that religion is a necessity for liberty, but the link in development of liberty makes perfect sense. I also think that one of the major reasons leftists attack religion, especially Christians, is that Christians have that resistance to tyranny by man. On the other hand, they've been historically been easily manipulated into tyranny by men claiming divine inspiration.

The agenda of Obama's FCC's Chief Diversity Officer is perfectly clear:

"Mark Lloyd, newly appointed Chief Diversity Officer of the Federal Communications Commission, has called for making private broadcasting companies pay licensing fees equal to their total operating costs to allow public broadcasting outlets to spend the same on their operations as the private companies do."

He wants to bankrupt every private broadcaster, giving government a monopoly on broadcasting. That's the definition of communism. This man is a dangerous loon.

This is just another attack on freedom by Obama. His goal is to attack freedom viciously every day, day after day on every front. Obama and his army of czars are assaulting without pause 24 hours a day because that's their only job (and we're paying them to do it). Obama knows that Americans in the private sector, the people who would naturally resist his Marxist onslaught, spend their days working in real jobs creating wealth for the benefit of every American. We don't have the energy to fight Obama's daily, hourly assaults on freedom. He plans to win by attrition. The American people better get better organized to fight this monster. Team up with several other people and rotate days on Obama freedom assault watch. The defender of the day can write and call his or her representatives several times that day and send a summary email to teammates. The next day, the new teammate on point can read the email, contact his representatives and watch for the new assault of that day. And so on down the line.

Tuesday's Nealz Nuze really makes this point for me. Here are some of the major topics: subsidies for appliances, stimulus boondoggle, Obama's pay czar, demanding salary info from insurance companies, White House seizing control of terrorist interrogations, and tax and trade. Obama and his allies are wielding these policies like weapons and beating us about the head and shoulders with them repeated every day. It's an all out assault on us and our freedom on every issue from every direction all day every day. Since we're paying them to do this, they can be relentless. We have to organize to beat back this assault.

The president of the Dallas Federal Reserve reports that the Federal government's unfunded liabilities surpass $100 trillion. More on Obama's fantastic expansion in the size of government.

The rich are no longer getting richer. This is scary because if the rich aren't getting richer, neither is anybody else. But it jives with other information we've recently learned, for example that there was zero private sector job growth in the US over the last 10 years. I've been saying that the US is in decline. We keep seeing more and more facts that back me up. And Barack Obama wants to take us down further, fast and hard. The path back to a trajectory of greatness is to re-embrace freedom on every issue.

Fidel Castro comes out swinging in defense of his ideological twin, Barack Obama, claiming anybody who resists transforming America into a communist country is a right-wing racist. Too bad Mao, Stalin and Lenin aren't alive to team up with comrades Obama and Castro. They could all get together and enjoy a Roman bath in human blood.

The Sugar Baby industry is booming. This is kind of wild.

Now government is taking money from people by force to subsidize energy efficient appliances. Since they don't mandate setting old appliances on fire, this program will be less destructive than cash for clunkers, but it's still destructive.

In essay on Obama's runaway spending, Mark Steyn writes this gem of a paragraph:

"I don't know why one of the least fiscally debauched states in the union [New Hampshire] needs funds from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act to repair random stretches of highway, especially stretches that were perfectly fine until someone came along to dig them up in order to access "stimulus" funding. I would have asked one of those men with a shovel, as depicted on the sign. But there were none to be found. Usually in New Hampshire, they dig up the road and regrade or repave it while flagmen stand guard until it's all done. But here a certain federal torpor seemed to hang in the eerie silence."

Tell me about it. I've often criticized Dayton for having eight major infrastructure projects going on at the same time with nobody working on them, but then the city tore up Main St. in the heart of downtown too. It's been blocked for weeks with little or no work being done on it. The city is tearing up more streets in downtown with nobody working on them either. It's certifiably insane. You can't drive two blocks in and around downtown without being restricted by a road or bridge construction project that is sitting idle at least 90 percent of the time. For the first time since I lived down here (3 years) we have constant traffic problems.

Because the media hasn't covered it, Steyn reminds us that countries that didn't have big stimulus plans are already out of recession.

