Free kibbles

SOCIALISM:

Since Congress doesn't support card check, Obama enacts it through the back door. But if you think about it, this is the way our entire political system works. You don't have to get a majority of adult citizens to vote to raise taxes, all you need is a majority of voters which is universally a minority of citizens. That's how minority activists oppress the majority all over America. This is bull**** all the way around.

The effect of government unions on Los Angeles.

FREEDOM OF SPEECH:

More on Kagan:

"“Whether a given category of speech enjoys First Amendment protection depends upon a categorical balancing of the value of the speech against its societal costs.”"

In other words, if Kagan agrees with what you're saying, you're allowed to say it. Otherwise not. You watch. This will not even be an issue during her confirmation.

It turns out the intolerance of the left is not by nature (or maybe it's partly by nature) but by design.

"“Much campus censorship rests on philosophical underpinnings that go back to [Marxist] social theorist Herbert Marcuse, a hero to sixties radicals.  Marcuse argued that traditional tolerance is repressive — it wards off reform by making the status quo . . . well, tolerable.  Marcuse favored intolerance of established conservative views, with tolerance offered only to the opinions of the oppressed, radicals, subversives, and other outsiders.  Indoctrination of students and ‘deeply pervasive’ censorship of others would be necessary, starting on the campuses.” (emphasis added)."

Those Marxists sure know how to organize to do damage.

ECONOMY:

Stock markets already down as savvy investors take profit, realizing this trillion dollar euro bailout is just another massive debt boondoggle.

TAX AND SPEND:

Obama pushed Europeans into $1 trillion bailout.

"President Obama had just flown into Hampton, Va., Sunday morning to deliver a commencement address. But before he donned his silky academic robes, he was on the phone with Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany, offering urgent advice — and some not so subtle prodding — that Europe needed to try something big."

This guy is a monster. He wants to destroy not only America, but the world. Why settle for national communism when you can go for world-wide communism? He must think the only reason the Soviet Union collapsed is the rest of the world wasn't communist.

40 million citizens are on food stamps. Wear am I?

16 European governments have agreed to go $1 trillion deeper into debt ostensibly to prevent a government debt problem. I keep writing about it because I can't believe it when I write it. $250 billion of that comes from the IMF which receives a significant amount of its funding from US taxpayers, plus the Federal Reserve is playing a role through currency swaps. So government is taking money from us by force, driving our government and Americans personally deeper into to solve Europe's government debt problem. Where's the outrage? The euro only came into existence in 2002. European governments have taken it to the verge of destruction after only eight years. It's taken 100 years for our government to do the same to the dollar. But that's setting the bar too low.

"There is nothing more to be said other than this is potentially the greatest inflationary plan ever designed. Although statements have been made in the past that the EU has failed to follow through on, the statements issued last night appear to have a sense of seriousness about them, especially the ECB announcement to buy government and private debt, and the Federal Reserve launching of currency swaps. Both these actions suggest spectacular inflation may not be far away."

Nice of the Fed to jump on the inflationary bandwagon. If you don't think this has always been the plan, you're not paying attention. Some of these people are not fools. Alan Greenspan wasn't a fool. He knew exactly what he did, and that's why he retired right before the housing bubble popped. Bernanke isn't a fool. He was Greenspan's right-hand man. He's knows he's destroying the dollar. Obama isn't a fool. He knows he's destroying the country. These aren't accidents or unintended consequences. They're enriching themselves and their cronies at our expense knowing full well what the consequences will be an planning to profit from them as well.

"Although the ECB statement says the purchases will be sterilized, meaning they won’t increase the overall money supply in the  system, one wonders how long this will go on. A sterilization of the money printing would mean that money would be drained out of other sectors of the EU economy to be given to the governments of the PIIGS, who are proven irresponsibles with money. Draining from the potentially productive sectors of the EU economy to give to the PIIGS is almost as insane as printing the money without sterilization."

So they're coming right out and saying they're going to transfer wealth from the productive parts of the economy and transfer it to the most irresponsible governments in the EU. This is a tax. We're at the start of the biggest societal collapse since the fall of the Roman Empire, the collapse of the welfare states world-wide, and people keep pretending they don't see it.


