Health Care

Losing the debate on merits, the establishment calls healthy food pseudo-science. I have no comment on Whole Foods specifically, but this article uses Whole Foods to attack the healthy food movement.

More restaurants charge Obamacare surcharge.

Global Warming and Energy

More evidence the climate is not very sensitive to CO2 changes.

EPA plans to ban mine ostensibly to protect salmon fishery.

Societal change is the source of increased costs of weather damage, not climate change.

Politics

I don't understand these people who claim Obama hasn't passed his agenda because House Republicans have thwarted him. As far as I can tell, Republicans give him everything he wants. He wants the debt ceiling raised every year; Republicans raise it for him every year. He wants to increase spending every year; Republicans increase spending for him every year. He wants Obamacare; he gets Obamacare. He wants increases in food stamps; Republicans give him increases in food stamps. He wants amnesty; Republican leaders try to give him amnesty. He wants a $800 billion boondoggle stimulus giveaway to his supporters; he gets it. He wants to extend unemployment benefits; Republicans extend unemployment benefits. He wants to expand NSA spying on Americans; NSA expands spying on Americans. I can't think of any program he's advocated that he hasn't gotten. The people have shot down proposals that Obama didn't push, SOPA and PIPA come to mind, but nothing Obama has pushed for has failed except immigration reform, and Republican leaders will likely join Democrats and pass that soon.

AIPAC's influence is waning.

Tax and Spend

Conservatives exaggerate the relatively small Pentagon cuts proposed by Hagel.

Local

Article inadvertently explains why Dayton area economy is so bad.

"Dewey’s operates a restaurant at 131 Jasper Street just off Brown Street near the University of Dayton. The Cincinnati-based pizza chain had purchased properties in downtown Centerville to open a restaurant there, but pulled the plug on those plans in December 2013 after multiple regulatory issues arose with the site, including parking, traffic flow and drainage. Earlier plans to build a restaurant on Far Hills Avenue in Kettering were shelved in 2009.
“We’ve worked to bring a second location to the Dayton market for several years,” Chuck Lipp, chief operating officer and partner at Dewey’s Pizza, and a UD graduate, said in a news release. “The Dayton community has been very supportive of our first location near the University of Dayton, and we’re very appreciative.”"

This guy has been trying to open a second restaurant for five years, but he's been unable to do so.

Accuweather forecasts of 8 - 12 inches of snow from Saturday night to Monday morning. They're usually wrong, and I hope they're wrong this time.

Economy

Q4 phony economic growth revised down.

Ohio's labor force grew by 25,000 in 2013.

Police State

Cyber attacks prompting companies with ties to intelligence services to swarm business. The consequences of inviting these spooks into your company will be a takeover of systems by NSA. NSA is probably behind most of the attacks to make this happen.

NSA and others target political opponents. Uses false flag attacks to discredit critics.

Some really slow person just noticed Xbox Kinect is the NSA ultimate spy tool. Put your Xbox in your bedroom, and NSA will make you a porn star. How dense do you have to be to just figure that out?

Microsoft denies knowing Kinect was a great spy tool. Microsoft is also selling land in Florida.

Federal Reserve

Foreign countries blamed for currency manipulation that costs US manufacturing jobs, but it doesn't mention that fantastic currency manipulation being done by the Fed.

Mt. Gox files for bankruptcy, exposing the bitcoin farce.

"The beleaguered MtGox bitcoin exchange has officially filed for bankruptcy in Tokyo. According to the Wall Street Journal, Bitcoin held an impromptu press conference that addressed recent rumors. They state that they have over $60m in liabilities against just $30m in assets, and confirm the loss of over $500m worth of Bitcoins, split between customers' balances (750,000 BTC) and company assets (100,000 BTC). Owner Mark Karpeles said, 'There was some weakness in the system, and the bitcoins have disappeared. I apologize for causing trouble."

Weakness in the system. Like maybe that bitcoin was a electronic fantasy?

Ten signs of growing panic in the banking sector.

Right to Keep and Bear Arms

Eleven year old girl shoots dead cougar stalking her older brother.

"‘We're real avid hunters,’ Mr White said of his clan, which he described as 'backwoodsy.' .
The rancher explained that until recently, local residents were able to keep the cougar population in check by hunting the predators with dogs, but two years ago, the local Legislature outlawed the practice."

They don't care if cougars kill kids.

"The animal appeared to be moving in the direction of Shelby’s 13-year-old brother, who was unaware of the danger as he made his way toward the basement door with a bag of animal feed in his hands.
The girl’s father, Tom White, was home at the time, but Shelby was the only one in the family with a tag - a permit to legally kill a cougar."

Good thing she was there, or her dad would probably be in jail for shooting it.

"The 64-year-old farmer used to be a hunter safety instructor and taught all his grandchildren how to properly use weapons. 
‘I want my grandkids to know how to protect themselves ‘cause we have a lot predators,’ White explained."

This is good parenting, and the children haven't been corrupted by their small town government school.

"Analysts are trying to determine why there are more cougar attacks this year than in previous years.
One of the theories suggests that the animals may be wandering into more residential areas in search of food if they are not finding enough deer- their usual prey- to keep them satisfied.
This incident was the third report of a cougar being killed in the span of a week in the area."

Apparently it didn't cross their mind that the law restricting cougar hunting might have something to do with it.

Misc

How Stalin prepared for WWII.

Foreign Policy

We're supposed to be alarmed a Russian spy ship visited Havana, Cuba.

Education

New York City Mayor de Blasio cancels deal with four charter schools.

"But de Blasio, who is an unabashed critic of charter schools and won election with full-throated support of the United Federation of Teachers, said in a statement some of the city’s agreements to share class space will be voided."

In the next year or two, we'll read about how the quality of education in New York City has fallen, but it won't be linked to de Blasio.

Global Warming and Energy

More on Greenpeace founder's testimony refuting the great global warming fraud.

"Indeed, cold weather is more likely to cause death than warm weather. RealClearScience reported that from “1999 to 2010, a total of 4,563 individuals died from heat, but 7,778 individuals died from the cold.” Only in 2006 did heat-related deaths outnumber cold deaths.
In Britain, 24,000 people are projected to die this winter because they cannot afford to pay their energy bills. Roughly 4.5 million British families are facing “fuel poverty.”"

Those numbers don't reconcile.

Government responsibility for California's drought.

