Free kibbles

ECONOMY:

Ultra-leftist Barney Frank calls Pharaoh Obama and Lord Geithner's new financial regulation plan too liberal. Who was calling Obama a moderate?

The economy is not recovering; the government is just doing tricks to make the numbers look that way.

"The Euro was introduced in 1999, ten years ago, and was worth about $1. Today it is worth $1.46. Nominated in dollars, it looks as though the U.S. GDP grew from $9.5 trillion to $14 trillion . Nominated in Euros, however, the U.S. GDP is about the same as it was in 1999. Due to population growth, this would mean that the average American should be slightly poorer than he or she was in 1999, aside from any benefits that stem from improved technology."

That makes sense. Private sector employment is the same as it was in 1999. GDP in honest terms is the same as it was in 1999. Thanks, government.

Just to drive the point home: 40 percent of US CEOs expect to cut jobs during the next six months. Just like during the Great Depression, the US is leading the world in bad policy that is keeping us mired deeper and longer in recession.

Apparently the FDIC is not "asking" banks for help as one article put it. The FDIC is taking money from banks by force before those banks were legally supposed to pay.

GOVERNMENT SPENDING:

The Heritage Foundation highlights the fiscal danger from Social Security being in the red.

"The 2009 deficit of about $10 billion will be followed by a 2010 deficit of about $9 billion. If there is a strong recovery--which is questionable at best--the program could briefly return to surpluses. But by 2016, deficits will return and continue permanently. A far more likely scenario is that Social Security will run deficits from this point on."

America's looming debt crisis, the one I had been putting 10 years out, is here today.

"On top of the $1 trillion-plus deficit predicted for this year to pay for the Obama Administration's programs, taxpayers will have to find still more money to pay Social Security's deficits. It is true that a trust fund exists that has been funded by $2.4 trillion of Social Security surpluses since 1983, but there is no real money in that trust fund.
As the Office of Management and Budget said in 2000, "These balances are available to finance future benefit payments ... only in a bookkeeping sense. They do not consist of real economic assets that can be drawn down in the future to fund benefits. Instead, they are claims on the Treasury that, when redeemed, will have to be financed by raising taxes, borrowing from the public, or reducing benefits, or other expenditures."
Congress has already spent every penny of that money, and all that is left are IOUs that must be repaid by the same taxpayers who paid the extra taxes in the first place. Taxpayers, not the trust fund, will end up covering Social Security's deficits."

Government has been stealing the Social Security surplus and using it to buy votes. This is the same government that liberals want to give the power of life or death in the form of health care over us.

"In other words, Congress would have to invest $7.7 trillion today in order to have enough money to pay all of Social Security's promised benefits between 2016 and 2083. This money would be in addition to what Social Security receives during those years from its payroll taxes."

Medicare and Medicaid are even worse off.

Do we really need a study to prove that unionizing government employees is bad for the country? As self-evidence at this is, yes we do. We need all the studies like that we can get to penetrate people's consciousness.

FEDERAL RESERVE:

Ron Paul on the Daily Show.

HEALTH CARE:

Obamacare tablets. Where's the price tag?

Democrat claims Republicans want sick people to die quickly. This is what congressidiots do with our tax dollars.

Inconvenient facts about Romneycare in Massachusetts, which is the model for Obamacare. Don't you just love the stark differences between liberals like Obama and conservatives like Romney?

States considering constitutional amendments to nullify health care mandates. This doesn't take a constitutional amendment. States are sovereign despite what Marshall and Lincoln did. Big government is ripping our country apart.

Mises scholar explains how government regulations led to the skyrocketing cost of health insurance.

"Were it easy for new health-insurance companies to enter into the market, surely we would be seeing a vast increase in them as a response to the record profits of the past few years. On the contrary, the number of health insurance companies has been on a consistent decline because of regulations and barriers to entry."

Democrats are masters of the half-truth. Competition is key to bringing down prices, but their plan will stifle competition, not increase it. It is funny (funny sick, not funny haha) how Obama tried to adopt the language of markets, talking about competition, to sell his seizure of our health care sector.

How Congress uses tricks to make its health care bills seem less expensive (yes, $900 billion is less expensive) than they really would be.

I'm not surprised to find out that new drugs, technology and procedures increase life expectancy without contributing significantly to health care costs, but I am surprised that organizations are claiming they contribute significantly to costs.

GLOBAL WARMING:

I'm not surprised that the Kerry/Boxer Senate tax and trade bill is more onerous than the house bill.

Global warming propagandist scientists conspire to peer review each others papers and ignore errors so they can get their propaganda published.

Who needs tax and trade anyway? Obama regulating greenhouse gases without waiting for a bill from Congress.

"But existing law still leaves the executive branch enormous discretionary power--and thus a hammer to hold over Congress's head. A report issued in April by the New York University Law School argues that "if Congress fails to act, President Obama has the power under the Clean Air Act to adopt a cap-and-trade system.""

That's what we get from giving the EPA this power and the EPA deciding that CO2, the gas as essential to plant life as oxygen is to animal life, is a pollutant.

WAR ON DRUGS:

There's an international movement to decriminalize drugs. About time. Let's hope the US gets on board, but I'm not holding my breath.

WAR:

Obama begins review of Afghan policy. Begins? He set the strategy for Afghanistan back in March. He put a new general in command 70 odd days ago. He learned of a request for 40,000 more troops last week. But he only began his review yesterday? It shows how little American lives mean to Obama. Review to last weeks. Obama first heard of this impending request in August. Why is he just starting it now? Our troops have been dying since he got the report.

MISC:

New Ohio law requires children under eight years old and 4' 9" to ride in a booster seat. You've got to be kidding me. Get the hell out of my car and off the backs of my family, government.

Stanley Kurtz continues to uncover Obama's ties to ACORN.

New York Supreme Court throws out Dan Rather's lawsuit against CBS.

Murray Rothbard on capitalism versus statism. Rothbard lays bare the motives of government and the intellectuals who support it and profit from it.

"It was the partial success of this movement that freed the market economy and thereby gave rise to the Industrial Revolution, probably the most decisive and most liberating event of modern times. It was no accident that the Industrial Revolution in England emerged, not in guild-ridden and State-controlled London, but in the new industrial towns and areas that arose in the previously rural and therefore unregulated north of England. The Industrial Revolution could not come to France until the French Revolution freed the economy from the fetters of feudal landlordism and innumerable local restrictions on trade and production. The Industrial Revolution freed the masses of men from their abject poverty and hopelessness — a poverty aggravated by a growing population that could find no employment in the frozen economy of pre-industrial Europe. The Industrial Revolution, the achievement of free-market capitalism, meant a steady and rapid improvement in the living conditions and the quality of life for the broad masses of people, for workers and consumers alike, wherever the impact of the market was felt."

Not the usual baloney we hear about the industrial revolution being bad for people.

"In undeveloped and sparsely populated area originally, America did not begin as the leading capitalist country. But after a century of independence it achieved this eminence, and why? Not, as the common myth has it, because of superior natural resources. The resources of Brazil, of Africa, of Asia, are at least as great. The difference came because of the relative freedom in the United States, because it was here that the free-market economy more than in any other country was allowed its head. We began free of a feudal or monopolizing landlord class, and we began with a strongly individualist ideology that permeated much of the population. Obviously, the market in the United States was never completely free or unhampered; but its relatively greater freedom (relative to other countries or centuries) resulted in the enormous release of productive energies, the massive capital equipment, and the unprecedentedly high standard of living that the mass of Americans not only enjoy but take blithely for granted. Living in the lap of a luxury that could not have been dreamed of by the wealthiest emperor of the past, we are all increasingly acting like the man who murdered the goose that laid the golden egg.
And so we have a mass of intellectuals who habitually sneer at "materialism" and "material values," who proclaim absurdly that we are living in a "post-scarcity age" that permits an unlimited cornucopia of production without requiring anyone to work or produce, who attack our undue affluence as somehow sinful in a perverse recreation of a new form of Puritanism. The idea that our capital machine is automatic and self-perpetuating, that whatever is done to it or not done for it does not matter because it will go on perpetually — this is the farmer blindly destroying the golden goose. Already we are beginning to suffer from the decay of capital equipment, from the restrictions and taxes and special privileges that have increasingly been imposed on the industrial machine in recent decades."

