Free kibbles

ECONOMY:

Contrasting Michael Moore's socialist propaganda piece, Capitalism: A Love Story, and a film by Michael Covel that accurately explains why we suffered this economic meltdown, Broke: The New American Dream.

Obama administration setting salaries for executives of TARP recipient companies. But remember, Obama doesn't want to run these companies. We know that because he told us so.

Chrysler may not survive the year.

TAX AND SPEND:

Nancy Pelosi informs that Democrats are considering adding a VAT tax to our tax burden because Americans aren't taxed enough yet. Did you ever used to believe that Paul Volker and Alan Greenspan supported free markets?

"White House economic adviser and former Fed chairman Paul Volcker suggested it's one way the budget deficit could be closed, and another former Fed chief, Alan Greenspan, went a step further by calling it "the least worst solution" to our budget problems."

Least worst? What about cutting spending, Greenspan?

HEALTH CARE:

Medicare overpays. I thought government was going to bring down the costs of health care.

I've long suspected that Shepard Smith was a liberal, but I was never sure. His Katrina coverage pointed to him being a liberal and other hints appeared in his broadcasts. He proves it with this naked advocacy of the public option. This Republican Senator does a fantastic job responding to him, and to his credit Smith gives enough air time to do it.

Medicare denial rate higher than all insurance companies. I thought we wanted government insurance because evil insurance companies denied claims? The government is worse. Government is always worse. And Medicare pays for amazing waste. So despite paying for tremendous waste, it's denial rate is still higher than insurance companies.

Democrats fighting to keep final health care bill secret from Americans before vote.

White House, holding funds over California and New York like swords of Damocles, pressures Republican governors Schwarzenegger and Bloomberg to speak out in support of Obama's health care reform agenda. After both doing so, White House claims plan has bipartisan support.

Thanks to new taxes, cuts in Medicare, transfer of costs to insurance providers, health care providers, and states and delaying the implementation of the program for several years, the latest Senate health care bill appears to cost only $829 billion over 10 years. This is a phony number based on dishonest budget gimmicks designed to hide the costs. In fact, this bill will still cost us $2 trillion or more over 10 years once it takes effect. I hear senators also have land to sell us in Florida too.

GLOBAL WARMING:

At least this liberal understands that tax and trade won't created jobs - it will destroy jobs.

Obama using the EPA to threaten businesses with punitive CO2 regulations if they don't support tax and trade. Of course the EPA is politicized. All government is politicized. So far the only speed bump Obama's plan to crush our economy and turn us into a third world country has hit is resistance to health care oppression. The rest of the plan is going perfectly.

Taxpayer funded climate research facility destroys original data, collected on the taxpayer dime, used many papers that promote the fiction of man-made global warming. This makes it impossible for other scientists to replicate these studies. This is in the wake of the revelation of cherry-picked data being used for a number of other influential propaganda pieces masquerading as science. United Nations pulls the hockey stick graph copied from Wikipedia from United Nations Environmental Program (UNEP) report. This propaganda masquerading as science scandal just keeps growing and highlights how government money corrupts everything it touches. These frauds should all be fired. Don't expect Obama and his Democrats to admit the fraud though. Expect them to accelerate their attempts to destroy American productivity before more people catch on.

Lack of understanding of cloud formation and longevity put enormous uncertainty into climate models. You don't say.

Transfer of wealth included in draft of Copenhagen Climate Change Treaty. We have a new concept of environmental justice too.

Solar cycle 24's number of spotless days keeps growing to historical proportions.

WAR:

US surrenders Afghan territory to Taliban.

Two Vietnam books frame the White House debate on Afghanistan.

After weeks, or is it months, of politicizing the Afghan war, Obama finally officially accepts request for more troops.

POLITICS:

Republicans try to oust corrupt Charlie Rangel from his chairmanship for his serial tax fraud, but Democrats rally around corruption and defeat the resolution.

Harry Reid is so slimy that even Nancy Pelosi slinks away from him when tries to get close to speak about Afghanistan. Start the video at about 4:30.