"But, we have the Sierra Nevada’s to our east to catch moisture in the form of snow, and store it for the dry season. The snow melts and, historically, flowed through large rivers such as the San Joaquin, to the Pacific. Prior to federal water projects, steam boats came to dock in Fresno. Here’s what the San Joaquin River looks like today. And here it is about 100 years ago (or here’s another before and after comparison). There is a dam right outside of town, built during the New Deal, of course."

Of course.

"It doesn’t matter what constituency you belong to in California; chances are you are unhappy with your allocation or quality of water. Last week, it was announced that some farmers in the valley are getting cut out in the drought. They think the city folks in San Francisco and Los Angeles are taking more than their fair share. The “city folks” think industrial agriculture is taking more than its fair share. Residents across the state are constantly being admonished to conserve, with rationing of various types taking place. Cambria, a coastal community (where fog is the predominant form of moisture) essentially ran out of water, and that was before the current state-wide drought. Studies of tap water in poor agricultural communities shows alarming levels of toxins. And, of course, environmentalists are concerned about the effect of diverting water to people on wildlife."

Conflict occurs when government allocates resources through coercion instead of allowing the people to peacefully and voluntarily allocate them through the market. Shortages like this occur because of price fixing.

"In order to get residential metering to be politically palatable, promises were made that average water bills would not be higher, so rates were set low enough to ensure that residents would not face suddenly higher bills. These rates are too low to be sustainable in that water use is continuing to lower the water supply faster than it is replenished by nature. To the shock of no one who is paying attention, after the water meters were approved and installed city-wide, the city notified customers of proposed rate increases over the next several years. Hearings were held, and maybe, one day, water rates will increase, but probably not nearly enough to encourage true conservation. The kind of conservation that occurs when a free market pricing system encourages allocation of scarce resources based on the most pressing needs. As Murray Rothbard wrote in 1977, “If the water industry were free and competitive, the response to a drought would be very simple: water would rise in price.”"

Exactly.

Record number of sub-zero temperature days in Midwest.

Fukushima mission blamed for Navy sailors' health problems.

Federal Reserve

Bernanke's legacy is not only a weak and mediocre economy. He's also partly responsible for the 2008 crash, and he'll be mostly responsible for the looming crash.

Since Mt. Gox disappeared with $400 billion in bitcoints, bitcoin owners now want the Feds to regulate bitcoins, which goes against their original selling point. Their original selling point was stupid. I could give out markcoins to people who come to me and spin around in a circle 100 times. I could make future miners spin around more, and I could cut off the supply at some time in the future. In exchange, I'll create electronic notes that people can trade and use as money. Any takers?

Tax and Spend

Exposing Obama's end of austerity lie.

"President Barack Obama has recently released his budget in which he calls for an “end of austerity.” This is an amazing statement from a president whose government has spent the highest percentage of GDP in history and added more to the national debt than all past presidents combined."

Obama never ceases to make me sick to my stomach. I wonder how much suffering through his presidency has cost Americans in health care expenditures.

"The president’s rejection of austerity represents the Keynesian view which completely rejects austerity in favor of the “borrow and spend” — increase aggregate demand — approach to recession. What he really is rejecting is the infinitesimal cutbacks in the rate of spending increases and the political roadblocks to new spending programs. "

Some austerity.

"One particularly promising area for cutbacks is government regulation. Regulation is a burden on taxpayers, discourages entrepreneurship, and makes us less safe. One recent empirical study found that regulation was extremely costly and that “eliminating the job of a single regulator grows the American economy by $6.2 million and nearly 100 private sector jobs annually.” "

Here's the link to the study.

Republicans kill veterans benefits bill in Senate. This sounds like another political maneuver meant to hurt Republicans in November.

$60 million, ridiculously extravagant high school sports stadium shut down because of cracks.

Abba's wild outfits were designed to reduce their Swedish taxes.

Immigration

The US government has no business setting up border checkpoints 25 miles, or any distance, from the border.

War

Civil war escalates in Ukraine as gunman take over Crimean government buildings and raise Russian flag.

Regarding Ukraine and beyond, one has to wonder if the US is trying to start WWIII as cover for the looming economic collapse.

Economy

US orders for durable goods, already low, fell in January, but Obama's propagandists try to spin this into good news.

"American businesses ordered fewer durable manufactured goods in January, cutting demand for planes, autos and machines. But a key category that reflects business investment rebounded on the strength of demand for electronics and fabricated metals."

Too funny.

IBM lays off 3,000 to 6,000 workers.

Retail profits fall for the first time since 2009.

Market sets record highs on Yellen's promise to keep counterfeiting money.

Police State

GCHQ spies on webcams of Yahoo users, capturing sexually explicit images.

Police shoot dead unarmed and unthreatening homeless man, go free.

Government's Smithsonian Institute slams US for surge in solitary confinement.

"Although the practice has been largely discontinued in most countries, it's become increasingly routine over the past few decades within the American prison system. Once employed largely as a short-term punishment, it's now regularly used as way of disciplining prisoners indefinitely, isolating them during ongoing investigations, coercing them into cooperating with interrogations and even separating them from perceived threats within the prison population at their request.
As the number of prisoners in solitary has exploded, psychologists and neuroscientists have attempted to understand the ways in which a complete lack of human contact changes us over the long term. According to a panel of scientists that recently spoke at the American Association for the Advancement of Science's annual meeting in Chicago, research tells us that solitary is both ineffective as a rehabilitation technique and indelibly harmful to the mental health of those detained."

But I bet its effective in getting confessions and revenge.

""The United States, in many ways, is an outlier in the world," said Craig Haney, a psychologist at UC Santa Cruz who's spent the last few decades studying the mental effects of the prison system, especially solitary confinement. "We really are the only country that resorts regularly, and on a long-term basis, to this form of punitive confinement. Ironically, we spend very little time analyzing the effects of it.""

That makes sense for far away the world's leading prison state.

"A majority of those surveyed experienced symptoms such as dizziness, heart palpitations, chronic depression, while 41 percent reported hallucinations, and 27 percent had suicidal thoughts—all levels significantly higher than those of the overall prison populations. An unrelated study published last week found that isolated inmates are seven times more likely to hurt or kill themselves than inmates at large.
These effects, Haney says, don't only show how isolation harms inmates—they tell us that it achieves the opposite of the supposed goal of rehabilitating them for re-entry into society."

