Monday, March 31, 2014

Misc

Another in the series of essays that make the case Stalin initiated WWII.

Foreign Policy

The IMF operates as an instrument of US foreign policy.

Benghazi CIA station chief informed Obama admin no protest occurred before attack that killed four Americans.

CIA misled government about torture.

Expose of how the US government lied and colluded with Israel to manufacture a phony crisis over Iran's non-existent nuclear program.

War

I love Google maps, but it can't document let alone explain the many cultural complexities involved in every US aggression such as Ukraine and Transnistria.

70 year connection between Republicans and Ukrainian Nazis. No wonder Germany is so interested in Ukraine.

Ukraine adopting Gestapo tactics.

Bailout of lenders in Ukraine.

Economy

FBI supposedly investigates if high speed traders use non-public info.
"Even trades based on computer algorithms could amount to wire fraud, securities fraud or insider trading. "
What a joke. If they find out they do, they'll fine them a penny on the dollar at most. What happened to the SEC?

US companies hold $1.9 trillion overseas to avoid US taxes.

Regulation

FCC generously releases more spectrum to Wi-Fi. Kiss their rings.

Supreme Court judge sees glimmer of patent problem, but thinks Supreme Court is the answer.

Police State

NSA penetrated RSA and everybody else farther than we even know.

People rationally detect liars only 43 percent of the time, but do better following their gut. Too bad this article is mangled.

Local

I wonder how many Delphi retirees have died fighting since Obama killed their pensions while saving GM's.

Over the last nine months, an army of cops from different police brigades stole $9 million in cash and drugs from locals. I guarantee the price for this army was significantly higher than $9 million. Even if you accept the war on drugs argument on its face, it's a loser. Worse, this army arrested 79 people, transforming them from wealth producers to wealth consumers, further impoverishing us. This is an economic and personal disaster with far greater costs than list here.
"“Ultimately we cannot arrest our way out of the heroin problem and the drug problem in the state of Ohio,” DeWine said."
Yet they continue.

Politics

Closer look at income inequality.

More on Bush. It's obviously an orchestrated coming out party. Apparently Bush is Sheldon Adelson's favorite, and therefore probably AIPAC's, favorite. This explains the disconnect. The Israeli lobby probably has no pulse on the American people. The sad thing is, it could come down to Bush versus Clinton, and pretty much nobody would show up.
"Adds Shawn Steel, a big California GOP money man, Sheldon is a “very rational guy.”
Perhaps. But last fall at Yeshiva University, this “very rational guy” gave this response to a question from Rabbi Shmuley Boteach on whether he supports U.S. negotiations on Iran’s nuclear program:
“No. What do you mean support negotiations? What are we going to negotiate about? What I would say is, ‘Listen, you see that desert out there, I want to show you something.’ … You pick up your cell phone and you call somewhere in Nebraska and you say, ‘OK let it go.’
“So, there’s an atomic weapon, goes over ballistic missiles, the middle of the desert, that doesn’t hurt a soul. Maybe a couple of rattlesnakes, and scorpions, or whatever.
“And then you say, ‘See! The next one is in the middle of Tehran. So, we mean business. You want to be wiped out? Go ahead and take a tough position and continue with your nuclear development.
“‘You want to be peaceful. Just reverse it all, and we will guarantee that you can have a nuclear power plant for electricity purposes, energy purposes.’”
Adelson’s response was recorded by Philip Weiss of Mondoweiss website who was at Yeshiva and filmed the interview. Weiss says the audience cheered Adelson’s proposed nuclear strike on Iran and no one on the stage, not Wall Street Journal columnist Bret Stephens, peeped a word of dissent."
What could go wrong?

Regarding secession, either one of two things is true. Either group A voluntarily joined group B, or group B forcibly annexed group A. Either way, group A has a legal and moral right to secede.

California Obamacare exchange sends out voter registration cards to all enrollees pre-marked Democratic.

Health Care

FDA to ban raw meat sales. This was a too believable, day early April Fools Day joke.

Roundup toxicity linked to reduced male fertility.

CDC pretends ignorance of the cause behind rising reports of autism. The reason is government pays parents if they have their child diagnoses with autism or ADHD.

Statins increase the risk of breast cancer.

Unprecedented ebola outbreak in Guinea spreads to Liberia.

Education

Students are fed up with common core arithmetic.

Global Warming and Energy

IPCC releases another absurdly alarmist report about global warming. As the IPCC's models diverge further from reality over time, the IPCC claims increased confidence in the models.

Synchronizing leftist goals, report claims people must eat less meat and dairy to combat global warming.

Regulation

Scotland assigns a government overseer for every Scot child.

Tax and Spend

Aid to Ukraine bad for Americans and Ukrainians.
"This $1 billion for Ukraine is a rip-off for the America taxpayer, but it is also a bad deal for Ukrainians. Not a single needy Ukrainian will see a penny of this money, as it will be used to bail out international banks who hold Ukrainian government debt. According to the terms of the International Monetary Fund (IMF)-designed plan for Ukraine, life is about to get much more difficult for average Ukrainians. The government will freeze some wage increases, significantly raise taxes, and increase energy prices by a considerable margin.
But the bankers will get paid and the IMF will get control over the Ukrainian economy."
Lovely.

Immigration

ICE released 68,000 illegal immigrants despite them previously being convicted of crimes.

Sunday, March 30, 2014

Health Care

Daylight savings times increases heart attacks 25 percent the following Monday.

Diet drinks linked to increased hearth disease and death.

Humans spread Black Death, not rats.

Number of women over 50 giving birth skyrockets.

Politics

Republican insiders court Jeb Bush. Are they trying to kill the party? More.

Socialism

Twice regulators failed to open a probe of GM ignition problems. That's socialism.

Delphi told GM switches didn't meet specs.