"Of the world's biggest economies, only those of the U.S., Britain and Italy are still contracting. All three nations are big stimulators, though Prime Ministers Gordon Brown of England and Silvio Berlusconi of Italy can't compete with Mr. Obama's $800 billion porkapalooza."

Sucking $787 billion out of our economy and diverting $787 billion worth of resources from profitable enterprises to government make-work did $1.574 trillion damage to our economy and made the recession much deeper and longer than it otherwise would have been.

Stimulus boondoggle funds to be used for sex studies. Is this part of a long term plan by Democrats to use sex to control voters in the future? That's only half a joke.

Renominating Bernanke is the continuation of yet another bad Bush policy.

The Fed's approval rating is lower than the IRS.

I don't think I could have summed up the real reason frauds are pushing this global warming scam more succinctly than Democrat Sen. Ben Cardin who joyfully calls the tax and trade program "the most significant revenue-producing proposal of our time." This fraud has nothing to do with the environment. It has nothing to do with the climate. It has nothing to do with the welfare of people. It's all about money and power. The House tax and trade bill, which already passed, would be the biggest tax increase in history. Obama plans to tax and spend us into collapse and Marxist revolution, and Democrats are planning to pass this one by bypassing the filibuster too (even though Democrats have a filibuster-proof majority).

Trying to censor articles from the internet will harm newspapers, not help them.

UK banning common terms that leftists might pretend are racist. FCC's Chief Diversity Officer is taking notes.

Now that cash-for-clunkers is over, car dealers are preparing for very slow times. That's how it works. Government money is like a drug.

African leaders want $67 billion a year in welfare, supposedly to combat global warming. The welfare we're already giving Africa is trapping Africans in poverty.

Americans are angry about big government. It's about time. Interestingly enough, this started under Bush. Obama just made worse. Unless some people think Bush is black (I wouldn't rule that out), racism is not a factor.

Free kibbles

Since our economy hasn't completely collapsed yet, Obama re-nominates Bernanke as Fed chief to finish destroying it. Bernanke's career. Piling on, Obama puts union boss in charge of New York Fed Bank.

2003 essay criticizes the renomination of Greenspan while warning that once Greenspan's gone, a worse Bernanke might assume power. Yet another remarkably accurate prediction from the Austrian School. Also, Bloomberg won it's FOIA case against the Fed. That's going to be interesting.

Inflation, inflation, inflation.

Iranian government puts reformers on trial.

The Montgomery County jobless rate hit 12.5 percent while Dayton's remained at 13.7 percent. No wonder people are fleeing this area like rats leaving a sinking ship. The solution is to dramatically reduce the burden of government.

I don't want the FCC enforcing net neutrality. I want the market to determine who gets what bandwidth. Once again the problem is states limit competition, as they do with medical insurance.

Free kibbles

Obama seizes power over terrorist interrogations. Add Interrogator-in-Chief to his list of titles. Good thing he's a super smart superman. I wonder why he keeps expanding government. It seems to me he should just run it all from the White House and put every other Federal employee on welfare.

AG Holder directs prosecutor to investigate if CIA interrogations were legal. This is going to have a chilling effect on our intelligence capability because it has to seem like an attack on the CIA. That issue will consume the rest of Obama's term in office. It might boost his support with his base, but it will harm his support with the rest of the country.

What's wrong with CIA agents threatening the families of captured terrorists? If that's illegal, that's just stupid.

"Agents threatened to kill a key terror suspect's children and sexually assault another's mother, it is claimed."

Obviously harming the families should be illegal, but threatening should not be. When did the concerns about terrorist interrogations turn from torture to abuse? I don't think choking terrorists should be legal though. If a CIA interrogator broke the law, regardless of what some lawyer wrote, he or she should be prosecuted, but this sounds more like a witch hunt.

At a town hall meeting, retired Marine reminds Congressman Brian Baird, who recently compared town hall attendees to brown shirts, that it was the Nazis who seized control of the German finance industry, auto industry and health care industry, similar to what Democrats are doing to us today. This is an awesome video.

Here come the tax increases.

Trying to recover from the beating he took from his constituents, Arlen Specter calls for hearings on Obama's end of life counseling for veterans. This would be a great thing if it happened before any health care oppression bill was voted on.

