Foreign Policy

Saudis snub US congressional delegation.

War on Drugs

After five years, Obama suddenly plans to commute sentences of federal drug offenders. I hope thi sis true, but why the wait?

Federal Reserve

Bernanke leaves the Fed with $4.1 trillion balance.

"Retiring Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke, who was replaced by Janet Yellen as of today, is leaving the Federal Reserve with an unprecedented $4,102,138,000,000 in total assets on its balance sheet, up 391 percent from the $834,663,000,000 in total assets the Fed showed on its balance sheet when Bernanke took over as chairman in February 2006."

That's nuts.

Politics

Former aide says Christie knew about bridge lane closings. Christie denies.

Police State

Canadian spy agency CSEC busted for illegally spying on Canadians.

Former TSA agent exposes TSA as a fraud.

"I hated it from the beginning. It was a job that had me patting down the crotches of children, the elderly and even infants as part of the post-9/11 airport security show. I confiscated jars of homemade apple butter on the pretense that they could pose threats to national security. I was even required to confiscate nail clippers from airline pilots—the implied logic being that pilots could use the nail clippers to hijack the very planes they were flying."

He may have hated it, but he did it.

"We knew the full-body scanners didn’t work before they were even installed. Not long after the Underwear Bomber incident, all TSA officers at O’Hare were informed that training for the Rapiscan Systems full-body scanners would soon begin. The machines cost about $150,000 a pop.
Our instructor was a balding middle-aged man who shrugged his shoulders after everything he said, as though in apology. At the conclusion of our crash course, one of the officers in our class asked him to tell us, off the record, what he really thought about the machines.
“They’re shit,” he said, shrugging. He said we wouldn’t be able to distinguish plastic explosives from body fat and that guns were practically invisible if they were turned sideways in a pocket.
We quickly found out the trainer was not kidding: Officers discovered that the machines were good at detecting just about everything besides cleverly hidden explosives and guns. The only thing more absurd than how poorly the full-body scanners performed was the incredible amount of time the machines wasted for everyone."

Which we learned later.

"Finally, the public had a hint of what my colleagues and I already knew. The scanners were useless. The TSA was compelling toddlers, pregnant women, cancer survivors—everyone—to stand inside radiation-emitting machines that didn’t work."

Only government.

"I hinted several times on the blog that a determined terrorist’s best bet for defeating airport security would be to apply for a job with the TSA and simply become part of the security system itself. That assertion stemmed from personal experience. A fellow officer once returned to O’Hare from a trip to TSA headquarters and confessed that he had run into some complications: Someone realized that his background check had never been processed in the four years he had been an employee. He could have been anyone, for all TSA knew—a murderer, terrorist, rapist. The agency had to rush to get his background investigated. Who knows how many similar cases there were, and are, at airports around the nation."

I bet they have a hard time hiring decent people.

Georgia police strip search victims of minor traffic stops.

Local

Water main break in Miami Twp.

Boil advisory in Gratis.

Global Warming and Energy

On the one hand, people are complaining about propane shortages. On the other, they're complaining about supposed price gouging. More on record propane and heating oil prices and supposed price gouging. When demand outstrips supply, prices must rise to put them back into balance. Market conditions have changed.

California government shuts off water except for public health and safety. Prices take care of problems like this naturally and efficiently.

Bloomberg appointed UN envoy for climate change.

January one of the coldest and snowiest on record.

Misc

Before earthquakes, the earth's crust behaves like a P-type semiconductor.

"the peer review system often creates near-insurmountable hurdles against the publication of data that seem contrary to long-held beliefs."

Great observation.

Astronomers surprised by birth of star.

"Investigators had not anticipated anything comparable to the events they observed. Extremely high energies were at work, strong enough to produce X-rays—something that could never occur in an inactive and diffuse cloud in space: “ The detection of X-rays from the cold stellar precursor surprised astronomers,” states a report by SPACE.com. “The detection of X-rays this early indicates that gravity alone is not the only force shaping young stars," said Kenji Hamaguchi, a NASA-funded researcher at the Goddard Space Flight Center.

The gravity-driven universe is, of course, the bedrock of popular cosmology. Now it has failed another test. “The observations reveal that matter is falling toward the core 10 times faster than gravity could account for,” the report states. According to Michael Corcoran of NASA Goddard, a co-author on the report, "The X-ray emission shows that forces appear to be accelerating matter to high speeds, heating regions of this cold gas cloud to 100 million degrees Fahrenheit". By comparison, the superheated corona of the Sun measures at about 2 million degrees Fahrenheit.

What is happening inside R Corona Australis? The investigators concluded that “some previously unrealized energetic process, likely related to magnetic fields, is superheating parts of the cloud, nudging it to become a star”.  We’ve seen this many times before: a new discovery evokes statements of surprise, and magnetic fields are mysteriously factored in to save appearances—but with no mention of the electric currents that create magnetic fields."

Magic.

Regulation

Litany of minimum wage economic fallacies.

If the market undervalues women employees, why don't women employers hire all  women employees? Economics.

Health Care

Government turned the 1918 flu into a pandemic.

There should be a free market in food labeling for the same reason there should be free markets for everything else.

Economy

Understanding regime uncertainty.

"In modern commercial economies, enterprising people who are “continually afraid of the violence of their superiors” are victims of what Bob Higgs calls “regime uncertainty.” In response, of course, these people don’t literally bury their wealth as they would have done in more primitive times and as they likely do still in more primitive societies. Instead, they refuse to invest (or they invest much less than they would were their property, and their claims to the fruits of the productive uses of their property, more secure). Enterprise shrinks. Economies stagnate. And the consequent reduction in spending is mistakenly accused of being the cause of these economic woes rather than recognized for what it is: a symptom of a deeper, more ‘real’ problem."

He's not talking about saving.

Politics

Proving what I've said for years, that Republicans don't want to repeal Obamacare, they propose a similar, counter-plan to Obamacare that allows them to share in the looting.

Colorado politicians want to drive up the price and make the outcomes worse of emergency care by closing emergency rooms that aren't owned by their hospital cronies, making their cronies and themselves richer in the process.

War

92 US nuclear weapons officers tied to cheating scandal.

I'm not sure Obama is a reluctant realist as he is a destroy America first Marxist.

Police State

This concern for a nuanced opinion of NSA leaker Snowden strikes me as propaganda. Apparently those like me who think him a hero are winning. Dictonary.com defines hero as

"a man of distinguished courage or ability, admired for his brave deeds and noble qualities."

