Free kibbles

FREEDOM OF SPEECH:

US government seeking extradition of UK student because he hosted a site with links to files of copyrighted data. He did not host any data himself.

ECONOMICS:

The seasonal temps are back in the unemployment line causing a big spike in unemployment claims.

Peter Schiff doesn't trust the current dollar strength because it's driven by fear of the euro, not economic fundamentals in the US.

TAX AND SPEND:

S&P cuts credit ratings for French, Italian and Spanish debt. Italy and Spain are part of the PIIGS. We've been talking about them for a year or more. France is a relatively new addition to this problem. It's the second biggest economy in the Eurozone. But it gets worse.

"In all, S&P, which took away the United States' AAA rating last summer, lowered the ratings of nine countries, complicating Europe's efforts to find a way out of a debt crisis that still threatens to cause worldwide economic harm.
Austria also lost its AAA status, Italy and Spain fell by two notches, and S&P also cut ratings on Malta, Cyprus, Slovakia and Slovenia."

The euro is hosed.

WAR ON DRUGS:

What a scam. The government imprisons people for peacefully putting stuff in their bodies, then forces them to work as slave labor.

POLICE STATE:

Indian government forces biometric IDs on its subjects.

 WAR:

It seems absolutely stupid that the government sends marines to kill people, but it wants to charge them for urinating on their corpses. Which to you think bothered the victims most: being killed or having their bodies urinated on after they were dead? This is how war turns morals upside down and ruins those who fight it and the society that wages it.

Now the US wants to shut down the Iranian central bank which would collapse its economy. This is an act of war, and the only possible motivation for it is to start a war.

"I have to think that this may cause blowback in the form of many countries developing a gold-backed currency to use and trade in. Will all these countries dump their dollars for gold? If I'm the central banker in Russia, China, Syria, Iran and many South American countries, I'm thinking completely in terms of how to be less vulnerable to the U.S. empire gone mad. Gold is one answer."

Let's hope.

FOREIGN POLICY:

Ron Paul gives a great criticism of the US foreign policy toward Iran and shows why his is superior.

POLITICS:

Obama makes a smart move by trying to combine bureaucracies. Liberals and conservatives alike always fall for plans to make the government more efficient, as if more efficient coercion is a good thing. In this case Obama wants to eliminate the Commerce Department, which Republicans always claim they want to eliminate, but never do. If Republicans block this plan, they will lose the PR battle. If they agree to it, Obama will get the credit. Another skeptic calls this a powergrab.

"In fact, like the Bushite Department of Homeland Security, merging all the special-interest trade and business agencies is intended to increase federal power and reward the big corporations allied with it."

Typical. The San Jose Mercury News, an ultra-liberal rag, admits this is a power grab.


Every now and then a judge gets it right:

"A federal judge has ruled that Rick Perry and three other Republican presidential candidates will not be added to Virginia's primary ballot. District Court Judge John Gibney Jr. rejected their requests, arguing that they filed their challenges to Virginia's stringent ballot requirements too late. "They played the game, they lost, and then they complained about the rules," he said."

This is good news for Romney and Paul since they made it on the ballot.

Judge imprisons company owner for failing to meet schedule for building a bridge. Sometimes the petty brutality of the state boggles the mind.

Pat Buchanan agrees with me that Ron Paul will not make a third party run. I makes no sense for him to do so because he couldn't win that way. All he could do was insure Obama's re-election and harm Rand Paul's future chances. This isn't hard to figure out, but Buchanan lays it out nicely.

MEDIA:

I'm skeptical that Stephanopoulos's stupid question about contraceptives was really about a bet. This sounds like a misguided effort to deflect criticism.

LOCAL:

Public invited to discuss school funding. Well isn't that nice since the public is paying for it. That's very benevolent of our rulers.

MISC:

Government corrupts everything it touches including science, but did it have to be the healthy wine study?

"An extensive misconduct investigation that took three years to complete and produced a 60,000-page report, concludes that a researcher who has come to prominence in recent years for his investigations into the beneficial properties of resveratrol, a compound found in red wine, “is guilty of 145 counts of fabrication and falsification of data”."

I guess it's back to beer for me.

"According to a report from the Associated Press (AP), Dr Nir Barzilai, whose team conducts resveratrol research at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine in New York, says Das is not a major player in the field.Barzilai told AP lots of labs around the world are conducting extensive research into resveratrol, with encouraging results, and the new allegation will not make a material difference."

Oh, thank goodness.

Astronomers release enormous database... Why wasn't it public already? What was the point of ever keeping it hidden? I understand scientists want to review their data before they publish it, but when an ongoing project, why wait so long? Collect, verify, release.