Free kibbles

FREEDOM OF SPEECH:

Hungarian government seizes regulatory control of all media. I wouldn't want to live there. It's a shame people allow government to get away with so much by threat of violence. If the government had pulled up in tanks to seize control, the people would have protested. But because they did it by law, with the threat of violence, they people sit idly by like sheep. Legislation is government's weapon of conquest against its own citizens.

List of headlines reporting government abuses discovered by WikiLeaks document dumps. This is why Julian Assange is the government's number one target, not Osama bin Laden.

TAX AND SPEND:

Apparently the Hungarian government has joined the PIIGS in debt problems too.

This is typical.

"The federal government released its 2010 financial statements as prepared according to Generally Accepted Accounting Principles (GAAP) a few days before Christmas. The public isn’t clamoring for this information and the government’s numbers don’t seem to be keeping anyone awake at night.

For those looking for scary numbers to wash down with their bubbly tonight, according to GAAP, the government’s deficit in 2010 was $2.08 trillion, a considerable widening from the $1.254 trillion deficit in 2009.

If these numbers weren’t bad enough, the U.S. Government Accountability Office says it can’t render an opinion on the federal government’s financials “because of widespread material internal control weaknesses, significant uncertainties, and other limitations.”

Specifically the GAO won’t weigh in because of three areas: “(1) serious financial management problems at the Department of Defense (DOD) that made its financial statements unauditable, (2) the federal government’s inability to adequately account for and reconcile intragovernmental activity and balances between federal agencies, and (3) the federal government’s ineffective process for preparing the consolidated financial statements.”"

But that some government claims it can run every aspect of our lives better than we can.

This quote explains why New York government's financial problems are certain to get worse.

"Andrew Mark Cuomo was inaugurated on Saturday as the 56th governor of New York, promising to take on the state’s daunting financial problems immediately and to fight to ease tax increases for homeowners."

Cuomo intends to raise taxes on homeowners, and the rich ones will continue to leave the state.

GLOBAL WARMING AND ENERGY:

Time magazine covers show global warming circular reasoning.

Insight into the warped mind of one of people responsible for making climate change a political issue.

POLICE STATE:

Is Karl Rove really working with Obama and the Swedish government to prosecute Assange? Apparently he works for the Swedish Prime Minister, so he probably is.

Top aid to Sec. of State Colin Powell charges that the Bush administration knew hundreds of individuals detained in Guantanamo were innocent, but did not release them because of political considerations.

1984 is here.

FOREIGN POLICY:

This headline from the L.A. Times gets it right:

"Former Marxist guerrilla sworn in as president of Brazil"

The fact that she's a woman is insignificant. That she's a Marxist is overwhelmingly important.

"The new president hopes to maintain the economic momentum that was the key to Lula's power and popularity while advancing the Workers Party social agenda of reducing poverty, attracting foreign investment to create jobs and taking greater control of natural resources."

Her socialist agenda will definitely lead to the polarization of wealth, but oil money may keep the economy going despite it.

Strategic breakdown of any conflict between North and South Korea.

POLITICS:

I have no idea why hard-core libertarians adopted the word anarchist for themselves. Anarchists are bomb-throwers. Libertarians are the opposite of that. Words matter. I have no doubt that if these people had adopted the word peace-lovers instead of anarchist, the movement would have attracted many times more people.

MEDIA:

Observation that journalists have completely merged into the government. Media is dominated by big corporations, and all big corporations are agents of the government. Also, if a reporter criticizes government, that reporter loses access to the aristocrats. Criticizing government is a career killer.So this merger is no surprise.

MISC:

A stray airliner triggered the evacuation of the Capitol today, but this article shows the evacuation procedure is worthless.

"It was first noticed at 1:30 p.m., triggering an "Aircon Red" — or air condition red — alert. E-mail evacuation notices went out to House and Senate members and staff just after 1:40 p.m., and the all-clear, a return to "Aircon Green," was given about 20 minutes later."

So it took over ten minutes to issue the alert. It takes several additional minutes for people to evacuate.

"An "Aircon Red" alert is triggered when an airplane enters a specified geographical airspace that puts it within three-to-five minutes of reaching the Capitol depending on air speed and other factors, according to a former House aide who dealt with security issues."

So if a plane targets the Capital, it will hit over five minutes before the evacuation alarm is sent. If this had been a real attack by plane, everybody in the Capitol would have been killed before the warning was sent. This is just another pretense of security meant to instill a false sense of security and aggrandize the government. It actually makes the people in the Capitol less secure because they don't take other measures to insure their security because they've been lulled into a false sense of security.