Free kibbles

ECONOMY:

Deficits matter because they crowd out private investment. According to the Heritage Foundation:

"Yhe Office of Management and Budget has released its annual mid-session review that updates the budget projections from this past May. They show that this year, Washington will spend $30,958 per household, tax $17,576 per household, and borrow $13,392 per household."

Put in perspective by the article:

"The typical American household makes about $46,000 a year. Are we to believe that the Federal government will spend, in the name of the American people, $31,000 per household? That each household will be taxed – income taxes, Social Security taxes, corporate taxes, etc. – $17,000? That is what the figures say. Dividing $46,000 by $17,000 is 37%. Can that be possible? Add to this another $13,000 in debt. That is what the government's statistics report. Anyone who thinks an extra $13,000 in household debt doesn't matter is living in la-la land. This includes economists.
...
The government is debating whether the deficit will be $900 billion a year or a mere $700 billion. Both figures would have been laughed off by both parties as fantasyland scare tactics in August 2008. That is how fast and how far the terms of acceptable political discourse have shifted in just one year.
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When Bernanke, Geithner, and other high officials assure the public that the Federal Reserve will unwind its huge increase in the monetary base, once the economy starts growing again, investors dismiss any suggestion that this proposed unwinding will be a replay on steroids of Bernanke's mild reduction of growth in the FED's balance sheet, 2006–2007. That created the worst recession in post-World War II history."

Tuesday I wondered what the Fed was hiding by paying interest on bank reserves which keeps the banks from loaning out the money, supposedly what all this liquidity was supposed to provide. This article concludes with the claim that the Fed is loaning those bank reserves to the government to buy long-term debt.

"[I]f we are to believe the president of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, the Federal Reserve has been lending the commercial banks' excess reserves to the government. The FOMC is using the commercial banks' money to buy T-bonds and Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac bonds."

What a convoluted scam. It's a big financial circle that seems to be designed to make the Federal government look more financially sound. The Fed creates money out of thin air, gives it to banks, then offers to pay the banks interest if they keep that money at the Fed, then it loans that money to the government. What the article doesn't point out, and I'm not sure why, is government spending accounts for 67 percent of the typical American household income. We're insane. Sure, Obama and Democrats have made these numbers significantly worse, and want to make them even far worse, but Bush and Republicans made them significantly worse before that. And the budget grew while Clinton and Gingrich were in power too. And Bush before them. And Reagan before him. Both parties love deficits. Both parties think government spending is a good thing. American voters are committing suicide by voting for either of the two anti-American parties.

HEALTH CARE:

Great video shows Obama health care oppression organizer, chief astroturfer, explaining to his astroturf buddies how to shout down health care oppression protesters at a town all. Contrasted with highly misinformed grass roots health care protester.

Leftist organization calls leftist protesters "right-wing terrorists" and the heirs of bin Laden. They think like Obama. They obviously can't count either.

Suggestions to put consumers back in charge of their health care to cut costs.

Ann Coulter's third in a series about liberal lies about health care oppression.

GLOBAL WARMING:

Senate Democrats divided on tax and trade legislation which is bad for the European Union since its already suffering under punishing yet ineffective tax and trade restrictions.

Article claims the Arctic is the warmest it's been in the last 2,000 years. This claim flies in the face of the growing arctic ice extent. Maybe these cores don't include the last two years as arctic ice increased. I expect a little analysis will reveal this study is phony and ginned up by propagandists, but you won't read that in newspaper. New evidence supporting the Medieval Warm Period.

Sunspots may be disappearing completely. Yikes.

