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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.