China supposedly plans to cover earth with surveillance satellites in two years in frustration over Flight 370 search.

Local

DP&L requests a rate hike.
"Dayton Power & Light customers may be on the hook for millions of dollars in extra fees on their monthly electric bills if the Public Utilities Commission of Ohio grants requests that consumer advocates say are related to maneuvering done to minimize the effects of deregulation."
If DP&L has to ask for a rate hike, it's bit deregulated.
"The deregulation law required electric utilities to transition from state regulated monopolies to businesses that vie for customers in a competitive market. The thinking was that competition brings lower prices, which benefits consumers.
However, the switch to a competitive market has taken far longer than initially expected, and OCC is accusing DP&L of purposely causing delays in order to collect more fees."
Well, duh.
"“Basically, DP&L is asking the PUCO to delay its full transition to market until it can make more profit and have its customers pay more. That’s a bad idea for Ohioans.”"
Ordering a company to sell assets isn't deregulation either.

Saturday, March 29, 2014

Politics

Europe is breaking up.

Economy

China is due for a spectacular bust.
"China is the greatest construction boom and credit bubble in recorded history."
It will pop.

Vegas gambling revenue down in February.

Global Warming and Energy

The frauds claim global warming will make species go extinct, but the IPCC admits there's no evidence that it has made even one species go extinct.

Obama wants to regulate cow flatulence.

Tax and Spend

More on Cuba's tax cuts to attract foreign investment.

War

SEAL missions increase in Africa.

The Turkey leak of planned false flag attack to start a war with Syria.

US troops suicide epidemic.

Police State

After an eight year court battle, one woman finally had her name removed from no-fly list.

Official story of the Boston Marathon bombing manhunt.

The militarization of police is dangerous.

More confessions from a former TSA agent.

NSA uses metadata to predict personality.

Health Care

Maybe those people who think the government works for the people can explain why Obamacare moves forward despite on 26 percent support.

Socialism

GM ignition recall grows to 2.6 million vehicles. GM's recall total reaches 4.8 million vehicles.

Flight 370 searchers find only garbage.

Local

Police arrest UD students on fake crimes for celebrating after basketball game.

Police ready two SWAT teams to terrorize celebratory UD students.

Dayton to spend $1 million buying bikes which will be stolen like the last ones. Quit trying to socially engineer the city.

Kettering to spend $6 million tearing up roads.

Thursday, March 27, 2014

Federal Reserve

Plutocrats attack the Fed over bank stress tests.
"Bank executives and investors lashed out at the Federal Reserve on Thursday, attacking its stress tests as “opaque” after the results battered Citigroup’s share price and rattled banks around the world."
Like "opaque" is the problem. Citigroup can publicize anything about itself it wants. When all these banks demand bailouts, this is going to be another spectacular failure of the Fed.

QE was intended to enrich plutocrats.
"Dallas Fed President Richard Fisher has been a thoughtful dissenter all along on the lunacy of QE and the Fed’s massive bond buying spree. But now he has left nothing to the imagination, admitting that Bernanke’s objective all along was to aggressively levitate the price of financial assets and thereby confer massive windfall gains on the wealthy who own most of them. And all this was done in pursuit of some whacked-out, latter-day Keynesian version of “trickle down” economics, which, according to Bubbles Ben, was for the good of the average American—even if they didn’t appreciate it, comprehend it, demand it, or vote for it."
I don't believe he thought it was good for average Americans. This creates the income inequality everybody complains about.

Media

The so-called media shield law is really a government licensing scheme for journalists. Freedom of the press means anybody is free to be the press.

Economy

More and more people are arguing we live in a post-scarcity world. We don't.
"Understand something at the very beginning: to say that something is “no longer subject to market forces” is to say that the good in question is non-scarce, or free. That means that every (or nearly every) factor used in producing that good also is non-scarce, and that the full costs to the consumers using such goods also are zero. All I can say is that this contention is an absurdity. "
Yes it is.
"It is true that the advent of low marginal costs has forced new ways of retailing, but economic progress always has done that. For example, a generation ago, Wal-Mart was able to seize huge chunks of market share because the company had developed a distribution and retail strategy that made it a much lower-cost producer than were the other retailers, including Sears, J.C. Penny, and K-Mart. That does not mean markets have disappeared or are no longer relevant; likewise, Wal-Mart now finds itself under pressure from other retailers as well as the internet. Markets still prevail, but in different forms. "
But the people in power and at the top of the economic ladder want to be there forever, so they hate change, and they use government to keep things from changing.

Millionaires are congregating to escape taxes and wealth confiscation.

Even USA Today points out bad signs for the stock market.

Impact of economic freedom on income inequality.

Regulation

I find it hard to believe that 26 percent of all car crashes involve cell phone use.
"The National Safety Council's annual report found 26 percent of all crashes are tied to phone use, but noted just 5 percent involved texting. Safety advocates are lobbying now for a total ban on driver phone use, pointing to studies that headsets do not reduce drive distraction."
I bet stats don't show a rise in crashes as cell phones became more common. I think this is typical subterfuge.

Health Care

According to the CDC, pretty much every child, OK, 1 in 68, has autism. As they keep lowering the standards to scare people and justify their existence, it'll be every child in five years.
"The incidence of autism ranged from a low of 1 in 175 children in Alabama to a high of 1 in 45 in New Jersey, according to the CDC.
Children with autism continue to be overwhelmingly male. According to the new report, the CDC estimates 1 in 42 boys have autism, 4.5 times as many as girls (1 in 189)."
If a boy acts like a normal boy, he has autism or ADHD. He's only healthy if he acts like a girl.

Obamacare program enrolling  people at Mexican consulates.
"“Whether they’re Mexican nationals or whether they’re United States citizens or whether they’re in transition-- and if they’re there it is our responsibility within all of America to educate on the Affordable Care Act,” Enroll America Field Organizer Jose Medrano told Breitbart News on Wednesday."
No, it's not.