FEDERAL RESERVE / INFLATION:

I wouldn't be at all surprised if the one world government crowd was trying to hijack the end the Fed movement for its own ends. But let's slay one dragon at a time. Hannity, Beck and Coulter are part of the one world government movement, but I could see how the media owners could use those pundits to help build support to abolish the Fed then use the maintream media to build support for a global monetary system. Since the mainstream media and the right-wing media are owned by the same few organizations, maybe they're smart enough to play both sides against us. I don't give them that much credit though. I don't this kind of conspiracy theory is useful. Frankly, it's a collectivist way of thinking. The way to make a better, more free world is to make clear, cogent arguments for freedom on every issue, support freedom on every issue and vote for freedom on every issue. As with everything of value in this world, it must be done by individually. Group thinking inevitably leads to ever more oppressive collectivism.

The moral costs of inflation from a personal point of view.

"But asset inflation—ultimately, the debasement of the currency—as the principal source of wealth corrodes the character of people. It not only undermines the traditional bourgeois virtues but makes them ridiculous and even reverses them. Prudence becomes imprudence, thrift becomes improvidence, sobriety becomes mean-spiritedness, modesty becomes lack of ambition, self-control becomes betrayal of the inner self, patience becomes lack of foresight, steadiness becomes inflexibility: all that was wisdom becomes foolishness. And circumstances force almost everyone to join in the dance.
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Inflation is not a bogey for everyone—not for those who wish to restructure society, for example, or for those who want government control of ever more aspects of people’s lives. But for the rest of us, the consequences of its full-blown return are not likely to be good: for inflation is not an economic problem only, or even mainly, but one that afflicts the human soul."

Powerful.

WAR:

George Will is on a role, now calling for US troops to leave Iraq. US troops are already on the path to leaving Iraq unlike the buildup in Afghanistan, so I don't understand bringing this up. We should leave on the Iraqi timetable, whatever it is, and that's what we're doing. If the Iraqis devolve into civil war after we leave, that's their problem.

LIBERTY:

Supreme Court has second hearing on case where the Federal Election Commission barred the airing of a video critical of Hillary Clinton.

WAR ON DRUGS:

Mexican drug cartels are clearing land and planting pot plantations in national forests. The Federal government can't even stop the drug cartels from producing drugs on Federal property. How much more evidence does anybody need to realize the war on drugs is an abysmal failure and can only be an abysmal failure because it's a war on ourselves?

POLITICS:

We know unequivocally that harsh interrogation techniques work."According to the report, KSM was “an accomplished resistor,” who provided mostly “outdated, inaccurate, or incomplete” information until he was waterboarded. Subsequently, he became the “most prolific” source of important leads."But we've known that waterboarding worked for years. That's why we used it. We also know that the government prosecuted agents who went beyond the limits and broke the law. But we also know that extreme sleep deprivation is harmful to the brain. Limits on sleep deprivation should be set and going beyond them should be considered torture.

Nothing is going to happen to Charlie Rangel as long Democrats control the House and the White House. The question we should be asking is why didn't Bush's Justice Dept. or IRS bust Rangel. The answer is they're all corrupt and Democrats and Republicans agree that they won't prosecute each other for ubiquitous corruption like that.

FOREIGN POLICY:

Obama halts non-humanitarian aid to Honduras because the Honduras government enforced the rule of law against a power-grabbing leftist. Our president is punishing Honduras for supporting the rule of law while he undermines it here. Nice job, voters. I wish Obama would halt all non-humanitarian aid to every country. Honduras needs to hold its election and get on with its life. You can't help but be impressed with the way the Honduras government has stood strong in support of the rule of law versus the allied forces of radical leftists including the US.

North Korea announces it is in the final nuclear enrichment phase to make nuclear weapons. I hope we bomb every North Korean nuclear facility into dust tonight or the best case scenario is every person in the civilized world will have to live with nuclear blackmail for the foreseeable future.

MISC:

This paragraph from essay praising Amity Schlaes The Forgotten Man sounds as if it was written about Obama and AG Holder:

"By 1940, America had learned about FDR & Friends that "unpredictability was the only thing you could be sure of" (p. 374). While FDR would repeatedly announce that "we are bringing order out of chaos" (p. 208), Mrs. Shlaes shows unequivocally that his blasé attitude towards the rule of law was doing quite the opposite. How could the economy recover when FDR's own attorney general went into a court of law and sneered at "the supposed sanctity and inviolability of contractual obligations" (p. 233)?"

