Health Care

Government corporate agents Oracle, Red Hat and Google come to the rescue of healthcare.gov. With friends like these, who needs enemies. It still won't be fixed by the end of November.

Healthcare.gov is a magnificent example of government failure.

Speculation has run rampant about how many people have signed up for Obamacare. We finally have a hint.

"Enrollment in health insurance plans on the troubled Obamacare website was very small in the first couple of days of operation, with just 248 Americans signing up, according to documents released on Thursday by a U.S. House of Representatives committee."

Ouch. It looks like the American people are nullifying Obamacare.

Peter Schiff understands Obamacare.

"Put simply the program is built on a mountain of false assumptions and is covered by a terrain of unanticipated incentives. Any cleared-eyed observer should conclude that it is perfectly designed to raise the costs of care and wreck the federal budget. However, like just about every other complicated problem that bedevils the nation, the public has become far too caught up in the politics and has ignored the horrific details."

As usual.

"Most people agree that the plan can only remain solvent if enough young and healthy people (“the invincibles”) agree to sign up. They are the ones who are likely to pay more into the system than they take out. But now that insurance coverage is guaranteed to anyone at any time (at the same price — even after they have gotten sick or injured), the only incentive for the invincibles to sign up will be to avoid the penalty (I think we can dismiss “civic duty” as an effective motivator). But as I detailed in a column last year, Justice John Roberts declared the law to be constitutional only because the penalties are far too low to actually compel behavior. Once young healthy people understand that they can save money by dropping insurance, they will. No amount of slick, cheerful TV ads will change that."

That was by design.

Health care is not special. The laws of economics apply to health care the same as everything else.

Socialism

Socialists brought more people to the west than the water supply can support.

"To find a clue about the real source of the problem, we need only look to the Times article itself:

Thanks to reservoirs large and small, scores of dams including colossi like Hoover and Glen Canyon, more than 1,000 miles of aqueducts and countless pumps, siphons, tunnels and diversions, the West had been thoroughly re-rivered and re-engineered.

Rain doesn’t fall much in the West, so to get water, the people need to go to the water in the rivers, or the water in the rivers needs to be shipped to the people. That’s where all those aqueducts and tunnels and diversions come in."

Reservoirs don't change how much water flows into the system, but it makes it appear the area has more water than it does.

"Water shortages occur in the West not because too many people are flushing their toilets too often, but because agriculture, heavily subsidized through cheap water made possible by the federal government, continues to grow crops in places that would never support agriculture on a similar scale in a free market. Indeed, agriculture uses well over 80 percent of all the water used in Western states, and most of that water is stored, pumped, and diverted using dams, pumps, and aqueducts paid for by the U.S. taxpayer.
As a result, growers don’t have to face the real-life costs of transporting water to their farms. They only need consider the subsidized price, which is far below what it would be in a private market. Consequently, water usage for growers across the West is much greater than what it would be were there a functioning market for water in the region."

Short-term demand is temporarily able to outstrip long-term supply.

"Naturally, the fact that taxpayers pay for all this does not mean that the taxpayers control the water. The most important resource in the West is in fact mostly controlled by Congress and the Bureau of Reclamation, and indirectly by growers and other special interests. Water is distributed in the West not by markets and market prices, but by the political process."

This creates a problem that cannot exist in a free market.

"Naturally, the fact that taxpayers pay for all this does not mean that the taxpayers control the water. The most important resource in the West is in fact mostly controlled by Congress and the Bureau of Reclamation, and indirectly by growers and other special interests. Water is distributed in the West not by markets and market prices, but by the political process.
In an arid place like the West, the political control of water translates to the political control of entire sectors of the economy. Writing in 2004, economist William Anderson noted:

No private firm would distribute a precious commodity like water in a desert in the way that the Bureau of Reclamation has done it. While the subsidized farms in the West are private, the federal government owns the main input that is needed for their crops: water. Thus, the term “private enterprise” here is meaningless, since the farms are wards of the state.

The fact that many farms are “wards of the state” as Anderson calls them, does not trouble the more influential growers much, as agricultural interests remain extremely influential in Western states, and they indirectly control most of the water."

It should bother everybody else.

Media

Great pictures of Amish life. The media has been painting the Amish in a bad light lately. I guess because they reject what the media is selling.

Economy

Graph highlights the newly inflated real estate bubble.

The economy continues to decline.

"According to a report from the National Association of Realtors home sales plunged significantly in the month of September. So much so that it is the single largest drop in signed home sales in 40 months."

That sounds like an indicator the housing bubble is popping.

"We are very closely approaching 2007 levels of personal and business debt. Likewise, we’re reaching new highs on stock market exchanges and home prices seemed to be recovering to boot.
But the real question is… how can we possibly be in a recovery when millions of Americans remain unemployed and underpaid?
How is it possible that home prices were rising and sales increasing while a record 107 million Americans received government distributions?
How can we be out of a recession when nearly 50 million Americans – fully 23 million households, or about 20% – are dependent on food stamps?
The answer is simple.
The entire economy is now a complete sham."

Yes it is.

"When experts say we’re out of the recession because the economy is growing, it’s important to understand that the purported “growth” is simply inflation making it’s way into the system.
It’s the very same reason for why stock markets have once again reached record highs (none of these company’s earnings justify their outrageous stock prices!), and why home prices didn’t continue to collapse.
They injected the system, literally, with trillions of dollars to keep prices afloat and avoid a deflationary depression."

It's a sham.

Americans are taking on record levels of debt again. It's going to end worse this time than it did in 2007.

Federal Reserve

Prediction that gold will be $50,000 an ounce by 2020.

Despite the calls for more inflation, more inflation is the last thing we need.

Education

Female teachers are wussifying boys. Healthy boys are being diagnosed with mental problems and being drugged into submission.

"The relevent content is that women are making school hell for boys, that they have turned normal boyish behavior, such as enjoyment of rough-housing, into psychiatric “personality disorders.” They are doping boys up, forcing them into behavior utterly alien to them, and sending them to psychiatrists if they don´t conform to standards of behavior suited to girls. The result is that boy children hate school and do poorly (despite, as Gnaulati, says, having higher IQs). This is no secret for anyone paying attention, but  Gnaulati  makes it explicit."

Sounds right to me.

Global Warming and Energy

Study links climate to solar magnetic fields at equator and poles.

Study shows Medieval Warm Period was global in scope and oceans are colder today than 8-10 thousand years ago.

Foreign Policy

NSA is supposed to spy on foreign governments, so why all the flap about that?

