Free kibbles

SOCIALISM:

The Obama administration's assault on Toyota is paying dividends in the public opinion arena.

TAX AND SPEND:

One of the constant reminders that politicians all lie without conscience is the way politicians say they're always looking for a way to cut the deficit. That's like saying they're looking for their noses. You don't have to look for it. Stop spending.

REGULATION:

I wouldn't call this a factbox on Dodd's financial reform plan. I'd call this Dodd's talking points. Notice how, as always, this is a big-government plan to supposedly fix problems created by big-government.

Cato proposes a big-government plan to supposedly fix problems created by big-government.

"There's a long debate to be had about the maximum size to which a bank should be allowed to grow, and about how to go about breaking up banks that become too large."

"...should be allowed...?" There's that allow word that government lovers always use. I thought Cato claimed to be libertarian.

Dodd's bill would create five new government bureaucracies and Charles Schumer wants to throw in some tax increases for good measure. Because that worked so well every other time.

Financial reform doesn't address Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.

The last Democrat so-called jobs bill includes requirements on foreign banks servicing Americans or foreigners in America to report to the IRS and to withhold a certain portion of the the account in case the IRS wants to seize it. If the foreign country's laws don't allow that, the bill requires them to close the account. Apparently Congress forgot that its powers end at the border, but you can bet many foreign countries will cave to the US on this.

HEALTH CARE:

Three dollar device greatly increases healing speed, but it's not available in the US because of the FDA.

Doctors don't need to retire to free themselves from government. They can just stop taking third party payments from insurance companies and government.

GLOBAL WARMING:

British court declares global warming a religion and seizes money from his employer and gives it to him because of discrimination against his beliefs. So now if you debate against global warming, you can be held liable for discrimination.

Since so many adults have seen through Al Gore's global warming scam, he's redoubling efforts to brainwash children.

Iceland volcano has put more CO2 into the atmosphere than halting air traffic has saved, but environmentalists celebrate it anyway proving once again that their real goal is to harm human development, not save the planet.

WAR ON DRUGS:

This politician's argument against legalizing marijuana shows the Machiavellian workings of the authoritarian mind.

"This is not the first time legalization has come to the fore. In the 1970s,Alaska legalized the drug—only to recriminalize it in 1990 after Alaskan teen marijuana use jumped to twice the national average. This is clear evidence that if legalized, marijuana use will increase (even among children)."

That's according to government statistics that are always biased to make government look good. Marijuana is available in every school in America today.

"There are significant cost burdens that come along with increased marijuana use. For example, there will be a greater social cost from decline in worker productivity and school performance. Legalization will also lead to a greater need for drug education, rehabilitation and treatment. And there will be costs associated with selling the drug."

I know of no studies that show legalizing marijuana would reduce worker productivity and school performance. I'm sure some people have their performance degraded, the same as the people who smoke too much or drink too much or spend too much time at the beach or on the internet do, but most of them are probably already pot smokers or overindulging in something else. Besides which, if workers don't do a good job, business owners should be able to fire them. Government prevents that from happening. Drug education, as will all other education, should be a matter for the private sector, not government. Costs associated with selling the drug? I guess we should ban everything because of the costs associated with selling everything.

"Do we really want our governments to sell substances known to be toxic to the body, and which has no medical value that is recognized by the medical community, for the sake of sheer profit? If this were a corporation proposing such a thing, it would be taken to court."

Government selling it? Who's proposing government sell it? And imagine if government banned all substances toxic to the body.

"Consider these findings from a white paper by the California Police Chiefs Association’s Task Force on Marijuana Dispensaries: California legalized “medical” marijuana in 1996, and dispensaries where the drug is handed out – to pretty much whoever comes in with a doctor’s note – have become catalysts for serious crime."

By definition, prohibition creates crime. Funny how the government agents, especially cops who profit from crime and drug crime more than any other, produce studies that support prohibition. Of course if marijuana is illegal except for medical reasons, black market violence will infect the medical marijuana market. The black market is the problem, not legalizing medical marijuana. Notice how he doesn't address the violence caused by prohibition except to twist it in the case of medical marijuana and make it appear that legalizing medical marijuana caused the violence, not prohibition in the first place. I'm sure his cronies paid him well for this essay.


POLITICS:

Democrats have $22 million more than Republicans to throw at midterm elections, but this doesn't tell the whole story. Tea partiers are withholding their money right now. They're fighting primary battles to replace establishment Republicans. You can bet tea party candidates won't be hurting for money, but Republicans won't control it. This is a good thing.

Why Democrats play the race card to win elections: they have to.

Clownish actions of leftist pretending to be tea partiers.

Goldman-Sachs is a huge contributer to Obama.

"It would be fair to say that the total amount the Obama administration has received from those affiliated with Goldman Sachs is ten times that of what Bush received from Enron."

What a bunch of fools. In moments of weakness, I wish Obama would seize that firm and fire all the execs who contributed to him just to show them what idiots they were.

