Free kibbles

REGULATION:

The SEC sues Goldman-Sachs for fraud over mortgage-backed securities.

"Goldman Sachs misstated and omitted key facts about a financial product tied to subprime mortgages as the U.S. housing market was beginning to falter, the Securities and Exchange Commission said in a statement today. The SEC also sued Fabrice Tourre, a Goldman Sachs vice president."

Why did it take two years to figure this out? The SEC had to be protecting Goldman. I have no doubt that Goldman-Sachs was engaged in fraud, and the SEC knew about it all along. That's the nature of government. Without the SEC, this would likely have been exposed much sooner, possibly in time to reduce the damage.

Goldman says:

"The financial services giant said the charges were "completely unfounded in law and fact.""

Of course it does. The SEC was in on it, so it has to be legal, right? This has probably all been orchestrated to give Obama and Democrats some positive PR to push through financial regulation and to give them some credibility with their base in November. Even though Goldman has all kinds of dirt on Paulson, Geithner, Greenspan and Bernanke, they'd be foolish to bite their master's hand given public sentiment about Wall Street. They'll probably put up token resistance, pay a fine, and get back to working with government to rob us blind.

Here's more evidence this Goldman thing is political theater and Goldman is in on it:

"Goldman Sachs Group Inc., which fell 13 percent yesterday after U.S. regulators announced fraud accusations, didn’t disclose that it was warned nine months ago that investigators wanted to bring a case, people with direct knowledge of the talks said."

So basically Obama and Goldman got together months ago and negotiated the timeline and agreed how to orchestrate this thing to benefit Obama, Democrats and Goldman too because government is going to keep funneling money through regulations, the Fed and bailouts if necessary to make sure Goldman profits at our expense.

HEALTH CARE:

Obama orders hospitals... You might wonder where Obama gets the power to order hospitals to do anything. See, he didn't really order them, he threatened to cut off their Medicare and Medicaid funding if they didn't do what he said. It's blackmail. Last I heard, blackmail was a crime (even though it shouldn't be), but not for government. I don't want hospitals to treat gay partners different than heterosexual partners, but this illustrates how government money is used to carry out government's authoritarian agenda. Once again, Obama's power lust puts me in a crappy position, hoping hospitals will reject his dictates, but I don't want them to reject gay partners. I'd like to see a hospital CEO publicly welcome gay partners while at the same time rejecting the president's pretense of authority to give them orders.

POLICE STATE:

Cops can beat people for no reason without consequence, but if they make a derogatory comment about a star quarterback, they get kicked off the force.

Florida using IBM predictive software on juvenile delinquents to determine which ones pose significant future risk. Needless to say, this will involve monitoring them the rest of their lives. This is part of the all-seeing eye I keep warning against. Soon a computer will analyze every movement you make past a surveillance camera, where you drive to, what you buy, what you eat, where you web-surf and what you read, and if it decides your activities fit a criminal profile, you're screwed. If it decides you don't like big-government, you're screwed. If you date a cop's exgirlfriend, you're screwed. If you write letters to the editor denouncing the performance of a politician, you're screwed. If you don't buy enough government approved products from government approved stores, you're screwed. Orwell never envisioned computers when he wrote 1984, it would have been a far scarier book.

We have to set up laws to prevent government from seizing our online information. Nobody can claim they expect privacy in their email when they know it exists on multiple computers across the internet, and government is using that argument to access that info. But we contract for privacy with our email provider, then we can expect privacy. Unfortunately, we need laws to make government respect that.

FOREIGN POLICY:

New START treaty. History of START III.

POLITICS:

List of quotes from founding fathers meant to show they support tea party ideals conveniently omits the founding fathers' warnings against entangling foreign commitments and wars. There's no way to have a foreign policy that includes policing the world and small government. If citizens elect people with the character to use violence to force their will on foreigners, that same character will lead them to use violence to force their will on the citizens. Furthermore, that same character makes people more corruptible.

Tax day tea parties.

Man, oh man, can President Obama be any more tone deaf and dishonest?

"Mr. Obama admitted to his supporters that the anti-tax rallies "amused" him.

The president went over the laundry list of tax cuts instituted in Washington over the past year.

"In all, we passed 25 different tax cuts last year. And one thing we haven't done is raise income taxes on families making less than $250,000 a year -- another promise that we kept," he told supporters at the Arsht Center for the Performing Arts. "So I've been a little amused over the last couple of days where people have been having these rallies about taxes. You would think they would be saying thank you.""

Nothing like misrepresenting his promises, his record and ridiculing the real, passionate concerns of the American people. And not to mention, we should be thanking him like allowing people to keep a tiny bit more of their own money one time is a gift from Great Pharaoh. This should really work people up. I don't know if Obama doesn't know what a tax cut is, or if he's just lying to rally his base. I'm torn on stupid or evil here.

Nancy Pelosi to ignore creating tax and spend budget until after November.

I think libertarian sentiment was always mainstream. It's just that active libertarians had no way to get their message to the masses. The internet changed all that, and the economic collapse prompted people to start getting information elsewhere, and they found the libertarian message that naturally resonates with them online. Of course a good case can be made that Ron Paul's 2008 presidential campaign, in which he was the only candidate to predict the collapse and present policies to rectify our economic problems, set the stage.

MEDIA:

ABC, CBS and NBC disparaged and dismissed the tea parties? I'm shocked.

MISC:

I'm glad to see somebody prosecuted for leaking classified material. The government protects way too much information, but that's a political issue. Bush was such a wimp on this, that security leaks were rampant during his administration. Classified information should not be leaked (unless it's covering up government crimes).

WWII casualties.