Free kibbles

ECONOMY:

More families and friends moving in together. Although it's for bad reasons, this isn't a bad thing. Getting families together empowers them and will help in overcoming the damage government is doing to us.

The special role of gold (and silver) in the marketplace explains why gold is constantly in the news and why governments are starting to wage war against it.

FEDERAL RESERVE:

Just as I suspected yesterday, food prices aren't the only commodity on the rise. All commodities are on the rise because speculators realize they're the only safe haven. That noise about food shortages is just a cover-up to ward off inflation fears. When global cooling hits, we will see food shortages, but not yet.

GLOBAL WARMING AND ENERGY:

Scientists plot graph of the state of both major, longterm ocean currents, the Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation (AMO) plus the Pacific Decadal Oscillation (PDO), versus the mean temperature in the US over the last 100 years, and the fit is nearly perfect. Wow. It'll be almost impossible to argue that any other factor is anywhere near as powerful at driving climate than these currents.

WAR ON DRUGS:

This is how bad our war in drugs has made things in Mexico:

"It is getting out of hand. The killing of policemen, judges, and mayors is now common. Journalists die in droves. After the murder of another of its reporters, El Diario, the major paper of Ciudad Juarez, published the following editorial, addressed to the drug lords:

“We bring to your attention that we are communicators, not mind-readers. Therefore, as workers in information, we want you to explain to us what you want of us, what you want us to publish or stop publishing, what we must do for our security.

“These days, you are the de facto authority in the city, because the legally instituted authorities have been able to do nothing to keep our co-workers from continuing to fall, although we have repeatedly asked this of you. Consequently, facing this undeniable fact, we direct ourselves to you, because the last thing we want is that you shoot to death another of our colleagues.”

This is astonishing. It is worse. A blue whale singing Aida would be merely astonishing, but here we have the editors of the major newspaper of a substantial city stating candidly, with perfect clarity, that the narcotraficantes, not the national government, exercise sovereignty over the city. The federal government understandably denounced the editorial. No capital wants to be told that it does not control its territory. But this is exactly what the paper said."

That's outrageous, and it's the fault of the prohibitionists in America who don't care how many people their policies kill as long as they can tell themselves they forced their will on others.

"But Mother Washington doesn’t want Americans to have drugs. Nor does it want to imprison half of Yale for droppin,’ poppin,’ and tokin,’ as we once said. In effect the feds protect the consumption (through low penalties and slight likelihood of being caught) while penalizing the sale, thus keeping prices high."

As for the evil myth that drug users can't succeed in life, our last three presidents at least used drugs. Apparently drug use is the path to the most powerful job in the world.

POLICE STATE:

Here's how insane electronic surveillance of Americans without a warrant has become:

"In an effort to handle the massive amount of requests from federal agents for access to the GPS data, several cell phone providers now offer automated services for obtaining internal cell phone data. Sprint Nextel, for example, has an entire website devoted to cell phone records that law enforcement officers can access. Called the Mobile Locator, the system allows law enforcement to access information, such as call history, without a search warrant, thus completely bypassing the protections afforded us by the Fourth Amendment. It also enables government agents to monitor an individual in real-time on a zoomable, online map.

A recent study by Indiana University reveals the extent to which government agents are making use of this resource. According to the study, over a period of 13 months, Sprint responded to eight million requests from law enforcement for GPS data. In addition to GPS data, Sprint also stores IP data and URL web history for a two-year period, which it also makes available to law enforcement upon request."

We did this to ourselves.

WAR:

Germany just paid off its WWI debt. War is far more expensive than we acknowledge.

Revelations about the war in Afghanistan from Bob Woodward.

"Woodward’s most interesting revelation: the US Central Intelligence Agency is operating a secret, 3,000-man Afghan mercenary force whose mission is assassinating Taliban and al-Qaida fighters.

The hunter-killer force described by Woodward was set up to operate inside Pakistan, where US troops are officially not allowed to go. The mercenaries are mostly Afghan Tajiks, Uzbeks, and Hazara – all traditional enemies of the majority Pashtun – as well as renegades, common criminals, and mercenaries.

Their raids into Afghanistan’s tribal territory are sometimes coordinated with CIA’s intensifying drone attacks on Pakistani tribesmen that are causing heavy civilian casualties.

CIA also runs its own secret militias in southern Afghanistan and, reportedly, in Tajikistan and Uzbekistan."

What's the problem with using mercenaries to track down terrorists in places Americans can't go? This is the kind of tactics we should be using to kill people who have either launched attacks on the US, train people to attack the US or are about to launch an attack on the US. We should bring our troops home and have counter-terrorism agents work with the local Muslims who oppose the terrorists to kill or capture them.

"Crimes, atrocities and mistaken killings committed by CIA’s Afghan mercenaries go unreported and unpunished."

That's because they operate in a lawless region. The US should not put them above the law for making mistakes.

"The result is a dangerous, confusing mêlée of hired gunmen, US special forces, militias, and government troops – an Afghan/Pakistani version of America’s wild Dodge City."

A standard failure of central planning. There should be one and only one group running the mercenaries, and if we would end the wars, bring home the troops, engage these people in a system of voluntary exchange, shortly thereafter we wouldn't need even that one group. The Muslims profiting from working with Americans would take out terrorists of their own volition. Another revelation:

"We are also just receiving reports of a major US airstrike and special forces ground operation inside Pakistan. The target was the Haqqani guerilla network, a former major US ally during the 1980’s."

This resulted in another incident of blowback as Pakistan cut off the main NATO supply route to Afghanistan in retaliation. The aristocrats seem unable to comprehend that people may not like what they do and may resist and retaliate for their actions. This is really scary:

"The surge in suspected Taliban activity inside Afghanistan and apparent increased willingness by Nato to attack targets on the border, or just inside Pakistan, could be a sign the international forces are losing patience with Pakistan."

Expanding the war into Pakistan would be nuts. We're on our way to fighting pretty much every country in the Middle East. From the original article:

"Many intelligence professionals warn that CIA’s primary role of providing unbiased intelligence to the president is being undermined by its growing combat mission. Once your men and "assets" are involve in assassinations and fighting, it’s very difficult to remain objective, detached and neutral. An institutional bias quickly sets in."

No kidding. The CIA is already a rogue agency. It should have no role in killing terrorists. That duty should belong to some other organization. Maybe the Justice Department.

POLITICS:

Mises.org article from 2008 about how Obama hid his father's socialism, and animating factor in his ideology, from Americans. This is highlighted in a critique of Dinesh D'Souza's analysis of Obama as an anti-colonialist.

