Free kibbles

SOCIALISM:

This fantastic story comparing the privatized House barbershop with the socialized Senate barbershop will knock your socks off. It's a beautiful, encapsulated lesson of the failures of socialism versus capitalism.

TAX AND SPEND:

I guarantee that this Republican budget does not include spending cuts. It might include tiny reductions in the growth of spending, but it does not include spending cuts. It will continue to grow spending.

"The proposal would produce $3.1 trillion in deficits over the next decade, a little less than half as much as President Barack Obama's budget plan. The deficit would shrink to $166 billion in 2018 under the proposal, though it would begin growing again in subsequent years. The plan would not balance the government's books until 2040."

And those are the most optimistic figures. As bad as this budget is, the reality, if it passed would be worse. I doubt it includes the cost of a war in Iran either.

Private company SpaceX to take over missions to the ISS. This is a step in the right direction. Privatizing the ISS would be another step in the right direction. Space X entrepreneur believes he can get the cost of a round trip to Mars to about $500,000. That's what happens when you unleash the power of the .marketplace

REGULATION:

Congressmen propose warning label for all video games, claiming all cause aggression. Here's another important issue for Santorum to campaign on.

Tax hikes are scheduled for January.

FEDERAL RESERVE:

Advancing toward the cashless society.

"Sweden is rapidly moving towards a cashless economy. How will Sweden, and other countries in the future, balance efficiency, privacy, government control, and civil liberties? Or will they do all that technology allows? 'Bills and coins represent only 3 percent of Sweden's economy, compared to an average of 9 percent in the eurozone and 7 percent in the U.S."

I prefer cash. Governments are waging a war on cash by depreciating the currency but failing to release larger bills.

"The United States stopped printing large denomination notes in 1945 and officially discontinued their issuance in 1969, when the Fed began removing them from circulation. Since then the largest currency note available to the general public has a face value of $100. But since 1969, the inflationary monetary policy of the Fed has caused the US dollar to depreciate by over 80 percent, so that a $100 note in 2010 possessed a purchasing power of only $16.83 in 1969 dollars. That is less purchasing power than a $20 bill in 1969!"

So people are being forced to use electronic media for large purchases, which also makes electronic media more convenient for small purchases.

EDUCATION:

Brits are trying to prevent children from having best friends, promoting them to play in large groups, in order to wipe out individualism. We need to end this horrific social experiment of government schools now.

Teacher suspended for reading Ender's Game to students because a parent claimed it was pornographic. There's so many things wrong with this story. First, I've read Ender's Game. There's nothing pornographic in it. This is just some loon parent going off. The bigger question is why was a teacher reading a book to 14 year old students? Fourteen year old students should be able to read books by themselves. I don't think a teacher ever read to one of my classes after the second or maybe third grade. This goes back to my essay published (but not linked) today: teachers are not the problem.

Harvard professor wants to train people to be entrepreneurs. This is folly because,

"What distinguishes the successful entrepreneur and promoter from other people is precisely the fact that he does not let himself be guided by what was and is, but arranges his affairs on the ground of his opinion about the future. He sees the past and the present as other people do, but he judges the future in a different way."

Education grounds one in what is. A successful entrepreneur creates something that currently is not. If we need entrepreneurs, why not have government fund them?

"Instead of the unfettered market directing capital to successful entrepreneurs, the Small Business Administration (SBA) seeks to direct capital to anyone who thinks they might be an entrepreneur, especially if they fall into certain favored categories of race and gender."

Don't forget cronies. Cronies of politicians would get the most money.

GLOBAL WARMING AND ENERGY:

This is a terrible blow to the global warming frauds.

"“President no longer worried about CO2!” That’s what the headlines should have read last week after Obama presented an elaborate argument that alternative energy is the only viable response to high energy prices without ever once mentioning CO2, global warming or climate change. Instead, he presented the need to lessen our reliance on oil purely as an economic imperative."

When the cheerleader-in-chief of your cause doesn't even mention your cause, your cause is hurting.

POLICE STATE:

Video of TSA harassing a three year old in a wheelchair. Taken by his father. You can't make this stuff up.

WAR:

So the story of the soldier accused of murdering 16 Afghan civilians is he had financial problems at home and he doesn't remember anything about the murders. None of this rings true. No wonder the Afghans are so skeptical. Afghans continue to doubt this story. The AP reports that Afghan villagers claim American soldiers threatened to kill at least 20 of them after an IED attack.