Obama raises the 10 year budget deficit projection from $7 trillion to $9 trillion. I notice he didn't recommend $2 trillion in spending cuts to hold the line. What's $2 trillion more in debt between friends?

Foreign automakers are thanking Obama for seizing our money and shipping it to them through cash for clunkers.

How rotten a person do you have to be to holler "Heil Hitler" at a Jew? Or anybody else for that matter? If you think the Israeli health care system is similar to the Nazi health care system, make that point. Don't holler "Heil Hitler".

Democrats are figuring out the best option to force the health care bill down our throats despite our protests.

This is an awesome open letter from a doctor to Obama. Obama has really put his stupidity, or is it evil genius, on parade with these health care town halls. It sounds like this guy might work for an insurance company too, not that that effects any of his points.

I love that the CEO of Whole Foods, a liberal icon, presented an alternative to Obama's health care oppression.

I'm shocked, shocked to find out there's a double standard in media coverage of health care protesters and anti-war protesters.

Dayton schools are slightly above failing - getting a D grade from the state. Officials seem to be happy with this. How pathetic.

Only one crime was solved for every 1,000 CCT cameras in London, which has over a million cameras. There's nothing in London that I want to see bad enough to endure that.

In essay documenting the history of the welfare state, this guy stole my line about welfare being a spider's web. Fortunately, I updated my line months ago to "Welfare is both spider and spider's web, trapping Americans in dependency and poisoning their will to excel." I wasn't aware of this:

"The modern welfare state is often viewed as originating in Imperial Germany in the 1880s, when the Iron Chancellor, Prince Otto von Bismarck, established compulsory accident, sickness, and old-age insurance for workers. Bismarck was no altruist. He intended his social programs to divert workingmen from revolutionary socialism and to purchase their loyalty to the Kaiser's regime; to a large extent he seems to have achieved his objectives."

That was pretty slick. Like giving the revolutionaries heroin.

"If we cared nothing for our own freedom, we might be inclined to accept the ministrations of the welfare state with gratitude. But even then our contentment would be disturbed by the large extent to which the government fails to deliver what it promises. To be blunt, the government's protection is largely fraudulent.
Officials pretend to protect citizens and promote social harmony while actually accomplishing the opposite. Thus, the government's affirmative action programs have actually fostered racial acrimony and conflict rather than racial harmony.[25] The environmental laws have caused many billions of dollars to be squandered in mandated actions for which costs vastly exceeded benefits.[26] And the Food and Drug Administration, far from improving public health, has caused (at least) hundreds of thousands of excess deaths and untold human suffering.[27] It is bad enough that citizens are viewed as sheep; it is worse that they are sheared and slaughtered."

Cash for Codgers. Ouch!

Obama's pay czar thinks he has the power to retroactively seize the pay of some executives. Maybe he didn't read the section of the Constitution forbidding ex post facto laws.

Obama's Saul Alinsky techniques are failing him.

""Rule 12: Pick the target, freeze it, personalize it and polarize it. Cut off the support network and isolate the target from sympathy. Go after people and not institutions; people hurt faster than institutions. (This is cruel, but very effective. Direct, personalized criticism and ridicule works.)""

That works on leaders, but when they turn it on the people, the people get angry.

At least somebody is questioning why the FCC needs an Orwellian-named Chief Diversity Officer.

Blogger shows that punishment for downloading music is worse than for many crimes including kidnapping a child, arson and second degree murder.

Free kibbles

Mitt Romney blames Obama for a failure of leadership creating the health care debacle. While that's certainly true, the more important aspect of this story is Mitt Romney's tacit support for further government intervention in our health care system.

Teddy Kennedy doesn't think the law should apply to him. He expects the Massachusetts legislature to change it on his behalf.

"The Boston Globe now notes Mr. Kennedy's current request "puts lawmakers in a delicate position." They "are nervous about being accused of engineering a self-serving change to help their party" just a few years after ramming through a similar self-serving change."

I'm surprised at their hesitation. Government exists to pass self-serving laws.

