Free kibbles

LIBERTY:

Introduction to Bourbon for Breakfast.

FREEDOM OF SPEECH:

The Australian government censors the internet - for the safety of children of course. More like for the protection of government.

COMMUNISM:

Jokes do a better job of exposing communism than politicians or scholars.

SOCIALISM:

Pension plans are doomed.

"Voters have let politicians run up enormous debts on the assumption that these debts will never have to be paid. Voters allow this because they want to buy now and pay later. So, politicians follow their demands. Politicians spend now and promise to pay later. But, voters being what they are, they are not going to change their desire to buy now and pay later. When it comes to that point where the ability to buy now is being limited by previous promises to pay later, voters will ask politicians for another round of buying now and pain later. The best way for the politicians to do this is to declare bankruptcy, and start the whole process over again."

We have nobody to blame but ourselves.

ECONOMY:

There's a run on the banks in Spain.

"This is nothing but a sign of a run on Spanish banks. They can't get funding in the markets and there is a steady withdrawal of funds from the banks. For all practical purposes, the ECB is supporting the Spanish banking system with life support measures. This means that the ECB will have to drain funds from elsewhere in the system to sterilize this rescue operation. Without sterilization the effort becomes very inflationary, with sterilization the effort distorts the entire EU economy. It's all destabilizing."

Coming soon to America.

TAX AND SPEND:

Governments created the economic mess in Europe (and Japan and the US), not speculators.

"There is no better moment for this. The language that European leaders and the media are using in relation to the continent's sovereign-debt crisis diverts the blame away from those responsible, and targets speculators instead: "Merkel and Sarkozy take aim at speculators" (Reuters Germany); "we will defend the Euro at all costs" (José Manuel Barosso); "we believe that not only Greece, Spain, Portugal and Italy are under attack," but that "the whole Euro-zone is being threatened" (Jean Claude-Juncker). German Chancellor Angela Merkel even claimed that "in some ways, it's a battle of the politicians against the markets," adding that "speculators areour enemies," and "I'm determined to win."[1]"

Once again, the time-tested ritual that's been so effective since the dawn of civilization plays out. Governments destroy their economies, and they attack the easy scapegoat - speculators - to keep the people from holding them responsible.

"This "battle" goes so far that the present article might by now even be considered illegal in France. According to Reuters, French authorities plan to work together with intelligence services to fight "unfounded" rumors about the solvency of European countries.[2]"

More oppression is always the result until the people finally reject their governments.

"In the present case of sovereign-debt crisis, concern is growing among market participants about whether or not the citizens of the PIIGS (Portugal, Ireland, Italy, Greece, and Spain) will be willing — and able — to pay back their governments' debt. As a result, yields on government bonds as well as on insurance devices like Credit Default Swaps (CDS) rise. The actual cause of this, however, is the underlying fiscal policy of the country in question, and not the speculator's purchase, which is merely a reflection or a result of imprudent decisions taken by politicians in the past."

How dare those speculators investigate government's actions and expose the consequences of government actions to the people by betting against their bonds and currencies? Governments must operate in secret because the people would never tolerate their actions if they were informed. Speculators expose those secrets, that's why governments hate them.

"Speculators become aware of the big hole that governments themselves dug over the recent years. And speculators transmit this knowledge to other market participants by bidding prices on these debt obligations (in the case of bonds) or insurance policies on those obligations (in the case of CDSs) accordingly."

Government can't stand the light. Speculators are the canaries in the coal mine, and the government doesn't want the miners to know it's poisoning the mine.

Warning that democracy could disappear in Greece, Spain and Portugal over debt problems. That's exactly what Obama is trying to make happen in America.

FEDERAL RESERVE:

During a deflation, government policies like the minimum wage, unemployment and others make wages sticky, leading to mass unemployment. The solution is not a central bank but ending those government interventions in the market.

