Free kibbles

FREEDOM OF SPEECH:

Self-censorship code for comics collapses.

RIGHT TO KEEP AND BEAR ARMS:

Federal judge declares sections of California's handgun ammo law unconstitutional. That's unusual. The Ninth Circuit will eventually overrule him.

ECONOMY:

Interesting prediction based on the complexity of the world economy:

"The Swiss-born, pony-tailed economist who enjoys the Asian style of life and Mao memorabilia expects emerging stock markets to succumb to headwinds as the result of inflation during 2011.

Faber opines the confluence of the U.S. Federal Reserve and European Central Bank unprecedented debt monetization activities have flooded capital fleeing into commodities–raising substantially the cost of living to lower per capita purchasing parity countries–as the root cause."

So as western countries race to the bottom, destroying their currencies, and money races into commodities, the inflation shows up sooner in emerging economics than developed economies because developing economies have shorter structures of production. But this does not mean our economy is recovering. Quite the opposite.

"Contrary to what could be construed as a “recovery” in the U.S. and Europe by his latest prediction, Faber believes otherwise, suggesting enough money printing by central bankers will eventually raise economic metrics as the legendary Austrian economist Ludwig von Mises observed and taught during the days of Maynard Keynes:

“It would be a serious blunder to neglect the fact that inflation also generates forces which tend toward capital consumption. One of its consequences is that it falsifies economic calculation and accounting. It produces the phenomenon of illusory or apparent profits.”

–Ludwig von Mises"

So inflation is making the numbers look good. It's making GDP go up. It's making stock prices go up. But in fact, we're cannibalizing our capital, and our economy is becoming more primitive. His prediction is that oil will rise most of all.

"While oil production struggles to satisfy global demand in 2011—this according to Energy Information Agency—the double whammy of tight oil supplies and an inflated currency in which much of the world trades for the black gold are solid “fundamentals” for a rise in its price, which Faber and others such as famed commodities investor Jim Rogers clearly agree upon."

There you go.

TAX AND SPEND:

Scary-funny video about the future of taxes. It looks like it was originally a commercial.

Here's a good example of how every government program, regulation, subsidy, etc., no matter how benevolent they seem, is really just a cover for the ruling class to loot the people. It doesn't matter if the program is socialist like Amtrak or fascist like the health insurance industry. In this case, JP Morgan is making millions by administering food stamps. This is another way we're being forced to bailout Wall Street.

Fleeing taxation.

Republicans don't want to cut $2.5 trillion. This is balony. Republicans always claim to want to cut the budget when they have no power to do so. This is the same tactic Republicans always use to regain power and loot the crap out of us just like Democrats.

FEDERAL RESERVE:

Fed by the Fed's printing presses, the large, too big to fail banks are starting to loan. That means inflation. Prediction that interest rates are going to rise, so if you need a loan, lock it in now.

HEALTH CARE:

Two-thirds of doctors fear Obamacare will mean lower quality care for patients. The other third must have been paid to respond otherwise. Of course it will reduce quality of care. More regulation always reduces the quality of a product. 27 states now challenging Obamacare in federal court. They'd be better off just nullifying it and not asking daddy to overturn it.

GLOBAL WARMING AND ENERGY:

It used to be that gas with ethanol in it was labeled, but apparently that's not the case anymore - any gas you buy may contain ethanol - and it damages engines.

It's great to see wattsupwiththat.com put up a solar images and data page.

Government spends about $4 trillion annually corrupting climate change science.

WAR ON DRUGS:

Modern prohibition has made cocaine so expensive people are turning to the cheaper but much more dangerous methamphetamines.

"The answer is that crystal meth is a cheap date; it has been referred to as the poor man's cocaine. Cocaine and meth are both stimulants, so it is reasonable to assume that they appeal to the same subset of drug users. During cocaine's heyday, meth was nearly extinct on the illegal market."

This is the same, predictable and predicted process that occurred during alcohol Prohibition. It's so well understood, it has a name.

"The scourge of crystal meth is another example of the "potency effect" or what has been called the "iron law of prohibition." When government enacts a prohibition, increases enforcement, or increases penalties on a good such as alcohol or drugs, it inevitably results in substitution to more adulterated, more potent, and more dangerous drugs."

Drug prohibition is not about health or safety. It's about looting the people.

Government asks the Supreme Court for warrantless searches of homes for drugs.