I like how they say supposed goal.

San Francisco police officers must have made somebody powerful mad to get prosecuted for typical police corruption.

"Five San Francisco police officers and one former officer were indicted Thursday on an array of federal law and civil rights violations, including extortion, drug dealing, stealing and conspiring to oppress low-income residents living in single-occupancy hotel rooms."

Better a handful than none.

Politics

Obama to focus on young, black men, some of the people his policies harm the most. This is another 2014 campaign gimmick to shore up his foundering base. He's already created more racial tensions than I can remember since the 1960s, and this will make it worse, making things worse for blacks, but he doesn't care. It's all about power for him and that means winning elections.

Local

Mold in downtown public housing high-rise making residents sick, and it has been for years.

Butler County judge shuts down New Miami speed cameras.

Health Care

Prescription painkillers are the new gateway drug.

New pain pill five times more potent than existing pills. Funny how doctors want the FDA to ban it as if they have no power to not prescribe it.

Children of older fathers more likely to have mental illness, but mental illness is subjective and the cause could be environmental, so I remain skeptical.

Hillary offers wishy-washy support for Obamacare in a meaningless political statement.

More on the damage caused by mammograms.

"Annual mammograms for middle-aged women apparently “don’t save lives, but instead can cause over-diagnosis of cancers that won’t be fatal.”
“What mammography has done,” writes one physician, “is turn healthy people into sick but grateful cancer survivors.”
I’ll sound like a crank and a rube for pointing this out, so I’ll let (another) doctor do so: Mammograms “use ionizing radiation at a relatively high dose, which in and of itself can contribute to the development of”—duh—“breast cancer.”
And creepiest of all: Mammograms sometimes squish existing tumors and spread those cancerous cells even farther. Genius!"

Creepy and fantastically profitable.

"But don’t start twirling those mustaches yet, you smug, dastardly men.
The doctor who discovered the prostate-specific antigen screened for in PSA tests now says the test shouldn’t be used to screen for prostate cancer—at least to the extent it is today, thanks to all that Movember awareness-raising.
Dr. Richard Ablin says that “the urology community and drug industry misused the PSA test, putting money over the best interests of patients,” and the “US Food and Drug Administration failed in its duty to the public: its advisers warned that routine PSA screening would cause a public health disaster, but it was approved under pressure from advocacy groups and drug companies.”"

It's not about gender. It's about money in a fascist environment.

Benefits of natural sea salt.

Another establishment attack on healthy eating.

Regulation

Ann Coulter understands the minimum wage issue.

"The minimum wage is the perfect Democratic issue. It will screw the very people it claims to help, while making Democrats look like saviors of the working class, either by getting them a higher wage or providing them with generous government benefits when they lose their jobs because of the mandatory wage hike. "

Exactly. Either way, Democrats win.

"Why were wages so high until 1968? Because that's when Teddy Kennedy's 1965 Immigration Act kicked in, bringing in about a million immigrants a year, almost 90 percent of them unskilled workers from the Third World.

Our immigration policies massively redistribute wealth from the poorest Americans to the richest. It's a basic law of economics that when the supply goes up, the price goes down. More workers means the price of their labor plummets. "

She's right about that too.

"Having artificially created a glut of low-wage workers, now Democrats want to artificially raise their wages.

It's win-win-win-win-win for Democrats.

-- Employees who get a higher minimum wage are grateful to the Democrats.

-- Employees who lose their jobs because of the minimum wage hike are grateful to the Democrats for generous government handouts.

-- Poor immigrants who need government benefits are grateful to the Democrats.

-- American businesses enjoying the deluge of cheap labor are grateful to the Democrats.

-- Democratic politicians guaranteed re-election by virtue of ethnic bloc voting are grateful to the Democrats.

Do Republicans have any principles at all? Why isn't the GOP demanding an end to this dump of unskilled workers/Democratic voters on the country? "

She is missing one economic point and that is competition is worldwide should be worldwide to benefit the consumer.

"You want a higher minimum wage? Turn off the spigot of low-wage workers pouring in to the U.S. and it will rise on its own through the iron law of supply and demand. "

But more jobs will move to foreign countries to purchase cheaper labor.

Global Warming and Energy

Greenpeace founder testifies against great global warming fraud before US Senate. The frauds are very unhappy with him.

Climate change that wiped out Bronze Age cities 4,100 years ago occurred without a change in CO2.

Freedom of Speech

Court orders Google and YouTube to remove all copies of the "Innocence of Muslims", the bizarre, anti-Muslim video that was used as cover for terrorist attacks on the US consulate in Benghazi and other US facilities. The take-down is based on specious claim by an actress in the movie, but more than likely, the secret agency who made the movie is making this happen. Since it served their purpose, they want to erase any trace and memory of it, and justices are doing their part with a bizarre decision.

Socialism

GM recalls 1.6 million cars after killing 13 people.

Venezuela is a classic case illustrating that market interventions always create more problems which are followed by even more market interventions, ultimately resulting in socialism and economic collapse.

Nazis were socialists.

"Goebbels never doubted that he was a socialist. He understood Nazism to be a better and more plausible form of socialism than that propagated by Lenin. Instead of spreading itself across different nations, it would operate within the unit of the Volk."

Fascism is a form of socialism.

Economy

Target data breach cut profit in half in Q4.

War on Drugs

Mexico refuses US extradition request for drug lord.

War

I don't know if this is a bluff, but I hope Karzai refuses to sign an agreement so all NATO forces are withdrawn from Afghanistan.

Russia puts troops on alert and orders war games near Ukraine. NATO promises to defend Ukraine from Russia.

"Meanwhile Nato defence ministers warned that they considered Ukraine’s future to be “key to Euro-Atlantic security” and assured the new government in Kiev that the alliance would back its “sovereignty, independence [and] territorial integrity.” "

This is nuts. Now we know why our rulers used the Olympics to demonize Putin to a giant audience.

Kiev's coup-meisters wasted no time in shaking down the EU for €5 billion. This is just payment for executing the west's coup.

With Afghanistan and Iraq basket cases, US-backed coups in Ukraine and Venezuela, and US backing in the Syrian civil war, this parallels WWI. The US is directly aligned against Russia in Ukraine and Syria. That kind of war would be a scapegoat for economic collapse.

