Free kibbles

FREEDOM OF SPEECH:

SOPA and PIPA have prompted techies to try and make Hollywood obsolete. It's about time. Overcoming the power of copyright protection will be hard, but I like the ideas.

This article tells the story of how the internet defeated the establishment over SOPA and PIPA. This is a really telling quote from the RIAA:

""The problem for the content industry is they just don't know how to mobilize people," said John P. Feehery, a former House Republican leadership aide who previously worked at the motion picture association. "They have a small group of content makers, a few unions, whereas the Internet world, the social media world especially, can reach people in ways we never dreamed of before.""

This is a description of how consumers overcame mercantilism. What he's talking about is how the internet connects consumers. Millions and millions of consumers instantaneously. The RIAA and MPAA serve producers. A small number of producers. This was a case where the producers were trying to use the government to exploit the consumers - a classic case of mercantilism - but the internet enabled the consumers to rise up en mass and stop it. But North shows naivete here:

"The Web, the social media, YouTube: they cannot be stopped. Ask Chris Dodd."

They can be controlled by the establishment, and that's exactly what the government is going to do. Governments are slow compared to technology advance, but they always end up controlling any worthwhile new technology. I imagine somebody as naively proclaimed that radio and TV couldn't be stopped. How'd that work out? The internet is a communication medium. The government will control it.

The 25 representatives who received the most money from the entertainment industry to support SOPA and PIPA.

Chris Dodd hints at how Congress will take revenge on internet companies for killing SOPA and PIPA:

""It is an irresponsible response and a disservice to people who rely on [these sites] for information and use their services," Dodd wrote. "It is also an abuse of power given the freedoms these companies enjoy in the marketplace today.""

Take away the freedoms. This time the establishment was surprised. Next time they won't be. It's coming, and next time Congress won't be stopped. This is a power struggle, and government has all the power. Expect to see these companies called before congressional hearings and demonized very soon.

REGULATION:

Nobody would open a global business in the US if he could do it somewhere else.

"I'll bet you don't know that I may be the first person in recorded history to move voluntarily from the warm beach and golf resort of Hilton Head Island, South Carolina to cold and snowy Toronto, Canada. But Steve Wynn and many other entrepreneurs forced to deal with the multitude of regulatory agencies at the federal, state and local level would likely agree. America’s growing number of bureaucrats – all with their hand out to exchange fees for paperwork – can make it impossible to compete in the global economy from the US."

How sad is it that Canada is more free than the US? Same with China.

HEALTH CARE:

Doctor calls police on mother because she refused to vaccinate son. This is another good reminder that your children are the property of the state and doctors are agents of the state.

GLOBAL WARMING AND ENERGY:

Green politicians killed the natural gas car.

POLICE STATE:

Lew Rockwell is right: this arrest of a mother because she allowed her ten year old to get a tattoo shows that government owns all children. It just allows parents to keep them as long as the parents property promote the state. This is true of all property.

WAR:

Pat Buchanan makes the case against war with Iran. I wonder about these oil price predictions. We heard those same predictions before the government invaded Iraq, but they never happened.

FOREIGN POLICY:

Thanks to years of US government aggression in Egypt - support for a tyrant - and the Fed's inflationary monetary policy, Islamists won over 70 percent of the seats in the new Egyptian Parliament.

This guy thinks that since the US has toppled so many governments and killed their leaders lately, the Iranian leaders will bow to the will of the US. That's the way normal people think. Heads of state are not normal.
"Many people, for example, wrote to me with doubts that the Iranian government would ever be willing to "lose face" with their own people by dismantling its nuclear program. What these people fail to consider, however, is that the Iranian government has to consider not only the disposition of its citizens, but also what is likely to happen if they allow a war to develop with the U.S. Losing face with one’s own citizens is usually a bad thing for a politician, but when the alternative is getting overthrown by a powerful foreign military and being executed like a dog in the street, losing face doesn’t look nearly such a bad alternative."
These are not the only two options. I think it's more likely the Iranian rulers will continue slowly developing nuclear technology without any overt weaponization, doing the little things necessary to avoid war until Europe and the US collapse under the burden of government. This is why they keep holding out olive branches when the US turns up the heat, bringing the temperature back down, then they reject any conditions put on them and continue on. They're using delay tactics against our rulers, and they'll probably do so successfully until western government collapse like dominoes.

Terrorists kill over 150 in Nigeria. Obama is getting US troops mixed up in this civil war too.

POLITICS:

Copying Obama, Romney sings happy birthday to SC governor. How phony is this? It just shows that Romney is the Republican Obama.

It looks like voters in South Carolina were more interested in a couple of Newt Gingrich sound bites than his record or policies.

Because the Republican establishment corrupted the vote count in Iowa, they were forced to admit it can never be certified.

Ron Paul action figures.

MEDIA:

Newt gets points for taking on the press, but the real crime of the media is here:

"In the post-debate CNN analysis, Romney was mentioned 87 times, Gangrich 84, Rancorum 76, and Ron 1 time."

Yet Paul continues to grow his support. That shows how powerful the message of freedom is. The Ron Paul super PAC is hosting its own South Carolina primary coverage in protest.

MISC:

Colts close to hiring Jim Tressel as head coach. If that happens, talk about landing on his feet. I never thought of Tressel as NFL material because he never seemed a great quarterbacks coach. But maybe he can hire one.