Free kibbles

FREEDOM OF SPEECH:

Why government needs a kill switch for the internet.

"The Internet is a destabilizing force to established interests in the world. It is premised on the free exchange of information which, in turn, is an expression of the liberty of individuals to act in furtherance of their particular interests. Government schools, the mainstream media, and other institutional voices, relentlessly work to condition the minds of people to think and to act within limits that are consistent with institutional purposes. Ideas or actions that do not challenge established interests may be welcomed (if supportive of such ends) or tolerated (perhaps as entertainment). But as the institutional order continues its decentralizing collapse into alternative social systems and practices, its domination of humanity continues to weaken. The struggle confronting mankind comes down to the question of whether human beings are to be the masters of their own lives, or whether they are to remain as resources to be exploited for institutional ends."

Government can't allow people run their own lives, now can it? The thing I find most funny about this, is the cure is worse than the disease. It's like saying because somebody might get sick, we need to give the president the power to kill him. A cyber-attack can't shut down the internet, but the president wants to be able to. The private sector is best equipped to deal with a cyber-attack. Never government.

"Do not allow yourself to be misled as to what is at stake in all of this. The established order is fighting to preserve its preeminence over all of humanity, and no appeals to traditional liberal sentiments or humane values, or constitutional or moral principles, will be allowed to stand in the way of this institutional imperative. Those who pay attention to what is implicit in events are quickly discovering that, regardless of the forms under which they operate, every state system is grounded in the exercise of arbitrary force."

It's like giving the president power to seize control of every business in the US in case of an attack. We don't allow that, and we better not allow this.

RIGHT TO KEEP AND BEAR ARMS:

Reminding everybody how lawless government is, Chicago plans to continue with gun control laws despite Supreme Court decision. This is where Obama learned his lawlessness.

STATES RIGHTS:

Washington aristocrats are afraid of Thomas Woods's Nullification. It's great that the people can finally learn about the proud, and sometimes not so proud, history of nullification in the US and how we can use it to limit the damage of modern aristocrats.

"Most intriguing, Woods suggests that nullification could take the form of states requiring its citizens to send federal income tax money to the states where it would be put into escrow accounts, where the states then individually determine what legitimately should go to the federal government, with perhaps the states sending the rest back to its citizens."

I love this idea. I've long thought the states should find a way to indemnify their citizens from withholding taxes for unconstitutional government actions. This is one way to do it.

"A book that provides a playbook on how to reverse out of control government is selling like hotcakes just blocks from the White House. I get it. Some people are very afraid of this book and need to find out what is in it real fast. They know this book has nation changing potential. I say buy the book, get the nullification argument down cold, get in on the debate and scare the hell out of Washington D.C."

There's no doubt that the aristocrats in Washington don't want us to read this book  Buy it before they ban it.

ECONOMY:

Removing the mystery of credit default swaps.

"Due to this self-reinforcing spiral of distrust in banks and rising funding costs, people have regarded CDSs as one example of Warren Buffet's infamous financial weapons of mass destruction. Indeed, CDSs can be used to take down banks by lowering the confidence in them.

Yet, such an attack can only be successful if banks are vulnerable. Only if banks violate the golden rule of banking, i.e., if they mismatch currencies or maturities or engage in a combination of both, they become vulnerable to attacks through CDSs. Only then will the distrust spurred by higher spreads translate into funding problems that threaten a bank's liquidity.

When a bank matches maturities and currencies, holding 100-percent reserves, the attack will be unsuccessful and will not bring down the bank. In this case, speculators may ultimately suffer losses. Increased spreads may spur distrust and bring about a loss of costumers that do not roll over funds or withdraw deposits. However, a sound bank would not become illiquid or insolvent by such an attack. Only fractional reserves, mismatching of maturities, and mismatching of currencies make banks vulnerable.

CDSs are powerful corrective instruments that discipline banks. CDSs are not weapons of mass destruction but instruments of providing discipline and order. It is possible that without rising CDSs spreads, Icelandic banks would have survived longer. They would have had time to cause additional distortions and make the collapse even more disastrous."

Another valuable function of speculators.

Because of the increase in parasitic government and stimulus jobs, it appears that personal income has recovered to pre-crash levels, but those results of phony. They don't reflect any increase in production that by definition is required for the economy to recover.

TAX AND SPEND:

The other day I explained that it makes more sense to subtract government spending from GDP than to add it in. Now a Mises scholar explains it better.