What Snowden did took courage, ability and great sacrifice, a noble quality. This isn't even close.

Terror suspect challenges constitutionality of NSA spying and demands more info on NSA's involvement in his case.

Feds seek death penalty for Boston Marathon bomb suspect. They already tried to execute him, so I'm not surprised.

I laugh at this article saying the EU will put devices in cars to monitor their every movement and provide a kill switch by 2020. This already happened in the US. Every car made in the last few years is already oppressed by this technology. This story is propaganda.

Global Warming and Energy

Record high prices for propane and heating oil.

More on people voluntarily helping each other in Atlanta.

"Tens of thousands of people and businesses around Atlanta and the southeast continue to spontaneously organize via social media and help those stranded on government “maintained” roads. No press conferences have been held by the private citizens helping each other. No tax money has been used. No one has been forced to contribute their time or work effort. No vehicles or supplies have been commandeered."

More.

NSA spied on Copenhagen climate frauds. As if they would be exempt. Not a bombshell to me.

Local

Water main break under 48 in Centerville.

Government delaying and threatening Middletown power plant plan.

"Before an energy company planning to build a $500 million power plant in Middletown can start construction, it must clear a number of hurdles that include obtaining the necessary government permits and certification.
The public will have the opportunity to provide input. Also, the organization that operates the Midwest power grid, PJM Interconnection, is studying the effects of connecting a new electricity power plant on equipment and supplies.
Until government approvals are received and studies completed, the capital-intensive project Middletown leaders are calling a “flagship” for the city is not a done deal."

"It is only the beginning stages of what’s likely to be a more than year-long vetting process."

That's why I said I wouldn't hold my breath. The good news is this power company is used to dealing with oppressive government. It will take a lot to frustrate its owners to the point where they cancel plans. I bet the west Texas plant gets started in a fraction of the time it takes to start the Middletown plant.

Fuyao exec talks to DDN reporters. Here's what they wanted to talk about:

"The Fuyao (pronounced “FWEE-ow”) representative spoke this week with two Dayton Daily News reporters for nearly an hour, on everything from the Chinese auto glass manufacturer’s plan to create 800 new jobs to his appreciation of the work state development officers did to draw Fuyao here."

What a reliable propagandist for government.

Local health propagandists are working hard to absolve blame for a superbug they created. Great, Orwellian title.

In what passes for normal in Dayton, the celebrated project to destroy a classic building filled with student housing and replace it with a new building filled with student housing implodes, literally.

"Student Suites has submitted a new site plan for its proposed student housing complex downtown because the city of Dayton has been unable to clear a deed restriction tied to the recently imploded Schwind Building.
Steve Papa, director of operations and construction services for Student Suites, said the U-shaped, 200-unit building is now proposed to wrap around the Wilkinson Street side of the property, rather than the Ludlow Street side that includes the historic former Dayton Daily News building.
He said the initial aggressive target of opening in August 2014 has now been pushed back a year."

Anybody who bought into the initial prospective was a fool, and anybody who buys into the current prospective is a fool.

The last thing we need around here is more parasites performing Pentagon duties.

Parasites ask Dayton voters to pay them more money.

Socialism

Thanks to government control over water in most cases and the tragedy of the commons in the rest, 17 California communities are in danger of running out of water.

Regulation

Minimum wage laws explained by Hazlett in Economics in One Lesson.

Federal Reserve

A bank run at My Bank in Russia. More are coming.

The Canadian central bank has been printing too, causing a buildup of government and private debt in Canada.

"Harper, serving as he does as Prime Minister of Canada, must be aware that the Bank of Canada which he ultimately oversees has held its key borrowing rate almost as low as possible for over four years now. As recently as 2009 the Bank had driven down its prime discount rate to a quarter of a percent. It has since softened its stance, but the rise to 1% is a far cry from any semblance of normality."

Because Canada started in better shape than the US, it's still in better shape than the US.

Tax and Spend

House Republicans overwhelmingly joined Democrats supporting the $1 trillion welfare farm bill.

War

Trying to save his job from the people who want Obama to fire him for lying to Congress, Clapper claims Syria is a hotbed of terrorists who want to attack the US. Those are the same terrorists Obama has been arming for several years. This is the tried and true claim to get Americans to allow another war.

Japan's ruler wants to gear up for war with China.

"Asked whether, given his analogy, he would consider deescalating tensions with China at the moment, Abe evidently said no, not as long as that country continues to build up its military."

I don't understand blaming Japan for this. China seems to be the aggressor between the two.

"Given a rising anti-Japanese nationalism in China, a growing regional arms race, and increasingly aggressive Chinese claims to islands near energy-rich deposits in regional seas, this might seem to be a moment to calm the waters, so to speak. But not for the Obama administration, which recently welcomed Abe’s decision to put more money into new weaponry for the Japanese military. To this world of rising tensions Washington has, in recent years, added a much ballyhooed new focus on Asia, a “pivot” or “rebalancing” to the region. Its emphasis has clearly been on heightening tensions by organizing a string of countries against a rising China, triggering old Cold War-era Chinese fears of encirclement (or “containment,” as it was called in those days)."

The US should stay out of it.

For warmongers, it's always WWII. Too bad they don't realize WWII was The Unnecessary War.

Politics

Edward Snowden nominated for Nobel Peace Prize.

The NSA appoints its own privacy officer. Too funny.

Obama used a brain-damaged Army Ranger for a prop during the SOTU.

Local

Beavercreek is going on an orgy of stealing taxpayers' money. That city has grown in population and commerce, bringing in tremendous new tax revenue, but it's never enough for Beavercreek's rulers. They pushed for increased school taxes for years before they finally succeeded. Now they're pushing for higher fire, police and street taxes.

Usually government's best cheerleader, the DDN is forced to report that 2013 was a bad year for jobs in Dayton. You don't say. Despite the overwhelming propaganda promoted by the DDN about how our rulers are stealing our money and using it to improve our economy, the reality is:

"The Dayton metro area lost 600 jobs last month, and the region’s labor force shrank to the lowest level since at least 1983, which made for a disappointing finish to a disappointing year for the region, according to preliminary data released Tuesday."

Lowest level since 1983. What a disaster. Dayton and Daytonians are being ruined by government looting.

DDN capitalizes on death another Greene County man from the flu to promote flu vaccine propaganda.