Tell me about it. Rothbard wrote this in 1972. This quote explains exactly what's behind liberals' ridiculous proclamation that health care is a right:

"Heir to an ample and generous past … the new commonality has been spoiled by the world around it … the new masses find themselves in the presence of a prospect full of possibilities, and furthermore, quite secure, with everything ready to their hands, independent of any previous efforts on their part, just as we find the sun in the heavens…. And these spoiled masses are unintelligent enough to believe that the material and social organization, placed at their disposition like the air, is of the same origin, since apparently it never fails them, and is almost as perfect as the natural scheme of things….
As they do not see, behind the benefits of civilization, marvels of invention and construction that can only be maintained by great effort and foresight, they imagine that their role is limited to demanding these benefits peremptorily, as if they were natural rights. In the disturbances caused by scarcity of food, the mob goes in search of bread, and the means it employs is generally to wreck the bakeries. This may serve as a symbol of the attitude adopted, on a greater and more complicated scale, by the masses of today towards the civilization by which they are supported."

Bold mine. And how insightful is this quote?

"Indeed, American liberals — who for decades have been the main heralds and apologists for big government and the welfare state — have increasingly become unhappy at the results of their own efforts. For just as in the days of oriental despotism, state rule cannot endure for long without a corps of intellectuals to spin the arguments and the rationale to gain the support and the sense of legitimacy among the public, and the liberals (the overwhelming majority of American intellectuals) have served since the New Deal as the celebrants of big government and the welfare state. But many liberals are coming to realize that they have been in power, have fashioned American society, for four decades now, and it is clear to them that something has gone radically wrong. After four decades of the welfare state at home and "collective security" abroad, the consequences of New Deal liberalism have clearly seen aggravated breakdowns and conflicts at home and perpetual war and intervention abroad. Lyndon Johnson, with whom liberals became extremely unhappy, correctly referred to Franklin Roosevelt as his "Big Daddy" — and the parentage on all foreign and domestic fronts was quite clear. Richard Nixon is scarcely distinguishable from his predecessor. If many liberals have become strangers and afraid in a world they have made, then perhaps the fault lies precisely in liberalism itself."

Amen. Where are the scholars to write with this clarity an honesty today?

"The point of this essay is that the public need not be forced to choose between the alternative of repressive and stifling welfare-warfare state monopoly liberalism on the one hand, or the irrational and nihilistic return to tribal primitivism on the other. The radical alternative is evidently not compatible with a prosperous life and industrial civilization; this much is crystal clear. But less clear is the fact that corporate state liberalism is in the long run also not compatible with an industrial civilization. The one route offers our society a quick suicide; the other a slow and lingering murder."

I reject both paths.

New book on Ayn Rand.

In praise of hedge funds and short selling and in fear that hedge funds will soon be regulated.

In praise of buying cheap.

Obama's FCC chairman proclaims himself czar of the internet.

"In his words, "the FCC must be a smart cop on the beat preserving a free and open Internet.""

The assault on freedom and free speech never ends. I wonder what the justification for this will be. The fiction created for government's seizure of the airwaves was that the airwaves were owned by everybody. That's a bunch of crap, but it was the fiction promoted. That fiction doesn't work for the internet. Will Obama even bother creating a fiction? Somebody will have to to defend the lawsuit.

Not only should a person falsely convicted by a prosecutor who manufactured evidence be able to sue the prosecutor when his innocence is later proven, the prosecutor should be charged, tried and convicted for the crime of kidnapping and abrogation of rights under color of law.

"In Imbler, the Supreme Court determined that a prosecutor who knowingly uses false testimony and withholds exculpatory evidence is immune from damages, even in cases where his misdeeds result in a wrongful conviction. The Court determined that subjecting prosecutors to the possibility of such suits would affect their judgment in determining what cases to bring."

What a crock. This is a transparent case of lawyers protecting lawyers for the sake of making lawyers more powerful.

UPS is attacking FedEx in Congress in an attempt to saddle FedEx with the same unions that drive up UPS's labor costs. This is another case of government creating a problem - giving unions the power of coercion over UPS - and attempting the solve the problem by creating a worse problem - extending the coercion to FedEx. It's also another case of a company trying to use government to harm the competition which can only happen because we've given that power to government. We should take that power back.

This is a great sub-headline: Joe Scarborough stands athwart history yelling, "slow down." That's funny. Needless to say the author is not impressed with Scarborough's support for the status quo, just at a slightly slower pace, he calls conservativism. That's why I call conservatives liberals-lite.

"Yet The Last Best Hope is less a serious manifesto than a breezy bull session. Scarborough argues that rightwingers seeking to recapture Ronald Reagan’s box office mojo need to embrace environmentalism (they should be “going green for God”); acknowledge the permanence of troubled entitlement programs like Social Security and Medicare (“everyone is going to have to give until it hurts”); and pursue a humble foreign policy (except when they don’t: “Most Republicans, including myself, were steadfast in their support for the war” in Iraq).
...
Hayek pushed a decentralist, libertarian line instead, because he believed that none of us has a monopoly on truth or knowledge and that “to live and work successfully with others requires…an intellectual commitment to a type of order in which… others are allowed to pursue different ends.” In such thoughts is the beginning of a very different political program, one that might go much farther in restoring “America’s promise” than supporting, as Scarborough did when he served in Congress, “increased funding for school lunch programs by 4 percent instead of 6 percent.”"

Smack.

Great essay written four days after Katrina explains that the natural disaster caused by Katrina was minor compared to the man-made disaster caused by 40 years of the welfare state.

"The reference to Iraq is eerie. The photo that accompanies this article shows National Guard troops, with rifles and armored vests, riding on an armored vehicle through trash-strewn streets lined by a rabble of squalid, listless people, one of whom appears to be yelling at them. It looks exactly like a scene from Sadr City in Baghdad."

And all the news coverage and liberal criticism since Katrina bought into the same philosophy - government failed to take care of these people as if these people were babies in diapers. Bull. Many people suffering from Katrina, the ones who turned to predation on others and turned the natural disaster into a much greater man-made disaster, failed to take care of themselves because government had undermined their ability to do so for generations. They didn't know how. They were born into welfare so they never developed the social tools to take care of themselves and work together to the benefit of themselves and everybody else.

"There were many decent, innocent people trapped in New Orleans when the deluge hit - but they were trapped alongside large numbers of people from two groups: criminals - and wards of the welfare state, people selected, over decades, for their lack of initiative and self-induced helplessness. The welfare wards were a mass of sheep - on whom the incompetent administration of New Orleans unleashed a pack of wolves.
All of this is related, incidentally, to the apparent incompetence of the city government, which failed to plan for a total evacuation of the city, despite the knowledge that this might be necessary. But in a city corrupted by the welfare state, the job of city officials is to ensure the flow of handouts to welfare recipients and patronage to political supporters - not to ensure a lawful, orderly evacuation in case of emergency."

Man, this is a great essay that shines a laser on the real fundamental problem exposed by Katrina.

Longer school days do not translate into better educated kids. I think it would make them less educated. Education is a family affair. If parents make education a priority, a child will learn more. The more schools undermine the parent-child relationship by trapping kids in cookie cutter, lowest common denominator schools, the worse kids will do in school.

Yet another political writer misunderstands Obama. Obama is too a radical. But he's also a realist. He knows he can't just dictate we become a communist country. Obama will not allow the process of creative destruction to keep America succeeding. He's following the Cloward-Piven strategy of overburdening our welfare state in an attempt to collapse our economy, hoping for Marxist revolution to follow. Just like Lenin, Obama has to work within the constraints of reality. And just like Lenin, the worse the better for Obama.