It's like deja vu.

"FDR comes across as a man infected with an endless drive for power. He was a consummate politician lucky to be "a great radio speaker born into the era of radio" (p. 129). And he had a moral character and sense of honor that would make a pimp blush. We have never stooped so low before or since. Even so desperate an FDR wannabe as Obama is a Thomas Jefferson in comparison to this man."

Obama hasn't come close to fully revealing himself yet.

"To give credit where credit is due, when it came to politics, FDR was an undoubted genius — but so were his contemporaries Stalin and Mussolini, so maybe that's not really much of a character reference. When it came to economics, he was crack-smoking stupid, and he doubtless caused much misery. But worst of all was his lawlessness."

Crack-smoking stupid. Man, that's funny.

Parents suspicious of Obama's back to school address to children.

"But critics objected to the language of one of the lesson plans, for students in pre-kindergarten through grade 6, which suggested that students "write letters to themselves about what they can do to help the president." Another assignment for students after hearing the speech was to discuss what "the president wants us to do.""

I wouldn't let my kid hear it. This is nothing but a way for him to suck in an audience of children captured in government schools. It's an application of force.

Britain suffering brain drain from high taxes. Guess where else that's happening...

Obama to data mine information on social networking sites. If Bush had done this, liberals including the mainstream media would have gone nuclear. But I don't mind it. If you're dumb enough to put private information in public for anybody to consume, that's your own fault. Of course Obama undoubtedly intends to use it for political purposes, not national security. This is a different situation from government taking pictures of people with security cameras. In that case, the government is creating the information. This would analogous to taking pictures of yourself everywhere you go, making them public, then complaining when the government examines them.

Cutting Federal raises from 2.4 percent to 2 percent isn't much, but it's better than nothing.

Lactose intolerance is normal. Being able to drink milk as an adult is not. Weird.

Massachusetts businesses fear they lost their gravy train when Ted Kennedy died. Poor little babies might actually have to compete on a level playing field. This shows just how grotesquely corrupt Kennedy was, taking money from taxpayers by force and funneling it to politically connected businesses, and how that grotesque corruption is celebrated by liberals. Notice the article doesn't talk about all the lost, more productive jobs that happened when Kennedy took that money from taxpayers by force. It's only concerned about the potential of losing less productive jobs that only exist because of government subsidies.

I'm glad to see somebody else has noticed that America is turning into the Soviet Union.

"It can be argued that the destabilization of our culture and economy, magnified by policies of the Obama Administration, conform to KGB plans for the collapse of the United States. The only question remains: Is Obama masterminding the current events for economic collapse, or is he just the hapless puppet holding the hot potato?"

Glenn Beck has done a great job showing that much of the groundwork for our collapse has been done by radical leftists for the last several years and even several decades. Obama is a powerful actor pushing us towards collapse, but the widespread work started long before anybody heard of him. And he brought his Marxist allies into our government. Everything we feared about Obama is true. If anything, he may be more dangerous than we feared. This KGB agenda reads like the liberal agenda in America. That's not surprising. Both are driven by Marxists seeking Marxist revolution in the US. I'm not worried about an external threat. We need to focus on the internal threat. The outsiders are just circling to grab any spoils.

I don't usually watch Beck, but Around the Horn was more boring than usual today. Beck looks like he's going to melt down. He should stick to presenting facts and commentary and leave the dripping melodrama alone.

The panel on Special Report was talking about Van Jones, and none of them had a problem that he was a communist, but all of them had a problem with him being a 9/11 truther. That's how far our country has fallen. How many people did the truthers kill? How many people did the communists kill? Truthers are harmless wackos. Communists are the most evil, deadly wackos the world has ever known.

Down with government utility monopolies.

Illegal immigration probably won't increase anytime soon because our economy is going to continue to flounder until it collapses.

California wildfire caused by arson.