"However, you don’t have to be a mind-reader to understand what enrages Feinstein. Merkel and the other world leaders we’ve been caught eavesdropping on are all members of a transnational political elite of which Feinstein is a leading figure. The political class – in this country and around the world – reserves to itself certain perks and privileges, one of which is the absolute sanctity of their esteemed persons: for example, when they commit a crime, as Glenn Greenwald showed so exhaustively in his book on the subject, they very rarely go to jail. Even if they’re convicted of a crime in a court of law they nearly always manage to get off with a slap on the wrist – that is, if they don’t elude punishment altogether. "

They're one big, corrupt family. More.

NSA spying makes is pariah in Americas too. More.

NSA spied on the Pope.

US allies certainly spy on our rulers, but they don't have the capability of NSA. Most if not all of this phony outrage is just jealously and theater for political gain.

War

Saudi split pressures US to go to war with Syria and Iran.

Israeli warplanes attack Syrian military base. Let them fight their own wars.

Turkey rejects US patriot missile defense system in favor of Chinese system. Uh-oh.

Iraqi PM is in Washington to ask US to help fight the civil war in Iraq.

War on Drugs

Major drug tunnel found from Mexico to US.

Politics

Obama approval rating at all-time low. I want to know who these 42 percent that support him are.

I think the incidence of mental illness in our rulers is way higher than 1 in 7.

Love as an alternative to the state.

"Given that wealth destruction undermines social well-being, how did it come to pass that the state — an institution based on violence and plunder — has overridden peaceful cooperation as the dominant factor in social life virtually everywhere on earth? Although this simple question requires a complex answer, we know that the rulers have used fear — of themselves and of other dangers known and unknown — to terrorize the people and convince them that they are incapable of providing security, that only the state can provide it. First through fear alone, then through complementary religion, and ultimately through complementary ideology, the people’s convictions were twisted into forms compatible with the rulers, the priest/ideologists, and the military elite’s living at the expense of the plundered masses, who were kept in line more by false beliefs than by raw force."

We see it every day.

"Yet, here we are, inhabiting a world divided in countless ways by mutual misunderstandings, hatreds, and yearnings for vengeance. Because each society is subject to a state whose own interests are served by keeping this vicious pot boiling, we have no prospect of ever breaking out of the endless cycle of evil, violence, and retribution. In the process, the whole world forgoes the immense blessings that would flow from mutual cooperation, peace, and tolerance."
"Love does not keep score; international rivals do so in numerous dimensions. Love leads to inner peace and cordial relations with others, whereas the state remains always at war, if not against other states, then certainly against its own subjects, on whom it preys ceaselessly in order to sustain itself and to gratify the rulers’ insatiable ambitions for personal acclaim and unchecked power."

He offers no way to get from here to there.

Sombreros called racist. Give me a break.

Goldman Sachs votes for Hillary with our dollars.

"Drum roll please . . . . . . . . . . it’s . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Hillary Clinton!, whom Goldman just paid $400,000 for two speeches.

Is there a more money-grubbing woman anywhere in America?  There’s no one more greedy and obsessed with money than a socialist ideologue."

I bet she's happy Obama brought outright socialism into the mainstream.

Regulation

FAA loosens regulations on e-devices on airplanes, admitting their previous regulations were useless, arbitrary and authoritarian.

Women under 21 can't buy tobacco in New York, but they can get an abortion.

Misc

NASA launched 500 million tiny copper wires into orbit. What could go wrong?

Radiation from Fukushima blamed for many maladies.

Police State

Google and Yahoo deny giving NSA access to their servers. I bet they did.

The Senate races to legalize NSA spying.

"The Senate Intelligence Committee voted Thursday to advance legislation that would endorse a National Security Agency program to collect the phone records of nearly every American while strengthening privacy protections for the Americans whose data is gathered."

How can legalizing spying strengthen privacy protections. What a crock.

Security experts created a fake profile, then got it hired into a government bureaucracy, where it received three more job offers the first day.

Silent Circle and Lavabit unite to create secure email service resistant to government spying.

Local

DP&L moves toward competitive power rates. Hooray for competition.

Instead of government-created power monopolies, now we'll have government-managed power competition. It's not true competition, but it will be an improvement.

Tax and Spend

Some Ohio food stamp recipients get cut 5.5 percent.

Congressional theft.

"Between two-thirds and three-quarters of federal spending, in contravention of the U.S. Constitution, can be described as Congress taking the earnings or property of one American to give to another, to whom it does not belong."

The world's most successful criminal organization.

Misc

Hackers taking over all electronic systems in cars. How does this benefit me?

Apple to replace defective iPhone 5s batteries. Another stumble for Apple.

War

DARPA developing drone-mounted laser weapons. Phasers, anybody? Point defense lasers? This is real Star Wars stuff.

While the government attempts to seize control of the internet for supposed security purposes, Syrian hackers hack Obama's Twitter and Facebook accounts. The absurdity burns.

Foreign Policy

Australia's version of NSA working with US NSA. No surprise there.

Police State

New Snowden revelation busts NSA conspiracy with Google and Yahoo.

"The leaked documents include a post-it note as part of an internal NSA Powerpoint presentation showing a diagram of Google network traffic, an arrow pointing to the Google front-end server with text reading, 'SSL Added and Removed Here' with a smiley face. When shown the sketch by The Post and asked for comment, two engineers with close ties to Google responded with strings of profanity.""

I wish these revelations would put these NSA corporate agents out of business, but they won't.

Tax and Spend

Government officially loses nearly $10 billion on GM bailout, so you know the real loss is much higher.

First the first time in five years, the official deficit falls below $1 trillion, and lot below, but this article is so stupid, it's funny.

"Among the reasons: A growing economy, the end of a temporary Social Security tax cut, higher tax rates on wealthy Americans, and the series of across-the-board tax hikes known as sequestration."

That's funny.

Local

Boil advisory for Piqua residents.

Sinclair and Clark State battle over decaying corpse of US military funding.

Drug bust. Drug bust. Drug bust.

Health Care

Oreos as addictive as cocaine.

The sorry consequence of government control of health care:

"Even many physicians neglect to tell their patients about the simple and, oftentimes, free changes they can make to dramatically improve their health, simply because they have been brainwashed by the conventional system and are convinced that drugs are part of the, if not the sole, answer for virtually any health condition."

Get rid of government's drugs and adopt a healthy lifestyle.

