Free kibbles

LIBERTY:

As we've become less free, we're losing the ability to imagine what it means to be free.

"If the role of the state is to ferret out evil thoughts and bad ideas, it must necessarily become totalitarian. If the goal of the state is that all citizens must come to hold the same values as the great leader, whether economic, moral, or cultural, the state must necessarily become totalitarian. If the people are led to believe that scarce resources are best channeled in a direction that producers and consumers would not choose on their own, the result must necessarily be central planning.

On the face of it, many people today do not necessarily reject these premises. No longer is the idea of a state-planned society seen as frightening. What scares people more today is the prospect of a society without a plan, which is to say a society of freedom.But here is the key difference between authority in everyday life — such as that exercised by a parent or a teacher or a pastor or a boss — and the power of the state: the state's edicts are always and everywhere enforced at the point of a gun."

Government does not keep us safe, and we need to quit pretending it does before it destroys our country.

Robert Murphy makes an interesting argument about anarchy in response to the situation in Haiti.

"When Rothbardians say that they favor anarchy, what we mean is that for any given society, with all else held equal, a government monopoly on legal rulings and police enforcement will make the society worse off. (I am here focusing on the pragmatic claims rather than ethical considerations.)

...

When dealing with Somalia, therefore, the relevant question isn't, "Would you rather live in the United States or Great Britain, with a stable government, or live in Somalia, with competing warlords?""

I think the relevant question is where in the world has anarchy ever produced as thriving a society as the top civilizations of the world? Another relevant question is where in the world has a thriving anarchist society survived predation by government dominated societies? There are no examples. I've heard the Celts mentioned as an example, but I don't get that because they were governed by warlords. The anarchist's paradise is as much a fantasy as the worker's paradise. There are always jerks in society who initiate violence against others, and those people must be dealt with with more violence. The people dealing out that "legitimate" violence to stop the initiators of violence are the government. A because power corrupts, government is always corrupt. The only question we need to answer is how to make government the least bad it can be while still serving the function of overcoming those who initiate violence on others.

You must have economic freedom in order to have political freedom. We have neither.

Judge orders woman to stay in hospital because she might miscarriage otherwise. I'm not surprised that the US is generating into a totalitarian state, I've been writing that we were on this path for 20 years, but even I'm surprised at how quickly it's happening. Within the last two years, I said we only had about 20 years to turn it around. I doubt we have 10 now. We may not have five. Our government has abandoned all pretense of having limited powers and the rule of law.

RIGHT TO KEEP AND BEAR ARMS:

Two states have passed and 21 states have introduced legislation protecting the right to keep and bear arms for citizens inside those states from federal interference.

ECONOMY:

Our government is following the same policies that Japan followed which led to zero GDP growth for 17 years.

TAX AND SPEND:

After exploding the budget faster than any president in history, Obama to propose spending freeze on 1/6th of the budget in order to appear fiscally responsible. That means spending will continue to skyrocket in 5/6ths of the budget. This is a cheap political ploy to appease the Tea Party movement, but it will anger his base, and I bet nothing will come of it. He's just looking for good press. He should have made real spending cuts the day he took office, not phony ones a year after he made George Bush look like a spendthrift.

There may be a more evil motive behind this proposed spending freeze. Obama certainly knows we're heading for another stock market crash and a second dip in the recession. When it comes, he can blame it on this spending freeze and make the case that the only thing propping up the economy is crazy government spending.

How runaway government spending kills jobs and economic growth.

Telling headline: Deficit picture slightly less bleak. That's trying to put the brightest face on a terrible situation and failing horribly.

GLOBAL WARMING:

NASA and NOAA busted for selectively using temperature data that is biased towards higher temperatures and ignoring temperature stations that show otherwise.

CRIMINAL JUSTICE:

Minnesota Supreme Court upholds DUI conviction of man whose car wouldn't start. They must have a different definition of driving than the rest of us.

The self-defense basis for DUI laws is wrong.

"Laws prohibiting drunk driving have absolutely nothing to do with the legitimate right to self-defense, and are actually on par with John attacking the roofer before the roofer has even threatened him. In order to see why this is the case, it is important to recognize that the supposed "crime" drunk drivers commit is only being intoxicated behind the wheel of a car. If the intoxicated driver should get into a deadly accident (that is his fault, due to negligence), he will be charged with a different and more serious crime, like manslaughter or even homicide. If the intoxicated driver should drive in a manner that threatens the lives of other motorists, he will be charged with something like reckless endangerment. The charge of "drunk driving," therefore, is always a separate charge that only addresses the fact that a man has an arbitrary amount of alcohol in his veins at the time he was driving. This is precisely analogous to prohibiting roofers from ever holding hatchets, simply because they coulduse those hatchets in order to maim or kill other people."

Unsafe driving should be punished. The cause of the unsafe driving is immaterial.

Another story of cops who "feared for their lives" killing a citizen. In this case it was three cops shooting a 62 year old man with a baseball bat after they had already tasered him. Never call the cops during a family dispute that hasn't turned violent. If you live through it, it will ruin your life.

POLITICS:

After getting advice from Bill Clinton, Obama to play the "feel your pain" card.

MEDIA:

Important Obama stories the mainstream media covered up in 2009. They did far worse in 2008 when they failed to point out that Obama is a member of the bomb-throwing Marxist wing of the liberal movement.

MISC:

Early reading can cause myopia and more serious eye problems.

Discovery of 7,000 year old man with amputated arm shows that our ancient ancestors performed complex surgery.

Avatar surpasses Titanic as top grossing film.

Does power corrupt all or merely attract the corruptible? Study suggests it only corrupts those who feel they deserve power, and there's a lot to be said for that point of view. But the answer is both, but it doesn't corrupt everybody at the same rate (it corrupts those who feel they deserve it much faster). Even the most seemingly incorruptible person will be corrupted in subtle ways through use of the language of power and identifying with those in power, separate from the rest of us, and over time that corruption will grow and leak out into actions.

30 percent of female military veterans report they were raped in the military. Wow. We knew there'd be serious problems with women in the military, but I wouldn't have expected it to be that bad.