"Amnesty for the Banksters, Debtor’s Prison for the Serfs"

EDUCATION:

Superhot, young Japanese professor offers to have sex with Chinese students to apologize for 1937 Japanese invasion of China. This is the only positive development in government education I've ever heard of. Maybe it will catch on.

ENERGY:

BP caves on Obama's lawless demand to set aside $20 billion as a slush fund for Obama. In the mafia tradition, Obama made BP a deal it couldn't refuse.  I wish those execs had been able to record this meeting and expose Obama extortion because you know they didn't agree to turn over $20 billion without coercion.

Volunteers eschew government and act together to save their river from the Gulf oil spill. This is another great example of how people can work together when they bypass government to an extent that government, by its very nature, prohibits in areas it controls.

Obama is talking again. "I...I...I..." This guy is a dictator of a banana republic, shaking down a wounded company while it's trying to solve the Gulf oil leak problem.

Obama busted for blatant lie about US oil reserves.

"During his speech, the president made a statement that was blatantly false. The president noted, "We consume more than 20% of the world's oil, but have less than 2% of the world's oil reserve. And that's part of the reason oil companies are drilling a mile beneath the surface of the ocean -- because we're running out of places to drill on land and in shallow water.""

Government forced BP to drill in deep water, and Obama knows it. This lie is evil. Government blocks drilling all over the country. The US has:

"untapped reserves are estimated at about 2.3 trillion barrels, nearly three times more than the reserves held by Organization of Petroleum Exporting Counties (OPEC) and sufficient to meet 300 years of demand-at today's levels-for auto, aircraft, heating and industrial fuel, without importing a single barrel of oil."

All these energy problems including this leak are caused by government interference in the energy market. And these bans are unconstitutional. The founding fathers knew nothing about oil, so the Constitution is silent on it. It does not give government the power to control or ban drilling for oil. It also doesn't give government power to seize land and keep it from the people.

Talk about BP going bankrupt is increasing. I think it's a fait accompli. I think it will be in investor's best interest to get out from under the costs Obama is going to lay on them. He's going to destroy BP.

This is Obama's real failure concerning the oil spill:

"Local gulf coast officials are tearing out their hair trying to comprehend and comply with seventeen (as in seven more than 10) federal agencies falling all over themselves to do The Boss’ bidding and help and impose and superimpose their visions and regulations on what is a war zone with hundreds of ships and some 30,000 people involved, many of them frightened."

Obama should have blanket waived all regulations that restrict efforts to stop the leak and clean up the mess.

"Following the advice of his chief of staff, Rahm "I Got a Rent-Free Apartment from a BP Adviser" Emanuel, Obama is determined to leave no crisis unused. When he got into the decades-long fossil fuel addiction rehab stuff, his eyes shone. His delivery punched up."

Of course. Any chance to do more damage really motivates him.

Obama embraces regulations, unions and protectionism to block the resolution of the oil spill problem.

"According to news reports, corporations from more than a dozen different countries with extensive experience and technological know-how regarding the clean-up of oil spills have offered to help but have been told to get lost by the Obammunists.  The reason is a 1920 protectionist piece of legislation called ‘The Jones Act,” which requires shipping to be built  by American (i.e., unionized) workers and staffed by American sailors.  So as not to ruffle the delicate feathers of unionized dock workers and other protectionist parasites in an election year, the Obammunists have refused all of their help."

And Obama is forcing BP to pay for his decisions. File this under evil.

WAR ON DRUGS:

Remembering the destruction wrought by Prohibition:

"There was never an America without chemical highs. The Native Americans used hallucinogens routinely, and the ship that brought John Winthrop and the first Puritans to the continent carried three times more beer than water, along with 10,000 gallons of wine."

Puritans. We often attribute drug and alcohol prohibition to Puritans, but apparently not. Naturally stupid Prohibition started in Ohio - the land of self-proclaimed do-gooders and busybodies.