US commander in Afghanistan says mission is on track. On track for what? For killing more Americans, NATO personnel and Afghans? For creating more terrorists who want to kill us? For bombing that country back into the stone age? For transferring hundreds of billions more from the American people to war profiteers? For producing more opium? For setting up a certain civil war as soon as US troops leave? If that what he means, I agree with him.

I'm happy to see the war on terror transformed into an intelligence war. That's how it should have been handled from the start. But I also agree with this article. It will make the war invisible to the American people, and that's a bad thing. The problem is drone strikes and CIA covert actions. Those should be abolished. If the president believes somebody should be targeted for assassination, he should get a Letter of Marque or Reprisal from Congress. Then the people would have insight into what's going on.

Reporter finds reams of US military documents in a dumpster outside Baghdad that were supposed to have been destroyed because they document the killing of Iraqi civilians by US troops.

"Maj. Gen. Steve Johnson, the commander of American forces in Anbar, in his own testimony, described it as "a cost of doing business." According to other testimony: "Troops, traumatized by the rising violence and feeling constantly under siege, grew increasingly twitchy, killing more and more civilians in accidental encounters. Others became so desensitized and inured to the killing that they fired on Iraqi civilians deliberately while their fellow soldiers snapped pictures.""

And we wonder why they hate us. Where were the arrests and court martials?

POLITICS:

Police arrest Ron Paul supporters during a political meeting.

"You might have seen those articles about how a number of Ron Paul supporters were arrested during what seemed to be a routine floor fight at a caucus in Missouri.

That sounds like the sort of thing you might expect in Russia."

I expect it here too.

Paul raises $3.3 million in February.

Widespread ballot problems in the land of Obama. I'm sure this is perfectly innocent. CBS called Illinois for Romney pretty quickly. Where is the delay for hand counting?

Polls shows the perception gap between blacks and whites regarding Obama's policies. We know one thing for sure: Obama's policies have made Wall street fat cats even richer while everybody else is getting poorer. My mistake. Obama has also made the people who live around D.C. richer.

LOCAL:

In an economy, there's always two sides to every exchange, so while local governments may have saved millions on salt and overtime due to the mild winter, many people who depend on that overtime, shoveling and plowing snow lost income.

MISC:

Arnold Schwarzenegger repackages the one world government baloney in a project called Sustania.

New technique for analyzing satellite photos reveals interconnections of settlements dating back 8,000 years.

Strong earthquake in Mexico.

The history of the conflict between the Virginia colony and Indians.

"Perhaps the most unfortunate aspect of the affair, for its long-run consequence in poisoning Indian-white relations in Virginia, was the white aggression later in 1622 against the friendly Potomac Indians. The powerful Potomac tribe had refused to join the Powhatan confederacy plot to massacre the whites, and indeed had helped to save the colony from destruction by warning the colonists of Opechancanough's plot.

While on an expedition to the Potomacs to obtain corn, Captain Isaac Madison allowed himself to believe, without proof, the false tale of an exiled Potomac chief and of a renegade Polish interpreter, Robert Poole, that the Potomacs were planning to massacre the expedition. Madison then kidnapped the Potomac king and suddenly attacked and massacred any Potomac Indian he could lay his hands on."

The colonists couldn't understand the complex interactions between Indian tribes, and they fell for the lies of disgruntled individuals. Sounds like Iraq. Sounds like Afghanistan. It sounds like these problems of colonization are universal.

"Even collective guilt was imposed on the Indians, it being provided that if an Indian murdered a white man, all the people of the neighboring Indian town would be "answerable for it with their lives or liberties." But this law taxed even the often elastic consciences of the Virginians of the day, and was soon repealed."

Sounds like the story the Afghans are telling of the recent massacre.

"Arrant self-righteousness and a flagrant double standard of morality are often characteristic of the side with the superior weapons in any dispute, for its one-sided version of morality can be supported by force of arms if not by force of logic."

Colonists generally have superior weapons, so this sounds like another, related, universal rule of colonization.

"It is another common rule that militarization of a society ostensibly to bring force majeure against an enemy often succeeds also (or even only) in bringing that force against the very society being militarized. Thus, soldiers, conscripted into the garrisons, were to be subject to highly rigorous articles of war: any blasphemy, for example, when "either drunk or sober" was punished by forcing the soldier to run the terrible gantlet. Public prayers were to be read in the field or garrison twice a day, and any soldier refusing or neglecting to attend the prayers or the preaching or to show proper diligence in reading homilies and sermons was to be punished at the whim of the commander."

This seems to be another, related, universal rule of how wars lead to oppression at home. In this case it led to rebellion. That produces more oppression at home.