MEDIA:

Trust in media has been steadily eroding sine 1976. Why is it taking so long? It's almost like the decline is directly related to death by old age of people who used to trust the media.

MISC:

Paper disputes theory that a comet impact was responsible for the rapid decline of the Clovis people.

Free kibbles

SOCIALISM:

Former SEIU chief and current Obama economic advisor Andy Stern under investigation for corruption. Duh. The only question is whether Obama and Holder will quash this investigation or not.

Europeans strike en-mass against austerity programs. Coming soon to the country you live in. This is the kind of chaos Obama wants to create, and he's being very successful.

ECONOMY:

I keep hearing this baloney, but I'm a highly trained and skilled worker, but nobody is beating down my door trying to hire me for a high-tech job.

"Premus and others say a shortage of skilled workers to fill the higher-paying jobs created by a modern economy is a big part of the problem."

If some employer out there is having trouble finding skilled employees, call me. My resume is available online at multiple sites include Monster.com. I think this is a crock. I bet monster has hundreds of thousands of resumes of technical people who would like a better job, and few are getting called.

Analysis if history shows what we know from logic: government spending and debt can never stimulate the economy.

This new attack that businesses are sitting on trillions of dollars is ridiculous. What does sitting on mean? Do you think CEO have trillions of their companies' money stuffed in their mattresses? Of course not. This money is in bank accounts, stocks, bonds and other investments. This money is working in our economy. They're just not using it to expand their own businesses because the future looks so bleak.

Gold ATMs coming to the US. I bet government almost instantly bans them.

The only way politicians can improve the economy is by getting out of the way.

TAX AND SPEND:

John Stossel explains some of the problems with taxing the rich. Hint: think John Galt.

House passes bill targeting China for currency manipulation, effectively enabling the US to put tariffs on Chinese goods and start a trade war. It's as if they think we don't know that the Federal Reserve is the most powerful manipulator of currency in the world. It's OK for US aristocrats to manipulate our currency to advance their interests, but they don't like it when the Chinese aristocrats do the same. Mises scholar explains China's currency manipulation. Peter Schiff explains the consequences if China allows its currency to float:

"[I]f China were to stop manipulating the dollar higher, it would remove the props currently supporting our dysfunctional economy. American interest rates and consumer prices would soar, and our economy would collapse. Meanwhile, China would experience the opposite effect. Chinese consumer prices would fall, immediately raising living standards for average Chinese workers, whose higher real wages would finally allow them to fully enjoy the fruits of their labor. 

What strikes me as particularly dangerous is that no one, not even the Chinese, appear to understand these fundamental dynamics. All of the Shanghainese with whom I spoke last week were unaware that a stronger yuan would be in their own best interest. The way most people see it, a stronger currency is a bullet that China must be prepared to take in order to save the rest of the world from further pain."

Naturally the non-experts in Washington have it backwards, using the government's gun to push policies that damage Americans. It's like the aristocrats want to see America collapse as fast and as hard as possible, and maybe they do. Or maybe they're economically ignorant. It's so hard to tell if they're super-stupid or super-evil.

Obama doesn't want to raise taxes to raise revenue. He knows raising them will hurt the economy and therefore hurt everybody. This guy thinks he's doing it out of fairness. Baloney. He's doing it to collapse our economy and spark a communist revolution.

Democrats want to raise taxes on overseas income which will encourage companies to leave the US entirely. Obama laughs evilly...

Predictions that government will default on the debt are increasing. This idea will gain momentum until it reaches a tipping point and government investors dump bonds en mass and move into commodities. Hyper-inflation and high interest rates will follow.

FEDERAL RESERVE:

Thomas Sowell explains why the government has once again started waging war on gold owners.

"But, even with the gold standard gone, the ability of private individuals to buy gold reduces the ability of the government to steal the value of their money by printing more money."

That's because gold is a highly liquid store of wealth. When the Fed prints money, every dollar in every wallet and every bank account loses value. The Fed steals our money. But as the dollar drops, the price of gold stays the same. An ounce of gold buys the about the same today as it did 100 years ago. Lew Rockwell likes to say an ounce of gold today buys a fine suit, just like it did 100 years ago. But today that suit costs $1,300. 100 years ago, it cost $5. Over the last 100 years, the Fed has stolen 96 percent of the value of dollars in wallets or savings accounts, but it can't steal any value from gold.

"A hundred dollar bill would buy less in 1998 than a $20 bill would buy in the 1960s. This means that anyone who kept his money in a safe over those years would have lost 80 percent of its value, because no safe can keep your money safe from politicians who control the printing presses."

This is why saving dollars in a safe or mattress, or a savings account, for any amount of time is stupid. You might as well just give it to the government.

Inflation is hitting in commodities just as predicted as speculators flee to food commodities for safety. I doubt this really has anything to do with shortages. This is the canary in the coal mine.

EDUCATION:

Jonah Goldberg blames liberals solely for the failure of government schools in America even while pointing out Bush and Republicans passed No Child Left Behind. The problem with government schools is government, not just liberals.

HEALTH CARE:

Time is a price for those waiting for treatment in Canada's health care system.

GLOBAL WARMING AND ENERGY:

Praise for The Improving State of the World. This book explodes the myth that globalization is bad for people and the planet.

Low solar activity has led to the lowest Aurora Borealis in 100 years.

Kilimanjaro's retreating glacier is due to deforestation, not global warming.

Quantum mechanic effect turns waste heat into power. Entropy may not have to increase as fast as we thought.

I read this the other day but didn't link it for some reason. Bilderburg meeting discusses global cooling while governments all over the world implement policies to fight global warming.

"Either it was a printing error.

Or the global elite is perfectly well aware that global cooling represents a far more serious and imminent threat to the world than global warming, but is so far unwilling to admit it except behind closed doors.

Let me explain briefly why this is a bombshell waiting to explode.

Almost every government in the Western world from the USA to Britain to all the other EU states to Australia and New Zealand is currently committed to a policy of “decarbonisation.” This in turn is justified to (increasingly sceptical) electorates on the grounds that man-made CO2 is a prime driver of dangerous global warming and must therefore be reduced drastically, at no matter what social, economic and environmental cost. In the Eighties and Nineties, the global elite had a nice run of hot weather to support their (scientifically dubious) claims. But now they don’t. Winters are getting colder. Fuel bills are rising (in the name of combating climate change, natch). The wheels are starting to come off the AGW bandwagon. Ordinary people, resisting two decades of concerted brainwashing, are starting to notice.

