Free kibbles

ECONOMY:

A nice summary of the predictions and playout of the ongoing recession.

Six indicators show the economy is worse than most think.

"We're literally tens of trillions of dollars deeper in the hole now than we were in 2007. There's as much, if not more, leverage in the system today as there was then. Wall Street, it turns out, is now more corrupt than ever as failing institutions were merged with too-big-to-fails. There is no regulation to be had. There have been no significant criminal prosecutions. Main Street has gotten nothing but platitudes. And the worst of it is that the US government is enabling the entire thing. Double dip cones for everyone!"

Not only is the economy not recovering, thanks to the government, we're trillions more in debt than when debt collapsed the economy in 2007. It's not a double dip. It's an acceleration down the continuing collapse. Walter Williams reminds us that our economic problems were self-inflicted.

The richer the Chinese get, the more gold they buy.

REGULATION:

Despite regulations and tariffs, Vietnamese catfish is cheaper and comparably tasting to US catfish.

EDUCATION:

How to get a four year degree for $11,000.

Government schools, originally based on military structure, become more like prisons.

HEALTH CARE:

The FDA seizes birthing pools because they're unregistered medical devices.

GLOBAL WARMING AND ENERGY:

In yet another obvious negative feedback mechanism, trees are sucking up CO2 in their trunks. As if this wasn't predicted in advance.

POLICE STATE:

Obama's justice department dismisses Miranda rights.

WAR:

Yemeni president flees to Saudi Arabia to treat wounds but vows to return despite pressure to resign. Author claims the US dollar could be be ousted as the world's reserve currency along with the Yemeni president. This is happening anyway. Tying it all to Yemen is an exaggeration.

"America's CIA-sponsored AYM youth movements were behind the initial color revolutions. But notice how the mainstream press has stopped celebrating them. Perhaps they haven't worked out as planned. Either Western elites are encouraging a series of Arab Islamic Republics (so as to buttress what seems to be an essentially phony "war on terror") or they are trying to create controllable regulatory democracies that will likely be run by dependable militaries with a constitutional façade. Neither of these options looks to be feasible in the near term.Alternatively, the West seeks generalized chaos for some reason – or, more intriguingly, it has simply lost control of the situation. As we've stated before, Yemen is important because it may well indicate how much control the West actually has over the Arab Awakening. So far, what's been most apparent is dithering. The West hasn't shown a firm hand. There are reasons why."

I can't help but laugh when supposedly free marketers, people who claim to understand the fatal flaw of central planning, turn around and attribute great events to central planners as if they had some sort of divine power to recreate whole societies according to their central plan. No doubt elites are manipulating events. And no doubt the outcome will be different than they want.

Ex-CIA terrorist hunter claims he had opportunities to kill or capture bin Laden multiple times in the 1990s and was ordered not to each time.

With the US government declaring that cyber attacks are acts of war, watch for government to perform false flag cyber attacks to manipulate the public.

Our troops overseas have been told they are defending our freedom, but they're not.

"The reality is that you are not defending our freedoms with your actions overseas. In fact, it is the exact opposite. Your actions overseas are placing our freedoms here at home in ever-greater jeopardy.Consider your occupation of Iraq, a country that, as you know, never attacked the United States, making it the defender in the war and the United States the aggressor. Think about that: Every single person that the troops have killed, maimed, or tortured in Iraq had absolutely nothing to do with the 9/11 attacks.Yet, the countless victims of the U.S. invasion and occupation of Iraq have friends and relatives, many of whom have become filled with anger and rage and who now would stop at nothing to retaliate with terrorist attacks against Americans.Pray tell: How does that constitute defending our freedoms?"

The government lies to them like it lies to everybody.

Evidence that a bipartisan group of thieves recognizes that it's in their interest to end the wars so they can steal more money from us for under other guises.