"The reporter tells me that some police officers down in Kentucky were wandering the hallways of an apartment building (searching for a suspect who had sold drugs to one of their informants) and broke down an apartment door from which they claim to have smelled marijuana and heard noises that "made them fear evidence was being destroyed." So without any warrant at all they kicked in a door and arrested a completely different man than the one they were searching for as the poor sap they grabbed, by chance, had marijuana and cocaine in his apartment. No surprise, the Kentucky Supreme Court suppressed the evidence. Even less of a surprise, federal and Kentucky political authorities went apoplectic with that decision."

The seizure of power by government will never end until we end it.

POLICE STATE:

DHS's twisted campaign promoting Americans to spy on each other moving into malls and sports stadiums. While most Americans will ignore this, some won't, and they'll help government destroy innocent people.

FOREIGN POLICY:

The Iran talks in Turkey break down.

OMG. Obama bowed to China's leader.

ILLEGAL IMMIGRATION:

Border agents should only be able to shoot in defense of self or others. The same with everybody else.

POLITICS:

Let's get rid of the ruling class motorcades and police escorts please. I understand the president needs some security, but he's the only one, and the president doesn't need as much as he loots us to pay for. I still think they would all be better off hiring private security instead of using socialist security.

Mitt Romney wins straw poll of New Hampshire Republican statists with 35 percent, but the big news is Ron Paul came in second with 11 percent. That's impressive since he's done nothing to suggest he's running, unlike many of the people he finished ahead of. I think Ron Paul teamed up with Judge Napolitano would beat Obama.

New Jersey's Republican Governor Christie criticized for appointing a Muslim attorney as a judge. This kind of knee-jerk anti-Muslim sentiment hurts us all.

A couple months ago, Hawaii's incoming governor said he wanted to release Obama's birth certificate to put and end the controversy. I said at the time that was going to become a big problem for him and possibly Obama because Obama was intentionally hiding something. That time is now. When asked about the birth certificate, the governor was unable to produce it, he failed to claim he saw it, but instead claimed he saw some entry in some archive reporting Obama's birth. By making this an issue, this guy just gave the birther movement a big boost.

MEDIA:

Olbermann abruptly quits. Or was fired. Or something.

Now they're painting Obama as the great compromiser. Let's hope he isn't as slick as Willie. Willie didn't look too slick in his first two years either.

Funny how the media condemns Republican rhetoric but not Democrat. Wait, that's not funny.

MISC:

Recommended one hour video explaining Austrian Business Cycle Theory.

Manmade islands off Dubai are sinking into the sea. Oops.

Using iodine to treat diseases.

This is a fantastic essay by Mark Steyn on the disintegration of Anglo civilization. On the one hand it beautifully captures the decline of Britain and by extension the US. On the other it bizarrely confuses the ideas of liberty, which made the English-speaking world great, with the the oppression and violence of empire, which dramatically limited the greatness that otherwise would have been achieved. Possibly the most bizarre quote from the essay is this:

"For that reason, in terms of global order, the transition from Britannia ruling the waves to the American era, from the old lion to its transatlantic progeny, was one of the smoothest transfers of power in history—so smooth that most of us aren’t quite sure when it took place. Andrew Roberts likes to pinpoint it to the middle of 1943: One month, the British had more men under arms than the Americans; the next month, the Americans had more men under arms than the British."

A smooth transition of power in 1943? Over 70 million people were killed in WWII. It took decades to recover. It some ways, the world has yet recover. I'd hardly call that a smooth transfer of power. In many ways, WWII was a product of centuries of damage done by the British Empire. It could be called the deadliest case of blowback in history. But this bit at the end is wonderful:

"Cecil Rhodes distilled the assumptions of generations when he said that to be born a British subject was to win first prize in the lottery of life. On the eve of the Great War, in his play Heartbreak House, Bernard Shaw turned the thought around to taunt a British ruling class too smug and self-absorbed to see what was coming. “Do you think,” he wrote, “the laws of God will be suspended in favor of England because you were born in it?”

In our time, to be born a citizen of the United States is to win first prize in the lottery of life, and, as Britons did, too many Americans assume it will always be so. Do you think the laws of God will be suspended in favor of America because you were born in it? Great convulsions lie ahead, and at the end of it we may be in a post-Anglosphere world."

It doesn't have to be that way. We still have it in our power to stop government from turning our country into a third world country and China surpasses us, but it won't happen until the people understand the extent to which the ruling class have looted us so they can put an end to it. I don't see any evidence they'll figure it out until our country collapses like the Soviet Union.