"The business of being a doctor in the US has been largely reduced to being the front man for a multi-billion dollar drug business whose primary mission seems to be enriching their bottom line by keeping you sick and dependent on drugs to relieve -- but not cure -- your health complaints. "

Too bad this came out the day after I made this claim in my latest article.

Stress isn't bad for people. Stressing over stress is.

"One recent study suggests this, finding that although high amounts of stress increase the risk of dying, it does so only in individuals who perceive stress to be harmful. In people who don’t see stress as a health threat, stress does not appear to increase mortality.
If the connections found in this study are indeed causative, this is huge. It means that stress isn’t “bad.” Stressing over stress is what makes stress so stressful."

That works for me. I think constant stress is bad.

Global Warming and Energy

IPCC arbitrarily lowers short-term model predictions without changing long-term predictions.

NOAA acknowledges corral reefs can adapt to climate change, erasing another alarmist claim.

Politics

Most libertarians do not identify with the tea party.

War

Another consequence of the US proxy war in Syria is a polio outbreak.

Misc

Study concludes that primate brains evolved, among other things, to protect against snakes. This makes sense considering children seem innately afraid of snakes without being taught and the snake archetype as ultimate evil around the world.

Google+ sees big jump in users, tops 300 million active users. I wonder if this is a counting gimmick based on some of the changes they made.

Police State

UK prime minister threatens UK newspapers if they publish more NSA spying revelations from Snowden.

Local

Gas prices drop below $3 per gallon. Gas prices jumped to $3.39. That's ridiculous.

Health Care

NBC busts Obama for lying about people being able to keep their health insurance plans.

Thirty-four companies fight GMO labeling in Washington. It seems to me that non-gm food producers should label their food that way.

Republicans reject delaying health care fee. So much for wanting to reduce taxes.

I'm skeptical that big data caused insurance companies to throw away a centuries old model of grouping people and trying to cover as many people as possible to trying to cover as few as possible. They still can make money covering high risk individuals if they charge enough.

Federal Reserve

This time two years ago, everybody predicted hyper-inflation in 2012. Last year they predicted it in 2013. Now they're predicting it in 2014. I'm still not sure we won't see deflation first, but either way, economic collapse is imminent.

Global Warming and Energy

With solar activity still in decline, the chances of a Maunder Minimum-type cold period are increasing.

Frauds getting rich off their lies.

Sports

Napoleon Goodell's targeting of players for fines is dividing the league.

War

Drone strike kills two in Somalia. I can't wait for the Somali terrorists to come to the US to kill Americans in retaliation.

Police State

Ohio doesn't have enough of the new execution drug, has to switch again. I guess nobody checked on supply issues.

The government charges every American $574 a year to pay for the NSA to spy on them.

The evidence that the FBI is lying about the Boston Marathon bombing is mounting.

"In his letter, [Senator Charles] Grassley hints that Cambridge, Mass., police believe the FBI had identified the Tsarnaev brothers as suspects and had a large team of agents on stakeout for them at Cambridge’s Central Square without sharing the information with local authorities."
"Let’s not forget [New Hampshire state legislator] Republican Stella Tremblay who ended up resigning over her view that the Boston Bombing was a government run operation. People just don’t believe the lies anymore if they are paying any kind of attention at all. They might not know exactly what is wrong but they know something is."
"She has family. That’s why she resigned."

That sounds right.

Misc

Company claims to have defeated CAPTCHA.

Children are biased towards attractive people. Duh. So are adults.

Health Care

I was listening to Rush today, and he's missing the genius behind Obamacare. The Democrats are preparing to pivot as they always planned. It was always planned that people would hate Obamacare and it would fail. It was always planned they would blame the "free market". Obama didn't lie, and government didn't raise prices, evil, profit-seeking insurance companies did. The evil corporations are trying to profit from people's misfortune. The website failure delayed the pivot. That's why Sebelius is on the hot seat. As soon as the website is fixed, Obama and Democrats will blame the market for high prices. They'll say they did everything they could to work with the market, but the market failed, therefore they have to usher in full-blown socialized medicine. This has been their plan all along. This is the fight they want; and they expect to win because they made the status quo - Obamacare - intolerable, and Republicans can't get the votes to repeal it in the Senate even if they wanted to, which they don't.

The most lawless president in my lifetime illegally waives health care penalties.

Even though the government controls antibiotics and only government agents can proscribe them, the CDC blames their ineffectiveness against superbugs on people for over-medicating themselves.

Modern studies show saturated fat does not promote heart disease and fats like coconut oil are healthy.

Foreign Policy

Spain joins foreign governments protesting NSA spying.

Ron Paul welcomes the split between the US and Saudi Arabia.

Obama says NSA needs more constraints on spying. Hello. You're the boss. Constrain them. Talk about passing the buck.

The US wants to train Libyans, the same guys who killed four Americans in Benghazi, in aviation and nuclear technology. What could go wrong?

Timeline of CIA atrocities.

Tax and Spend

More on government's corruption of science.

"Michael Hiltzik writes in the LA Times that you'd think the one place you can depend on for verifiable facts is science but a few years ago, scientists at Amgen set out to double-check the results of 53 landmark papers in their fields of cancer research and blood biology and found only six could be proved valid."

I wouldn't think that. It's people who have misguided assumptions like this that enable government to rob us blind.

Local

Cops chase vehicle into crash.

Kettering school bureaucrats use children as pawns in pep rally in support of stealing more money. Some education.

Government to seize Arcade over $325,000 in back taxes. This is nuts. It's another economic fallacy. The building is worth nothing. The city is keeping it that way.

High school volleyball coach indicted for sex with minor.

""As parents, we all expect that coaches and others that have access to young adults will be positive mentors. Sadly, this coach instead acted inappropriately and had a negative impact on this victim." Heck said. Fisher is scheduled to be in court on the indictment October 31, 2013"

Heck lies again.

Another DDN story about drugs, Krokodil again. Great quotes.

Economy

Ohio median income dropped by $4,600 annually since 2007, and that doesn't count real inflation.

An Obama bureaucrat blames high broadband internet prices in the US on lack of regulation. This is absurd. It's another economic fallacy. The price is so high because regulations limit competition compared to elsewhere.

Apple's profits fall for the third straight quarter.

Politics

Kochs secretly funding elections through non-profits. Governments do the same thing. So does George Soros. I imagine every billionaire does the same thing. Why single out the Kochs? Rhetorical question.

Tax and Spend

Support for repudiating the national debt.