"When Dennis Kucinich earlier this month introduced a bill to compel the withdrawal of all American troops from Libya within 15 days, the leadership of both parties and the political class treated it the way they do most of Kucinich's challenges to establishment political orthodoxy:  they ignored it except to mock its unSeriousness.  But a funny thing happened: numerous liberal House Democrats were joined by dozens of conservative GOP members to express support for his bill, and the White House and GOP House leadership became jointly alarmed that the bill could actually pass; that's why GOP House Speaker John Boehner introduced a Resolution purporting to rebuke Obama for failing to comply with the War Powers Resolution, but which, in fact, was designed to be an utterly inconsequential act.  Its purpose was to protect Obama's war by ensuring that Kucinich's bill failed; the point of Boehner's alternative was to provide a symbolic though meaningless outlet for those House members angry over Obama's failure to get Congressional support."

Gosh, it must suck for the greater nobles when the lessor nobles chose a different way to loot the people than the greater nobles. I'm unimpressed. Another perspective...

"At the last minute, House Speaker John “Crybaby” Boehner cobbled together a non-binding resolution giving the President an extension of the 60 days provided by the War Powers Resolution, asking for documents detailing our political and strategic goals, and slamming the administration for not providing “a compelling rationale” for military action. The resolution passed, 268-145, with 45 Democrats crossing the aisle and voting with the Republicans. More significantly, however, the Kucinich resolution – which would have cut off appropriations for the Libyan intervention – garneredmore Republican votes (87) than Democratic “ayes” (61).What’s going on here?"

The crooks in Congress are pretending to care about their constituents, but those constituents don't have the power to actually end the wars. Hope is a wonderful emotion, but this isn't a sign of hope. It's a sign of Congress's power to crush hope. And while 2012 may empower the people somewhat, it won't empower them enough to save our country from the robbery done in the last century.

"Context is everything, and the economic crisis that has gripped the nation in recent months – underscored by an unemployment rate over 9 percent and a disastrous housing market – has driven home the point anti-interventionists have been making for years: we’re “nation-building” abroad while our own country is falling to pieces. This is something that everyone – even a Republican – can readily understand, and the freshman “tea party” class of 2010 is learning very quickly the lesson their eldersrefused to absorb during the Bush era: we can’t afford to police the world."

Welcome to the economic reality party a couple of decades too late. This is like sending out a memo that communism might fall in 1993. Hello. The memo is late. The collapse of the US police state is already in progress. Nonsense is all we get from Washington.

ILLEGAL IMMIGRATION:

This is an unfortunate fact:

"If you give government a job to do, even one that seems justified in the abstract, it will use its power to make a terrible mess in practice. This is true in a host of areas from welfare to warfare, but it is even true in the complicated area of immigration."

No doubt about it.

"Just imagine this. The owners of Chuy's Mesquite Broiler in Phoenix and 13 other locations around western states have been kidnapped from their popular restaurants and dragged to jail. This will be followed by trial, and certain personal bankruptcy. They could face 80 years in prison. In the raid, "Homeland Security" stole their computers, their accounting and employment records, and walked out the door – just like a gang of thieves. The only difference is that these thugs operate under the cover of the law."

Government is brute force. This sucks. I love Chuy's. I support having businesses check ID like bartenders to make sure they don't hire illegal immigrants, but this response is ridiculous. As Rockwell points out, it's also predictable. This is a matter for the states, not the feds according to the Constitution.

FOREIGN POLICY:

Spain leads other European countries in Arabian-style protests.

POLITICS:

As much as I distrust the tea party, and as much as tea party candidates immediately betrayed the small-government ideals they ran on as I and others predicted, I wouldn't dismiss them out of hand. Rand Paul got elected because of them. I expect the tea party will oust more establishment Republicans in the 2012 primary. So they are doing some good. Not as much as libertarians would wish, but still some good. But the little good they're doing is far too little, far too late to stop the two party government machine from destroying our economy and dragging us all into an extended period of poverty.