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.