Free kibbles

TAX AND SPEND:

John Boehner is the Democrats's favorite tool. That guy has done more heavy lifting to cover up and legitimize their gonzo spending than anybody in history. He's helped Democrats make the case that the tea party is the problem. With friends like him carrying water for the big spending establishment of both parties, who needs enemies?

Twenty two Republicans resisted Boehner's appeasement for Democrats.

POLICE STATE:

Another example of how citizens keep themselves and their fellow citizens safe.

Getting revenge on Anonymous, Paypal gives FBI 1,000 IPs Anonymous used to attack Paypal.

WAR:

Now we get report that Somali women are being systematically raped. This is another step in ginning up support to send US troops into Somalia.

NATO is so ignorant about what's going on in Libya, that Gaddafi forces managed to pose as a rebel faction and infiltrate the rebel movement. I wonder how many air strikes NATO performed on their behalf before this was discovered.

FOREIGN POLICY:

Syrian government uses tanks against protesters.

POLITICS:

I'll be darned. Lew Rockwell has mild criticism for Ron Paul. That's the first I've seen of that.

I've long contended that because politicians make a living by stealing money from others and using violence to force their will on others and because the primary skill of a politician is to lie about that without conscience, that politicians were all freaks, psychopaths and sociopaths. I've long contended that the worst of the worst rise to the top. Now we get this from the Wall Street Journal:

"When times are good and the ship of state only needs to sail straight, mentally healthy people function well as political leaders. But in times of crisis and tumult, those who are mentally abnormal, even ill, become the greatest leaders. We might call this the Inverse Law of Sanity."

Hello? Have you never heard of Mao, Stalin or Hitler? Pol Pot? Castro? Whoever wrote that is insane.

Hard core libertarians often claim that government can't be changed from the inside. It must be abolished by withdrawing consent. That's a pipe dream. Never in the history of the world has a society withdrawn consent from government and replaced that government with a society based on natural law. Like the government is just going to put down its guns and walk away. Advocating that position is just a way to avoid having to engage and do the work to change the system from within. Not only can libertarians gain ground by changing the system from within, it's the only way we have. Ron Paul supporters are proving that in Nevada.

"Since [2008], Paul’s Nevada supporters have been working a new strategy. As Paul readies his 2012 presidential campaign, the outsiders have now become the insiders, working to change the state Republican Party from within its own ranks, rather than battling it from the outside.Again, they’ve been fairly successful."

Imagine that. Dedicated people with truth on their side and passion using their talents and drive to change the system from within. Let's do it everywhere. Of course they haven't been as successful as they would like. Nobody ever is, and the establishment fights back. The establishment will betray them. The establishment will backstab them. And many of them will become the establishment and have to be replaced. But ultimately, this is the path to victory.

The fat cat Republican establishment handed Romney another $12 million for his PAC.

"Restore Our Future, a group run by Romney officials from his 2008 bid, was funded exclusively by 90 wealthy donors, most of which have also given to the former Massachusetts governor’s presidential campaign account."

I can't wait to watch this sleaze-ball lose. His only hope is that, because there are so many candidates, they split the vote. Just like McCain in 2008. Romney hires the guy who wished the Fed could set our money on fire to solve our economic problems.

I bet you guessed that Rick Perry was also funded by millionaires and billionaires. He's also a tenth amendment hypocrite.

Herman Cain dominates Denver straw poll. Wow. He'd become almost invisible.

LOCAL:

Because we've given a few people power over schools, they might choose to teach creationism as if it was equivalent to evolution. In a free society, most people would send their children to schools that gave them a quality education so they could make a lot of money as adults, and those who sent their children to schools that eschewed science would have children who made less money as adults.

MISC:

Apparently people are just figuring out that anything controlled by computer can be controlled by a hacker such as prison cell doors.

This is a great quote:

"The government is good at one thing.  It knows how to break your legs, and then hand you a crutch and say, 'See, if it weren't for the government, you wouldn't be able to walk.'"

Perfect.

Free kibbles

ECONOMY:

Most economists agree we're sliding deeper into depression, but the Keynesian prescription is dangerously wrong.

"In reading Krugman and the Keynesians, I am always struck by their analysis that assets, economically speaking, really are homogeneous. It doesn't matter where new spending is directed, just as long as there is spending. Spend, and everything else falls into place."

I've said the same thing: to a Keynesian, all work is equivalent. Digging ditches and filling them adds as much to aggregate demand as building a new building. Paying somebody to do nothing is the same as paying them to create wealth. Digging ditches by hand, with a shovel or with a back-hoe  makes no difference. Keynesians have no understanding of wealth or of capital.

The Wall Street Journal is the most powerful cheerleader for the US economy, even it is has been forced to admit our economy continues to crash. And yeah, I can read the numbers. They say GDP has grown at just over zero percent. That's a phony statistic. Government spending has grown significantly. During the same time, the private sector has shrunk significantly too. Don't fall for the bull****.

POLICE STATE:

The good news is the FBI is using high tech means to nab al Qaeda sympathizers. The bad news is they're using the same techniques against you. You may think that because you're innocent, you will be treated as such, but I remind you that any data they collect against you will be used against you in a court of law, and if they arrest you, will be treated as guilty unless you are able to prove your innocence.

MEDIA:

It cracks me up how all these media articles present it as a fact that failing to raise the debt ceiling is a bad thing.

"And the real kicker? This whole wrenching effort to shrink the debt may actually increase the debt."

