Free kibbles

ECONOMY:

Top ten countries for millionaires. Needless to say, the top two are the most economically free places in the world, Singapore and Hong Kong. The most stable nation on earth with sound banking law, Switzerland is third. The US is way down at 7th. We can thank government for making us that low.

Despite fears of deflation (which we should embrace, not fear, since that's the only way to heal the damage government has done to our economy) inflation is still in force. Check out these numbers:

"The level of excess reserves held by commercial banks has climbed to $1.05 trillion in early June from $1.4 billion in January 2008 while lending remains in free fall."

That's nearly a thousand-fold increase. Bernanke hasn't just taken us into uncharted irresponsible territory, he's taken us into a new universe of irresponsibility.

"However, we are of the view that, on account of the fall in the growth momentum of money supply between November 2008 and November 2009, US economic activity could come under pressure in a few months time. As a result, the Fed may embark on strong monetary pumping. We suggest this could lead to severe stagflation."

Stagflation was so much fun in the '70s that Bernanke wanted to do it again on an unprecedented scale.

TAX AND SPEND:

New York aristocrats vow not to shut down government because of debt. Too bad for New York taxpayers. They would be way better off if the government was shut down.

REGULATION:

Making good of regulations as a weapon, government targets Apple because it doesn't pay enough tribute to government. Government can't allow a company to make superior products, satisfy its customers and gain marketshare without looting it even more. More.

"Compared with other tech giants, Apple’s lobbying expenditures are small. In 2009, Apple spent only $1.5 million to lobby the federal government, less than Amazon, Yahoo and IBM. In 2009, Google, for example, spent $4 million, Microsoft $7 million and AT&T $15 million.

In the first quarter of this year, Apple spent $560,000 on lobbying, according to disclosure reports. During the same period, Google spent $1.4 million and Microsoft spent $1.7 million."

This shows what I've been saying - government is god to corporations. Government can strike them dead with a pen and raise them from the dead into zombie companies the same way. But like all gods, government demands tribute. If corporations don't pay tribute, god gets angry and punishes them.

How regulations make us less safe.

"But our system also fosters other dangerous, unintentional risks. Think of the recent mining accident in West Virginia, the oil rig explosion in the Gulf of Mexico, or the so-called fruit-of-kaboom bomber. The commonality in all cases is that the safety of employees and consumers was in the hands of a preestablished government agency that was supposedly ensuring safety."

Surrendering responsibility for safety to bureaucrats can only make us less safe. It also removes a point of competition - why spend more on safety than required? - so products are less safe than they would be in a free market, adding to the risk.

"Another unintended consequence of state codification of safety are the resulting disincentives to innovate. Instead of putting efforts toward the risky endeavor of product innovation, a business is forced to put its effort towards finding a way to meet or overcome the code."

I just said that.

HEALTH CARE:

Obama seizes more control of our lives under the guise of health care. This man is truly dangerous.

GLOBAL WARMING:

IPCC insider reports that the IPCC invented phony claims about consensus on man-made global warming to advance its political agenda.

"The UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change misled the press and public into believing that thousands of scientists backed its claims on manmade global warming, according to Mike Hulme, a prominent climate scientist and IPCC insider.  The actual number of scientists who backed that claim was “only a few dozen experts,” he states in a paper for Progress in Physical Geography, co-authored with student Martin Mahony.

“Claims such as ‘2,500 of the world’s leading scientists have reached a consensus that human activities are having a significant influence on the climate’ are disingenuous,” the paper states unambiguously, adding that they rendered “the IPCC vulnerable to outside criticism.”"

Fraud piled on fraud piled on fraud. Their house of frauds is crashing down.

Steve McIntyre continues his heroic efforts to expose the global warming frauds by explaining the nature of the 'tricks' they use. These tricks are arbitrary manipulations of data to the climate appear warmer now than it actually is or to hide warmer periods in the past.

