Free kibbles

WAR:

President Obama summarily executes American citizen by drone attack in Yemen.

""The killing of Anwar al-Awlaki is a great success in our fight against al-Qaeda and its affiliates," said Rep. Peter King, the Republican chairman of the House Committee on Homeland Security. "For the past several years, al-Awlaki has been more dangerous even than Osama bin Laden."Al-Awlaki, who was born in New Mexico and spent time as the imam of a mosque inNorthern Virginia, isn't as big a fish as bin Laden, the al-Qaeda leader killed in a stealth strike by Navy Seal Team 6 in May. But he might have been a more significant threat to the United States in recent years.Up to the time of his death, U.S. officials remained concerned about his ability to inspire homegrown terrorists. The Obama administration even put him on the kill or capture list, allowing for an unprecedented lethal strike against a U.S. citizen."

Has Obama put out a kill order on your or somebody you know? Are you sure? The president has claimed the power to arbitrarily murder Americans, making us much less safe.

POLITICS:

Michelle Obama tries to repair her image by shopping at Target, and the media lapdogs lap it up as if they were unaware.

MEDIA:

Onion News Network to cover the end of the world live as asteroid destroys the planet. Too funny.

LOCAL:

Most Ohioans can't pay their child support.

"County and state officials blame the economy, high unemployment and parents’ inability to pay the amounts mandated by the courts for many of the defaults. Officials also cite difficulties establishing proper wage withholding processes with some parents’ employers."

In other words, the courts are screwing dads. I've seen this since I started working in the legal field back in Ohio. The courts demand dads who make almost nothing pay exorbitant amounts of child support. If they fail to pay, the state takes away their drivers license, costing many their jobs. The state makes it impossible for them to pay then wonders why so many don't.

"Custodial parents are more likely to seek public assistance when the other parent is not paying child support.
That leads to higher costs for taxpayers, said Robert Gruhl, director of the county’s child support enforcement."

The government subsidizes divorce indirectly through child support and directly through this "public assistance", but we wonder why divorce rates are so high.

MISC:

While the government has spent multiple millions or billions developing facial recognition technology, a couple of guys at Carnegie Mellon have developed a cloud-based ap that can identify people in cell phone pictures in under a minute.

Free kibbles

TAX AND SPEND:

I find it hard to believe that the German legislature supporting more bailouts of the PIIGS boosts Angela Merkel. I think it's far more likely she'll get booted out of office over this.

LOCAL:

Gas prices lowest in six months. That means demand is low because the economy is slowing even more.

Denying Social Media to Predators

Denying Social Media to Predators
by Mark Luedtke

People act to achieve their desires. In the case of sexual predators, many adopt careers that enable their predations. The Transportation Security Administration (TSA) is number one target destination of perverts in the USA. TSA agent is the only job that empowers perverts to molest adults and children or take naked pictures of them with impunity. TSA horror stories are legion, and it seems we hear of another TSA agent begin arrested for being a pervert every week. Recently a TSA agent in Spring Creek, Nevada was charged with six counts of lewdness with a child. But even though TSA hasn’t stopped one terrorist in ten years, Americans still subject themselves to these perverts every day.

The number two target destination for perverts in America is government school teacher, for obvious reasons. Our government schools coerce students under threat of violence into an unnatural system that gives teachers tremendous power over students, turning them into easy victims for predators.

In a natural learning environment, children spend their time with other children of all ages and with adults. For hundreds of thousands of years, the children of our ancestors learned from older children, and they passed that knowledge on to younger children in an unstructured environment. They learned from many adults, with no single adult being elevated as the focus. This environment socialized and educated the children into responsible, powerful adults.

Government schools intentionally destroy this socialization and education process. Our schools are modeled on Prussian schools that were designed to break the socialization process and teach children subjugation to authority so they would become good soldiers for their ruling class masters as adults. The Prussians didn’t want the students to become educated or socialized because that would enable them to think for themselves. By separating older and younger siblings, the schools also undermined the family and substituted the authority of the state for the natural cohesion of the family unit.

The same is true in the US. We often talk about our failing schools, but our schools only fail if you believe their function is to education and socialize. It’s not. Their function is to brainwash children into good drones and soldiers who never question authority, and our schools are brutally effective at achieving that goal.

The regimented, authoritarian structure of our schools produces predators and victims, as the epidemic of bullying and criminal activity at schools proves, and sexual predators are drawn to this target rich environment. Teachers are elevated to positions of unnatural power and students are stripped of their natural, social defenses of family, other adults and older friends. The headlines constantly inform us of the consequences as teacher after teacher gets caught sexually abusing students. For every one who gets caught and is paraded in the spotlight, typically a pretty blond woman to boost TV ratings, to create the illusion government protects children when it actually encourages preying upon them, think of all the ones who don’t get caught or we never hear about.

