Free kibbles

Presenting bad news as if it was good news as become an art form. The US lost more jobs, but fewer than predicted. Let's celebrate.

Lew Rockwell comments on the sociology that lead the press to present such bad news as good news and compares it with how the press exaggerated the bad news during the Reagan administration because they didn't like his policies that led to 20 years of prosperity.

"Every day the headlines blasted away, as if the media establishment were trying to whip the public up into a hysterical frenzy against tax cuts. People were encouraged to blame That Man in the White House [Reagan] for all existing evil, and the nightly newscasts were filled with furrow-browed anchors doing stories on the poor suffering masses and their desperate plight. Their political agenda was aggressively on the display, brazen beyond belief.
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The contrast with the Obama administration can't be more stark. No one in these ranks said that malinvestments have to be washed out of the system, and bankruptcies and unemployment must be tolerated for a time in order to get back to economic growth. Nay, nay, they pulled out the old bag of tricks and claimed that they only needed to loot the public of hundreds of billions and spend it on building up government, and then, wow, like magic, the entire economy would come back to life.

But it hasn't. The stock market survives, but that's no indication. Stock markets are never better performing than during a hyperinflation. Interest rates are rock bottom, but only through artificial means. Gross Private Domestic Investment is still falling off a cliff, having already completely erased ten years of investment from the record of history. Here is a fundamental factor that suggests that terrible things are still to come our way. And I guess I'll have to put this in italics because the point seems to be lost in the shuffle: unemployment is still rising, even soaring, straight to double digits!

The sociology of this intrigues me to no end. Unemployment is one of the human elements that journalists are supposed to glom onto. Oh, look at poor Bob and Jane and how they lost their jobs and have nowhere to go, etc., etc. Talk about human interest! Where are the weepy stories about the plight of people wandering around with no work? Instead, we get happy clappy stories about how things are not nearly as bad as they might be had the great and powerful Obama of Oz not appeared to save the day. There is also the remarkable spin that things are getting worse, yes, but at a slower pace than before — an observation that might be most commonly heard in Hell."

Journalism is just another form of politics.

I'm not surprised to find out Microsoft is manipulating Bing search results to make itself look good compared to Apple.

The reason Democrats' health care proposals are so bad is they fail to address the fundamental problem of our health care system - third party payers which cause what Laffer calls the health care wedge.

"Implementing Mr. Obama’s reforms would literally be worse than doing nothing."

It's good to see Laffer didn't mince any words.

In 1994 essay, Mises scholar presents an in depth analysis of our health care problems and proposes uncompromising freedom as a solution. This essay is updated for today.

"For over a century, virtually all proposals for economic or social reform have been based on the thoroughly mistaken philosophical and theoretical foundations of Marxism, and have aimed at the ultimate achievement of a socialist society, in the belief that socialism represented the most rational and moral system of mankind's social organization. On the basis of this conviction, individual freedom was progressively restricted and the power of the state progressively enlarged. Individual freedom – laissez faire capitalism – was assumed to be a system of chaos and of the exploitation of the masses by the capitalists. The onslaught of the socialists (who in this country call themselves "liberals") – the step-by-step achievement of their political agenda – encountered virtually no philosophical resistance. Not surprisingly, again and again, the "liberals" defeated their ill-equipped conservative adversaries, who at most could only delay their advance. The victories of the "liberals" were inevitable because it was a battle of men with the seeming vision of a better world that could be achieved by means of intelligent human effort based on a body of ideas (however mistaken those ideas were), against men who, while they valued the relatively free world they saw around them, had no significant philosophical or theoretical knowledge of how to defend it."

Amen.

"In contrast, while the philosophy of Marx and Engels is dying, the philosophy of Locke and Jefferson, and Adam Smith, that is, the philosophy of individual freedom and capitalism underlying the American Revolution – the philosophy which, ironically enough, was the original meaning of the word liberalism – has been reborn. It has been reborn first and foremost at the hands of Ayn Rand in political philosophy and of Ludwig von Mises in economic theory, both of whom have enormously strengthened it. This philosophy of individual freedom, of the inviolability of individual rights, of the benevolent functioning of an economic system based on private ownership of the means of production and the profit motive – of capitalism – calls for a radically new political agenda. It calls for a political agenda that progressively rolls back the interference of the state and progressively enlarges the freedom of the individual. This is now what political philosophy and economic theory at their highest levels of development recognize to be the essential means of solving social and economic problems. Movement in this direction – in the direction of individual freedom from government interference – is henceforth to be regarded as the standard of what is to be considered progress in the realm of political action."