"Doug Stevenson saw a doctor and was prescribed an antibiotic, but began having more trouble with his breathing. Joy Stevenson said her husband went to five different institutions in the month or so he battled the virus. He never got a flu shot, she said, and in hindsight she wishes he would have."

The establishment clearly didn't know how to treat this man, but we're supposed to believe that same establishment about the efficacy of the flu vaccine.

Natural gas bills to skyrocket.

"The cold weather snap this month has been severe enough that it will raise monthly residential natural gas bills from $6 to $35, according to projections from two utilities Wednesday."

Wow.

Zoning bureaucrats break their own zoning rules to allow 15 story condo along Riverview for crony. They won't change the rules for regular people.

The ballot for the income tax doesn't mention the extension will be permanent.

Misc

This picture of Mars and the jelly donut rock looks nothing like I would expect a planet that has been geologically dead for billions of years. The rocks, many sharp edges, look recently shattered. The debris looks recently deposited.

I wonder how much taxpayers paid to have somebody realize the human body isn't adapted for space travel.

Some guy characterized as a quack files suit against NASA to compel NASA to study the jelly donut "rock" further.

""The refusal to take close up photos from various angles, the refusal to take microscopicimages of the specimen, the refusal to release high resolution photos, is inexplicable, recklessly negligent, and bizarre," according to the suit."

I complete agree with that. This is far and away the most exciting find on Mars ever. NASA should devote all of Opportunity's resources to studying it. It makes no sense that they don't. Maybe the petition mentions that the shape of the donut curiously matches the shape of the markings on the ground it lays on, but the article doesn't.

20 percent of human genome comes from Neanderthals.

Global Warming and Energy

Link between electrical activity on the sun and weather and climate on Earth.

"Is it a coincidence that hurricanes Katrina and Rita occurred on either side of the second largest X-flare ever recorded?"

I doubt it.

Now that it's not so cold anymore, people can turn up their thermostats. That's mighty generous of our rulers. We live in upside-world.

Georgia Governor blames weather, timing for disaster in Atlanta, not incompetence. This is more about people being sheep and counting on government instead of thinking for themselves.

Chick-fil-a cooked and gave away all their food to needy people during the storm.

Regarding how normal people help each other during crises while government hinders them...

"It wouldn’t surprise me to see FEMA come rolling into Georgia and start hindering, prohibiting, and criminalizing such private efforts, which is what that agency did in New Orleans."

This crisis won't last long enough for FEMA to figure out where Atlanta is.

The process of adjusting temperatures from surface stations overwhelms the supposed temperature increases from global warming.

"Basically what they are saying here is that the heat sink effect of all the concrete and asphalt surrounding the station swamps the diurnal variation of the station, and when it is moved away, the true diurnal variation returns, and then the homogenization methodology falsely adjusts the signal in a way that increases the trend."

The key word is falsely.

Health Care

Mercola on the 800,000 deaths in five years caused by medical procedure.

Immigration

Border patrol drone crashes into Pacific, leading the rest of its fleet to be grounded.

War

Hundreds of thousands of dollars of real wealth were destroyed in an EVE Online battle in a simulated analog to the wealth destroyed in real battles. That's amazing.

Global Warming and Energy

Laws against price gouging exacerbate propane shortage.

The US spends billions each year promoting the CAGW fraud, but it can't afford a fraction of that to keep equipment working.

Met office forecasts have been too warm in 13 of the last 14 years. Maybe they're biased and they're models are wrong.

Arctic was warmer than present during the Medieval Warm Period.

There hasn't been a new high temp for a continent since 1978, when all the alarmists were claiming a new ice age was coming.

Motorists and students stranded in Atlanta during winter storm. Normal people to the rescue.

"Atlanta is pretty much shut down due to 1-2″ of snowfall in a city that gets a dusting every 5 years. The snow has rapidly turned to ice in a city where not 1 car in 1,000 has snow chains. People are stuck in cars all over the city as traffic is snarled. Folks are out of gas, cars are wrecked and going no where. Kids are stuck at schools with no way to get home.

In all of this, people and businesses are spontaneously organizing –  going out and bringing food to those stuck in cars,  shuttling people in 4-wheel drives and even inviting them to stay in their homes. The reliably pro-government Atlanta Journal Commiestitution is part of the solution for once, publishing useful information. Atlanta’s hometown home improvement warehouse, The Home Depot, is keeping stores open to provide makeshift shelter to those stranded nearby.
People helping people – no central plan needed, no emergency city war-room, no mayor dispatching people with walkie talkies – just ordinary folks helping those around them in obvious need. Friends for life are being made tonight. Count on it." 

Nice.

Media

Criticism of the New York Times's attack on the Mises Institute and libertarian leaders.

"The NYT comments on the Mises Institute are a serious string of distortions. I have noted some other “libertarian” web sites that instead of coming to the defense of the Mises Institute are subtly advancing the NYT attack. They know better and thus have to be viewed with suspicion. At a time like this, the libertarian movement will see who its friends are and who will carry water for the elitist, power hungry, establishment.
Bottom line, for NYT to go out of its way to publish these distortions on the front page tells you that Lew Rockwell and the Mises Institute are getting into their head. This is a great and important moment."

First they ignore you, then they ridicule you, then they fight you, then you win.

Paul Krugman attacks Ludwig von Mises in the New York Times, further elevating Austrian economics.

Politics

Libertarian activists are working to get state and local governments to cut off power and water to NSA facilities. Maybe this will mean consumers don't have to freeze to save electricity when it gets cold out.

"Here’s the crux of the bill: "It is the policy of this state to refuse material support, participation, or assistance to any federal agency which claims the power, or with any federal law, rule, regulation, or order which purports to authorize, the collection of electronic data or metadata of any person pursuant to any action not based on a warrant that particularly describes the person, place, and thing to be searched or seized.""

That's from Washington state.

Regarding NSA spying, Obama cares more about the feelings of his fellow rulers than the Constitution. This is true on every issue.

As expected, Republicans are already planning to surrender on the debt ceiling.

"“I’ve been saying publicly that once we voted for the budget, you knew that you were going to get a clean debt ceiling,” said conservative Rep. Raúl Labrador (R-Idaho), referring to the recently passed budget deal that he voted against. “The time to fight for spending cuts is when you’re talking about spending, not at debt ceiling time. So when people caved on the budget and caved on the [Ryan-Murray] agreement, it’s really hard for them to come back and say, ‘We don’t want to increase the debt ceiling’ when they’ve already voted for something that increases the debt.”"