Embattled global warming fraud threatens to sue over satirical video. He has no lawsuit. He's a public figure.

Pew poll documents distrust of government. I'm always amazed at how true believers fail to understand this.

MISC:

Boortz falls for the fallacy that there's such a thing as good, non-political government.

Another essay claiming the internet is balkanizing politics in America. That's like complaining that we have too much choice at the grocery store. The problem is our two party system and that government forces its will on the people at the point of gun, not the 300 million unique opinions of Americans.

The US is not number one in many important categories.

About Foundations of Economics: A Christian View.

"The audience included, providentially, a certain successful Christian entrepreneur. This man has a heart for Christian education and for the free market. He also has a nonprofit foundation and he told me his foundation would give me a grant to help me write an introductory economics text from a Christian perspective. That is what I have tried to do with my book, Foundations of Economics."

That ought to be interesting.

Economics and ethics. Fantastic quote from Adam Smith explains the fatal flaw of central planners:

"The man of system, on the contrary, is apt to be very wise in his own conceit; and is often so enamoured with the supposed beauty of his own ideal plan of government, that he cannot suffer the smallest deviation from any part of it. He goes on to establish it completely and in all its parts, without any regard either to the great interests, or to the strong prejudices which may oppose it. He seems to imagine that he can arrange the different members of a great society with as much ease as the hand arranges the different pieces upon a chess-board. He does not consider that the pieces upon the chess-board have no other principle of motion besides that which the hand impresses upon them; but that, in the great chess-board of human society, every single piece has a principle of motion of its own, altogether different from that which the legislature might chuse to impress upon it. If those two principles coincide and act in the same direction, the game of human society will go on easily and harmoniously, and is very likely to be happy and successful. If they are opposite or different, the game will go on miserably, and the society must be at all times in the highest degree of disorder."

Smith notes human action too.

"When you identify a source of social tension, realize that the source of the tension might not be the ignorance, idiocy, or venality of the people you want to control but your desire to control them."

Hello, tea parties. The cause of division in America is people don't want to be forced to do something against their will at the point of the government's gun. Liberals don't like it. Conservatives don't like it. Libertarians don't like it. Nobody likes it. The bigger and more oppressive government becomes, the more divided and angry it makes people, and growing oppression will eventually drive people to violence. It's been that way for every civilization in history. How much oppression people will tolerate varies, but all people eventually rebel against oppression. It's inevitable. It's human nature. The solution is simple. Embrace freedom on every issue.


This story about how statists hate the volcano eruption (anybody who had their plans disrupted would hate it) gave me an idea for a great Saturday Night Live skit. They could spoof a news show with a host, a congressman who proposed legislation to repeal the law of gravity and a black critic. The host would pretend to be objective while giving almost all the air time the congressman. The critic would point out that Congress can't repeal the law of gravity and talk about the unforeseen consequences if it could (like people floating away into space). Eventually the congressman would call the black critic a racist and accuse him of using the n-word.

"I suspect that, if the volcanic ash continues to generate some economic dislocations, and when the more severe state-generated economic collapse occurs, the statists will insist that the volcanic ash was the cause of all our economic difficulties. They will resurrect their global warming agenda and propose even harsher legislation to prevent earthquakes, tornadoes, and volcanic eruptions, . . . events caused by human behavior which, in turn, cause depressions!"

Good prediction.


Last night I was saying that I'm glad no airplane had crashed because of volcanic ash, but now we have reports government overreacted there was no threat to air travel. I'm still glad no airplane crashed, but the decision not to fly should have been made by the people with something at stake - the airlines.


Images from new solar observatory.


Researchers claim they can exploit cell phone system to get anybody's phone number, track their whereabouts and real their voicemail. Government will be really upset they horned in on government's monopoly.


Bill Clinton, the president who unleashed the FBI to murder the Branch Davidians, blames the Oklahoma City bombing on limited government supporters.

"Yesterday, on the fifteenth anniversary of the attack on the federal office building in Oklahoma City, former President Bill Clinton had an op-ed in the New York Times headlined: “Violence is Unacceptable in a Democracy.” The article settles any doubts about whether Clinton was one of the most talented demagogues of modern times.

Casting a net of collective guilt over much of the 48 contiguous states, Clinton announced that the 1995 bombing was the fault of people who believed “that the greatest threat to American freedom is our government, and that public servants do not protect our freedoms, but abuse them.” People who distrusted government helped echo ideas which somehow persuaded “deeply alienated and disconnected Americans” to carry out the attack.

In other words, people who harshly criticize the government are guilty of - or at least complicit in - mass murder."

Talk about projection.

"Clinton declared that “we do not have the right to resort to violence — or the threat of violence — when we don’t get our way. “

Unless you’re the government."

Government is violence and threat of violence. That's all it is. The article goes on to list some of the violent acts government committed under Clinton.


Concern that bigger volcano next to the erupting volcano in Iceland might also erupt.