Doctors believe will test suspending dying people in death by replacing blood with cold saline, then replacing the warm blood to bring them back to life.

Study claims exposure to cell towers affects brain.
"Exposure to cell phone towers alters brain function in alarming ways, causing a lack of concentration, irritability, difficulty sleeping and lack of appetite. That's the conclusion of a new study just published by the British Medical Journal.(1)

The study, authored by Professor Enrique A Navarro, concluded that the severity of such symptoms directly correlated to cell tower exposure levels. In other words, the closer a person lives to a cell tower, the greater the severity of their symptoms. This was true regardless of race, income level and other demographics."
This doesn't surprise me. We talked about it decades ago. But I doubt the effects are pronounced as this article wants us to believe. Power lines probably do the same thing, especially high voltage lines. Light pollution affects brains.

Global Warming and Energy

Climate models are useless because they fail to simulate oceans.

US producing ten percent of world's oil.

Police State

Probable cause has disappeared.

While ubiquitous commercial surveillance will happen, we don't have to allow government to perform it.

War on Drugs

Some Colorado marijuana convictions will be overturned.

Misc

Most mudslide town residents aware of mudslide risks.

War

Taxpayer-funded IMF announces $14-$18 billion bailout of Ukraine's coupmeisters with governments to pony up another $10 billion. This is mostly a bailout of banks.
"The money will go to the lenders, which include banks, mainly in Europe, and other investors in Ukraine’s bonds. This will not stem Ukraine’s economic decline. The IMF’s price includes higher taxes, which will make it worse."
We get poorer.
"One of the more amazing things about the world at present is that the major robberies accomplished by its states are done right out in the open and celebrated. Furthermore, institutions like the IMF that fail time and again, even report their failures in great detail before repeating them anew. For example, the IMF has a 51-page report explaining its failures in its Greek loan program."
People cheer while government make them poorer.

Special interests, especially oil and gas interests, lobby for sanctions against Russia.

After decades of fighting, Philippine government signs peace pact with Muslim rebels.

Now Turkey will block YouTube as well as Twitter.
"Earlier, what appeared to be a leaked audio recording of Turkish officials discussing Syria appeared on YouTube.
It relates to a discussion of possible military operations in Syria, which was apparently attended by Turkey's intelligence chief, its foreign minister and the deputy head of the armed forces."
Facebook may be next.

Air Force fires nine midlevel nuclear missile commanders and disciplines dozens more over cheating scandal.

British newspaper praises Osama bin Laden in 1993.

Education

Student wins settlement against school after school demanded her Facebook password.

Local

This Greater Dayton Premier Management looks like another socialist, non-profit.

Two reported bombs in Kettering. I bet the bomb squad calls fireworks, or something small like that, bombs.

Four county Dayton metro are gained only 590 people since 2010.
"The Dayton MSA, defined as Montgomery, Greene, Miami and Preble counties, is home to an estimated 802,489 people.
While the region’s population increased slightly, Montgomery County lost an estimated 2,000 people during the three-year period, according to the data released Wednesday."
"Montgomery County has lost more than 70,000 residents since its peak population of 606,148 in 1970."
The exodus continues.

Trotwood politicians to fly to Minneapolis to protest closing Trotwood Target store. I don't remember this much fuss when Best Buy, Kmart, Sears and everything else closed out there.

I'm skeptical of this study grading Montgomery County residents health 72 out of 88 counties in Ohio. What does high school graduation have to do with it?

Wednesday, March 26, 2014

War on Drugs

Lots of drinking in Iran.
"Despite the ban on alcohol and frequent police raids, drinking in Iran is widespread, especially among the wealthy. Because the Shia-dominated Muslim state has no nightclubs, it all takes place at home, behind closed doors."
Prohibition does not work.

Democrats count on marijuana legalization voters to boost their prospects in November.

Tax and Spend

Cuba to cut taxes to lure foreign investors.

After voting to secede, Venetians may withhold taxes from Rome and become instantly much wealthier.

Immigration

Border Patrol releasing illegal immigrants in south Texas.

Foreign Policy

Russian government dumps iPads for Samsung tablets because of spying fears.

Global Warming and Energy

Analysis shows el Nino may be unpredictable. I doubt it. Just because it hasn't been figured out so far doesn't mean it won't.
"I suppose this explains why this model has been doing so poorly for the last year in predicting a new El Niño, it has been showing an El Niño just months away for almost a year."
We'll see.

Health Care

War on second-hand smoke.
"By the way, to reach its secondhand smoke conclusions, the Environmental Protection Agency employed statistical techniques that were grossly dishonest. Some years ago, I had the opportunity to ask a Food and Drug Administration official whether his agency would accept pharmaceutical companies using similar statistical techniques in their drug approval procedures. He just looked at me."
"The late H.L. Mencken’s description of health care professionals in his day is just as appropriate today: “A certain section of medical opinion, in late years, has succumbed to the messianic delusion. Its spokesmen are not content to deal with the patients who come to them for advice; they conceive it to be their duty to force their advice upon everyone, including especially those who don’t want it. That duty is purely imaginary. It is born of vanity, not of public spirit. The impulse behind it is not altruism, but a mere yearning to run things.”"
No kidding.

War

The head of the Egyptian army that led the US-backed coup will run for president as many expected. War is politics by any other means.

America's Ukrainian coup leaders.
"“[Ukrainian ambassador] Geoffrey Pyatt is one of these State Department high officials who does what he’s told and fancies himself as a kind of a CIA operator,” laughs Ray McGovern, who worked for 27 years as an intelligence analyst for the agency. “It used to be the CIA doing these things,” he tells Democracy Now. “I know that for a fact.” Now it’s the State Department, with its coat-and-tie diplomats, twitter and facebook accounts, and a trick bag of goodies to build support for American policy."

