Free kibbles

RIGHT OT KEEP AND BEAR ARMS:

Free societies are armed societies.

"If the gun controllers' claim that the mere presence of arms leads to mayhem were true, the Swiss would have wiped themselves out years ago. There are guns and gun ranges all over the place. You would be hard-pressed to find a Swiss home without a firearm and ammunition. Yet, the Swiss have a very low crime rate."

'Yet' is the wrong word. It should say 'Therefore'. It should go without saying that the laws of human nature are laws of nature like gravity. People want to live. Criminals are people, therefore criminals want to live. Armed citizens often kill criminals, therefore criminals don't commit as many crimes in an armed society.

"If you were a robber or a rapist, who would you rather have as a victim? Someone who is armed, or someone who is defenseless? Even a stupid criminal knows the answer to that question."

It's not rocket science. And all it takes to understand the Second Amendment is basic grammar. The word 'regulated' meant 'made regular' (which makes a lot more sense than our definition today), or in today's language, 'trained'.

ECONOMY:

Revelations about Greece potentially falsifying its debt numbers has sent the Euro lower which caused a temporary increase in the value of the dollar.

TAX AND SPEND:

I contend that the best definition of greed is wanting to take property from others by coercion, and by that definition government is greed. People who provide millions or billions or more in goods or services to others and get compensated accordingly in a system of voluntary exchange are not greedy. People who take money from others by force or deception, or get politicians to do it for them, are greedy. People who prosper through honest exchange in the private economy are not greedy. People who prosper through using violence against others in the political economy are greedy.

Taxing clowns.

"Piotti’s very smart bill proposes a 5% state tax on among other things, comedians, clowns, jugglers, ventriloquists, petting zoos, paintball and haunted hay rides."

Government greed.

German government agrees to bail out Greece government. How many times have we heard this?

REGULATION:

Small business owner explains to his employees that he has to cut their hours because of the increase in the minimum wage.

Draft auto bill would require all vehicles to have black boxes so the government can track everywhere you go and shut off and steal your car whenever it wants.

FEDERAL RESERVE:

A leftist criticizes Obama's Fed policy and calls for him to support Ron Paul's audit the Fed bill.

Why we need to audit (then abolish) the Fed.

"Rule: Whenever Federal regulation fails to prevent the negative outcome that has just come out, Congress adds more regulation.

Rule: Whenever a Federal regulatory agency or Government-licensed monopoly (read: Federal Reserve System) fails to prevent a disaster, Congress then transfers more power to that agency. This usually is accompanied by an increase in its budget. Of course, Congressional authorization of an increased budget is unnecessary for the Federal Reserve System, which keeps whatever money it wants in order to fund its operations, and then decides, based on an audit by a firm hired by the FED and answering only to the FED, regarding how much money it will repay to the Treasury each year.

Result: Another unforeseen crisis, probably worse than the crisis that triggered the reform legislation."

Absolutely.

"The Federal Reserve runs finance, and, through finance, the economy. Congress and the President go through the motions of being in charge, but it's an illusion – one that the FED prefers. But when push comes to shove – extremely rare – the FED insists on its integrity as independent of the government. It runs the economy based on a government-established legal monopoly over the money supply, yet it is supposedly independent of government.

It's a sweet deal."

Tell me about it. The Fed is the only entity in the country that's allowed to counterfeit money. Imagine what your life would be like if the government not only allowed you to counterfeit money, but it gave you a monopoly on printing money, and it ordered everybody else in the country to accept your money at the point of the government's gun. Finally, it also allowed you to conduct all your transactions in secret even from Congress. To say that you and everybody you care about would be stinking rich is an understatement. Want a new house? Print some money and buy it. Want some gold? Print some money and buy it. Want a vacation house in Martha's Vineyard? Print some money and buy it. Want to make your family and friends rich so they can travel the world with you? Print some money and give it to them. That's exactly what government did for the bankers when it created the Federal Reserve.

GLOBAL WARMING:

Alarmist report of unprecedented melting arctic sea ice from 1943. Too funny.

WAR ON DRUGS:

This violence on the Mexican border isn't about illegal immigration and more oppressive laws can't solve it. This is violence caused by drug cartels, the more oppressive we make our laws, the more we drive up the costs of drugs, and the richer, more powerful and more violent the drug cartels become. The solution is to stop the oppression. End the war on drugs.

POLICE STATE:

More cameras for New York City. Pretty soon the only people who will have any privacy will be the crooks because they'll know how to defeat the system.

Judge releases the Michigan so-called Hutaree militia members on bail, saying the government failed to show they were a danger. Slap! It's rare to find a judge that doesn't side with prosecutors. Either these guys got lucky or the prosecution's case is even more bogus than I suspected.

Despite knowing they will be abused, Cato favors surveillance cameras with the laughable caveat "prudently used".

WAR:

Pakistan Taliban claim responsibility for bumbled (or fake) terrorist attack in New York. That's seems unlikely, but it shows us that we've turned the Taliban, who were never our enemies, into enemies. We're creating enemies faster than we can ever overcome them. In a couple years a billion Muslims will be trying to blow up America, and we'll act surprised and wonder what we did wrong.

"The police commissioner said a white man in his 40s had been identified on video footage of the area and was seen removing a dark shirt to reveal a red shirt about half a block from the vehicle."

But New York City needs more cameras.

""We are treating it as if it could be a potential terrorist attack," Janet Napolitano, the homeland security secretary, said on Sunday morning."

Officials are being awful coy. I think this is evidence they know the bomb was never intended to explode.


I'd say it was an act of terrorism too, obviously it was intended to scare people, but that doesn't rule out a fake or even a false-flag operation.


