Free kibbles

ECONOMY:

Another example of Atlas shrugging.

"Signs of why recovery will be slow and long time in coming: The Sunday Denver Post in article (p. 6K, 01/03/2010) on increasing foreclosures and declining prices in the luxury home market quotes Edie Marks, long one of the Denver areas most successful luxury market specialists, "The people that have money are sitting in kind of a cocoon - they're not making decisions because they're concerned about what's coming down in terms of taxation and vindictiveness against the wealthy.""

This fits right into Obama's plan. He's going to demonize the rich people for not spending their money, accuse them of hoarding, and use that as motive for taking more money from them by force. Obama is counting on the people behaving rationally and punishing them for it as part of his plan to collapse the US economy. We've already seen the start of this with his attacks on bankers for not making loans even though every policy he pushes incentivizes them to not make loans.

RIGHT TO KEEP AND BEAR ARMS:

I thought everybody who knew anything about the second amendment understood that the real goal of gun control is for government to gain power over citizens and additionally for federal gun control laws, for the federal government to gain power over the states.

FEDERAL RESERVE:

Embattled Bernanke defends the low interest rates that created the recently burst economic bubble, blaming lack of regulations instead. When will people stop pretending this guy is a free market advocate? Bernanke is a classic, fatally flawed central planner. Like all of them, he can't admit his mistakes.

""We still have much to learn about how best to make monetary policy and to meet threats to financial stability in this new era," he said."

One of the identifying characteristics of a central planners is they always claim we have to learn something new in a new era. In the mean time, the private sector just seamlessly transitions through every human advance with hardly a hiccup. I have little confidence in his commitment to raise interest rates to combat bubbles since he never did it before and he's working to inflate another bubble now.

"The Fed has pushed overnight bank-lending rates to near zero and has said it expects to keep them there for at least several more months because the economy remains weak and inflation low. Some private economists and officials in Asia and Europe have warned this could plant the seeds for a new bubble, though Fed officials have argued that market gains in the U.S. haven't gotten out of hand."

What does "out of hand" mean? Like all central planners, Bernanke thinks he's a god who knows the "proper" way things should be regardless of what the people working in a system of voluntary exchange want.

HEALTH CARE:

The FDA is much like airport security - oppressing good drugs and allowing bad ones through - for the same reasons airport security oppresses normal passengers but allows would-be terrorists through. Monopolies are bad. Socialist institutions are bad. Socialist monopolies are the worst. Government is the common denominator among all our health care problems.

Cato lists several good reasons Republicans absolutely should not have compromised on a less damaging health care bill. If they had compromised, too many people would have acquiesced and considered this a fiat accompli. We don't need to slow down on the road to serfdom, we need to turn around and head back toward freedom, and we still have that opportunity on health care because Republicans unanimously rejected the Democrat bill. Contrary to what Cato suggests, their opposition was not principled, but it was the best tactic for them and for the country. Unfortunately, those two things rarely coincide.

"But Republicans never put forward an alternative health proposal."

I'm not putting any confidence in the original essay referenced here since that statement is an outright lie, and I don't imagine it has any purpose other than slandering Republicans. We have tons of reasons to despise Republicans. We don't need to make any up.

GLOBAL WARMING:

The global warming scam has turned into a religion, but I hadn't heard there was a green bible trying to infect Christianity. I'm not about to link it.

A study commissioned by Al Gore shows that the worst case scenario for sea level rise by the end of the century is a meter, nowhere near the 20 feet Gore claims. Unless something natural changes, it won't be near that much.

WAR:

Before Christmas, most Americans probably never heard of Yemen, let alone be able to identify it on a map. But after the underwear bomber, who was radicalized in the UK, many are ready to go to war with it over "several hundred" al Qaeda members. UK PM Gordon Brown and Obama are scapegoating Yemen. Al Qaeda in Yemen is no more a threat to our embassies today than they were two weeks ago. Help the locals find the al Qaeda people and help the locals deal with them. We don't need to make 20 million enemies by attacking Yemen because of several hundred al Qaeda.

Because government holds a socialist monopoly on airport security, it blunders around like a headless zombie trying to solve its airport security problems that it forces on the rest of us, ordering pat downs for all citizens from 14 high risk nations as if all citizens from those nations have been reported by their father as potential terrorists, have been added to a terrorist watch list, ask to avoid the normal passport check procedures, buy one-way tickets with cash and carry no luggage, and strap bombs in their underwear. Government always punishes citizens for its failures.

Great subheading on this article:"After $40 billion in spending, amateurs are still getting on planes with explosives."

POLITICS:

I agree that libertarians, especially the Libertarian Party, has done a terrible job convincing Americans to support freedom. Their approach has been wrong all along. It's one of the reasons I started this blog. Libertarianism is the most attractive political philosophy to the populists, and that's the way to sell it. Americans of all political persuasions are unhappy about how the rich get richer and the poor get poorer, and libertarianism is the only philosophy that can solve that problem because the only reason the rich can exploit the rest of us is government. Not only does liberty raise people out of poverty, it makes for a more egalitarian society. As long as we allow government to control our power, aristocrats will sell our power to the highest bidder because its the only thing of value they have and the buyers will use it against us. It doesn't matter who's in power. It can't be any other way. The only solution is to take our power back from government so the aristocrats can't sell it.

The author makes a good point about the perception of freedom. I think most Americans would agree that freedom means freedom from coercion, and I think most Americans would say they are free. A simple thought experiment explodes that misconception. Imagine you sent a letter to the IRS saying since you're a free person, you aren't going to make your voluntary tax payments. Imagine what would happen next. Is that freedom? Taxes are inconsistent with freedom. So is every other government mandate and regulation.

Republican and Democrat aristocrats are engaged in a contest to see who can seize more power from the people for themselves than the other party so they can advance their careers and the careers of their cronies. That's all American politics is. Everything else is a smokescreen. The only problem our aristocrats are trying to solve is how to advance their own careers over their adversaries.

MISC:

The internet is running out of IPv4 addresses. These addresses for the foundation of all internet traffic. If government controlled this protocol, users would experience problems for years because of this. But because government has little power over the internet as of right now, most users will never see a problem. IPv6 is already in place for the transition.

Avatar creators are rolling in dough. They should track movies by movie-goers as well as money. I wonder what the most watched movie at the theater was. You could adjust those numbers for population and determine what the most popular movies were. Of course there's a lot more competition for our entertainment dollars today than 70 years ago.

Mike Brown better not let Mike Zimmer go. I'd be surprised if he wanted a head coaching job right now. My biggest concern would be that he wanted to leave the place where his wife died.

Saudi Arabia to execute Lebanese TV host for sorcery. And we sold these guys F-16s.

Government is crushing our freedom to assemble and protest.