Iraqi election commission quits en mass over interference during the war.

Federal Reserve

Brazil is defaulting on its debt by printing money.

Just the other day the Fed said 29 of 30 big banks passed stress test, but today it blocked capital plans of five of them because of stress test problems. It's all about the headlines. Citi fails.
"Citigroup, as well as U.S. units of Royal Bank of Scotland Group Plc, HSBC Holdings Plc and Banco Santander SA, failed because of qualitative concerns about their processes, the Fed said today in a statement. Zions Bancorporation was rejected as its capital fell below the minimum required. The central bank approved plans for 25 banks. "
I'm sure there are different aspects of the test, but this is funny. The first headline was the one everybody was supposed to remember.

Food prices are up 19 percent in 2014.

Police State

Judge permanently kidnaps sick child because her father is angry the state kidnapped her for a year and denied her medical care.

The new story about Boston Marathon bombing suspect number one is the TSA was supposed to detain him, but his name was spelled wrong in the database. This is ridiculous because we know the FBI was in contact with him and his family.
"An FBI member of the JTTF interviewed Tsarnaev in person. The FBI did not conduct surveillance of Tsarnaev because the case did not rise to the standard that permits surveillance, according to federal officials."
What a travesty.
"Nearly two years later, after the Boston Marathon bombings, authorities interviewed an associate of Tsarnaev’s named Ibragim Todashev about the Waltham murders. The FBI shot and killed Todashev during the interview when he allegedly attacked an agent. The FBI, which has been cleared of wrongdoing by state authorities and an internal review, says Todashev was about to sign a statement implicating both himself and Tsarnaev in the murders when he was killed."
Another travesty. I like how they pretend they could only stop him if he boarded an airplane.

Local

Lawsuit challenges Dayton's red light cameras.

Regulation

Ohio compromise bill allows Tesla to direct sale cars in Cincinnati, Columbus and Cleveland, but nowhere else. That's hardly a compromise. That's aggression against Tesla.

Tesla's direct sales model may be presidential campaign issue.

Sports

NLRB grants Northwestern players permission to form a union. The NCAA is very afraid.

Misc

Criticism of the claim researchers discovered gravity waves from Cosmic Inflation after the Big Bang.

Geologists warned Army Corp of Engineers of impending Washington mudslide in 1999. More.
"How Sedna, which was discovered in 2003, and its newly found neighbor, designated 2012 VP 2113 by the Minor Planet Center, came to settle in orbits so far from the sun is a mystery."
"Neither body can be explained by the present structure of the solar system, with its four rocky planets, four outer gas giant planets, disk of small icy Kuiper belt objects beyond Neptune and the comet-rich spherical Oort Cloud located some 10,000 times farther from the sun than Earth."
Another failure of theory.

Tuesday, March 25, 2014

Global Warming and Energy

Study that claimed polar bears were losing population invalidated.
"But now, in an astonishing admission, the PBSG have acknowledged that the last population survey for the SB (Regehr, Amstrup and Stirling, 2006), which appeared to register a decline in population size and reduced cub survival over time, did not take known movements of bears into account as it should have done."
I bet it was on purpose. Fraud.

IPCC admits its supposedly scientific consensus about biofuels was wrong.
"Growing crops to make “green” biofuel harms the environment and drives up food prices, IPCC admits in dramatic U-turn
The United Nations will officially warn that growing crops to make “green” biofuel harms the environment and drives up food prices, The Telegraph can disclose."
Consensus means nothing in science.

Coldest October to March in US in 102 years.

Health Care

HHS pushes back deadline to sign up for Obamacare again.

Foreign Policy

Japan stockpiling uranium and plutonium and preparing to build a nuclear plant capable of producing material for a bomb. China is not pleased. Tough. They're building nuclear bombs.

Bipartisan bad foreign policy.
"The ignorance and hubris of the folks that we have elected to high office is astonishing, but it is matched by what one reads in the mainstream media where there is a steady drumbeat to "do something" every time a foreigner looks askance at the insane policies that Washington regularly promotes. If there is one central truth about the US-Russian relationship it is that it is better to have a friendly Russia cooperating on issues like Iran and Syria than it is to have a hostile Russia that will use its considerable resources to obstruct Washington’s initiatives. Unfortunately no one inside the beltway seems to understand that."
Politicians aren't like us.

The US should not use NGOs to manipulate foreign elections.

Obama's Secret Service agents sent home after drinking in Netherlands.

Politics

One of Bill Clinton's grope victims, Kathleen Willey, is back in the news criticizing the Clintons.

Police State

The cover story for the murder of the friend of Boston Marathon bombing suspect by an FBI agent is the man threatened the armed FBI agent who was accompanied by other armed cops and agents with a pole. That's the best they could come up with?

Four part Mises daily series on NSA.

Spyware app for Google Glass secretly takes pictures. You know NSA will do that will all Google Glasses.

Education

Private school bars child who shaved head out of compassion for her friend with cancer, but upon recognizing the mistake, allows the child back. Government schools never admit their mistakes.

Federal Reserve

The IRS says bitcoins are property, not currency. Of course any commodity can become money. The IRS made this decision so they could tax it.

Another fractional reserve bitcoin exchange freezes customer accounts.

Bank runs in China.

Local

UD NCAA victory celebration to cost taxpayers.

$5 from federal taxpayers will fund destroying wealth in the area.

Sports

Mark Cuban jumps on the bandwagon predicting the decline of the NFL, but he gets press for it.

Misc

300 earthquakes in Chile.

Announcement about gravity waves proving inflation after Big Bang may be wrong. They are wrong since the Big Bang never happened.

Foreign Policy

Obama costs Belgium taxpayers over 10 million euros, sending 900 people, 45 vehicles and three planes. Stay in the White House, please.