Of course, raising the debt ceiling is the way to reduce the debt. Failing to raise it will increase the debt. It's so obvious.

LOCAL:

Every time we have a storm, thousands of people lose power. This is just stupid. This used to be rare. Now it happens every, single storm. Government control of goods that make civilization is turning our country into a third world country.

MISC:

Leather version of barefoot running shoe.

Free kibbles

ECONOMY:

Our economy didn't grow in the first half of 2011, but our debt grew tremendously. That's a bad trade-off.

GE moving jobs to China to escape the burden of government.

"It's the kind of news that makes you want to reach for something sharp and jab it in your eye. General Electric's Chief Executive, Jeffrey Immelt, is one of President Obama's advisers on… ready? U.S. job creation!"

I don't want to jab it in my eye.

Apple has more cash than the US government. This is meant to point out the stupidity of government, but I see it different. Apple investors should be quaking in their boots because as soon as some Congress-crook realizes this, Congress will steal this money.

TAX AND SPEND:

Ron Paul confirms what I've said all along: the fix is in. The leaders have already reached an agreement. All this debt ceiling baloney is a charade so each side can blame the other and claim credit. Fulfilling my prophesy, the Senate kills the latest plan passed by the House. It still cracks me up that for the last two years Obama and his powerful majorities in both chambers of Congress spent like - well, like nothing we've ever seen in the history of mankind - but Republicans are being blamed for resisting debt limit increases.

Obama is not addicted to deficit spending. If only it was that simple. Obama has a plan to collapse the American economy under the burden of government, and he's doing everything he can to make that happen. Fortunately, he can only do so much, and the American people do a fantastic job of overcoming the burden of government to keep our economy going. But Obama is making it tougher every day.

High taxes kill cities. Tell me about it.

GLOBAL WARMING AND ENERGY:

Obama can't let a day go by without battering the American people and our economy. Today he did it with higher fuel standard demands. These demands will force automakers to nearly double mileage which means it will kill big cars, SUVs and trucks. This is insane. It will make cars ridiculously expensive and dangerous.

WAR:

GAO reports slams Pentagon for terrible cyber-security. And the government wants to seize control over the entire internet ostensibly to secure it.

MEDIA:

I have to admit my guilty pleasure of laughing at the bias of media. I can't help it. Frankly, it's one of the great enjoyments I get in life. For example, here's the first paragraph of a USA Today article about the debt ceiling:

"In an unforgiving display of partisanship, the House passed emergency legislation Friday night to avoid an unprecedented government default and the Senate scuttled it less than two hours later."

Isn't it interesting how the House is engaging in an unforgiving display of partisanship but neither the Senate nor the president is? What a crock. Our press sucks almost as much as the government it partners with.

LOCAL:

The autopsy turned up no drugs or alcohol in system of young man who busted out of a police car and killed himself by jumping off of the Salem Street bridge.

MISC:

Hackers modify military drone and fly it to hack wi-fi networks and cell phones.

You know those unlimited bandwidth programs? They can't exist. They're impossible. For example, suppose AT&T's maximum bandwidth was XXX Goofybytes. Suppose you tried to download YYY Goofybytes where YYY > XXX. It's impossible for AT&T to meet your demand. So, like every other unlimited plan before, AT&T is throttling bandwidth beyond a certain metric. Bandwidth is a scare resource like another, and it will be allocated by price. Never fall for the hype. Buy a plan with limited bandwidth so you don't become a victim.

Free kibbles

ECONOMY:

The so-called experts are once again surprised, this time by a drop in durable good orders.

TAX AND SPEND:

Harry Reid blames the tea party for keeping Republicans from giving in to Democrats on the debt ceiling debate. He's right. The Boehner plan is worse than worthless, but at least the tea party kept the establishment Republicans from caving to Democrats like Democrats expected. It's important to remember that the reason the government hit this debt ceiling limit so rapidly was the outrageous spending Obama and Democrats forced through in the last couple of years, so it is dishonest to blame Republicans for this problem. It's also dishonest that the president hasn't put forth a plan, Senate Democrats haven't passed a plan, but the House Republicans have passed several plans but they're still being blamed for the lack of a deal.

Here's a pretty honest and accurate assessment of the debt ceiling quandary.

When the government shut down in 1996.

Prediction that the US will implement a European-style wealth tax. I can just hear the class warfare arguments now.

FEDERAL RESERVE:

The Fed tries to combat the accusation it prints money by explaining it uses electronic money, as if that makes  a difference.

GLOBAL WARMING AND ENERGY:

Somebody recognizes the same thing I've noticed...

"The most surprising thing about the current heat wave affecting much of the United States is that no global warming charlatan is claiming that it is the result of carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions."

It's odd.

"Dennis T. Avery of the Hudson Institute, reports CERN has demonstrated “that more cosmic rays do, indeed, create more clouds in the earth’s atmosphere.” Cosmic rays are subatomic particles from outer space. More clouds means that less of the sun’s warmth reaches the Earth’s surface."

Several studies have provided evidence in support of this theory.

The solar energy sector is maturing, but how much of that is because of subsidies?

Study of NASA satellite data shows that global warming models are full of hot air.

"NASA satellite data from the years 2000 through 2011 show the Earth's atmosphere is allowing far more heat to be released into space than alarmist computer models have predicted, reports a new study in the peer-reviewed science journal Remote Sensing. The study indicates far less future global warming will occur than United Nations computer models have predicted, and supports prior studies indicating increases in atmospheric carbon dioxidetrap far less heat than alarmists have claimed."