"With the possible exception of Venezuela, none of these multiple crises can be considered in isolation: the key connecting factor is Russia. Vladimir Putin has set himself up as the antipode to the US and its dream of constructing a "new world order" based on unipolarity and America’s undisputed military dominance. Ideologically, Putin has positioned Russia as the conservatizing factor in world affairs, as opposed to the "progressive" and revolutionary character of American influence abroad. In effect, Washington and the Kremlin have switched positions as a new cold war breaks out, with the former leading a global effort to overturn the old order of sovereign nation-states and the latter resisting US-backed revolutionary movements throughout the world."

Upside-down world again.

Regulation

FCC restrictions on radio frequencies limit carriers.

Misc

Security firm finds huge trove of user account and password information on the web for hackers to access.

Education

As I've been saying for decades, there is no shortage of STEM workers.

"The National Science Board's biennial book, Science and Engineering Indicators , consistently finds that the U.S. produces many more STEM graduates than the workforce can absorb. Meanwhile, employers say managers are struggling to find qualified workers in STEM fields. What explains these apparently contradictory trends? And as the shortage debate rages, what do we know about the pipeline of STEM-talented students from kindergarten to college, and what happens to them in the job market? An article LA Times summarizes his findings of his findings on the STEM hype: '...some of it comes from the country’s longtime cycle of waxing and waning interest in science; attention seems to focus on science every 10 to 15 years before slacking off. The only forces pushing the idea of STEM doom, he said, are those that have something to gain from it. Mostly those are STEM employers ... that want to pack the labor force with people to suppress wages ... Joining the chorus are universities that want more funding for science programs...'"

The claim is a fraud. They also use this excuse to import low wage foreigners.

Federal Reserve

Hackers using IE vulnerability to access banking information.

Local

Water main break closes Webster Street.

Flasher psychologist, because he's part of the police state apparatus, only gets ten days house arrest and $250 fine for two counts of flashing.

"Shuman’s professional license remained active Tuesday, according to the State Board of Psychology."

What a travesty and a reminder that laws are for serfs, not rulers.

Police State

AG DeWine tells how well government policing works in Ohio:

"Ohio Attorney General Mike DeWine said Tuesday that “we have a gang problem in every one of our major cities. These gangs are many times involved in the violence that is going on in our communites.’’"

And the police blame bar owners.

Supreme Court condones cops bullying and arresting residents until one of them consents to a warrantless search.

Health Care

Mammograms can cause cancer.

"Results published in the British Medical Journal² (BMJ) in 2012 show that women carrying a specific gene mutation called BRCA1/2 are particularly vulnerable to radiation-induced cancer.
Women carrying this mutation who were exposed to diagnostic radiation before the age of 30 were twice as likely to develop breast cancer, compared to those who did not have the mutated gene.
They also found that the radiation-induced cancer was dose-responsive, meaning the greater the dose, the higher the risk of cancer developing. The authors concluded that:

"The results of this study support the use of non-ionizing radiation imaging techniques (such as magnetic resonance imaging) as the main tool for surveillance in young women with BRCA1/2 mutations."

"

Typical government.

EPA writes another regulation to help Monsanto and other Big Ag corporations.

"In what could easily be classified as one of the US Environmental Protection Agency's (EPA) worst decisions yet, a final rule released by the EPA earlier this month creates an exemption for residue tolerance levels of genetically modified (GM) Bt toxin in GM soy foods and feed.¹
Essentially, the Agency has approved unlimited residues of GM Bt toxin in your food! Generally, one of the EPA's regular responsibilities is to set a tolerance, or maximum residue limit, for pesticide residues on food, which are designed to protect you from harmful levels of pesticides.
By exempting Bt toxin residues from this, it "eliminates the need to establish a maximum permissible level for residues" of this pesticide when it's incorporated into the plant. In other words, pesticide companies like Monsanto can incorporate as much as they want into your food… and that's all right with the EPA."

This is why it's folly to count on government regulations to benefit people.

Researchers blame grilled and fried meats for dementia, but...

"The culprit is something called advanced glycation end products, or AGES. The compound is created when protein from the meat interacts with fat and sugar while being cooked."

Funny how they ignore the sugar. Maybe you shouldn't put sugar on your steak.

Brushing your teeth reduces risk and severity of rheumatoid arthritis.

Education

More on the study that linked cheating on a test with a desire for government work and corruption at the government job.

Health Care

How to avoid chronic inflammation.

"Stop eating pro-inflammatory foods such as those made from white flour and white sugar. Remove hydrogenated oils from shortening, margarine and fried foods from your diet. Add healthy, anti-inflammatory oils such as olive oil, macadamia nut oil, flax oil and fish oil to your diet. Eat plenty of alkalizing fruits and vegetables. Avoid acidifying foods such as sodas, artificial sweeteners, additives, preservatives, white sugar and white flour. Also exercise moderately."

It's not that hard.

Global Warming and Energy

Not only are government weather forecasts a few days in advance generally wrong, so are government climate forecasts.

"No production of society is as wrong as government weather forecasts and yet continues to operate."

That's an exaggeration. Pretty everything government does is wrong.

I'm glad to see somebody recognizes the insanity of proposed climate engineering projects.

Economy

Volunteering reaches ten year low because people are hurting.

Rolls Royce to build drone ships.

Politics

The NFL threatens to block Arizona from getting the Super Bowl if a certain law passes. The NFL was implicitly very political already. Now its explicitly political. This law shouldn't limit itself to religion or gays. I should recognize and protect everybody's natural right to freedom of association.

In the mean time, a Hollywood bar bans anti-gay politicians. I doubt anybody is pressuring them. Liberal intolerance and discrimination is supposedly a good thing. They should ban all politicians.

Messiah Obama says His supporters are doing God's work. This guy is certifiable.

Clinton files pass due to become public, but aren't, to protect Hillary.

Federal Reserve

Bank run in Ukraine. Coups have consequences.

Banking regulations including Dodd-Frank, like all regulations, harm small banks and benefit large banks. As a result, we have fewer small banks and more large banks, just like government wants.

War

No government is legitimate, but Russia is right about the armed mutiny in Ukraine. This isn't over by a long shot.

How the coup in Ukraine could cause problems for us all.

Madeline Albright and Sandy Berger agitate for war in Syria. More agitating. This isn't over either.

Foreign Policy

Chinese Coast Guard shoots water cannons at Philippines fishing boat.

