Free kibbles

TAX AND SPEND:

Government continues to covet your retirement accounts. Naturally they're cover for doing this is to "...enhance, by regulation or otherwise, the retirement security of participants..." Like giving the government your money enhances your security.

Obama has boosted the number of federal employees over 2 million for the first time ever to 2.15 million. That's a bunch of guaranteed Democrat voters.

"From 1981 through 2008, the civilian work force remained at about 1.1 million to 1.2 million, with a low of 1.07 million in 1986 and a high of more than 1.2 million in 1993 and in 2008. In 2009, the number jumped to 1.28 million.

Including both the civilian and defense sectors, the federal government will employ 2.15 million people in 2010 and 2.11 million in 2011, excluding Postal Service workers."

Why exclude postal workers? So it's even bigger than 2.15 million.

Recently resigned Comptroller General of the US explains our debt problem.

"[W]ithin 12 years, without an increase in interest rates, interest on the national debt is expected to be the largest item in the budget."

Ouch.

"If the people speak up, their leaders will follow."

Why do we call them leaders. Politicians are always followers, often years if not decades behind the people.

New Hampshire has no income tax, no state sales tax, few regulations on businesses and an unemployment rate far below the national average. This isn't a coincidence.

Seven charts document a trillion dollars of debt since Democrats took control of Congress. As much damage as Obama and Democrats have done, laying this all at the feet of the Democrats since 2006 is dishonest. Bush's policies, the Fed policies under Bush, and the policies of a hundred previous years all brought us to this point.

REGULATION:

Report shows that federal regulators, bureaucrats and politicians all ignored warning signs from the private sector of a housing crisis.

"One of the nation’s biggest mortgage industry players repeatedly warned the Federal Reserve, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. and other bank regulators during the housing bubble that the U.S. faced an imminent housing crash.

The trade group also mapped out the 15 states which faced "sudden increases in foreclosures" and "a downward spiral," including California, Florida and Nevada.

But bank regulators not only ignored the group's warnings, top Fed officials also went on the airwaves to say the economy was "building on a sturdy foundation" and a housing crash was "unlikely."

The letters, obtained by Fox Business, were sent in 2005 and 2006 before the housing bubble burst."

This is all federal regulators, bureaucrats and politicians can do - respond like Neanderthals after the fact. They can never be anything better than a day late and a dollar short - and in reality they're always much worse than that. The private sector always leads. The government can only follow. Only a system of voluntary exchange has the regulatory power, foresight and nimbleness to head off, minimize damage from and optimize recovery from crises.

WAR:

Government reports that al Qaeda is likely to attempt an attack on the US. Whenever the Bush administration said this, liberals would have gone off their rocker claiming it was alarmism. Funny how this coincides with Democrats just losing the Senate seat in Massachusetts and scrambling to save health care oppression. Where are the cries of alarmism now? I have no idea if the threat level is really higher or not, but we should be as skeptical of Democrats as Republicans.

US and British depleted uranium bombs blamed for birth defects in Iraq.

FOREIGN POLICY:

Of course a strike on Iran could spark nationalism. That's a secondary issue. The primary issue is whether or not all nations of the world are going to allow Khamenei and Ahmadinejad to obtain nuclear weapons and use them to solidify their power and threaten their neighbors, Europe and the US. I don't think Israel will allow this to happen no matter what Obama wants. President Ahmadinejad agrees to ship uranium to foreign countries for enrichment. Wow. If Iran follows through on that, that would be great. Western countries would be foolish to sabotage this deal. But couldn't Ahmadinejad further enrich the returned uranium into weapons grade? There's got to be some sort of verification involved. Regardless, this could be a huge step toward avoiding a military strike. It looks like Ahmadinejad is just playing politics to stall for time, probably at the advice of the Chinese or Russians to give them an excuse to deny sanctions. I wonder what happened to the mouse, turtle and worms. Israel is not buying it.

""Iran's plan will probably be stopped by a regime change or, if there is no other choice, by recourse to force to deprive Iran of its nuclear arms production capabilities," [Minister] Yaalon told a security conference in Herzliya. "

I sure hope this doesn't end if violence, but I doubt it will end any other way. Better to destroy Iran's nuclear facilities than to have Iran nuke some city.

Pat Buchanan joins the call to bring our troops home from Japan and Korea. Why stop there? Bring them all home.

POLITICS:

Harry Reid attacks Republicans for playing political games with national security. It's kind of fun to watch Reid self-destruct under the pressure of losing his seat.

This is how stupid our politics is:

"Sarah Palin calls on President Obama to fire Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel for reportedly describing the strategy of Senate liberals as "fucking retarded.""

That's just stupid. I couldn't care less about his language. Grow some thicker skin, Palin. This is more political correctness run amok.

"Just a few weeks ago, Palin said she was worried about a country where people couldn't use words that were "politically incorrect.""

Typical politician. Emanuel should be fired because he's helping destroy America, but of course that's what his boss wants him to do. I call for President Obama to resign because he's intentionally (unintentionally is bad enough) destroying America.

MISC:

Criticism of Ayn Rand. You don't get too much of this in the libertarian world.

Why should Tiger Woods show humility to the public and clean up his act? Like nobody else has ever had affairs. If I was Woods, as badly has he's been treated by the press and other golfers, I'd want to come back to golf, win every tournament I played in and stick it in their eye. Maybe the press and other golfers should show some humility to Woods since he's singularly responsible for their dramatically increased paydays. Woods is a jerk, and he deserves to pay his wife millions for what he put her through. I never thought anybody would make me sympathetic to him, but I can't stand this holier-than-thou crap.

Reason describes how "public servants" become our masters.