Free kibbles

RIGHT TO KEEP AND BEAR ARMS:

Government seizes tea party organizer's guns without due process.

"The following facts are undisputed by both sides of the legal dispute over possession of guns:

• Police in Weston, Connecticut, based in part upon an unsubstantiated FBI statement that Reddy was a "person of interest" in a domestic terrorism investigation, executed a search and seizure warrant at Reddy's home on February 14 that involved the local SWAT team. The police took a pump-action shotgun and an antique revolver from Reddy.

• Walter Reddy has no criminal record of any kind.

• Reddy was never charged with a crime, but his legally held guns were taken from him anyway. He is, however, a widely known constitutional political activist and persistent critic of big government.

• Reddy repeatedly asked for an opportunity to get a lawyer before a February 25 hearing on possession of his guns, and was denied his request

• The chief witness brought by the state against Reddy explicitly stated that Reddy had never acted in a threatening or violent way.

• No other witness even attempted to claim that Reddy was threatening or violent.

"The fact that he wasn't given the opportunity to get a lawyer [for the hearing] is just wrong," Reddy's lawyer Joseph Secola told The New American. "It just seems to me that he was not accorded the necessary due process of law. He asked repeatedly for a continuance to get counsel and it was repeatedly denied.""

Not that a lawyer would have helped, but this shows the lawlessness of government.

ECONOMY:

Despite the best efforts of government including the Fed to keep Americans from fixing the housing market they broke, the American people are succeeding anyway.

"Sales of new single-family homes in February were down more than 80 percent from the 2005 peak, far exceeding the 28 percent drop in existing home sales. New single-family sales are now lower than at any point since the data was first collected in 1963, when the nation had 120 million fewer residents."

The laws of economics are laws of nature and cannot be broken. Any attempt by government to do so can only cause pain and hardship.

Belgium is thriving because its prime minister has been unable to form a government. We should be so lucky. Actually, I don't know if the same would happen here because our federal budget has built in spending increases every year. It gets bigger and more oppressive even if nobody runs it.

A lot of people are saying gold is overvalued. Gold is expensive. Doug Casey dissents, and this chart shows why.


Wow.

"From the ‘60s until about 2000, most Western governments were selling gold from their treasuries, working on the belief it was a “barbarous relic.” Since then, governments in the advancing world – China, India, Russia and many other ex-socialist states – have been buying massive quantities.Why? Because their main monetary asset is U.S. dollars, and they have come to realize those dollars are the unbacked liability of a bankrupt government. They’re becoming hot potatoes, Old Maid cards. But the dollars can be replaced with what? Sovereign wealth funds are using them to buy resources and industries, but those things aren’t money. And in the hands of bureaucrats, they’re guaranteed to be mismanaged. I expect a great deal of gold buying from governments around the world over the next few years. And it will be at much higher dollar prices."

While the BRICS talk, they're buying gold.

"Although gold prices are at an all-time high in nominal terms, they are still nowhere near their highs in real terms, of about $2,500 (depending on how much credibility you give the government’s CPI numbers), reached in 1980. Gold sentiment is still quite subdued among the public; most of them barely know it even exists."

So much for a bubble. Where does he think the price will go?

"A guess? I’ll say the equivalent of about $5,000 an ounce of today’s dollars. And I feel pretty good about that number, considering where we are in the current gold bull market. Classic bull markets have three stages. We’ve long since left the “Stealth” stage – when few people even remembered gold existed, and those who did mocked the idea of owning it. We’re about to leave the “Wall of Worry” stage, when people notice it and the bulls and bears battle back and forth. I’ll conjecture that within the next year we’ll enter the “Mania” stage – when everybody, including governments, is buying gold, out of greed and fear. But also out of prudence."

That's a lot of upside still.

Putting some of your wealth overseas to protect some of you assets from theft by government.

TAX AND SPEND:

Pat Buchanan looks to Europe to see how the US government will collapse under its debt.

"European investors are now demanding and getting 22 percent interest on two-year Greek bonds. And with Greek debt at 150 percent of its gross domestic product – the same as Zimbabwe – the question is no longer whether Athens will default, but when, how and what will be the losses to European citizens, banks and governments who hold Greek paper.Will Greece be the only domino to fall, or will Ireland and Portugal follow and the contagion spread across Europe and leap the Atlantic?"

