Free kibbles

FREEDOM OF SPEECH:

Defense Secretary Gates cracks down on military interviews. We can't have another case of a general and his staff getting the truth to the American people. Apparently military leaders can't be trusted to speak to the press, but they can be trusted to kill people.

RIGHT TO KEEP AND BEAR ARMS:

Concealed carry laws have made .380s popular.

ECONOMY:

Fear that the government will seize Americans' gold again. The gold vending machine shows up in Las Vegas.

Because Pittsburgh didn't participate in the housing bubble, it didn't suffer from the bust.

TAX AND SPEND:

James Madison, the father of the Constitution, explains that the Constitution does not give government the power to perform charity because government would corrupt it. We should have listened.

I'm all for layoffs at the state and local government levels. Let's include the federal level in there, and we might start getting somewhere.

Mainstream media brings up the tax issue facing LeBron.

REGULATION:

The financial oppression bill requires financial firms to have proper ratios - read quotas - of minorities and women to do business with the government.

"In addition to this bill's well-publicized plans to establish over a dozen new financial regulatory offices, Section 342 sets up at least 20 Offices of Minority and Women Inclusion. This has had no coverage by the news media and has large implications.

The Treasury, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, the Federal Housing Finance Agency, the 12 Federal Reserve regional banks, the Board of Governors of the Fed, the National Credit Union Administration, the Comptroller of the Currency, the Securities and Exchange Commission, the new Consumer Financial Protection Bureau...all would get their own Office of Minority and Women Inclusion.

Each office would have its own director and staff to develop policies promoting equal employment opportunities and racial, ethnic, and gender diversity of not just the agency's workforce, but also the workforces of its contractors and sub-contractors."

You have no idea how much I wish all this stuff was just a bad dream.

FEDERAL RESERVE:

Prediction that the IMF will become the world's central bank. No thank you.

EDUCATION:

Government has ruined the value of many graduate degrees too.

HEALTH CARE:

Obama's Medicare chief wants to use government run health care to redistribute wealth. That's why Obama picked him and appointed him before the Senate could even interview him.

While all central plans implemented by force are bad, some are less bad than others. Britain is returning primary decision making about patients to their doctors.

"About £80billion will be distributed to family GPs in a move that will see strategic health authorities and primary care trusts scrapped.

The plan, contained in a white paper to be published next week, is designed to place key decisions about how patients are cared for in the hands of doctors who know them. Tens of thousands of administrative jobs in the health service will be lost as a result."

How common sense is that? What cracks me up is that central planners had to come to that decision, and there will lots of critics. This just goes to show how badly central planners had previously screwed things up.

Why health care for animals is superior to health care for humans.

GLOBAL WARMING:

That whitewash of climategate reminds me of the global warming fraud itself - the end result was determined before any investigation was done, and the report confirmed the pre-determined result despite the available data.

POLICE STATE:

New movie documents the fraud of the TSA.

You can encrypt your data so the government can't break it.

Former police officer found guilty of manslaughter for shooting unarmed man. This almost never happens. It should be big news.

WAR:

Criticism of Obama's creation of a US colony in Afghanistan.

"Obama ran on ramping up the war on the Afghan front, and eventhreatened to invade Pakistan, two campaign promises he has kept. Furthermore, he is committed to prosecuting the war in Afghanistan and now Pakistan on a scale that even the nuttiest neocons never dared suggest, a “nation-building” project that is nothing less than the construction of a US colony, or satrapy, from scratch.McChrystal went into Afghanistan declaring he was ready to roll out a “government in a box,” i.e., a puppet regime such as the Japanese set up in Manchuko in 1931. This is the CNAS-Obama-ite “national security” doctrine in action: pretending to be the Viet Cong while reenacting every mistake the US ever made in Vietnam, starting with getting involved to begin with."

Bam!

"This idea that the Obama-ites are really peaceniks in disguise, who have to hide their “true” beliefs in order to pass electoral muster, is a myth woven by Fox News and the neocon Right: he and his Pentagon are no such thing. Indeed, they are even more serious – albeit not as visibly enthusiastic – about  projecting American military power globally than their predecessors in the White House."