Government spending kills.

"On May 5^th, three bank workers died in a blaze at their Athens office block after violence broke out in a mass demonstration against the Greek government.

This was the tragic result of a decision taken in 1992, to impose a single currency on twelve very different economies."

Government is violence. The result of government interference in our lives is invariably violence and death. We accept that when the only people government target are murders, rapist, thieves and invading armies. But we're fools to accept it when government targets every citizen as it has been doing in America for 100 or more years.

REGULATION:

Obama wants to split agency that regulates offshore oil drilling. That's window dressing that won't change anything. This is just political cover because he's the single biggest recipient of BP campaign donations over the last 20 years.

What kind of idiot would try to ban investment banks from betting against their clients? Suppose I want to buy 100 shares of Corporation X. Suppose you want to sell 100 shares of Corporation X. Suppose we both use the same brokerage company. Do you see the problem? Government is a boot on the neck of citizens. That's why it's such a great burden.

FEDERAL RESERVE:

Because Ron Paul dedicated his political career to ending the Fed, the Senate finally passed a watered down version of his audit the Fed bill. The House already passed a stronger version. If this becomes law, the revelations should outrage Americans, and hopefully we'll be able to pass a stronger audit the Fed bill later.

EDUCATION:

This is why teachers unions hate charter schools.

""The average charter student is scoring 5.8 points higher than his lotteried-out peers in math and 5.3 points higher in English. In grades four through eight, the charter student jumps ahead by 5 more points each year in math and 3.6 points each year in English. Charter students are also shrinking the learning gap between low-income minorities and more affluent whites. 'On average,' the report concludes, 'a student who attended a charter school for all of the grades kindergarten through eight would close about 86% of the 'Scarsdale-Harlem achievement gap' in math and 66% of the achievement gap in English.'""

But charter schools aren't the answer any more than vouchers are. They're being corrupted every day by the poisonous government that funds them. This is comparing failing government schools with slightly better government schools, and we should accept neither.

School girls get week of detention for having Jolly Ranchers at school. As Obama's allies so eloquently reminded us recently, government is a boot on the necks of citizens - even third graders.

GLOBAL WARMING:

The CBO reports that curbing CO2 output will reduce jobs. Of course it will, but this is yet another time the CBO has exposed the lies behind the Obama agenda. Obama must hate the CBO.

Maybe this representative needs the arguments reduced to a sixth grade level, but the American people don't. They get it that the man-made global warming movement is a fraud. They've been making arguments at the sixth grade level for decades. It took that long for skeptics to overcome them because those arguments are more complex. But the deciding factor was the climate got colder. Once again, we were lucky.

Insider describes Senate tax and trade bill (which is no longer called cap and trade because the people realize it's a tax):

"What’s become increasingly apparent is that this legislation no longer has much to do with reducing greenhouse gas emissions.  It’s a monstrous collection of payoffs to big business special interests, ranging from Goldman Sachs to Duke Energy to General Electric."

Of course it is. That the federal government way.

Summary and section by section analysis of Kerry-Lieberman tax and trade bill. Get ready for another fight for our future.

WAR ON DRUGS:

That video of the drug raid I linked to a week or so ago has gone viral with nearly a million views on YouTube. The American people are finally seeing the outrageous violence the government is employing against American citizens in the name of the war on drugs, and they don't like it. It's about time. This shows us the power of video and the power of the internet. As Balko puts it, he can write about how many people are killed by government's war on drugs, and it doesn't penetrate the brain. This video penetrates the brain.

"I've been writing about and researching these raids for about five years, including raids that claimed the lives of innocent children, grandmothers, college students, and bystanders. Innocent families have been terrorized by cops who raided on bad information, or who raided the wrong home due to some careless mistake. There's never been a reaction like this one.

But despite all the anger the raid has inspired, the only thing unusual thing here is that the raid was captured on video, and that the video was subsequently released to the press. Everything else was routine. Save for the outrage coming from Columbia residents themselves, therefore, the mass anger directed at the Columbia Police Department over the last week is misdirected. Raids just like the one captured in the video happen 100-150 times every day in America. Those angered by that video should probably look to their own communities. Odds are pretty good that your local police department is doing the same thing."