Then along came the ultimate hook-up tools: Facebook and Twitter. These tools make it easy for revolutionaries and rioters to hook up, but so far in the US, they’re more often used for sexual hookups. When it comes to our already perverted teacher-student relationship, these tools make it more easy for predatory teachers to prey on their students. According to the Houston Chronicle, “80 Missouri teachers lost their licenses between 2001 and 2005 because of sexual misconduct. Some of those cases involved exchanging explicit online messages with students.”

You didn’t read about all of those events in the headlines, did you? That’s in little Missouri. Think about how many teachers are predators in bigger cities and bigger states. God forbid the press tell you something important like the fact that government schools are home to a bunch of sexual predators. Not every government school teacher is a predator, but an abnormally high number are.

So I applaud Dayton Public Schools for prohibiting teachers from contacting students through social media. Normally I’m against all bans, but when government coercion creates an environment this dangerous to children, I welcome policies that minimize the damage done by government’s perverted agents.

But I laugh at the spin put on this policy by the head of the Dayton teachers union and the press. The Chronicle reports, “‘I see it as a form of protection for teachers,’ said David Romick, president of the Dayton Education Association. ‘We have cautioned members for years to be careful about the use of social media and about keeping their professional and private lives separate.’” Protection for teachers. That’s funny.

Clearly the best policy would be to abolish government schools. Parents and teachers could work together in voluntary associations to create a natural learning environment for children that would enhance children’s natural defenses against predators and would discourage predation. The result would be healthier, well education children who think for themselves and who do not reflexively kowtow to authority. But who would join the military to fight for nearly no money and die in some war of aggression overseas against people who never did anything to us? Somebody might actually stand up to a TSA agent instead of bending over and saying thank you. Government won’t stand for that. But at least we can deny the predators access to social media.

There’s No Such Thing as Free Birth Control

There’s No Such Thing as Free Birth Control
by Mark Luedtke

When I accepted this assignment, I replied, “I'm against free birth control.” Even though I know darn good and well there’s no such thing as a free lunch, I still fell into that twisted habit of thinking of a government service as free. That shows the extent to which government has corrupted our very thought processes. Government has no money of its own. All the money it has, it seizes from taxpayers under threat of violence. If you don’t believe me, ask Wesley Snipes. So to answer this question, we should first rephrase it in an honest fashion: Should Americans be forced at the point of a gun to pay for the birth control of others?

I hope every American would say no. Imagine if a group of thugs busted in your door, stuck guns in your face and demanded your money so they could buy birth control for their sisters and girlfriends. You would know you were the victim of an armed robbery, and after the thieves left, you would call the police to report it. You would want the thieves caught and your money returned. You would never wonder if providing “free” birth control to those women was good policy. But when the government proposes the same criminal activities as the mafia or a street gang, we check our brains at the door and discuss the policy aspects instead of the morality of stealing people’s money.

The reason this is suddenly a hot issue is a new report from the Institute of Medicine, which deals exclusively with women’s health and reproduction issues, claims that taxpayer-funded birth control would reduce teen pregnancy. The institute operates under the National Academy of Sciences. The study was commissioned by the Health and Human Services Department to guide implementation of Obamacare. Gee, I wonder if the outcome of a study commissioned by the Health and Human Services Department under a leftist president regarding his signature legislation and farmed out to a government bureaucracy that deals exclusively with women’s health and reproduction issues might have been predetermined.

This pseudo-scientific study shows that a predetermined conclusion can be reached by any study if the political activists posing as scientists ignore enough information. I remember when liberals paid lip service about addressing root causes of social issues. Not this time. This study didn’t examine any of the root causes of teen pregnancy or HIV/AIDS, which it also examined. This is an important reminder of the extent government has corrupted science. Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius gave away the farm. According to CNN, “She called the IOM report ‘historic’ and said its recommendations were ‘based on science and existing literature.’” How can you tell when a politician is lying? Right. You can bet Sebelius paid these political activists plenty of our money to produce this sham report.

What the report glaringly ignored was the economic incentives government creates that promote teen pregnancy and AIDS in the first place. For example, it failed to mention how the war on drugs causes many people to use dirty needles to shoot up heroin and methamphetamine, spreading HIV. This problem would be virtually wiped out by ending the disastrous war on drugs.

