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.