That's pretty much what I wrote when this issue first came up. What a bunch of slime.

Full text of Obama's State of the Union address.

Foreign Policy

Ukraine PM and his cabinet resign as Parliament repeals restrictive laws.

Federal Reserve

JP Morgan banker jumps to death from JP Morgan skyscraper in London. When have we seen that before?

Turkey's central bank cranks up interest rates to stabilize currency.

"During an unscheduled meeting, the central bank hiked the interest rate on overnight loans from 7.75% to 12% and the rate on its overnight borrowings from 3.5% to 8%."

Too bad our Fed rulers aren't that benevolent. They know it worked when Volker did it in 1981, but they won't do it now because they want to loot every last bit of wealth from us then force a new fiat currency on us.

Tax and Spend

Queen Elizabeth has wiped out the royal family's savings because she overspent the enormous budget of money stolen from taxpayers.

"The report also criticized the royals' "complacency" in allowing some 39 percent of royal buildings and land to slip into a state of disrepair. It said the 60-year-old heating system in Buckingham Palace alone will cost between £500,000 and £1 million to replace.
"The Household must get a much firmer grip on how it plans to address its maintenance backlog," Hodge said."

Predictable.

Where does Obama think he gets the power to raise the minimum wage of new federal workers? Congress has the power of the purse.

Education

New Zealand schools find that children behave better when they have less structure. That runs against government's coercive approach to everything.

I'm all for people being allowed to carry weapons in schools, but removing liability is stupid.

Local

Sheriff's create confusion with their silly winter weather emergency level declarations. People can see the roads themselves and determine whether or not to drive.

Government's electric companies fail to keep power on for 2,000 people. 500 DP&L customers without power.

It would great if this $500 million natural gas plant gets built creating 400 jobs in Middletown. It would boost our economy and our power supply. But I won't hold my breath. More.

Cold blamed for deaths, but I bet the real blame lies with power outages and poorly maintained roads.

Record low high set. Record low tied.

"Simpson said today was the second coldest afternoon in a decade and only the fifth day in the last decade to not reach at least 10 degrees. The only other morning that was colder in the last decade was 14 below zero Jan. 16, 2009."

As real scientists predicted, it's cold.

Sports

Northwestern football players file to become a union. This is going to scare the crap out of the NCAA.

"It's become clear that relying on NCAA policymakers won't work, that they are never going to protect college athletes, and you can see that with their actions over the past decade. Look at their position on concussions. "

That's for sure.

MLB approves padded caps for pitchers. Why not for everybody who wants to wear one? I doubt anybody else would, but some might.

Health Care

Grocery Manufacturers Association lobbies for GMOs and caught in corruption.

Raw milk consumption is on the rise, but there have been no illnesses even though the government bans raw milk ostensibly because it is unsafe. They really ban it to protect the giant corporate CAFO dairies from competition.

Senator Tom Coburn, retiring to fight cancer, just found out his Obamacare plan doesn't cover his cancer specialist. In a double-travesty, he can buy more insurance for his pre-existing condition.

Politics

61 percent don't trust Obama to make right decisions. Who does?

Michelle Obama solicits $10 donations to protect Obamacare.

War

Alleged secret CIA prisons in Poland circa 2002-2003.

Tax and Spend

More Swedes reject their welfare state.

Bizarre New Jersey tax laws could steal all of NFL players' earnings for Super Bowl.

Media

Defending the status quo, the New York Times attacked the Mises Institute, hardcore libertarians and Ron Paul and Lew Rockwell, showing the libertarian movement is gaining ground.

When Ashley Banfield accidentally showed clips of Hillary Clinton that made her look bad, she apologized, but media outlets do this all the time on purpose.

Foreign Policy

After executing his uncle, North Korea's Kim Jong Un ordered the execution of all his blood relatives. Super freak.

Economy

In the 1990s, Microsoft bought up a bunch of companies and basically buried their tech. Now Google is buying a bunch of AI and robot companies, but it's developing the tech.

Dow falls again, 41.23 points.

"Limiting losses in the Dow and S&P 500, however, was Caterpillar (CAT.N). The stock jumped 5.9 percent to $91.29 after the maker of mining and construction equipment reported a stronger-than-expected quarterly profit."

Equipment sales for gold and silver mining was the only good news.

Grocery store closings are following retail and banks get creative at stealing your money.

Immigration

Detroit wants its own Visas to lure foreigners into indentured servitude. I think Detroit has plenty of unemployed people who could work. It doesn't need to import laborers.

Regulation

Google and Samsung sign patent deal. Neither Google nor Samsung signed a deal with the guy working in his garage. This is another way patents exclude competition and produce giant corporations.

Federal Reserve

Government escalates attacks on BitCoin by arresting CEO of exchange on charges of money laundering.

More on London's HSBC quasi-bank run.

Police State

FBI shuts down anonymizing TorMail service on the made up charge of enabling child porn, loads the Tor servers with malware, then grabs all the email addresses and accounts.

NSA and GCHQ (British NSA) target "leaky" mobile apps to obtain private info.

The US prison nation.

The Justice Department supposedly reaches a compromise that allows tech companies to publicize more of government's requests, but since much of them remain secret, we can't trust it. These companies are so in bed with the government, this seems like a publicity stunt.

Political persecution of D'Souza over mistakes on campaign contributions frightens some who haven't realized they live in a police state.

Future cops will use smart bullets, stun cannons, all-seeing cameras and crime prediction to intimidate, abuse, maim, kill and control all Americans.

Woman asks for help from federal police officer (I thought we didn't have those), and he responds with nude selfie picture.

Global Warming and Energy

Government's monopoly electric company users consumers to suffer by reducing electricity use during cold snap again.

Unable to scare people about global warming anymore, now alarmists want to scare people about Earth's impending magnetic pole shift. The problem is they can't blame it on CO2.

Local

Rulers handing out $1,000 beautification grants with other people's money.

This $50,000 trade office in Israel is a give-away to some city of Dayton crony who does business in Israel.

Education

Schools have closed so often this winter, Kasich wants a one-time increase in calamity days. Wouldn't that be an ex post facto law? I don't know if the Ohio constitution precludes them or not.

Health Care

Doctors don't know how to treat the sharp rise in gout cases because they focus on the symptoms caused by uric acid, blaming protein, instead of the root cause of high-carb beverages.

Farming reshaped people's genomes.

Obamacare bars children eligible for Medicaid from being covered on their parents' plans. This will become a big deal so Obama will write another lawless waiver.

