Free kibbles

LIBERTY:

More than 40,000 new laws go into effect in 2010. That's 40,000 ways we lose freedom in just one year. Calling the US the land of the free is a joke.

John McLaughlin says freedom is overrated. I'm sure it is to people like McLaughlin. That's how our government became so oppressive, we're declining as a civilization and we're facing economic collapse.

Famous prognosticator Gerald Celente calls the Tea Party rallies last April 15th, the Forth of July and the August town halls the first three shots of the second American revolution.

"Though in its early stages, the “Second American Revolution” is underway. Yet, what we forecast will become the most profound political trend of the century – the trend that will change the world – is still invisible to the same experts, authorities and pundits who didn’t see the financial crisis coming until the bottom fell out of the economy.

Trend Forecast: Conditions will continue to deteriorate. The global economy is terminally ill. The recession is in a brief remission, not the early stages of recovery. Cheap money, easy credit and unrestrained borrowing brought on an economic crisis that cannot be cured by monetary and fiscal policies that promote more cheap money, easy credit and unrestrained borrowing.

Nevertheless, Washington will continue to intervene, tax and exert control. Protests will escalate and riots will follow."

It's amazing how badly the aristocrats are misreading the American people.

Maybe the real reason government is quashing check cashing places is they allow Americans to conduct financial transactions out of the view of government.

SOCIALISM:

Ron Paul tells it like it is.

"The tragic reality is that this fatally flawed, but widely accepted, economic school of thought called Keynesianism has made our country more socialist than capitalist. While the private sector in the last ten years has experienced a roller coaster of booms and busts and ended up, nominally, about where we started in 2000, government has been steadily growing, because Keynesians told politicians they could get away with a tax, spend and inflate policy. They even encouraged it! But we cannot survive much longer if government is our only growth industry."

This is why the aristocrats of both parties fear Ron Paul.

FREEDOM OF SPEECH:

Muslims accused of insulting British soldiers refuse to stand in front of judge. So what? The story here is that these men were arrested for insulting British soldiers. The second story is the little Napoleon on the bench threatened to charge them with contempt of court for not standing.

France unveils new law forbidding couples from using insulting names during domestic disputes. Our civilization has gone insane. Al Qaeda doesn't have to attack us. Bin Laden should just sit back and laugh at us as we commit suicide.

ECONOMY:

It looks like the housing market is falling again.

TAX AND SPEND:

We should take the power to raise the debt ceiling from the federal government. We should demand government use best accounting practices from the private sector and require a vote of 2/3 of the states to ratify any increase in federal government spending.

Taxpayers will lose $400 billion on Fannie and Freddie bailouts while we pay their socialist CEOs $6 million.

So-called House financial reform bill authorizes $4 trillion to prop up failed banks in the future. That's $4 trillion taken from taxpayers by coercion (since it's the Fed, it's taken by stealth, not violence). That's not reform. That's oppression. We need to call this bill the financial oppression bill.

"Don’t worry, this time regulators will have better tools. Six months after being created, the council will report to Congress on “whether setting up an electronic database” would be a help. Maybe they’ll even get to use that Internet thingy. "

That's funny.

"Since Congress isn’t cutting jobs, why not add a few more. The bill calls for more than a dozen agencies to create a position called “Director of Minority and Women Inclusion.” People in these new posts will be presidential appointees. I thought too-big-to-fail banks were the pressing issue. Turns out it’s diversity, and patronage. "

That's twisted. I have a better idea. Completely extract government from our economy and empower the only effective regulatory regime ever implemented - fierce competition.

US government pensions face $2 trillion deficit. What's $2 trillion to a genius like Obama?

Government is making it a lot more expensive to die after this year by reinstating the death tax. Only government would punish people for dying.

Don't give Obama any ideas.

"British taxpayers are helping to fund basket-weaving and slapstick acting workshops for young people across Europe.

The projects, which include meetings about folk dancing and even a scheme to promote afternoon siestas, are part of an £800million EU programme to help people aged 13-30 'feel European'."

I'm sure Obama would love to spend our tax money making us feel more European. Or Asian. Or South American. Anything but American.

EDUCATION:

While there are good ideas here, I'm not so sure sitting back and allowing kids to progress at their own pace and test themselves is the best idea. You might end up with 18 year olds who are great at baseball but can't read. Not every kid will excel in a free form environment. There needs to be different schools with different approaches to the meet the needs of different children and their families so that as many kids as possible can excel. That can only be achieved in a free market for education.

Government schools produce Orwellian proles. Hey. I went to a government school.

HEALTH CARE:

The Mayo Clinic in Arizona stops accepting Medicare patients because the government pays so little. Coming soon to a hospital near you. Coming after that is a law mandating hospitals can't turn away Medicare patients followed by the bankrupting of hospitals and mass retirements of doctors. Our government will make our health care system as bad as Britian's NHS soon enough.

