Free kibbles

FREEDOM OF SPEECH:

Reason wonders what the mission of the new cyber-warfare command is. It's to seize control of the internet.

SOCIALISM:

Bailing out labor union pensions is a big kiss to labor unions from Democrats for helping them win in 2008.

ECONOMY:

Americans are becoming more slaves to the government.

Prediction of a big crash before the end of the year.

TAX AND SPEND:

Democrats know darn good and well that hiking the millionaire's tax won't increase revenues because it will push people to leave New York, but they're proposing it anyway. California Democrats propose massive new taxes that will push productive people and businesses out of the state. They know darn good and well this will make California's problems worse, but all they care about is their jobs so they're doing it anyway.

REGULATION:

Government puts its boot on the neck of children including two five year olds for selling lemonade without a license only to later discover the children didn't need a license. I'm shocked they didn't need a license.

Wall Street firms doing victory lap because of financial oppression that will make them richer and us poorer.

FEDERAL RESERVE:

Bernanke's going off the deep end. Now he's claiming that, if left free from political forces, central banks would guarantee no boom-bust cycles and no inflation. He says that with a straight face knowing full well that the Fed has destroyed 96 percent of the value of the dollar since it was created. It reminds of that scene in the Titanic when the guy says the ship unsinkable as it's taking on water.

Along with all the other damage Chavez is doing to Venezuela, he's printing money like crazy, and we know how that's going to end.

"Venezuela's market has been absolutely flattened by an overburdening government. Nationalization turned vibrant industries into dead factories, while regulations and price fixing crushed what remained of the private sector. With no true recovery possible, the regime has turned to the printing press as the solution to its economic problems. But, as events clearly show, this has not led to prosperity. It has only led to further suffering, as inflation quickly erodes Venezuelan savings and further damages Venezuelan industry.

Far from the recovery claimed by Mark Weisbrot, the continuation of current fiscal and monetary policies will bring immeasurable pain upon the people of Venezuela. Unless Hugo Chavez's government suddenly ends spending and returns to a free market, the most likely conclusion to current events in Venezuela is a crisis of interventionism"

Obama and Bernanke are doing the same thing to us.

EDUCATION:

New Jersey school teacher busted for lying about her salary while grandstanding about budget cuts.

GLOBAL WARMING:

Australian government spends $15 million on seminar series teaching global warming frauds how to deal with skeptics. And you thought government was supposed to be fair and on your side.

Myths of so-called green energy.

""One nuclear power plant in Texas covers about 19 square miles, an area slightly smaller than Manhattan. To produce the same amount of power from wind turbines would require an area the size of Rhode Island. This is energy sprawl." To produce the same amount of energy with ethanol, another "green" fuel, it would take 24 Rhode Islands to grow enough corn.

...

Maybe the electric car is the next big thing?

"Electric cars are the next big thing, and they always will be."  

There have been impressive headlines about electric cars from my brilliant colleagues in the media. The Washington Post said, "Prices on electric cars will continue to drop until they're within reach of the average family."

That was in 1915.  

In 1959, The New York Times said, "Electric is the car of the tomorrow."  

In 1979, The Washington Post said, "GM has an electric car breakthrough in batteries, now makes them commercially practical."

I'm still waiting.

"The problem is very simple," Bryce said. "It's not political will. It's simple physics. Gasoline has 80 times the energy density of the best lithium ion batteries. There's no conspiracy here of big oil or big auto. It's a conspiracy of physics.""

If wind and solar power or electric cars were more efficient, people would be profiting from them without subsidies.

WAR:

The narcissist-in-chief thinks he can convince Muslims that America is not at war with Islam by saying so even though he'll continue to kill Muslims in Muslim countries. Needless to say, this is worthless.

POLITICS:

Female South Carolina Republican gubernatorial candidate busted for affair. They're all doing it.

MISC:

It looks like BP finally managed to stop the Gulf oil leak at least temporarily. Gulf spill surpasses Exxon Valdez. Lessons from the oil spill.

"BTW, good for TPM for noting that natural oil spills (called seeps) dump roughly four Exxon Valdezes into the Gulf each year. But since the seeps are not man-associated, they are ignored."