"There is a huge discrepancy between the data and the forecasts that is especially big over the oceans."

Imagine that.

WAR ON DRUGS:

Here's a good reminder that the war on drugs creates lunacy.

"A Minnesota senior was jailed by Canadian border guards at a Manitoba port of entry after a jar containing some motor oil was mistaken for heroin."

This can only happen because government turns people who possess drugs into criminals.

POLICE STATE:

This is a good reminder that the crooks in Congress are also creeps.

"A group of Senators are meeting in secret today, while most people are focused on the 'debt ceiling' issue, in order to try to rush through a renewal of the FISA Amendments Act, which expressly allowed warrantless wiretapping in the U.S. The law isn't set to expire until next year, but some feel that the debt ceiling crisis is a good distraction to pass the extension without having to debate the issue in public."

They are rotten to the core.

The impossibility of just judgment. What can be determined pretty well is how much damage was done by a criminal and therefore how much restitution must be made.

WAR:

Democrat calls for hearings on right-wing extremism and terrorism. That didn't take long. The blood of the Norwegian victims isn't even dry yet. Review if law enforcement spends enough resources oppressing the right-wing.

US soldier accused of planning a bomb attack on Fort Hood.

Libyan rebel leader and top commanders killed.

POLITICS:

Thing's aren't looking good for Obama's reelection.

MEDIA:

How the media is propagandizing the Norwegian terrorist.

LOCAL:

Can you imagine a company in the private sector allowing a water leak to spill a steady stream of water into a neighborhood for six weeks? It would never happen. Only government can be that bad. Naturally budget cuts are blamed.

MISC:

Anybody who doesn't realize that if you can open your car door and start your car with your cell phone, so can a hacker, is a fool.

Free kibbles

SOCIALISM:

Description of The Lost Literature of Socialism.

"In his hard-hitting and controversial book, George Watson examines the foundation texts of socialism to find out what they really say; the result is blasphemy against socialism's canon of saints. Marx and Engels publicly advocated genocide in 1849; Ruskin called himself a violent Tory and a King's man; and Shaw held the working classes in utter contempt. Drawing on an impressive range of sources from Robert Owen to Ken Livingstone, the author demonstrates that socialism was a conservative, nostalgic reaction to the radicalism of capitalism, and not always supposed to be advantageous to the poor. There have even been socialist monarchs - Napoleon III was one. Two chapters of the book study Hitler's claim that "the whole of National Socialism" was based on Marx, and bring to light the common theoretical basis of the beliefs of Stalin and Hitler which led to death camps. As a literary critic, George Watson's concern is to pay proper respect to the works of the founding fathers of socialism, to attend to what they say and not what their modern disciples wish they had said. The dust grows thick on many of these tomes, while present-day socialists follow a few ossified slogans plucked selectively from the best-known books. Socialist ideas are now rescued from priggish and woolly-thinking moralists so that genuine debate can be revived. This invigorating book forces the reader to abandon long-standing assumptions in political thought. It is certain to ruffle feathers, blue as well as red. Read the Preface here."

This is exactly what I expected. People who claim socialism is about advancing the poor are either ignorant or lying. Anybody who can't tell that Hitler and Stalin shared ruling philosophies, philosophies that are the natural product of socialism, is a fool.

ECONOMY:

Obama blames technological innovation and efficiency for unemployment. Walter Williams destroys that claim. Wealth creation leads to more, higher paying jobs, not less.

TAX AND SPEND:

Thomas Sowell brings up an interesting point about the debt ceiling.

"The national debt-ceiling law should be judged by what it actually does, not by how good an idea it seems to be. The one thing that the national debt-ceiling has never done is to put a ceiling on the rising national debt. Time and time again, for years on end, the national debt-ceiling has been raised whenever the national debt gets near whatever the current ceiling might be.Regardless of what it is supposed to do, what the national debt-ceiling actually does is enable any administration to get all the political benefits of runaway spending for the benefit of their favorite constituencies -- and then invite the opposition party to share the blame, by either raising the national debt ceiling, or by voting for unpopular cutbacks in spending or increases in taxes.
The Obama administration is a classic example. When all its skyrocketing spending bills were being rushed through Congress without even being read, the Democrats had such overwhelming majorities in both the Senate and the House of Representatives that Republicans had all they could do to get a word in edgewise -- even though their words had no chance of stopping, or even slowing down, the spending of trillions of dollars.
Now that the bill is coming due for all that spending and borrowing, Republicans are suddenly being invited in to share the blame for either raising the national debt ceiling or for whatever other unpopular measures will be legislated."

That's a good point. It definitely favors the majority.

We keep hearing this crap about how the government must pay it's bills and that it's immoral for the government to fail to meet its obligations. But what if a mafia don ran up a big tab at his local Italian restaurant, but he hadn't stolen enough money to pay for it yet? Does it suddenly become moral for him to steal more money from others to pay that bill? Why is it different for government?

Phony statistics like GDP hide the growth of government, and it's nearly impossible to measure the burden of regulations.

HEALTH CARE:

Woman charged for growing vegetables in her yard. That's how deeply the government is in bed with big food producers to keep us sick.

Government's attack on the food supply has prompted civil disobedience.

WAR:

Insight into the bizarre mind of the Norwegian mass murderer includes suspicion he did not work alone.

I don't know about this...

"Oh my, the young man accused of killing 93 people in Norway, isn’t the man Homeland Security and the Pentagon hoped for."

