Free kibbles

FREEDOM OF SPEECH:

Government marches ahead with its plans to control the internet.

SOCIALISM:

Hugo Chavez isn't satisfied with the dictatorial powers he already has. He wants the Venezuelan Congress to empower him to make laws by decree.

ECONOMY:

Real numbers show just how bad the economy is.

Potential pitfalls to avoid if you chose to switch your gold from unallocated to allocated storage.

TAX AND SPEND:

The US has the highest corporate tax rate of any industrialized nation. And they wonder why jobs are going overseas.

Great description of the scam the Treasury, Fed and big banks are running on us.

"Quickly loan money to desperate investment banks via TARP. Get the Federal Reserve to create money and use the money to buy junk assets from investment banks, so that they can pay back TARP. Declare yourself a financial genius."

Lord Geithner and other aristocrats keep telling us we're making money on TARP. It's all funny money created by the Fed.

Republicans and Democrats even got the Social Security tax cut wrong.

Thomas Sowell simply says what nobody else is saying about the Bush tax cut deal going on in Washington:

"Nobody's taxes are being cut, but spending is going up."

What else would you expect in Washington?

Democrats cave on their plans to push through a 2,000 page omnibus budget with their wishlist of spending increases, agreeing to a short continuing resolution until next year. That's a big improvement. I give Republicans credit for this. Earmarks aren't necessarily any more wasteful than any other government spending. The problem with earmarks is they're the primary tool that aristocrats use to buy votes, so their corrupting influence is significantly higher per dollar than other government spending. That's why aristocrats fight so hard for them.

"The two leaders have not worked out how long to extend current funding. Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell has introduced a measure that would last until February 18.

Until then, the government would continue to operate on the framework of an outdated budget that likely would make it difficult for federal agencies to cancel outdated programs and move ahead with new ones."

What a joke. Bureaucracies never cancel outdated programs.

FEDERAL RESERVE:

The Fed orders Oklahoma bank to remove Christian references:

"Federal Reserve examiners come every four years to make sure banks are complying with a long list of regulations. The examiners came to Perkins last week. And the team from Kansas City deemed a Bible verse of the day, crosses on the teller’s counter and buttons that say "Merry Christmas, God With Us." were inappropriate. The Bible verse of the day on the bank's Internet site also had to be taken down."

In Bernanke we trust.

EDUCATION:

Atlanta teachers busted for cheating by correcting answers on students' standardized tests to make it look like the students, and therefore the teachers, performed better than they actually did. I'm happy to know the teachers knew the answers.

HEALTH CARE:

Kids with ADHD more at risk for obesity. This doesn't seem hard to understand. It's the sugar-carb highs and the insulin response. ADHD always sounded like sugar highs and lows to me, and now we know that grains and other carbs cause the same highs and lows as sugar.

GLOBAL WARMING:

Despite the collapse of the Chicago carbon exchange, California opens a carbon exchange. This is a good reminder that bad ideas never go away. Think Marxism.

POLICE STATE:

As is the nature of government, TSA continues to reach new heights of oppression.

"Adrienne Durso, “a breast-cancer survivor … said she went through a metal detector at the Albuquerque airport on Aug. 25 but was then subjected to a patdown. In a telephone interview with a San Diego TV station, she said the agent ‘heavily concentrated on my breast area where I told her I’d had a mastectomy the year previous and it just seemed to go on and on.’

She was travelling with “her teenage son[, who] was told he was not subjected to a patdown because he does not have ‘boobs.’”

This is, of course, precisely the sort of crime that would not only shutter a private company but catapult those responsible to prison while bankrupting them with fines – all to the strains of NOW’s hysteria and whining."

It's pathetic to see Americans bow down to these thugs just because they put on a government uniform. It's important to realize what Becky calls patdowns are not patdowns. They are invasive searches. I hate to see those terms intermingled.

Options for using the legal system to punish TSA agents for sexual assault.

Julian Assange released on bail, but apparently he's under house arrest at some mansion. Some bail. At least he has computer access. This is probably a ploy by police to monitor everything he does online and to get full access to WikiLeaks.

This is a bizarre story. Apparently Los Angeles police have captured a serial killer who took pictures and videos of women, some of whom he may have killed. After investigating missing persons and open cases, police are left with pictures of 160 still unidentified women who may or may not be dead. Assuming most of these women are alive, I find it hard to believe he killed a hundred women and got away with it until now, they chose not to say anything about this guy. Maybe there was no coercion or violence with them. But now they're faces are pasted all over the internet associated with this monster, and their lives will never be the same. And the reason for this release seems to be nothing but a power trip:

"Police said they were sensitive to the harm and embarrassment the release of the photographs could cause women who never told their family or friends about the encounters. In the end, however, they decided that the need to identify the women outweighed the potential harm. For similar reasons, the Times has decided to publish the photographs on its website."