"One myth about "debtors'" relief is that debtors are habitually poor and creditors rich, so that intervening to save debtors is merely a requirement of egalitarian "fairness." But this assumption was never true: in business, the wealthier the businessman the more likely he is to be a large debtor. It is the Donald Trumps and Robert Maxwells of this world whose debts spectacularly exceed their assets. Intervention on behalf of debtors has generally been lobbied for by large businesses with large debts. In modern corporations, the effect of ever-tightening bankruptcy laws has been to hobble the creditor-bondholders for the benefit of the stockholders and the existing managers, who are usually installed by, and allied with, a few dominant large stockholders. The very fact that a corporation is insolvent demonstrates that its managers have been inefficient, and they should be removed promptly from the scene. Bankruptcy laws that keep prolonging the rule of existing managers, then, not only invade the property rights of the creditors; they also injure the consumers and the entire economic system by preventing the market from purging the inefficient and improvident managers and stockholders and from shifting the ownership of industrial assets to the more efficient creditors."

Wall Street banks are probably the world's biggest debtors. They call debt leverage.

"Not only that; in a recent law review article, Bradley and Rosenzweig have shown that the stockholders, too, as well as the creditors, have lost a significant amount of assets due to the installation of Chapter 11 in 1978. As they write, "if bondholders and stockholders are both losers under Chapter 11, then who are the winners?" The winners, remarkably but unsurprisingly, turn out to be the existing, inefficient corporate managers, as well as the assorted lawyers, accountants, and financial advisers who earn huge fees from bankruptcy reorganizations."

Government exists to support the status quo, making the plutocrats richer at everybody else's expense.

"Most people, unfortunately, apply the same analysis to public debt as they do to private. If sanctity of contracts should rule in the world of private debt, shouldn't they be equally as sacrosanct in public debt? Shouldn't public debt be governed by the same principles as private? The answer is no, even though such an answer may shock the sensibilities of most people. The reason is that the two forms of debt-transaction are totally different. If I borrow money from a mortgage bank, I have made a contract to transfer my money to a creditor at a future date; in a deep sense, he is the true owner of the money at that point, and if I don't pay I am robbing him of his just property. But when government borrows money, it does not pledge its own money; its own resources are not liable. Government commits not its own life, fortune, and sacred honor to repay the debt, but ours. This is a horse, and a transaction, of a very different color."

The government never gets penalized.

"The government gets the money by tax-coercion; and the public creditors, far from being innocents, know full well that their proceeds will come out of that selfsame coercion. In short, public creditors are willing to hand over money to the government now in order to receive a share of tax loot in the future. This is the opposite of a free market, or a genuinely voluntary transaction. Both parties are immorally contracting to participate in the violation of the property rights of citizens in the future. Both parties, therefore, are making agreements about other people's property, and both deserve the back of our hand. The public credit transaction is not a genuine contract that need be considered sacrosanct, any more than robbers parceling out their shares of loot in advance should be treated as some sort of sanctified contract."

It's great work if you can get it.

"Establishment economists, including Reaganomists, cleverly fudge the issue by arbitrarily labeling virtually all government spending as "investments," making it sound as if everything is fine and dandy because savings are being productively "invested." In reality, however, government spending only qualifies as "investment" in an Orwellian sense; government actually spends on behalf of the "consumer goods" and desires of bureaucrats, politicians, and their dependent client groups. Government spending, therefore, rather than being "investment," is consumer spending of a peculiarly wasteful and unproductive sort, since it is indulged not by producers but by a parasitic class that is living off, and increasingly weakening, the productive private sector. Thus, we see that statistics are not in the least "scientific" or "value-free"; how data are classified — whether, for example, government spending is "consumption" or "investment" — depends upon the political philosophy and insights of the classifier."
"It is for all these reasons that the Jeffersonians and Jacksonians (who, contrary to the myths of historians, were extraordinarily knowledgeable in economic and monetary theory) hated and reviled the public debt. Indeed, the national debt was paid off twice in American history, the first time by Thomas Jefferson and the second, and undoubtedly the last time, by Andrew Jackson."
"Consider this question: why should the poor, battered citizens of Russia or Poland or the other ex-Communist countries be bound by the debts contracted by their former Communist masters? In the Communist situation, the injustice is clear: that citizens struggling for freedom and for a free-market economy should be taxed to pay for debts contracted by the monstrous former ruling class. But this injustice only differs by degree from "normal" public debt. For, conversely, why should the Communist government of the Soviet Union have been bound by debts contracted by the Czarist government they hated and overthrew? And why should we, struggling American citizens of today, be bound by debts created by a past ruling elite who contracted these debts at our expense? One of the cogent arguments against paying blacks "reparations" for past slavery is that we, the living, were not slaveholders. Similarly, we the living did not contract for either the past or the present debts incurred by the politicians and bureaucrats in Washington."
"Specifically, of the 28 American states in the 1840s, 9 were in the glorious position of having no public debt, and 1 (Missouri's) was negligible; of the 18 remaining, 9 paid the interest on their public debt without interruption, while another 9 (Maryland, Pennsylvania, Indiana, Illinois, Michigan, Arkansas, Louisiana, Mississippi, and Florida) repudiated part or all of their liabilities. Of these states, four defaulted for several years in their interest payments, whereas the other five (Michigan, Mississippi, Arkansas, Louisiana, and Florida) totally and permanently repudiated their entire outstanding public debt. As in every debt repudiation, the result was to lift a great burden from the backs of the taxpayers in the defaulting and repudiating states."
"The next great wave of state debt repudiation came in the South after the blight of Northern occupation and Reconstruction had been lifted from them. Eight Southern states (Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Louisiana, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee, and Virginia) proceeded, during the late 1870s and early 1880s under Democratic regimes, to repudiate the debt foisted upon their taxpayers by the corrupt and wasteful carpetbag Radical Republican governments under Reconstruction."
"So what can be done now? The current federal debt is $3.5 trillion. Approximately $1.4 trillion, or 40 percent, is owned by one or another agency of the federal government. It is ridiculous for a citizen to be taxed by one arm of the federal government (the IRS) to pay interest and principal on debt owned by another agency of the federal government. It would save the taxpayer a great deal of money, and spare savings from further waste, to simply cancel that debt outright. The alleged debt is simply an accounting fiction that provides a mask over reality and furnishes a convenient means for mulcting the taxpayer. Thus, most people think that the Social Security Administration takes their premiums and accumulates it, perhaps by sound investment, and then "pays back" the "insured" citizen when he turns 65. Nothing could be further from the truth. There is no insurance and there is no "fund," as there indeed must be in any system of private insurance. The federal government simply takes the Social Security "premiums" (taxes) of the young person, spends them in the general expenditures of the Treasury, and then, when the person turns 65, taxes someone else to pay the "insurance benefit." Social Security, perhaps the most revered institution in the American polity, is also the greatest single racket. It's simply a giant Ponzi scheme controlled by the federal government. But this reality is masked by the Social Security Administration's purchase of government bonds, the Treasury then spending these funds on whatever it wishes. But the fact that the SSA has government bonds in its portfolio, and collects interest and payment from the American taxpayer, allows it to masquerade as a legitimate insurance business."