All this, of course, spells big trouble for the global power elite. As well as leading to  food shortages (as, for example, it becomes harder to grow wheat in northerly latitudes; adding, of course, to such already-present disasters as biofuels and the rejection of GM), global cooling is going to find electorates increasingly angry that they have been sold a pup."

It's already happening. Scientist used to be a noble profession. Now it's almost as disdained as politician. We're just beginning to scratch the surface of the impact of the pervasive scientific fraud created by government funding and corruption of science.

I've long said our government is insane. It's nice to see somebody agree with me even if he limits his analysis to the EPA.

WAR ON DRUGS:

The escalation of the drug civil war in Mexico thanks to our government's war on some drugs.

POLICE STATE:

Spray for license plates reflects flash of red light cameras to help avoid tickets. I wonder how well it works.

Airport security agents viewing naked scans of passengers as porn just like we knew they would. I'd sure the pedophile TSA operators are checking out the addresses of the little kids they can't keep their hands off of. This is going to turn into a real nightmare for families.

Great title: Liars for Hire. This is how the police state pays agent provocateurs to manipulate people into the early stages of criminal activity so the government agents can swoop in, create a bunch of fear, and portray themselves as noble and capable protectors who need more of our money and our power to keep us safe.

GPS and the police state has turned 1984 into reality.

WAR:

The German government says Germans face no imminent threats from al Qaeda. I bet nobody does. While al Qaeda is certainly a real threat, the threat is way overblown.

I'm skeptical of any article that talks about US death squads, but this Eric Margolis guy has been an amazing leader at breaking war stories and explaining what's really going on that we don't hear about in our wars.

Fighting perpetual war ostensibly for peace has made America the most hated country in the world. That in turn has made us the world's most popular target for terrorists.

Insurance companies want to create their own navy to combat pirates. This is a fantastic idea. The US Constitution has a provision for this: letters of Marque. Let's do it ASAP! There's no way in hell the US government will surrender that power to the private sector. Maybe Britain?

POLITICS:

Obama fails to mention the word creator for a second time when referencing the Declaration of Independence. He's doing it on purpose. Note to Obama. The text of the Declaration of Independence is a matter of record. You look like a fool for not quoting it accurately.

MEDIA:

The left will not accept the fact that the tea parties are a grass roots organization. This article from Rolling Stone claims that corporations and Republican insiders built the tea party. Too funny.

MISC:

More alarmism exposed. Instead of thousands dead in Mexican mud slides, now the number is 11 missing with optimism all will be found.

Graphic shows the patent litigation process and estimates about $31 billion is sucked out of the economy for it each year.

The Chimera of the group mind. Mises thought out my claim that collectivism is a myth long before I did it. This technique is a way to wipe individuals from history and make it appear that history is driven by something like group hypnosis. Think Harry Sheldon.

"As a corrective of these fancies the truism must be stressed that only individuals think and act."

Yeah, Harry.

Exoplanet comparable in size to earth and in the goldilocks zone of its star discovered. Wow.

Eight natural disasters of the ancient world.

Free kibbles

REGULATION:

As if government wasn't destroying civilization fast enough, not only has government bans on pesticides led to the resurgence of bed bugs, but now stink bugs are making a comeback.

GLOBAL WARMING AND ENERGY:

The climate fraud NASA employs to head up the US climate data program (GISS) just arrested again for protesting in favor of the climate fraud. Why is this radical political activist in charge of what should be a non-partisan information-gathering service? Rhetorical question.

In an article about the reasons electric cars are unpopular, they're inefficient, we get the following gem that applies to all government regulations:

"Government would have us believe that a new regulation is the result of some great, objective, and careful investigation. But mostly these regulations and spending programs are foisted upon us by the people who only yesterday were nothing more than lobbyists for some fervently held cause. There has been no new data, but yesterday's lobbyists are today carrying the mantle of great authority and prestige because they have become high-level government bureaucrats.

We economists call such lobbying "rent seeking" and those who engage in it are "rent seekers." Rather than seeking the cooperation of other men in the free market, a rent seeker lobbies government to impose some special privilege. The cost of the rent seeker's efforts is greatly reduced because he need convince only a few elected officials or government bureaucrats rather than the entire market. His job is made all the easier by the knowledge that the elected official or government bureaucrat can grant the privilege with no cost to himself.

When a rent seeker gets a job in government itself, well, the fox is in the henhouse. Officials move billions of dollars and coerce millions of people with no responsibility whatsoever. If a program fails to achieve its grand design, no government official suffers the consequences. Furthermore, failed regulations are seldom repealed, because, despite the net burden to the economy, a few new constituents do benefit and lobby mightily to keep them in place."

This is the best explanation of rent-seeking I've read. This how the corrupt political economy (redundant, I know) arises.

POLICE STATE:

How prosecutors destroy lives even when their victim wins a not guilty verdict.

WAR:

I'm skeptical that a Mumbai-style attack on Britain, France and Germany was foiled. All these governments have to do is claim they foiled such an attack, and it gets reported as fact. They never present any evidence to back up their claims because they claim it will hurt national security. And how you they do such an attack anyway? Mumbai is one city. The terrorists sped in from Pakistan in boats. They can't take boats to Europe. The article itself backs up my skepticism.

"Security sources insisted that attacks in Europe were not imminent."

But apparently the CIA killed people with drones anyway.

"No further evidence of such a plot was provided."

Naturally. This doesn't pass the sniff test.

MISC:

Murray Rothbard exposes one of the reasons the history taught to us is so wrong: you can't just read a book and take it at face value. In order to truly understand history, you have to learn the intentions and biases of the author you're reading, who is friends and enemies are, who he's reacting against and who his audience is.

The War on Internet Freedom

As I predicted when Obama won the election, government's war on internet freedom has expanded dramatically. The justice department is already shutting down web servers with thousands of blogs and ordering the owner not to speak about it. Congressmen want to give the president an internet kill switch.  Congress has introduced a bill to shut down websites ostensibly to protect copyrights. But governments use IP as an excuse to oppress political opposition. The head of the NSA wants to partition the internet into a secure government section. Frankly, I'd love to have the government off the regular internet, but nothing good can come from this proposal.

Maybe worst of all, Obama wants Congress to force all digital communications to use encryption that can be broken by the government and anybody else. From the point of view of civilization, this is bizarre. In the private sector, companies work diligently to uncover and fix software vulnerabilities that enable people to exploit the internet and gain access to personal information. The US government wants to mandate that all internet and wireless communication software purposefully implement a vulnerability that its agents and any other hacker can exploit to gain access to personal information. We know how this will be abused by government let alone anybody else who feels like exploiting it.