Egyptian cabinet resigns, making way for the chief of the military coup to run for president. It's slick how they orchestrate these coups to make them appear legitimate.

Misc

Major scientific journal requires authors make all data publicly available at the time of publication.

White hat researchers develop computer virus that targets WiFi and propagates through the air. NSA and black hat hackers will be all over this. Every WiFi will be hacked soon.

Police State

NSA and GCHQ train trolls to attack people and sow chaos on the internet. And we wonder why trolls and political discourse are so bad.

World's largest bitcoin exchange, Mt. Gox, disappears with $172 million in investments.  How's that imaginary currency working out for you now? It was probably run by NSA. Or maybe the Fed. Loss may reach $400 million.

Police officer explains government's position to man filming an arrest, "You have no rights."

More on the deep state.

Local

Psychologist sentenced to house arrest for two counts of exposing himself. Do his clients get their money back?

Attack on white RTA bus driver by black gang members racially motivated. I doubt they'll be charged with hate crimes though. FBI to investigate hate crime, most likely to bury it.

Right to Keep and Bear Arms

American gun production increased 31 percent in 2012.

Education

As if you needed another reason to home school, the Gates Foundation is building a database on eleven million school children.

Foreign Policy

Brazil to lay cable to Europe to bypass NSA spying.

Health Care

Now doctors want healthy women to have their ovaries removed to prevent cancer. Medical research has gone nuts.

Federal Reserve

Review of David Stockman's The Great Deformation.

"The main theme of The Great Deformation is stated clearly on the first page of the introduction, where Stockman explains how “fiscal cliffs as far as the eye can see” are “the result of the capture of the state, especially its central bank, the Federal Reserve, by crony capitalist forces deeply inimical to free markets and democracy.” This statement suggests a great irony in that it was the “Chicago School” economists who championed the “capture theory of regu­lation” with regard to such industries as interstate trucking and airlines, but ignored the biggest and most important regulatory capture of all—the creation of the Fed."

No wonder the establishment went nuts over this book.

"Nor was a bailout of the insurance company, AIG necessary. At the time, Stockman writes, 90 percent of AIG was solvent, yet it was handed $180 billion in taxpayer funds. The sole purpose of the bailouts, Stockman documents, was “all about protecting short-term earnings and current-year executive and trader bonuses.” In other words, the sole purpose of the government’s monetary and fiscal policies during that time was to guarantee the eye-popping bonuses that Wall Street One-Percenters paid to themselves to guarantee that these extraordinarily wealthy multimillionaires would continue to flood the Democratic and Republican Parties with campaign “contributions” to help guarantee the reelection of every last congressional incumbent."

That's not surprising.

"The most scathing condemnation of the Republican Party occurs in Stockman’s seventh chapter, in which he explains how “free-market” economists like Milton Friedman and George Shultz (“who had… perfected his patented craft of explaining things to presidents exactly as they preferred to hear them”) supported Richard Nixon’s decision to separate the dollar from gold once and for all in 1972. The result was “a forty-year spree of global debt creation, financial speculation, and massive economic imbalance…” The main purpose of Nixon’s election-year decision was to eliminate any and all constraints on federal spending in the short term to ensure his reelection. It worked well for him." 

Typical politician.

Summary of Ben Bernanke's tenure is not pretty.

Politics

Kasich signs two election law changes, angering Democrats.

Claim that Republicans are formally committed to Austrian economics is bogus.

Internally inconsistent philosophy of liberalism.

"In a recent Mises Daily article, Julian Adorney noted that a central tenet of the gospel of social democracy is that the majority of the people are too stupid to buy or consume the “correct” products and services without government diktat, but that when it comes to voting, the opinions of the majority are infallible and never to be questioned.
Here, we see a woman who claims a mandate to rule based on the opinions of the same people she declares too stupid to see to their own healthcare:"

It's Michelle Obama, much like Hillary Clinton before her.

Police State

Trying to grasp the scope of the US police state.

Insider tells how the deep state really works.

"There is the visible government situated around the Mall in Washington, and then there is another, more shadowy, more indefinable government that is not explained in Civics 101 or observable to tourists at the White House or the Capitol. The former is traditional Washington partisan politics: the tip of the iceberg that a public watching C-SPAN sees daily and which is theoretically controllable via elections. The subsurface part of the iceberg I shall call the Deep State, which operates according to its own compass heading regardless of who is formally in power. [1]"

Everybody in government is a socialist. People who are attracted to the creation of wealth and service to others works in the private sector. People who are attracted to using coercion to force their will on others - socialists - work for the government because they can't legally do that anywhere else. The guy writing this, a longtime government worker, is obviously a socialist.

"As I wrote in The Party is Over, the present objective of congressional Republicans is to render the executive branch powerless, at least until a Republican president is elected (a goal that voter suppression laws in GOP-controlled states are clearly intended to accomplish). President Obama cannot enact his domestic policies and budgets: Because of incessant GOP filibustering, not only could he not fill the large number of vacancies in the federal judiciary, he could not even get his most innocuous presidential appointees into office. Democrats controlling the Senate have responded by weakening the filibuster of nominations, but Republicans are sure to react with other parliamentary delaying tactics. This strategy amounts to congressional nullification of executive branch powers by a party that controls a majority in only one house of Congress. "

Like Obama doesn't wield crazy, unconstitutional, dictatorial powers as it is.

Bar association protests NSA spying.

Autonomous cars are controlled by the government for the government.

War

Ramifications of coup in Kiev. Nobody is talking about Venezuela. Sure, it's a socialist mess, but I bet the US is agitating down there too.

Map of the political and ethnic division of Ukraine.

