Free kibbles

ECONOMY:

The IMF warns that the US and Europe face an explosion of social unrest because the government is dragging our economy, which means all of us, over a cliff.

TAX AND SPEND:

Cato points out what I've been saying for a while but I hadn't heard anybody else say before now: Obama says he wants to take tax rates back to the Clinton era. What nobody is saying is the world has changed since the Clinton era. During the Clinton era, those tax rates were among the lowest in the advanced world. Since then foreign countries have lowered taxes because they learned the lesson of the Cold War that our politicians refuse to acknowledge. Today, those tax rates would be the highest in the advanced world. It's economic suicide.

REGULATION:

Because of Democrats' financial oppression law, bank fees are on the rise.

GLOBAL WARMING AND ENERGY:

Link to article from 2000 claiming that snowfalls wouldn't happen any more because of global warming.

The French are building the first commercial fusion reactor.

POLICE STATE:

In some states, you can be prosecuted for videoing police.

"Arresting police whistleblowers is a nationwide trend. And the courts approve. For instance, the Massachusetts Supreme Court upheld the conviction of a man arrested for recording a police encounter. Defendant Michael Hyde used the recording to file a harassment complaint against police. Instead, he was convicted of illegal wiretapping. While he was sentenced to only six months of probation, he could have faced a much longer prison term."

Cops will put cameras on street corners to video citizens, but citizens who video cops will suffer.

ILLEGAL IMMIGRATION:

Democrats to try and pass amnesty for illegals before the election. That's an interesting strategy. They must feel that the energy on the right can't get any higher, and they're hoping this will generate energy on the left. But this will backfire. Independents will move further away from Democrats because of this.

POLITICS:

The non-experts in the press will not quit pushing this baloney that tea party candidates can't win in November. These are the same non-experts who said a Republican couldn't win in Massachusetts or New Jersey.

"Conservative activist Christine O'Donnell scored an upset victory in Delaware's Republican Senate primary on Tuesday, defeating longtime congressman Mike Castle 53 percent to 47 percent.

O'Donnell's surprising win marked yet another triumph for the Tea Party movement and may have ended the Republican Party's hopes of regaining control of the Senate in November. Polls have shown O'Donnell trailing far behind Democratic nominee Chris Coons, the New Castle county executive."

Those polls were taken before the primary. The situation has dramatically changed now. I bet she wins.

"The Delaware Republican Party had worked hard to portray O'Connell as mentally unstable and unsuitable to be a U.S. senator, and the national GOP likewise worked behind the scenes to undermine her insurgent campaign. And after Tuesday's results, it was clear that she would continue to struggle to receive support from the party establishment in Delaware."

That's how low Republicans are. There's virtually no difference between Republicans and Democrats. Our two party system forces them to be nearly identical, right next to each other in the so-called middle they create. Republicans and Democrats are in bed together.

"In Wilmington, Republican strategist Don Mell and his wife, Jeanne, who is a Democrat, walked across the street from Castle's party to Coons' primary watch party at a nearby pub. The couple donned Castle pins when they arrived at the Coons event and picked up one of the Democrat's yard signs."

Literally.

""If we can't cross the street to each other's side, we're never going to get anything done," he said, referring both to the events Tuesday night and bipartisanship more broadly."

The last thing we need is for Democrats and Republicans to get together to get stuff done because that stuff invariably means looting us even more and dragging country closer to destruction.

Twenty-five percent of Americans trust the federal government to do the right thing all or most of the time. They'll learn. There's no such thing as good government.

MISC:

Airlines are adopting tiny saddle seats to make sure nobody ever flies again. This is ridiculous. They can't really think this will boost business.

Author describes the difference between the government and the state:

"The State is the country acting as a political unit, it is the group acting as a repository of force, determiner of law, arbiter of justice. International politics is a "power politics" because it is a relation of States and that is what States infallibly and calamitously are, huge aggregations of human and industrial force that may be hurled against each other in war. When a country acts as a whole in relation to another country, or in imposing laws on its own inhabitants, or in coercing or punishing individuals or minorities, it is acting as a State. The history of America as a country is quite different from that of America as a State. In one case it is the drama of the pioneering conquest of the land, of the growth of wealth and the ways in which it was used, of the enterprise of education, and the carrying out of spiritual ideals, of the struggle of economic classes. But as a State, its history is that of playing a part in the world, making war, obstructing international trade, preventing itself from being split to pieces, punishing those citizens whom society agrees are offensive, and collecting money to pay for all.

Government on the other hand is synonymous with neither State nor Nation. It is the machinery by which the nation, organized as a State, carries out its State functions. Government is a framework of the administration of laws, and the carrying out of the public force. Government is the idea of the State put into practical operation in the hands of definite, concrete, fallible men. It is the visible sign of the invisible grace. It is the word made flesh. And it has necessarily the limitations inherent in all practicality. Government is the only form in which we can envisage the State, but it is by no means identical with it. That the State is a mystical conception is something that must never be forgotten. Its glamour and its significance linger behind the framework of Government and direct its activities."

I'm not very good at that touchy-feely stuff. I only care about government. Whenever somebody says, "We should do this or that...", I always challenge them by asking if they mean government should pass a law forcing this or that on people against their will, creating all the problems that come with doing so. That's what matters. And usually the people change their minds when they think of it in real terms. People can talk about conceptual states all they want. I guess they have fun doing so, but I don't care. I care about the real damage done by government.

A plan to privatize college football programs.