Free kibbles

ECONOMY:

53.4 percent of Americans between the ages of 16 and 24 are unemployed. The minimum wage and big government depressing our economy are destroying the future of America.

GOVERNMENT SPENDING:

Social Security is in the red.

HEALTH CARE:

The Democrat dominated Senate Finance Committee rejected two public option amendments.

You knew it was going to be like this - Democrats want to send individuals who don't buy health insurance or pay the exorbitant fine to prison. Democrats don't want Americans to be free.

Republicans bash Democrats over tax increases in their health care plans. Why aren't these ads running on my TV?

21 false claims in Obama's speech to Congress about health care by Cato scholar. Great list.

Democrats pushing to include illegal aliens in government health care plan.

GLOBAL WARMING:

Senate Democrats rebranding tax and trade bill as "pollution reduction" bill. Maybe somebody should inform them that CO2 is a plant food.

WAR ON DRUGS:

Indiana grandmother arrested for buying two packages of cold medicine in a week.

WAR:

If President Obama was so concerned about a new strategy in Afghanistan, maybe he should have talked to the commanding general there more than once in 70 days.

POLITICS:

Democrats hoping for an act of violence to paint all small government supporters as violent. The problem is they'll get one eventually. It's inevitable. The media ignores violent acts by mainstream leftists like Bill Ayers but magnifies violent acts by the fringe right-wingers, and Pelosi and company are setting this up as a tool for regulation. But I think they're once again misreading the public. When they try to paint everybody as violent, it will backfire on them.

Wall Street is showering money on Democrats, especially Chuck Schumer. They got a fabulous return on investment from the money they gave Democrats previously.

FOREIGN POLICY:

Sarkozy mocks Obama over desire to banish nuclear weapons.

MISC:

Woman charged with operating an illegal day care for watching neighbors kids before they get on the school bus.

Dry counties going wet to raise revenue by taxing alcohol. Phony, holier-than-thou policies go out the window when money to buy votes dries up. This is what led to the repeal of prohibition. As our recession deepens, maybe we'll repeal the war on drugs too.

UK government going through people's trash. Obama is taking notes.

It's disgusting how much more money in wages and benefits government workers make than private sector workers. This is blow your mind.

"The Congressional Budget Office states that by next year America’s debt will exceed 60% of its Gross Domestic Product (GDP). In 2023, our debt will exceed 100% of the GDP."

Yikes!

20 techniques to help your memory.

Government spends tons of money on worthless research. Duh.

Interesting way of dealing with man who burned veterans' flag.

Free kibbles

ECONOMY:

Predicting the coming meltdown in the green technology sector because government is artificially inflating it.

Economic freedom leads to prosperity for all. Labor restrictions, like all government interference in the economy, makes us all poorer, and the most poor suffer the most.

MISC:

Fossil of four winged proto-bird discovered in China.

Environmentalists are enemies of civilization.

Lining the Pockets of Billionaires, Politicians and Special Inter

Lining the Pockets of Billionaires, Politicians and Special Interests

by Mark Luedtke

 

Here we go again. In what's become a yearly Ohio tradition, a couple of billionaires are pressuring Ohioans to give them a constitutionally protected monopoly on gambling businesses in Ohio. The details change every year, but the theme remains the same: Uncle Billionaire wants your gambling money, and he doesn't want anybody else to have any.

One of the great failures of the American political system is that special interests can come back year after year trying to take freedom and money from the American people, no matter how many times they lose, until they finally win. Freedom has to win every battle. Tyranny only has to win one. The current health care debate is another perfect example.

Ohio Issue 3 would create four casinos in Ohio, one each in Cleveland, Columbus, Cincinnati and Toledo. These casinos would have a constitutionally protected monopoly on casino games. The amendment specifically bans all lotteries except the government lottery. Charities could have bingo games. Because of the way the amendment is written, all other gambling games, including charity games, would be implicitly banned. Supporters say this is a mistake. I find that hard to believe.

Billionaires aren't dumb. Because of what they learn every time they lose, they improve their sales technique the next time. They figure out how to buy off the special interests with our money to get enough votes to win their monopoly. Last year the Fraternal Order of Police fought against the gambling monopoly. This year the billionaires won the support of the FOP by specifically earmarking a portion of the gambling taxes to police training. Buying support from special interests is just that easy. Between the FOP support and the bad economy, this incarnation of the gambling monopoly amendment, which is being sold as a jobs amendment, is more likely to pass than ever.

But the entire process starts with a fraud. The text on the ballot is not the text of the amendment. The amendment is six pages of detailed legislation, and the devil is in the details. The entire US Constitution isn't much longer than six pages. Most Ohioans will never see the actual amendment, only the sanitized summary on the ballot.

But why should a couple of billionaires be the only people to enjoy the profits of gambling? If the new owners of the Arcade want to open up a casino inside, why should the state stop them? If Pat Flanagan wants to put a couple of slot machines in his bar, why should the state stop him?

Pennsylvania, Indiana, Michigan and West Virginia all allow casino gambling. Kentucky recently passed a law allowing it, though no casinos have been built yet. The ads tell us that Ohioans spend $1 billion gambling in surrounding states each year. My research indicates that's in the ballpark. Of course Ohioans should capitalize on that business. But we shouldn't follow the government protected monopoly model of those states. Every adult in Ohio should be free to share in the profits from running gambling games.

I propose an alternative amendment to allow gambling in Ohio. “Because the people of Ohio are free, and because free people can gamble if and when they choose, the people of Ohio may gamble or run gambling games as each sees fit.” That sure beats a constitutionally protected monopoly for billionaires.

This whole scam is just a way to transfer wealth from Ohioans to billionaires, politicians and special interests. I'm not a gambler, so I've never gambled in a neighboring state, but I've been told that while the casinos flourish, the surrounding towns do not. Of course. The casinos build everything inside to keep gamblers inside. Games. Bars. Restaurants. Hotels. Entertainment for non-gambling people who came with gamblers. All inside the casino so very little money leaks out into surrounding businesses. That's just smart business. That's what would happen in Ohio. Gamblers in Dayton would forgo a night out in Dayton and instead hit the casino in Cincinnati or Columbus. The money would flow out of Dayton into the casino owners' pockets.

Proponents point to the taxes on the casinos as a benefit. Even before regular taxes, 33 percent of the gross revenue would go to casino taxes. 51 percent of that would be distributed to county and city governments based on population. How's that good for us? You'd have to be the most naive person in the world to think government is going to lower our taxes because of the new revenue stream. The people of Ohio won't see a dime of this money. It will just be more revenue for local politicians to buy votes and pervert our economy, making us all poorer.

Opponents of the bill complain the casinos aren't paying enough tax. Our 7.5 percent income tax is destroying our state, but they think an additional 33 percent off the top is too little. Those people apparently have no concept of property rights or how an economy works.

And this amendment isn't just a first step toward embracing greater freedom, the freedom to gamble, in Ohio. Once these billionaires have our money in their pockets, they'll use it to maintain their monopoly. The local politicians all over the state who get our money rained on them from the casino tax will use their power and our money to protect that monopoly and the revenue stream it generates. All the recipients of that vote buying money will fight to maintain that monopoly so they can keep our money flowing into their hands.

The billionaires, the politicians and the special interests win. The people lose. That's how it always works when government interferes in our economy.

Freedom, not government protected monopolies, is the solution to our economic problems. If we really want to create jobs, we should abolish state and local income taxes (and the federal income tax for that matter), cut the government spending they fund, extract government from our economy and make gambling free for every Ohioan to enjoy and profit from.

Free kibbles

ECONOMY:

In 2003, Paul Krugman feared deficits and inflation. Now he loves them. He's nothing but a liberal masquerading as an economist.

FEDERAL RESERVE:

Sweden's central bank lowers interest rate to negative 0.25 percent. Whoa. That's going to blow in the Swede's faces.