I had no idea Greece had gone down so fast. That's only the beginning. I don't think it fair to say the US government collapse would be a result of European contagion. The US government will collapse under its own debt regardless. Events in Europe may make that happen sooner rather than later though. Obama is achieving exactly what he wanted: the collapse of the US economy under the burden of government. And Republicans are helping every step of the way. But Obama won't get the Marxist revolution he wants to follow. Americans aren't Europeans. Because we're descendants of a self-selected group of rugged individualist immigrants, when push comes to shove, our libertarian natures will win out.

"And here is where the risk to Obama comes. Playing off Ryan may be smart short-term politics, but if the world financial system were to come crashing down – in part because of the absence of a U.S. deficit deal – no one would blame Paul Ryan."

Obama's betting he and Bernanke can steal enough money over the next year and half to keep the system afloat until he wins in 2012. He thinks that will enable him to orchestrate his Marxist revolution from the White House. I wouldn't take that bet, but I'm surprised every day I wake that the system hasn't collapsed over night.

"The Herbert Hoover of that depression would be Barack Obama."

Herbert Hoover my ass. Compared to the coming depression, which will include the destruction of the dollar, the last one was a walk in the park. After Obama Americans will elect a Republican FDR who runs on a campaign of reducing the size and scope of government only to greatly increase it as soon as he takes office. People ignorant of history are doomed to repeat it. Western civilization is collapsing faster than even I thought.

REGULATION:

Bloomberg's government leads the nanny state assault.

"The activities logged on the “risky” list are limited to the more brutal, gladiator-like sports such as wiffle ball, kickball, dodgeball, freeze tag, red rover, and capture the flag. On the right side of the page, take the poll that asks the question, “Do you agree with the Health Department that Wiffle Ball, kickball and Red Rover are dangerous?” When I checked, 83% said yes. Don’t wonder why we have the government we (most of us) deserve."

The sad truth is we have the government we deserve. I love the picture of the kid wrapped in bubble wrap since I've used that example to illustrate the logical conclusion of nanny state activities for years.

The mandatory car insurance scam.

FEDERAL RESERVE:

Gary North blasts reports that the BRICS nations are going to do something about international finance.

"This is sound and fury, signifying little. This is grist for journalistic mills. This is chaff, not wheat.
We live in a world of illusion. The goldbrick central banks with their paper gold and endless promises keep us dancing to their tunes. But there is not one tune. There are many. Cacophony rules.Central bankers have only two policies, as gold coin dealer Franklin Sanders has pointed out: inflation and blarney. We are getting lots of both."

These guys may not do anything, but the system is going to change because Bernanke is destroying the dollar.

HEALTH CARE:

Most people don't need to see the dentist every six months.

"Last week, the [British] Government warned the public to ignore dentists who tell us to come for check-ups every six months. In fact, according to experts at the health watchdog, The National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (Nice), most adults need to have a check-up only every two years."

The dentists must not be paying the government enough. Then again, have you ever seen British teeth?

Study discovers that prostate screening provides no benefit. What a surprise. We know mammograms cause breast cancer. This kind of crap can only happen because of the government control of our food supply and health care system.

GLOBAL WARMING:

The truth about the greens.

"What most people are unaware of is the fascistic hatred of mankind that underlies the philosophic basis of environmentalism."

"At the heart of environmentalism, aside from its wish for far fewer humans, is a hatred of capitalism. The failures of communism and socialism everywhere attest to the way state control of all aspects of life is ignored by Greens.David Foreman, founder of Earth First!, said, "We must make this an insecure and inhospitable place for capitalists and their projects…We must reclaim the roads and plowed land, hold dam construction, tear down existing dams, free shackled rivers and return to wildness millions of tens of millions of acres of presently settle land."Thus, agriculture, the key to civilization, is decried as harming the Earth and all manner of business and industrial enterprises, dependent on the provision of energy, is regarded as evil."

And kill billions in the process. That's the green goal.

April blizzard in northeast blamed on global warming. Apparently the hotter the planet gets, more we get buried in snow earlier and later.

POLICE STATE:

On the pandemic of police brutality.

"Yet another disturbing aspect is that a minority of citizens will justify each act of police brutality no matter how brutal and how unprovoked. For example, WNDU.com's poll of its viewers found that 64.2% agreed that Snyder was a victim of police brutality, but 27.8% thought that Snyder got what was coming to him. "Law and order conservatives" and other authoritarian personalities invariably defend acts of police brutality. Perhaps the police brutality pandemic will bring the day when we will be able to say that a civil libertarian is a law and order conservative who has been brutalized by police."

Once again, we get the government we deserve.

"Police forces have always attracted bullies with authoritative personalities who desire to beat senseless anyone who does not quake in their presence. In the past police could get away with brutalizing blacks but not whites. Today white citizens are as likely as racial minorities to be victims of police brutality."