"Keynesianism promises that we can all pick one another's pockets — and all get rich doing it!"

All government spending is first taken from the private sector by force.

Since the new home purchase tax credit expired in May, the housing bubble it re-created has popped.

"New home sales, not to be confused with existing home sales, fell 32.7 percent from April to May."

That's an impressive implosion.

REGULATION:

Democrats still short of 60 votes necessary to pass financial oppression bill.

The EU allows eggs to be sold by the dozen.

"Reports had suggested that the EU was planning to ban shops from selling eggs by the traditional measure and instead rule that they be sold solely by weight.

Renate Sommer, the German MEP in charge of steering the new food labelling rules through the EU Parliament, was forced to intervene to quash fears that shoppers would have to change the habit of a lifetime.

"Labels will still be able to indicate the number of food items in a pack, whether of eggs, bread rolls or fish fingers," she said in a statement. However, the weight will also have to be included on the box, which has led to fears that retailers and producers will have to incur extra costs, which will be passed on to shoppers."

That's very benevolent of the dictators. I can't imagine how I've lived nearly a half a century and never run across the terrible problem of not having the weight of the eggs in a carton labeled. Thank goodness these benevolent dictators solved that non-existent problem at added cost to the consumer, making everybody poorer.

FEDERAL RESERVE:

I can't help but laugh every time I read about some aristocrat complaining that China manipulates its currency when the Fed is the world's leading manipulator of currency.

HEALTH CARE:

Government behind schedule implementing Obamacare. They're going to be behind schedule and over budget on every health care need they're supposed to supply, and the result will be rationing.

Life expectancy in the District of Columbia is significantly lower than the rest of the nation.

GLOBAL WARMING:

It's going to be hard to top this alarmist article from the global warming frauds: Global warming could cause mankind to go extinct in 50 years.

Obama's environmental agenda costs Americans jobs.

WAR ON DRUGS:

Mexican drug cartels kill front-runner for governor in Mexican state on US border.

POLICE STATE:

Illinois prison guards allow 36 year old man to bleed to death internally without medical care despite his repeated requests for help over days.

Is anybody surprised that the report of the officer who tased the 86 year old bedridden granny doesn't jive with the report of the victim and her grandson?

"Having “exhausted attempts at verbally getting Varner to comply,” Duran used his Taser, which mis-fired. One of his comrades, Officer Sandberg, shot Varner with his Taser, which operated as expected and “rendered Varner incapable of any further aggressive action.”

To this point, Varner had not engaged in what reasonable people would call “aggressive” action. Even if one assumes that the feeble invalid were capable of using the knife to injure Duran or the other officers, she was acting in a defensive manner. True to the martial law mind-set that defines contemporary police work, Duran apparently perceives a refusal to cooperate as “aggression.”

Tinsley was “detained” after he “tried to interfere with Officers” when they assaulted his grandmother with their portable electro-shock torture devices, according to Duran’s report. While being conveyed to the hospital by EMTs, the grandmother “made several statements of killing the police,” Duran writes. “Varner told me she was going to kill every officer that was in her apartment when she got out. Varner told me she was going to snap my neck like a twig just like she did during World War II.”

Once again, Varner denies making such threats, and Tinsley also disputes that claim. Taking Duran’s version at face value, furthermore, would merely underscore the fact that the police had no business interfering in this matter: Varner wasn’t objecting to help, she was reacting to the uninvited, unjustified intrusion by agents of state coercion for whom “officer safety” is the paramount consideration."

The big, strong policemen had to tase the 86 year old, blind in one eye, bedridden granny who just wanted them to leave her house for their own safety.

So what have these Russian spies done that is illegal? As far as I know, it's not a crime to attend parties, chit-chat or pass briefcases. If they stole some classified material, why haven't they been charged with that?

"Last week, an undercover agent pretending to be a Russian official arranged a meeting to talk about the weekly laptop exchanges, pretending to be ready to send the sexy spy on a mission to deliver a fake passport to another female agent, according to the federal complaint."

Here we go again. It looks like the only actual crime committed was the crime instigated by the feds.

Airport scanners greater cancer risk than government told us.

MEDIA:

If you're a mainstream media leftist, Bush's Supreme Court nominees are conservative while Obama's are centrist.

MISC:

How the US got into WWII.