"One Sunday in 1874, Eliza Thompson—a mother to eight children, who had never spoken out on any public issue before—stood before the crowds at her church and announced that America would never be free or godly until the last whiskey bottle was emptied onto the dry earth. A huge crowd of women cheered: They believed their husbands were squandering their wages at the saloon. They marched as one to the nearest bar, where they all sank to their knees and prayed for the soul of its owner. They refused to leave until he repented. They worked in six-hour prayer shifts on the streets until the saloonkeeper finally appeared, head bowed, and agreed to shut it down. This prayer-athon then moved around to every alcohol-seller in the town. Within 10 days, only four of the original 13 remained, and the rebellion was spreading across the country."

If it hadn't caused so much destruction, this would be a funny story.

"When you ban a popular drug that millions of people want, it doesn't disappear. Instead, it is transferred from the legal economy into the hands of armed criminal gangs. Across America, gangsters rejoiced that they had just been handed one of the biggest markets in the country, and unleashed an armada of freighters, steamers, and even submarines to bring booze back. Nobody who wanted a drink went without. As the journalist Malcolm Bingay wrote, "It was absolutely impossible to get a drink, unless you walked at least ten feet and told the busy bartender in a voice loud enough for him to hear you above the uproar.""

The parallels to modern prohibition, excluding that pesky unconstitutionality thing, are inescapable all the way to the submarines.

"The icon of the new criminal class was Al Capone, a figure so fixed in our minds as the scar-faced King of Charismatic Crime, pursued by the rugged federal agent Eliot Ness, that Okrent's biographical details seem oddly puncturing. Capone was only 25 when he tortured his way to running Chicago's underworld. He was gone from the city by the age of 30 and a syphilitic corpse by 40. But he was an eloquent exponent of his own case, saying simply, "I give to the public what the public wants. I never had to send out high pressure salesmen. Why, I could never meet the demand."

By 1926, he and his fellow gangsters were making $3.6 billion a year—in 1926 money! To give some perspective, that was more than the entire expenditure of the U.S. government."

This is why the war on drugs is unwinable. Every time the police state seizes a drug shipment, prices rise and more money flows into the hands of the drug cartels, making them richer and more powerful.

"The criminals could outbid and outgun the state. So they crippled the institutions of a democratic state and ruled, just as drug gangs do today in Mexico, Afghanistan, and ghettos from South Central Los Angeles to the banlieues of Paris. They have been handed a market so massive that they can tool up to intimidate everyone in their area, bribe many police and judges into submission, and achieve such a vast size, the honest police couldn't even begin to get them all. The late Nobel Prize winning economist Milton Friedman said, "Al Capone epitomizes our earlier attempts at Prohibition; the Crips and Bloods epitomize this one.""

And now MS13. Anybody who thinks that drugs are worse for society than the war on drugs is delusional.

"Armed criminal gangs don't fear prohibition: They love it."

Of course they do. It makes them obscenely rich and powerful. Only the Federal Reserve steals more money from Americans than the war on drugs. We're the stupidest people in the world.

"He has uncovered fascinating evidence that the criminal gangs sometimes financially supported dry politicians, precisely to keep it in place. They knew if it ended, most of organized crime in America would be bankrupted. So it's a nasty irony that prohibitionists try to present legalizers—then and now—as "the bootlegger's friend" or "the drug-dealer's ally." Precisely the opposite is the truth. Legalizers are the only people who can bankrupt and destroy the drug gangs, just as they destroyed Capone. Only the prohibitionists can keep them alive."

That's right. Nixon, Reagan and every other hardcore supporter of the war on drugs are responsible for stealing tremendous wealth from the American people and transferring it to the drug lords and drug gangs.

"Once a product is controlled only by criminals, all safety controls vanish and the drug becomes far more deadly. After 1921, it became common to dilute and relabel poisonous industrial alcohol, which could still legally be bought, and sell it by the pint glass. This "rotgut" caused epidemics of paralysis and poisoning. For example, one single batch of bad booze permanently crippled 500 people in Wichita, Kan., in early 1927—a usual event. That year, 760 people were poisoned to death by bad booze in New York City alone. Wayne Wheeler persuaded the government not to remove fatal toxins from industrial alcohol, saying it was good to keep this "disincentive" in place."