Obama's new style of coups. Here's some insight into Venezuela:

"In Venezuela, opponents of the Bolivarian Revolution hoped to win in the polls in a way they had repeatedly failed to do while Chavez was alive. But Chavez’ successor, Nicolás Maduro, handed them yet another defeat, and the revolution continued. Despite monitors from around the world certifying the election as fair, the United States continued to defy every other country in the world by refusing to recognize Maduro’s victory and backing the opposition’s claims of fraud and their demands for further recounts.
The American legitimization of the protest in the streets provided cover to the opposition while it attempted to overturn the election results and amounted to cooperation with another Venezuelan coup attempt. When an opposition that for fourteen years had failed at the polls to change the government failed at the polls again, it created the appearance of a massive social movement in the streets to give credibility to calls to change that government through social pressure.
In the recent municipal elections, the Venezuelan opposition hoped the Chavez’ glow had worn of off Maduro. It hadn’t. Maduro and his allies won 76% of the mayoral races in a municipal election that saw an impressive 58.92% turnout.
Frustrated, and realizing that they simply cannot terminate Chavez’ revolution in the polls, the opposition once again took to the street. Right wing opposition leader Leopoldo Lopez – who was involved in the 2002 coup attempt against Chavez – called for his supporters to take to the streets. Leaving no doubt that the goal was, once again, coup, Lopez insisted that the violence would go on until they "got rid of Maduro."
And, once again, the U.S. backed, not the numbers in the polls, but the smaller numbers in the street. While the Mercosur governments of Brazil, Argentina, Uruguay, Paraguay and Venezuela released a statement describing the opposition violence in the streets as "attempts to destabilize the democratic order," the U.S. helped them to destabilize the democratic order, and, once again, jumped in with the coup."

Figures.

Hagel's budget cuts criticized for targeting warfighters while increasing bureaucrats.

Cuts hit some bases, not others. I bet I know how they were chosen.

Career soldiers already being forced to retire.

Regulation

Regulations make US broadband so slow.

Global Warming and Energy

Exxon CEO sues to stop fracking near his home. This is like Walter Cronkite suing to stop a wind farm near his home.

Oil spill closes 65 miles of Mississippi River including Port of New Orleans.

Socialists are people who embrace using aggression, coercion and violence against others, so it's not surprising they threaten global warming skeptics with violence.

Frauds blame volcanoes for the pause. This proves they didn't account for volcanoes in their models which is an impressive oversight. Of course the same reason the sun has so few sunspots - electricity - is likely the reason volcanic activity is increasing.

Everybody but Obama agrees the polar vortex wasn't caused by global warming.

Local

Consultant hired to bring retail to former fairgrounds site.

Tax and Spend

Ohio still has a socialist economic development bureaucracy in addition to the fascist JobsOhio.

Boeing has a negative tax rate.

"As Scott Klinger at CFC points out, “Over the last six years, Boeing has reported $26.4 billion in pre-tax profits to its shareholders, while claiming a total of $105 million in refunds from the IRS [for] an effective tax rate of -0.4 percent.”"

It's good to be in bed with the king.

Economy

Netflix reaches deal with Comcast to ensure plenty of bandwidth for Netflix customers. That's how the market works. This is what net neutrality prevents.

Thank goodness Chinese investors are coming to Ohio because nobody else is.

NASDAQ and S&P set record highs.

Regulation

Despite FCC regulations preventing private drone operation, drone use has skyrocketed.

War

Hagel proposes real cuts to military. I doubt Congress will allow that.

Pro-western interim leader appointed in Ukraine coup.

Federal Reserve

Fed orders new capitalization rules for foreign banks in the US so Deutsche Bank pulls $100 billion out of the country.

War on Drugs

US uses drones and cellphone taps to help Mexico capture drug kingpin.

Health Care

Review of Death by Food Pyramid.

"The long and the short of it is that the US Government is required by law to adhere to these guideline for all the people it provides food for. And the US Government is the largest food provider on the planet, feeding 53 million people daily (that was in 2000 when I last looked it up — God only knows how many it’s feeding now). How does Uncle Sam feed so many people? School lunches, the military, commodities programs, prisons, etc.
So the Dietary Guidelines for Americans serve as the basis for the Federal food and nutrition education programs. It is not some obscure document the government spends a ton of taxpayer dollars on then hides it away. It is the law of the land."

And so damaging.

FDA writes new rules to harm small, organic farmers and boost its corporate agents.

Local

Government to spend another $1.8 million to fix the Austin Blvd. mess it created.

Misc

Big bang cosmology in crisis again.

Police State

Modern police are derived from slave patrols.

"The first government-licensed police agencies in America were 18th century slave patrols, which were authorized to arrest both fugitive slaves and “disorderly” people of all descriptions. "
"From its inception, American “law enforcement” has been in the business of harassing harmless people, demanding that they present their “papers,” and violently abducting them if they cannot give a proper “accounting” of themselves to those who presumed to own them."

Not so different.

War

Ukraine sliding into civil war which will end up a proxy war between the US and Russia.

Federal Reserve

Five years after their last disaster, the Fed releases transcripts showing Fed officers were clueless.

"On the morning after Lehman Brothers filed for bankruptcy in September 2008, most Federal Reserve officials still believed that the American economy was growing, and that it would continue to grow, avoiding a recession.

The officials, gathered at the Fed’s marble headquarters for a meeting that had been scheduled months earlier, voted unanimously not to lower interest rates. They were not convinced the spreading financial crisis would drag down the economy, according to a transcript of the meeting the Federal Reserve released Friday.

But in a pattern that repeated itself throughout the financial crisis, Fed officials soon concluded they would need to do much more. Just minutes after the first meeting, a smaller group of Fed officials was pulled into a meeting where they agreed to prevent the collapse of a previously overlooked company at the very center of the financial system, the insurance giant American International Group."

That's great for AIG's owners, but bad for the rest of us.

Tax and Spend

Obama will call for end of era of austerity when he reveals bigger budget. What era of austerity?

"With the 2015 budget request, Obama will call for an end to the era of austerity that has dogged much of his presidency and to his efforts to find common ground with Republicans. Instead, the president will focus on pumping new cash into job training, early-childhood education and other programs aimed at bolstering the middle class, providing Democrats with a policy blueprint heading into the midterm elections."

He's just trying to buy votes with other people's money, money other people don't have.

Economy

Drones are putting helicopter pilots and cameramen out of work, but there's no great cry that this will hurt our economy because it won't.

Obama's advisors claimed his 2009 stimulus boondoggle was a great success. Debunked.

Politics

New York City mayor caught violating traffic laws because laws are for serfs, not rulers.

War on Drugs

Colorado marijuana tax brings in more revenue than expected. This will boost legalization efforts all over the country.

Colorado's new cannabis economy.