War

Rumsfeld criticizes Obama over Afghanistan.
"The U.S. has status of forces agreements with more than a hundred countries, Rumsfeld noted. "A trained ape can get a status of forces agreement," he said. "It does not take a genius. And we have so mismanaged that relationship.""
We should get rid of all those agreements and bring our troops home.

Now Obama is waging an illegal war against Kony's Lord's Resistance Army.

The US has been at war somewhere almost our entire lifetimes.

Monday, March 24, 2014

Health Care

Butter consumption reaches 40 year high.

More on FDA's labeling regulation changes.

War on Drugs

Photo's from raided Mexican drug lord's home show how wealthy the war on drugs makes them. And we wonder why people still keep producing drugs.

Global Warming and Energy

It's true that cyclical patterns of rainfall won't slow rising oceans, but global warming isn't responsible for rising oceans either. The planet is cooling.

Politics

I expected the Republican establishment to overcome the tea party by coopting all the representatives who won using that label, and they've been so successful, tea party candidates are unlikely to win any primaries this year. Why bother when they regularly vote with the establishment to raise the debt ceiling and give Obama everything he wants? They're not libertarians.

War

Turkey shoots down Syrian plane.

Warmongers don't know what to do about Russia annexing Crimea.

Tax and Spend

Just through five years, Obama is already the most expensive president in history.

Foreign Policy

Even Europeans have had enough of Obama.

Sunday, March 23, 2014

Health Care

More muscle leads to longer life.

Ebola hits Guinea capital killing 59 so far.

Saturday, March 22, 2014

War

Taliban kill nine on another war profiteering hotel in Kabul.

Russia officially annexes Crimea. That sounds like a good thing since the Russian people and the Crimean people both wanted it. Apparently this gives Russia access to Black Sea oil and gas, but Russia already had access to the Black Sea, and Ukraine still has access to the Black Sea. Unless that oil is only off the coast of Crimea, I don't see what this changes.

In a tit-for-tat move, Russia bans nine Americans from entering the country after Obama bans Russians.
"The sanctions ban Boehner, Reid, and Sens. Mary Landrieu, Daniel Coats, Robert Menendez, John McCain, as well as Obama advisers Caroline Atkinson, Daniel Pfeiffer and Benjamin Rhodes from entering Russia."
This is funny.

The Libya war was a lie too.
"NATO’s action magnified the conflict’s duration about sixfold and its death toll at least sevenfold, while also exacerbating human rights abuses, humanitarian suffering, Islamic radicalism, and weapons proliferation in Libya and its neighbors."
The war profiteers profited. That's a success to them.

Eastern Ukraine rallies for secession.

Britons not buying western propaganda, view Russia more favorably than EU.

Education

More on the myth of a science and engineering personnel shortage.

Misc

Stardust particles are unlikely to be from the birth of the solar system.

Swarm of small earthquakes in Oklahoma.

Police State

Computers better at spotting fakers than people. More evidence that people are terrible witnesses and terrible at detecting lies.

NSA hunts sysadmins to hack their computers and gain control of the networks they control.

Hawaii cops will no longer be allowed to legally have sex with prostitute.

There was never any chance that prosecutors would prosecute the FBI agent who, during questioning, murdered an associate of the older alleged Boston Marathon bombing suspect who also was killed by police.

Police keep cell phone tower intercepts secret.

Foreign Policy

NSA hacked Chinese telecom firm Huawei and stole their software. This is the same firm the US accuses of being a conduit for Chinese spying.

Michelle Obama tells the Chinese that internet access is a universal right. What is she smoking?

Turkey bans Twitter.

Federal Reserve

A processing error caused delay in processing direct deposit paychecks to Fifth Third today. Supposed glitches like this are becoming awful common, almost like banks are doing it on purpose so people get used to being unable to access their money.

The Fed says 29 of 30 big banks could weather big shock, and the Fed is never wrong. Everybody can breathe easy.

Economy

Ohio unemployment rate falls to six year low of 6.5 percent, but the state 4,500 jobs.

Cheddar Cheese prices jump as demand from China doubles. Now we know what China is doing with all those dollars the Fed printed.

Home sales hit 19 month low.

War

Ukrainian snipers linked to coupmeisters, not government as initially reported.

113 killed, 148 wounded in Iraq.

Global Warming and Energy

IPCC scientists knew their data did not support the IPCC's claims, but they allowed those claims to stand. That's why I call them frauds.

Mann refuses discovery order to Steyn.

Thursday, March 20, 2014

War

Instead of killing as many Americans as in the past, modern wars just cripple them.

Regulation

Ohio to ban colored headlights.

Wednesday, March 19, 2014

Politics

I've long thought our rulers hijacked the feminist movement to exploit women.

Obama's policies are reducing the number of women in the work force. Same with men.

EPA floods Democrats with data to support them but fights Republican FOIAs, exactly as you would expect.

Regulation

Customs orders 2,000 multimeters destroyed because of their color.

War on Drugs

How the war on drugs contributed to Philip Seymour Hoffman's death and the deaths of so many others.
"The first is that owning, selling, and buying heroin is prohibited by the state and such activities carry heavy penalties. This causes a multitude of distortions in its production, distribution, and consumption. For the economist then, heroin is not in its normal state. "
"Another implication is that prohibition is not effective. North Korea can conceal its own failures, but open societies cannot. Prohibition might discourage some potential consumers, but would those same consumers commit harm to themselves or others in the absence of prohibition? Most would not. In other words, while the drug war forces addicts and casual users to rely on unlabeled, black market (and possibly tampered-with) products for their fix, would drug users in a free market turn to such dangerous products? It’s unlikely. We do know that in the face of prohibition, many users turn to using alcohol and prescription drugs for off-label recreational uses that can cause harm that is similar or even worse than those caused by prohibited drugs.
There is simply no evidence that prohibition generates any socially desirable benefits, but there is ample evidence of its costs and destruction."
People should learn the lessons of the official Prohibition.

