Free kibbles

SOCIALISM:

What happens when the government buys a car company? The Chevy Volt catches on fire and GM offers to buy back the broken cars with taxpayer money.

ECONOMY:

Unemployment drops to 8.6 percent in November as the American people slowly overcome all the damage government has done to our economy. This is a consequence of the money from Obama's first stimulus boondoggle running out, freeing resources for use by the private sector, and the relative gridlock since the Republicans took over the House, blocking more Obama stimulus boondoggles. It would be ironic if Obama won re-election because the damage from his stimulus finally ran its course and Republicans blocked him from doing more damage.

Bloomberg reports that much of this drop comes from people dropping out of the work force.

"Payroll gains in the U.S. picked up last month and the jobless rate unexpectedly fell to the lowest level since March 2009, a decline augmented by the departure of Americans from the labor force."

Much of this also comes from seasonal hiring too.

"Payrolls climbed 120,000, after a revised 100,000 increase in October, with more than half the hiring coming from retailers and temporary help agencies, Labor Department figures showed today in Washington."

You won't see that context in any headline.

One in five mortgages underwater.

"An estimated 10.7-million households, or 22.1% of all homes with mortgages, had more debt on the properties than they were worth in the third quarter, according to Santa Ana research firm CoreLogic. This is a slight decline from the 10.9 million properties that were underwater in the second quarter."

Wow.

TAX AND SPEND:

As European sovereign debt sinks the continent, Europeans are ironically looking to Germany for more money to bail out the worst offenders. The Germans cannot and will not foot the tab for other governments. The EuroZone as we know it is doomed. And unless Americans elect Ron Paul, the Fed will destroy the dollar too.

REGULATION:

Democrat singles out IT workers in bill that would end overtime pay for them. Why just IT workers? I suspect union influence, pressuring them to unionize.

The Patriot Act is hurting US tech companies overseas business. No doubt.

FEDERAL RESERVE:

Fear of sovereign debt default are leading central bankers to buy gold to insulate themselves from defaults and government control.

If you want to know how bad the outlook for the dollar is, look no further than the architect of Zimbabwe's destruction of its currency.

"Zimbabwe’s money printer extraordinaire, Gideon Gono, says he’s worried about the U.S. dollar and believes “As a country, we still have the opportunity to avoid being caught napping by adopting the Chinese yuan as part of consolidating the country’s look East policy.”After the Zim dollar crashed in early 2009 with price inflation rates reaching 98%–a day! Since then, most transactions in Zimbabwe have been done in U.S. dollars.
But back when he was creating Zimbabwe dollars by the bail, Gono said, “Therefore, printing money to sustain lives, to build infrastructure and a springboard from which to leap forward, cannot be bad.” At the time he looked to America for inspiration. “Look at the bridges across the many rivers in New York and elsewhere,” Gono told New African, “and the other infrastructure in the country that were built with high budget deficits. There are times when it is necessary to dig deeper and construct or reconstruct.”
“To ensure that my people survive, I had to print money,” Gono told Newsweek. “I found myself doing extraordinary things that aren’t in the textbooks. Then the IMF asked the U.S. to please print money. The whole world is now practicing what they have been saying I should not. I decided that God had been on my side and had come to vindicate me.”"

Gosh. Sound familiar? Bernanke has the same philosophy, and it will end in the same kind of catastrophe. It's ironic that the US, the worst serial devaluator of currency in the world, keep lecturing China about devaluing its currency in response. Our tax, spend and inflate government, embraced by both parties, is destroying our country and handing the world to China's government on a silver platter.

Gary North believes that the coordinated effort between the Fed and half a dozen other central banks to flood the eurozone with dollars is a sign of panic. Maybe panic is the wrong word, but it seems to me it's a sign the banksters are out of options.

"As I shall argue, this was an action preliminary to (1) Angela Merkel's December 2 speech to the German parliament, which is preliminary to (2) the next Eurozone summit, scheduled for the weekend of December 9, which is preliminary to (3) a coordinated violation of the two treaties that created the European Union, which is hoped will (4) pressure the European Central Bank to buy newly created Eurobonds issued illegally by the EU, in order to (5) raise enough euros fast enough to buy Italian government bonds before (6) the Italian government misses interest payments, which may (7) bankrupt the largest French banks, which could (8) trigger a worldwide financial panic."

Maybe "out of options" is the wrong phrase. How about preliminary to another centralized power grab?