The government has been telling us for a decade that we're all terrorist suspects. Now they can finally point to an incident to justify their policies. They're going to make us pay big-time for his actions.

ILLEGAL IMMIGRATION:

Children of illegal immigrants aren't getting ahead because they're illegal immigrants. Duh.

POLITICS:

I agree with Lew on this. I'm shocked only 46 percent think most in Congress are corrupt.

Congress's approval rating hits a record low of 6 percent. This is bad news. We should be happy Congress hasn't raised the debt ceiling limit. So far they've done the right thing: nothing. But they'll screw it up in the end. Somebody is going to raise the debt ceiling.

The word "we" as an excuse for collectivism, meaning stealing our stuff.

MISC:

Chinese couple sells their kids, three of them, each at a different time, for gaming money.

The Ends Can’t Justify the Means

The Ends Can’t Justify the Means
by Mark Luedtke

This may come as a surprise to most Americans, but judges and prosecutors, like all politicians, are not Jesus Christ. They’re not angels. They’re not saints. In the most fundamental way, they’re normal people like everybody else. Like you and me, they work to advance their personal economic interests. They want a nicer house, nicer cars and a vacation house on the beach. They want to send their kids to the best private schools. They use the justice system to advance their careers. They work to get re-elected or promoted to higher office.

But American voters don’t elect prosecutors and judges who are “soft on crime”. Voters want convictions. Therefore the police, prosecutors, the prosecutor’s stable of so-called experts, the judge and every other criminal justice system official focus on convicting as many people as possible regardless of guilt because that’s how they improve their standard of living.

Don’t take my word for it. Watch several trials, especially the preliminary hearings, so the patterns of corruption will be obvious. See the charade for yourself. Take your kids during the summer. At least look up The Innocence Project.

The corrupt nature of courts used to be common knowledge before government seized monopoly control over schools. That’s why in the past, when people were better educated, they created the jury system. The only thing standing between the awesome destructive power of the state and a poor sap targeted by criminal justice agents is a jury.

Judges and prosecutors hate that twelve serfs stand between them and a new vacation house, so they systematically marginalize juries. Police, prosecutors and propagandists try and convict the accused in the media to bias prospective jurors before they’re conscripted. Prospective jurors are conscripted from the list of registered voters because registered voters are invested in the political system. They identify with the prosecutor, judge and police so they’re likely to trust them. Jurors are not allowed to know anybody involved in the case to make sure they won’t identify with the accused or his attorney. The judge browbeats reluctant jurors with rhetoric about duty and valuable service, then forces them to work essentially without pay, subservient. The judge and prosecutor don’t work for free. Jurors are barred from seeking information about the case from any source outside the courtroom to insure that all information they receive is spoon-fed to them by government agents. They are barred from questioning witnesses or examining the scene independently. Prosecutors demand jurors check their brains at the door and rubber stamp their claims. They kick professionals off the jury out of fear they might think for themselves.

Jurors’ self-interest also biases them toward conviction because if they acquit a real criminal, that criminal may harm them in the future. If they convict an innocent person, their lives will be unchanged.

The numbers only hint at the incalculable damage this bias has caused. Over seven million people are trapped in the US penal system. One in one hundred Americans is imprisoned. That’s far more people and a far higher incarceration rate than any other country. The US isn’t the land of the free. It’s the land of the imprisoned.

But every now and then a case like the Casey Anthony case reminds us that the natural decency of the American people can still resist corrupt government power.

The Casey Anthony case illustrated the standard qualities of our conviction system. Police, prosecutors, Nancy Grace and others got a rope and whipped a lynch mob into a frenzy, insuring every prospective juror was biased toward conviction. Jurors were conscripted, locked up, denied access to media and forced to serve for essentially no pay for weeks. Prisoners in Guantanamo have more privileges.

The judge allowed the prosecutor to present weeks worth of character assassination as if it was evidence. As if dancing is evidence of murder. The judge allowed the prosecutor to emotionally manipulate the jury with a fictional video of duck tape over Caylee Anthony’s mouth. He allowed the prosecutor to present bizarre, untested evidence about air quality from the trunk of her car. The judge perfectly played the role of pretending to be an unbiased gatekeeper while in reality being a facilitator for the prosecutor. Prosecutors also illegally withheld information from the defense, a tactic they commonly use with impunity.

But despite the systemic and social bias, the twelve jurors did what they were supposed to do: they judged the prosecutor’s case and found it insufficient to prove guilt beyond a reasonable doubt even though at least some jurors thought Anthony was guilty.

The state is the most destructive institution ever created, so it’s always a good day when the people check its corrupt application of power, even if it means a murderer goes free. But the lynch mob has turned on the jurors for doing their job. The final straw in our degeneration into a banana republic will occur when the government takes jurors and their families into protective custody ostensibly to protect them from the lynch mobs they incite but in reality to coerce them into convicting. If government’s mob harms a juror, that will open the door for just that.

Free kibbles

ECONOMY:

The bigger government gets, the more it spends and regulates, the wider the wealth gap between whites and minorities becomes. That's because when you concentrate political power in the hands of a few, economic power also becomes concentrated in the hands of a few. This is both logical and supported by all of history. The economic problems created by government always harm minorities the most. Why can't liberals figure that out?

Why Alan Greenspan was responsible for the 2008 crash.

TAX AND SPEND:

The New York Times exposes Bush's outrageous spending that Republicans pretend never happened.

