Free kibbles

TAX AND SPEND:

All this talk about a balanced budget amendment is a red herring. The crooks don't obey the law or the Constitution. They'll have this same argument over and over and never balance the budget unless there are real penalties, like the leaders of both parties in both houses losing their jobs.

Remember in 2008 when Obama rammed whatever he wanted through Congress because he won the election? Remember in 2010 when voters wiped out Democrats for their big spending, big taxing way? Obama doesn't feel the same about that election so he keeps pushing for tax hikes.

A short history of US government defaults.

The government basically owns the big three credit rating agencies, so I'm not surprised that S&P has effectively come out in support of the Obama-Boehner not so grand bargain.

"Key elements for a big deal remain in place. Obama has been clear that he wants one and has started making the case to skeptical factions of his own party that getting the nation’s fiscal house in order is in their best interest. House Speaker John A. Boehner (R-Ohio) also remains committed to an ambitious plan, having told his troops that he didn’t become speaker to do small things. And, perhaps most critically, the markets are demanding it. The credit rating agency Standard & Poor’s says Washington must agree to reduce the debt by $4 trillion over 10 years to avert a downgrade."

Since S&P is basically a branch of the government, it does what the most powerful men in Washington want. It cracks me up how the press keeps calling this a grand bargain. The government is going to create from 10-15 trillion in debt, maybe more, over the next ten years, but everybody acts like some bargain that will nominally cut that by four trillion, but which will never actually happen, is a grand bargain.

REGULATION:

If clothes designers get copyright, it will cripple the fashion industry they way IP is crippling others.

GLOBAL WARMING:

The idea that scientists are trying to manufacture consensus on man-made global warming makes any consensus meaningless.

POLICE STATE:

This statement from the Casey Anthony prosecutor sums up his case and why he lost.

"I have never been able to figure out a reason why somebody would cover up an accident by putting pieces of duct tape over the nose and mouth of a child and then dumping them in a swamp. When children die by accident, people call for help. That's how it works in the real world. In the fictional world that may be different. But in the real world, people want their child to live and Casey clearly didn't. Every action she took showed that."

None of that is evidence of murder, and it shouldn't have been allowed in the trial. The onus is not on the defense to explain why somebody might put duck tape on a child who died by accident. The onus is on the prosecution to show that the defendant committed murder. Failing to report her child missing is not evidence of murder. It's evidence she's a rotten mother. She certainly seemed happy her daughter was dead. That's reason to suspect her. But it's not evidence of murder. Experts noted that the judge really facilitated the prosecution:

""The judge really opened the doors for everything in this case. Maybe he thought, 'Let the appeals court deal with it.' Maybe he was punting. But in my opinion, none of it should have gotten into the trial" said defense lawyer and forensic consultant Keith Murray."

No kidding. The same with the video:

""It was a graphic animation portraying [a theory of] how the child was killed but it wasn't evidence. It only graphically showed what the prosecution would like the jury to believe happened. It's not evidence, it shouldn't have been admitted as evidence. It's inflammatory and not based on any scientific foundation," said Lawrence Kobilinsky, chairman of the Department of Sciences at John Jay College School of Criminal Justice in New York."

No kidding.

WAR:

The body guard who killed Karzai's brother was a CIA asset then a Taliban double agent.

Qaddafi supporter rally for third day in a row.

FOREIGN POLICY:

Chavez delegates powers so he can rule while undergoing chemotherapy in Cuba.

It strikes me that our government has a foreign policy of aggression and a domestic policy of aggression. That makes perfect sense because if you elect people to be aggressive in foreign policy, they'll have an aggressive nature, and they'll push aggressive domestic policy. And vice-versa.

POLITICS:

Breakdown of Republican candidates' finances. Obama's bundlers bring in big bucks. I wonder how much of it is illegal. We'll never know.

MISC:

Verizon requires customer to get a subpoena to get an itemized bill.

I'm really looking forward to trying Google Plus too. This is a great observation about capitalism.

"It turns out that capitalism doesn't operate at all the way people once thought it did. It is not a system that permits the captains of industry to extract money from workers and peasants so that the fat cats can accumulate and keep it for themselves. Not at all; if anything it is the reverse. The captains of industry are desperately clamoring for us to pay attention to them and we agree to do so provided they find ever more creative ways of making us happy at their expense."

The only problem with capitalism is the crony part.