Free kibbles

ECONOMY:

If the Dow continues to follow the trends of the Great Depression like it has because Bush and Obama are repeating the mistakes of the Great Depression, we can expect it to fall to 7,500.

Peter Schiff's prediction of the falling dollar is finally coming true as investors realize it's not a safe haven but a sinking ship. Shadowstats.com has alternate inflation at just under nine percent.

"Schiff predicts that when prices do start going up significantly, as the inflation train rushes towards us, it may be too late for anyone to do much about it, because the inflationary stimulus policies of the US government and its Federal Reserve have made the US economy so febrile that anypunitive Volcker-style interest rate rises required to shut down rapid price inflation will cripple the US economy completely. The analogy Schiff uses is of a man who has got rid of his party hangover (the 2008 bust following the preceding boom) by taking another large cup from the punch bowl (the Keynesian stimulus policy). This may have made the pain go away temporarily (producing the infamous green shoots of recovery), but have left the man in an even worse state to cope with reality when the second hangover inevitably kicks in (which is starting about now)."

Obama is achieving exactly what he wanted to achieve: making us all much poorer.

REGULATION:

The conspiracy against hemp. Too many producers of competing products don't want it legalized.

GLOBAL WARMING AND ENERGY:

If you believe the alarmist mainstream media stories, every place on earth is heating much faster than average, which is obviously impossible.

POLICE STATE:

On the hundreds of new top secret intelligence programs:

"Why would these hundreds of organizations and contracting companies be willing to take gigantic amounts of the taxpayers’ money when everyone agrees that the money cannot be spent sensibly and that the system already in place cannot function effectively or efficiently to attain its ostensible purpose? The question answers itself. It’s loot for the taking, and there has been no shortage of takers. Indeed, these stationary bandits continue to demand more money each year.

And for what? The announced goal is to identify terrorists and eliminate them or prevent them from carrying out their nefarious acts. This is simultaneously a small task and an impossible one. It is small because the number of persons seeking to carry out a terrorist act of substantial consequence against the United States and in a position to do so cannot be more than a handful. If the number were greater, we would have seen many more attacks or attempted attacks during the past decade—after all, the number of possible targets is virtually unlimited, and the attackers might cause some form of damage in countless ways. The most plausible reason why so few attacks or attempted attacks have occurred is that very few persons have been trying to carry them out. (I refer to genuine attempts, not to the phony-baloney schemes planted in the minds of simpletons by government undercover agents and then trumpeted to the heavens when the FBI “captures” the unfortunate victims of the government’s entrapment.)

So, the true dimension of the terrorism problem that forms the excuse for these hundreds of programs of official predation against the taxpayers is small—not even in the same class with, say, reducing automobile-accident or household-accident deaths by 20 percent. Yet, at the same time, the antiterrorism task is impossible because terrorism is a simple act available in some form to practically any determined adult with access to Americans and their property at home or abroad. It is simply not possible to stop all acts of terrorism if potential terrorists have been given a sufficient grievance to motivate their wreaking some form of havoc against Americans. However, it is silly to make the prevention of all terrorist acts the goal. What can’t be done won’t be done, regardless of how many people and how much money one devotes to doing it. We can, though, endure some losses from terrorism in the same way that we routinely endure some losses from accidents, diseases, and ordinary crime."

Not only can we endure them, we have no choice. This isn't about stopping terrorism. It's about controlling the people. It's about power. In-depth description.

Pilot program in Britain using GPS satellites to identify and confiscate money from speeders. Take the battery out.

WAR:

Afghanistan war to get worse, but we'll be in control by the end of the year. The first rings true, the second does not.

FOREIGN POLICY:

Our situation with Israel shows that:

"you can’t have a republic and an empire: it’s one or the other. This is true not only because empires are constantly defending and extending their frontiers, and are in a state of constant warfare, which requires a centralized authority and the consolidation of State power, but also due to the peculiar vulnerability of democratic institutions to foreign subversion. An America that refused on principle to interfere in the affairs of other nations would have little or nothing to fear from foreign lobbyists and fifth columnists: on the other hand, a “democratic” empire in which the emperor is subjected to all sorts of political pressures, including the necessity of raising obscene amounts of money just in order to keep his throne, is indeed “something that can be easily moved,” as Bibi put it."

I choose Republic.

MEDIA:

Journolist - the vast left-wing media conspiracy.

LOCAL:

It looks like the MRSA problem is at Kettering Medical Center. But government didn't provide that information, a family member of a victim did. Once again, private individuals are helping each other while government attempts to keep that from happening.

MISC:

99 out of 100 people taking statins for cholesterol don't need them, and cholesterol does not cause heart disease.

Benefits of alcohol. I have to get another beer.

Anger at the ground zero mosque.

"To begin with, the proposed Islamic center – not a mosque, but the Muslim equivalent of the YMCA – a nonprofit foundation wants to build in New York City isn’t at "ground zero," it is four blocks from the site of the World Trade Center."

I haven't heard that in any of the stories. Funny how it's omitted.

"Never mind the fact that there is already a mosque four blocks away from the site of the World Trade Center (see here), which has been there for many years."

I hadn't heard that before either.

Of course language shapes the way we think. We think in the words we know.

Cool looking, centrally planned city Masdar, UAE. I wonder if people will make it thrive.

Smart drugs. I wonder if baseball will outlaw them.

Is our universe inside a black hole in a higher universe?

Alternative news links.

Why is Google buying a spy drone that can see through walls?