Isn't it stunning how, despite the overwhelming unpopularity of the programs of the Democrats, the Republicans aren't making any headway? Our government has degenerated into a situation where the party in power, whichever party it is, is so bad, that the party out of power just sits on the sidelines, attacks and waits for them to implode so they can take power and repeat the same destructive cycle. At least Newt Gingrich would be out there with a competing agenda.

Conservative leader proposes Senate Republicans threaten to shut down the Senate if the Democrats try to bypass the filibuster on health care. The Republicans should play hardball just like the Democrats.

Doctor doesn't like the accusations being made about doctors in the health care debate.

Remember that Obama is loaning billions of dollars to the Brazilian government owned oil company for off-shore drilling? We shouldn't be surprised that George Soros owns $2.6 billion of that company too. Talk about a payoff.

What's wrong with this headline: "DOJ Gives Oracle Approval to Buy Sun"?

Scientists build case that current sunspot activity is comparable to the Maunder Minimum. Yikes! The Maunder Minimum is significantly longer and colder than the Dalton Minimum. You can't help but wonder if these minimums are comparable to the way a spinning top sometimes tilts over then bounces back before it falls over completely. They might well be the harbingers of a new ice age. Hopefully it won't happen for another 1,000 years or more, but geologically speaking, we're due for an ice age, and we don't know exactly when. That's why I expect the global warming frauds to change their tune in the next year to three years and revert to pushing the propaganda that we are headed into a new ice age, even though we don't know that we are, we only know the planet is cooling like it naturally does all the time, and the only way to deal with the problem is to surrender all our wealth and power to some world-wide agency.

Still no sunspot activity for solar cycle 24. I wonder if I'll be writing the same thing 10 years from now.

Wattsupwiththat identifies problems with satellite readings of ocean temperature showing June 2009 to be a record high. There's several other articles pointing out problems as well.

Seven people arrested in organized crime carbon credit trading scam. It's the same old story. Government seizes new power and creates corruption. The only so-called solution considered is giving government even power which inevitably creates more corruption, and so on and so on and so on. We never learn.

Man puts up sign saying, "No colors allowed", pretty obviously intending it to mean gang colors. Needless to say, it wasn't taken that way by some. The sign owner deserves all the crap he catches for that. If you don't gangs in your bar, be a little more specific on your sign.

This sucks:

"U.S. Geological Survey scientists say they have detected mercury contamination in every fish sampled in 291 streams across the United States.
The USGS said about a quarter of the fish were found to contain mercury at levels exceeding the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's criterion for the protection of people who consume average amounts of fish."

I like fish.

Even Tom Ridge and Dick Cheney are throwing Bush under the bus. How's that famous, blind loyalty working out for Bush?

Chairman of the Joint Chiefs says Afghanistan is deteriorating. Over half of Americans think the war isn't worth fighting. Obama finds himself in a George Bush situation, supporting an unpopular war. Military requests more troops for Afghanistan. To fight a war we have no legal justification for.

So many things are wrong with this story and none of the important facts are reported: two year old stabs baby brother. What ever happened to investigative journalism? Maybe they'll do a thorough follow-up.

I don't have a problem with ISPs capping internet bandwidth. What's wrong with this? It's like a bartender cutting off a customer who drinks too much. As long as government isn't dictating this or censoring content, I don't see a problem. ISPs are free to have any business model they choose. If you don't like it, get a new ISP. If one isn't available, start a new ISP company.

Free kibbles

Goldman Sachs puppet tax cheat Lord Geithner says government officials acted appropriately regarding Goldman Sachs during the bailout frenzy. Then Goldman Sachs had Geithner offer to sell Americans land in Florida. Don't you just love when government investigates itself and clears itself of wrong doing?

Vick to team up with Philly animal rights group. I bet those people give him hell. I wouldn't let him near my dog.

Medicare costs $325 billion per year. Mandatory US spending.

If Obama wants anybody to believe that he doesn't really support pressuring seniors into dying early, he should quit hanging out with Tom Daschle since Daschle is one of the architects of that provision.

Obama's VA, following the lead of Clinton's VA, pressures senior veterans into end of life decisions. Do you think Obama is just ignorant or evil?