Of course they are. People who enjoy using violence to force their will on others as Obama's domestic policy clearly shows he does don't allow borders to stop them from using violence to project their will on others. The more oppressive the domestic policy, the more aggressive the foreign policy. Both are a reflection of the desire to use violence to control others.

"The indiscretions of Big Mouth McChrystal are only the latest and the least of the “COIN-dinistas” problems. Their neo-Maoist “live and fight among the people” doctrine is failing big time in the field, and they are falling back on the “revolution betrayed” explanation for the inability of their new-fangled counterinsurgency strategy to turn the tide against the Taliban."

I wasn't aware of the Marxist theme to Obama's strategy. I should have expected that.

Ann Coulter blasts the Afghan war and Bill Krystol and stands up for Michael Steele. Like I said, Obama is dividing Republicans as well as Democrats. This might be his strategy for winning in 2012.

FOREIGN POLICY:

US foreign policy should be like Switzerland's. They've enjoyed 500 years of peace.

MEDIA:

I wasn't aware that Obama had put restrictions on news organizations regarding the Gulf oil spill, but I'm not surprised.

"During the Civil War, Abraham Lincoln famously suspended rights of habeas corpus. Now the man who likes to think of himself as a latter-day Lincoln—and would prefer that you share that view, this despite the fact he couldn't pack Lincoln's lunch—has taken a page out of his idol's handbook. On Thursday, the Obama White House tightened its already stringent rules preventing news organizations from showing images of the damage done by the Gulf oil spill.

News photographers and reporters are no longer allowed to come within 65 feet of any response vessel or booms on the water or on beaches. As CNN's Anderson Cooper reported on his Thursday evening broadcast, "[I]n order to get closer, you have to get direct permission from the Coast Guard captain of the Port of New Orleans. You have to call up the guy. What this means is that oil-soaked birds on islands surrounded by boom, you can't get close enough to take that picture.""

This thing is making Obama look so bad to the government worshipers on both sides, he's blacked out news coverage. I'm telling you, like Lenin before him, Obama will stop at nothing. He wouldn't bat an eye at killing 10s of millions of people to turn America into a communist country. If you want to make an omelet, you have to break some eggs, right Obama?

"The same journalists who were eager to film coffins containing the remains of American military personnel returning from the battlefields in Iraq have been curiously silent regarding this prohibition."

I'm not surprised about that either.

Government is freaked out that Americans are turning away from TV.

MISC:

Why we picture things from history wrong.

More and more doctors and people are realizing that natural fats are healthy and carbs and sugars, especially processed, are not. You're never too old to get healthier.

Of course government agents commit fraud on the census by filling out dummy forms. The surprising part of this story is two were fired for it.

Free clock with atomic accuracy.

I tend to be an evening person, but both of these descriptions work for me:

"Yet the research continues to mount, arguing that evening people have qualities which should be nurtured. They tend to be more creative, intelligent, humorous and extroverted. They are the balance to morning people, who are said to be more optimistic, proactive and conscientious."

I don't like being around anybody in the morning, but I'm super analytical, critical and mathematically oriented in the morning. In the evenings I'm more outgoing, creative and open-minded. I bet everybody is this way to one extent or other.

10 reasons to adopt the primal lifestyle.

Jeffrey Tucker on how working for free can lead to great references and great job in the future.

The history of US coins tracks its decline.

"America's earliest coins portrayed Liberty. Not rulers and politicians. Just Liberty. A symbolic representation of the country's highest ideal. In the beginning Americans had an affair of the heart with Liberty. She was their muse and they were aflame in their love for her. They talked about her everywhere, in their churches and taverns and town squares. But she hasn't appeared on our circulation coinage for more than sixty years, not since the beautiful "Walking Liberty" half-dollar. It represented Liberty striding gracefully into the rising sun of the future, arm extended in peace and carrying a bounty of riches. It was a beautiful representation, well chosen, because abundance accompanies Liberty wherever she goes. Our devotion to her would be no less if it were not true, but it is one of her secrets: Liberty creates prosperity.

Today's coinage, looking each year more like subway tokens, celebrates the state. Just as words replace deeds and paper substitutes for gold, politicians have displaced ideals. The American state, which was created to serve Liberty, is now commemorated instead."

Yuck.

In praise of coconut oil.