Free kibbles

ECONOMY:

CEOs rate Texas as the best state to do business in and California the worst. It's no coincidence that state income tax rates are at opposite ends of the spectrum.

Jobless claims are up again.

TAX AND SPEND:

Exposing phony alarmism surrounding the debt ceiling debate and proposing the government sell off assets to pay off the debt.

Obama White House floats trial balloon for mileage tax to be recorded by a government device in every car and paid along with each gas purchase.

"Among other things, CBO suggested that a vehicle miles traveled (VMT) tax could be tracked by installing electronic equipment on each car to determine how many miles were driven; payment could take place electronically at filling stations."

Get out of my car and out of my life.

The number of Americans receiving food stamps has reached one out of seven. Yay for government fighting poverty.

FEDERAL RESERVE:

The title of this article by John Stossel explaining general inflation is priceless: Gasoline and Onions.

GLOBAL WARMING AND ENERGY:

The EU plans to pay fishermen to catch plastic. Who needs food?

Desperate global warming frauds, unable to steal as much of our money as they want through legislation, are filing suit in many states and D.C. using children and young adults as plaintiffs in an attempt get the courts to declare the atmosphere a public trust.

WAR:

Obama is throwing the SEALs under the bus on the execution of bin Laden.

"Mr Panetta also told the network that the US Navy Seals made the final decision to kill bin Laden rather than the president.He said: "The authority here was to kill bin Laden. And obviously, under the rules of engagement, if he had in fact thrown up his hands, surrendered and didn't appear to be representing any kind of threat, then they were to capture him. But they had full authority to kill him.
"To be frank, I don't think he had a lot of time to say anything. It was a firefight going up that compound. And by the time they got to the third floor and found bin Laden, I think it - this was all split-second action on the part of the Seals.""

What a load of crap. This is a new low even for Obama. We've already heard it was a kill mission from the start. Obama tried to pretend it wasn't, and it didn't work. So now he's throwing the SEALs under the bus. He knows they won't say a word. That's a new low. This is going to come back to haunt him, big time.

"There was also growing doubt about the US claims that Pakistan’s intelligence agencies involved in the raid.Lieutenant General Asad Durrani, former head of the ISI, Pakistan's intelligence service, said it was "inconceivable" that his government was unaware of the US raid on Osama bin Laden's compound.
He claimed his country was forced to deny any knowledge of the raid to avoid a domestic backlash. The ISI's official line has been that bin Laden's compound had "slipped off our radar" after it raided the building in 2003 while hunting for another senior al-Qaeda operative.The agency claims it was unaware that bin Laden was hiding there.
Lieutenant General Durrani, however, said that the denial was a "political" maneuver by the intelligence services to avoid claims that they were working too closely with the US."

This makes sense too. It's hard to imagine the Pakistanis were unaware of US helicopters flying all the way from Afghanistan to within 30 miles of Islamabad. The more lies about this come out, the worse it's going to be. I'm telling you, the government can't help but screw up a train wreck.

""The army chief was in his office, the cordons had been thrown around that particular place. The Pakistani helicopters were also in the air so that indicates that it was involved."[There are] political implications back home. If you say that you are involved there is a large, vocal faction of Pakistani society that will get very upset because we are carrying out repeatedly these operations with the Americans.""

How stupid do they have to be think nobody would notice that? Only government can be consistently that stupid.

The Guardian summaries a number of bin Laden conspiracy theories, but the best part of the article is the explanation of why they're proliferating.

"The decision not to release photographs of Osama bin Laden's corpse and the way the White House has changed its account of how he died has prompted an avalanche of conspiracy theories about his death."

All these theories are the product of White House lies. Assuming they got the right guy, all they had to do was tell the truth and show him captured and alive or show his body to independent observers. It would have been easy, but instead they chose to lie, dispose of the body with no independent verification and then implement an obvious cover-up.

"Bin Laden is alive and being held in a secret location while the US interrogates him about al-Qaida's nuclear arsenal. "Is it possible that Osama bin Laden has been ghosted out of his compound, and we're seeing a show at this point?" asked the rightwing commentator Glenn Beck."

We can only hope this is true. I just don't think our government is that smart. I'd love to be pleasantly surprised. I hate to lampoon bin Laden's reported death, but changing stories of the government has made it all but impossible.

"The White House has also had to abandon the story that President Obama and his national security team watched tensely as events unfolded in real time (despite the White House having released photos of the team watching tensely), with the operation conveyed into the White House by cameras on the SEALs helmets. If Obama was watching the event as it happened, he would have noticed, one would hope, that there was no firefight and, thus, would not have told the public that bin Laden was killed in a firefight. Another reason the story had to be abandoned is that if the event was captured on video, every news service in the world would be asking for the video, but if the event was orchestrated theater, there would be no video."