I could have quoted the whole thing.

War

Retired US drone warrior from unit credited with 1,626 kills suffers from PTSD, but he wasn't attacked, so he more likely suffers from guilt.

""The clinical definition of PTSD is an anxiety disorder associated with witnessing or experiencing a traumatic event," Bryant says. "Think how you would feel if you were part of something that you felt violated the Constitution.""

Sounds like guilt to me.

"And so, we got confirmation to fire on these guys. And the way that they reacted really made me doubt their involvement, because the guys over there, the locals over there, have to protect themselves from the Taliban just as much as armed—us—we do, as U.S. military personnel. And so, I think that they were probably in the wrong place at the wrong time. And the way that—I’ve been accused of using poetic imagery to describe it, but I watched this guy bleed out, the guy in the back, and his right leg above the knee was severed in the strike. And his—he bled out through his femoral artery. And it—"

So even conservative counts of militants killed are exaggerated and civilians undercounted.

"And my—my goal in all of this is to talk about, like, these aren’t killer robots. They’re not like unfeeling people behind this whole thing. There are—there are some people that are extremely scary when talking to them, and there was one individual who got the word "infidel" tattooed in Arabic on his side, and he had Hellfire tattoos marking every shot. But that’s an extreme."

In other words, most drone warriors are psychos, but not all of them, and most not as bad as that guy.

"Well, you know, the clinical definition of PTSD is an anxiety disorder associated with witnessing or experiencing a traumatic event. And it’s such a blanket term that so many people are like, "Oh, you can’t get PTSD from this or that." And it’s a widely—it’s a wider phenomenon than I think a lot of people realize.
And my deal is more moral injury, like think of it—think how you would feel when—if you were part of something that you felt violated the Constitution. And, I mean, I swore an oath, you know? I swore to defend the Constitution against all enemies, foreign and domestic. And how do you feel if, like—you can’t use "I obeyed orders" as an excuse. It’s "I obeyed the Constitution, regardless of lawful or unlawful orders." And lawful orders follow the Constitution. And that, that’s the hardest part."

Shrinks keep expanding the definition of PTSD.

"Right. It said, upon—like, the person who was—I mean, there’s multiple people that review the feed, and the person that was in the chat said, "Upon further review, it [the child that was killed] was a dog." So—"

Psychos. I'm happy that some of the drone warriors feel guilt, it shows they're human, but I bet its rare.

Global Warming and Energy

Global warming activists posing as scientists refuse to carry out study on cyclical climate change because it would necessarily ignore any anthropogenic effects. It would still be a worthwhile study if done honestly.

So far, hurricane season quietest in 45 years.

Police State

Ten steps to increase security and privacy on the internet.

Prosecutors want to the Supreme Court to make it legal to use warrantless wiretaps in court.

Thousands protest NSA.

Houston neighborhood replaces police with private security and cuts crime in half for half the price.

Freedom of Speech

File sharing site was honeypot to catch pirates.

Foreign Policy

Japanese government refused to allow NSA to tap Japanese internet connections.

"The NSA wanted to intercept personal information including Internet activity and phone calls passing through Japan from Asia including China. The Japanese government refused because it was illegal and would need to involve a massive number of private sector workers. Article 35 of the Japanese Constitution protects against illegal search and seizure."

A government that obeys its Constitution. Crazy.

Obama busted for lying about NSA spying on Merkel. He claims he would have stopped it had he known, but US intelligence sources say Obama was briefed in the spying in 2010. NSA denies.

Israel and NSA are partners in crime.

"It wasn’t the US government breaking into the private communications of former French President Nicolas Sarkozy, according to top secret documents unearthed by Edward Snowden and published in Le Monde – it was the Israelis."

But NSA took the blame.

Even Dick Cheney advocates a diplomatic solution with Iran, saying the military option should only be a threat. The warmongers are grasping at anything to keep the military threat alive. How far they have fallen.  US negotiator calls for delay in new sanctions.

Syria presents plan for destruction of chemical weapons.

A strong majority of Americans support a special congressional panel to investigate Benghazi. British security contractor who defended US consulate during attack speaks for the first time.

"A British security contractor said he repeatedly warned US officials that their diplomatic mission in Benghazi, Libya, was inadequately protected before it suffered a deadly attack last year.

He also described fighting off armed attackers during the al-Qaeda-linked assault, in an attempt to help rescue guards he had trained to man the gates of the compound.

Speaking publicly about the attack for the first time, the contractor, a former British soldier using the pseudonym Morgan Jones "for his own safety", described the experience as "sheer hell".

He claimed that having been employed to train the unarmed guards for the mission's entrance, he told US officials that a team of armed Libyan militiamen hired separately by the State Department to defend the mission in the event of an attack were not up to the task.

"I was saying 'these guys are no good. You need to get them out of here'," he told CBS News, adding that he repeatedly cautioned that they were "not going to stand and fight" if they came under fire. "In the end I got quite bored of hearing my own voice saying it," he said."

Maybe this will shake more information loose.

War on Drugs

Fifty-three percent of Americans say war on drugs has not been worth the cost.

Conservative estimate of cost of drug war in 2011.

"For 2011, the federal portion of the Drug War budget will amount to $23.44 billion."
"The state portion of the Drug War costs comes from a report titled, "Shoveling Up: The Impact of Substance Abuse on State Budgets", authored by The National Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse at Columbia University, in 2001, which in its press release and on page 3, shows that states spent $30.7 billion in 1998 on "the burden of substance abuse on the justice system -- for incarceration, probation and parole, juvenile justice and criminal and family court costs of substance involved offenders". In other words, that $30.7 billion represents only "justice-related" (Drug War) expenses in state drug budgets."
"So, add that $30.7 billion that the states will spend, to the federal amount of $23.44 billion and you'll get $54.14 billion total, which means that the War on Drugs will cost American taxpayers.."

That's hyper-conservative.

Local

Crash knocks out power in Huber Heights. 3000 without power in Trotwood.

Gas prices falling to $3.

