Free kibbles

ECONOMY:

Finland enters second dip of recession.

Why we haven't suffered worse consequences of government malfeasance yet:

"One reason that we have thus far been spared the full wrath of Washington's poor decisions is that we are still benefiting from problems abroad, particularly in the eurozone. As sovereign debt issues have temporarily caused a flight to the dollar, our economy has benefited from lower interest rates and restrained consumer prices."

"Our last remaining leg of support has been the activity of Asian central banks, who have continued in their herculean efforts to prop up the dollar and bail out Americans with low interest rates and cheap imports. However, when sovereign credit risk eventually rears its head in America, look for Asian policymakers to finally wise up. Once that prop is removed, there will be no questions about the gravity of our situation – and little dispute that it amounts to a depression."

We're in a world of hurt.

"Cameron went on to say, "Greece stands as a warning of what happens to countries that lose their credibility, or whose governments pretend that difficult decisions can somehow be avoided." This type of realistic sentiment is completely absent in our current leadership in Washington, even though the US deficit is 9.9 percent of GDP and mounting. Meanwhile, the tough decisions being made by European governments will start to rebuild investor confidence in the euro."

We're the stupidest people in the world.

FEDERAL RESERVE:

Reminding us that Bernanke is just another aristocrat, he defends today's deficits but warns they will become dangerous tomorrow. That's what politicians always say. We can run up all the debt we want today, it's good for us, but tomorrow somebody else will have to do something about it. It's good to be the king.

GLOBAL WARMING:

Another study has found out what we already know - global warming frauds aren't interested in science, they're pushing policy.

"A cross examination of global warming science conducted by the University of Pennsylvania’s Institute for Law and Economics has concluded that virtually every claim advanced by global warming proponents fail to stand up to scrutiny.

He found that the climate establishment does not follow the scientific method. Instead, it “seems overall to comprise an effort to marshal evidence in favor of a predetermined policy preference.”

The cross-examination, carried out by Jason Scott Johnston, Professor and Director of the Program on Law, Environment and Economy at the University of Pennsylvania Law School, found that “on virtually every major issue in climate change science, the [reports of the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change] and other summarizing work by leading climate establishment scientists have adopted various rhetorical strategies that seem to systematically conceal or minimize what appear to be fundamental scientific uncertainties or even disagreements.”"

More and more people are realizing these frauds are political hacks posing as scientists, not real scientists.

FOREIGN POLICY:

Iran to continue enriching uranium despite new sanctions, just like we knew they would. Sanctions are worse than useless. They never have their targeted effect, but they always make the target more defiant and less willing to work with others while impoverishing the population.

WAR:

Reason is uncomfortable with the idea of target killings.

"Last week U.N. investigator Philip Alston delivered a report on "targeted killings" in which the U.S. government plays a starring role. Under a policy secretly initiated by George W. Bush and expanded by Obama, the CIA and the Joint Special Operations Command track and kill people, including U.S. citizens, based on their alleged ties to Al Qaeda or its allies. The killings, typically carried out by missiles fired from drone aircraft, dangerously blur the line between warfare and summary execution."

Everybody should be uncomfortable with targeted killings especially in the hands of the most corrupt people in the country. Obviously, since we're at not at war, it would be best if the governments of countries where terrorists reside would arrest them and prosecute them as criminals for carrying out terrorist attacks. But that's not going to happen in Somalia or large areas of Afghanistan, Pakistan and Yemen. It's not going to happen other places. If we don't kill them, they will continue to launch terrorist attacks on US citizens. The long term solution should be to engage the people around them in a system of voluntary exchange, earn their trust and develop ties so those people will want to stop the terrorists out of self-interest, but in the mean time we can't sit idly by and let them kill Americans. I don't like the bombs, I would prefer snipers because it would limit other casualties, but in some cases, it appears that our government either kills or US citizens be killed. We shouldn't kill anybody unless we know he or she has launched an attack against the US previously or he is implementing an attack against the US. Being associated with al Qaeda or talking about attacking is not enough.

POLITICS:

California Republicans sent a strong message that they look to the private sector for solutions to their problems when they nominated Meg Whitman, former CEO of eBay, and Carly Fiorina, former CEO of Hewlett-Packard, to run for governor and US senator, respectively, in huge victories. Neither have been corrupted by being in politics previously.

Lincoln eeks out a surprise win in Arkansas. Too bad. I'd love to have seen another incumbent ousted. Tea Partier defeats establishment Republican to run against Harry Reid in Nevada. Women won big on the Republican side. They should make a lot of noise about that. The Washington Post seems surprised these women didn't make gender an issue. Why could that be? Maybe because they weren't Democrats?

MEDIA:

Reason wonders why it took so long for Hearst to get rid of Helen Thomas. So do I.

MISC:

Science discovers what we all knew despite what power-hungry politicians keep telling us, only a few bad apples are affected by video-game violence. These are the people who were going to be bad anyway.

Congressman wants to know why so many key technical people were not on the Deepwater Horizon oil rig the day it blew. This could be interesting. Government acts like it's in charge by ordering BP to bring more ships to the Gulf to capture oil. Of course BP was already doing that because capturing the oil increases its revenues and decreases its liability.

I have no doubt the officials are favoring the Lakers. They always favor the Lakers.

Swiss lawmakers reject treaty with US that would compromise Switzerland's banking secrecy. Put your money is Swiss banks before the feds take it all.

The libertarian-paleo connection: never trust the government.

"Paleos generally reserve a special hatred for the state. After all, the state and its allies in academia and industry are spreading deadly health advice that is responsible for the bulk of disease and obesity, and it continues to do so in the face of a growing mountain of evidence contradicting it. It should have been obvious from the start that the conventional wisdom was bogus – it totally contradicts evolutionary biology. The conventional recommendation to avoid red meat and animal fat, for example, flies in the face of over 2 million years of evolutionary adaptation to eating animals (the whole animal, including all of the fat). The recommendations to eat grains and vegetable oils are also suspect – grains were only introduced into the human diet about 10,000 years ago, and vegetable oils haven't evenexisted for more than a century. The state's health advice is not only wrong, but directly harmful to health. That makes the state responsible for an unfathomable amount of misery and death. For paleos, this elicits a deep mistrust in the state – how can they trust that the state doesn't screw up this badly in anything else it does?"

It doesn't get much more libertarian than that.