Regulation

Hamburg plans to ban cars. Hamburg will be a ghost town if that happens.

Foreign Policy

Iranian official claims Iran had sought nuclear weapons until the Ayatollah stopped it. That jives with CIA reports.

Economy

Propagandists blame emerging markets for stock losses.

War

US airstrike in Somalia.

Police State

UK police arrest and spy on citizens if they go someplace scary.

Health Care

Gut microbes are beneficial if they evolved with host culture and detrimental if they did not.

Push-ups, pull-ups, and squats burn twice as much energy as previously thought.

Medical guidelines based based on fraudulent research likely killed 800,000 Europeans in the last five years.

"The 800,000 deaths are comparable in size to the worst cases of genocide and mass murder in recent history."

That's government science for you.

Government is deliberately giving volunteers the flu.

Antiseptic mouthwash raises blood pressure by killing off beneficial bacteria. I realized that killing beneficial bacteria was a bad thing  a few years ago and quit.

Foreign Policy

India invites Japan to invest in northeastern India where Chinese investments are barred. This fear that China will take over the South Pacific and Indian Ocean is unfounded. There's plenty of powerful countries in that region to check China.

Misc

Michaels joins Target and Neiman Marcus as victims of major credit card theft.

Global Warming and Energy

The pause risks ruining the reputation of scientists, and maybe science.

Science magazine adds editors to check data analysis methods.

Adding patches of native prairie to farmland significantly preserves topsoil.

Politics

Just a couple of weeks after both parties overwhelmingly supported a $1.1 trillion spending bill, now they're pretending to fight over raising the debt limit. What a joke.

Leftists upset with libertarians for resisting NSA on states rights grounds.

Local

Truck crash cuts power. Car crash cuts power.

The $22 million fieldhouse and motel associated with the music venue in Huber Heights is on track. I bet they never recoup their investment if it gets finished. What is the point of this fieldhouse anyway? I bet Huber Heights promised to pay them to allow high schools to play there.

Another RTA bus crash.

Propane shortage gets worse.

Federal Reserve

Banks stop payday advance loans. Funny how I never heard they were gouging.

Regarding the quasi-bank run in London, when you put your money in the bank, it is no longer legally yours.

Federal Reserve

Fearing a bank run, British bank secretly blocks large withdrawals.

Farmer's coop bank in China closed.

"As China's CNR reports, depositors in some of Yancheng City's largest farmers' co-operative mutual fund societies ("banks") have been unable to withdraw "hundreds of millions" in deposits in the last few weeks. "Everyone wants to borrow and no one wants to save," warned one 'salesperson', "and loan repayments are difficult to recover." There is "no money" and the doors are locked."

Uh-oh.

Global Warming and Energy

Greenpeace disappears a founder from its history.

No warming in 2013, the tenth warmest year in RSS dataset. Ranked eight in HADCRUT4. Two more datasets call 2013 fourth and seventh.

Study calculates benefits of fossil fuels to be 50 times greater than the costs of carbon.

Austrian government sends $2.4 million bill to insurance company of the formerly trapped propaganda ship.

Global warming frauds attempt to take over the global economic conference in Davos.

Global warming frauds refuse to turn over raw data purchased by taxpayers to critics, but the BBC demands the raw data for a study critical of it be turned over.

Both NASA and NOAA admit the pause continues.

Changing land use, not global warming, blamed for increased flood risk. No doubt more people are living and working closer to the water.

Increasing Antarctic sea ice defies models that predict it will decrease.

US braces for coldest month in a century.

War

Three Big Lies undermining Syrian peace talks. The orchestrated release of pictures purporting to show Syrian government torture victims makes the likely to be false. US may switch sides in Syria.

Hillary Clinton is responsible for making Libya worse than when Qaddafi ruled.

Blaming Hillary for the proxy war in Syria.

Analyst doubts Syrian government used chemical weapons.

"A co-author of the new analysis is Prof. Theodore Postol of MIT. He says “I honestly have no idea what happened. My view when I started this process was that it couldn’t be anything but the Syrian government behind the attack. But now I’m not sure of anything. The administration narrative was not even close to reality. Our intelligence cannot possibly be correct.”"

Corrupt intelligence is no surprise.

Military inadvertently poisoned soldiers and their families for decades then covered it up.

"From 1933 -1999, US Army personnel, working, training and living at Fort McClellan, were never told they were being exposed to major biochemical health threats. Hundreds of thousands of men and women trained in, bathed in, breathed and drank hazardous substances including ionizing radiation and polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs). So did the residents of the adjacent town, Anniston, Alabama.
In 1966, after years of dumping and discharging waste from the manufacture of now banned industrial coolants, dioxins and herbicides—which included the infamous chemical “Agent Orange”—Monsanto Corp. secretly, tasked a University of Mississippi biologist with testing the water at Ft. McClellan. The horrifying results of these studies would be kept from environmental officials and the public."

The government is really good at covering things up for a while.

Foreign Policy

Obama and Kerry are exaggerating the extent of the Iranian nuclear deal to the detriment of the deal. Let's hope the US vendetta against Iran is over.

As I predicted, NSA also engages in corporate espionage.

Health Care

Supreme Court exempts religious non-profits from Obamacare birth control requirements.

Exercise can double chances of surviving cancer. The US has been waging war on cancer for decades, it's probably spent hundreds of billions of dollars, and they just now figured this out.

Monsanto is supposedly breeding better food.

"But here’s the twist: The lettuce, peppers, and broccoli—plus a melon and an onion, with a watermelon soon to follow—aren’t genetically modified at all. Monsanto created all these veggies using good old-fashioned crossbreeding, the same tech­nology that farmers have been using to optimize crops for millennia. That doesn’t mean they are low tech, exactly. Stark’s division is drawing on Monsanto’s accumulated scientific know-how to create vegetables that have all the advantages of genetically modified organisms without any of the Frankenfoods ick factor."

It's a nice marketing story, but I'm skeptical.

Politics

Highlighting the farce of political platforms, Republicans adopt a plank calling for an end to unconstitutional NSA surveillance as if Republicans didn't start the programs and nearly every Republican supports them. But the goal is to fool the people.

Crediting Snowden and others for the rise of libertarianism that is taking the moral high ground from liberals. I must have missed how liberals ever held the moral high ground. I know they claimed to hold it, but those claims were bogus.