What I read earlier, I hoped I linked it, but maybe not, is that the video didn't work for 20 minutes or so. Those pictures from the Obama situation room were staged. Duh. Or maybe they weren't. Maybe that's part of the cover-up. This is a public relations disaster overshadowed by a public opinion victory for Obama. But I think eventually, and not too long in the future, the public relations aspect will collapse under the scrutiny of skeptics.

"No explanation has been provided for why an unarmed bin Laden, in the absence of a firefight, was murdered by the SEALs with a shot to the head. For those who believe the government’s story that "we got bin Laden," the operation can only appear as the most botched operation in history. What kind of incompetence does it require to senselessly and needlessly kill the most valuable intelligence asset on the planet?"

That sounds familiar. Where have I heard it before? Maybe in the last four or five posts I've made?

"As one reader put it in an email to me: "What is really alarming is the increasingly arrogant sloppiness of these lies, as though the government has become so profoundly confident of their ability to deceive people that they make virtually no effort to even appear credible.""

Where have I heard of a cover-up in plain sight before? Where I have heard the word 'arrogance' used often in relation to the administration response used recently? Maybe in the last four or five posts I've made?

Frankly, I'm more interested in the OBL cover-up in plain sight than the crashed helicopter cover-up.

Here's the text of the FBI's most wanted statement on bin Laden:

"Usama Bin Laden is wanted in connection with the August 7, 1998, bombings of the United States Embassies in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, and Nairobi, Kenya. These attacks killed over 200 people. In addition, Bin Laden is a suspect in other terrorist attacks throughout the world."

Notice anything conspicuously missing?

Speculation that the primary reason behind the US and western attack on Libya was Qaddafi's plan to introduce a gold dinar as the unified African currency to compete internationally with the fiat currencies of the west.

"Gaddafi did not give up. In the months leading up to the military intervention, he called on African and Muslim nations to join together to create this new currency that would rival the dollar and euro. They would sell oil and other resources around the world only for gold dinars."

That would do it. Bush invaded Iraq after Saddam started selling oil in euros instead of dollars. No wonder France and Germany didn't want to invade then.

With all the news about OBL's assassination, here's what you didn't read in the news last week.

"Sequels are rarely as good as the original, but last week’s Great Escape from Kandahar Prison II was almost as exciting as the 2008 original in which 800 Taliban prisoners were busted out of Afghanistan’s Sorpoza Prison.This time around, 541 prisoners, including 106 Taliban commanders, tunneled their way out of the notorious maximum security prison."

Yeah. Hundreds of Taliban escaped a US-Afghan maximum security prison. Maximum non-security maybe.

"No less an authority than Afghan president Hamid Karzai recently called the ten-year US-led war, “ineffective, apart from causing civilian casualties.” Ouch!"

Ouch. That's what happens when a foreign power takes sides in a gang war half way around the world.

"Petraeus’ new role confirms CIA is fast becoming militarized as an active combat arm of the US government. CIA is slated to deploy more paramilitary units, mercenary forces and drones in Iraq, Pakistan and Afghanistan."

Bigger ouch.

"Veteran intelligence professionals lament CIA’s “going cowboy.” They say the agency’s primary goal is providing the White House with facts and balanced analysis, not indulging in gunplay. Getting involved in fighting overseas will inevitably corrupt CIA, they warn, and bias its judgment. We have already seen this happen in Afghanistan and Pakistan."

Not to mention Vietnam and Afghanistan the first time. But this has to be a metastasizing cancer.

POLITICS:

The Weekly Standard says Ron Paul is too honest to win the presidency. I agree. But that won't stop me from supporting him.

According to a CNN poll, voters think Ron Paul is the best candidate to beat Obama.

"Who does best against Obama? Paul. The congressman from Texas, who also ran as a libertarian candidate for president in 1988 and who is well liked by many in the tea party movement, trails the president by only seven points (52 to 45 percent) in a hypothetical general election showdown. Huckabee trails by eight points, with Romney down 11 points to Obama."

Voters are right. Only Ron Paul can win the anti-war votes. Obama can't. Only Ron Paul can win the civil liberties votes. Obama can't. And Ron Paul will win the right.

The double-standard between Obama assassinating bin Laden and running a victory lap around Ground Zero compared to if Bush had done the same thing is breath-taking.

President Transparency - uhm, I mean Pharaoh Obama - is holding meetings in a local coffee shop to keep them off White House logs. Shame on me, but I would hate holding meetings in the world's most guilded cage. The world's greatest symbol of modern oppression. The world's most grotesque reminder of slavery. But apparently Obama relishes in White House oppression. He isn't running from the greatest symbol of oppression in the modern world. He's playing politics.

MISC:

Xe, formerly Blackwater, hires John Ashcroft as ethics director. If somebody told you that in a bar, you'd think it was a joke.