Free kibbles

FREEDOM OF SPEECH:

This WikiLeaks statement sounds socialist, not anti-state. I wonder if this is evidence of the schism inside WikiLeaks.

TAX AND SPEND:

Thomas Sowell reminds us how Republicans lost the political battle to Bill Clinton over shutting down the government in 1994 even though they had both the moral and political high ground and fears the same might happen. I think Sowell is way off base. The far bigger and more likely danger is Republicans will raise the debt limit in exchange for token spending cuts and win the political battle by creating the illusion they did something to our benefit when in fact they will be supporting the status quo that is destroying our country.

FEDERAL RESERVE:

In a good reminder that government corrupts everything it touches, article explains how the Fed bought the entire economics profession.

"One critical way the Fed exerts control on academic economists is through its relationships with the field’s gatekeepers. For instance, at the Journal of Monetary Economics, a must-publish venue for rising economists, more than half of the editorial board members are currently on the Fed payroll — and the rest have been in the past."

It's easy for the Fed because the Fed can print money and spend it on anything it wants in secret.

How the ruling class and their propagandists use euphemisms for inflationary monetary policy in order to loot us more successfully.

Re-inflating the cupcake bubble.

HEALTH CARE:

Human brains shrinking.

"According to a new report in Discover Magazine, the human brain, which has expanded for most of our biological history, has begun to shrink. Kathleen McAuliffe writes that, according to new research, "Over the past 20,000 years, the average volume of the human male brain has decreased from 1,500 cubic centimeters to 1,350 cc, losing a chunk the size of a tennis ball. The female brain has shrunk by about the same proportion." And that shrinking appears to still be happening on an evolutionary scale."

I vote for diet as the major cause. And civilization could have a major effect since we've become so successful at working together to solve our problems.

GLOBAL WARMING AND ENERGY:

NASA has been so wrong about solar cycle 24 for so long, they've once again revised down their sunspot count prediction because the longer they failed to do so, the more obvious their ignorance became, but they have no more idea what's going on than my dog.

Virginia legislatures propose law that would retroactively remove the Attorney General's powers to investigate civil issues in order to stop the current AG from investigating Michael Mann for fraud. The frauds must know this investigation, if successful, would expose serious fraud that would stick to them all.

POLICE STATE:

Why you should always encrypt cell phone data.

WAR:

Apparently the US and Israeli developers of the Stuxnet worm attacking Iran's centrifuges made elementary mistakes.

"There is a growing sentiment among security researchers that the programmers behind the Stuxnet attack may not have been the super-elite cadre of developers that they've been mythologized to be in the media. In fact, some experts say that Stuxnet could well have been far more effective and difficult to detect had the attackers not made a few elementary mistakes."

What else would you expect from government?

FOREIGN POLICY:

The popular revolution in Tunisia ousted a US backed dictator.

"Something has gone terribly wrong with Washington’s plans for regime change in the Mideast. Wasn’t there supposed to be a US and British engineered revolution against Iran’s mullahs, followed by installation of a cooperative pro-western government and a bonanza for western oil companies?

The revolution came, all right, but in the wrong place. The explosion of popular fury in Tunisia that ousted its dictator of 23-years is sending shock waves across the Arab world and has alarm bells ringing in Washington.

Pay no attention to President Barack Obama’s pious bromides welcoming the revolution in Tunisia. The US, France and their Arab satraps are deeply worried that Tunisia’s popular revolution could spark similar uprising against the dictatorships or monarchies in other members of America’s Mideast Raj, notably Egypt.

It has come to light that Tunisia’s ruling elite had dinners and wine flown in from Paris at government expense for lavish parties in their beachside villas. Shades of the Iranian revolution, when women of the ruling elite in Tehran used to send their dirty laundry to Paris for hand washing, or fly to Paris to have their hair done for a soiree.

In a zesty bit of irony totally lost on the US media, just as a people’s revolution was ousting Tunisia’s brutal US-backed regime, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton was in Qatar piously lecturing local oil monarchs on good government and the need to promote democracy."

"The US and France have always hailed Tunisia as a poster-boy for "moderation, stability, and democracy. "

Translation: 1. moderation: following orders from Washington and making nice to Israel; 2. stability: crushing all opposition, particularly Islamist-oriented parties, muzzling the media, and paving the way for US business; 3. democracy: holding fake elections every few years. The US media soft-soaped Ben Ali and gushed over Tunisia’s "moderate" virtues. They did the same for Egypt’s Anwar Sadat.

America’s other "moderate" Arab clients, Egypt, Morocco, Algeria, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Yemen, Oman and some of the Gulf states, followed precisely the same model of ersatz elections, ferocious internal oppression, and absolute obedience to Washington.

Tunisia closely resembled other Arab non-oil states in having very high unemployment, social and intellectual stagnation, lack of free speech or expression, and no hope for the future unless one had links to the rapacious, self-serving, western-backed ruling oligarchy. On top of this, in most Arab states, over 60% of the population is under 25."

The blowback against American government policies in the Muslim world continues to grow. Our government never grows tires of looting us to send welfare to oppressive dictators.

"Tunisians are known as an easygoing, even-tempered people. US and French aid was supposed to keep a lid on the country and defuse popular unrest. So just about everyone was caught by surprise when Tunisia went critical."

Sounds like another socialist intelligence failure. More on Tunisia:

"With U.S. debt levels on par with Greece, the American economy unfree and struggling, its population increasingly aging and mediocrely educated, and its giant military and diplomatic structure expressing the congenital cyclopia that is the way of all empire – the U.S. is no longer the ally of choice for anyone."

Nice summary of what we've done to our country.

"Some have dubbed the rebellion in Tunisia as the "First Wikileaks Revolution." U.S. State Department cables to Washington decrying the corruption and evils of our friend Ben Ali drove Washington to do … wait for it…. absolutely nothing. But somehow, shining the light on what Tunisians already new, and could only whisper about under fear of being disappeared and permanently silenced, was empowering. Tunisian rage at the assumption of great and unwarranted power by a state – unjust governance – is one part of a volatile substance. This rage had existed in Tunisia at least since the popular Habib Bourguiba was declared incompetent and displaced by Ben Ali 23 years ago. The binary explosive may have been established when simmering rage at injustice met a sudden, Wikileaks and Internet-aided recognition that no one else will act, because no one else cares. If it is to be, it is up to me."

I wonder how much effect WikiLeaks had.

MISC:

Facebook disables feature giving developers access to home address and phone number. That's good news. It shows again how markets, even when the company is a government protected monopoly, are responsive to customers. Have you noticed the TSA responding to customers? Of course not.

Will Android replace x86 and Windows? Probably. X86 was always a clunky, poorly designed architecture and Windows was always a crappy operating system. They only reason they gained market dominance was government granted them monopolies in the form of patents. But nothing lasts forever. Because of the installed customer base, they won't die anytime soon, but it looks like that symbiosis is being eclipsed.

Good looking people tend to be more intelligent. I know that's true in at least one case.

Patents up 31 percent in 2010. That's a tremendous stifling of innovation.