Dinesh D'Souza arrested for what sounds like making a mistake while bundling campaign funds for Republican Senate candidate. Obama and Clinton can take in millions from the Chinese with no consequence, but a Republican gets arrested.

Obama's failure to rein in NSA shows the American people have almost no control over government.

Chris Christie rejects the failed war on drugs. Good for him. I bet this brings his poll numbers back up.

Economy

Walmart to cut 2,300 Sams Club jobs.

Top investment firms don't pay attention to establishment macro-economics because their models don't work in the real world.

"Blogger Noah Smith recently did an informal survey to find out if financial firms actually use the “dynamic stochastic general equilibrium” models that encapsulate the dominant thinking about how the economy works. The result? Some do pay a little attention, because they want to predict the actions of central banks that use the models. In their investing, however, very few Wall Street firms find the DSGE models useful.

I heard pretty much the same story in recent meetings with 15 or so leaders of large London investment firms. None thought that the DSGE models offered insight into the workings of the economy."

But rulers rule.

Tax and Spend

Opportunity hits 10 year anniversary on Mars. Funny how this exaggerated claim that Opportunity found evidence of water came right at its ten year anniversary. A cynic might think it was propaganda.

Except for Greece, investors are buying PIIGS bonds, driving down rates. Let's see how long it lasts.

Police State

Hackers steal documents from Microsoft related to law enforcement.

San Jose police want to tap into private security cameras. All police will do this soon.

Local

8,500 Duke customers without power.

War

More F-35 problems.

Foreign Policy

Russia to extend Snowden's permission to stay in Russia.

Education

1,600 school personal apply for free firearms training. This is great.

40 percent of Ohio college students need remedial math or English classes. What an incredible failure.

23 percent of Americans didn't read a book last year.

Economy

Dow falls 183 after falling 176 yesterday. This might be the start of the crash.

Microsoft reports record revenue.

Facebook is a plague to me, but I'm not sure it's a plague to its users. I hope it goes away soon, though.

Global Warming and Energy

Electric grid company asks consumers to conserve electricity. We obviously need greater production.

Tax and Spend

Ten thousand Ohioans lose food stamps for failing to meet work requirements.

Local

Because of bad forecasting, local governments are short on salt.

The market made Moraine a great location for Fuyao.

Home sales and prices rose in 2013.

Potholes worsen.

While the news is predicting another snowmagddon, Accuweather now predicts 0.09 inches on Saturday and 0.34 inches Sunday.

War

I wouldn't equate modernizing nuclear weapons with increasing them. That Chinese missile is a game-changer.

Politics

Obama picked a Friday before a three day weekend to talk about NSA non-reform.

"Just how massive is this scandal? The Washington Post has reported that the NSA hacks into 500,000 American buddy lists and 600,000 American address books every day, and the Guardian of London reported last week that the NSA seizes 200,000,000 American text messages every day. This is in addition to seizing the content of all cellphone- and landline-generated telephone conversations and copies of all emails sent or received in the United States. And all of that is in addition to seizing all bank records, utility bills and credit card bills of everyone in the United States."

It's for our own good.

"In a thinly disguised effort to change the subject, Obama’s Friday speech focused on where the seized data is stored, rather than on whether the government in a free society is empowered to collect it. He proposed that the data seized by the NSA be stored at non-government locations that he did not identify and kept there and be made available to the NSA after approval by the secret Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) court."

That's funny.

"So, that silent exhale of relief from the NSA last week was generated by the realization that this third-party storage proposal will not restrict the massive spying one iota.
Added to this placebo is the president’s proposal to employ a Defender of the Constitution (what a great job title!) to appear before the FISA court, along with lawyers for the NSA, and argue against the NSA’s wishes. This is another diversion that would add another level of unconstitutional and irrelevant complexity to the present scheme."

Exactly.

Police State

Three out of five members of some government panel says NSA's bulk collection of metadata is unconstitutional. Nothing of substance will change.

The government, prosecutors and judges in cahoots, cheats to insure convictions of whistleblowers.

Health Care

20,000 people plan to give up real food and eat processed algae instead.

"Less than a year ago, Rob Rhinehart published a blog post explaining how he had stopped eating food and begun living entirely on a greyish, macro-nutritious cocktail. Today, he told Motherboard that he's sold more than $2 million worth of Soylent to tens of thousands of post-food consumers worldwide—and that it's on track to ship next month."

This is going to cause health problems.

Local

This morning Accuweather say's we're going to have 1-2 inches of snow tomorrow (Friday) night. That wasn't mentioned yesterday.

Like Dayton, Springfield wants to make a temporary 0.5 percent income tax permanent in May.

If there's a spike in demand for propane, that will naturally produce a spike in prices. This prevents shortages. The reason we're seeing shortages is government won't let the price mechanism work.

Economy

Clearest blue diamond ever found estimated worth £10 million.

Here comes tsunami of retail stores closing.

"On Tuesday, Sears said that it will shutter its flagship store in downtown Chicago in April. It's the latest of about 300 store closures in the U.S. that Sears has made since 2010. The news follows announcements earlier this month of multiple store closings from major department stores J.C. Penney and Macy's.
Further signs of cuts in the industry came Wednesday, when Target said that it will eliminate 475 jobs worldwide, including some at its Minnesota headquarters, and not fill 700 empty positions.
Experts said these headlines are only the tip of the iceberg for the industry, which is set to undergo a multiyear period of shuttering stores and trimming square footage."
"In addition to J.C. Penney—which announced last week that it will close 33 stores—there are about a dozen retailers that still have too many stores, Sozzi said. Among them: American Eagle, which needs to move some of its aerie lingerie locations into its main stores; Aéropostale, which is on track to close 175 stores over the next few years; and Wal-Mart, which has about 100 stores in the U.S. producing same-store sales declines deeper than 3 percent, Sozzi said."

How's that Obama recovery working out for you?

War

Israel claims to have foiled an al Qaeda plot targeting the US embassy. Apparently neither waging war on al Qaeda for 12 years nor arming al Qaeda affiliates in Libya and Syria has stopped them. Neutrality could not possibly work worse.

Claim that the Syrian torture report is untrue. No surprise there. Most of the reporting about the Syrian civil war has been untrue.

Tax and Spend

Change to popular property tax exemption is one of Kasich's bait and switch new taxes.

War on Drugs

State forms new task force to break down doors, shoot dogs and point guns at kids in order to fight heroine. It does this because government has been so effective at fighting the war on drugs for the last 100 years. More.