Many Americans will not be able to keep their current health insurance plan if Obama's health oppression plan passes.

House health care oppression bill gives government the power to check your "financial responsibility". You know what that would mean to a health care bureaucrat: checking out your bank account.

The burden of government on business in America has become so great that big companies are "detaching" from the US.

"Thousands of IBM employees have recently been offered a choice between losing their jobs in America or moving abroad to stay employed."

Detaching is code for shipping jobs overseas. Obama is accelerating that process. I'm sure this health care debacle is pushing businesses to stop hiring direct employees and hiring contractors instead too. The news will cover that in a few months.

Garet Garret on the transformation of America from a republic to an empire explains why we're foolish to count on the Constitution as a limit on government power.

"There is no comfort in history for those who put their faith in forms; who think there is safeguard in words inscribed on parchment, preserved in a glass case, reproduced in facsimile and hauled to and fro on a Freedom Train.
Let it be current history. How much does the younger half of this generation reflect upon the fact that in its own time a complete revolution has taken place in the relations between government and people? It may be doubted that one college student in a thousand could even state it clearly. The first article of our inherited tradition, implicit in American thought from the beginning until a few years ago, was this: Government is the responsibility of a self-governing people. That doctrine has been swept away; only the elders remember it.
Now, in the name of democracy, it is accepted as a political fact that people are the responsibility of government. The forms of republican government survive; the character of the state has changed. Formerly the people supported government and set limits to it and minded their own lives.
Now they pay for unlimited government, whether they want it or not, and the government minds their lives — looking to how they are fed and clothed and housed; how they provide for their old age; how the national income, which is the product of their own labor, shall be divided among them; how they shall buy and sell; how long and how hard and under what conditions they shall work, and how equity shall be maintained between the buyers of food who dwell in the cities and the producers of food who live on the soil. For the last named purpose it resorts to a system of subsidies, penalties and compulsions, and assumes with medieval wisdom to fix the just price.
This is the Welfare State. It rose suddenly within the form. It is legal because the Supreme Court says it is. The Supreme Court once said no and then changed its mind and said yes, because meanwhile the President who was the architect of the Welfare State had appointed to the Supreme Court bench men who believed in it.
The founders who wrote the Constitution could no more have imagined a Welfare State rising by sanction of its words than they could have imagined a monarchy; and yet the Constitution did not have to be changed. It had only to be reinterpreted in one clause — the clause that reads: "The Congress shall have power to lay and collect taxes, imposts and excises to pay its debts and provide for common defense and welfare of the United States."
...
The president names the members of the Supreme Court, with the advice and consent of the Senate. It follows that if the president and a majority of the Senate happen to want a Welfare State, or any other innovation, and if, happily for their design, death and old age create several vacancies on the bench so that they may pack the Court with like-minded men, the Constitution becomes, indeed, a rubberoid instrument.
...
The one fact now to be emphasized is that when the process of erosion has gone on until there is no saying what the supreme law of the land is at a given time, then the Constitution begins to be flouted by Executive will, with something like impunity. The instances may not be crucial at first and all the more dangerous for that reason. As one is condoned, another follows, and they become progressive."

Great essay, and that's a nice shot at the destruction of the rule of law at the end of the quote, but I still don't agree the US is an empire. We're dumber than an empire. We have all the bad aspects of empire and none of the good. Empires conquer other lands and loot the people there. We send our troops to other lands, then we loot ourselves and give the money to the people there.

Libertarianism defined as a set of rules for property rights.

Great example of the success of severely limited government in Iraqi village.

Boortz finally gets it:

"Having begun a story of the Cloward-Piven Strategy, I now strongly believe that many Democrats in Washington actually wish to completely destroy our present economy so that they can replace it with an economy mirroring European socialism. Elections have consequences."

About time he figured it out.

The people are figuring out this global warming scam. 20,000 rooms have been canceled for the next UN climate summit. Thank God that the planet started cooling in 1998 instead of 2008 or the new communism would already have been forced down our throats. But just like health care, in a couple of decades the planet will start to warm again, and the frauds will come out of the woodwork saying "I told you so", and they'll be stronger than ever. Even before then though, look for these same frauds to revert back to the claim we're entering a new ice age, we have to surrender all our money and power to some world agency to save us.