I'm surprised how much stocks went up with this announcement. I'm sure all the insiders understand they can't paper over this problem. They understand that at some point in the future, economies all over western civilization are going to collapse. But they must think they can still make money by driving up the price before then. It's like people who buy government bonds. They're always sure some sucker will buy them from them later until they're stuck with them. The same is going to happen with stocks.

GLOBAL WARMING AND ENERGY:

New paper suggests the sun maybe going into period of low activity like the Maundar Minimum. The period of the Maundar Minimum was significantly colder and longer than the Dalton Minimum. If this comes true, it would be an unprecedented disaster. Unfortunately there's way too little information to make reliable predictions about the sun.

Anthony Watts naively recommends legal orders for climate scientists to release data. Apparently he doesn't realize the government never obeys the law unless it works in its interest.

POLICE STATE:

TSA stops girl because her purse had a gun design on it. Funny how this video won't load. This happens all the time when I read articles critical of government, but it almost never happens to me otherwise.

Judge Napolitano on the Senate bill empowering the US military to arrest Americans and hold them indefinitely.

WAR:

More on NATO killing 24 Pakistani troops. US says:

"U.S. officials have told the Associated Press that Saturday's incident occurred when a joint U.S. and Afghan patrol requested backup after being hit by mortar and small arms fire by Taliban militants.Before responding, the patrol first checked with the Pakistani army, which reported it had no troops in the area, they said.
U.S. officials say that Pakistani troops had "given the go-ahead" for the strikes, The Wall Street Journal reported on Friday. This account would suggest that the Pakistanis were at least partly to blame for the deadly error."

Pakistan says:

"A Pakistani military official who spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the information confirmed that the American had provided his side with a location for the planned strike.However, he said, the information arrived late, Pakistan never cleared the strike, and the coordinates provided were incorrect anyway."

Pakistan think:

"NATO and America have expressed regret for the loss of lives, but have rejected Pakistani descriptions of the incident as a deliberate act of aggression."

He said. She said. 24 dead.

FOREIGN POLICY:

Islamists make strong gains in Egypt. Estimates show they've won a 70 percent majority.

Russia accuses the US of using the same infiltration tactics it used to foment revolutions in the Middle East to manipulate elections in Russia. Which evil should I believe? As of now, I have no idea. That's the problem since I realized how much evil and aggression the US government perpetrates around the world. Not to long ago, a couple of years at most, I would unquestionably supported the US and called the Russians liars. Now I realize our government is as evil if not more so than the Russian government. On the flip side, tons of Russian, Chinese and other foreign money floods our elections too.

POLITICS:

Jewish Republican group explains why it barred Ron Paul from presidential event.

Newt is now the front-runner in pretty much all polls.

It cracks me up how politicians always say their family comes first after they've been caught having affairs. If family really came first, they wouldn't have had affairs in the first place.

A look back at Iran-Contra.

MEDIA:

Maybe nudity is the key to keeping newspapers relevant.

LOCAL:

I'm all for Ohio State grad students revitalizing downtown as long as they're using money from voluntary investors. If that's the case go for it! If they're trying to use money stolen from taxpayers at the point of the government's gun, go away!

MISC:

Bandwidth is a scarce resource like any other physical resource, so prices are the natural way to allocate it. This was inevitable. This will make for more efficient allocation of bandwidth and a better product for everybody.

Chrome overtaking Firefox as the second most popular web browser.

I didn't know Dennis Ritchie died. For years Kernighan and Ritchie's C book was the programming bible. This picture really does capture how our society rewards style over substance.

On the flip side, Jobs made products for the consumer market, and therefore consumers know who he is. Ritchie made products for developers, so consumers don't know who he is. But Ritchie enriched the world far more than Jobs.

Will somebody please fire Any Reid? For the last 15 years or so, Jeff Fischer was the most overrated coach in football. Mercifully, his owner fired him. Andy Reid, a close second to Fischer all those years, is now the dean of overrated coaches. That guy has produced fewer accomplishments despite having more talent than any coach I know of. It's like he's unable to grasp the concept that running the ball and stopping the run is necessary to win championships. Please fire him. And thank goodness the league fired Donovan McNabb. That guy was one of the most overrated quarterbacks ever.

Are governments secretly conspiring to control the world's water supply? Governments have controlled water supplies forever. That's why we suffer such shortages.