"At a White House meeting on November 25, FDR raised the subject of Japanese relations. He "brought up the event that we were likely to be attacked [by Japan] perhaps (as soon as) next Monday [December 1], for the Japanese are notorious for making an attack without warning, and the question was what we should do." Secretary of War Stimson stated the dilemma succinctly: "The question was how we should maneuver them into the position of firing the first shot without allowing too much danger to ourselves.""

If you ever wondered if FDR manipulated the Japanese into attacking us, now you know.

"Among the Japanese intercepts sent from Tokyo in their J-19 code, decoded and translated by our Navy cryptoanalysts in Washington on December 3, was a "ships in harbor" message to the Japanese consul in Hawaii. Tokyo asked that Hawaii report twice a week, instead of irregularly, the locations of US "ships in harbor" at Pearl Harbor. Pearl Harbor officials had never been advised that "ships in harbor" reports were being compiled by the Japanese consul in Hawaii and sent to Tokyo. Nor were they told of this "ships in harbor" intercept.

On December 3, "highly reliable information" was received in Washington that the Japanese diplomatic and consular posts in Hong Kong, Singapore, Batavia, Manila, Washington, and London — all in American, British, or Dutch territory — had been ordered to destroy most of their codes and ciphers and burn all other important confidential and secret documents."

...

"On December 4, radioman Ralph T. Briggs at Cheltenham, MD, intercepted a message containing the phrase Higashi no kaze arne — "East Wind Rain" in English. The hidden meaning of "East Wind Rain" was: "War with England (including Netherlands East Indies, etc.); war with the U.S.; peace with Russia." Thus Russia was not to be a target of Japanese aggression, but England (Singapore), the Dutch East Indies, and the United States (possibly Manila, Pearl Harbor, or the Canal Zone) would be involved at the start in whatever aggression Japan was planning.

This message, with its hidden meaning — "War with the U.S." — written in bold, was hand-delivered to the director of naval communications in Washington. There it vanished, its significance apparently not recognized. At least no hint of this crucial intercept, or its interpretation that an attack on US territory was coming, was ever relayed to any responsible official who would admit receiving it. All trace of its receipt was lost and none was ever found in spite of a thorough search during the many post-Pearl Harbor investigations."

...

"The papers Lieutenant Schulz delivered to FDR on the evening of December 6 consisted of 13 parts of a 14-part message: Japan's answer to the United States' rejection of the latest Japanese attempt at a compromise. It announced that the Japanese were breaking off negotiations and that US–Japanese relations were de facto ruptured."

...

"On the morning of December 7, President Roosevelt received part 14 of Japan's reply to the US "ultimatum," as well as the "One P.M. Message," intercepted early that morning, advising her ambassadors to deliver to Hull the 14-part reply to the US "ultimatum" at precisely 1:00 pm Washington time. According to FDR's personal physician, Dr. Ross T. McIntire, who was with FDR from 10 am to noon that day, FDR did not think that, even given "the madness of Japan's military masters," they would risk war with the United States. McIntire wrote later that FDR thought "that they [the Japanese] would take advantage of Great Britain's extremity and strike at Singapore or some other point in the Far East, but an attack on any American possession did not enter his [FDR's] thought.""

The fatal conceit of central planners once again.

"On Sunday, December 7, 1941, Japanese planes attacked Pearl Harbor. Administration officials found it difficult to believe the news of the Japanese attack when it first reached Washington. Hull thought it must have meant Manila. But Stark knew it meant Pearl Harbor; he knew the phrase "This is not a drill" heralded a real attack, not a practice.

When Roosevelt heard of the attack, he was surprised, but several witnesses reported that he actually seemed relieved at the news — at least until he learned the extent of the disaster. Secretary of Labor Frances Perkins said "that night … in spite of the terrible blow … he had nevertheless a much calmer air. As we went out [of that evening's White House meeting, Postmaster General] Frank Walker said to me, 'I think the boss really feels more relief than he has had for weeks.'" In Perkins' oral history, "His surprise was not as great as the surprise of the rest of us." And Eleanor. Roosevelt wrote, "In spite of his anxiety Franklin was in a way more serene than he had appeared in a long time. I think it was steadying to know finally that the die was cast.… [Pearl Harbor] was far from the shock it proved to the country in general. We had been expecting something of the sort for a long time.""

Too bad they didn't have the base on alert then.

Kagan, who wrote a 1995 article complaining that senators don't do enough hard questioning of judicial nominees and make them answer, backpedals and dissembles from that position now that she's the nominee in question.