Free kibbles

What does competition for free books mean?

Author advocates slavery, forcing doctors to work for free, to "fix" health care.

Ex-Soviet official describes the horrors of universal care in the Soviet Union. It'll be the same anywhere. The problem is the system, not the people implementing it.

"To improve the statistics concerning the numbers of people dying within the system, patients were routinely shoved out the door before taking their last breath."

At least in Oregon they offer euthenasia when the death panel denies care. That's our future if Democrats get their way. We know how it will work. The local death panel will deny care, but there'll be an appeals process. You can argue to the appellate death panel that your life is worth the cost of the treatment that might save it. Maybe the gods of death will rule in your favor. Almost certainly they won't. Then you can appeal to the supreme death panel, if you live that long. Then you'll be denied again for the good of society. Needless to say, the aristocrats won't have to go through this process. They'll just get whatever treatment they want.

Because of Obama's views about government making decisions on end of life, Obama is the first president to ever scare Cato scholar. He should be scared.

I don't think anarchy can exist either. It's kind of like a dream of a communist utopia, where everybody just gets along and society spontaneously orders itself. Of course we know that communist utopia is a fraud. It can never exist, and any attempts to implement it beyond a handful of people ends up implementing complete tyranny. In the anarchist case, any attempt to implement anarchy is bound to degrade into defacto government by warlords. At least the warlords will be competing, which makes it preferable to the the total state, but there are certainly better models for government than warlords. It's fine and dandy to espouse a philosophy rejecting all force, but it's a fantasy.

Bernanke has succeeded at re-inflating our bubble economy. He claims this is a good thing. Thanks to Bernanke's comments about re-inflating the bubble, stocks hit new high for 2009. Too bad you can never know when the next crash is going to hit. It would be great to ride the bubble up, then right before the crash, switch into gold. I still think the key is watching the CPI. Bernanke is going to keep inflating that bubble to appease his political masters - he wants to be re-appointed to his job - and they'll be happy until the CPI starts rising.

These highway checkpoints are illegal. That's another case the Supreme Court blew.

Mexico eases laws on small amounts of drugs, but what do they think this will do? The demand will still exist. The supply will still illegally rise to meet the demand.

Why are so many items I post in this blog disappearing? I'm beginning to think somebody is editing my blog. Or maybe the search function is broken. For example, a week ago I posted"

Obama appoints Democrat activist focused on censoring talk radio as "Chief Diversity Officer" of the FCC. Don't bend over to pick up the soap."

Today a search doesn't show that item. That's been happening to me on a daily basis.

Study shows it's easy to engineer DNA evidence. We are so screwed. Right now DNA is considered a magic bullet. Unassailable evidence.

""You can just engineer a crime scene,” said Dan Frumkin, lead author of the paper, which has been published online by the journal Forensic Science International: Genetics. “Any biology undergraduate could perform this.""

It will take decades to change the social inertia to stop depending on DNA.

Free kibbles

Obama tries to manipulate religious leaders to support health care oppression. That's kind of fitting. Right now the US is far and away the world's leader in production of medicines and health care equipment because we're the only major country with a health care system in which profit plays a significant role. All the countries that liberals point to as examples of good government run health care benefit tremendously from the innovations made in America. Obama and Democrats are trying to get rid of those profits. If they succeed, the world will regress into a new dark age in health care. Life expectancy will fall dramatically all over the world. Diseases long banished will reemerge. The devastating consequences of Obama's health care oppression have been far under-estimated. The oppression of the Church locked the western world in a dark age nearly two thousand years ago, so it's fitting Obama is teaming up with religious leaders to usher in a new dark age today.

Government interference in our health care has already caused life expectancy in the US to peak. We don't have to accept that. We can free ourselves and our health care industry from government, and life expectancy will accelerate as we reduce the burden of government.