Police State

Rikers Island inmate bakes to death in cell. Talk about cruel and inhuman punishment.

NSA lawyer claims giant tech companies knew about NSA programs.

Hawaii police need to have sex with prostitutes to catch lawbreakers.

Federal Reserve

Obama nominates dual Israeli-US citizen and former head of Israel's central bank to vice-chairman of the Fed.
"We are thus to understand that President Obama, having searched the entire length and breadth of our land, could find nobody better than a 70 year old with Wall St. and International Monetary Fund baggage who had most recently worked for a foreign government."
Funny.

Fed to keep rates low even after economy recovers, which it never will.
"But what stood out in the central bank's statement was its embrace of easy money policies even after the Fed achieves its goals of full employment and 2 percent inflation."
It will never reach those goals if it keeps printing money.
"U.S. stock prices fell after the statement was released, while yields on U.S. government debt rose."
 Usually when the Fed promises to keep rates low, stocks rise.
"The central bank also proceeded with its well-telegraphed reductions to its massive bond-buying stimulus, announcing it would cut its monthly purchases of U.S. Treasuries and mortgage-backed securities to $55 billion from $65 billion."
That explains it. I wonder if it added $10 billion of something else like mortgage-backed securities.
"The decision to continue to scale back its stimulus keeps the Fed on track for the measured wind down laid out by Yellen's predecessor, Ben Bernanke. The Fed repeated that it plans to continue trimming the asset purchases in "measured steps" as long as labor conditions continue to improve and inflation shows signs of rising back toward the Fed's 2-percent goal."
It looks like no. It may have cut purchases back to $65 billion. This seems like a mixed message. That would also explain the stock and Treasury moves.
"The Fed has kept overnight rates near zero since December 2008 and has bought more than $3 trillion in long-term debt to keep borrowing costs down and spur investment and hiring."
And yet, or because of this, the economy stinks.

Fed tapers another $10 billion.

Global Warming and Energy

NASA is right that western civilization will soon collapse, but it has nothing to do with overuse of resources. Looting and socialism are the cause. This is more misdirection to place the blame where it doesn't belong.

Report claims rest of world had warm winter.
"The central and eastern USA shivered through a colder-than-average winter, but most of the rest of the globe did not share in the chill, registering the eighth warmest overall winter on record."
Other temperature datasets will say otherwise.

Obama launches new, taxpayer-funded global warming propaganda program.

Skeptics, worse than Nazis, should be marched to war crime trials. You can't make this stuff up.

Global warming cause of cold weather. You can't make this up either.

Mainstream media joins FOIA lawsuit to obtain Mann's emails. It keeps getting worse for the frauds. That's why their desperation keeps increasing.

Thanks to a cover-up by government and its corporate agents, the biggest industrial accident in US history is a secret.
"The biggest industrial disaster in American history actually happened in 2008, when more than a billion gallons of coal sludge ran through the small town of Kingston, Tennessee. This story details how, five years later, nothing has been done to stop it happening again, thanks to energy industry lobbying, federal inaction, and secrecy imposed on Congress. 'It estimated that 140,000 pounds of arsenic had spilled into the Emory River, as well as huge quantities of mercury, aluminum and selenium. In fact, the single spill in Kingston released more chromium, lead, manganese, and nickel into the environment than the entire U.S. power industry spilled in 2007. ... Kingston, though, is by far the worst coal ash disaster that the industry has ever seen: 5.4 million cubic yards of coal ash, containing at least 10 known toxins, were spilled."
SOP.

Three years of record low tornado activity.

Future heat waves will supposedly reduce food supply even though heat waves in the past 60 years did not.

Misc

Theorist of the expansionist Big Bang tears up hearing his theory supposedly confirmed. Too bad the Big Bang never happened.

The scientists who censor and blackball maverick scientists call for more maverick scientists.

Socialism

Fire theory for Flight 370.

Politics

Lincoln worship and the Gettysburg address as a civil religion.

Health Care

Rootworms adapted to GM corn. What does overuse mean? The problem is use, not overuse. Animals including people have not adapted to GM corn.

Obamacare premiums to double some places this year.

FDA sentences six year old boy to death by prohibiting medicine.

New guidelines developed by Big Pharma would put 12.8 million more Americans on Big Pharma's dangerous statins. What a great way to get customers.
"The new estimate would mean 56 million people, or nearly half of the U.S. population between the ages of 40 to 75, could be eligible for taking a statin to prevent heart disease. The findings were published on Wednesday in the New England Journal of Medicine's online edition."
The sad part is people will fall for it.

Economy

More retail closings.

Local

Wright State and Sinclair expect millions stolen from taxpayers for construction projects.

Socialism

Witnesses in Maldives reported a low flying jetliner morning after Flight 370 disappeared.

Satellite picture could be lost plane. That seems too good to be true. How does somebody manage to find this picture without knowing the location?
"Similarly, residents of a tiny island in the Dhaalu Atoll in the Maldives say they saw a plane with Malaysia Airlines markings in the early hours of Saturday March 8."
Why not vacation in the Maldives?

Military possibly covering up for their poor air defenses.

Don't put an off button on the tracking device. And make them redundant.
You can't turn it off on your phone, though you should be able to, unless you take the battery out. That's only if it doesn't have a secondary battery.

Politics

Clinton had tapes like every other president, but we'll never hear them.

Health Care

Health insurance premiums since Obamacare rising faster than previous eight years combined. That's because Obamacare was designed to loot us.
"The individual market for health insurance has seen premiums rise by 39 percent since February 2013, eHealth reports. Without a subsidy, the average individual premium is now $274 a month. Families have been hit even harder with an average increase of 56 percent over the same period — average premiums are now $663 per family, over $426 last year."
Obamacare works just like planned.

