Free kibbles

FREEDOM OF SPEECH:

The city of Philadelphia taxing bloggers by forcing them to pay a $300 dollar business fee and income tax. On the surface this may look like a simple scheme to collect more revenue, but underneath is the desire to wipe out bloggers because government doesn't control their speech.

ECONOMY:

Gary North shoots down my pet conspiracy theory that central bankers engineered the financial crisis.

"The conservatives who theorize that the 2008 crisis was an engineered crisis have a better understanding of the power of central banking in politics than the economists do. But the critics fail to understand that central bankers are constrained by free market competition. Bankers do not understand or accept Mises's theory of the business cycle. They do not understand monetary cause and effect. They are either Keynesians or Chicago School monetarists, and both schools of opinion are supportive of the concept of central banking. So, they don't know what they are doing.

Every once in a while, their policies produce a financial panic and recession. But they do not learn from experience. They do not go looking for a new theory to explain their policy failures. They are committed to faith in government and government's licensed monopoly, the central bank."

I have trouble believing central bankers are this stupid. I often say that the Ivy League is the world leader at brainwashing smart people with stupid ideas, but at the same time, I have a hard time believing it. When I took economics, I knew immediately that the macro-economic part of it was baloney. I asked the teacher about it. He brushed me off. I don't believe that smart people can really fall for that crap. So maybe I'm wrong about the Ivy League. Maybe it brainwashed stupid people with stupid ideas. Maybe these people have always been incapable of learning from history or understanding simple logic. But I don't believe that either. I still believe Bernanke knows darn good and well he's destroying the dollar, and he's doing it on purpose. I think Greenspan knew exactly what he was doing, and that's why he retired before the shit hit the fan.

EDUCATION:

Government grows and metasticizes like a cancer. The same thing is happening with schools in my home town.

I love this:

"I hadn’t made the connection, but this is the same lady who runs the Free Range Kids blog, a neat blog that a reader pointed out to me last year. The central theme of Lenore’s blog is based on her statement that “mostly I’m afraid that I, too, have been swept up in the impossible obsession of our era: total safety for our children every second of every day.” Lenore adds, “it is really up to us parents to start renormalizing childhood. That begins with us realizing how scared we’ve gotten, even of ridiculously remote dangers……We have to be less afraid of nature and more willing to embrace the idea that some rashes and bites are a fair price to pay in exchange for appreciating the wonder of a cool-looking rock or an unforgettable fern.”"

Has it ever occurred to anybody that maybe the reason the world is so dangerous is we've turned our children into sheep and they grow up being easy prey for wolves?

POLICE STATE:

TSA launches new, aggressive groping technique for searching airline passengers. I wonder if the perverts get a few minutes to themselves after the assault.

The city of Cleveland is going to put chips in recyclable garbage cans and garbage trucks so it can detect if a household is recycling enough and fine the owner if not.

Leon, Mexico government installs iris scanners around the city to track people.

WAR:

Sweden conveniently files rape charges against WikiLeaks founder Assange only to almost immediately withdraw those charges. Sounds trumped up to me.

General Petraeus orders troops if Afghanistan to not access WikiLeaks.

Obama to keep 50,000 US troops in Iraq. So much for ending that war.

MISC:

Map of area around Ground Zero showing proposed Islamic Center site as well as many strip joints.