Good for Kettering residents who protested spending tax money on art.

Another DDN article about prescription pill abuse. Here's another one.

"Overdose drug deaths driven largely by painkiller addictions have surpassed car crashes as the leading cause of accidental death in Ohio."

Failure.

Three adults arrested for child endangerment for driving with seven children. If they had left them home alone, they would have been arrested for the same thing. Catch 22. This is ridiculous.

Health Care

Lipid hypothesis controversy. Video.

Government's supposedly health healthy, low fat diet worsens the prognosis for heart disease and diabetes.

Thirteen lies government told us about food, nutrition and health that made people fat and sick.

Saturated fat is not the problem.

Ten best selling drugs.

Paleo and gluten-free are hurting the bread industry but helping people get healthier.

Obamacare has increased the stock price of health insurance companies. Of course it has because Obamacare mandates young, healthy people who didn't have insurance before buy it. But when that doesn't happen, stock prices will fall.

Like you can't buy fire insurance after your house catches on fire, you can't buy health insurance after you get sick. Insurance is a hedge against something that may or may not happen in the future.

Misc

In another economic fallacy, socialists think they've beaten free marketers with this study showing that aborigines exposed to free markets tend to value items they already possess more than equivalent items they don't, but aborigines not exposed to free markets do not. But who defines equivalent? Who defines rational? Is your first baseball glove equivalent to somebody else's first baseball glove? Is your grandmother's heirloom ring equivalent to a similar ring? Of course not. There's nothing irrational about valuing items for historical or legacy reasons. There's also nothing irrational about valuing a known quantity above a similar-looking but unknown quantity. I also doubt this study on its face. Who says the isolated aborigines don't have a free market amongst themselves? I bet they trade with each other. The sample size is also small.

"So the experimenters had two well-contrasted groups of Hadza (who were otherwise genetically and culturally identical)—45 people with "Low Exposure" to tour groups and 46 with "High Exposure." In both groups, each person was shown two packets of biscuits, told that one was now his/hers, and then asked if s/he'd like to trade for the other. Then the experiment was repeated with two lighters.
Statistical analysis found that the "Low Exposure" Hadza had about a 50-50 chance of trading "their" item for the other—in other words, this group was completely realistic, seeing there was no reason to prefer one of two identical objects over the other. On the other hand, the "High Exposure" Hadza had a 75 percent chance of keeping "their" item rather than trading it. A geographical analysis found that living near the trading village reduced a Hadza's probability of trading "his" item by nearly 30 percent."

I fail to see how one behavior is more rational than the other. If you accept this description of the experiment at face value, there is no reason to trade, nor is their reason not to trade.

"This is, the authors write, consistent with the notion that "isolated Hadza display no endowment effect and that some of the novel environmental cues in the HE region led to the emergence of the bias.""

This has nothing to do with whether one group was more rational than another. Maybe the population more familiar with trading recognized there was no value to trading. Maybe the population more familiar with trading recognized trading is about improving ones lot, not making zero-sum trades. Maybe the population more familiar with trading was more skeptical because someone had tried to cheat them before. These would all be rational behaviors.

"And markets are supposed to be efficient machines for finding the true value of the goods and services they trade, regardless of people's hopes and fears."

There's another economic fallacy. There is no "true value" of goods or services.

Amazon reportedly spends all its income on R&D, reporting no profit.

Since nobody has ever seen a black hole, how can somebody have observed an entangle particle pair at an event horizon of one?

The state is more dangerous than a free society.

Local

Township trustees are paid more than other elected officials.

"Township trustee jobs up for election in November are among the best-paying elected positions in the region, a Dayton Daily News analysis found, despite the fact these races get little attention and the office-holders often represent far fewer people than area city councils."

It's nice to be the king.

Tax and Spend

The IMF advocates a one-time wealth confiscation tax as an alternative to government's defaulting on debt or inflating debt away.

Media

Glenn Greenwald has been forced into exile in Brazil because of his reporting on the US government and Obama's war on investigative journalism.

War

Pakistani officials support the US drone war privately while criticizing it publicly. The Pakistani military does not support it.

While the US is expanding war into Africa, the media still decries isolationism.

Foreign Policy

EU survey finds that all governments spy, but the US and UK are more advanced at it.

Nations unite at UN to block NSA spying. US considers no-spying treaty with allies. They'd be fools to believe it. Note NSA isn't considering a no-spy deal with Americans.

Terrorism is just the excuse for ubiquitous NSA spying.

Warmongers claim Iran can enrich enough uranium for a bomb in a month.

Iran announces new nuclear power plants, which should be no big deal, but whips up the warmongers.

Police State

The UK government's corporate telecom agents went above and beyond to facilitate UK government spying. Of course they did. The government is their god.

NSA says an internal error, not hackers, took down its website. That's even more embarrassing.

No bill will reign in NSA domestic spying. Technology, not law, limits spying.

Regulation

Google says its autonomous cars are safer than human drivers. You can bet government will mandate them in the near future so it can track every movement.

Health Care

More on fatally flawed CDC research technique that produced equally fatally flawed nutrition guidelines that promote obesity.

Government's medical establishment doesn't teach doctors how to treat pain other than providing Big Pharma's poisons.

Republicans want to keep some of Obamacare. More support for my contention they don't want to repeal it; they only want to share in the loot.

Obamacare to use information collected to prevent people from buying guns.

The more control government takes over the health care system, the more totalitarian it must become.

Michello Obama's classmate is senior vice president of the company that received the no-big contract to build the failed Obamcare website.That company also distributes $2 billion in Sandy relief.

British government pays £50 to doctors who put people on death lists.

Police State

Feds confiscate reporter's confidential files to uncover secret TSA whistleblower.

US executions steal supply of anesthetic from hospitals.

Hackers take down NSA website. Too funny.

Investigation casts doubt on claims widespread NSA spying prevents terrorist attacks.

Health Care

In another of his unprecedented in my lifetime acts of lawlessness, Obama delays penalties for Obamacare mandate.

Foreign Policy

AP apologizes for NSA spying on US allies.

US-Saudi relations deteriorate.

"The strange thing about the crackup in US-Saudi relations is that it has been on the way for more than two years, like a slow-motion car wreck, but nobody in Riyadh or Washington has done anything decisive to avert it."
"What should worry the Obama administration is that Saudi concern about US policy in the Middle East is shared by the four other traditional US allies in the region: Egypt, Jordan, the United Arab Emirates and Israel. They argue (mostly privately) that Obama has shredded US influence by dumping President Hosni Mubarak in Egypt, backing the Muslim Brotherhood’s Mohamed Morsi, opposing the coup that toppled Morsi, vacillating in its Syria policy, and now embarking on negotiations with Iran - all without consulting close Arab allies."