Who's need to identify the women? How did they weigh that need versus the harm? How is it possible to do so? It sounds to me the police didn't like not knowing, so they decided their need to be powerful was more important than the privacy of the women in the pictures. They're playing god with the lives of these women just to satisfy themselves.

""As a police department, we have an obligation to account for the welfare of these women," said veteran homicide Det. Dennis Kilcoyne, who headed the task force that hunted Franklin. "We're trying to fill in the life and times of Lonnie Franklin over the past 30 years, and talking to people is a big part of that. These are obviously women who had a conversation or two with this guy.... I won't be surprised if we find some of them were his victims.""

This has nothing to do with the welfare of these women. If any were his victims, they already know it. If any were his victims, they chose to keep the information private. For the police to make their experience public is unconscionable. It's an attack on their welfare. There is the possibility some of these women are dead and their family members don't know what happened to them. There's a service to be done for these families. But that service could be rendered in some fashion that doesn't publicize the others. For example, the police department can announce it has pictures, and families looking for missing relatives could examine them privately. This seems like a power trip with grotesque ramifications for many women to me.

ILLEGAL IMMIGRATION:

Victor Davis Hanson describes the third world shanty towns in central California. He should have taken pictures.

MEDIA:

Survey claims that Foxnews viewers are more misinformed, but the example used in the survey shows the survey is biased. Duh.

Concern than the mainstream media is co-opting WikiLeaks to promote its pro-government agenda.

"

Wikileaks has the essential features of a process of "manufactured dissent". It seeks to expose government lies. It has released important information on US war crimes. But once the project becomes embedded in the mould of mainstream journalism, it is used as an instrument of media disinformation: 

"It is in the interest of the corporate elites to accept dissent and protest as a feature of the system inasmuch as they do not threaten the established social order. The purpose is not to repress dissent, but, on the contrary, to shape and mould the protest movement, to set the outer limits of dissent. To maintain their legitimacy, the economic elites favor limited and controlled forms of opposition...  To be effective, however, the process of "manufacturing dissent" must be carefully regulated and monitored by those who are the object of the protest movement " (See Michel Chossudovsky,  "Manufacturing Dissent": the Anti-globalization Movement is Funded by the Corporate Elites, September 2010)

What this examination of the Wikileaks project also suggests is that the mechanics of New World Order propaganda, particularly with regard to its military agenda, has become increasingly sophisticated.

It no longer relies on the outright suppression of the facts regarding US-NATO war crimes. Nor does it require that the reputation of government officials at the highest levels, including the Secretary of State, be protected. New World Order politicians are in a sense "disposable". They can be replaced. What must be protected and sustained are the interests of the economic elites, which control the political apparatus from behind the scenes. 

In the case of Wikileaks, the facts are contained in a data bank; many of those facts, particularly those pertaining to foreign governments serve US foreign policy interests. Other facts tend, on the other hand to discredit the US administration. With regard to financial information, the release of data pertaining to a particular bank instigated via Wikileaks by a rival financial institution, could potentially be used to trigger the collapse or bankrutpcy of the targeted financial institution.     

All the Wiki-facts are selectively redacted, they are then "analyzed" and interpreted by a media which serves the economic elites. 

While the numerous pieces of information contained in the Wikileaks data bank are accessible, the broader public will not normally take the trouble to consult and scan through the Wikileaks data bank. The public will read the redacted selections and interpretations presented in major news outlets.

A partial and biased picture is presented. The redacted version is accepted by public opinion because it is based on what is heralded as a "reliable source", when in fact what is presented in the pages of major newspapers and on network TV is a carefully crafted and convoluted distortion of the truth.

"

In other words, don't take the mainstream media's word for what WikiLeaks has made public.

MISC:

Copyright a tool for censorship.

The Humane Society claims animal abuse at Smithfield farms, with video. This kind of thing would almost never happen in a free market. In a free market, private regulating agencies would inspect all food production plants and refuse to certify any like this. The American people wouldn't purchase food from uncertified producers because they wouldn't stand for this kind of abuse. But because government controls our food production, this kind of abusive, unsafe treatment of animals is the norm, making our food supply unhealthy.

CERN experiment failed to produce microscopic black holes as predicted by string theory. This doesn't disprove string theory in general, but at the very least they have some details wrong.

What's the big deal about not putting ads in Wikipedia? As long as they don't pop up and obscure the information I'm looking for, ads are fine.

Gluten-free beers.

The impact on society of having so many men having been raised by women.

"There are three primary social institutions that have historically served to mold young boys into men:  family, religion, and education."

And the destructive effects of government on all those institutions is obvious to anybody willing to see. We have to be careful not to blame the marketplace or society for what is really caused by government. For example, zoning laws, laws against child labor and laws forcing children into government schools keep children from sharing their father's work, not modern business or society. I'm sure plenty of fathers could use their child's help on the job for several hours a day as a gofer or apprentice, but since the child is forced into the government's military-style schools, prohibited from the father's workplace and the father is forced to drive many miles to that workplace, working parents and children can't get together during the day.