A friendly reminder that government will never pay off its debt, so increasing it is stupid. How government created our debtor nation.

"Hyman's most enlightening chapter is entitled "Securing Debt." After decades of urging the American public to borrow and banks to lend, in the 1960s the government planted the securitization seed that would grow to tip the financial system over in 2008. LBJ's Great Society looked to push capital into decaying cities, but the buying and selling of individual mortgages was cumbersome. Mortgage paper needed to be bondlike, and the Housing Act of 1968 implemented this vision, remaking "the American mortgage system in a way that had not been done since the New Deal."Along with "privatizing" Fannie Mae, the bill created the mortgage-backed security, directed mortgage funds toward low-income borrowers, and authorized the Treasury to be the buyer of last resort to the market. The federal government's intrusion in the housing market continued to grow. The idea that Fannie Mae was suddenly cast adrift to market forces is fallacious. Fannie was required to buy low-income mortgages and its "larger market actions would remain partially under government control.""

So after all the crap we heard about how businesses created mortgage backed securities, in fact government created them. What a shocker.

"Freddie Mac teamed up with Lewis Ranieri's Salomon Brothers and First Bank of Boston to create collateralized mortgage obligations (CMOs) in 1983. CMOs could be split into slices (tranches) allowing buyers to satisfy whatever risk appetite they had. "With the right math, a mortgage could be turned into anything.""

And the GSE Freddie came up with slicing those securities to spread the risk. Another shocker.

REGULATION:

Obama's business friendly rhetoric is worthless in the face of his regulatory onslaught. Ignore the words. Watch the actions.

GLOBAL WARMING AND ENERGY:

Residents of one Australian city are being squeezed by a heritage regulation restricting building heights to be less than a historic pub and by a regulation demanding floors be raised to guard against rising sea levels. The metaphor becomes real life. With just two regulations, government is literally squeezing this city into ruin.

POLICE STATE:

Plans to fight police corruption in Britain include:

"Army officers could be parachuted into the highest police ranks as part of a major Government shake-up. ... Senior intelligence personnel, civil servants and lawyers could also be fast-tracked into top positions, while university graduates could be put through a Sandhurst-style college to speed their progress."

 More centralization means more power therefore more corruption, not less.

Judge will release the names of Casey Anthony jurors as required by law but only after what he calls a cooling off period.

FOREIGN POLICY:

Aid workers help east Africa's starving. Something is going to blow here to spark a new crisis so Obama can send in US troops.

POLITICS:

Obama's poll numbers reach a new low at 43 percent.

LOCAL:

Unemployment increases in Dayton and Montgomery County.

MISC:

On the success of Mises Academy.

Walmart takes on Netflix with video streaming.

The economics of big cities.

Free kibbles

TAX AND SPEND:

Banks pay off TARP loans by borrowing from another government program. Just watch the right hand. Don't watch the left.

Boehner accuses Obama of creating a crisis atmosphere. It's about time Republicans stood up to that creep. I'm no fan of Republicans, but the way the media, Democrats and even Republicans have played nicey-nice with him disgusts me. It looks like CBS is doing a hit piece on Boehner, trying to make him look like a wimp. I don't believe it. He's a weasel, always trying to compromise his way to greater wealth and power, but I don't think he's intimidated by Obama for a second.

REGULATION:

Quotas on the number of women in the board room will ruin the status of women, relegating them to affirmative action status.

FEDERAL RESERVE:

The problem with government gold standards summed up: they lie. The people should determine what is money, not the government.

A decade or so ago, I wrote a cyber-punk story that featured the all-seeing eye of law enforcement. Nobdoy was interested. Today we have the hive-mind of facial recognition.

"As The Boston Globe reports, Massachussetts resident John H. Gass had his license revoked after the facial recognition Hive Mind deemed him an un-Person. Glass had done nothing, though – other than being tardy opening his mail, including a threatening letter from the Massachussetts Registry of Motor Vehicles demanding that he prove the guy pictured on his DL was, in fact, him.

Here’s where it gets interesting – and depressing.

Gass had already established his identity – apparently, to the satisfaction of the state motor vehicle authorities – at the time his license was originally issued. Just like everyone else who applies for a DL.

Now it – well, a computer – demanded he prove it again. On his nickel. On his own time."

Maybe my story was too mundane. Or maybe it sucked.

WAR:

Apparently the home-grown Norwegian terrorist was rabidly anti-Muslim.

"The children he massacred had held a pro-Palestinian rally the day before, and the Norwegian government planned to recognize Palestine and get out of Libya, both acts eliciting the hatred of neocons."

Everybody's got a nut. This guy just gave government the excuse it needed to treat all of us as criminals, which it was doing without an excuse before. All we're going to hear about for the next year and a half is right-wing extremism.

POLITICS:

Harry Reid and Mitch McConnell are proposing a super-congress: a committee of the top dogs of both parties in both chambers so they can fast track legislation past those pesky tea partiers throwing a wrench in the big government machine. I don't buy the propaganda about cutting entitlements. Boehner's on board too.

Another example showing politicians are freaks.

MEDIA:

Glenn Beck compares the teens killed in the Norway terrorist attack to the Hitler youth.

"There was a shooting at a political camp, which sounds a little like, you know, the Hitler youth. I mean, who does a camp for kids that's all about politics? Disturbing."

Wow.

LOCAL:

Obama's fear-mongering about him cutting off funds to seniors is scaring local seniors.

MISC:

It turns out bitcoin is not anonymous. Oops.