But even though the report failed to address the root economic incentives created by government that greatly exacerbate the problems the new policy is supposed to address, the CNN article hinted at them, “The direct medical cost of unintended pregnancy in the United States was estimated to be nearly $5 billion in 2002.” In other words, government has transferred the cost of unintended pregnancies from those who get pregnant to the taxpayers. The government subsidizes teen pregnancy. One of the fundamental laws of economics is that if government subsidizes something, we get more of it. The same is true for AIDS.

The way to dramatically reduce teen pregnancy is to stop subsidizing it. Leave all the costs to the teens and their families so individuals will take responsibility for their actions. CNN further reports on the risky behavior encouraged by subsidies, “And women who have unintended pregnancies are more likely to have little or no prenatal care, and engage in risky behaviors such as smoking, drinking or experience domestic violence.” The same is true for AIDS.

This debate was prompted by Obamacare’s supposed focus on preventive medicine, but if the government really wanted the American people to take advantage of preventive medicine to reduce health care costs, it would stop subsidizing sickness. If people paid their own medical bills, they would adopt preventive measures to keep their costs down. They would become healthier. Health care costs would plummet.

Both reason and compassion dictate we stop encouraging risky behavior with subsidies. But helping people is not our rulers’ real goal. Their real goal is to loot more money from the American people, and subsidizing irresponsible behavior enables more looting.

If people want to reach into their own pockets to provide contraceptives to others at no marginal cost, more power to them. But don’t use the government to steal from everybody else.

Get Excited About Science and Technology

Get Excited About Science and Technology
by Mark Luedtke

In a sad commentary on the state of our society, the Department of Education reports that in 2007, US fourth graders ranked twelfth among developed nations in math and science scores and eight graders ranked tenth in both. Despite having a smart phone in every pocket, Americans don’t seem very interested in learning the skills to produce the new technology we’ve come to expect year in and year out. The result has been an ongoing transfer of capital and technological expertise from the US to Asia and the transfer of innovation and wealth that goes with it.

A group of administrators of local science and technology organizations wants to change that. Working under the umbrella of the Dayton Society of Natural History and following a model developed in Europe and recently implemented in several US locations, the Dayton Regional Science Festival will launch its inaugural event called Ignite Innovation. But this science festival isn’t just for kids. Running from Thursday, Sept. 22 through Sunday, Sept. 25, the festival presents multiple events at several locations targeted at people of all ages from pre-school to adult. The full event schedule is available at boonshoftmuseum.org/ignite-innovation.

The Ignite Innovation website explains why Dayton is a prime location for a science festival, “The Dayton region has been a leader in launching education reform and forging career connections needed to fill future job pipelines. In addition, the region has a strong history of innovation and blending people, organizations and institutions for the greater good. More than just a “party” (although certain to be fun), Ignite Innovation will offer avenues for the entire community to begin understanding the amazing opportunities that exist to spark Science, Technology, Engineering and Math (STEM) creativity. Ignite Innovation will highlight the people, places and projects that are shaping our local science, technology, engineering and mathematics culture.”

This is an opportunity for the people of the Miami Valley to meet top technical innovators from the region and see their products and services in technology demonstrations. The idea is to excite the population at large, adults and children, about the technological innovation occurring in the region right now and to showcase the local opportunities for STEM education so Dayton can continue in technological leadership in the future.

Diane Farrell, Vice President, External Relations, Dayton Society of Natural History which operates The Boonshoft Museum of Discovery, SunWatch Indian Village And Fort Ancient, is the co-chair of the Dayton Regional Science Festival. She explains the purpose of the festival, “The purpose of Ignite Innovation is to bring together people of all backgrounds and ages to celebrate and discover science, technology, engineering and math (STEM), and to encourage participation with the people, places and organizations that specialize in programs, research and product development throughout our region. We have a goal of demonstrating that science is in everything, and that a solid foundation of and appreciation for STEM can lead to a better workforce of the future.”

The festival has drawn in participants from many organizations. It includes 17 partners and will present 14 events. Ms. Farrell explains this approach, “We hope to present STEM from many different viewpoints and allow the community at large, as well as tourists, to explore STEM by attending diverse events and having memorable experiences. In the long run, we hope to influence children to seek out opportunities to engage in STEM careers and to provide year-round activities to make STEM readily accessible for all. And, we hope to bring awareness to and recognition for those who are currently developing cutting edge STEM products, services and programs right here in our own backyard so that people both inside and outside the Dayton region can see all the STEM intellectual assets that exist in this community.”

With all the focus on STEM, the Dayton Regional STEM school is naturally one of the festival’s partners. The FAQ at daytonstemschool.org explains what makes STEM schools different, “A STEM education means that students, parents, teachers and partners are engaged in relevant, rigorous and relationship-based educational experiences. Students participate in a project-based curriculum that integrates the traditional STEM content areas with social studies, language arts, the fine arts, and wellness and fitness -- the school's primary foreign language offering is Chinese. The curriculum is directly connected to the real world of work being done by the scientists, engineers, strategists, planners, innovators and entrepreneurs throughout the Dayton region.”