The same is true with drugs today.

"Prohibition's flaws were so obvious that the politicians in charge privately admitted the law was self-defeating. Warren Harding brought $1,800 of booze with him to the White House, while Andrew Mellon—in charge of enforcing the law—called it "unworkable." "

I have no doubt the same is true today, but the war on drugs makes politicians powerful. The drug gangs funnel money to their campaigns. Misguided busybodies vote for them. They don't care that the war on drugs kills thousands and imprisons 10s of thousands every year.

"After the Great Crash, the government's revenues from income taxes collapsed by 60 percent in just three years, while the need for spending to stimulate the economy was skyrocketing. The U.S. government needed a new source of income, fast. The giant untaxed, unchecked alcohol industry suddenly looked like a giant pot of cash at the end of the prohibitionist rainbow."

Government's lust for money exceeds even its lust for power, so we may see some drug legalization soon.

"Many people understandably worry that legalization would cause a huge rise in drug use, but the facts suggest this isn't the case. Portugal decriminalized the personal possession of all drugs in 2001, and—as a study by Glenn Greenwald for the Cato Institute found—it had almost no effect at all.* Indeed, drug use fell a little among the young."

As I keep saying. When you legalize drugs, kids won't be able to buy them on the playground. You don't see pushers pushing alcohol on playgrounds.

"Okrent says the end of alcohol prohibition "made it harder, not easier, to get a drink. ... Now there were closing hours and age limits, as well as a collection of geographic proscriptions that kept bars or package stores distant from schools, churches and hospitals." People didn't drink much more. The only change was that they didn't have to turn to armed criminal gangs for it, and they didn't end up swigging poison."

The same will happen when all drugs become legal, and they will either because we legalize them or government collapses.

POLICE STATE:

This is a telling headline: "Police officer reassigned after punching incident caught on camera". Instead of saying the officer punched a woman in the face, they call it a punching incident. This reminds us that the press covers up government abuse of power. And the only reason this officer was reassigned was the punch was caught on video, otherwise he would have gotten away with it like they all get away with it. But he wasn't suspended. He wasn't charged. He's still collecting a paycheck funded by confiscating money from taxpayers.

Obama to use drones over US territory.

Italian prosecutor considers charging geologists with negligent homicide for failing to predict earthquake.

POLITICS:

Egyptian Foreign Minister claims president Obama told him in confidence that he is a Muslim.

"Gheit appeared on Nile TV's "Round Table Show" in January, on which he said that "he had had a one-on-one meeting with Obama who swore to him that he was a Moslem, the son of a Moslem father and step-son of Moslem step-father, that his half-brothers in Kenya were Moslems, and that he was loyal to the Moslem agenda.""

I'd say that even if Obama was Muslim, he wouldn't be that stupid, but his ego makes him stupid in things like that. Unfortunately, true or not, Obama has opened himself up to this stuff.

The only demographic that approves of Obama's performance is those receiving government handouts. That's why his approval numbers are still so high.

Nancy Pelosi wants to weaken the ethics requirements for Congress. Who knew they had ethics requirements?

MISC:

From page 74 of The Cult of the Presidency:

"Ironically, the removal of restraints of legislative power had, in many ways, weakened Congress's authority relative to that of the president. That was in large part because, as Corwin noted, the new regime's foundation was the delegation of legislative power to the executive branch."

Some of the monstrous, unconstitutional powers of the president were seized by presidents, but most were assigned by Congress, and all can be taken away by Congress.

Gates and Buffet encourage other billionaires to give half their fortunes to charity. Go for it, but remember, if it wasn't for government making everybody poorer, trapping people in government and corrupting research, we wouldn't need much if any charity in the US. The best thing about this idea is it should protect the money from the death tax, starving government of funds it would use against us.

Over a third of the internet is pornographic. So what? Nearly two thirds of the internet is not porn. Internet suppliers supply what people want.