Remember when scientists told us definitively that the moon was volcanically dead? I hope so, because that was just yesterday. Today they've discovered volcanoes. Next to meteorologists and economists, scientists the experts who never have to say they're sorry for being wrong. I bet the experts who claimed the world is flat never ate crow either. What a crock.

Free kibbles

HEALTH CARE:

Armed raids on raw milk producers. God forbid people drink healthy, raw milk. It steals sales from the corporate milk producers.

MISC:

Confirmation that humans interbred with Neanderthals.

Free kibbles

ECONOMY:

Prediction of a social media bubble.

HEALTH CARE:

The USDA supports irradiating food with a radiation dose equivalent to half a billion chest X-rays. Who do you think benefits from this process?  Government caught covering up evidence of fluoride toxicity to benefit dentists.

GLOBAL WARMING AND ENERGY:

Joe Bastardi predicts no el Nino this year, thank goodness. It's plenty hot already. Unfortunately, he's predicting a cold winter too.

Yes, sugar is bad for people, but using government to ban sugar would be far worse. Think of the deadly black market that would create. People would binge on sugar. They would process it further. They would shoot it into their veins. A sugar ban would create mayhem, death and destruction even greater than the war on drugs because people crave sugar far more than drugs.

POLICE STATE:

What laws have you broken today?

WAR:

The body count in Norway reaches 92. Wow. So far the government believes this was a home grown terrorist attack. The alleged mass murderer is not what the government establishment wishes.

LOCAL:

The Dayton air show is a trend setter. I don't know what that means, but I'm happy to hear it. Suddenly my blogger page is under intense scrutiny. Imagine that. God forbid somebody enjoy the local air show.

Free kibbles

SOCIALISM:

The government lost $1.3 billion on the Chrysler bailout. That's like pennies to the crooks in Washington.

State Attorneys General are negotiating broad immunity for banks for all the mortgage fraud.

"State attorneys general are negotiating to give major banks wide immunity over irregularities in handling foreclosures, even as evidence has emerged that banks are continuing to file questionable documents.A coalition of all 50 states' attorneys general has been negotiating settlements with five of the biggest U.S. banks that would include payment of up to $25 billion in penalties and commitments to follow new rules. In exchange, the banks would get immunity from civil lawsuits by the states, as well as similar guarantees by the Justice Department and Department of Housing and Urban Development, which have participated in the talks."

The banks don't care about the fine because the Fed will effectively pay it. This is a good reminder that government exists to protect the ruling class and to loot the people on their behalf. Legislatures exist to make the crimes of the ruling class legal. How much more fraud will have to be exposed before people realize that government is the problem, not the solution.

ECONOMY:

Prediction that unemployment is going to top 10 percent.

TAX AND SPEND:

Confirmation of my theory about bond holders (a theory which I probably put together from reading North in the first place).

"An increase in the debt ceiling will send the same negative message to holders of Treasury debt. But these people are overwhelmingly optimistic about the short-term future of U.S. government solvency. They do not care about the long term, because they believe that they can always sell their T-debt positions to willing buyers. They have faith that their personal optimism regarding Federal solvency will be widely held when they decide it's time to sell and buy some other asset. They think that they can become pessimistic ahead of the masses of holders of T-debt. They think they will be smarter and swifter than the market for T-debt. They think they are very smart indeed"

Short term thinking like this will lead to long term disaster.

"These supposed experts were dead wrong in 2009. They did not see the Greek debt crisis coming, any more than they saw the financial crisis of 2008 coming. They see themselves as ever so clever, and then they lose hundreds of billions of dollars."

Funny.

"Then they call on governments to bail them out, which (so far) governments have done."

Not funny.

Obama and Boehner performed a new, dramatic act in the debt ceiling negotiation charade. Obama summoning Congressional leaders sounds a lot like a king summoning a minister. How stupid are we that we have empowered two men to control hundreds of trillions in dollars of debt that we have to pay for?

FAA funding runs out at midnight.

"In a news release, Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood said he was disappointed that lawmakers did not pass a reauthorization and that funding is set to run out at midnight Friday. "Because of their inaction, states and airports won't be able to work on their construction projects, and too many people will have to go without a paycheck," he said. "This is no way to run the best aviation system in the world."The release goes on to say, "The safety of the flying public will not be compromised."
Air traffic controllers will remain on the job, but the furloughs will affect many FAA engineers, scientists, computer specialists, community planners and others. According to the Department of Transportation, FAA workers could be furloughed in 35 states, Washington, D.C., and Puerto Rico."

Why is the FAA doing construction? This is just another federal ditch-digging jobs program.

US bonds are not magical. Markets will deal with a default on them as they deal with defaults on any other bond.

FEDERAL RESERVE:

Ron Paul succinctly sums up Austrian Business Cycle Theory and explains our current problems in an op-ed about the debt ceiling:

"The Austrian School’s theory of the business cycle describes how loose central bank monetary policy causes booms and busts: It drives down interest rates below the market rate, lowering the cost of borrowing; encourages malinvestment; and causes economic miscalculation as resources are diverted from the highest value use as reflected in true consumer preferences. Loose monetary policy caused the dot-com bubble and the housing bubble, and now is causing the government debt bubble."

This will end badly, worse than anything we've ever experienced.

HEALTH CARE:

Because a company advertised the healthy benefits of walnuts, the FDA declared they were a drug and ordered the company to get permission to sell them. I used to make the argument that everything we ingest is a drug because everything we ingest changes our body chemistry. That's supposedly the definition of a drug. The FDA has caught on and is using that principle to oppress Americans.