Obamacare will create shortages and rationing will be the result.

GLOBAL WARMING:

Wind chill map shows super-cold US.

WAR ON DRUGS:

Czech government allows citizens to grow up to five marijuana plants. Allows? Up to five? This isn't exactly liberty, but it's a step in the right direction. We're less free in America.

CRIMINAL JUSTICE:

Another Washington DC cop pulls a gun at a snowball fight. We created these monsters by giving them way too much power.

WAR:

Mark Steyn calls Janet Napolitano, Janet Incompetano. I wish I had thought of that.

I don't blame Nigerians for being upset at special security screenings targeted at all Nigerians and travelers from other countries indiscriminately. Punishing everybody for the actions of a few doesn't work in elementary school or anywhere else. It breeds resentment against the punisher. The underwear bomber's behavior should have singled him out for a special security screening. Others exhibiting non-terrorist behavior should not be punished. This is the kind of stuff private sector security would intelligently implement. You can bet these oppressive new policies will influence more Muslims to attack Americans.

According to Victor Davis Hansen, one third of terrorist attacks on the US since 9/11 have happened since Obama took office. He wants us to believe that Obama is to blame, and he's probably right. Contradicting his own rhetoric, Obama escalated the war in Afghanistan even though we defeated al Qaeda there, he's escalated attacks on Pakistan, he's leaving US troops in Iraq even though we defeated al Qaeda there and the world is a more dangerous place because of it. I think it's funny how Hansen assumes the terrorist are attacking us because of Obama's conciliatory rhetoric instead of our policy of invading other countries, killing their people and propping up corrupt governments. Our policies have fomented the jihad movement against the US over the years, and that's why we're seeing more attacks. On the flip-side, putting terrorists into civilian court dramatically reduces the consequences for attacking Americans. Obama's harming us from both ends.

Is this a ticking time-bomb scenario? On the one hand, we've reserved waterboarding for the most knowledgeable terrorists. On the other hand, that's stupid. If we have good reason to think a terrorist has information that will help save American lives, we should waterboard that terrorist to get that information then try him for war crimes in a military tribunal. This isn't that difficult to understand. We'll never win and end this war if we keep confusing war criminals with civilian criminals.

"We wouldn't be faced with this problem had the President decided to label Abdulmutallab an enemy combatant, thus depriving him of most of the rights enumerated in the Constitution. But in March of last year, the Justice Department announced that it would do away with the term and its legal implications, all in its quest to shut down the detention center at Guantanamo Bay. By placing Abdulmutallab under the purview of our criminal justice system, we no longer treat him as an intelligence asset in a broader war against a declared enemy, but rather as a defendant presumed innocent, whose heretofore-unavailable "rights" to due process and a fair and speedy trial take precedence over all else.

We never gave these rights to Nazi saboteurs captured during World War II; after extracting what useful information they possessed, President Franklin Roosevelt ordered that they be tried by a military tribunal, and they were subsequently sent to the electric chair. It's difficult to see why today's enemy combatants are not treated the same way."

That might be the only thing Roosevelt got right.

TSA stops Joan Rivers from returning to America from Costa Rica. Another aspect of the damage done by government is it forces people to turn off their brains and follow rules instead. This may be another reason for the dumbing down of America.

Introduction to Yemen calls it the Afghanistan of Arabia. We're going to need to know a lot more about Yemen and fast.

"Thanks to the ineffective pyrotechnic device in his underpants, the wannabe Nigerian jihadist has and will inflict billions of dollars in security costs on the United States, and disrupt its vital air travel – all for a $2,000 economy airplane ticket."

This is another one of those poingant pieces of truth in an elegant package. Because our security forces are a socialist monopoly, the terrorists don't even have to kill any Americans to win. They can count on blundering socialists to do their work for them, wasting billions of dollars of our wealth punishing Americans in a knee-jerk response.

"Yemeni Shia and Sunnis are at scimitar’s drawn. The nation has deep tribal and clan divisions and rivalries. The south and north are at odds, with talk of secession by Aden. An assortment of anti-western militant groups has found a home in lawless Yemen. On top of all this, Shia Houthi tribesmen on Yemen’s undemarcated northern border are battling Saudi forces, backed by US air power. Yemen’s warlike tribes hate any outside authority, starting with their own government."

If the Yemenis hate outside authority, they'll hate al Qaeda, maybe worse than the Iraqi Sunnis. It sounds like al Qaeda in Yemen will have plenty of natural enemies that would hunt them down and kill them for the right price. It sounds like we've been engaged in a civil war in Yemen, propping up an unpopular dictator, and that's what prompted al Qaeda in Yemen to strike back at us. I imagine Yemen's wikipedia page is going to be updated. The first article calls the leader a military dictator. Wikipedia calls the ruler a president and the country a republic. It's hard to reconcile the reports that Yemen is a failed state with wikipedia's claims it's a fast growing democracy. I bet the latter is a formality and the former reality. There's a substantial community of Yemenis in Detroit.