Net neutrality suddenly looks like a minor regulation compared to all this.

This isn't just a Democrat issue by any means. Republicans and Democrats are teaming up to wage war on internet freedom.

Free kibbles

SOCIALISM:

Former SEIU head and current Obama economic advisor has a plan to employ out of work young people - make them all government employees. Americorp on steroids. What a scam. First they design a bunch of policies that puts 25 percent of young men and women out of work, then for another mere $45 billion, they make them into Obama's civilian army. His brownshirts. This is scary, but assuming Republicans make big gains in November, the only opportunity Obama will have to do this will be in the lame duck session.

ECONOMY:

Exploding the myth that economic problems are caused by bad attitudes. That's an updated description of Keynes's animal spirits, and it's bass ackwards. Bad attitudes are caused by real economic problems, and those bad attitudes power the recovery by leading to debt reduction and increased savings.

TAX AND SPEND:

Our government stole another $30 billion from taxpayers to bail out credit unions.

REGULATION:

In order to get around Germany's ban on incandescent light bulbs, German company is marketing them as heaters. This is awesome.

FEDERAL RESERVE:

One of the so-called economic experts admits he was wrong:

"“I apologise to readers around the world for having defended the emergency stimulus policies of the US Federal Reserve, and for arguing like an imbecile naif that the Fed would not succumb to drug addiction, political abuse, and mad intoxicated debauchery, once it began taking its first shots of quantitative easing.

“Ben Bernanke has not only refused to abandon his idee fixe of an “inflation target”,  a key cause of the global central banking catastrophe of the last twenty years (because it can and did allow asset booms to run amok, and let credit levels reach dangerous extremes).

“Worse still, he seems determined to print trillions of emergency stimulus without commensurate emergency justification to test his Princeton theories, which by the way are as old as the hills.  Keynes ridiculed the “tyranny of the general price level” in the early 1930s, and quite rightly so. Bernanke is reviving a doctrine that was already shown to be bunk eighty years ago.

“So all those hillsmen in Idaho, with their Colt 45s and boxes of Krugerrands, who sent furious emails to the Telegraph accusing me of defending a hyperinflating establishment cabal, were right all along. The Fed is indeed out of control.”"

Save this link. You might never see anything like it again.

HEALTH CARE:

Just as predicted, health insurance companies are reacting to Obamacare mandated designed to bankrupt them by dropping policies completely, in this case child-only policies, making it harder for people to get insurance. Needless to say Obama is not happy and he's demonizing the insurance companies for trying to stay in business. He wants to bankrupt those companies ASAP.

GLOBAL WARMING AND ENERGY:

The global warming frauds continue marching toward totalitarianism. The EU is threatening to ban airlines starting 2012 if they don't engage in carbon trading.

"Not even critics of the project believe that the European Commission will actually ban flights by American and other foreign airlines. “They will use it as leverage, and accept compensation measures,” estimates Liberal MEP Holger Krahmer."

It's another scheme to loot the people by forcing airlines to pay tribute causing them to charge their customers more..

POLICE STATE:

Several developments in the ongoing growth of our police state.

Obama wants Congress to force all digital communications to use encryption that can be broken by the government and anybody else. From the point of view of civilization, this is bizarre. In the private sector, companies work diligently to uncover and fix software vulnerabilities that enable people to exploit the internet and gain access to personal information. The US government wants to mandate that all internet software purposefully implement a vulnerability that its agents and any other hacker can exploit to gain access to personal information. Jeffrey Tucker explains what's at stake:

"The idea is that the government wants to wiretap every cell conversation, every email, every transmission, and wants to put the burden of providing for that capacity on private companies. Instead of enhancing real security, providing betters services, improving technology in a way that consumers want, these private companies will have to shift massive resources toward developing some dumb bureaucratic mandate in the government’s ongoing episodes of Spy vs. Spy, or Kaos vs. Control, or whatever you want to call these ridiculous games the government plays. They aren’t really about your security. They are about the government’s security."

This is another reminder that government is an enemy of progress and civilization.

In yet another reminder that government is the enemy of progress, legislation that would give government the power to shut down websites without a trial would have banned every technological innovation in entertainment in the past if had existed previously.

Corrupt federal prosecutor under investigation for prosecutorial abuse commits suicide. He could dish it out, but he couldn't take it.

Maryland judge rules that police have no expectation of privacy at a traffic stop. Good for him, but you know the state will continue to oppress people videoing cops.

WAR:

American general calls IEDs a cowardly way to fight then goes about laying another mine field in Afghanistan then calls for an airstrike on an Afghan house with women and kids in it.

"His face darkens. This Taliban tactic of lacing the countryside with explosives, he says, is "a more cowardly way to fight.""

Complaining about Afghans defending themselves with IEDs is ludicrous. The headline of this article is:

"IEDs show troop surge working, U.S. officers say"

I expected it to say that IED attacks were down. It says just the opposite. The article also says:

"He and other Marine commanders say they understand why the Taliban uses the devices: Killing and maiming U.S. troops as they surge into Taliban strongholds let retreating insurgents live to fight another day.

"It creates survivability" for the Taliban, says Barnhart, operations officer for the 1st Battalion, 2nd Marine Regiment, fighting in this hilly northern district of Helmand province."

So let me get this straight. The Taliban are killing more Americans and NATO forces than ever, they're also surviving to continue fighting, and that shows the troop surge is working. Silly me. I always thought the idea of winning wars was to kill the other guys, not get your guys killed while the other guys survive.

POLITICS:

Charlie Daniels writes an open letter to Obama.

Here's how Democrats corruptly get their mansions. John Kerry just has his multi-millionaire wife buy them.

US prosecutor testifies that Justice Department political appointees spiked the voter intimidation case against the Black Panthers because they were black and the people they intimidated were white.

MEDIA:

The New York Times is having a hard time coming up with things to attack John Boehner about.

MISC:

Weird maps show racial breakdown of US cities.

Surgery regrows cartilage from the inside.

Survey of methane on Mars shows methane production from either biology or geology, so Mars is not as dead as scientists expected.

In praise of Groupon.

Free kibbles

HEALTH CARE:

China to encourage private investment in health care. Once again the Chinese are going the right way while we go the wrong way.

WAR:

Pentagon carries out plan to burn 9,500 copies of a book at taxpayer expense about the Afghan war it didn't like. The publishers has released a redacted version of the book.