HEALTH CARE:

Democrats giving AARP special advantages to gain its support.

Ann Coulter's fifth installment of liberal lies about health care.

Great essay explains how government mandates for hospitals to treat the poor for free create problems in our health care system which a truly free market system would avoid while providing better care for the needy.

POLITICS:

Obama's Consumer Financial Protection Agency is just another tool to harm business while giving breaks to Obama's favorite businesses.

Government is getting closer to bailing out, meaning taking control of, the newspaper industry.

WAR ON DRUGS:

UK Navy seizes record haul of cocaine: five and a half tons. Drug dealers are moving cocaine into the UK by ton. The war on drugs is lost and never be won.

Free kibble

HEALTH CARE:

Michigan plan to tax doctors to pay for Medicaid. What? Taxing doctors to get money to pay doctors? The only people who win in that scenario is the politicians. I hear some former Michigan doctors driving by on their way to Florida.

Free kibbles

HEALTH CARE:

Democrats vote down another Republican proposal on health care while complaining that Republicans have no proposals on health care.

President Obama put a gag order on insurance companies from communicating to their customers about the health care oppression plans in Congress. What First Amendment? How does this even work?

How the Baucus plan would significantly increase the cost of health care and health insurance for Americans. A six year old could understand this. Democrats including Obama understand it. They're just lying to us.

Government mandates are a takeover of our health insurance industry. The mandates are a new tax, and they would force some 100 million Americans to have to change health insurance plans.

The Heritage Foundation estimates the economic damage that Democrats' health care oppression would do.

GLOBAL WARMING:

The never ending assault on freedom, prosperity and intelligence in America continues with Senate's introduction of tax and trade legislation. You'd think Democrats had learned their lesson, but I guess not.

POLITICS:

Obama administration loans taxpayer dollars to auto firm backed by Al Gore to build a new car in Finland. They should have just handed our money directly to Gore and cut out the middle men. Crooks.

WAR:

5 US soldiers killed in Afghanistan.

FOREIGN POLICY:

British PM Brown and French President Sarkozy join Obama in condemning Iran for a secret nuclear power plant for enriching uranium. We should paint a bullseye on it.

Obama is sending $400,000 of our tax dollars to charities run by Libyan tyrant Gadhafi and his family members. No wonder Gadhafi wants him to be president forever. Obama loves giving our money to tyrants who hate America.

MISC:

Domestic terror plots broken up by authorities.

Media redefining weapon of mass destruction to mean any potential explosive. I'm sure this creates the alarmism that boosts ratings, but it's stupid.

Teachers brainwashing kids to worship Barack Obama. This is spine tingling scary. Dangerous right wing weirdos are pushed to the fringes society. Dangerous left wing weirdos teach in our schools and live in the White House. Comparison to Jesus.

Typical violent protests from the left at the G-20. Have you noticed how there's no violence at tea parties unless SEIU goons show up and start fights? Look at this disgusting display of government force at the G-20. Both Republicans and Democrats are responsible for this. Read this story about the Reds game in Pittsburgh. This is outrageous. I want my country back from these two totalitarian wannabe parties.

This is a great fact. Liberals love to complain about the cost of the Iraq war, like we would have balanced budgets but for that. But in fact, Obama is spending more on poisonous welfare in 2010 alone: $888 billion, than Bush spent in seven years of the Iraq war: $622 billion.

Obama's self-worship and his hatred of America. More evidence.

90 percent of Americans think the media helped get Obama elected. The media isn't fooling too many people anymore.

Obama reducing the number of border agents on border with Mexico. I guess all the problems have been solved along that border.

This courtesy of Boortz:

"[Boortz Washington correspondent Jamie Dupree] was talking with a fellow reporter on his way into the Capitol today when an employee of the congress joined in. Can't remember just what office Jamie said this person works in, but it deals with drafting legislation. Anyway ... she revealed to Jamie that sometimes when she's preparing the legislation to be printed and uploaded to the Internet she is asked to intentionally misspell words. Why? So that those words - key words - won't be found when someone uses a search engine to figure out what this legislation is and is not doing."

Outright fraud.

Free kibbles

MISC:

Surveillance blimp deployed to Afghanistan. How long have I been saying we should use surveillance blimps on our borders? Hot air might work better than helium because helium leaks so quickly. It seems to me somebody could develop a hot air surveillance blimp powered by solar energy that could stay aloft for a year at a time.

Email to aristocrats

Private sector employment is below the level for August 1999. Americans have now officially sacrificed more than 10 years of our productivity, wealth and lives to you government aristocrats and your special interests. Naturally, you aristocrats constantly demand more. It'll never be enough for you until all Americans except you are living in caves, wearing fur loincloths and hunting for food with pointy sticks.

Vote NO on health care oppression.
Vote NO on tax and trade.
vote NO on any new government spending.
Vote NO on any new taxes.

Cut the Federal budget in half.
Abolish the income tax.
Abolish the Federal Reserve.

Free kibbles

ECONOMY:

Private sector employment is below the level for August 1999. We've now sacrificed more than 10 years of our productivity, wealth and lives to our government. Naturally, the aristocrats demand more. It'll never be enough for them until we're all living in caves and wearing fur loincloths.

Sweden announces tax cuts and regulatory changes to promote entrepreneurship in order to boost its economy. Even the Swedes, often hailed as successful socialists, are embracing economic freedom to their benefit while we continue to destroy it to our detriment. We have the stupidest government in the world.

HEALTH CARE:

The Heritage Foundation analyzes the Baucus health care oppression bill.

Obama's health care mandate is a tax.

GLOBAL WARMING:

One of the world's leading proponents of global warming and lead author for the IPCC admits he was wrong, the planet is cooling and will continue to cool for several decades. The silence from the media is deafening.

POLITICS:

Summary of Obama's appearances on Sunday talk shows.

FOREIGN POLICY:

Obama gives speech at UN. I'm sure he'll be warmly accepted for his anti-American positions.

Russia is suddenly open to Iran sanctions. Maybe Obama got something in return for scrapping missile defense in Poland after all.

MISC:

Of course Obama and Democrats want to bail out the newspaper industry. Look how they used bailout money to seize control of the financial sector and auto industry. Obama would love to control the press too instead of having to trust it to be a willing ally.

Short history of ACORN.

Free kibbles

HEALTH CARE:

Senate Democrats continue pushing their health care oppression bill.

GLOBAL WARMING:

China claims it will cut CO2. I think this is a political ploy to pressure the US into further harming our economy. Obama and his climate frauds and America haters are out in force for the UN global warming fraud meeting.

WAR:

Obama delays request for more troops. He's playing politics with the lives of our troops, trying to deflect blame from himself. You know in six months, he'll say he didn't get the request until a month from now.

FOREIGN POLICY:

Honduras security forces besiege Brazilian embassy in hopes of forcing ousted president to surrender and stand trial. I think this leftist has gravely misjudged the fortitude of Honduran officials.

MISC:

The new union bill includes provision for government to arbitrate disputes between employers and unions. I'm sure that'll be fair.

EU studying artificial intelligence projects to monitor web traffic and identify risks.

Soviet doomsday machine built to respond to a US first strike.

Free kibbles

POLITICS:

Obama pressures New York Governor Patterson not to run for re-election. You got to be kidding me. Patterson isn't dragging down Obama. Obama is dragging down Patterson. Somebody should tell Obama to resign before he does any more damage. Jimmy Carter seems to have running mouth disease.

WAR:

Top US General in Afghanistan says the US mission there will fail without more troops. What is the mission? Will it fail even if we send more troops? Should we be fighting that mission? Pull the troops out now. I bet Obama pulls our troops out soon. He'll say he did he his best, our troops did their best, but they couldn't overcome 7 years of mismanagement by Bush. I don't care who he blames. Pull them out now.