The global warming frauds at NOAA claim that accurate temperature measurements don't matter. They say that because most of their measuring stations, the ones they've been promoting as evidence of climate change, have been placed outside of the specifications near local heat sources like air conditioners and blacktop. The only reasonable conclusion is these stations were intentionally placed near heat sources to promote the global warming fraud.

"The NOAA climate measuring network is so broken there is literally no way to fix it. "

So they bury the problem with the stroke of a pen.

Sen. Lindsay Graham, who until about a month ago was global warming true believer, does a 180 and says:

"I think they’ve oversold this stuff, quite frankly. I think they’ve been alarmist and the science is in question…"

I guess he realized his political fortunes were best served by siding with skeptics than frauds. Naturally a Republican is promoting a bill that increase government regulation of fuel emissions. With phony-small government supporters like these, who needs enemies?

After solar cycle 24 showed a few signs of life, its activity has again fallen. This is very bad news. We're reaching 1913 levels of solar inactivity, the year of the great Great Miami flood. We've also seen tremendous rain this year. I can't help but wonder if there's a relationship. Oklahoma City flooding. Maybe I'm wrong, but flooding seems much higher than normal this year. There was the Nashville flood. The Arkansas flood. Now an Oklahoma flood. The Ohio was threatening cars this weekend and the Great Miami is rising. I can't help but wonder if this flooding is the result of this low solar activity.

Gore's alarmist lies are becoming more shill has his hopes for a government takeover of our energy sector fade. I wish some prosecutor would investigate this guy for fraud. Hypocrisy from Gore? Say it ain't so.

ENERGY:

Windfarms are bad at capturing energy but good at sucking up taxpayer money.

Naturally Obama followed in the IPCC's footsteps and twisted the reports of scientists on drilling to meet his political agenda.

Gas prices up 20 percent since the beginning of June.

The way Obama has treated BP, with intimidation and lawlessness, is more like Chavez or Putin treats companies, not America before we turned into a banana republic.

"BP has more than 600 claims personnel working to pay fishermen and others that have suffered economic damage. It has vowed to pay all "legitimate" claims and has worked through 20,000 of 42,000 submitted so far, at a cost of $53 million. BP has also promised it will not limit its payments to the Oil Pollution Act's $75 million cap on these damages, and last month it announced it would hire an independent mediator to review claims. Any claimant denied payment has the right to sue for redress under the law, which means BP has an incentive to get these payouts right.

By contrast, a government-administered fund more or less guarantees a more politicized payment process. The escrow administrator will be chosen by the White House, and as such would be influenced by the Administration's political goals. Those goals would include payments to those harmed by the Administration's own six-month deep water drilling ban. That reckless policy will soon put thousands of Gulf Coast residents out of work, but the White House knows that BP isn't liable under current law for those claims. The escrow account is an attempt to tap BP's funds by other means to pay the costs of Mr. Obama's own policy blunder."

The scariest is that people on the left don't think Obama is lawless enough, and people on the right think he's failed to use enough power too.

"BP is financially responsible for the Deepwater Horizon gusher, and the White House should want the company to stay healthy enough to honor those obligations. Instead, the Administration's denunciations and legally dubious demands are compounding the damage."

Every Obama policy compounds the damage government does to our livelihoods.

"We hope BP resists Mr. Obama's demands to put a political actor in control of its Gulf payments—both for the sake of legitimate Gulf claims, and to vindicate the U.S. as a nation that doesn't discard the law for the sake of political retribution."

Did this guy miss the government takeover of GM?

WAR:

This sounds suspicious. Why was the Pentagon sponsoring geologists to look for riches in Afghanistan? The US found over $1 trillion in natural resources in Afghanistan. But naturally the incompetent Afghans can't be trusted to utilize the resources correctly. This is another convenient excuse to wage war in Afghanistan - so Americans can manage the resources for the good of the Afghans who can't take care of themselves, of course. I bet US interests suspected this all along, and it's one of the reasons, along with the oil pipeline US interests want to see built, we're still there.