Dr. Gregory R. Bernhardt is President, Board of Trustees, Dayton Regional STEM School (DRSS) and is on the Dayton Regional Science Festival Steering Committee. Dr. Bernhardt talks more about what attendees can expect from the festival, “From my perspective, we are trying to highlight and increase the awareness of our region’s residents of the many ways that science and STEM is involved in our communities, education, business, military, non-profits, etc. and to increase interest of youth in STEM as a possible career path. We are really interested in having everyone participate, but particularly parents, students, educators and businesses. But everyone should be more aware of how science is critical to our lives and well being.”

With all these events, everybody in the Miami Valley could learn something by attending this festival. The organizers hope the event will spur economic activity by bringing tourists to the area as well as by promoting future innovation, and that’s something everybody in Dayton can get behind.

Free kibbles

SOCIALISM:

Taxpayers are funding a seminar on how to target and unionize young people. The goal is to organize them then send them marching in the streets for communism.

ECONOMY:

Americans earned less and spent less in 2010 for the second straight year. Government spent tremendously more. Government looting is making us poorer and our rulers richer.

TAX AND SPEND:

Democrats ignore Obama's misnamed jobs bill. Criticism of the bill and of Obama.

"What is so striking about Obama’s shopworn rhetoric is its juvenile intellectual quality. His explanation for how the AJA will create jobs is a non-starter because he does not explain how we get from here to there. As in so many other cases, the president thinks that waving a wand over a problem will make his most ardent wishes come true, even when similar earlier efforts have proved to be dismal failures."

Juvenile intellectual quality for sure.

National bankruptcy may make Obama the last big-government president. Or not. Politicians will not cut the government because controlling all that money and power allows them to live like kings. Think about the celebrated Paul Ryan plan that continued growing government at almost exactly the same rate as Obama's budget. But at some point, the debt will bring the government down and our economy will collapse with it, but I doubt it will happen before November 2012.

Obama might like to be remembered for Obamacare, more accurately called Pelosicare, but he will in fact be remembered as the food stamp president.

HEALTH CARE:

The FDA and the government in general have been working overtime to scare us about food safety, but check out this cantaloupe story:

"So far, the outbreak has caused at least 72 illnesses — including up to 16 deaths — in 18 states, making it the deadliest food outbreak in the United States in more than a decade."

98,000 thousand people a year die from medical misadventure, but you never hear about that because government controls our health care system. They just want to scare us into allowing government to seize that kind of control over food production as well. And they're doing it.

POLICE STATE:

The military wants to develop even better surveillance technology that the government will then use against us.

WAR:

Commanders show British soldiers in Afghanistan snuff films of Apache helicopter killing people to boost morale.

FOREIGN POLICY:

Now the government wants us to be afraid of the Iranian navy. Give me a break.

POLITICS:

Talking heads like to claim that Ron Paul isn't electable in a general election. Baloney. This poll puts him two points ahead of Obama.

LOCAL:

Central planning will not keep young professionals in the area. Dramatically reducing the burden of government will.

Free kibbles.

SOCIALISM:

Political pressure forces Ford to pull ad bragging that it didn't take bailout money.

ECONOMY:

The CEO of Coca-cola just noticed the US is worse for business than China. Pretty much every other big company recognized that a decade ago.

TAX AND SPEND:

Palin exposed as a tax and spend mayor in Wasilla.

REGULATION:

Every time media tells me government agents have reached an international agreement, I cringe.

FEDERAL RESERVE:

This is a wonderful piece of double-speak:

"Over the years, there have been changes in the Fed’s structure to improve its independence, credibility, accountability, and transparency."

Independence and accountability? That's some trick.

HEALTH CARE:

I don't mean to make fun when people have died, but when the government-controlled media exaggerates such events, I have to proclaim a fear-mongering alert: Run for your lives from cantaloupe!

"The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said Tuesday that 72 illnesses, including 13 deaths, are linked to the tainted fruit. State and local officials say they are investigating three additional deaths that may be connected."