I'm sure those things upset the Saudis, but I bet this is just an excuse. The Saudis know that the Chinese and Russians are building an economic block based on gold and the US and Europe are on the verge of an economic collapse because of paper money.

Local

Sinclair, funded by our tax dollars, to open new branch in Beavercreek to train people for defense industry jobs. This is how our government robs all of us to promote a failing industry. This is why, when the economy collapses, Dayton is going to get hurts worse than most other places.

War on Drugs

In another DDN drug article, FDA blames doctors for over prescribing certain drugs.

"One person dies every 19 minutes from a prescription drug overdose in the United States."

Failure.

In another DDN drug article says Ohio and local law enforcement are looking out for the flesh-eating drug Krokidil even though there are no reports of it in Ohio.

DDN article about proposed Ohio Good Samaritan law for people calling 911 to help overdose victims. This is a media onslaught. Apparently somebody sent out a memo to change the media narrative from Obamacare to drug problems.

Sports

NFL ends exclusive helmet contract with Riddell.

"According to an account published this week by SI.com, Goodell said at a youth league event this summer in Fairfield, Conn., that the league "had to use quite a bit of leverage" to end the deal.
But during the last few years, as the league became increasingly focused on concussions, NFL officials were more concerned about the implication of selling exclusive branding rights to one helmet company over another. At an NFL-sponsored youth Play 60 event in New York City last year, the league had a variety of helmet manufacturers displaying their products to kids and parents."

I bet there's more to this story because football helmets are designed to be battering rams, not head protectors. Maybe this will usher in protective helmets instead.

No it's not fair that breast cancer gets so much attention while other cancers and other diseases get so much less. Making NFL players wear pink isn't about health. It's about catering to women and political correctness.

Health Care

HFCS causes high blood pressure and build-up of uric acid which causes gout.

Education

Why would this student end up in a faculty bathroom to kill this teacher? There's more to this story.

Politics

Here's how dictionary.com defines anarchy:

"

an·ar·chy

[an-er-kee]

noun

1.a state of society without government or law.

2.political and social disorder due to the absence of governmental control: The death of the king was followed by a year of anarchy. Synonyms: lawlessness, disruption, turmoil.

3.anarchism ( def 1 ).

4.lack of obedience to an authority; insubordination: the anarchy of his rebellious teenage years.

5.confusion and disorder: Intellectual and moral anarchy followed his loss of faith. It was impossible to find the book I was looking for in the anarchy of his bookshelves. Synonyms: chaos, disruption, turbulence; license; disorganization, disintegration.

"

I have no idea why libertarians chose that word to describe a lawful, peaceful, voluntary society. Here's an example.

"Wow! The moral superiority of freedom, non-aggression, un-coerced exchange!"

That has nothing to do with the definition above. And anarchists, historically, are bomb throwers. Words mean things. You can't just pick the word anarchy, rejects its definition, then say anarchy would be a great thing. The fact is libertarians are the only champions of the rule of law, but anarchy rejects law. If you tell people you support anarchy, they will dismiss you out of hand because they know this definition.

Thomas Sowell points out that poor Asians get educations and climb the economic ladder because of cultural pressure. Other people don't because of cultural pressure.

Police State

NSA spying and lies.

"Now we know that Alexander has lied yet again to a congressional committee. He recently acknowledged that the number of plots foiled is not the stated-under-oath 54, but is either two or three. He won’t say which two or three or how spying on every American was the only lawful or constitutional way to uncover these plots. He also won’t say why he originally said 54, instead of two or three; but he did say last week that he will retire next spring.
This is maddening. The government breaks the law it has been hired to enforce and violates the Constitution its agents have sworn to uphold; it gets caught and lies about it; and no one in government is punished or changes his behavior."

Not maddening. Business as usual.

Cops are serial dog killers.

Former CIA and NSA director Hayden gives interview on Amtrak train that is overheard by fellow passenger who live-tweets about the interview. And this guy is supposed to be one of government's great secret keepers. He's supposed to keep us safe and keep the information he obtains by spying on us secret.

Dallas cop fired and arrested for shooting a man carrying a knife because he claimed the man threatened an lunged at him but a video showed the man did not lunge at him. Wow. This is extremely unusual.

War

Despite the phenomenal number of billions it swims in, the US Army only has two combat ready brigades.

Foreign Policy

EU suspends data sharing with US because of NSA spying. Documents show NSA tapped phones of at least 35 world leaders. I hope there really is fury, but I don't feel bad for these rulers. Did they really think they were special? Rhetorical question. NSA wiretaps everybody.

Snowden has documents documenting foreign cooperation with NSA.

Netanyahu cries wolf over Iran.

Tax and Spend

Ohio racinos to pay $1 million to local communities. This is the payoff the make to allow their existence.

Local

Everybody who works for in the welfare department legally steals money intended for the poor, but this guy got arrested for doing it illegally.

Another drug article in the DDN.

Police State

CISPA is back in the Senate. Please shut the government down again.

Federal Reserve

Good description of the consequences of inflation.

"Artificial booms entail a turbocharging of whatever else is going on at the time. The dot-com crisis of the 1990s occurred because a credit expansion took place during a time when technological innovations associated with the digital revolutions created a strong demand for investment funds in that sector. The housing crisis in 2008 occurred because a credit expansion took place during a time when the federal government was pushing hard for increased home ownership for low-income families. We understandably identify these different cyclical episodes (the dot-com crisis, the housing crisis) with “what was going on at the time.” The common denominator, however, is the Fed’s propensity to expand credit. (emphasis added) "

I like the turbocharging metaphor. Regarding the current situation:

"Recovery most likely would have come quicker, with less long–run harm, if policy had been less active, even, perhaps if nothing had been done. As pointed out in the Wall Street Journal “Review and Outlook” of March 6, 2009, “Recessions don't last forever, but bad policies can prolong the pain.”"

Prolong it it has.

Misc

New indy Star Trek episodes.

Global Warming and Energy

Antarctic sea ice extent reaches new record.

No global warming for 16 years, 11 months, almost 17 years.

War

After US failures in Iraq and Afghanistan, expect the future to hold tiny wars and micro-conflicts.

Military contractors are still US armed forces.

Foreign Policy

Saudis sever diplomatic relations with US.