Whoever had the bright idea to video and release this piece has probably been fired, and we're unlikely to see any videos of raids like this ever again, so please watch it and pass it along.

"According to Montgomery, when the couple's neighbors inquired about the raid, they were told that the SWAT team had merely conducted a drill, and no shots were fired. When neighbors learned from the family that this was a lie, they began writing to the department and the Daily Tribune to demand answers. When the couple discovered the police had videotaped the raid, they requested a copy of the video. Montgomery said in her email that the copy they were initially given had no audio, and the incriminating (to the police) portions of the video had been removed."

They have to cover up their actions because they can't justify them to any reasonable person.

"On February 23, the Daily Tribune published its first story on the raid. The paper made its own request for the SWAT video, which the police department initially denied. On April 20, Jonathan Whitworth pleaded guilty to a single charge of possession of drug paraphernalia. He wasn't even charged for the minor amount of marijuana in his home (marijuana for personal use has been decriminalized in Columbia). He was issued a $300 fine. On April 27, the Daily Tribune made a formal request for the video, which it received on April 30, with full audio and with no visuals removed. The paper posted the video with an accompanying article on May 3. On May 5, I posted it here at Reason, and the video went viral."

All that over a little marijuana no more dangerous than cigarettes. Not that the type of drug matters. This can't be justified for crack, heroin or any other drug somebody voluntary takes.

"According to surveys of police departments conducted by University of Eastern Kentucky criminologist Peter Kraska, we've seen about a 1,500 percent increase in SWAT deployments in this country since the early 1980s. The vast majority of that increase has been to serve search warrants on people suspected of nonviolent drug crimes. SWAT teams are inherently violent. In some ways they're an infliction of punishment before conviction. This is why they should only be used in situations where the suspect presents an immediate threat to others. In that case, SWAT teams use violence to defuse an already violent situation. When they're used to serve drug warrants for consensual crimes, however, SWAT tactics create violence where no violence was present before. Even when everything goes right in such a raid, breaking into the home of someone merely suspected of a nonviolent, consensual crime is an inappropriate use of force in a free society."

Government is violence, and it's only proper role is in overcoming the violence of others. I must never be allowed to initiate violence.

"And we didn't get here by accident. The war on drugs has been escalating and militarizing for a generation. What's most disturbing about that video isn't the violence depicted in it, but that  such violence has become routine."

This is a poor application of the passive voice. The war on drugs hasn't been magically escalating. We've been escalating it. We're responsible for making this happen. We demand cops use violence against non-violent Americans even though initiating violence should never be condoned. We demand politicians put more cops on the street to initiate more violence even though initiating violence should never be condoned. We're to blame.

"Shooting the family's dogs isn't unusual, either. To be fair, that's in part because some drug dealers do in fact obtain vicious dogs to guard their supply. But there are other, safer ways to deal with these dogs than shooting them. In the Columbia case, a bullet fired at one dog ricocheted and struck another dog. The bullet could just as easily have struck a person. In the case of Tarika Wilson, a Lima, Ohio, SWAT officer mistook the sounds of a colleague shooting a drug dealer's dogs for hostile gunfire. He then opened fire into a bedroom, killing a 23-year-old mother and shooting the hand off of the one-year-old child in her arms."

We're reaping what we've sown. Because we embrace the violence of government and demand that government become ever more violent and oppressive, government has become ever more violent and oppressive. Duh.

"Though SWAT teams are frequently defended as necessary tools reserved for the most dangerous of drug offenders, the reality is that in many communities, all search warrants are served with forced entry and paramilitary tactics.

...

Repeat the mantra that we're at war with illicit drugs often enough, and the cops on the front lines of that war will naturally begin to think of themselves as soldiers. And that's particularly true when you outfit them in war equipment, weaponry, and armor. This is dangerous, because the objectives of cops and soldiers are very different. One is charged with annihilating a foreign enemy. The other is charged with keeping the peace.

...

It's heartening that nearly a million people have now seen the Columbia video. But it needs some context. The officers in that video aren't rogue cops. They're no different than other SWAT teams across the country. The raid itself is no different from the tens of thousands of drug raids carried out each year in the U.S. If the video is going to effect any change, the Internet anger directed at the Columbia Police Department needs to be redirected to America's drug policy in general."