Somebody should ask why terrorists are attacking the US and Europe but not China or Russia so much. There are independence movements of Muslims from China and Russia, but nothing like al Qaeda's attack on us. It's not our way of life. It's not our wealth. It's that we're pushing around Arab Muslims.

A week and a half after our security services allowed the underwear bomber on the plane, Obama strongly criticizes intelligence failures. A more cynical person might think this was timed to distract Americans from Democrats' final health care oppression negotiations.

FOREIGN POLICY:

How are Putin, Chavez and Ahmadinejad pushing us? I don't see the Russian navy threatening the US coast. I don't see Russian troops on our borders or Venezuelan or Iranian. But they all see US troops on their borders. The nuclear threat from North Korea and Iran is real and we should denuclearize the North Korean peninsula and stop Iran from obtaining nukes, but this idea that in addition to the nuclear threat from Kim Jong Il and Ahmadinejad, thugs are threating the US is a fantasy. We should not be the world's policeman. South Korea can take care of itself. Europe can take care of itself. Japan can take care of itself. Columbia can take care of itself. Blaming Obama's peacenik approach for the Fort Hood shooter is irresponsible too. The Fort Hood shooter was upset that we were fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan, not that we weren't being forceful enough. Hansen sees the world through aggression-colored glasses. Apparently his world is only happy if the US is aggressively threatening the rest of the world.

POLITICS:

Recognizing futility, Democrats dropping out of races.

Democrats House member switches to Republican over Obamacare. Another reminder that all these aristocrats care about is their own power. Neither principle nor what's best for the people and the country play a role in our government.

I hope Obama and Democrats are driving the country to the right. I hope they're driving it towards freedom. Bush pushed the country left. Obama's pushing the country right. Another thing the two parties have in common is that the American people are always moving away from them, yet we continue to elect them every election.

"Nearly three-fourths of those surveyed prefer that Congress do nothing to reform health care rather than take final action on either the Senate or House versions of Obamacare."

This is a good point to make to our representatives.

Republicans heading home and taking credit for the economic impact of pork projects in Obama's stimulus boondoggle. These Republicans were elected by people claiming to support limited government.

Republicans mount serious primary challenge to Ron Paul. They hate him. He makes every other Republican look like the corrupt, government-loving statist they are.

MISC:

Tea Party activists planning national strike on Jan. 20. This is another way for Atlas to shrug. I hope this goes over big, but it doesn't sound like it will.

Washington's 10 most corrupt politicians. Naturally, they're the most powerful too. Nine Democrats and one Republican. Somebody is going to claim bias.

Limiting toilets to 1.6 gallons per flush is a de-evolution of society.

"The toilet manufacturers, meanwhile, are all touting their latest patented innovations as a reason for the reduced hysteria surrounding the toilet disaster. I suspect something different. We have all gotten used to a reduced standard of living — just as the people living in the Soviet Union became accustomed to cold apartments, long bread lines, and poor dental care. There is nothing about our standard of living that is intrinsic to our sense of how things ought to be. Let enough time pass and people forget things.
...
Indoor plumbing since the time of the ancient world has been a sign of prosperity and human well-being. Indoor toilets that flow into a sewer have been around since 1500 B.C., but every new settlement of people in a new area presents the problem anew. In rural America, indoor toilets weren't common until the 1930s. That today everyone assumes them to be part of life is a testament to the creative power of economic progress.
What we have in these regulations passed since the 1990s is therefore a step backwards from a central aspiration of mankind to dispose of human waste in the best possible way. We have here an instance of government having forced society into a lower stage of existence.
Government has reduced us as people to the point that we either have to enter the black market to get good sewage or come to terms with living amidst periodic spreading of human waste all over our domestic and commercial environment.
Again, this is wholly unnecessary. Capitalism achieved something spectacular in waste disposal. Government came along and took it away from us. That's the story in a nutshell.
...
[T]here was wisdom in those old designs. The environmentalists didn't account for the present reality in which people typically flush twice, three times, or even four times during a single toilet event. Whether or not this ends up using more or less in the long run is entirely an empirical question, but let us just suppose that the new microtanks do indeed save water. In the same way, letting people die of infections conserves antibiotics, not brushing teeth conserves toothpaste, and not using anesthesia during surgery conserves needles and syringes."

That's a fact. We are far too accommodating of the restrictions of freedom that are unraveling civilization forced on us by government.

Trends Research 2010 predictions are not pretty and include an economic crash, protectionism, a depression era return to elegance in fashion and art, increased terrorism in the US and survivalism goes mainstream.