"The results are as follows:

• 2010: 292 heroin overdose deaths
• 2011: 395 heroin overdose deaths
• 2012: 606 heroin overdose deaths

"

This show how government makes drug problems worse, not better.

Global Warming and Energy

2013 supposedly fourth warmest on record.

Blaming global warming alarmism for the extremely rapid lose of readers for the Guardian and the Independent. The could be said for leftist rags in the US.

The formerly trapped Antarctic propaganda mission may cost taxpayers $2.4 million.

Assumptive claim that the arctic is warmest its been in 44,000 years. It'll be debunked tomorrow.

The activist who claims global warming must be exaggerated for political reasons displays a martyr complex  while insulting skeptics in his defense. This is really pathetic.

Police State

The man harassed by FBI for wearing Google Glass in a theater was in Columbus, Ohio.

Ukraine government identifies protesters and sends them a mass text message order to disperse.

"Three cellphone companies in Ukraine ... denied that they had provided the location data to the government or had sent the text messages, the newspaper Ukrainskaya Pravda reported. Kyivstar suggested that it was instead the work of a 'pirate' cellphone tower set up in the area."

Political profiling is another reason to create privacy technology.

I bet there are way more than two dozens servers undermining Tor.

Verizon reports police forced it to turn over information an outrageous number of times.

"Verizon on Wednesday released its first transparency report, revealing that it received more than 164,000 subpoenas and between 1,000 - 2,000 National Security Letters in 2013. The report, which covers Verizon's landline, Internet and wireless services, shows that the company also received 36,000 warrants, most of which requested location or stored content data."

That's crazy.

Snowden denies receiving Russian help for NSA leak.US threats to kill him prompt Snowden to seek extra protection from Russian government. That's scary and sad.

Plutocrat Bill Gates supports government spying. That's why Microsoft products can't be trusted.

Local

I doubt a slumped over man can give permission to search his vehicle, and being slumped over is not probably cause.

Ohio Edison customers without power.

Gas prices jump 30 cents overnight. This market is broken.

Trotwood residents and NAACP pressure government to use coercion to stop Target from closing.

"Foward and others took issue with Target for not informing city leaders of declining revenue."

Apparently all businesses are supposed to report to their coercive rulers.

"Foward said the NAACP will monitor developments whether Target moves down the road to Clayton or Englewood.
"The NAACP is going to have a huge problem with that," he said.
City Manager Mike Lucking said Target received a 15-year tax abatement worth $1.2 million.
"That's money that would normally go to the schools, go toward city services," Lucking said. "That's money they realize they benefited from ... Basically at the end of their abatement, they're moving out of town.""

Because they store isn't profitable. More.

Fairfield cop who killed 23 year old man had a bad record that prompted the police chief to recommend firing him.

I should have been a weatherman. Nowhere else but politics can you be constantly wrong and still make a lot of money. Yesterday Accuweather predicted it was going to be 35 on Friday. Today it's going to be 16, then 28 on Saturday. It won't break freezing until Feb. 1. I bet the predictions get colder.

Regulation

In 1977, Congress passed the Community Reinvestment Act.

"The Community Reinvestment Act (CRA, P.L. 95-128, 91 Stat. 1147, title VIII of the Housing and Community Development Act of 1977, 12 U.S.C. § 2901 et seq.) is a United States federal law designed to encourage commercial banks and savings associations to help meet the needs of borrowers in all segments of their communities, including low- and moderate-income neighborhoods.^[1][2][3] Congress passed the Act in 1977 to reduce discriminatory credit practices against low-income neighborhoods, a practice known as redlining.^[4][5]"

In other words, the government coerced lenders into making loans to people with bad credit. Bill Clinton increased the coercion.

"The Clinton administration has turned the Community Reinvestment Act, a once-obscure and lightly enforced banking regulation law, into one of the most powerful mandates shaping American cities—and, as Senate Banking Committee chairman Phil Gramm memorably put it, a vast extortion scheme against the nation's banks. Under its provisions, U.S. banks have committed nearly $1 trillion for inner-city and low-income mortgages and real estate development projects, most of it funneled through a nationwide network of left-wing community groups, intent, in some cases, on teaching their low-income clients that the financial system is their enemy and, implicitly, that government, rather than their own striving, is the key to their well-being.

The CRA's premise sounds unassailable: helping the poor buy and keep homes will stabilize and rebuild city neighborhoods. As enforced today, though, the law portends just the opposite, threatening to undermine the efforts of the upwardly mobile poor by saddling them with neighbors more than usually likely to depress property values by not maintaining their homes adequately or by losing them to foreclosure. The CRA's logic also helps to ensure that inner-city neighborhoods stay poor by discouraging the kinds of investment that might make them better off."

The consequence of this, fueled by Greenspan's money printing, was the subprime mortgage crisis. Even though government forced these banks to make subprime loans they didn't want to make, the lenders were ridiculously labeled predators and the loans were called predatory loans. To protect themselves from loans they knew wouldn't be paid back, loans the government forced them to make, banks created mortgage securities to reduce their risk, spreading that risk to the financial system. Now the government has done a 180. Some new consumer protection agency wrote regulations exactly opposite to the CRA rules in order to supposedly protect consumers from predatory loans.

"New mortgage regulations mandated by the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau went into effect this month. The rules are meant to hold lenders liable for bad loans and protect borrowers from loans they can’t afford."

You can't make this stuff up. This is a perfect example of how government intervention in the economy always creates worse problems than the problems it purports to solve, then government uses the problems it created as an excuse to further pervert the economy, creating even worse problems. These regulations will limit the number of housing loans made and increase the expense of getting a loan, depressing the housing market. Even the DDN recognizes this. We all know what happened the last time the housing market fell.

Regulations will delay or prevent space tourism the same way they delay or prevent everything else.

Health Care

15 reasons to sprint more.

This year's flu is hitting young, healthy adults more than elderly and children.

"The total number of hospitalizations reported so far this year are about half the 2,503 reported at this point in the season last year. But this year’s flu season is just beginning to peak with flu-related hospitalizations climbing 33 percent from the first week in January to more than 400 by the end of the second week of the month, the health department reports."

I bet this ends up being a typical flu year.

Suppressing flu fever helps the flu spread to others.

"A new study claims that there are at least 700 extra influenza deaths in the United States every year because people suppress their fever."

No surprise.

The establishment discovered that Omega-3 oil is good for your brain.

Hundreds in Ohio lose doctors because of Obamacare.