POLITICS:

George Soros spent $26 million of his own money to defeat Bush in 2004 including giving $5 million to moveon.org and $10 million to the Democrat party. This is why the excitement over a $1 million donation to a tea party is worrisome.

Free kibbles

TAX AND SPEND:

Obama funneling our tax dollars to the districts of Democrats in trouble. This is nothing new. All presidents do it. The declaration of emergencies is one of the most obvious tools they use to manipulate voters. But I have no doubt Obama is doing it on an unprecedented scale just like everything else.

I agree with all these reasons for defaulting on the government debt.

"To start with, once the U.S. government defaults on its debt, people will think twice before lending it any more money; giving politicians the ability to borrow is like giving a teenager a bottle of whisky and the keys to a Corvette. A second reason is that the debt is an albatross around the necks of the next several generations; it's criminal to make indentured servants out of people who aren't even born yet. A third reason would be to overtly punish those who have been lending money to the government, enabling it to do all the stupid and destructive things that the government does with that money."

I also agree with this:

"The debt will be defaulted on one way or another. The trouble is they're almost certainly going to default on it through inflation, by destroying the currency, which is much worse than defaulting on it overtly. That's because inflation will wipe out the relatively few people who are prudent in this country, those who are actually saving money. Because they generally save in the form of dollars, they're going to wipe them out financially."

I see no reason to believe the worst won't happen. The people don't even know what's really going on. The tea partiers seem clueless, and are too little too late even if they understood what the government and the Fed are doing to us. They have no clue how bad things really are. And I couldn't agree with this more either:

"Don't say "we." Say the U.S. government. I don't consider myself part of the problem. Americans have to learn that the government isn't "us." It's an entity that has its own interests, its own life, its own agenda. It views citizens as milk cows – or perhaps even beef cows – strictly as a means to its ends."

Again, very few Americans understand this. They still believe in the myth of good government.

FEDERAL RESERVE:

Stealth monetization of federal debt.

HEALTH CARE:

I don't believe for one second that twice as many people wish Obamacare had gone further than wish it had never passed. These questions must have been really loaded.

GLOBAL WARMING AND ENERGY:

Some of the climate frauds have been forced to admit the sun plays a role in earth's climate. I know it seems absurd that the frauds had ever denied it played a role since the sun is responsible for virtually all energy on earth, but they did.

Climate frauds forced to acknowledge that long-term global current cycles effect climate. These are huge breakthroughs tearing down the framework of the fraud.

REGULATION:

The Justice Department determines there's not enough competition between big tech giants, so it will for competition on them because the government, which is a monopoly, knows more about competition than the marketplace. The real reason the Justice Department is doing this is to extort greater campaign donations from the employees of these giant tech firms. This will put a huge damper on innovation in the tech market.

POLITICS:

Ann Coulter blames Goldwater's loss on his being secular and libertarian on social issues. I've never heard that given as a reason for his defeat. I've heard that he lost because establishment Republicans stayed home. I have no idea if either is right.

LOCAL:

Federal lawsuit forces Dayton police force to spend half a million more dollars recruiting minorities. Apparently the feds don't like it when people just recruit people. Most recruits come from outside Montgomery county.

MISC:

Book claims Titanic sunk because of a steering error that's been covered up for nearly 100 years.

How governments use intellectual property as an excuse for oppression.

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SOCIALISM:

It's a little hard for the two martini lunch crowd to condemn union workers for drinking at lunch. Unfortunately, the smoking pot makes it easy. And the taxpayers paying their salaries makes it a no brainer.

Government workers make 85 percent more than the comparable private sector workers who pay their salaries.

ECONOMY:

The business cycle - the relationship between artificially expanding credit, lower interest rates, higher stocks and the subsequent crash - explained in 1755. This stuff is well understood by anybody who cares to understand it. The principles are pretty easy to understand.

Apparently credit unions are in just as bad of shape as banks. Lovely.

TAX AND SPEND:

Democrats decide to adjourn leaving the big tax increase in US history looming.

REGULATION:

Small food truck vendors don't have nearly the political clout of the established restaurant business, so government is trying to put them out of business to protect their cronies. Regulations are just another form of looting.

GLOBAL WARMING AND ENERGY:

Animation shows how hurricanes suck heat out of the ocean and dissipate it in the upper atmosphere, cooling the planet.

POLICE STATE:

Robbery victim calls police only to have the police shoot his dog, beat up him and his brother and arrest him for insulting a police officer. I know people think events like this are rare, isolated incidents. They're wrong. This is the new normal in our government-worshiping police state. Here's the punch line:

"There will be a police investigation but that officer will not be placed on administrative leave."

The police force is going to investigate itself just to pretend it actually cares, but it's already determined that assaulting the victims and killing their dog was excellent police work. That's like the mafia investing itself over a knee-capping. We have nobody to blame for this but ourselves. We turned our country into a police state.


POLITICS:

More observations on the state of collapse of our government. Quoted in full.

"I just turned on CNN to discover a “news” report about comedian Stephen Colbert testifying before Congress on “farm labor and immigration.”  It seems he had done a comic routine on the topic which, in this age, qualifies him to share his expertise with the political establishment.  The CNN report followed a “breaking news” story about “synchronized dogs.”  I quickly switched over to C-SPAN and found Sen. Al Franken – sans gorilla costume – presiding over the Senate.  There was no sign of the rest of the SNL cast, although Caligula’s horse was spotted heading for the exits in full gallop.

And there are people who continue to deny that the established order is in collapse.  I suppose they’re waiting for Jerry Brown to get elected to the governorship of California, and return dignity and credibility to the system!"

I've read and heard a lot of comparisons of modern sports to the bread and circuses of Rome providing a distraction from import things, but I think, like in Rome, the more distracting show is on Capitol Hill.

I recently pointed out the power of ridicule and encouraged my readers to use the technique against the government and government lovers whenever possible. It was wonderful to see Steven Colbert use that technique he's mastered in Congressional hearings today.

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ECONOMICS:

After NBER's declaration that the recession ended in June 2009, Robert Murphy is embarrassed to be a professional economist.

REGULATION:

The head of the NSA wants to partition the internet into a secure government section. Frankly, I'd love to have the government off the regular internet, but nothing good can come from this proposal.

GLOBAL WARMING AND ENERGY:

Arctic sea ice, you know the sea ice that the global warming frauds claim is disappearing, covers a greater extent of the earth than it did through most of the last 9,000 years. Skeptics 9,000. Frauds 0. But they have all the government money stolen from us at the point of a gun, so they won't give up.