I love it when passavists, people who refuse to use violence to stop an evil empire from conquering others, try to have it both ways and complain the US didn't do enough to against the Soviets.

"In modern history’s greatest betrayal, the Allied war leaders handed half of Europe to Soviet rule, betraying tens of millions of its people to the gulag, dictatorship, and confiscation of all their property."

What were they supposed to do? Turn and declare war on the Soviets? To be fair, I don't know that this guy is a passavist. And maybe there was some option that didn't involve war. Maybe they could have negotiated a better deal, but the Soviets wouldn't have honored it anyway, just like they tried to take over Berlin. But Great Britain and the US had had enough of war. I don't begrudge them opting not to risk war with the Soviets at that time. What I get upset about is that we didn't re-embrace freedom at that time which would have cause the Soviet empire to quickly collapse. Instead our government became huge - more like the Soviet government - and therefore it took us decades to out-compete them.

"The heavy machinery used by Stalin to industrialize the USSR and build its arms factories was largely bought from the United States."

So he's also complaining that we allowed trade with the Soviets, even though free trade with all is the main foreign policy plank of libertarianism. Free trade is how you make connections with people, bring countries together and overcome differences. Maybe this guy's not a libertarian at all, but this is posted on a libertarian website. It reads more like an anti-American article than a libertarian article.

"It has generally been forgotten that Stalin’s concentration camps and mass murder peaked in the mid-1930’s, at least five years before Hitler began mass murder. Yet America rushed to the Soviet Union’s aid when it was attacked by Germany, supplying huge amounts of material aid, arms, fuel and cash."

That's because American leftists, useful idiots all, were sympathetic to their seeming ideological brethren in the Soviet Union and the Roosevelt administration was packed with Soviet spies.

"How could warlords Roosevelt and Churchill been so foolish and cowardly? Stalin had 12 million soldiers moving into Eastern Europe. Stalin’s might intimidated Roosevelt and Churchill, causing them to replace one totalitarian dictator, Adolf Hitler, by appeasing an even more dangerous one, Stalin."

Well, duh. Is this guy really criticizing Churchill and Roosevelt for not challenging Stalin's 12 million soldiers in Eastern Europe? It must be really self-satisfying to sit in your comfy academic library 65 years removed and rip the men who had just been through years of the worst hell the world has ever seen. For all their faults, I don't fault them for making peace instead of more war.

"After German forces surrendered, US general George Patton was ready to turn his famed 3^rd Army against the Russians in Eastern Europe. The US had the atomic bomb, Russia did not. But the US and bankrupt Britain decided to buy off Stalin."

Instead of waging more war against the only major power left in Europe. I agree that Eastern Europeans suffered, but I can't believe anybody would advocate we should have continued the war against the Soviets. Wasn't 75 million dead enough? I wonder if this guy is a loon. I just emailed to ask him if he really thinks we should have continued the war. He replied that he thinks they should not have given in so easily to Stalin's terms.

Barack Obama's mentor, insane Rev. Wright, gave us more insight into the character of our president today with his racist tirade and criticism of Martin Luther King.

"The civil rights movement "was always about becoming white," Wright said at the seminar."

"According to the New York Post, Wright also alleged that the American education system is built to poorly educate black students "by malignant intent" and criticized civil rights leader Martin Luther King for advocating nonviolence."

That last part is critical to understand. Obama isn't looking for a peaceful revolution. He's trying to spark a violent revolution. He told us as much when he said he wanted to have a presidency like Lincoln's. For those of you who think it's inaccurate to use Wright's words to paint Obama, maybe you don't know the history of Obama and Wright. Young community organizer Obama searched Chicago for a long time to find a church with a mentor he could identify with. He chose Rev. Wright's virulently racist church. Obama had Rev. Wright marry him. He named his book after a Wright sermon. Obama considers Wright family. Obama tied himself to Wright. I'm just following his lead.

Scientist studying the brains of psychopaths and serial killers discovers that his brain is the brain of a psychopath. As is his DNA. No wonder he's fascinated with serial killers. Yikes.

Amazing picture of a nuclear explosion in the middle of an abandoned military fleet.

This article about slowing and stopping light sounds really weird. What do atoms have to do with the speed of light? Light travels in a vacuum, and it either ignores atoms or is absorbed by them. I've never heard of light traveling in matter. I don't even know what that means. It sounds like photons are being absorbed, then re-emitted to me, but there's nothing new about that. I'm sure this is something special, but this article doesn't explain it very well.