Amen.

POLICE STATE:

When you board an airplane, it's best to leave the electronic massage shoes with batteries and on-off switch at home.

You don't see many juries acquitting on child molestation charges, but it sounds like Tonya Craft's case was an extreme case of prosecutorial abuse, and fortunately for her she could afford $500,000 in defense fees and the jury saw through the government fraud. If these prosecutors and their advocates masquerading as experts don't pay a price, the system will continue to get worse.

WAR:

How American military dominance makes us less safe, less prosperous and less free.

Pat Buchanan gets it right again: war is coming to America because we've been exporting it for decades. If we want to keep war from coming here, we need to end our waging of war over there.

"Though all were Muslims, none seems to have been a longtime America-hater or natural-born killer. Hasan was proud to wear Army fatigues to mosque. Shahzad had become a U.S. citizen. Abdulmutallab was the privileged son of a prominent Nigerian banker.

...

All were converted in manhood into haters of America willing to kill and die in a jihad against America. And the probability is high that there are many more like them living amongst us who wish to bring the war in the Af-Pak here to America.

But what radicalized them? And why do they hate us?"

Because we're waging war on middle-eastern Muslims, and have been oppressing them since we helped create the state of Israel, if not earlier. We've been screwing up their countries and lives for 60 years. Now we've escalated to the point where we're bombing two, or three if you count Pakistan, of their countries back into the stone age. They want to make us pay for the damage we've done to them.

"This was the mantra after Sept. 11. We are hated not because of what we do in the Middle East, but because of who we are: people who love freedom and stand for women's rights.

And that is why they hate us – and why they come to kill us."

But they aren't waging war in Switzerland. Or Australia. Or the freest places in the world, Hong Kong and Singapore. That claim is absurd.

"In a way this is a comforting thought, because it absolves us of the need to think. For no patriotic American is going to demand we surrender our freedom to prevent fanatics from attacking us."

I can't tell if he's being ironic or he's taking a shot at phony patriots who demand we surrender our freedom to keep us safe. Either way, I like it. And it's not Lady Gaga.

"U.S. Marines were not attacked by Hezbollah until we inserted those Marines into Lebanon's civil war. No Iraqi committed an act of terror against us before we invaded Iraq. And if the Sept. 11 killers were motivated by hatred of the immorality of our society, what were they doing getting lap dances in Delray Beach?"

All the lies told by the elite to promote these wars are easily exposed. The conclusion is inescapable for anybody with half a brain and without an ulterior motive:

"We are being attacked over here because we are over there.

Nor is it a good sign that U.S. intelligence is reporting that rising numbers of U.S. Muslims are making Internet inquiries about how and where to get training to bring the war home to America."

End the wars. Bring all our troops home - not just the ones in Muslim nations. Engage the Muslim world in mutually beneficial trade.

David Cameron accepts Queen Elizabeth's invitation to become Prime Minister of Great Britain after both the Tories and Labour failed to create a coalition government. As archaic as it seems, it's probably as good a system as any. The aristocrats of every welfare state have created crises in government and everywhere else.

MEDIA:

In the you can't make this stuff up category, the New York Times advocates that Greece end socialized medicine and return to market based health care. I'm wordless.

LOCAL:

Group of government agents unveils plan to end area violence that can be summed up in two words: more government. Funny how self-serving their plans always are. Of course that means less prosperity and more crime, not less. I have a better plan that can be summed up in two words: less government. That means more prosperity and less crime.

MISC:

Apparently it's unusual for a University of Chicago law professor to have almost no paper trail. Who else do we know who taught at the University of Chicago and had virtually no paper trail before he became president? Kagan's following the Obama model, so we know what to expect from her. She's almost certainly another stealth Marxist. All Kagan knows is government. Just like Obama.


Boortz explains it well:

"When you elected Barack Obama to the presidency, you knew that as the President he would have the power to appointed Justices to the Supreme Court -- It is stated in the Constitution, for cryin' out loud. And when you elected a big government Marxist into the White House, what kind of justices did you expect him to appoint? These are the kinds of things you should think about next time you go to the polls to elect someone based on the fact that they are "cool" or have a nice "bod" or a catchy campaign slogan."