FOREIGN POLICY:

Iran suffers from highly sophisticated internet worm that targeted its infrastructure like power plants. Why is anybody surprised Ahmadinejad blames capitalism for poverty? Iran has been a socialist state for decades.

POLITICS:

Why government occasionally sacrifices one of their own:

"Regarding this scandal with the city of Bell, CA, I confess that I don’t know all of the details, but I do know that the City Manager was collecting something like an $800,000 salary.  I haven’t bothered with the fuss because I would expect nothing less from a professional criminal class. Moreover, while this is outrageous, I believe it is such a drop in the bucket compared to the far bigger rackets that go on with the military-industrial-corporation complex run out of Washington.

That said, when I hear that one of the Bell people could be jailed for up to 58 years for his antics, I can’t help but think of a passage from Franz Oppenheimer in The State:

“When, pursuant to their own ideals of justice, the aristocrats as a social group execute one of their own class for murder or robbery, for having exceeded the bounds of permitted exploitation, the thanks and the joy of the subjects are even more heartfelt than after victory over alien foes.”"

Reminds me of Blago too, except he didn't do anything beyond the norm. He was sacrificed because of his ties to Obama.

Hayek exposes the myth that compromise is a good thing. Compromise is a tool aristocrats use to loot ever more wealth and power from the people.

Interesting contrast between revolutionary Declaration of Independence and Republicans' government worshiping pledge to America. Republican pledge with full text. I can't believe they made something this complex. This looks like a propaganda piece made to influence other aristocrats, not normal Americans. Why not 10 bullet items every American  could digest in seconds? This is a gimmick. They have no intention of following it if they gain power.

MEDIA:

Newsweek likes Boehner because

"Boehner’s principles didn’t change at the turn of the century; he’s always been a Chamber of Commerce conservative. But a new administration meant new expectations, and a different set of incentives. Under Clinton, Boehner’s job was to oppose the White House; under Bush, his job was to get stuff done. As a man who made his money selling plastics, Boehner seems to enjoy the latter role more—which is why he broke with many of his fellow fiscal conservatives and backed Dubya on NCLB, Medicare Part D, and TARP, and, more recently, acknowledged reality on the Bush tax cuts. “John is, more than anything, a dealmaker,” says Republican consultant Kevin Madden, a former Boehner spokesman. “He uses his personal and political power to make deals.” (Boehner declined to speak to NEWSWEEK for this article.)"

That's why I don't like him.

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TAX AND SPEND:

Warren Buffet's partner says people should be thankful the government robbed them of $700 billion to hand out to banks for TARP. Thanks for making me poorer and your cronies richer. This is another important reminder that big business doesn't support free markets and never has. Big business is created by big government and can only exist because big government loots the people on their behalf.

EDUCATION:

I completely agree that this man did the right thing by jumping on the bus and defending his handicapped daughter, though I would defend him if she wasn't handicapped either, from bullies. This illustrates what our government school system has turned into and the police state that has resulted.

WAR ON DRUGS:

Man uses drug dealer technique to deliver black market grilled cheese. He's unlicensed, unregulated and untaxed, providing a valuable service, we know that because people pay him voluntarily, without bowing to government. This illustrates how government interference in peaceful exchanges between people always leads to black markets.

POLICE STATE:

The police state reveals that government considers Americans potential targets of war:

"The diabolical nature of the State is sometimes revealed in small but crucial details. The criminal complaint against alleged would-be bomber Sami Samir Hassoun offers a very good example: The Lebanese expatriate, who is a legal resident of the United States, is accused of “attempting, without lawful authority, to use a weapon of mass destruction against people and property in a manner that would have affected interstate and foreign commerce….” (Emphasis added.)"

Yikes. You won't read this critical information in the media:

"In fact, the criminal complaint specifies — albeit in footnotes — that Hassoun was not motivated by Islam or any other religion, and that he wasn’t interested in killing or harming anybody until long after he fell under the influence of a paid federal provocateur and two FBI agents posing as terrorist financiers. Rather than advancing the “Islamist agenda,” Hassoun — who wanted to bring down Mayor Daley’s administration — allegedly suggested that Muslims could make useful scapegoats."

The facade of our government is transparent if people would lift the scales from their eyes and see through it.

FOREIGN POLICY:

Lew Rockwell asks a good question about the American hikers who either crossed into Iran on accident or who are spies: What would the US do if it captured three Iranian hikers illegally crossing the border into the US from Mexico? It depends on what officials discover about them.

POLITICS:

No matter who wins what seats in November, the winners will betray their voters, including tea party candidates.

"You might as well know right now, however, that the Tea Party, no matter how successful it is at the polls in November, will certainly betray the party of liberty. There are several reasons for this, but the fundamental one is intellectual. The Tea Party does not have a coherent view of liberty. Its activists tend to be good on specific economic issues like taxes, spending, stimulus, and health care. They worry about government intervention in these areas and can talk a good game.

But just as with old-time conservatives, there are many issues on which the Tea Party tends toward inconsistency. The military and the issue of war is a major one. Many have bought into the line that the greatest threat this country faces domestically is the influx of adherents of Islam; in international politics, they tend to favor belligerence toward any regime that is not a captive of U.S. political control.

On immigration, the Tea Party ethos favors national IDs and draconian impositions on businesses rather than market solutions like cutting welfare. On social and cultural issues, they can be as confused as the Christian right, believing that it is the job of government to right all wrongs and punish sin."

As I've often said, conservatives have no principles. They want some nebulous thing - smaller government and lower taxes. They don't recognize that all taxes are theft. They don't recognize that all government spending is harmful. That's why even those who aren't corrupt when they run for officer are so easily corrupted when they get in power.

"The larger problem occurs once they take office. Here is where the serious problems begin. They are leaned on by their new colleagues, the party elites, related financial interests, the press, and the entire system of which they are now part. Are they going to make themselves enemies of that system, or are they going to work within the system in order to achieve reform, and not just for one term but more terms down the line? Doing a good job means being part of the structure; doing a bad job means being an enemy of the very system that they now serve.

Which choice do they make? The same choice that everyone else in office makes (Ron Paul being the lone exception in all of human history). It is for this reason that newly seated "revolutionary" politicians will betray those who put them in power. It happens like clockwork, same as day turns to night."

Many Democrats have principles. They want to seize control of all property in the US and transform America into a communist state. They're already corrupt. The rest of Democrats are just power-hungry opportunists just like most Republicans, all already corrupt too.

"We can state with confidence, all else being equal, that even the best electoral outcome will not lead to actual cuts in the power of government over our lives.