The extremes Democrats will go to to harm Americans know no bounds. Now senate Democrats are plotting to split the health care bill so the most oppressive parts of it can be passed using a parliamentary maneuver that blocks use of the filibuster. What's funny about this article is it blames Republicans for blocking the bill, suggesting the Democrats need to avoid a filibuster because of Republicans. What the article fails to mention is that Democrats have a filibuster-proof majority in the Senate. What's really going on is Obama and Harry Reid are scamming other Democrats who don't support their health oppression plans. Anybody who thought that the overwhelming public opposition to this bill would stop Democrats from using every dirty trick in the book to pass it anyway is a fool. Interesting that now Obama wants this bill done by the end of the year, when he originally wanted it before the August recess.

When Obama was inaugurated, I warned what might happen when the unstable Democrat coalition flies apart. It may be doing that right now.

60 percent of Florida voters fear the government more than their health insurance company. Now that's healthy.

Obama, health care and the post office:

"The proliferation of Obama’s gaffes and non sequiturs on health care has exceeded the allowable limit. He has failed repeatedly to explain how the government will provide more (health care) for less (money). He has failed to explain why increased demand for medical services without a concomitant increase in supply won’t lead to rationing by government bureaucrats as opposed to the market. And he has failed to explain why a Medicare-like model is desirable when Medicare itself is going broke.
The public is left with one of two unsettling conclusions: Either the president doesn’t understand the health-insurance reform plans working their way through Congress, or he understands both the plans and the implications and is being untruthful about the impact."

I think Obama understands economics just fine. He's harming us on purpose.

Democrats demanding executive pay information from insurance companies so they can demonize them. When will we stop these gangsters?

Obama is determined to destroy his presidency over this health care issue. Now he's going to change the focus again, forget worrying about costs and make us all weepy because some people don't have health insurance. The people are going to see right through this transparent fraud because the contradictions and the lies are already out there.

Financial firms supporting Obama and Democrats are profiting hugely from the health care oppression debate. That's the political economy in action.

Thomas Sowell explains that deception is at the heart of the Democrats' health oppression plans.

Here's another Andy Stern sighting: Obama having conference call with his SEIU purple-shirts tomorrow. You can count on more thuggery and violence by Obama's purple shirt militia after this call. I hope at least one of those purple shirts is a good guy and records this call and releases it, but that's unlikely. I'm sure the SEIU vets it's thugs well before allowing them this level of access.

Car dealerships withdrawing from Cash for Clunkers because of non-payment by the government. Can't you just wait until they do the same thing to our health care?

Housing starts down in July. That housing bubble is resisting being re-inflated. The people are trying to fix the economy, but government is working against us.

Countries that experienced deflation are leading the world out of recession. That's because deflation is the natural healing process after an inflationary bubble pops. We're seeing mainstream outlets begin to question the flawed economic orthodoxy. We need deflation in America, and in a lot of places we're seeing it (I bought a gallon of milk for about a buck fifty the other day. Not too long ago, that same gallon at that same store was pushing four bucks.), but government is working against us. This is an excellent article.

"Deflation may be bad for particular interest groups, which happen to be very powerful. It is bad for chief executives. It is easier to keep your profits rising in a mildly inflationary environment. You can just jack up your prices a bit, and you can often cut workers’ wages by stealth by holding wages steady.
The banking industry, which has come to rely on inflation to make highly leveraged loans sustainable, also dislikes deflation. Likewise, it is bad for governments, which use inflation to reduce the value of their debts.
In the other hand, deflation is good news for savers, who get richer just by hanging on to their cash. And it is beneficial for consumers, who get cheaper prices. It is usually good for workers as well, as they can generally hold the value of their wages, even while prices fall."

That pretty much explains it all. The reason the Federal Reserve and other central banks exist is to invisibly transfer wealth from average people to the government, bankers and CEOs. It's the greatest scam in history. They've successfully pulled it on us for 100 years.
Countries that experienced deflation are leading the world out of recession. That's because deflation is the natural healing process after an inflationary bubble pops. We're seeing mainstream outlets begin to question the flawed economic orthodoxy. We need deflation in America, and in a lot of places we're seeing it (I bought a gallon of milk for about a buck fifty the other day. Not too long ago, that same gallon at that same store was pushing four bucks.), but government is working against us. This is an excellent article.