You can't point fingers of blame at natural oil leaks. Pictures from the oil spill. Natural oil leaks don't do this.

Hillary Clinton encourages college graduates to work for the government as a parasite instead of doing productive work. That directly contradicts her admonition for them to work for the public good.

Everything you love you owe to capitalism.

The words state, statism, static and status quo share a common theme. They are the opposite of progress, and government is the enemy of human progress because it takes away individual choice and reduces options. How ironic is it that the ideologues who hate and resist human progress the most call themselves progressives? As if he'd been reading my blog, Jeffrey Tucker explains:

"Everyone knows that the Obama administration’s decision to suspend consideration of applications to drill in the Arctic is driven by political considerations, some attempt to “respond” to the BP mess in the Gulf. But what strikes me as just how willy nilly the state acts toward the goods and services that fuel civilization itself. The decision makes us all poorer on the margin, increases “dependency” of the U.S. on foreign oil, drives up prices, and sets back social advance in every way – all in the name of some random attempt for one guy to appear “strong” and “act” in the face of an accident. It’s rarely been more obvious, day to day, that the machinery of the state, while pretending to be the caretaker of mother earth, only destroys hope for real human beings."

Other than punishing criminals and enforcing contracts, property rights and individual rights, every action the government takes slows human progress.

NOAA predicts busy Atlantic hurricane season - again. It always predicts this, and like a broken clock, it's right every now and then.

NBA star Dwayne Wade explains the economics of collusion.

"Miami Heat player Dwayne Wade becomes a free agent on July 1. So does LeBron James of the Cleveland Cavaliers, Joe Johnson of the Atlanta Hawks, and Chris Bosh of the Toronto Raptors. The four men are the cream of the 2010 NBA free agent crop. And according to Wade (via the Chicago Tribune), they plan to consult one another about their decisions on where to sign:

Wade said he’s not sure when the top free agents will discuss their respective plans, though they have spoken informally in the past.

“(Free agency) has been three years coming,” Wade said. “We’ve discussed it prematurely, at different times. (But) you don’t know what guys are thinking and where they’re going. I think we’ll all sit down, and before one of us makes a decision, all of us will have spoken to each other and (listened to the) thinking.

“A lot of decisions (will be based on) what other players are willing to do and what other guys want to do. So it’s not just a ‘me’ situation here. We all have to look and see what each other is thinking.”

There’s nothing remarkable about Wade’s statements — except that he’s admitting to a felony punishable by a $1 million fine and ten years imprisonment. That’s the “max contract” for price fixing these days. And what Wade describes is in fact an illegal price-fixing cartel."

Those collusion laws are nuts.

More eminent domain abuse. Greed is wanting to take something from another by force instead of through voluntary exchange.

Paleolithic diet.

"Around 10,000 years ago, an enormous breakthrough was made- a breakthrough that was to change the course of history, and our diet, forever. This breakthrough was the discovery that cooking these foods made them edible- the heat destroyed enough toxins to render them edible. Grains include wheat, corn, barley, rice, sorghum, millet and oats. Grain based foods also include products such as flour, bread, noodles and pasta. These foods entered the menu of New Stone Age (Neolithic) man, and Paleolithic diet buffs often refer to them as Neolithic foods.

The cooking of grains, beans and potatoes had an enormous effect on our food intake- perhaps doubling the number of calories that we could obtain from the plant foods in our environment. Other advantages were soon obvious with these foods:

· they could store for long periods (refrigeration of course being unavailable in those days)

· they were dense in calories- ie a small weight contains a lot of calories, enabling easy transport

· the food was also the seed of the plant- later allowing ready farming of the species

These advantages made it much easier to store and transport food. We could more easily store food for winter, and for nomads and travelers to carry supplies. Food storage also enabled surpluses to be stored, and this in turn made it possible to free some people from food gathering to become specialists in other activities, such as builders, warriors and rulers. This in turn set us on the course to modern day civilization. Despite these advantages, our genes were never developed with grains, beans and potatoes and were not in tune with them, and still are not. Man soon improved further on these advances- by farming plants and animals."

Storage of grain, the first savings accounts, enabled the division of labor and therefore civilization, but it's not good for our diet.