MISC:

New study based on newly declassified intelligence shows that the Soviet Union was not the aggressive nuclear threat our government told us it was. This should come as no surprise. They weren't ideologues looking for martyrdom. We long ago learned it was not the economic powerhouse we were told either. We fought the Cold War exactly wrong. The Cold War was fought to empower the Cold Warriors running the government, not to keep us safe. We fought the Cold War by becoming more like the Soviets, shackling ourselves with burdensome government to our detriment. It wasn't until Ronald Reagan loosened those shackles by lowering taxes that we won the Cold War. If we had stayed true to our principles, kept government small and individuals powerful, we would have won the Cold War decades sooner at least. And today we're shackling ourselves even more, and we will suffer grave consequences for it.

FCC proposes net neutrality rules. As nice as that sounds, it guarantees shortages. Let's understand the problem. If every user and every site could connect with no bandwidth problems, there would be no need for any rules. Everybody would be happy. But because bandwidth is limited and some users and sites take up tremendously higher amounts of bandwidth than everybody else, internet service providers are considering rationing bandwidth. The free market is trying to allocate scare resources optimally, which is what it does better than anything. Net neutrality is just effectively a price control. Remember when Nixon set prices for gas too low? We ended with shortages and gas lines. Government enforced net neutrality will create shortages of bandwidth. When you try to go to your favorite site, you will have to wait. It's be like 100 people waiting for $5 of gas while one person was pumping $1 million into his own gas tank.

So as soon as the government sticks its nose in this business, it will create shortages that will demand more government interference. It's the never ending downward spiral. Pretty soon we'll have government allocating bandwidth based on political priorities instead of the demands of web users and providers. This is another doorway through which government plans to control speech on the internet. The government should stay out of this and let the robust competition in the marketplace allocate the scare resources as effectively as possible, but I don't think that's going to happen.

Free kibbles

ECONOMY:

Once again, Peter Schiff tells it like it is, and it isn't pretty.

"However, politics quickly trumped economics, and the Lehman trial balloon soon turned into the Hindenburg. Washington had no stomach for the ensuing financial carnage, and when other institutions began to topple, Bush, Paulson and Bernanke abandoned their prior convictions and threw all they had into the ensuing bailout bonanza. As a result, the moral hazard that they had sought to avoid now exists on a scale unprecedented in our history. Capitalism has been extinguished on Wall Street, and our financial institutions now exist as public utilities. The presidents of our biggest banks are now the highest paid civil servants in the world!"

This can end only one way, and we're all going to be far worse off for it.

HEALTH CARE:

Obama claims that mandating people get insurance and fining them if they don't isn't effectively a tax increase. What would you expect him to say? It's government taking money from people by force. It's a tax.

Perfect example of how paying for you own health care saves money.

There is no right to health care. It's fiction created by people who want to take power from others.

FEDERAL RESERVE:

Naturally the UN wants to replace the dollar as the world's international currency with a new currency run by a world-wide central bank. That way it can destroy all the world's economies at once. One world communist government.

POLITICS:

Civility is overrated. The politicians of both parties love civility because it lulls the people to sleep and enables them to run roughshod over our rights. It takes some incivility to wake the people up to fight for their rights. I prefer the latter to the former any day.

"This new focus on civility is meant to cloud another issue. Let's not confuse personal civility with political civility. A "civil" citizenry can mean a pliable citizenry, waiting—sometimes forever—to speak their minds.
We have no duty to say "please" and "thank you" to elected officials. Not yet."

For all those people who are ignorant of history and think we're more uncivil than ever, go tell it to Aaron Burr and Alexander Hamilton.

People didn't just discover that Obama was black in August. They're just fed up with the growth of government.

FOREIGN POLICY:

George Will wonders if nation building failed in Bosnia despite all it's advantages, how we can expect it to succeed in Afghanistan with all its liabilities.

Obama ups the ante in trade war with China with tariff on Chinese tires, no doubt a gift to his union buddies.

"China has not been competing unfairly on tires — just more effectively, mainly because of its far lower labor costs. As a result, its tire exports to the United States tripled from 2004 to 2008. Four United States tire factories have shut down since 2006, with more to follow."

So change was happening, unprofitable businesses were closing down in favor of profitable businesses, but Obama wants to stop change. He's the anti-change candidate.

Pretty good analysis of the eastern European missile defense plan canceled by Obama. Missile defense is a wonderful technology we should continue to aggressively advance, but using it to lock ourselves into a commitment to defend ex-Soviet satellite states is a terrible idea.

"Even if Obama didn't win specific concessions from the Russians, he still made the right decision. Saving money and avoiding needless antagonism of Moscow are victories in and of themselves."

I agree, but I think Obama could have won something from Russia in exchange.

MISC:

Blagojevich's defense for selling Obama's senate seat: he was trying to get important legislation passed for the people of Illinois. Politics is corruption.

My position on net neutrality is evolving. Sure, it would be wonderful if internet service providers could provide unlimited bandwidth to every provider and customer, but bandwidth is a scarce resource like any other, and rationing is inevitable. I would rather have competing service providers in the private sector ration bandwidth than the government. Of course that assumes unrestricted competition which government doesn't allow right now.

It'll be interesting to compare the coverage of this small Muslim march on Washington to the non-coverage of the gigantic tea party last weekend.

Free kibbles

FOREIGN POLICY:

Russia drops plans to deploy missiles near Poland in response to Obama canceling missile defense there. That's good. Russia condemns Ahmadinejad's statement calling the Holocaust a myth. Another good thing.

MISC:

Austin police attempting to identify anonymous web critics for prosecution. That'll teach them to criticize the government.

Free kibbles

ECONOMY:

Protectionism on the rise.

FEDERAL RESERVE:

How Bernanke made the recession worse.

The Fed wants to determine salaries of bankers.

SPENDING:

The Heritage Foundation predicts Obama will spend twice as much on welfare as Clinton - $10 trillion over 10 years. Ouch! We should end welfare, not expand it.

Obama has sparked the revenge of Ross Perot. Perot must have been a racist to oppose Obama's policies before Obama supported them.

HEALTH CARE:

Cato blasts the Baucus plan.

The Baucus plan is public option lite. It would make insurance more expensive and care lower quality.

45 percent of doctors say they would consider quiting if Democrats pass health care oppression. Some actually will quit, but I doubt it would be anywhere near 45 percent.

87 percent of companies would reduce benefits if Democrats pass health care oppression.

Republicans need to take the blame for not fixing health care when they were in power. All they did was create the biggest entitlement in history - Medicare Part D.

Both parties support the third party payer system which is the root of our health care problems.

The White House sent out Michelle Obama to make the case for health care reform. Now those of us who oppose it are both racist and sexist. Obama has stooped to another new low. He dragged his wife into the fray, and now she's fair game. But when critics go after her, you know Obama, the Democrats and their mainstream media press team will cry foul.

GLOBAL WARMING:

Obama administration reports its tax and trade plan will cost taxpayers $200 billion per year. That's $2 trillion over 10 years. And those are Obama's numbers, so you know the cost will be significantly higher. I wonder if he put this info out to make health care oppression look less expensive.

New fuel economy standard pushed to 35.5 MPG. This will make cars much more expensive and dangerous. Lovely.

Save the reindeer!

Obama can use the EPA's ruling that CO2 is a pollutant to put limits on it and drive up energy prices without tax and trade legislation.

"Now that cap-and-trade has so spectacularly failed in the legislature, it is a sure bet that Obama will direct (or has directed) EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson to issue her own cap-and-trade protocols. Look for something concrete out of EPA before the U.N.’s climate change confab in Copenhagen in early December. (That “something” may even include a new fuel economy standard of 35.5 miles-per-gallon—though it would be lower, of course, for the inefficient cars produced by government-owned General Motors.)"

Good prediction.

POLITICS:

Obama's press secretary Gibbs says Obama doesn't think opposition to his policies is based on race. Good for him. He's right. Too bad the Democrats, mainstream media and liberals in general can't figure that out. Or maybe it's not. The more Democrats accuse the opposition of being racists, the more they hurt their own cause, so maybe it's a good thing. This is probably the first time I've ever supported Obama twice in the same blog entry.

