Free kibbles

ECONOMY:

Obama's anti-job policies cost the country jobs again in December.

"Of Mr. Obama's expected pivot to jobs, Sen. Sherrod Brown (D., Ohio) said: "When man plans, God laughs.""

That's a perfect indictment of central planning. Too bad Sherrod Brown is one of the staunchest supporters of central planning in the Senate. And lest we forget the Republicans love central planning just as much as Democrats...

""It's time for President Obama to heed the recent words of Democrat Senator Ben Nelson and finally do what he should have been doing over the past year -- put his full and undivided attention on fixing our economy," said Republican National Committee Chairman Michael Steele."

With pretend friends of free markets like Republicans, who needs enemies? I don't want Obama's attention fixing our economy. Government cannot help fix our economy. All it can do is harm it. I want the government out of our economy so the people can fix it as quickly and painlessly as possible.

""The Dec 25. bomber had to be dealt with, and the president had to take responsibility," Mr. Emanuel said. "If he didn't address it like a laser, if he talked about jobs then, people would have said he wasn't dealing with the problem at hand. You have to deal with all of it.""

No, you don't. Please stop. Central planning is the common thread exacerbating all our problems. Obama shouldn't be dealing with the economy because government shouldn't be involved in the economy. Obama shouldn't be dealing with airport security because the government shouldn't be involved in airport security. Obama shouldn't be dealing with Afghanistan because government shouldn't be waging in Afghanistan. The only things Obama should be concerned with is making sure North Korea and Iran don't get nuclear weapons, take out al Qaeda, border security and that our federal justice system works. Everything else should be left to free people. China is not threatening us. Russia is not threatening us. Venezuela is not threatening us. Afghanistan is not threatening us. Yemen is not threatening us. Leave them alone.

Americans are choosing to walk away from their mortgages because it can save them money. That's what happens when they don't put money down because government forces banks to make cheap loans, and the housing market collapses because the bubble the Fed created pops. That's how badly government has screwed up our economy, and that's why we're not in recovery.

Because the Swiss have managed to remain significantly free, there's no riff-raff in Switzerland. Have you noticed that al Qaeda isn't attacking Switzerland? Maybe we should adopt a foreign policy more like the Swiss.

"Switzerland is not really a single country, but a confederation of largely autonomous "cantons" – 26 in all – and these cantons compete amongst each other, such as in providing the most favourable business and tax climate. A visit to the site comparis.ch will show that one of the choices the Swiss people have is the amount of tax they pay.

As one example, the canton of Obwalden formerly had one of the higher tax rates, but to compete brought it down to a flat 10% – though cantons Zug and Schwyz are better known for their low taxes. In the south, cantons Vaud, Geneva and the Italian-speaking Ticino are currently lowest. Also, it is perfectly possible for any reasonably wealthy person to cut a special deal with a canton for a much lower rate. In fact, the wealthier the better – the lack of social envy and its politics is unusual and noteworthy.

There are also occasional amnesties to provide for tax which is not paid. The evaded amounts are actually lower percentage-wise than the much more oppressive surrounding countries. This can only be due to lower rates, more local accountability and less violent collection methods leading to less resentment and motivation for resistance. Tax evasion, if found out, might land an offender in a somewhat uncomfortable civil action, but it is not a crime."

That's how the Founding Fathers envisioned the sovereign states would work.

RKBA:

Description of how little the Heller ruling changed things in D.C. At least you can own a gun now, but only after bending over and taking it long and hard from the government first. This is asking permission, and obviously permission can be refused, and that violates our innate right to keep and bear arms and the second amendment.

FEDERAL RESERVE:

Forbes interview with Ron Paul.

WAR:

How the Afghan war looks from the point of view of Afghans.

"Referring to the first of December’s massacres, a Middle Eastern newspaper wrote, “The raid in the eastern province of Laghman this month followed a pattern that has become sadly familiar in Afghanistan over recent years. As is often the case, international forces insisted militants were killed, but local officials and villagers claimed the dead were civilians.” [11]

...

On January 2 Dawn News, Pakistan’s first 24-hour English news channel, reported on its website that 44 CIA-directed Predator drone missile attacks last year had killed 708 people, only five of them alleged al-Qaeda and Taliban targets. “According to the statistics compiled by Pakistani authorities, the Afghanistan-based US drones killed 708 people in 44 predator attacks targeting the tribal areas between January 1 and December 31, 2009.

...

For all the carnage wreaked on innocent Afghans and Pakistanis, a senior NATO intelligence officer told Western media representatives at a briefing on December 27 that “The Afghan Taliban have expanded their influence across Afghanistan and are now running a ‘full-fledged insurgency’ with their own ‘governors’ in all but one of the country’s provinces.” [18]

“In 33 out of 34 provinces, the Taliban has a shadow government…has a government-in-waiting, with ministers chosen” for the day the government falls in the unnamed official’s words. [19]"

After over eight years. Like every other nation that's tried to control Afghanistan, we're going to fail.

The Netherlands wants to develop a mobile version of the nude body scanner. Wouldn't it just be easier to outlaw clothes? Let everybody get in on the action. I know a lot of people are optimistic that more and more people are beginning to embrace freedom, but it's hard to see how we can overcome this kind of power. I think the power of government is growing much faster than the movement to take away that power. I hope I can look back in 10 years and happily note how wrong my pessimism was.

So the big airport todo was over a guy running to kiss his girlfriend goodbye. The moral of the story is would-be bombers can get on airplanes no problem, but guys who forget to kiss their girlfriend then run the shortest route to do it cause airports to be shut down and end up in prison. This is government in action.

FOREIGN POLICY:

Obama administration finally decides to support protest movement in Iran. It's got to upset him to turn against his tyrant buddies. He should have come out in support of freedom over thugs who shoot their own citizens in the street on day one. I don't know if they're going about it the right way (remember when liberals said he was wise not to interfere?), but it shows Obama is willing to switch positions on what he considers the unimportant issues in order to have the political capital to push his destructive domestic agenda. I think the opposition movement was doing just fine without our interference. I hope this doesn't backfire.

"Since the opposition movement's demonstrations recently peaked after the death of reformist Islamic cleric Ayatollah Hossein Ali Montazeri, a number of Iran scholars in the U.S. said they have been contacted by senior administration officials eager to understand if the Iranian unrest suggested a greater threat to Tehran's government than originally understood.

"The tone has changed in the conversation," said one scholar who discussed Iran with senior U.S. officials. "There's realization now that this unrest really matters.""

So the all-knowing central planners are wondering if they were wrong, and they're reaching out to members of the private sector to find out. Admitting they might be wrong is extremely rare for central planners. We should get rid of the central planners in the first place.

POLITICS:

Sarah Palin is headline speaker at Tea Party convention. As I feared, the Tea Party movement has been absorbed by the conservative movement. Any pretensions of advocating freedom are gone. Sarah Palin was only one of the four candidates in the last election to support full blown socialism in the form of some stupid idea that everybody who lives in Alaska, just by being there, is entitled to a check from the revenue generated by oil companies. I like her stands against politics as usual and against corruption, but her ideology is no different than the Republicans who gave us Obama.

MISC:

A couple of great quotes:

""A little government and a little luck are necessary in life; but only a fool trusts either of them."

"When politics are used to allocate resources, the resources all end up being allocated to politics.""