"The cannabis market is not simply a matter of putting some leaves in small bags. The new legal market, instead, is a market with far better quality control and accountability on the part of merchants. And it means economic growth for many industries that have never traditionally been connected with recreational drugs.
Supporting the cannabis merchants are a wide variety of enterprises from distribution warehouses to financial institutions, attorneys, short-haul truckers, and more. The new demand for commercial real estate to serve the needs of both producers and retail outlets has created a need for real estate brokers who can specialize in the cannabis industry, while attorneys assist with the drafting of legal documents, and accountants must be hired to keep track of the money. Unfortunately, many of these industries must continue to be wary of federal law, even when state law is clear on the matter. Banks, specifically, which are regulated at the federal level, only recently were given the green light by federal regulators to open accounts for cannabis-related businesses. The legality of this sort of banking remains on shaky ground, however, and many banks remain loath to participate, thus crippling the financial and banking opportunities for the cannabis industry in Colorado and Washington."

Suddenly the unseen becomes seen.

Right to Keep and Bear Arms

US gun production has almost doubled under Obama.

Foreign Policy

Secession movement on the march in Europe pushing to break up the EU.

Economy

Economic lessons relearned during blizzards.

Global Warming and Energy

Ten lefty lies about the British floods debunked.

"The fact - and this cannot be restated often enough - is that these floods are a man-made disaster. But the man-made element has nothing whatsoever to do with anthropogenic CO2 emissions. Rather it is the result of deliberate policy, initiated by the UN (Agenda 21), the European Union and its amen corner the Environment Agency, designed to create wildlife habitats at the expense of humans.

Under EU regulations Britain is powerless to prevent this problem occurring again and again. None of this can possibly change so long as Britain's regulations are subject to the policies created by the green ideologues who infest the European Union."

Great first article.

Farmers Almanac was more accurate predicting the winter weather than government.

Media

Former Johnny Carson lead writer says Jay Leno was forced out for making jokes about Obama.

Misc

On the scientific process.

"Scientists have the option to subject claims of knowledge to checking and confirmation. Even very old and established claims are checked and sometimes revised or overturned. This procedure and the ability to carry it out are what give scientific knowledge its verifiable aspect. But the motivations to carry out such checking are strictly human. They are affected by all sorts of non-noble incentives and considerations, such as whether the work will be published, whether it will bring fame and advance career, whether it will be accepted by others, and whether it will attract financial support or lead to financial gain. "

Scientists are human too.

Kipling seemed to know Roosevelt was going to be president long before he became president or even vice president or governor of New York, suggesting the plan to install him as vice-president then assassinate McKinley was in place and not so secret well in advance. Article documents US military atrocities against Philippinos.

Tax and Spend

Government scientific boondoggles.

Before the Large Hadron Collider was built, people were afraid it would destroy the world. Now that CERN scientists want a much bigger collider, people are afraid it will destroy the world. It won't destroy the world with black holes. It will certainly help destroy western civilization by its looting though.

Obama's proposed budget increases spending and taxes while cutting so-called benefits. Typical Obama.

Food stamp participation at record highs.

Police State

NSA targets activist groups to shut down political dissent.

"A sinister note is added to the proceeding with a new NSA document entitled "Manhunting Timeline," which describes an international effort to prosecute not only WikiLeaks but potentially anyone who spoke out in Assange’s defense."

That's what secret police do.

"The NSA-GCHQ collaboration is especially useful in that the former was (and is) no doubt deploying the latter to get around the remaining legal obstacles to spying on and otherwise disrupting the legal constitutionally protected activities of American citizens. After all, there is no British version of the Bill of Rights, and, as we have seen, the British government is far less constrained – either by law or the politics of the matter – from engaging in activities modeled on the behavior of the East German Stasi. Indeed, a British court is about to declare Greenwald’s partner, David Miranda, a "terrorist.""

Same with Australia.

"Targeting not only the personnel behind "rogue" websites, but also the users is crossing the Rubicon. If engaged in by the Ukrainian, Russian, or Chinese governments, you’d see Uncle Sam getting up on his high horse denouncing it as a violation of human rights and calling on the offending parties to cease and desist: this would be the signal for the Washington press corps to commence an orgy of tyrant-shaming. "

True.

"All of which brings us a bit closer to showing that the central purpose of the NSA’s activities has zero to do with real terrorism, rationally defined, and everything to do with going after "rogue" actors, such as WikiLeaks and yours truly, who are engaged in what we used to call journalism. They don’t care all that much about, say, al-Qaeda in Syria as they do about Assange’s personal life or what my "real name" is (as they put it in an April 2004 memo)."

Exactly.

Former TSA agent says Americans shouldn't be mad at them because they're just following orders. Where have I heard that before?

War

Chaos and coup in Libya.

Government lies about the Vietnam War.

It seems the US is playing from the same playbook in Ukraine that it used in Egypt, Libya and Syria.

The US-backed coup attempt in Ukraine could split Ukraine and cost us Germany as an ally.

"The “struggle for Ukraine” is a chapter in a series of U.S.-orchestrated provocations, which began with the expansion of NATO (North Atlantic Treaty Organization) eastward to abut Russia’s borders – an expansion pursued by Clinton, Bush and Obama alike. It gathered momentum with the U.S.-backed attempts to incorporate Georgia and Ukraine into the North Atlantic alliance.
The next stage in goading the Russian Bear consisted in American-funded NGO political-action groups – many of them backed by George Soros – flooding Russia proper. (“Purple” in Iraq, Blue in Kuwait, Cotton in Uzbekistan, Grape in Moldova, “Orange” in the Ukraine, “Rose” in Georgia, “Tulip” in Kyrgizstan, “Cedar” in Lebanon, Jasmine in Tunisia, Green in Iran, still un-christened in Russia and Syria: Dig around and you’ll find American activists à la Alinsky behind these “color-coded,” plant-based revolutions, blessed and backed by Foggy Bottom.)
“A U.S.-NATO military outpost in Georgia and missile-defense installations near Russia” completed the provocation. “Whether this longstanding Washington-Brussels policy is wise or reckless, it – not Putin’s December financial offer to save Ukraine’s collapsing economy – is deceitful,” inveighs Cohen.
Also upon us is a second Cold War between the U.S. and Russia, which will see a close, bilateral collaboration between Berlin and Moscow – Putin and Angela Merkel enjoy a cozy and copacetic relationship and will likely work together to dominate Eurasia."

Oops.

M4A1 rifle issued to US special forces is unreliable.

Federal Resesrve

Price inflation doesn't hit everywhere at once, as this report shows.