That doesn't mean that all is for naught. What will change the prospects for freedom in this country is a growing and society-wide awareness of the issue of freedom and the role of the state in wrecking that freedom, and the civilization to which it gives rise."

Agreed.

MEDIA:

Network news lost 739,000 viewers last year.

Chris Matthews, yeah that Chris Matthews, explains to President Obama that the money people earn belongs to them, not the government. Wow.

MISC:

Benjamin Franklin was against IP laws.

Mercury has a comet-like tail from the sun blasting gas off of it.

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SOCIALISM:

Top 20 socialist sound bites from Obama and his partners.

In case anybody mistook drug dealers for libertarians, the Teamsters in California organized the first marijuana growers union.

Obama is trying to get the Chinese to buy a stake in GM. If this happens, with all the Democrats saying Republicans outsource jobs to China, the American people will go nuts. Obama isn't just evil, he's stupid too.

ECONOMY:

The Russians understand how to stimulate their economy: fire 100,000 bureaucrats. If only Americans were that dedicated to freedom.

TAX AND SPEND:

Washington state proposes high income tax on high earners in order to chase them out of the state to saner pastures.

FEDERAL RESERVE:

Kristen Bell wants to end the Fed. Or does she?

REGULATION:

The FDA refuses to require genetically modified food producers to label their food and instead blocks efforts of non-GM food producers to label their food as natural. I always enjoy a good reminder that all government agencies exist solely to expand the power of bureaucrats and their political masters, which means protecting their big-politically-spending corporate cronies, at our expense.

Apparently sand castles are illegal on federal land. So is videoing. According to my constitution, the federal government owning land it isn't using is illegal.

POLICE STATE:

Police to charge 84 year old man hospitalized by assault by police officer.

"Travis Lamont, the costumed government enforcer who assaulted Daniel Daley outside an Orlando bar on the morning of September 18, is 26 years old. His victim is 84 years old and uses a walker. Lamont, as a member of the state’s enforcement caste, was armed. Daley was not.

Eyewitnesses to the assault insist that the elderly man never harmed or threatened Lamont in any way. His “offense” was to grab the younger male’s shoulders to balance himself when he stumbled. This “assault” supposedly justified a violent attack in which Lamont body-slammed the elderly man head-first into the pavement.

In his report, Lamont claims that Daley “cocked his right hand back as if to throw a punch”; the officer “feared a physical attack was imminent,” to he “directed him [Daley] to the ground with an arm bar technique…. In the process of directing the subject to the ground, the right side/top forehead [of the victim] struck the pavement.” Apparently, Lamont “directed” the old man so forcefully that witnesses on the scene feared that they had just witnessed an act of homicide.

Eyewitness Sean Hill recalls the sickening noise made when Daley’s head collided with the asphalt: “Like a watermelon — pop!”"

The wrong guy is being charged here, but the police officer and the prosecutor are on the same team, team confiscation, who get paid by stealing money from citizens at the point of a gun, so they stand together, along with the judge.

Men arrested in Britain for allegedly planning to kill the Pope plan to sue for false arrest since no such plan existed. But it sure made for positive headlines for the government at the time.

The FBI coerces another sucker into planting a fake bomb so they can arrest him and make big headlines making themselves look good.

iPhone ap for reporting your neighbor to the EPA and homeland security. The police state wins once it gets people to do its dirty work.

POLITICS:

If the House adjourns three weeks early to campaign, it will backfire on them. But those freaks are so out of touch they probably don't realize it.

Independents still don't trust Republicans on spending. Good.

Obama suspected of that time-honored Democrat crime mastered by Linden Johnson and Bill Clinton of pulling tax records of political enemies and using it against them.

MEDIA:

Archie comics presents pointed commentary on our ruling class with a comic featuring Obama and Palin sharing a malt in the malt shop. Sweet.

LOCAL:

For a year or so I've suspected that the rash of fires in Dayton must be being caused by arsonists. There's a report of a fire in the paper daily. I hear the fire engines every day. Today I see a story about two arson attempts on the same house within five hours. I think we're suffering a rash of arsons because of our economic problems.

MISC:

100 years ago, people probably only got sick when they had a disease like tuberculosis or flu or they injured themselves or got an infection. The medical profession evolved to diagnose those external problems and treat them. But today most people are sick because of their lifestyles. The problems are internal, not external, and medicine hasn't evolved to handle that. Doctors diagnose and treat these internal problems the same as they do external ones. Unfortunately that often ends up exacerbating the problem by masking the symptom without addressing the root lifestyle problem.

Criminal Attorneys General Attack Law-abiding Craigslist

Criminal Attorneys General Attack Law-abiding Craigslist
by Mark Luedtke

The last couple of months before an election are dangerous times in America. Every elected official, power-hungry megalomaniacs all, in office is looking to use the government’s gun against somebody, somewhere in spectacular fashion to gain headlines and buy votes. Attorneys General of 17 different states chose Craigslist as their victim.

For several years Craigslist has been the target of heavy criticism because prostitutes and child sex traders post on the site. The criticism reached a fever pitch after the arrest last April of the “Craigslist Killer”, a man who stalked women advertising for sex on Craigslist. In response, Craigslist announced it would review adult ads and reject those that obviously announced sex for sale.

Then CNN reporter Amber Lyon, a pretty, young blond girl chosen by CNN execs for maximum exploitation of the Craigslist sex story, placed a provocative ad in the adult section containing the phrase, “Sweet, innocent, new girl with a WILD streak...” and $200 per hour. Craigslist did not remove the ad, and 15 men called about the ad in the first three hours. But why would they remove the ad? She didn’t offer sex. She didn’t say she was under age. Lyon wants viewers to believe everybody who posts a provocative ad is a criminal, guilty until proven innocent. Lyon proceeded to ambush Craigslist founder, a socially inept misfit, and make him look terrible even though he had long ago turned over the company to a more capable manager. If Lyon wanted to do an honest report, she would have interviewed the current CEO and mentioned that since May 2009, Craiglslist has rejected over 700,000 postings. She didn’t.

When Lyon called Craigslist “the Walmart of child sex trafficking”, the AGs had the soundbite they needed to pounce, so they picked up the government’s gun and put it to the heads of the executives of Craigslist even though they have no legal leg to stand on. In 1996 Congress passed the Communications Decency Act considered “the cornerstone of Internet Freedom.” The law immunizes providers of interactive web services against prosecution by state and local officials over illegal content posted by their users. Without this protection, the web as we know it would not exist. Even a broken clock gets the time right twice a day.