Swedes buy health insurance to escape socialized medicine delays. Socialism always produces a two-tiered system.

Misc

Assumptions about stars and redshift lead to bizarre dark energy theory.

Scientists think they discovered water on Ceres, but...

"Interestingly, of the four occasions that Herschel studied Ceres, one of those times the signature of water was not detected. This suggests that there may be some seasonal effect influencing the plume’s presence. Astronomers think that as Ceres reaches the closest part in its orbit to the sun, the more intense sunlight causes its icy surface to sublimate (i.e. turn straight from ice to vapor without transitioning through a liquid phase) at a rate of around 6 kilograms (13 pounds) per second. As the dwarf planet drifts further away, little vapor is generated due to a reduction in solar energy."

It's more likely they discovered the same electrical sputtering that occurs on comets and moons that they don't acknowledge exists.

"Herschel also noticed a short term variation in the water plume signal. As Ceres rotates, the water signal rotates with it, suggesting there are discrete regions on the world’s surface generating the plumes. In fact, the astronomers have been able to link the water plumes with two darker regions on the surface that were first observed by Hubble. The regions, which are 5 percent darker than the Ceres average, could be absorbing more sunlight, causing the ice to heat up faster and generating the water vapor plumes more readily."

More likely they've been darkened by electric discharges like on comets and moons.

"This discovery has a far-reaching impact. For starters, scientists are finding that the definition of a comet and an asteroid is becoming more and more blurred with the discoveries of “hybrid” objects that possess qualities of both. Perhaps Ceres, a huge asteroid, also has an aptitude for presenting comet-like features."

Establishment scientists are slowly learning what Wal Thornhill has been saying for quite some time.

Students accidentally discover relatively nearby and recent supernova.

"What’s funny about this is that the galaxy M82 is undergoing a huge burst of star formation right now, and that means lots of massive stars are born."

That means there's a lot of electricity flowing through the galaxy, and that apparently made a double-layer explode.

"Given the fact that it’s nearby, up high for so many observers, and caught so early, this may become one of the best-observed supernovae in modern times."

Hopefully this will help the establishment transition to the Electric Universe theory faster.

Tax and Spend

The government wants us to believe it has fewer employees now than in the last 47 years, but they don't mention contractors.

War

Car bomb targets Hezbollah in Lebanon.

"It was the second bombing in the neighborhood of Haret Hreik this month amid a series of attacks that have shaken Lebanon in a spillover of Syria's civil war into its smaller neighbor. The violence has targeted both Sunnis and Shiites, and further stoked sectarian tensions that are already running high as each Lebanese community lines up with its brethren on opposing sides of the Syrian conflict."

The US doesn't care who its wars kill.

Pat Buchanan recognizes US wars reap no benefits.

"The neoconservatives say much of this might have been averted, had we left a stronger contingent of U.S. troops in Iraq and supported the Syrian uprising before the jihadists took control.
They were for attacking Assad last summer, are for more severe sanctions on Iran now, and are for war if Iran does not give up all enrichment of uranium.
But the neocons have broken their pick with the people. For they have been wrong about just about everything.
They were wrong about Saddam’s WMD and a “cakewalk” war.
They were wrong about how welcome we would be in Iraq and how Baghdad would become a flourishing democracy and model for the Mideast.
They did not see the Sunni-Shia war our intervention would ignite.
They were wrong about how our interests would be served in attacking Libya.
They did not see the disaster that would unfold in Pakistan."

Some record.

Trying to tally the real costs of war.

"The most decorated Marine in the history of the Corps Major General Smedley Butler once wrote that "War is a racket." That was in 1935. If only he could see it now. The cash flow enabling the global war on terror which was launched in 2001 is astonishing, numbers that are too large to even imagine. Columbia University economist Joseph Stiglitz has estimated that the total cost of Iraq alone will exceed $5 trillion when all the borrowed money and legacy expenses for 30,000 wounded soldiers are finally paid off. And Iraq is only one part of the enormous shift in national resources that has taken place over the past twelve years.
The direct costs of the Bush-Obama war are reflected in the Defense and intelligence budgets, both of which are more than twice as big as they were pre-9/11, but factor in the additional domestic costs for the Transportation Security Administration, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), and growth of the federal bureaucracy in general and the numbers become mind boggling. And then there is the replication of the federal spending at the state and local levels reflected in the increases in numbers of police and the establishment of homeland security offices in nearly every state as well as in some counties and cities. New York City alone has more than 34,000 policemen, to include a large intelligence division and counter-terrorism group that has been accused of spying on local Muslims all along the East Coast. It was trained by the CIA and is headed by a former CIA analyst. Many large companies have also either been either compelled or convinced to spend increasing sums on security, nearly all of which is unnecessary.
So if war on terror is a racket, the question becomes how long will it take before the productive part of the economy collapses under the strain of paying for a huge package of goods and services that do not actually produce anything."

I don't think it will be long now.

"It may be happening already as the US economy continues to struggle after its reversals five years ago, but the media and public figures can only rarely be seen calling for some retrenchment because they themselves benefit greatly from the status quo and have been largely immune to the consequences of their bad decision-making. This lack of any sustained public outcry over the expensive new national security state just might be because many people are in fact making quite a lot of money out of it. "

May? Politicians, bureaucrats, plutocrats, the media and everybody else are guided by self-interest.

"When all the increases are added up and compared to the baseline of 2001, the war on terror currently costs the American taxpayer more than $500 billion per year. As there may be only 100 or so terrorists seriously interested in attacking the United States directly, that works out to something like $5 billion per year per terrorist."

Great analysis.

"It all adds up to a huge pile of money and a lot of interested parties who want to keep the gravy train going. If you add up the soldiers, bureaucrats, policemen, and private contractors you come up with 8,900,000 Americans who are directly dependent on the spending on the government’s war on terror for their livelihood. They are present in every county and town in the United States. They all have a powerful incentive to promote the national security state and government officials, who also benefit from the largesse, listen to them in ways that they do not listen to the rest of us.
The current total federal budget is $3.77 trillion, much of which is dedicated to "keeping us safe." It is just under 25% of the national GNP and growing, but it is only part of the story as it does not include state and local expenditures for police and homeland security."

It's all about the money.

"And it is all done to fight a few hundred terrorists, mostly being pursued by the authorities in their home countries, moving every night to avoid surveillance and hiding in caves. Economic collapse due to military overextension is not unthinkable, witness the fall of the Soviet Union twenty years ago."

Not unthinkable?