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.