"The FDA’s letter continues: “We have determined that your walnut products are promoted for conditions that cause them to be drugs because these products are intended for use in the prevention, mitigation, and treatment of disease.” Furthermore, the products are also “misbranded” because they “are offered for conditions that are not amenable to self-diagnosis and treatment by individuals who are not medical practitioners; therefore, adequate directions for use cannot be written so that a layperson can use these drugs safely for their intended purposes.” Who knew you had to have directions to eat walnuts?"

You can't make this stuff up.

"“The FDA’s language,” Faloon writes, “resembles that of an out-of-control police state where tyranny [reigns] over rationality.”"

Ya think?

"Meanwhile, Faloon points out, foods that have little to no redeeming value are advertised endlessly, often with dubious health claims attached. For example, Frito-Lay is permitted to make all kinds of claims about its fat-laden, fried products, including that Lay’s potato chips are “heart healthy.” Faloon concludes that “the FDA obviously does not want the public to discover that they can reduce their risk of age-related disease by consuming healthy foods. They prefer consumers only learn about mass-marketed garbage foods that shorten life span by increasing degenerative disease risk.”"

That's exactly right. The FDA and its corporate partners are conspiring to make Americans sick so they can make money off our sickness. All governments exist to help the ultra rich, the bankers and the corporations loot everybody else.

GLOBAL WARMING AND ENERGY:

Environmentalists who blocked power plants are killing people in this heat wave.

"It’s like something you’d expect in a third world country. During one of the hottest summers on record, a utility company in Detroit has announced it will turn off the air conditioners despite the National Weather Service issuing an Excessive Heat Warning for all of Southeast Michigan.From CBS News yesterday:
The excessive heat and higher electrical demand has led DTE Energy to begin intentional rolling blackouts in one Metro Detroit community, Thursday afternoon, and at least one other area could follow.
…
There were about 25,000 DTE customers without electricity, Thursday afternoon, as temperatures were set to hit the triple digits in Metro Detroit.  The biggest outages right now are in Redford Township, Detroit’s westside, Ferndale and Plymouth Township.
Dozens of communities surrounding Detroit are going without electricity and people aredying. It would be easy to blame Detroit Edison and the utilities for the outages and deaths, but the problem is with the EPA."

Environmentalists hate their fellow men.

WAR ON DRUGS:

Documenting the routine lawlessness of the federal agents investigating Lance Armstrong.

"In the latest salvo, attorneys for Armstrong have filed a complaint alleging that the authorities have been illegally leaking grand jury material to the media, and specifically Salena Roberts of Sports Illustrated, the New York Times, "60 Minutes," the Associated Press (AP) and others"

This is SOP.

"The fact that federal agents have no regard for the law – while simultaneously proclaiming their adherence to it – and the fact that no one in the news media seems to care that Lance Armstrong’s rights are being eviscerated so that Selena Roberts and her friends can gain financial and personal rewards is a sign of the times. The United States is not a country where those in authority believe they are bound by the law, and the Progressive Media, which prattles on about the "majesty of the law," actually spits on the law every day so that more people can be wrongly charged and imprisoned. If one wishes to understand the chief end of Progressivism, this is it."

We did this to ourselves.

POLICE STATE:

US seeks extradition of British man for linking to pirated material.

WAR:

Coordinated terrorist attack kills over 30 in Norway.

POLITICS:

Study claims that seeing the American flag transforms voters into Republicans. No wonder leftists hate the flag. This is silly.

This is the lesson about democracy the elite don't want us to know...

"One thing that Into the Cannibal’s Pot demonstrates is that democracy alone is not at all desirable if it is not attached to a culture that highly values the protection of life, liberty and property."

As government works relentlessly to devalue life, liberty and property in America, we're learning that lesson the hard way.

"American elites are silent about the various outrages occurring in South Africa, Mercer argues, because they support and sometimes personally benefit from similar policies in their own country."

No kidding.

"Mercer shows that Nelson Mandella, who was imprisoned before the worldwide collapse of socialism in the late 1980s/early 1990s, is still a devoted socialist. He gets the economics of apartheid exactly backwards, for instance: It was a system of governmental laws and regulations instigated by white labor unions, and was not an example of capitalism. This was explained wonderfully in Walter E. Williams’ book, South Africa’s War Against Capitalism. Nevertheless, Mandella announced in a 1997 speech that "the evolution of the capitalist system in our country put on the highest pedestal the promotion of the material interests of the white minority." Wrong, Nelson. As Mercer points out, the "biggest industrial upheaval in South Africa’s history" was a 1922 miner’s strike that came as a result of the fact that the capitalist mine owners wanted to hire more blacks. The white labor unions whose slogan was "Workers of the World Unite, Keep South Africa White," opposed this and the power of the government was employed to enforce discrimination against black workers. It was the capitalists who wanted to abolish the apartheid system because there were profits in doing so. White miners were paid much more than black miners even though they were not much more productive."

They'll never teach than in the US. Note that Williams's book is out of print and costs over a hundred dollars used.

Lots of Republicans are already polling well against Obama.

LOCAL:

The forecast for today is a high of 102. That's as hot as and way more humid than Texas. I still haven't seen anybody blame global warming.

MISC:

New minimal running shoe.

Jeffrey Tucker explains what's wrong with Facebook. Most people I know understood this the moment they found out how Facebook worked, but apparently 500 million people didn't. Google figured it out too, and that's why Google+ is significantly improved.