If you voted for Obama and have buyer's remorse, quit yer bitchin'. Those of us who did the work to know who Obama was before the election don't want to hear it. You're part of the problem. You think the information you need to make intelligent decisions will be delivered to you on a silver platter. That's entitlement mentality. Please never vote again.


Obama's nominated a stealth Marxist for the Supreme Court, but conservatives' biggest concern is gay rights. You got to be kidding me. "It's OK if you turn everybody in the country into slaves as long as you don't let gays in the military." This is probably an exaggeration promoted by the mainstream media, but you can bet Republicans will make this the major issue since they love big-government as much as Democrats.


Here's Obama's idea of diversity:

"Who knew that the express way to the Supreme Court would be through the left wing Princeton history department?

More on Kagan’s early career as a young leftist scholar here and here.

Barack Obama and the new age of “diversity” has given us two left wing Ivy League females — identically unmarried and childless — not simply from the same city and same state, and not simply from the same undergraduate college, but from the very same undergraduate degree program .."

Don't forget they both grew up in New York City.


The solution to bad judges from both ideologies is to impeach them for failing to uphold their oath of office by subordinating their opinions to the law the highest of which is the plain language of the Constitution.


Google android surpasses iPhone, and it looks like android phones have caught up or maybe surpassed iPhones in technology.


OK, so maybe the US isn't the stupidest country on earth. Russians advocate using a nuclear bomb to seal the oil leak in the Gulf. They used this technique five times. Maybe Obama will use that solution the next time he gets a headache too.


The Mojave cross commemorating veterans that the Supreme Court recently ruled was constitutional was stolen. Our lawless government is creating a chaotic and lawless society.


Study shows what anybody with half a brain already knew - babies are born with sense of right and wrong. Of course they are. Our sense of right and wrong is a reflection of survival instincts. They're hardcoded in our genes. One of the great dangers of our big brains is those brains allow us to deviate from those moral codes and perform destructive acts. That's why people are such slaves to their subconscious minds in general. Human survival depends on voluntary cooperation. Only evil people force others to do things against their will. These are some pretty neat studies to test such things in tiny babies. The critics are missing the point - the babies innately understand cooperation is a good thing and resisting hampering others is a bad thing.


BP's been at the front of the news because it leased the Deepwater Horizon oil platform, but Transocean and Halliburton are also involved.

"With at least 4m gallons of oil now fouling the Gulf, the executives of BP America, which owned the well, Transocean, which owned the sunken Deepwater Horizon rig, and Halliburton, which cemented the well, were involved in a desperate attempt to avoid taking direct blame for the 20 April incident."

There should be plenty of liability to go around.


The other side of the story in Mexico. While the drug gangs and government fight a low-level civil war, the people are significantly freer than Americans.

"I have met many people who work for the Mexican State in some capacity, and enjoy the monopolized fruits of their labors. It seems that the middle class is made up greatly of people who work for the State, and the upper class is made up of politicians and narcos (drug traffickers). The lower classes meanwhile are the small business operators and agrarian workers who seem to thrive while providing the locals and tourists there with goods and services, unhampered by strict infringement by State bureaucracies.

Contrast this with the U.S., where enforced bureaucracies impede anyone from doing anything without a license, bonds, and business insurance. These obstacles to doing business on a small scale do more than undermine the entrepreneurial spirit, ingenuity, and economic potential of the United States. They suck us dry of our culture. We lose not just our business sense but also our overall creativity. Our neighborhoods become a wasteland of strip malls and chain stores, rather than colorful habitats for a vibrant culture."

That's exactly what's happening to our government dominated, homogenized, regularized, equalized society.


History suggests that second Icelandic volcano may erupt soon.

""We know of four Eyjafjallajokull eruptions in the past [dating back to AD 500] and in three out of these four cases, there has been a Katla eruption either at the same time or shortly after.

"By shortly, I mean timescales of months to a year.

"We consider that the probability of Katla erupting in the near future has increased since Eyjafjallajokull went.""

Airlines won't like that.