Democrats are destroying the meaning of the word racist as well as their party.

Pat Buchanan blasts Jimmy Carter for claiming the resistance to Obama's agenda is based on racism.

And since slandering the opposition as racists isn't working, Nancy Pelosi plays the crying card. Just when you thought politicians couldn't get any more pathetic and disgusting.

FOREIGN POLICY:

The Poles and Czechs feel betrayed because Obama killed the missile shield. I'm sure they do. They came to our aid in Iraq. No doubt they want to think America will go to war with Russia to protect them. But that's never going to happen, and it shouldn't happen. It was never a smart policy to put the missile shield up on Russia's border. It was never a smart policy to expand NATO to Russia's border. We should have abolished NATO, not expanded it. Bush put us in bad situation, and Obama, for once, did the right thing. Great quote from the Wall Street Journal:

"President Obama promised he would win America friends where, under George W. Bush, it had antagonists. The reality is that the U.S. is working hard to create antagonists where it previously had friends."

But again, the problem was created by Bush pushing American hegemony where it doesn't belong like the US has infinite resources and is the king of the world and every nation has to bow down to us. Obama fixed the problem, but it will have consequences.

"The Administration's likelier motive for scrapping the interceptors is that it hopes to win Russia's vote at the U.N. Security Council for tougher sanctions on Iran. Maybe the Russians have secretly agreed to such a quid pro quo, though publicly they were quick to deny it following yesterday's decision."

Given the ineptitude of Obama and his administration, I sincerely doubt any quid pro quo is in place. Obama is surely hoping, but I doubt those hopes will be fulfilled.

"The European switcheroo continues Mr. Obama's trend of courting adversaries while smacking allies. His Administration has sought warmer ties with Iran, Burma, North Korea, Russia and even Venezuela. But it has picked trade fights with Canada and Mexico, sat on trade treaties with Colombia and South Korea, battled Israel over West Bank settlements, ignored Japan in deciding to talk with North Korea, and sanctioned Honduras for its sin of resisting the encroachments of Venezuela's Hugo Chávez."

Nice summary.

Maybe Obama is getting something back for killing the missile defense bases after all. But probably not.

Russia to help Venezuela develop nuclear energy? Energy? I doubt it. Why does oil rich Venezuela need nuclear energy? This is where we should check Russian influence, not in Europe. Europe can take care of itself. We don't need Venezuela in our backyard becoming the next Iran.

MEDIA:

In a huge blow to the mainstream media, John Stossel is leaving ABC for Foxnews. Wow. Foxnews wins again. How bad is the network news that it can't outcompete Foxnews for an incredibly popular journalist like John Stossel?

MISC:

Obama out to destroy competition between financial regulators. Yeah. Competition is the problem.

GM is now advertising a 60 day money back guarantee. GM can do that because it's funded by tax dollars. Ford can't. This is just one step in the process of putting Ford out of business. I also heard the Federal government will buy only GM cars instead of splitting between GM, Ford and Chrysler as usual. That's another step in putting Ford out of business. Government is going to destroy our domestic auto industry just like Britain's government did.

Arlen Specter, who was against card check when he was a Republican, introduces new card check bill now that he's a Democrat. Specter is consistently a snake.

Barney Frank wants to expand the Community Reinvestment Act - the law that forces banks to make subprime loans. Have I mentioned that Barney Frank is a corrupt moron? How'd the last subprime mortgage crisis work out for us?

From boortz:

"Next week Ahmadinejad, Castro, Chavez, Gaddafi and other thugs will be coming to the US to speak to the UN General Assembly. However, the new president of Honduras has been banned from entering the US. "

You've got to be kidding me.

Why prosecutors bring charges when they shouldn't. That's how they get re-elected.

In praise of Sarah Palin's decision to quit as governor of Alaska and become an internet political maverick. This is funny and insightful. It's disturbing to think that twitter might become powerfully influential in politics. I think a a communication mechanism that limits messages to 140 characters might turn out to be the most culturally degrading phenomenon since MTV.

Reason interview with the host of Red Eye:

"I became a conservative by being around liberals and I became a libertarian by being around conservatives. You realize that there’s something distinctly in common between the two groups, the left and the right; the worst part of each of them is the moralizing. On the left, you have people who want to dictate your behavior under the guise of tolerance. Unless you disagree with them. Then the tolerance goes out the window. Which kind of negates the whole idea of tolerance. That’s the politically correct moralizing. Then when you become a conservative, the other kind of moralizing comes from religion. But if you remove both of those from the equation, what you’re left with is libertarianism."

Like I said, a liberal is a conservative who hasn't been mugged yet, and a conservative is a libertarian who hasn't been harassed by the police yet.

Michelle Malkin exposes ACORN's illegal alien home loan racket.

ACORN is a nationwide criminal organization and should be investigated as such, but RICO, at least the part allowing the government to seize assets before a conviction, is unconstitutional.

Free kibbles

ECONOMY:

Interesting quote from the Government Accountability Office:

"privatizing the government-sponsored enterprises (GSE) Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac could mitigate the systemic economic risk caused by the federal government's guarantees to the now-defunct mortgage giants, but that the benefits of privatization could be reversed by government efforts to insure private-sector mortgages."

Wow. Government isn't usually that honest, but Hell would freeze over before Obama would give up control of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.

GOVERNMENT SPENDING:

Obama is ushering in a new golden age in government jobs.

HEALTH CARE:

Thomas Sowell continues his scathing attacks on Obama (he must be a racist too) by comparing Obama's health care plan to childhood fairy tale. Needless to say, the end is not good.

POLITICS:

I want to thank this liberal and Jimmy Carter for explaining that I really like Obama's policies, I just oppose him because I'm a racist. I appreciate these liberals being so kind to tell me my own mind since I don't know it myself. I really wanted socialized medicine all my life. I really wanted tax and trade all my life. I really wanted Obama to take a trillion from Americans by force and hand it out to his leftist allies to buy votes. I really want government to solidify its monopoly on our schools. The only reason I object to those policies is Obama is black. I appreciate being educated on my positions and racist mentality. This is from Foxnews, btw.

House joins the Senate and cuts Federal funding to ACORN. Unfortunately this was a rider in a bill that give government a monopoly on student loans. Maybe because government monopolies have worked out so well for us so far.

FOREIGN POLICY:

Obama to change European missile defense policy, but to what? Why is it our responsibility to protect Europe from missiles anyway? If Europe wants to buy the technology, fine, but we shouldn't spend one dime on it. I never liked the idea of putting missile defense right next to Russia where it was easy for Russia steal it. This is more dissembling from Obama. He didn't change the plan. He canceled it. I think that's a good move, and he should have just said so. I think Bush pushed that base as a way to expand NATO to Russia's border, and that was dumb. I think Obama should have used it as a bargaining chip to get something from the Russians though.

Venezuela buying weapons. With the US building seven military bases in Columbia, what do you expect? The war on drugs is creating yet another conflict.

MEDIA:

Despite Obama's lifelong ties to ACORN, despite all our money being funneled to ACORN by the Federal government, and despite all the video and talk about ACORN supporting child prostitution, Charlie Gibson is unaware of the story. That's why the mainstream media is dying. They've made themselves irrelevant. Liberal bias is a major reason. Liberal bias shows up in what is not covered even more than it shows up in what is covered.

Mark Levin's Liberty and Tyranny: a Conservative Manifesto has sold over 1 million copies, and it still hasn't been reviewed by the New York Times or Washington Post. I wonder why.

MISC:

Nouveau poor being discriminated against by old poor.

Obama supports extending provisions of Patriot Act. I can understand roving wiretaps and monitoring solo terrorists, but poking into business records is baloney.

Free kibbles

ECONOMY:

Economist destroys three conventional wisdom assumptions for the causes of the current economic crisis.

