Free kibbles

FREEDOM OF SPEECH:

Man successfully argues stripping to protest TSA was protected speech.

SOCIALISM:

Expose shows unions are all too happy to take taxpayer money to dig ditches then fill them back in.

"Tocci and Hutchings say that this is just the sort of stuff that happened under FDR in the 1930s with the Works Progress Administration. “They dug the roads up, put ‘em back!” says an animated Tocci."

Gosh. Where have I seen them do that?

ECONOMY:

Charts show that wages, adjusted for inflation, have been falling for decades. I keep saying that our economic problems have been a century in the making. Maybe these charts will wake people up. Our ancestors suffered because government looted a little, then they suffered more because government looted a little more, then they suffered a lot because government looted a lot. Now we're suffer collapse because government has looted us beyond our ability to overcome that looting.

"We see two things in the chart above on average American wages. First we see how (in real dollars) wages for the average U.S. worker have been falling steadily for more than 40 years. Those wages have now fallen by more than 50%, all the way down to the same levels as during the Great Depression. And we see how the U.S. government’s lies about inflation have almost entirely concealed this relentless collapse in wages. How convenient."

It's convenient for Fed chairmen, presidents and congressmen, they get rich off the looting, but the rest of us get poorer.

Even the Federal Reserve is admitting its actions enrich the rich and impoverish the poor. You think I'm joking...

"A report from the Federal Reserve Bank of New York suggests that the bulk of equity returns for more than a decade are due to actions by the US central bank. Theoretically, the S&P 500 would be more than 50 percent lower – at the 600 level – if the bullish price action preceding Fed announcements was excluded, the study showed. Posted on the New York Fed’s web site Wednesday, the study sought out to explain why equities receive such a high premium over less risky assets such as bonds. What they found was that the Federal Reserve has had an outsized impact on equities relative to other asset classes. For example, the market has a tendency to rise in the 24-hour period before the release of the Fed’s statement on interest rates and the economy, presumably on expectations Chairman Ben Bernanke and his predecessor, Alan Greenspan, would discuss or implement a stimulus measure to lift asset prices. – CNBC"

If you thought I was lying to you over the last few years, this report should assure you I'm not. This is just one many ways the government enriches rich people and impoverishes everybody else. In fact, this is an indirect way which is just an add-on to the many direct ways government officials enrich rich cronies with money stolen from the rest of us.

Canadians are wealthier than Americans.

"For the first time in recent history, Canadians are richer than Americans.  That is to say that the average Canadian household is worth more than the average American household.  And we aren’t talking about a few bucks.  Nope.  The average Canadian household is worth more than $40,000 more than in America.  Canadians are also more likely to be employed and their real estate is worth more."

That's because they have greater economic freedom than we do.

"They cut the size of government.  Why did they cut the size of their government?  Because they had to. In the 1990s, they had to make tough decisions because they were facing the same crisis that we are currently facing: An exploding national debt and a growing entitlement crisis.  So in the 1990s, Canada took steps to shrink the size of its government."

But Americans aren't that smart. They failed to nominate the only candidate in the race who wanted to cut government.

FEDERAL RESERVE:

Democrats' corrupt banks.

HEALTH CARE:

To me, this has long been known. Obamacare didn't expose it, but for many it did.

""[T]he majority has at all times a right to govern the minority, and to bind the latter to obedience to the will of the former…. In a general sense the will of the majority of the people is absolute and sovereign, limited only by its means and power to make its will effectual."
~ Joseph Story, Commentaries on the Constitution, III, 327, 330
"The scientific concept of dictatorship means nothing else but this – Power without limit, resting directly upon force, restrained by no laws, absolutely unrestrained by rules."
~ Vladimir Lenin
A constitution merely prolongs the pretense that a political government can be limited by laws that it will interpret. Eventually, every constitutional government will embrace Lenin's ruling formula – "Power without limit, resting directly on force.""

It's a matter of principle. The laws of humanity never change. If you grant the government the power to steal from you, it will steal from you until you stop it. If you grant the government the power to order you around at the point of its gun, it will order you around at the point of its gun until you stop it. The US government, because it was small for a century and a half, managed to convince us that we're free. That's a lie. We're not free. We're the most docile and servile people in the western world. Our government has used that propaganda to become one of the most oppressive governments in the western world, and that's why we are doomed to the greatest economic collapse since the fall of the Roman Empire.

Scientists confirm the paleo lifestyle.

"Endorsed by the world-wide scientific community including top doctors at the Harvard Medical School, Johns Hopkins, and UCLA, and approved as curriculum for registered dieticians (RDs) by the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics, the single largest meta-analysis of health and fitness ever conducted shows that conventional “eat less, exercise more” approaches are far less effective than going Primal, harm our health, and lead to fat gain 95.4 percent of the time."

This is good news.

WAR:

Our government rulers are masters at starting wars on all fronts then persuading the people that we're surrounded by people who want to kill us. Orwell would be proud.

It turns out that boat the US Navy ship fired on in the Persian Gulf was an Indian fishing boat. The Navy killed one and injured two others. The Indians claim they gave no warning.

FOREIGN POLICY:

Proving himself to be a consummate tool of the CIA, the king of Jordan declares that Syria's chemical weapons could be seized by al Qaeda. What he doesn't mention is that the al Qaeda elements in the rebellion are being supported by the CIA and its regional stooges. How ironic, if by ironic I meant murderous. I'm so disgusted by the government that claims to rule in my name, I want to puke.

POLITICS:

Political ideology determines how we perceive temperature.

Obama's jobs advisors haven't met for six months because they disagree with Obama's policies. More.

"Revelations about the comical neglect and disintegration of the White House jobs council come immediately after the president said he didn't think building a business was much of an accomplishment anyway. His jobs council hasn't met in six months and doesn't have plans to meet again in the near future. Many members haven't endorsed the president, he has ignored many of the jobs council recommendations, and one of the council's key staff members appears to have quietly left for a job . . . in China! Is this sad, funny, pathetic or all of the above? How can the president keep a straight face when he talks about reducing unemployment, ending outsourcing, etc., if we give him another four years in power? "

Sociopaths have no problems keeping a straight face. Ever.

MEDIA:

Major media outlets give Obama veto power over stories.

"A confession in yesterday’s New York Times reveals that even the stenography produced by our nation’s most esteemed media outlets is anything but accurate: rather, it’s contrived and distorted by the very people whom these media outlets purport to cover adversarially. The article describes how many American media outlets, including the NYT, give veto power to the Obama campaign (and, less so, to the Romney campaign), as well as political offices generally, over the quotes of its officials that are allowed to be published:"

And you thought the press was adversarial to government.

MISC:

Microsoft suffers first ever quarterly loss.

Argument that Google's pile of cash means there's no new technology to invest in. Government has outlawed innovation.

"[Google]has 30, 40, 50 billion in cash.  It has no idea how to invest that money in technology effectively.  So, it prefers getting zero percent interest from Mr. Bernanke, effectively the cash sort of gets burned away over time through inflation, because there are no ideas that Google has how to spend money....
if we're living in an accelerating technological world, and you have zero percent interest rates in the background, you should be able to invest all of your money in things that will return it many times over, and the fact that you're out of ideas, maybe it's a political problem, the government has outlawed things.  But, it still is a problem...."

That's a pretty good, and sad, argument.