But elected officials get paid by robbing the rest of us at the point of a gun, they’re all corrupt and self-serving, so they never allow a silly little thing like the law to limit their greed for wealth and power at our expense. CNN had painted a picture of Craigslist as a pimp and child molester, and the opportunity to abuse their power for their personal gain was irresistible.

According to the AGs, two children wrote an open letter to Craigslist and asked them to take down the adult section because “they were trafficked for sex”. You might think adults would know better than children. You might think that the AGs would know that if they took down Craigslist’s adult section, the ads would simply move somewhere else. You might think that the AGs would understand it’s their job to capture and prosecute criminals, not Craigslist’s. You might think government could use Craigslist to track down sex criminals. The AGs know this, but they’ll never admit it. The letter from the AGs would make Machiavelli proud. First they wielded CNN’s ambush interview as a weapon, they accused Craigslist of facilitating crime, and then they showed all their cards:

“We recognize that craigslist may lose the considerable revenue generated by the Adult
Services ads. No amount of money, however, can justify the scourge of illegal prostitution, and
the suffering of the women and children who will continue to be victimized, in the market and
trafficking provided by craigslist.”

Craigslist is like Walmart online. It has 50 million users. The AGs had to shut down Craigslist’s adult section because it highlighted the futility and corruption of our government monopoly on security. Monopolies invariably provide lower quality products at inflated prices because they are protected from competition. Government is also protected from competition, and it obtains its revenue by robbing people at the point of gun. Therefore government is the most inept and corrupt institution ever invented by man. Government monopolies combine the worst of both. The government monopoly of security services is hopelessly corrupt and inept, and Craigslist made that obvious to everybody, so the AGs attacked the law-abiding while ignoring the criminals who post on it. Not to mention that government has no business sticking its nose in the consensual activities of adults.

Government supposedly derives its power from the people, and supposedly has no powers beyond the powers of the people, but nobody has the power to force Craigslist to censor its adult section. The AGs were the aggressors, not Craigslist. The AGs threatened peaceful Craigslist executives with violence: breaking in their offices, stealing their property, locking them in chains then throwing them into a cage. By any civilized standards, the AGs should be arrested and prosecuted for their actions and Craigslist should be free to run its bulletin board however it wants. But our government is a criminal organization, so that will never happen.

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FREEDOM OF SPEECH:

I don't think a treaty would help preserve the internet. I think it would just oppress it faster. The internet is too powerful for governments to tolerate.

SOCIALISM:

Thanks to Chavez's takeover of the Venezuelan economy, people are starving.

ECONOMY:

The recession may have officially ended in June 2009, but we haven't recovered a bit since then. It ran from Dec. 2007 until then, the longest since the Great Depression. Expect Obama to use this to blame Bush and Republicans. Here's a little injection of reality:

"Never mind that the U.3 and U.6 unemployment rates were 9.4% and 16.4%, respectively, in May of 2009, supposedly the last month of the recession while last month’s U.3 and U.6 stood at 9.6% and 16.7%. Real Private Fixed Investment continues to sink. Consumer and business bankruptcy filings continue to climb. One in 8 people in America are receiving food stamps according to Reuters. And in three-quarters of U.S. cities foreclosure filings are on the rise."

But government says the recession ended, and government has its gun pointed at all our heads, so it must be right. On a side note:

"In related news, the Japanese Prime Minister announced yet another “$11 billion stimulus plan designed to promote job creation, coax shoppers back into stores, and stem the surge in the value of the yen,” and the Bank of Japan intervened lowering the value of the yen “to protect the economy.”"

So much for fiscal austerity in Japan.

Mises.org's markets and data page.

TAX AND SPEND:

The UK tax organization wants employers to send all checks to them, and they'll deduct the tax then transfer what's left to the employee's bank account. They also propose using lie detector tests during frequent audits. I hope the British people revolt over this.

This article, while true, is also a bunch of crap. It claims president Obama thinks that income belongs to the government and the government generously allows people to keep some of it, not the people who earn it, but that's what all aristocrats have thought since 1913.

Bill Clinton falsely claims he reduced the debt while in office, and gets away with it. The Republicans in Congress reduced the deficit while he was in office, but not the debt.

GLOBAL WARMING AND ENERGY:

Another prominent climate scientist withdraws from the global warming movement because he realizes it's a fraud, and he says so in plain language:

"Physicist Dr. Denis Rancourt, a former professor and environmental science researcher at the University of Ottawa, has officially bailed out of the man-made global warming movement, calling it a ‘corrupt social phenomenon’.

He writes this in an essay on science trust issues plus adds this powerful closing passage about climate science:

And there is a thorough critique of the science as band wagon trumpeting and interested self-deception [4]. Climategate only confirms what should be obvious to any practicing scientist: That science is a mafia when it’s not simply a sleeping pill.

Now he thinks that fossil fuel burning isn’t a problem of significance based on the scale."

I couldn't agree more.

The most effective and cost-effective carbon sequestration technique known to man has been around for thousands of years: the garbage dump.

Record spring snow in New Zealand. Oh no! It's a climate disruption event and must because by man's productivity.

Obama EPA official warns the EPA will regulate and ban household appliances. Our government recognizes no limits on its power.

POLICE STATE:

Police officer slams 84 years old man into the ground, breaking his back and putting him in critical condition, and claims self-defense. Seriously. In a related event, related because they both involve police brutalizing civilians, a police chief body slams a 50 year old woman to the ground to arrest her because she wanted her friend to record the incident, which her friend did.

WAR:

Real life often provides wonderful observations of the state of decline in our lives. This is a good example:

"I arrived at the Pentagon Metro station this morning, as usual, on the commute to work. At the entrance to the Metro were six (!!!) military-like guards all carrying enormous automatic weapons looking ready to attack someone/anyone. On the train platform were two more paramilitary types with automatic weapons at the ready. My thoughts turned to the yearly cost of these eight security guards on just one single entrance to the Metro – as I walked down the escalator which has been broken for weeks…"

It not only can happen here, it is happening here...

POLITICS:

So the Delaware Senate race is being billed as the witch against the Marxist. As far as wacky goes, the Marxist is far more wacky and enormously more dangerous. Marxists killed well over 100 million people in the the name of Marxism last century. Wiccans didn't kill anybody in the name of Wicca that I know of. In 1999, every young girl was talking about Wicca. There were stores all over selling magic supplies. Remember Buffy the Vampire Slayer? It was a fad. Marxists are the most deadly cult to ever exist.

MISC:

Woman trademarks her own name and goes after people who use it without permission. This is a new extreme in IP law. I hope she's doing it to highlight the stupidity of IP law.