Boy did George Bush put an end to this and usher in the radical Democrats and the most anti-American president in history. Obama's plan could be summarized as "health care for each according to his needs from each according to his means." Where have I heard something like that before?

John Stossel scoffs at the proposition that government can provide health care to everybody, make it cheaper and stay out of medical decisions. He explains that much of the Democrats' plan is just welfare.

Barbara Boxer claims that the resistance to a government takeover of our health care system is a"diversion by the people who, frankly, want to hurt President Obama." There you have it. Our resistance has nothing to do with the merits of the plan. I'm being organized and manipulated by rich enemies of Obama. I have no brain of my own. It has nothing to do with wanting real health care reform versus Democrats' health care oppression. It has nothing to do with freedom. It's all about Barack Obama. But Democrats can go one step lower still, and look for it to happen within days. Democrats will accuse anybody who resists their health care oppression plan of being a racist. Watch for it. We're so mean to poor little Barack. Somebody ought to explain fascism to Nancy Pelosi. The Democrats' health oppression plan is fascist, not the the people resisting it. Boortz suggests Democrats might get around to calling resisters terrorists. Democrats would have nothing to gain by doing that, so I don't see that happening. Aristocrats are evil, not stupid.

It's ironic that the community organizer in chief is labeling the organized resisters to his health care oppression a mob. Liberals cheer when ACORN breaks into banks for a sit in or mobs businessmen and their families at their homes, but if conservatives speak up at a town hall meeting, they're labeled a mob.

In an essay condemning Obama's call for Americans to report other Americans' opposition to his health care proposal, author seems to have just realized that Obama is trying to divide the nation. Welcome to the waking world. Apparently he knows nothing about ACORN, Bill Ayers or Rev. Wright or the attacks on speech by Obama's allies.

"It dozens of the town hall meetings taking place back in individual districts this month, numbers of reports have surfaced that ACORN members have taken to publicly berating normal citizens who are simply there to ask the questions they have about the viability of a plan that requires the government to spend an additional $1,000,000,000 dollars."

Obama sent out his mob while calling resisters a mob. ACORN is everywhere, trying to harm us at every turn, funded by our tax dollars.

Senate confirms Sotomayor 68 to 31. It's good to see Republicans finally starting to take the responsibility of advise and consent seriously. The Senate confirmed Ginsburg, a much more radical leftist judge than Sotomayor, at least from what we know right now, 96 to 3. I'm also happy Republicans didn't filibuster her, though obviously that may only have been because they didn't have the votes.

This frightening animation illustrates where the US is quickly heading.

Victor Davis Hansen highlights the folly of amassing unheard of debt.

Tax and trade bill may get abandoned because of health care debate. Let's hope so. But if it doesn't, Democrat senators plan to put tariffs in the bill. They won't be satisfied until we're as poor as the Soviets were.

71 percent of Americans think Obama's policies have increased the deficit. How in the world did the other 29 percent manage to answer the poll question?

Car dealers launch a private version of cash for clunkers. You can be sure this version won't destroy the wealth in the clunkers, the dealers will make money off them in some way, and it's voluntary - people risking their own money instead of taking money from others by force and handing it out - so this will be a success.

I don't understand these people who think the Supreme Court cannot overturn unconstitutional laws. The Supreme Court is a co-equal branch of government. It's not subservient to Congress or the president or both combined. The job of the Court is to follow the law and to sort out conflicts in the law. Therefore it must nullify laws that are in conflict with the Constitution because it's the highest law of the land.

Ann Coulter lists the liberal conspiracy theories and theorists that never get bashed like the birthers.

Michael Barone says Obama wants to scale back American military and medical creativity. That's because he's trying to harm us. No doubt many people all over the world benefit from our advances, but I don't we should buy fighter jets that require 30 hours of maintenance for every hour of flight.

To illustrate that politics corrupts, now Larry Kudlow supports cash for clunkers.

Democrats continue to restrict the ability of Republican congressmen to communicate with their constituents.

Obama's great new anti-terrorist policy is to talk terrorists out of attacking us. Duck and cover!