"In the banking industry, however, bankers’ heterogeneous strategies were homogenized (although not entirely) by the Recourse Rule, which loaded the dice in favor of the regulators’ ideas of where risk did and did not lie.
The regulators thought that AA or AAA tranches of asset-backed securities were 60-percent safer than individual mortgages. To be sure, this was not an “irrational” theory, either: The tranching structure created by Moody’s, Standard and Poor, and Fitch had a lot to be said for it, and even the little-known fact that the SEC had effectively conferred oligopoly status on these three rating companies[7] did not guarantee that disaster would follow from placing further official weight on their ratings. But the crucial fact is that however reasonable it seemed at the time, the Recourse Rule imposed a new profitability gradient over the bankers’ calculations, producing the same effect that is intended by all regulations: The regulatory carrot altered the behavior of those being regulated, the better to align it with the regulators’ ideas about what would make for prudent banking. By thus homogenizing the heterogeneous competitive process, the regulators inadvertently made the banking system more vulnerable--if, in fact, the regulators’ theory turned out to be wrong.
If we seek the sources of a systemic failure, a logical place to look is among the legal rules that govern the system as a whole. Unfortunately, being legal mandates, these rules--unlike the different strategies pursued by competing capitalists--aren't subjected to a competitive process. So if they are based on mistaken ideas, we all suffer the consequences. That turned out to be the case with the Recourse Rule.
Contrary to popular belief, then, the crisis of 2008 is best described as a crisis of regulation—not a crisis of capitalism."

It always comes back to government regulation or money.

HEALTH CARE:

The Baucus bill cuts the cost to $856 billion. Like that's supposed to be a good thing. Obama has numbed us to anything less than a trillion, but that's real money taken out of our pockets. No thank you. CNNMoney points out several of the hidden costs of Baucus's bill. Wait, did I say CNN?

POLITICS:

Just in case anybody forgot what a world call dumbass Jimmy Carter is, he reminds us all by calling the resistance to government controlled health care racist.

MISC:

The income tax is the root of all evil. Pretty close.

"This was, to be sure, "the home of the free and the land of the brave." Americans were free simply because the government was too weak to intervene in the private affairs of the people — it did not have the money to do so — and they were brave because a free people is always venturesome. The obligation of freedom is a willingness to stand on your own feet."

I want to memorize that paragraph.

"[B]y enabling the federal government to put its hands into the pockets and pay envelopes of the people, [the 16th amendment] drew their allegiance away from their local governments. It made them citizens of the United States rather than of their respective states. Theft loyalty followed theft money, which was now taken from them not by their local representatives, over whom they had some control, but by the representatives of the other forty-seven states. They became subject to the will of the central government, and their state of subjection was emphasized by every increase in the income tax levies."

I might to memorize this entire essay.

Briton gets it right: don't further regulate financial markets - liberalize them. Libertarian candidates should use the argument and term liberalize at every opportunity. Liberals would be shocked to find out what the term really means.

"The notion that the present financial system is "laissez-faire" is, of course, ludicrous. At present, we have a nationalised organisation that holds a state-granted monopoly on the issuance of currency. If this were any industry other than finance, the Bank of England would be seen as the Soviet-style planning board that it is.
Defending laissez-faire is therefore not a defence of the status quo; it is a positive prescription for a totally new regime. Here are three courses of action that would liberalise the banking system:"

Three general but powerful policy descriptions follow. Maybe this is why we should open the presidency to foreign nationals. Just joking.

Company opens plant to transform plastic into $10 per barrel fuel. This story fails the sniff test. This company is in Washington D.C., home of the biggest lies and liars on Earth. It's the home of the political economy, not real innovation. I bet this claim is manure to feed politicians so they'll steal more of our money and give it to this company.

Free kibbles

ECONOMY:

Bernanke says the recession is over. Amazing what increasing the numbers on banks balance sheets will do. If you our I just changed the numbers in our bank accounts, we'd be put in prison, but Bernanke can just change them for banks and the government and then look at those numbers and say the recession is over. We like to talk about inflation as a printing press, but there is no printing today. Bernanke just logs into the computer and changes the numbers in accounts to whatever he likes. They put hackers in jail for that, but Bernanke is considered a hero that staved off a new Great Depression. Like those numbers are magic. No wealth was created. We're no better off than we were before. In fact, we're poorer. The banks are wealthier though.

Unemployment will remain unacceptably high for a number of years. How's that electronic recovery working out for you?

BUDGET:

Taxes are going to go up. You don't say. Even the mainstream media is figuring it out. Just like we said before the election.

Stimulus money goes to big companies with no competition in the process. Where are the liberals who cried about Halliburton for eight years.

HEALTH CARE:

Don't you love it when Obama says he's going to put expensive new mandates on health insurance but he acts like prices won't go up and he keeps saying if you like your plan, you won't have to change it even though your plan will change dramatically and get way more expensive?

"The average state-level mandate for community rating hikes premiums by over 10 percent. The average guaranteed-issue ordinance drives up premiums a whopping 227 percent."

Obama knows this. He's lying to us.

The more Americans learn about Obamacare, the less they like it. Obama knew that would happen. That's why Democrats tried to force the legislation through over the summer with no debate. That's why they're still trying to rush it through without holding a single hearing on it.

Obama and his media watchdogs are lying when they say Republicans have no health care proposals. They do.

WAR:

The head of the Joint Chiefs of Staff says more troops are needed in Afghanistan.

MISC:

It looks like 1.5 million showed up to the tea party protest in Washington on Saturday. Wow. The US media won't report the real number though. It makes you wonder how Obama won the election. Oh yeah. Bush and McCain. The Democrat response has been to understate the numbers and call the protesters racists.

ACORN calls Foxnews racists and threatens to sue for covering the story about the ACORN operatives that offered to help a guy force girls into underage prostitution.

Senate votes to cut off funding for Obama's power brokers at ACORN. That's a start.

How Hugo Chavez destroyed coffee production in Venezuela and how that compares to Obama's health care oppression plan.

Obama calls Kanye West a jackass for interrupting Taylor Swift at the MTV music awards. Finally Obama and I agree on something.

Another thing I agree with Obama about. His race is not an issue except for a fringe minority. Race doesn't drive the grass roots opposition to his agenda, his agenda drives it itself.

I hate those scooter commercials too. "It won't cost you a penny."

European responsible for banning incandescent light bulbs is a former Soviet communist party member. Anybody who thinks communists aren't still a danger to society is a fool. I'm talking to you, Charles Krauthammer. These dangerous people including Van Jones have hijacked the environmental movement, and they're trying to use it to destroy capitalism and freedom and bring the world into a new dark age.

Obama wants to change how we measure poverty. I like this idea because we don't have near as many people in poverty as the numbers say, but I bet that any changes Obama makes would increase the numbers, not decrease them.

Free kibbles

ECONOMY:

Obama pushes for more oppressive finance regulation because the existing, oppressive regulations did such a great job of preventing the recent collapse. Oh wait. No they didn't. President Obama is a master at controlling the news cycle. He was slammed for his dishonest health care speech, so he throws this out there in an attempt to change the subject and distract Americans will Democrats ram through a health care oppression bill. Of course, because he's so thoroughly controlled the news cycle, most Americans can no longer stand to see his face or hear him talk. His narcissism kept him from foreseeing that consequence of his actions. Obama wants to be the banker-in-chief too. There's no amount of power that would be too much for Obama.

FOREIGN POLICY:

Suddenly Iran is willing to discuss its nuclear program. Maybe Obama's sparkling personality paid dividends. More likely, something underhanded is going on.

MISC:

Private company plans to launch manned orbital spacecraft in 2011. Despite government's attempts to control all human activity, especially space activity, people are finding a way to progress.

At least 14 women and children killed in stampede to get free flour in Pakistan. That's the kind of news we'll read about the US in 10 years.