"U.S. consumer prices barely rose last month as a sharp increase in energy costs was offset by cheaper clothing, cars and air fares. The figures indicate inflation remains mild."

So inflation is hitting energy because it's a requirement for modern living. Prices of clothing, cars and air fares are down because people don't need to buy them. They can wear their old clothes, drive old cars and forgo flying. The prices of necessities rise while the prices of non-necessities fall.

Six bankers, three from JPMorgan, have committed apparent suicide in the last few weeks.

Silver and gold breakout.

Local

It's generous of our paternal rulers to grant permission for Dublin Pub to add $400,000 expansion.

Some local non-profit head will make $170,000 annually paid for mostly by taxpayers. What a scam.

Flush with new tax revenue, Beavercreek schools to imprison 5 year olds in kindergarten all day.

It's ridiculous how Wright-Patt is cutting costs now, but it could have done so long before.

Health Care

Pesticide exposure linked to Parkinson's.

Number of farms declining and farmers getting older.

Police State

Government intends to expand NSA spying, blames lawsuits against spying. Quit suing, or we're going to spy on you more. Just amazing.

This vague shoe bomb threat is probably just a scare tactic to boost support for NSA and TSA.

Backlash causes DHS to publicly cancel national license plate database plan, but they'll probably do it in secret anyway.

DHS contracts to purchase 704 million rounds of ammunition over the next four years or 2,500 per agent per year.

Chicago police computer predicts crime. I'll bet it's pretty successful, at least at first. Criminals will adapt. And the system will be abused.

Freedom of Speech

Obama sics FCC press police into newsrooms to intimidate reporters and their corporate bosses.

Sports

The NCAA punishes three Oklahoma athletes for eating too much pasta. Abolish that evil organization now.

I wondered about Michael Sam's motivation for announcing he was gay before the NFL draft, thinking there was a financial aspect behind it. Now we know it got him a autographed trading card deal.

""We normally focus on defensive players that are most likely to get drafted in the first two rounds, so Michael was originally one of our alternates," said Nick Matijevich, vice president of operations for Press Pass, which has signed 70 players to autograph deals, including Johnny Manziel, Jadeveon Clowney and Teddy Bridgewater. "But the news made his inclusion a no-brainer.""

I thought so.

Regulation

CBO predicts Obama's proposed minimum wage hike would cost 500,000 jobs. While it's impossible to predict how many jobs will be lost, jobs will be lost, and Democrats aren't happy with the CBO messenger of economic reality.

FCC plans rule changes to force net neutrality.

Global Warming and Energy

Obama orders higher fuel efficiency regulations for trucks to further harm our economy.

Official government forecast failed to predict extra cold and snowy winter because NOAA uses voodoo CO2 computer models to predict climate.

Summer will be cooler for the same reason the winter is cooler: the change in electrical activity from the sun indicated by the dearth in sunspots in solar cycle 24, not just because Lake Superior is frozen.

Misc

The Big Bang never happened.

Ten ways masculinity is under attack in the war on men doesn't mention the biggest way which is government schools.

Health Care

Link between sugar, especially fructose, and chronic disease including cancer and heart disease.

More on Subway removing shoe leather chemical from bread.

I prefer my eggs come from chickens.

Obamacare cuts causes fourth Georgia hospital to close.

Politics

Disgraced Illinois Democrat Congressman arrested in Zimbabwe for making porn movies and failing to pay his bills. This is the kind of people attracted to politics.

Global Warming and Energy

Chief scientist of Met Office claims global warming is making winter colder because of melting polar ice. Even the press excoriates him for this obvious lie.

Misc

Theory about entrepreneurship.

"What I find intriguing about this passage is that in describing his inspirations, Donaldson seems to capture the essence of Israel Kirzner’s theory of entrepreneurship as alertness to opportunities. The key feature of Kirzner’s theory is that opportunities tend to be discovered spontaneously by entrepreneurs who are not actively looking for them. Instead, the lure of a pure profit opportunity creates a special incentive for entrepreneurs that causes them to notice the opportunity. I read Donaldson as taking very much the same approach; he even goes so far as to say that when he actively looks at ideas (searching for meaning) they end up revealing nothing. For him then, artistic creativity is also spontaneous."

Entrepreneurs are perceptive and receptive of opportunities and innovations.

Security flaws in home security software. Imagine that.

Foreign Policy

The US would rather bludgeon than negotiate.

War

In another orchestrated step towards war, Syria is blamed for the failure of peace talks.

Economy

Finally a rational article about how bandwidth is a scarce commodity like all others, and a free market, not government-regulated net neutrality - in that commodity is the best way to meet the demands of consumers.

Household debt jumps to pre-2008 levels. Things just keep getting worse.

Local

4,000 lose power.

The bar oppressors are targeting Harem Nightclub next.

Global Warming and Energy

Texas A&M claims no emails exist about previous missing documents.

Now they're trying to scare us about arctic albedo.

Drought complicates California's water politics because government control of the water supply means water is allocated based on politics instead of economic need. Environmentalists forced the release of water usually used as a resevior during droughts to be released into San Francisco bay.

Brazil drought.

Mann's scientific fraud was recognized by a scientific panel which investigated him, and Mann lied about their conclusions, saying the exonerated him.

"In today’s post, I’ll look closely at the Oxburgh panel, one of the investigations cited in Mann’s pleadings. However, contrary to the claims in Mann’s litigation, not only did the Oxburgh panel not exonerate Mann, at their press conference, Oxburgh panelist David Hand, then President of the Royal Statistical Society, made very disparaging and critical comments about Mann’s work, describing it as based on “inappropriate” statistics that led to “exaggerated” results. These comments were widely reported in international media, later covered in a CEI article that, in turn, was reported by National Review. Moreover, information obtained from FOI in the UK a couple of years ago shows that Mann objected vehemently to criticism from an Oxburgh panelist, which he characterized as a “rogue opinion” and unsuccessfully sought a public apology."

Mann sounds exactly like a politician: lies upon lies upon lies. But he's being exposed.

Economy

Company plans to offer free wifi to everybody in the world from satellite, but there's no mention of how they plan to make money. They are asking for donations knowing that telecoms will try to shut them down.
With no sales and no profits, this will be a poorly managed project.

Establishment columnist notices establishment economists have done a terrible job predicting the economy, and he doesn't understand why.

Soros increases hedge that market will crash by 154 percent, but it's still just a hedge.