"Deflation may be bad for particular interest groups, which happen to be very powerful. It is bad for chief executives. It is easier to keep your profits rising in a mildly inflationary environment. You can just jack up your prices a bit, and you can often cut workers’ wages by stealth by holding wages steady.
The banking industry, which has come to rely on inflation to make highly leveraged loans sustainable, also dislikes deflation. Likewise, it is bad for governments, which use inflation to reduce the value of their debts.
In the other hand, deflation is good news for savers, who get richer just by hanging on to their cash. And it is beneficial for consumers, who get cheaper prices. It is usually good for workers as well, as they can generally hold the value of their wages, even while prices fall."

That pretty much explains it all. The reason the Federal Reserve and other central banks exist is to invisibly transfer wealth from average people to the government, bankers and CEOs. It's the greatest scam in history. They've successfully pulled it on us for 100 years. Even the scam of communism didn't last that long.

Ben Bernanke's irrational fear of deflation.

A lot of people are confused that Obama is going to lend $2 billion or more that we don't have to Brazil's state-run, socialist oil company for offshore drilling. There's nothing confusing about it. Obama understands that offshore drilling and domestic production of energy is good for a county. Because he wants to harm America, he won't let us do it here, and he's putting us $2 billion further into debt and promoting a socialist company so it will reduce the profits of US companies. Because he's a socialist, he's promoting socialism in Brazil. What's hard to understand about that?

The Bengals offered Vick $2.3 million for two years.

"They had a two-year, $2.3 million deal on the table. Is anyone surprised the Bengals got into the fray first? It's unlikely Tony Dungy would have allowed Vick to sign with Cincinnati because he is most concerned with Vick the person right now. Andy Reid signed Vick "sight unseen" - no workout or meeting, Reid just took Dungy's word for it on Vick, and Dungy trusted that the Eagles will be a good situation for Vick to re-start his career."

The Eagles offered $1.6 million for the first year with a $5.2 million option for a second year.

Plato was the original central planner.

President Grover Cleveland vetoed 584 bills including the Texas seed bill, a welfare program for drought stricken Texans, saying,

"I feel obliged to withhold my approval of the plan as proposed by this bill, to indulge a benevolent and charitable sentiment through the appropriation of public funds for that purpose.
I can find no warrant for such an appropriation in the Constitution, and I do not believe that the power and duty of the general government ought to be extended to the relief of individual suffering which is in no manner properly related to the public service or benefit. A prevalent tendency to disregard the limited mission of this power and duty should, I think, be steadfastly resisted, to the end that the lesson should be constantly enforced that, though the people support the government, the government should not support the people.
The friendliness and charity of our countrymen can always be relied upon to relieve their fellow citizens in misfortune. This has been repeatedly and quite lately demonstrated. Federal aid in such cases encourages the expectation of paternal care on the part of the government and weakens the sturdiness of our national character, while it prevents the indulgence among our people of that kindly sentiment and conduct which strengthens the bonds of a common brotherhood."

Well said.

Cuba to privatize farms to save socialism. Even the Cuban government is smarter than ours. We're going the wrong direction, and we have been for 100 years. I can't help but laugh at the non-sequitur similar to Bush's claim he needed to bailout the free market to save the free market.

"Despite being an agricultural nation with plentiful sun, soil and rain, Cuba produces barely 30 percent of the food it needs, due to an acute lack of resources and the inefficiency of its state farm sector. About 250,000 small family farms and 1,100 cooperatives till only about one-quarter of the land, yet still manage to outperform the state farms, producing almost 60 percent of crops and livestock, according to official figures."

Socialism is always a failure. Even Sweden and Norway are liberalizing their economies because their socialist economies are losing competitiveness.

Barbara Walters honors Hanoi Jane as one of the top 100 women of the [last, I assume] century.

Boortz finally catches on to Obama and the Cloward-Piven strategy.

Even though some of the gun-toting protesters near Obama were black including one black man carrying an AR-15, MSNBC fails to mention that and instead claims these protesters are racists. Great videos. Obama, liberals and the media are doing so much damage to race relations in the US, we'll be lucky if we don't end up back in 1962 by the time this term is over.

Democrat approval rating drops to 49 percent. Who are those idiots who approve of the Democrats?

Medicare cost history.