Free kibbles

ECONOMY:

This so-called attempt to model human behavior is no such thing. It's inherently collectivist. You can't model individual wants, resources and the actions each takes based on those things.

Time wonders if double-digit unemployment is here to stay. Double-digit unemployment will stay until we reduce the size and scope of government and free our economy from the Federal Reserve. It's so obvious that double-digit unemployment is not natural, why do Americans continue voting for the people in the two parties who force it on us and will continue to make it worse?

Peter Schiff is still buying gold for the long term.

The facts behind the green shoots lie.

HEALTH CARE:

Cato scholar translates Obama's health care speech. Pretty funny.

Reason ridicules Obama for his bogus speech. This is pretty funny too. Facts are stubborn things. Obama has shown that he's such an unserious president, a liar, a phony, a stooge, that even serious writers and thinkers are reduced to ridiculing him.

Mark Steyn raises another hidden but predictable cost of health care in an essay predicting Democrats will force their bill down our throats over the will of the people:

"In 2004, Britain's Health Protection Agency revealed that 44 percent of HIV patients being treated by the National Health Service were not residents of the United Kingdom at all but from southern Africa. In essence, a huge number of AIDS patients in South Africa, Zimbabwe, Zambia, Malawi, Swaziland and Lesotho have decided to outsource their health care needs to British taxpayers. Similar trends will manifest themselves here in nothing flat.
...
For most of the previous presidency, the Left accused George W. Bush of using 9/11 as a pretext to attack Iraq. Since January, his successor has used the economic slump as a pretext to "reform" health care. Most voters don't buy it: They see it as Obama's "war of choice," and the more frantically he talks about it as a matter of urgency the weirder it seems. If he's having difficulty selling it, that's because it's not about "health." As I've written before, the appeal of this issue to him and to Nancy Pelosi, Barney Frank et al is that governmentalization of health care is the fastest way to a permanent left-of-center political culture – one in which elections are always fought on the Left's issues and on the Left's terms, and in which "conservative" parties no longer talk about small government and individual liberty but find themselves retreating to one last pitiful rationale: that they can run the left-wing state more effectively than the Left can."

As soon as the government will pay everybody's medical fees, the US will become the free health care provider to the world. You think illegal immigration is bad now.

Forbes writer calls Obama's health care speech the equivalent of the giving the middle finger to America."If there was anything bipartisan about the speech it was that he embraced every bad big-government idea from both sides. If he prevails, the American public won't get "choice and competition" as he proclaimed, but a one-size-fits-all government-prescribed health care plan that it dare not refuse and dare not challenge.
Perhaps the most striking--and disturbing--thing about the speech was the unblinking confidence Obama exuded while breaking key campaign promises he made to voters.
...
Baucus has proposed a bill that would force the uninsured to pay fines on a sliding scale of income, with those making 300% of the poverty level having to cough up as much as $3,800 a year. In short, Americans would have to pay Uncle Sam for the privilege of remaining uninsured. If there were truth-in-labeling laws for Congress, it would be required to call this bill TonySopranoCare.
...
In exchange for these bitter tax pills, Obama promised Americans would get eternal health care "security and stability." To deliver that, he would of course ban insurance companies from denying coverage to those with pre-existing conditions--tantamount to forcing fire insurance companies to write coverage on a burning building. He would also prohibit insurers from putting any limits on the coverage they offer and cap what they can require patients to pay out-of-pocket.
...
Indeed, if Obama really can tame health care costs by making patients even less cost-conscious, I have an even better idea for him: Simply pass a law banning anyone from falling sick and mandate good health for all. If he can suspend the laws of economics, perhaps he can also transcend the laws of physiology."

Rich Lowry identifies 13 steps to creating an Obama speech.

GOVERNMENT DEBT:

The collapse of America through the collapse of Medicare and Social Security has begun with an end to cost of living adjustments for seniors.

WAR ON DRUGS:

Powerful essay from John Gray calls for an end to the destructive war on drugs:

"The war on drugs is a failed policy that has injured far more people than it has protected. Around 14,000 people have died in Mexico's drug wars since the end of 2006, more than 1,000 of them in the first three months of this year. Beyond the overflowing morgues in Mexican border towns, there are uncounted numbers who have been maimed, traumatised or displaced. From Liverpool to Moscow, Tokyo to Detroit, a punitive regime of prohibition has turned streets into battlefields, while drug use has remained embedded in the way we live. The anti-drug crusade will go down as among the greatest follies of modern times."

The war on drugs is not about making Americans safer, healthier or anything else, and it never has been. It's about politicians gaining more power for themselves and their powerful constituencies of lawyers and police officers.

More people over 50 are smoking marijuana than ever. That's one way to teach the kids pot is not cool. I'm sure the government is just drooling to start locking the elderly in cages for smoking pot.

WAR:

This essay is exactly right. The only way to defeat an enemy is to aggressive hunt him down and kill him. Civilian casualties are the fault of the terrorist who hides among civilians and the civilians who allow it. Just ask the Tamil Tigers.

Why is the US planning to build seven military bases in Columbia?

MISC:

I've written questions to scientists wondering what effect our changing magnetic field would have on climate. I never received an answer. Now scientists have discovered that the Earth's magnetic field captures energy from the solar wind, so a changing magnetic field will have consequences for climate.

Another Cato scholar rejects the collectivist ideas at the heart of the president's speech to captive school kids.

Washington D.C. tea party draws 10s of thousands.

Glenn Beck got another radical and corrupt Obama appointee kicked out of his job. Good job, Beck! Keep up the good work. Just stop crying while you do it.

The Census Dept. says it cut ties with ACORN. That would be great news if true. I'm not going to take the Obama administration's word for it.

While the program has ghoulish overtones, I'm surprised by this article on life insurance securities from Lew Rockwell. Wall Street and mortgage securities were the least culpable things to blow up our economy. The Fed did it with the help of Fannie and Freddie and government destroying rational credit checks for housing. The mortgage securities diffused the bomb into our entire financial sector, but they bomb would have been there whether they did that or not. I don't expect an sudden increase in longevity for the elderly either. Maybe the writer hasn't heard of Obamaoppressioncare.

Analysis argues that the US is on the road to failure, not success.

"A key variable in the success or failure of a nation and government like ours is the production of wealth. We the People produce this wealth. When our government selects strategies that impair the production of wealth and that destroy wealth, it causes failure.
Let’s look at six major government strategies that are causing major failure. There are many more. In each case, there is a pattern of persistence. The government failures do not deter it from continuing the failed strategy. The government enlarges them. The end result of such behavior is the ruination of the country."

The list shows many new policies are simply extensions of old policies in ongoing, destructive government strategies.

"Under these kinds of strategies, economic growth, which depends on wealth production (capital accumulation) slows down. Capital goes into hiding. Capital consumption is encouraged. Capital flees from America. The government’s strategies impair the country. They impair the government too. Bush's programs had the effect of slowing the growth of and destroying capital. Now Obama's programs are doing the same and promise even a higher degree of the same.
The end occurs when the U.S. hits the financial wall. To avoid that outcome, the government may reform itself. That path requires that it commit itself to abandoning the sword and promoting free markets. Without constitutional or legal commitment, it will have no credibility, because of its long history of using force. There are no signs whatsoever of the U.S. going in that direction. It is doing the very opposite. Failing that, as the day approaches when the U.S. slams into the financial wall, it can take increasingly stringent measures to defer the date. These will be very unpleasant for Americans, should they occur. The government can impose an array of measures: higher taxes, price and wage controls, controls on the movement of Americans and of capital, seizure of assets and wealth accumulations, and rationing. The government can replace old dollars with new ones with reduced purchasing power. It can control jobs and employment. It can impose forced labor. Or perhaps none of these measures will be adopted. Perhaps there will be a national bankruptcy in which there is a mad scramble to see who is going to absorb the losses."

Neither Republicans nor Democrats will give up their power voluntarily, so we either take their power from them by voting both out of office, or our country is going to collapse. I vote for no collapse.