OMG. Only lightening may be more deadly. Or living in houses. I bet more than 1,000 people have been killed from living in houses in the same period. But that's highly regulated by government so it's not newsworthy. Instead, the news focuses on the one in a few million people who ate cantaloupe and died. On a personal note, I ate cantaloupe yesterday at lunch. So far no ill effects. God bless the government for saving me. Or not since they had nothing to do with anything. I bet more people die from heart attacks in response to this bull**** than die from the cantaloupe in question. Please pray that I may live through the night after my self-destructive behavior of eating cantaloupe yesterday. God willing, I'll poke fun at alarmist bull**** again tomorrow in this blog as usual. If you think I'm going to die because I ate cantaloupe, or because I breathed Al Gore's air, please send all your money to lostinwilderness@gmail.com so my family can tend to my burial. Thank you.

GLOBAL WARMING AND ENERGY:

EPA implementing regulations it admits are absurd.

"While EPA acknowledges that come 2016, the administrative burdens may still be so great that compliance … may still be absurd or impossible to administer at that time, that does not mean that the Agency is not moving toward the statutory thresholds."

You can't make this stuff up. Do you think they can afford to hire an editor?

POLICE STATE:

The feds have a new surveillance device that mimics a cell phone tower so it can locate cell phones even when they're not in use. Have you checked in with big brother today?

New York City police chief claims the NYPD can shoot down airplanes if necessary. I don't like any government having this power, but I prefer local governments having it to the federal government.

The black flash mob attacks have spread to Denver.

Not only did the ATF force gun dealers to sell guns to the Mexican drug cartels, they funded the purchase with taxpayer money.

WAR:

Admiral Mullen tells the truth.

"We’re Going to Be There [Afghanistan] Longer Than 2014."

Obama must hate when his subordinates expose his lies.

The pretend transparent Obama administration won't allow the American people to see supposed pictures of bin Laden's execution. Or this is all charade. Flip a coin.

FOREIGN POLICY:

Israel announces more settlements. I wonder how analogous this situation is 19th century US manifest destiny. Seems very similar to me. I wonder if the Palestinians will receive tiny reservations on crappy land too or nothing.

POLITICS:

The latest Zogby poll shows Herman Cain skyrocketing to the top and Rick Perry falling 23 points. If this is true, it shows that polls have become even more irrelevant than before.

Eighty-one percent of Americans dissatisfied with the Federal government. I always wonder about the people who are satisfied. Who are they?

Christie still says no.

It's nice to see somebody in the press bring up the connections between Obama, Ayers, Alinsky, Cloward and Piven.

Obama's fundraising take plummets.

Obama's political warmonger predicts 2012 will be a "titanic struggle" in sort of the same way loser Jimmy Carter struggled titanically against Ronald Reagan. But different. It's funny that an incumbent is already resigned to a struggle instead of a victory. Policies matter. Socialism kills. What's really sad is Axelrod brings a lot of truth to the matter. Reagan won because he presented an unabashed libertarian message of hope in contrast to Carter's message of government malaise. Unlike 1980, the mainstream Republican agenda is the same as the Democrat agenda, but slightly less. Who cares? Today, no Republican other than Ron Paul draws the clear ideological line between libertarianism and government domination of society that Reagan drew in 1980, and the press won't allow him to get any traction.

MEDIA:

Humorous idea for Ron Paul to win the nomination by manipulating the media to cover him.

"Here is how Ron Paul can win. He can kidnap Chris Christie. Hold Christie hostage in a cabin. With Christie now receiving the media adoration once given to the buffoon Donald Trump, then poured on the hapless Rick Perry, my kidnap plan could propel Paul to the White House. Here's how it would work:
Every morning, outside the cabin, Paul could host a news conference to end the Christie kidnap. Imagine: With the media herd hungrily assembled, Chris Mathews would breathlessly ask Paul: "When will you release Christie?” Ron would reply: "I will that discuss that soon, but first I want to discuss my plans to end secrecy of the Federal Reserve Board" to the huge audience.
Matt Drudge and Roger Ailes would have a field day with the Christie kidnap.
Drudge would banner in bold: CHRISTIE TAKEN PRISONER. Media coverage would surge. Ailes, who has turned Republican debates into a reality show, as Howard Kurtz brilliantly writes in Newsweek, would use Fox money to hire a mercenary army to liberate Christie, with live coverage of the liberation on the Bill O'Reilly show. But before the Ailes force lands …
The next morning, with Christie still in custody, Paul would emerge before the hungry media herd again. Wolf Blitzer would ask: "When will you release Christie?" Ron would reply: "Wolf, I will discuss that soon, but first I want to discuss why I believe America is militarily overextended, which skyrockets our national debt.” Carville might say: It's about time! Castellanos might say: This could propel Paul, but the big winner is Mitt Romney. Gergen might say, an interesting strategy, but we have to balance all considerations.
Think about it. Ron Paul would have the largest audience in history, and could address the nation about its future, while the media herd awaits the Christie release."

Funny because it's true.