This ridiculously long article discussing the different political dynamic between Republicans in 1994 and 2010 fails to mention the most important difference - the positive agenda expressed in the contract with America.

FOREIGN POLICY:

Somali pirates accidentally attack French Navy ship. The French should have sunk them, not just captured them. I still don't understand why governments subsidize shipping companies that ship past Somalia with Navy support. If they stopped doing that and shipping went the other way for a while, the pirates would disappear. I can see where India, China and other Indian Ocean and South Pacific nations would want to wipe out pirates along Somalia because of the advantage to shipping oil that route, but not the US, South American or European countries.

Cato has gone off the deep end with this advocacy that the US welcome Iran as a trustworthy, friendly nation in return for the government's pledge not to build nuclear weapons. I hear Cato also advocates we release Charles Manson if he pinky swears he won't hurt anybody. Cato analyzes the cost of deterrence versus preventive war against Iran. The question we have to answer is are we better off containing any unintended consequences of destroying Iran's nuclear program or containing the predictable consequences of nuclear blackmail and attack by nuclear armed mullahs. I find it hard to believe that the unintended consequences of destroying Iran's nuclear program could be worse than the consequences of Iran vaporizing Tel Aviv or Miami. And the people who tell us that radical Muslim tyrants can be deterred are the same people who preach to us that we don't understand radical Muslims. They can't have it both ways. They're 100 percent accurate about the latter and therefore their opinion about the former is worthless.

Iraq should not be used as the model for preemptive war. Thoroughly destroying Iran's nuclear sites should take no more than a few days and use only air strikes. If we have to hit sites 10 - 20 times to pulverize them, then we'll hit them 10 - 20 times. If some sites are too hardened for air strikes, we'll use ground troops then extract them afterwards. If we have to hit some facilities again in three months, we'll hit them again in three months. We don't have to get involved in nation building. It's far cheaper in blood and treasure to strike multiple times than to nation build.

MEDIA:

MSNBC host says conservatives don't care if half the country dies as long as they take down Obama. I wonder how many viewers MSNBC lost over that comment. Probably not many because they don't have many left to lose.

MISC:

Spitzer space telescope discovers new ring around Saturn.

Myspace blocks user from streaming his own music because Myspace doesn't acknowledge his copyright.

The damage caused by housing regulations described by housing regulator.

"In the Big Apple, there are several agencies having direct jurisdiction over the housing market and several other agencies whose actions impinge upon housing. These agencies employ several thousand employees whose only job is to "get the landlord." Even those programs that seem landlord oriented — rehabilitation financing, for example — are really tenant-oriented programs designed to keep rents low and to exert more bureaucratic control over the market."

This is just crazy. Government is crazy. There's a lot more tenants than landlords to buy votes from.

Google caught in government catch-22 for trying to scan in millions of out of print books. That means it has to get around the copyright law, but in doing so, it was accused of violating anti-monopoly law.

Conservative blogger claims Bill Ayers admitted writing Obama's first book, Dreams From My Father. This story rings true, especially because Obama is fracturing the liberal coalition by being too liberal for the mainstream but not leftist enough for his radical roots. However, I can't help but be skeptical of this specific claim. This blogger, who nobody ever heard of before this claim, has too much motive to lie for me to just accept the story on her word alone. But the Obama biography ends speculation anyway. Ayers wrote the book.

I think Boortz is right with his prediction that Democrats will try to seize retirement assets just as the leftist in Argentina did.

ACORN and SEIU too close for comfort.

Cato calls for ending the lone wolf provision of the Patriot Act. I never understood this provision, and I don't have a much better understanding after reading this essay. This provision must be very vague. I'm all for ending other provisions too, such as writing your own warrant and demanding business records without a warrant.

Nothing is too frivolous for Obama to wield presidential power on.

"Obama's failed Olympic gambit was dumb politics. But it's also bad policy for the president to involve himself in nonpresidential issues, reinforcing as it does an infantile and unhealthy view of presidential responsibility."

Nice.

Polish President Vaclav Klaus won't let the EU power grab via the Lisbon treaty pass.