Now NYPD needs more funds. Government always needs more funds even though it always fails to provide quality services. NYPD doesn't need more funds. It needs competition. It needs to earn its money in a system of voluntary exchange.

ILLEGAL IMMIGRATION:

The illegal immigration protests are all about amnesty. These people want to be rewarded for breaking the law, and we shouldn't let that happen. Go home. Apply to come here legally then we'll welcome you with open arms.

7 in 10 American support arresting people who can't prove they're in America legally right up until they're the ones arrested, then suddenly they realize how stupid it was to give cops the power to stop and harass anybody they don't like by demanding to see their ID. That's what you need to ask: Do you support allowing cops to come up to you, your family members, your friends and anybody else on a whim and demand to see ID to prove that you are in the US immediately? You'd get a whole different result. Remember, cops gets to define reasonable suspicion and legitimate contact and there will be no repercussions for abusing this power, so that means they have no limits on who they can, and will, harass.

POLITICS:

Charlie Christ reportedly tried to contact Rahm Emanuel, who didn't return the call. There's a not nickle's worth of difference between a Republican and Democrat. They're all lying, corrupt, greedy, power-hungry freaks of nature who identify with party out of political expediency. Crist says he'll caucus with whichever party gives him money.

Veterans put up billboard attacking congressman who says he doesn't care about the Constitution. None of them care about the Constitution. The Constitution is a limit on their power-hungry ambitions.

Great observation about our not-so post-racial-president.

"He appoints federal judges on the basis of the color of their skin, not the content of their character or their record of achievement."

Revel in the hypocrisy.


Rumors of Obama affair. The National Enquirer is the most reputable paper in the country any more.


It sounds like establishment Republicans lied to James Dobson about Rand Paul's position on abortion, and he found out about it. Aristocrats lie? Say it isn't so. The key to stopping abortions is to strengthen the family, and the key to strengthening the family is dramatically reducing the size and scope of government and tearing down the welfare state.


In a scary reminder that all political parties are liberal now, debate between three candidates for UK Prime Minister is all about fairness, not freedom or responsibility.

MEDIA:

Is anybody surprised that CNN covers illegal immigrant protests significantly differently than they cover tea party protests?

MISC:

Amazing tornado video.

Boortz falls for the fallacy that there's such a thing as good government. He's only against big-government, but who decides when it's too big? Who decides when it's good or bad? Who decides how much it's OK for government to steal from us at the point of a gun? These questions cannot be answered satisfactorily for everybody, and that proves these contentions false. There's no such thing as good government. There's only bad, small government and worse, bigger government. There's no such thing as a legitimate tax extorted at the point of a gun. It's always robbery. As for those who say the majority decides in a vote, what if a dozen hoodlums come to your house and vote that you guys are a community, they're the government, and their first act as your government is to tax you of all the money wealth in your house. If you don't agree, they'll put guns in your faces and take the money themselves. If you think the power to tax is legitimate because the majority of some arbitrary group of individuals says so, then I'm sure you have no problem with this. Feel free to call for another vote and see how that works out for you.

Boy, can I empathize with this sentiment.

"Henry Hazlitt once reflected             

“When I look back on my own career, I can find plenty of reasons for discouragement, personal discouragement. I have not lacked industry. I have written a dozen books. For most of 50 years, from the age of 20, I have been writing practically every weekday: news items, editorials, columns, articles. I figure I must have written in total some 10,000 editorials, articles, and columns; some 10,000,000 words! And in print! The verbal equivalent of about 150 average-length books! And yet, what have I accomplished? I will confess in the confidence of these four walls that I have sometimes repeated myself. In fact, there may be some people unkind enough to say I haven’t been saying anything new for fifty years! And in a sense they would be right. I have been preaching essentially the same thing. I’ve been preaching liberty as against coercion; I’ve been preaching capitalism as against socialism; and I’ve been preaching this doctrine in every form and with any excuse. And yet the world is enormously more socialized than when I began."

I still see libertarians talking about hope. I don't get it. Are they blind to our collapse or do they overlook that the when the people en mass finally see the light - the holy grail of libertarianism - they will be starving in the streets as tanks roll by? There's no evidence to support the fantasy that enough people will realize that government is the problem before it gets that bad. If this seasteading thing works, they better have tight immigration controls, because as soon as anything is thriving, the looters come along and start destroying it. If everybody was a libertarian, you wouldn't need immigration controls, but that's not the case. Only let people join if they sign a contract saying they won't try to form a government ever. If they try, cut them loose. If they revolt and break their contract, every government is violence, the libertarians will have to cut themselves loose.

What drives interest rates.

"For instance, an individual who has just enough resources to keep himself alive is unlikely to lend or invest his paltry means. The cost of lending, or investing, to him is likely to be very high — it might even cost him his life if he were to consider lending part of his means. So under this condition he is unlikely to lend or invest even if offered a very high interest rate.

Once his wealth starts to expand, the cost of lending, or investing, starts to diminish. Allocating some of his wealth toward lending or investment is going to undermine to a lesser extent our individual's life and well-being at present. From this we can infer that anything that leads to an expansion in the real wealth of individuals gives rise to a decline in the interest rate, i.e., a lowering of the premium of present goods versus future goods. Conversely, factors that undermine real-wealth expansion lead to a higher rate of interest."

That doesn't bode well for us. The interest rate is the price for borrowing. It's a function of the supply of savings versus the demand to borrow those savings. As the quantity of savings goes down, the price (interest rate) goes up. As the demand to borrow goes up, the price (interest rate) goes up.

The liberty of ancients compared with that of moderns.