While any border agreement between China and India is significant, this sounds purely symbolic.

Obama tells Merkel NSA isn't monitoring her phone calls. She'd be a fool to believe him.

Italy unhappy about NSA spying.

Health Care

Obamacare website contractors known for security problems.

Right to Keep and Bear Arms

The DDN keeps running tragic stories of people around the country who die in gun accidents like this one from Texas, but they never run stories of people around the country who use guns to defend themselves. I wonder if they have an agenda.

Regulation

 If nine out of ten Ohio parents really want restrictions on nighttime driving by drivers under 18, the legislature will oblige.

Local

Prescription drug abuse event in Kettering.

Montgomery County has an opiate task force.

These two stories are back to back: drug resources in region and drug treatment options limited in Ohio. Town hall meeting about drugs. This is five stories today after four stories yesterday. I bet somebody is talking about cutting funds for drug warriors, so they're pushing the propaganda big time.

Water main break shuts down road. Another water main break shuts down school.

City to buy land and give it to a company. The cronyism, it burns.

Allowing bidding saves governments money on road salt.

Police employ mobile speeding cameras in Ford Escapes. More.

Fairborn police host prescription drug drop-off, but drugs must be out of original packaging and in zip-lock baggies. The problem is this is illegal.

"Some states have laws making it illegal for you to be in possession of your own prescription drugs under certain circumstances. Most states have laws that make it illegal to carry around pills that are not in their labeled prescription bottle."

Never trust the police.

Record snowfall set today.

Tax and Spend

Widespread disability fraud.

Ron Paul explains how government adopted McConnell's plan to suspend the debt ceiling.

"Congress surrendered more power to the president in this bill. Instead of setting a new debt ceiling, it simply “suspended” the debt ceiling until February. This gives the administration a blank check to run up as much debt as it pleases from now until February 7th. Congress can “disapprove” the debt ceiling suspension, but only if it passes a resolution of disapproval by a two-thirds majority. How long before Congress totally abdicates its constitutional authority over spending by allowing the Treasury permanent and unlimited authority to borrow money without seeking Congressional approval?"

It'll be soon.

War

US claims drone strikes in Pakistan and Yemen comply with international law.

Foreign Policy

Saudi Arabian government to shift away from US. Blaming Syria is a cover.

Economy

Since Obama took office, the press has tried hard to hide bad economic news and project only positive economic news with every monthly jobs report. But this article presents bad economic news during the middle of the month, which I don't ever remember happening. It also calls on the Fed to print more money. No shocker here. Wait a minute. This report didn't come out at the beginning of the month because of the shutdown. I get it now.

"While the Federal Reserve has been trying to promote growth, the rest of Washington has largely been working in the opposite direction, analysts said, with Congress creating drags on the economy through resumption of a payroll tax that began in January, the across-the-board budget cuts known as sequestration that began in March, and then the partial government shutdown and debt ceiling crisis in October. The result has been to accelerate a longer-running trend of a shrinking federal work force; in September, the federal government had the lowest number of civilian employees on its payrolls since 1966. "

The policy claims are a joke, but the employment numbers are no laughing matter.

Health Care

Recommendation to trust vitamin D instead of flu vaccine.

Police State

Slashdot poster asks if Bruce Schneier is a plant for the NSA. Maybe the poster is a plant for the NSA. Maybe both, or neither, are. Nobody can know but the NSA. This is how badly government has turned our world upside-down. Our country is doomed.

TSA now pre-screens fliers before they reach the airport.

"While the agency says that the goal is to streamline the security procedures for millions of passengers who pose no risk, the new measures give the government greater authority to use travelers’ data for domestic airport screenings. Previously that level of scrutiny applied only to individuals entering the United States.

The prescreening, some of which is already taking place, is described in documents the T.S.A. released to comply with government regulations about the collection and use of individuals’ data, but the details of the program have not been publicly announced."

What fourth amendment?

Month ago an FBI agent shot dead an unarmed guy he was questioning while backed up by a number of police officers. The unarmed guy was a supposed friend of Boston Marathon suspect 1. To this day, the FBI hasn't released a report about what can only be called an assassination. Originally the FBI claimed the victim attacked the FBI agent with a knife after he had admitted BMS1 had killed some drug dealers in 2011. Somebody quickly exposed the claim that the victim attacked the FBI agent with a knife as a lie. The victim reported he was afraid the FBI would kill him before the interrogation. Now a new report comes out parroting the claim about BMS1 killing the drug dealers. That report is as impossible to believe today as it was the first day the FBI lied about the questioning. The police trust people to forget, so they wait, then they start their propaganda again using their willing, accomplice press.

Local

Police arrest man for spanking his two year old's bottom. If that was the standard when I grew up, every parent would be in prison. This is another way government is destroying the family.

Heroin found with dead UD student.

Deadly addiction to prescription drugs rises.

Gangs supplying increase in prescription drugs and heroin. How that war on drugs police state working out for you?

Stories of prescription drug addiction. Another. Giant DDN website about prescription drug abuse. Apparently this is the new talking point.

Misc

Evidence that advanced civilizations suffered from catastrophic electrical effects from space.

War

Government justifies ubiquitous NSA surveillance by pointing to its failure to follow up information before 9/11 even though it had the legal authority and tools to do so. Because the government - NSA, CIA and FBI - was incompetent, NSA must spy on every American.

Foreign Policy

NSA eavesdropped on French phone calls on massive scale. The French are not happy.

Global Warming and Energy

Thank goodness Al Gore didn't buy Twitter.

Police State

Network maintenance blamed for Facebook posting problems. More likely it's NSA.

CryptoSeal shuts down VPN service.

"CryptoSeal Privacy, a VPN provider, has closed down its consumer VPN service. The company says it has zeroed its crypto keys, adding, 'Essentially, the service was created and operated under a certain understanding of current U.S. law, and that understanding may not currently be valid. As we are a US company and comply fully with U.S. law, but wish to protect the privacy of our users, it is impossible for us to continue offering the CryptoSeal Privacy consumer VPN product.' The announcement ends with a warning: 'For anyone operating a VPN, mail, or other communications provider in the U.S., we believe it would be prudent to evaluate whether a pen register order could be used to compel you to divulge SSL keys protecting message contents, and if so, to take appropriate action.' Sounds like another victim of FISA-endorsed NSA activity."

NSA is swatting US businesses like flies.

When the police shot crazily at unarmed Boston Marathon suspect 2 hiding in the boat, they shot up houses all over the neighborhood and only by luck missed shooting a gas tank in the boat.