Global Warming and Energy

California solar energy plant nearly blinds pilots.

Tuesday, March 18, 2014

Foreign Policy

NSA records all phone calls in an unnamed country for 30 days for later playback.
"Those calls can be "replayed" over a 30-day period, during which old calls are expunged to make way for the new recordings, according to the documents."
That's going to make people angry, and rightfully so.

Federal Reserve

Record spending on pets probably has more to do with inflation than anything else.

Experts puzzled by rash of suicides of financial whizzes.
"A majority of the eight suicides of 2014 have been very public demonstrations, which has suicide-prevention experts puzzled.
“Jumping is much less common as a method for suicide in general, so I am struck by the number that have occurred in recent months in this industry,” said Dr. Christine Moutier, chief medical officer of the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention."
Maybe they were pushed. Or maybe they know the end is near.

Beef prices record biggest surge in decade.

Venezuelan economy is basically collapsed with 57 percent inflation

War

Russian Spetsnaz units arrested in Ukraine.

Crimean election supposedly 97 percent in favor of secession.

Obama tries to stifle debate on Ukrainian policy by threatening to seize bank accounts of critics.

While western rulers pretend Putin is irrational, he's the rational one.
"At the end of the Cold War, writes ex-ambassador to Moscow Jack Matlock, 80 percent of Russia’s people had a favorable opinion of the USA. A decade later, 80 percent of Russians were anti-American.
That was before Putin, whose approval is now at 72 percent because he is perceived as having stood up to the Americans and answered our Kiev coup with his Crimean counter coup."
Upside-down world.

Regulation

Jack Daniels opposes loosening Tennessee whiskey regulation because it would increase competition.

Tax and Spend

Amtrak giving away taxpayer funded rides.

Rich New Jersey residents flee state's high taxes.

Local

Perpetual war takes toll on locals.

HHS Secretary Sebellius comes to Dayton begging people to sign up for Obamacare. It's such a disaster she has to do an Obama-style road show, and it will fail.

Only two arrested for OVI despite tremendous expense of checkpoints.

Monday, March 17, 2014

Media

Poor Cosmos ratings. Drudge calls this a disaster as they fall.

Health Care

Oldest known skeleton of cancer victim is 3,000 years. This is great evidence that cancer is caused by civilization, most likely eating grains.

HHS claims Obamacare enrollees reach 5 million.

Increased screenings credited with drop in colon cancer. I guess doctors are cutting out pre-cancerous tissue. It's better than getting cancer, but prevention is better than both.

Here's another bogus headline claiming omega-3 fats don't lower risk of heart disease. But this shows the article baloney:
"The research showed insufficient support for nutritional recommendations by groups such as the American Heart Association that advocate high consumption of polyunsaturated fats like omega-3, found in fish such as salmon, and omega-6, found in corn and sunflower oils, as well as some nuts and seeds. The study appears in today’s Annals of Internal Medicine. "
The "... and omega-6..." part ruins it. You can't group the two. They perform opposite functions. This is another bogus Big Pharma attack on supplements.

Tax and Spend

Federal tax revenues hit new record.

Immigration

The EU's promise of borderless migration fails as even Belgium orders immigrants to leave.

Latinos become top demographic in California with 39 percent plurality.

Global Warming and Energy

Every pound of pot grown indoors releases 4,600 lbs of CO2 into the atmosphere.

Another arctic blast due next week.
"[The] pattern next week has as much extreme potential for the time of the year as I can find. Coldest opening to calender spring in 50 yrs at least."
I'm not surprised.

Warming climate empowered Genghis Khan to conquer his empire.

Politics

Obama's own government analysis says his administration is not transparent.

The states against Tesla's direct sales model all have Republican governors.

Socialism

After its long delayed 1.6 million car recall, GM is recalling another 1.5 million vehicles.

Misc

Astronomers surprised by supposed gravity wave discovery, but claim it supports their inflationary Big Bang theory anyway.

Economy

The supposedly good but still dismal February job numbers were actually bad.
"Although it is often overlooked, a key statistic for understanding the labor market is the length of the average workweek. Small changes in the average workweek imply large changes in total hours worked. The average workweek in the U.S. has fallen to 34.2 hours in February from 34.5 hours in September 2013, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. That decline, coupled with mediocre job creation, implies that the total hours of employment have decreased over the period."
Uh-oh.

Inflation doesn't produce economic growth.
"Contrary to Evans a strengthening in monetary pumping to lift the rate of price inflation will only deepen economic impoverishment by allowing the emergence of new bubble activities and by the strengthening of existing bubble activities.
It will increase the pace of the wealth diversion from wealth generators to various non-productive activities, thereby weakening the process of wealth generation."
All economic activities, and therefore all jobs, are not created equal.

Police State

Australian and New Zealand require encryption services to decrypt for them.

Ron Paul on Diane Feinstein's hypocrisy over spying on Americans.

TSA polices St. Patrick's Day parade in Portland, Maine.

IBM tries to distance itself from NSA spying.

Education

Gifted children are neglected by government schools.

Compulsory schooling creates distinct youth culture.

Government schools have gotten so bad that nearly one in ten children are hospitalized for mental health problems. Abominable.

War

Obama freezes assets of seven Russians to punish them for supporting democracy in Crimea.
"Senior administration officials also said they are developing evidence against individuals in the arms industry and those they described as "Russian government cronies" to target their assets."
Russians consider this a joke. Russia will target US government cronies US arms industry too. Putin to sanction a handful of US Senators.

Sanctions are worse than doing nothing.

Russia recognizes Crimea as a sovereign state after overwhelming vote.

Claim that Ukraine shipped 33 tons of gold to the US to pay for the coup and IMF loans. Also claims the US seized Iraq and Libya's gold.

Neocons try to slander Ron Paul for not backing encirclement of Russia.