"In other words, Google+ found the thing about Facebook that distorts human associations and created a platform that more closely impersonates human social relations. To me, this is absolutely brilliant."

It is, and it should be a lesson for everybody. One key to success is having an idea the accentuates the human experience.

Free kibbles

ECONOMY:

Self-proclaimed experts are once again surprised by our bad economy.

TAX AND SPEND:

Investors losing confidence in Treasurys. Maybe they just noted the US has been spending unsustainably for years now.

Wall Street would take a beating if the crooks in Washington don't make a deal to steal more of our money. It must be nice to be the recipient of all that stolen money instead of the victim it's stolen from. This is one reason why they will raise the debt ceiling one way or another.

The debt ceiling mess does prove Congress is broken, but not in the way this article implies. It's broken because it steals our money, not because the two partiers are pretending they're going to reduce the amount they steal from us.

As I speculated long ago, it sounds like the fix is in. But nobody wants to talk about it.

"Democratic sources close to the negotiations said the potential agreements discussed by the White House and Republicans include up to $3 trillion in spending cuts over 10 years and a tax code rewrite by the end of 2012 that would bring in up to $1 trillion, also over the course of a decade. The sources spoke on condition of anonymity because they weren't authorized to speak publicly."

Sounds amazingly like the $4 trillion grand bargain that Obama and Boehner were working on a while ago. How convenient.

Latin Americans are pointing and laughing at our government. We're the laughing stock of the world. Our children will spit on our graves for what we've squandered.

Euro recovers on news of Greek debt plan. Why? I'm trying to figure out the mentality of these investors. They can't be dumb. They know as well as everybody else that these bailouts won't fix Greece or any other country. They know as well as everybody else that this makes the problem worse, not better. They must just be thinking short term. The bailouts guarantee the next rollover, and that must be all they care about. They must expect that they'll be able to make money until the system collapse, then they'll leave somebody else holding the bag.

You might think the FAA exists to make flying safer. You would be mistaken. It's a jobs program.

"The government will lose about $200 million a week in airline ticket taxes and $2.5 billion in airport construction projects will come to a halt if the Federal Aviation Administration is forced to shut down, Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood said Thursday."

The FAA exists to buy votes, as this article makes clear.

FEDERAL RESERVE:

The crooks at the Fed are preparing to take over if the crooks in Washington fail to raise the debt ceiling.

"Philadelphia Federal Reserve Bank President Charles Plosser said the Fed has for the past few months been working closely with Treasury, ironing out what to do if the world's biggest economy runs out of cash on August 2."

Are you afraid the cash in your pocket will fade into another dimension on August 2nd? What a joke. Cutting government spending would be a good thing. It would mean all the resources the government typically yanks out of the productive economy and squanders in the political economy will stay in the productive economy where people can use them to improve their lives. This is another reason the two parties will raise the debt ceiling one way or another.

HEALTH CARE:

Government domination of our health care system has left us vulnerable to diseases long since vanquished.

GLOBAL WARMING ENERGY:

I'm skeptical of this report that Congress stopped funding foreign global warming frauds.

POLICE STATE:

While crime rates fall, officer shootings rise.

We'll be lucky if the US doesn't start drone attacks against Anonymous.

FOREIGN POLICY:

I'm confused by the sudden news that Somalia is suffering famine. Apparently they weren't suffering famine, at least not newsworthy famine,  last week, but they are this week. I wonder if this is preparing the ground for another Clinton-esque humanitarian war mission into Somalia.

"The last time conditions were this bad was in 1992, when hundreds of thousands of Somalis starved to death."

Sounds like it. This has got to be part of a campaign to build support for more troops in Somalia. Reaching the needy is difficult and dangerous. What are the odds something bad is going to happen to some relief workers and western troops will have to go in?

POLITICS:

Senators playing politics with AT&T-T Mobile merger. That's what they do.

We've moved from wondering if Democrats will cross over and vote for Ron Paul in the primaries to advocating that.

The Onion reports that God urged Rick Perry not to run for president. He told Sarah Palin to run, but she's playing hard to get. Bachmann must have overheard that conversation while she was drugged up in the hospital with a migraine and thought he was talking to her.

LOCAL:

The government won't be happy until it shuts down every business in America like it's trying to shut down local bars through smoking fines.

"In a precedent-setting move, the Ohio Division of Liquor Control this month denied the liquor permit renewal of the Hamilton County business Peg’s Pub, on the grounds that it repeatedly disregarded state law by incurring about 18 fines and failing to pay $55,900 they owed, said Jen House, spokeswoman with the Ohio Department of Health."

It sounds to me like they're using selective enforcement run specific businesses out of business.

"“When you threaten the livelihood of the business, they are going to pay attention,” said Mark McDonnell, the health commissioner for Greene County."

Like threatening violence against businesses is good or moral. Get out of our lives.

MISC:

Now that Atlantis has landed, maybe people will stop talking about the shuttle. Good riddance. Now small firms have no work. Apparently the space shuttle was the world's most expensive jobs program. Maybe Obama could have them dig ditches then fill them in.

UK government to share restricted files in the cloud. What could go wrong? Anonymous is salivating.

The problem with volunteer work.

"If someone is actually getting paid to do work, he or she knows that at least one person values it. In contrast, volunteer work may or may not be useful, because it lacks the feedback of market prices."

Working for a living is public service. If you aren't performing a valuable service, you don't get paid.