Free kibbles

FEDERAL RESERVE:

So the Fed is create a health care bubble, an education bubble and a new tech bubble. Any other bubbles I'm missing? Don't forget the cupcake bubble.

HEALTH CARE:

North Carolina government threatens to jail a blogger for telling people how he beat diabetes. Forget freedom of speech. Forget good health. The government only cares about control. Hint: the blogger went paleo.

Whenever you see economic growth broken down by sector, health care is always growing the fastest. That's because it's a giant bubble too.

Government's control of our food supply enabled another mad cow to appear in the US.

"Clifford did not say when the disease was discovered or exactly where the cow was raised. He said the cow was at a rendering plant in central California when the case was discovered through regular USDA sample testing.

Dennis Luckey, executive vice president of Baker Commodities, told The Associated Press that the disease was discovered at its Hanford, Calif., transfer station when the company selected the cow for random sampling.

Rendering plants process animal parts for products not going into the human food chain, such as animal food, soap, chemicals or other household products."

This sounds like another factory farm problem. Other cows with mad cow probably already passed into the system. We'll read about them later.

Violence in childhood can change genes. More and more we're learning how our genetic expression is modified by our environment. I don't like the implication that this should be used as an excuse for the government to take children from their parents and put them with "safe families." I don't think government's approval of families would have anything to do with safety.

Registered dietitians want nutrition prisons.

GLOBAL WARMING AND ENERGY:

BP engineer charged with obstruction of justice for deleting text messages off his iPhone about the Gulf oil spill. That's ridiculous. Text messages on your phone should be your property to do with as you wish. The government thinks it's the defacto owner of text messages on personal phones. Those messages should be available on servers.

Methane released from the Arctic Ocean. I guess we're supposed to be alarmed.

A bombshell paper correlates ocean biodiversity and climate strongly with nearby supernova rates.

• "The long-term diversity of life in the sea depends on the sea-level set by plate tectonics and the local supernova rate set by the astrophysics, and on virtually nothing else.
• The long-term primary productivity of life in the sea – the net growth of photosynthetic microbes – depends on the supernova rate, and on virtually nothing else.
• Exceptionally close supernovae account for short-lived falls in sea-level during the past 500 million years, long-known to geophysicists but never convincingly explained..
• As the geological and astronomical records converge, the match between climate and supernova rates gets better and better, with high rates bringing icy times."

That's pretty amazing. Apparently earth's climate is driven more strongly by the sun and cosmic rays from supernova than anybody previously dared claim. The best scientific theories tend not only to fit the data, but also to be elegant, and this is elegant.

The E-15 policy quietly marches forward to benefit government cronies at the expense of the people. This article blames Obama, but it would have happened regardless of which party was in power.

WAR:

Prostitution and the US military.

POLITICS:

UK Judge grills Murdoch over political influence.

"James Murdoch faced tough questions about News Corp.'s NWSA +0.95%

political influence in Britain—especially with a key government minister—and his handling of a scandal over illicit reporting tactics at the company's British tabloids, during a public grilling before a judge-led inquiry into U.K. media practices."

Talk about hypocrisy. Is he going to grill the other top 100 plutocrats who control government?

Ron Paul likely to win Iowa. It'll be funny to see the press play catch-up and explain why they ignored the winner for most of the campaign. I wonder if they'll stop calling Mitt Romney the presumptive nominee.

New York Republican establishment makes robo-calls mis-informing voters that Ron Paul has dropped out of the race. I can't help but laugh at the blatant dishonesty and the fear of these crooks.

It's hard to see how Paul overcomes these results. He won over 20 percent in only one of five of today's primaries.

Apparently Newt isn't convinced Romney will pay his debts, so he's dropping out. That will make it a two man race.

Pat Buchanan believes the flagrant, public excesses of government under Obama are a sign that Democrats own government.

"What all of the above reveals is how the Party of Government views the government. They see its perks, privileges and power as their entitlements, their inheritance, their patrimony.

And there is some truth to that.

After all, the bureaucracy was built up in the New Deal and Great Society, and remains dyed-in-the-wool Democratic.

Even when the GOP wins the White House, the conservatives are outsiders in this city. Even when Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan won their 49-state landslides, neither came even close to carrying Washington, D.C., the sole Electoral College precinct that has never gone Republican.

While John McCain lost the nation by eight points to Obama, he lost Washington, D.C., by 86 points. This is Obama's town. He owns it.

But if a noxious aroma of self-indulgence and corruption is arising from it, it is Obama's problem, and it is no longer a small one."

I'm sure there's some truth to Buchanan's claim, but I don't believe for a second that the Secret Service culture suddenly changed after Obama was inaugurated. Individuals don't change that radically, that quickly. They did the same under Bush. The GSA parties may be getting bigger under Obama, but they got bigger under Bush too. The important factor is the size and scope of government, not which party controls the White House. Bureaucrats party like it's 1999 every day on the taxpayer dime regardless of who is in power. His point about entitlement is right, but he's wrong about the partisanship. The Republicans attend the same orgies as the Democrats.

MEDIA:

In a wonderful example showing how successful Ron Paul, Lew Rockwell and the Mises Institute have been, the USA Today asks if the US should return to the gold standard. Ben Bernanke must be crapping in his pants.

Obama has figured out how to turn the Secret Service scandal into political gain: call for more women Secret Service guards. Obama's trying to buy more votes from women. He really thinks he can drive enough wedges to win enough women's votes to win the election.

LOCAL:

Jobless rate falls from 8.9 to 8.5 in Montgomery County. Unfortunately the article doesn't tell us if that because of job creation or people dropping out of the work force. This article, like the one yesterday claiming an increase in sales tax means the economy is improving, show the writers don't understand economics. They're not giving us enough information because they don't understand how an economy works.

MISC:

As previously hinted at, private company Planetary Resources announces plan to mine asteroids. If they capture an asteroid into Earth or lunar orbit, they will have proven the technology to deflect an asteroid from hitting Earth. This is an example of people acting in their own interests, but that interest is not imminent profit.

Observation of photons show either independence or entanglement based on actions which occur after the observation. Our understanding of the universe is quite incomplete.