Free kibbles

SOCIALISM:

Hugo Chavez is still ahead of President Obama in the race to socialize everything. Look for Obama to seize some companies to try and catch up.

TAX AND SPEND:

US intelligence warned that Europe was on the verge of a crisis because of overspending on welfare states, but that didn't stop the two parties from continue to expand the welfare state in the US.

HEALTH CARE:

Realizing that Democrats are being attacked from all sides for their anti-entrepreneur agenda, Nancy Pelosi calls Obamacare an entrepreneurial bill - enabling people to engage in jobs people won't pay for by taking money from productive people by force and using it to pay for their health care. I'm sure her San Francisco voters love the part about promoting musicians.

How the 1099 order in Obamacare will hurt small businesses.

Obamacare will pack 32 million newly covered people into already overcrowded emergency rooms. I don't think Obamacare covered 32 million new people, but there's no doubt that overcrowding in emergency rooms will get worse.

GLOBAL WARMING:

Reason misses a good punch line:

"Were you aware that Americans have a collective obligation to stop kicking challenges to the next generation and join the White House in supporting "sweeping" and "transformative" legislation? I thought so."

You mean Obama's finally going to make sweeping and transformative cuts to federal spending to stop kicking the debt problem to the next generation? I'm on board. No, wait. He's talking about tax and trade.

POLICE STATE:

Remember when you weren't supposed to get too many X-rays because they were dangerous? Now the government is going to force people into X-ray machines whether they want them or not, and frequent fliers will have to get them all the time. Maybe this is a plot to give us all cancer and accelerate our descent into socialized medicine.

More evidence that police departments require arrest and Terry stop quotas.

ILLEGAL IMMIGRATION:

I don't have a problem with licensing drivers. If all roads were private, you would have to get permission to drive on them. But I do have a problem with checkpoints. They are unwarranted searches.

FOREIGN POLICY:

I don't see where the international community has any reason to complain that Iran is enriching uranium to 20 percent. I don't see how the international community has any moral authority to stop Iran from mastering all the necessary steps to build a nuclear weapon as long as it stops short of that. That seems to be a flaw in the nuclear proliferation treaty, and naturally Iran doesn't trust to trade in what it needs for its nuclear program because it's under constant threat of sanctions because it's a huge state sponsor of terrorism. I don't see a way to satisfactorily resolve this situation.

Every time somebody discusses these sanctions, they assume they will work. They won't. Sanctions never work. They won't work this time. They're most likely counterproductive because they would harm the freedom movement in Iran. Let's quit worrying about sanctions. It's a distraction.

Gordon Brown to head the IMF. It probably took that promise to convince him to resign as PM. We should pull out of the IMF. If we want to prop up foreign governments and banks, we can do it ourselves (though we shouldn't). We should not outsource our foreign policy.

POLITICS:

Another Obama nominee has tax problems.

How can prisoners be held beyond the length of their sentences up to forever? And why is this a federal issue? I can understand a state sentencing a child molester to lifetime observation or something like that, but modifying a sentence in the middle is the epitome of an ex post facto law.

MEDIA:

I don't have any problem with any administration taking its message straight to the people The internet makes that possible.. Why should the media be so empowered to misrepresent any administration? I do have a problem with ducking the media.

LOCAL:

It's amazing how stupid ideas spread like wildfire. First Detroit started demolishing houses. Dayton is doing the same thing. I've read that this is the hot idea all over Ohio.

"City officials expect to fall short on an ambitious plan to demolish 500 vacant structures this year.

...

He also spoke of the department’s 2009 accomplishments, including the razing of as many as 420 foreclosed, blighted or abandoned nuisance structures. That figure compares to 300 in 2008 and 131 in 2007.

...

“We are very fortunate. We are not facing personnel reductions because, right now, demolition is a priority,” Cromartie said."

Like cash for clunkers, society only gets poorer when it destroys wealth. Let's celebrate making everybody poorer, and make it a priority.

Downtown Dayton had a big party Friday night, and A World A'Fair was all weekend. I went out Friday and Saturday, but I didn't see a single petition carrier asking for signatures to nullify Obamacare in Ohio even though I know they have a petition drive going. How come liberals are so much better at that stuff? I know liberal organization often pay petition people. I bet our tax dollars fund them.

MISC:

Big government needs a diet more than anybody.

This seems like a whole lot of floundering about to explain something that seems pretty simple to me - the Constitution doesn't allow welfare. We know that because it doesn't enumerate a power for the government to redistribute wealth. Supporters of the constitutionality of welfare point to the general welfare clause, but welfare as we know it ostensibly promotes the welfare of some at the expense of others, and therefore it does not meet the requirements of promoting the general welfare. The general welfare doesn't mean the welfare of a subset of the population. It means the welfare of all the people. In fact, welfare as we know it doesn't promote the welfare of anybody but the politicians. It harms the recipient as well as the person the wealth is stolen from, so welfare is unconstitutional.

A reminder that most African slaves brought into the US were sold by other Africans.

Prediction that Iceland's volcano heralds a new, more active cycle for Iceland's bigger volcanoes. Ouch.