The pattern of disaster for the warmongers.

Sports

Anti-trust lawsuit against the NCAA over player compensation.

Sunday, March 16, 2014

Media

Hollywood propaganda film about the Hiroshima bomb.

Politics

After vote in Crimea, secession votes all over the west.

Venetians to vote to secede from Italy.

Quebecois to vote to secede from Canada.

Scots to vote to secede from Great Britain.

Freedom of Speech

UK wants to censor unsavory information on the web.

Socialism

Malaysia and the US are hiding information about flight 370.

Somebody else wonder this:
"As search teams continue scanning the waves for signs of debris, these online truth-seekers should be asking a different question: why couldn’t the plane itself tell us exactly what happened when it went off-radar?"
Because of socialism.
"The ongoing mystery of Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 is the fault of a bizarre quirk in our networked society. Even cars have broadband connectivity now, but the modern jet airliner – perhaps our most technologically evolved mode of transport – still exists in the age of radio.
Air traffic controllers today must orchestrate the most congested airspace using primarily voice commands. You can send and receive text messages from most aircraft, surf the web and even stream House of Cards. The system that powers the plane is limited to pre-dial-up internet connection speeds.
There is simply no datalink onboard an aircraft with the bandwidth to continuously stream the volumes of data collected and stored during every second of a flight by the flight data recorder and the cockpit voice recorder."
Because of socialism.
"A recent patent application filed by Boeing describes such a system, which specifies a limited data set including the precise location of the aircraft and the flight control inputs by the pilot or the automation system.There will be costs to mandating such a system, but the benefits are clear."
There's no need to mandate it. Just get government out of the way and entrepreneurs will implement this and more improvements we can't predict right now.

Flight 370 pilot was a political fanatic whose family moved out the day before the flight.

War

Permanent warfare state rules the US.

Report that 300 Blackwater mercenaries have been deployed to pro-Russian city in eastern Ukraine.
"Since the videos emerged, Twitter has been alive with speculation that mercenaries linked to Blackwater, now known as Academi, are active in Ukraine, helping to prop up the embattled new pro-western government."
"He added: ‘Of course the other possibility is it's all Russian propaganda.’
Any suggestion that a U.S. mercenary outfit like Academi had begun operating in the country could give Russian president Vladimir Putin the pretext for a military invasion. "
As usual, we know nothing.

Demographics show Russia and Ukraine are in decline, so leave them alone.

With 79 percent turnout, 93 percent of Crimeans vote to secede from Ukraine and rejoin Russia. Hooray for secession. That's a real majority unlike any election in the US.

Obama rejects real democracy in action in Crimea. Russia Times highlights US hypocrisy.

Putin's economic advisor says Russia should use currencies besides the dollar.

I'm skeptical of this claim that SEALs self-indulgently put over 100 bullets in Osama bin Laden. I'm not skeptical about the self-indulgence. I'm skeptical they killed him at all.

The is not about to promote peace in Venezuela. Didn't this guy notice Ukraine?

Global Warming and Energy

US Navy illegally dumps waste into formerly pristine nature reserve waters.

Education

Regulations target for-profit schools because of high loan defaults.
"The overhaul is prompted by the fact that students from for-profit colleges account for nearly 50% of all loan defaults yet only account for about 13% of the total higher education population."
I don't think the schools are the problem. The students are.

Misc

Microbe eats electrons.

Plutocrats funding science is hardly privatizing it.

Health Care

The "experts" who recommend statins are paid by the drug firms who make and sell statins. Imagine that.

Bad cholesterol, LDL, may just be a marker of a diet poor in amino acids, specifically tryptophan.

Democrats attack cancer victim who lost her insurance because of Obamacare because she made an add telling people.

As I predicted from the beginning, now that Republicans expect to gain control of both houses, they no longer are holding fake votes to repeal Obamacare. They're proposing a supposed alternative to share in the looting.

Economy

Obama may seize some assests, but the USG will seize everything it can.

Saturday, March 15, 2014

War

Karzai wants US troops out of Afghanistan, but it doesn't appear that will happen.
"The Afghan president has come under heavy pressure to sign the Bilateral Security Agreement, with a council of notables that he himself convened recommend that he sign the pact. The force would train and mentor Afghan troops, and some U.S. Special Forces would also be left behind to hunt down al-Qaida.
All 10 candidates seeking the presidency in April 5 elections have said they would sign the security agreement."
Bad news for Americans.

The way western leaders are so up in arms about Russian potentially, almost certainly, taking back control of Crimea, it seems like one of the strategic goals of fomenting the coup was to deny Russia a naval base in the Black Sea.

It seems I'm right.
"One of the keys may be found by looking back at Zbigniew Brzezinski’s 1997 book, The Grand Chessboard in which he wrote, “Ukraine, a new and important space on the Eurasian chessboard, is a geopolitical pivot because its very existence as an independent country helps to transform Russia. Without Ukraine, Russia ceases to be a Eurasian empire.”
“However, if Moscow regains control over Ukraine, with its 52 million people and major resources as well as access to the Black Sea, Russia automatically again regains the wherewithal to become a powerful imperial state, spanning Europe and Asia.”
The former national security advisor to Jimmy Carter from 1977 to 1981 and top foreign policy advisor to Barack Obama, Brzezinski wrote that US policy should be “unapologetic” in perpetuating “America’s own dominant position for at least a generation and preferably longer still.”"
This might be the major motivation. Still, I wonder about some of it. How does losing Ukraine make Russian not a Eurasian empire? Russia borders the Black Sea, so while its fleet is in Crimea now, they could build a Black Sea naval base in Russia.

Comparison of Ukraine and Crimea to Serbia and Kosovo.

Three years after the west backed al Qaeda affiliates in toppling Qaddafi, Libya is a chaos of al Qaeda affiliates. As predictable as this was, some call it unforeseen consequences.