MSNBC calls the AP racist for accurately transcribing Obama's speech.

"“Take off your bedroom slippers. Put on your marching shoes,” Obama lectured the audience. “Shake it off. Stop complainin’. Stop grumblin’. Stop cryin’. We are going to press on. We have work to do.”However, after the Associated Press accurately transcribed Obama’s dropped g’s, MSNBC aired a debate segment asking whether the decision not to “clean up” Obama’s words was “racist”."

Obama intentionally adopted that accent. Making that clear in the transcription is a service.

Praise for the Russian Times.

"I'm old enough to remember the incessant cold war propaganda about the Soviet Union's unfair elections and government-run press, so the I can appreciate the joy it must give the Russians to stick it back to us."

It's amazing how the US government has seized control of everything without people realizing it. Very impressive.

LOCAL:

Government education subsidies are not economic growth. They kill far more jobs they create. I'm all for businesses funding education so they can make sure they get the productive workers they need, but pointing to government agent GE as an example of this is just wrong. GE is just a filter for government money.

MISC:

Space weather is just another excuse the government uses to scare people into surrendering more money to it. Wake me if my power goes out.

Free kibbles

HEALTH CARE:

More examples of how the government partners with corporations to ruin our food supply.

GLOBAL WARMING:

Solar cycle 24 is showing some activity.

I've said for quite a while that the global warming fraud is not science. It's pseudo-science driven by politics, not the scientific method. Nice to see others reaching this conclusion.

POLITICS:

It looks like Perry is already flaming out. Ron Paul called him the flavor of the month, and it might turn out that way.

Republicans really want to draft Chris Christie.

MEDIA:

I'll be the Daily Show has more influence than any network news show. Maybe appearing there will boost Ron Paul.

Free kibbles

SOCIALISM:

Connecticut governor orders card check for unions.

"The orders, his ninth and tenth since taking office in January, will force the state’s 4,000 daycare providers to add over $1 million in dues to union coffers, and remove the right to secret ballot election for these workers by instituting a card check process."

Connecticut will suffer for this decision.

TAX AND SPEND:

The House passed the stop-gap spending bill that was defeated a couple of days ago.

"The latest measure is identical to the defeated bill except that it also would rescind $100 million from a program that provided a $535 million federal loan guarantee to Solyndra LLC, which filed for bankruptcy protection this month."

What are these weirdos doing?

"The dispute carries political risk for Republicans because polls show the public is weary of the rancor that marked previous battles over the budget. Disapproval ratings for Congress are at historic highs, and Republicans are faring worse than Democrats in polls."

What a crock. The public is tired of Congress stealing our money. Republicans are faring badly in polls because their voters want them to stop spending but they won't.

"The higher disapproval ratings for Republicans stem largely from perceptions that Boehner and other party leaders are unwilling to compromise with Democrats on key issues, said Michael Dimock, research director of the Pew Research Center."

More of the same crock. Have you noticed that the press always blames Republicans for not compromising with Democrats, never Democrats for not compromising with Republicans? Have you noticed that compromise always means growing government? There's never any compromise on reducing government. And Republicans keep growing the government despite the direction given them by voters, so claiming they don't compromise is absurd.

REGULATION:

The government plans to seize more control over your pension plan. Just like Obamacare is another step on the road to full blown socialized medicine, this is another step on the road to seizing your retirement money.

HEALTH CARE:

How government and corporations teamed up to foist cold cereal breakfasts on the American people.

GLOBAL WARMING AND ENERGY:

The conservative approach and the adherence to the scientific method by the CERN researchers who claim neutrinos traveled faster than the speed of light is an amazing contrast to global warming pseudo-scientists who make grandiose claims while hiding their data from other scientists so it can't be analyzed.

""When an experiment finds an apparently unbelievable result and can find no artefact of the measurement to account for it, it is normal to invite broader scrutiny....it is good scientific practice," he said."

Somebody tell that to the global warming pseudo-scientists.

Environmentalists want to ban OTC inhalers. And the EPA bans them. This is the government that claims it helps people.

POLITICS:

Obama's approval rating among blacks falls to 58 percent.

Conservative pundits dump Perry.

"The cringe-worthiest moment, by a hair, was when Perry botched what should have been his most potent attack on Mitt Romney’s chronic flip-flopping. As I noted on Twitter when it happened, any random high schooler at the CPAC conference in Washington could have done better than this."

They're upset he stumbled with his words. They don't care about policy. They don't care about substance. They care that he tripped over his tongue. I'm not sure I've ever seen such an impressive demonstration of the shallowness of how we chose elected officials.