"The value of the minerals - including lithium, iron, gold, niobium and cobalt - is estimated at nearly $US1 trillion, according to the study.

US Colonel Dave Lapan says that is a conservative estimate."

This is the kind of wealth that can jump-start a real economy.

"Colonel Lapan says the studies were part of a US government effort designed to assist Afghanistan build up viable industries, and advisers were working with the Kabul government to attract "world-class" mining companies."

World-class American mining companies.

"but there are doubts as to how the war-torn and graft-prone country can manage the windfall."

And you know who will be there to manage it on their behalf, and the government will keep American troops there in return. Because we're so generous. And the aristocrats are looters.

The minerals just happen to be in Taliban controlled areas. What luck for the war-lovers. This article claims these minerals make Afghanistan as natural resource rich as Saudi Arabia. The hype around this is overflowing, and I can't help but think this is designed to gin up public opinion for the war in Afghanistan. I already heard Lawrence Kudlow saying we have to keep China out because Afghanistan owes us control of those minerals. Want to take any bets we hear something similar about rich resources in western Pakistan soon? Assuming all this is true, and that's a big assumption - I wouldn't be surprised if, after we spend five more years there and lose another 5,000 soldiers, the press starts reporting this was way exaggerated - this would be a great opportunity to get our troops out and start negotiating free trade.

FOREIGN POLICY:

The Israeli government's investigation of itself over the Gaza aid ship raid is biased. Who'd have guessed?

POLITICS:

Ron Paul puts his money where his mouth is: he buys gold and gold mining company stocks. Naturally this is considered a bad thing by many who prefer liars and hypocrites to honest men.

MISC:

NASA stops project to return Americans to the moon, but you know Obama won't free Americans to go on their own.

Obama compares Gulf oil spill to 9/11, implying that BP is like Osama bin Laden. Obama's a monster who will use any tragedy to advance his violent control over our lives. Reason makes an excellent point:

"Not long ago, Barack Obama was pilloried for being too activist, too meddlesome, and too inclined to see himself as the messiah. He was forcing health care reform down our throats, running General Motors, wrecking the financial system and promising to make the oceans recede.

But that was a different guy, from a parallel universe. The President Obama we all know is a passive, detached do-nothing. Or so we have been hearing since the British Petroleum oil spill gained our attention.

Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal, a Republican who once denounced Democrats for scheming to "increase dependence on government," now demands that Washington do more for his state."

You know Obama is seething because he can't seize BP since it's a British company. Exxon better watch out. If Deepwater Horizon had been Exxon's rig, Obama would have seized Exxon already.

Scientists reboot Voyager 2 which fixes a data transmission problem. It's amazing these spacecraft are still sending back scientific data.

Astronomers observe solar system formation "like a raindrop forming in a cloud".

Radar images of Antarctic mountains buried under ice.

The US is losing scientific superiority to other nations.

"This article attempts to explain why the US is struggling in its competition with other countries in the realm of scientific advancement. 'It's not insufficient schooling or a shortage of scientists. It's a lack of job opportunities. Americans need the reasonable hope that spending their youth preparing to do science will provide a satisfactory career.' I can hardly believe that somebody actually understands the present situation. It continues, 'The current approach — trying to improve the students or schools — will not produce the desired result, the experts predict, because the forces driving bright young Americans away from technical careers arise elsewhere, in the very structure of the US research establishment. For generations, that establishment served as the world’s nimblest and most productive source of great science and outstanding young scientists. Because of long-ignored internal contradictions, however, the American research enterprise has become so severely dysfunctional that it actively prevents the great majority of the young Americans aspiring to do research from realizing their dreams.'"

The problem isn't complex. The problem is government has pushed out private interests, so our scientific community has been poisoned by politics. The solution is simple - get the government money out of science.

In the quantum world, inertial mass is not necessarily equivalent to gravitational mass.

There might be much more water locked in moon rocks than previously thought.