Wednesday, February 23, 2011

Free kibbles

ECONOMY:

Silver still looks like a better deal than gold.

FEDERAL RESERVE:

Even though housing continues to fall and commercial real estate is still down, banks are putting far less money aside to cover bad loans, enabling them to report big profits. But that just makes them vulnerable to bad loans again. They don't care. They know the government will steal more money from taxpayers to bail them out.

EDUCATION:

Bullying in government schools not limited to other students.

Will the teacher's union strike in Wisconsin destroy the teacher's unions? Let's hope so. I'm all for looters self-destructing.
"The 14 Democrats in the legislature have adopted a unique way to keep the governor's proposed union-busting legislation from getting passed. They have refused to show up. The legislature lacks a quorum by one vote. So, there can be no new legislation dealing with money. The Democrats supposedly are all in hiding in Illinois. They receive salaries for this. Call it a paid vacation.
I hope the idea spreads. I would prefer to pay legislators to flee the state rather than pass laws."
No kidding. If only we could get Congress to stop passing laws.

HEALTH CARE:

Supreme Court rules that parents can't sue vaccine makers for faulty products. Can you say moral hazard? Where's the outrage? Can you imagine if the government blocked Americans from suing BP over the oil spill? This is tort reform in action, using government to protect the ruling class' corporations from paying for the damage they do.

GLOBAL WARMING AND ENERGY:

On the revolving door between Gore's phony green companies and the Department of Energy.

Hundreds of scientists sign open letter to the secretary general of the UN demanding that global warming scientists prove their case, exclaiming the burden of proof is on them since they advocate drastic, violent action in response.

WAR ON DRUGS:

Alabama banning bath salts because they can be used to make drugs.

WAR:

Open source military vehicle design. This is an excellent idea.

How Curveball lied to justify the invasion of Iraq.
"CIA's able European chief, Tyler Drumheller, warned Langley that Curveball's claims were patently false. But CIA's sycophantic director, George Tenet, knowing President Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney, were determine to invade Iraq, sent "Curveball's" phony tale to the White House without, it seems, any reservations. Another "slam dunk.""
Thanks a lot.
"Ironically, it was Saddam Hussein, not Bush or Cheney, who was telling the truth. He was lynched after the 2003 US invasion in good part to prevent him from revealing the full extent of deep US-Iraqi collaboration prior to 1991."
He was killed quite suddenly.

FOREIGN POLICY:

Civil war in Libya.

A lot of great ideas for changing US foreign policy.
"Why might Iranians not appreciate our enthusiasms for democracy and human rights? In 1953 the wretched CIA, always making trouble for us, overthrew the elected ruler and installed the Shah, a brutal bastard. What did we care? We were surfing at Malibu. Then we supported our good ally Saddam Hussein against Iran in a bloody war started for us by Saddam, and now we freeze Iran’s assets and threaten to bomb it, and we wreck its perfectly legal atomic program with funny viruses. How could that upset them? Baffling."
I'm willing to bet the US government has threatened to nuke Iran a time or two too, just like they did North Korea.
"Anyway, MIT recently published an extensive peer-reviewed paper establishing that if you aren’t in Mexico, or Iraq, you can’t get killed there. It’s physics. Show me one person killed in Mexico who was somewhere else at the time. Under my rule, we will stay where we belong. Which is to say, very few places."
Why not just in the US?

MISC:

Google collecting SSNs of children. Yikes.

Drinkers earn more money on average than non-drinkers. I'm not surprised by that at all. Non-drinkers tend to be puritanical and therefore self-limiting.

The rich can only oppress the poor by using the power of government. They can't do it in a system of voluntary exchange.

The importance of using code talkers, usually lawyers, when you want to do something illegal.
"Rachel Uchitel, who had been seeing Tiger Woods while he was married, hired a lawyer to get in the middle of her attempt money extraction from Woods. She hired super code-talker Gloria Allred to represent her . Woods ended up settling with Uchitel for $10 million. That's how you get blackmail done.
On the other hand, Karen Cunagin Sypher attempted to blackmail high-profile basketball coach Rick Pitno. They once had a sexual tryst in a restaurant. She did not use Allred, or any other lawyer, she tried to pull off the blackmail on her own, instead of getting the millions she was demanding from Pitino, a judge just gave her 7 years in the big house. Ouch."
As long as the ruling class gets a cut, nothing is illegal.

I would definitely trust the private sector to develop technology to prevent an asteroid impact, not government.

Removing personal info from the internet.

1 comment:

  1. V in PA11:20 AM

    No doubt the US helped move the execution along to shutup Saddam. But I remeber reading that Saddam did confess to appearing as though he had WMD because if he admitted otherwise and we didn't invade, Iran would have. He had to appear to be strong or the rest of the ME would have kicked his butt anyway. No win situation for him.

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