MEDIA:

Foxnews's illustrates its bias by how much talking time it gave to the candidates. Ron Paul, despite polling third, got the next to least amount.

A plurality of Americans realize the media is immoral.

LOCAL:

Rust in government water.

"Park Layne has 17 miles of cast iron waterlines that are more than 50 years old and serve 1,648 homes. And the public water system is not filtered."

The EPA says it's not a problem. But imagine if this water was distributed by a private company instead of the government. The EPA would shut it down. It a private company flushed its lines like this, it would be accused of wasting water. This double-standard is a crock. This would never happen in a free market.

MISC:

Trips to the ISS cause astronauts to get blurry vision which they don't report. So we have a bunch of astronauts flying with blurry vision. Great.

World's oldest running car up for auction.

Free kibbles

ECONOMY:

The Dow is plummeting again. Traders and insiders are making tons of money off this volatility, but government's attempts to artificially keep the market inflated are doomed to fail.

TAX AND SPEND:

Here's more on the continuing resolution Boehner and his partners in crime tried to pass:

"These Republican leaders "tried to pass a continuing resolution through the House of Representatives on Wednesday afternoon that would have permitted funding for Obamacare implementation, Planned Parenthood, the United Nations Population Fund, and the Palestinian Authority to continue in the new federal fiscal year that begins on Oct. 1." The measure failed when 48 House Republicans joined with 182 Democrats to vote it down. The big question here is why didn't all the House Republicans vote against it?"

With supposed friends like these, who needs enemies?

Florida Republicans have funded public radio and TV while being in power for 15 years, so when you hear Republicans pretend they don't support these things, you know they're lying.

Succinct explanation of Obama's motivation for raising taxes on the rich:

"We have heard over and over again about how Obama wants to raise taxes on the "rich" to cut the deficit. What he is really trying to do is buy the votes of those who are not "rich" with the dollars of the "rich.""

Well said.

In response to President Obama's class warfare attack, Cato breaks down the amount of taxes paid by income bracket. Needless to say, the rich pay a higher percentage than the non-rich, contrary to what Warren Buffet would have us believe. The breakdown is faithfully progressive except for the people above 10 million a year. Those people pay slightly less than the rest of the millionaires, but more than everybody else. Obama and the press don't want you to know this.

REGULATION:

Government is once again shaking down Google for more money.

The rebellion grows. Doesn't it suck that patents have metastisised to that analogy? If some of the barbarians at the gate manage to chip Apple's IP walls, the iZombies may shake the halls of power demanding real patent reform.

POLICE STATE:

FBI arrests suspected hackers for LulzSec and Anonymous. Retaliation will follow whether the FBI is right or wrong.

"One individual was described as part of the LulzSec group, the other belongs to the group that calls itself Anonymous, the official said. The suspected hacker arrested in California is homeless and alleged to have been involved in the hacking of Santa Cruz County government websites."

I feel safer knowing the FBI is protecting us from homeless hackers.

WAR:

Americans blame the Pakistani Intelligence services for the attack in Kabul. Maybe it never crossed their mind that if Americans weren't killing people in Afghanistan, Afghans wouldn't retaliate against Americans.

POLITICS:

Rick Perry, who used to be a Democrat and who still loves to spend other people's money, calls Mitt Romney Obama-lite. They're both Obama-lites.

This is old but important news: US officials flunk test on history, civics and economics. This shouldn't surprise anybody.

Buffet to campaign for Obama. Duh. Buffet has been campaigning for Obama for years.

MISC:

CERN scientists claim they have measured particles traveling faster than the speed of light.

"Antonio Ereditato, spokesman for the international group of researchers, said that measurements taken over three years showed neutrinos pumped from CERN near Geneva to Gran Sasso in Italy had arrived 60 nanoseconds quicker than light would have done."

It's not likely the sun will fail to rise tomorrow, but let's hope this analysis crashes the great global warming fraud.

""We have high confidence in our results. We have checked and rechecked for anything that could have distorted our measurements but we found nothing," he said. "We now want colleagues to check them independently.""

Compare that attitude to the attitude of the global warming frauds. Wouldn't it be nice if Jones, Mann or Hansen hadn't been so corrupted by government money that they refuse to adhere to the scientific method in the same fashion? The scientific method is not dead except where government killed it regarding global warming pseudo-science.

Does Speaker Boehner want to cut spending?

Speaker Boehner recently pushed to raise the debt ceiling. In the decade before, he voted for pretty much every big-spending, new government program that came along. This week he pushed for an expansion of the emergency vote-buying, I mean, spending bill that just went down in flames. This is an easy one:

Does Speaker Boehner want to cut spending?