Police brutality is ubiquitous. Black victims are missing the boat by trying to make police brutality a racial issue. We have to acknowledge that police are equal opportunity abusers and everybody is a potential victim before we can end it.

"In America today, every citizen is a potential terrorist in the eyes of the authorities. Airport security makes this clear every minute of every day, as do the FBI and NSA with warrantless spying on our emails, postal mail, telephone calls, and every possible invasion of our privacy. We are all recipients of abuse of our constitutional rights whether or not we suffer beatings, Taserings, and false arrests."

Ubiquitous.

WAR:

Criticism of George Bush's claim "I’d rather fight them over there than here." If that was the only choice, it would make sense, but it's a false choice.

"The U.S. government made the Iraqis and the Taliban the "them" and made Iraq and all of Afghanistan the "there." The terrorism in those countries rose sharply. On one reading, the U.S. government is so dumb that it cannot even identify terrorists and their precise location, even with huge amounts allocated to the CIA. On another reading, the government has made these wars for geopolitical reasons that have little to do with terrorism. On a third reading, the government has been led into these wars by various interest groups. These three readings are not mutually exclusive. All three may apply."

That's a good point. I'm sure all these factor play a role.

FOREIGN POLICY:

Syrian government kills mourners at mass funeral.

POLITICS:

Schwarzenegger to run for EU president? Will the travesties of our society never end?

LOCAL:

Another way government creates crime: thefts from library up because of the recession.

I am so sick of headlines like this:

"Investors who count on DPL Inc. stock for retirement income say they are getting a bum deal under terms of the company’s planned $4.7 billion merger with global energy company AES Corp."

If you aren't willing to accept the consequences of your investment, don't invest. Quit your whining. If you don't realize investments come with risks, you're an idiot.

"Several shareholders told the Dayton Daily News they’re concerned they’ll suffer a significant federal capital gains tax hit in the sale and not be able to maintain the revenue stream they’ve enjoyed with DPL."

OK, what kind of fool do you have to be to present this profit-making experience as a negative? Don't you feel sorry for these people who are making so much profit they might have to pay income tax? How stupid does the Dayton Daily News and these shareholders think we are?

"Within hours of Wednesday’s merger announcement, plaintiffs’ attorneys began lining up, soliciting DPL investors to explore proposed class action lawsuits to protect shareholder interests."

Naturally plaintiff's lawyers lined up to sue somebody to protect people from profits. I'll bet you al ot of these fools think this is in their interest. Decades of government domination of our schools has made Americans the stupidest people on earth. Except for the plaintiff's lawyers.

"“When they talk about retention plans, they’re talking about more compensation. It’s basically a bonus to stay,” said University of Dayton law Professor Harry Gerla, a former attorney for the Securities and Exchange Commission. The DPL retention plan presumably would offer higher compensation than the “golden parachutes” in change-of-control agreements to entice the leadership to stay in place, he said."

Hello. Corporations are run by officers. The officers always take care of themselves first and foremost. Anybody who doesn't realize that self-interest is the fundamental principle in all human action is an idiot.

"“I wonder what that will mean for jobs” in Dayton, Gerla said. “In the long run, if they want to realize these centralization efficiencies, somebody’s going to have to go.”"

Jobs? I wonder what it will mean for costs. Ideally it would mean lower costs which would make everybody in Dayton richer, which would lead to more productivity, more jobs and more wealth for everybody. But of course all utilities are controlled by government so they're grotesquely more expensive, lower quality and inefficient than they would be in a free market, so that's unlikely.

"There will be little, if any, early impact on DP&L customers. The utility’s rates are set through the end of 2012, under a plan previously approved by Ohio regulators. DP&L is to keep its name and Dayton offices for at least two years."

In other words, Ohio government gave DP&L a monopoly so it could charge ridiculously high prices and provide abysmal quality of product than it otherwise would have done in a competitive marketplace. And the Dayton Daily News wants us to think that's a good thing.

"After Wednesday’s announcement, DPL’s share price shot up from $27.59 to end the week at $30.32, more than twice AES’s Friday closing price of $13.01."

Don't you feel bad for those poor stockholders who earned ten percent in a couple of days and stand to earn more? Let's do official math: (30.32 - 27.59) / 27.59 / 2 * 365 = 1806 % annualized gain. This story is absurd!

MISC:

Women prefer men with ring fingers longer than index fingers. That's not the only reason women love me.

I hope Walmart grocery delivery takes off.

Government grant of copyright monopoly drives book price over $23 million.

Interview with Philip K. Dick that could only be with Philip K. Dick.