Free kibbles

FASCISM:

Sure, Obama has made our economy significantly more fascist with his regulations, hiring and firing people and putting government agents in board rooms, but don't be mistaken by that. Fascism is only a means to an end for Obama. The end is communism. The left is angry at him for not advancing socialism fast enough, but political reality is an obstacle. He's dragging us toward communism as fast as he can. And the US has plenty of militarism, it's just as visible inside our boarders. Government officials don't wear military uniforms and we don't have military parades showing off tanks and missiles. But we spend as much money on the military as every other country combined.

The LightSquared scandal is breaking the same time as the Solyndra scandal.

TAX AND SPEND:

Video of Obama from July saying he didn't want to raise taxes right now. This guy takes lying to a new level.

House rejects a business as usual spending bill. If I had a nickel for every time that happened, I'd have a nickel. Good for us.

"The outcome sends House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, and his leadership team back to the drawing board as they seek to make sure the government doesn't shut down on Sept. 30, the end of this fiscal year."

Typifying the Republican party, Boehner has never seen a spending increase he didn't love. How come I'm just now hearing of a potential government shutdown? We can only hope.

REGULATION:

Who owns Google's search results? The Senate thinks it does.

FEDERAL RESERVE:

Got this from Boortz:

"The stealth wealth tax may be the single-largest tax ever imposed on the American people, yet virtually no one knows about it. What is particularly unconscionable about this tax is that it has been imposed upon the most responsible citizens and the elderly in a most disproportionate way, and the real tax rate on American savers has soared to record levels.

The Federal Reserve has held down interest rates so that the average person receives less than 1 percent on money-market funds or certificates of deposit — that is, money used for precautionary and low-risk savings. At the same time, the Fed has allowed inflation to rise to an annual rate of more than 3.5 percent. As can be seen in the accompanying chart, when inflation rates are higher than interest rates, people suffer an effective real tax rate above 100 percent. At present rates of interest and inflation, this means that most Americans pay effective tax rates on their savings ranging from 360 percent for lower-income people to 390 percent for higher-income people."

The mainstream is discovering the Fed.

Republicans warn Bernanke not to artificially stimulate the economy in order to re-elect Obama. This shows how the Fed cannot help but be political. It's impossible for it to be independent. Both parties want to control it and both have the power to influence it. But here goes the Fed anyway. I don't believe for a second this plan will end up being revenue neutral like this article claims. They're printing more money. We need higher interest rates to encourage savings so we can grow our way out of this recession. As for inflation:

"While inflation has picked up this year, most FOMC members anticipated last month that it would “settle, over coming quarters, at levels at or below those consistent with the Committee’s mandate,” minutes of the August meeting said."
"Traders agree, marking down U.S. inflation expectations to the lowest levels this year. The breakeven inflation rate, calculated from yield differences on 10-year Treasury notes and inflation-indexed U.S. government bonds of similar maturity, has fallen to 1.92 percent from a 2011 high of 2.67 percent on April 11."

If the recession continues to deepen, and it looks like it will, inflation will probably slow down temporarily. At some point though, inflation will pick up while the recession continues just like it did in the 1970s.

HEALTH CARE:

Howard Dean believes that one-third of businesses will transfer their employees from private health insurance to government health insurance. He considers this a good thing.

Government agent says people will adjust to the new taste of food that results from new government regulations. Unfortunately, he's right. Americans will adjust just like sheep.

GLOBAL WARMING AND ENERGY:

Solyndra executives will plead the fifth before Congress. Smart. They have nothing to gain by answering Congress's questions.

Walmart promises to go solar in California. Why not everywhere? Because California makes it too expensive to use regular energy sources. That's one of the reasons the state is dying.

WAR:

US government expands drone attacks into Somalia and East Africa. That will make us more enemies.

Here's a good reminder of just how militaristic the US has become: the House Armed Services Committee chairman says that military budget cuts might force the government to revive the draft. Spending as much as every other nation on earth is not enough.

MISC:

Tony Bennett explains his views and refuses to back down.

Why liberals blame corporations

I just had one of those little insights I sometimes get at night.

It's an economic law that you have to produce before you can consume. But liberals, and plenty of conservatives, think consumption drives production. That's Keynesianism.

That misunderstanding of economics also infects political beliefs. Libertarians understand that politicians, being human beings, sell their product to others. The product they sell is our power and our money: the things they steal from us at the point of the government's gun. Corporations, the highest bidders, buy that product to advance their own interests. If they didn't, somebody else would buy our money and power and use it against them.

But liberals believe that corporate demand for our power and money drives production. They think government would be good if corporations didn't create demand. They blame the consumer instead of the producer. It's the same fundamental misunderstanding of economics applied to politics.