Saturday, October 31, 2015

Politics

The Palestinians are fed up with their rulers too, yet those rulers continue to rule, the same as everywhere else.
"When Palestinians were polled by the Jerusalem Media and Communications Center (JMCC) in August, just prior to the current Intifada, only 3 percent approved of his leadership – compared with the still meager approval rating of 16 percent of his boss, Palestinian Authority President, Mahmoud Abbas. Even those who are often cast as alternative leaders – Fatah leader, Marwan Barghouti, and former Gaza-based Hamas Government Prime Minister, Ismail Haniyeh – were nowhere near popular, achieving 10.5 and 9.8 percent of the vote respectively.
It was as if Palestinians were telling us and their traditional leaderships, in particular, that they are fed up with the old rhetoric, the constant letdowns, the unabashed corruption and the very culture of defeat that has permeated the Palestinian political elite for an entire generation."
Yep.

Netanyahu blames a Palestinian for the holocaust.

Police State

Massachusetts crime lab scandal.

War

ISIS in Egypt claims responsibility for downing Russian passenger plane. Russians blame mechanical
problem.
"Various reports suggested that a mechanical problem could have played a role. Security sources said an initial examination of the crash site showed the plane went down due to a technical fault, Reuters reported. Ria Novosti quoted a source in Sharm el-Sheikh airport as saying that the crew of the A321 appealed to the airport’s technicians due to “engine start failures several times over the past week”."
We'll see.

Obama officially puts boots on the ground in Syria, they'd been there all along, officially breaking his promise not to do so.

Fred Reed questions whether the US Navy could win battles against China in China's backyard, questioning the wisdom of challenging China's new, manmade island bases.
"There is also the fact that the American military simply doesn’t matter, which reduces concern with whether it can fight and who it can fight. It doesn’t defend the US, since there is nothing to defend it against. (What country has the remotest possibility of invading America?) So the military is used for what are essentially hobbyist wars, keeping Israel happy, providing markets for the arms companies, and for social engineering: we have girl crews who would be a disaster at damage control, but we assume that there will never be any damage to control."
Ouch.
"Washington seems not to realize that it wields far less military power than it thinks it does, and that the power it does wield is ever less useful than before. As a land power, it is very weak, being unable to defeat Russia, China, or peasants armed with rifles and RPGs. Air power has regularly proved indecisive."
Double ouch.

Soldiers earn more than their young, uneducated counterparts in the marketplace. They are risking their lives more.

Immigration

Sweden overwhelmed by refugees.

Foreign Policy

Obama blocks release of emails between Clinton and White House.

Emails show Clinton sent classified information from her private server, contradicting her statements.

While the State Department rejected requests for additional security from the ambassador, Clinton supported additional security for the Libyan Prime Minister. More evidence for my theory Clinton, Obama and other rulers had Ambassador Stevens assassinated.

Socialism

Government suspends hero for trying to save child's life. Upside-down world.

Media

CNBC doesn't care Republicans dropped them. Making Republicans happy was never their goal. Rating and money were, and they were wildly successful like Fox News and CNN before them.

Friday, October 30, 2015

Tax and Spend

Water on Mars again presented as fact in propaganda story about NASA stealing money to send people there.

Economy

Incompetent government enables markets to thrive in Peru.

Price of steel falls as supply increases.

Misc

Establishment scientists notice filaments associated with star formation.
"As Philippe André, Principal Investigator for the Herschel Gould Belt Survey, wrote:
“The greatest surprise was the ubiquity of filaments in these nearby clouds and their intimate connection with star formation.”"
Eventually science trumps pseudo-science.

Casini survives pass through Enceladus's plume.

Apple surpasses Oracle's Java for biggest PC security risk. Adobe flash is third.

War

After NSA tracks them, US assassinating ISIS leaders by drone.

We know US troops have been fighting in Syria, but people are angry Obama made it public.

Socialism

GM recalls cars for fourth time for same fire risk issue.

Thursday, October 29, 2015

War

Iraq rejects more US troops.

Tax and Spend

Venezuela selling off gold to pay debt and for welfare. They should default now.

Police State

90-year-old woman accuses TSA of forcing her to strip to the waist.

Politics

The rise of Ryan and Rubio illustrate the Republican establishment is striking back against the supposed rebellion.
"Duly, old school Tim Huelskamp, Republican representative from Kansas, who had been bullied by John Boehner for defying the speaker, told the Washington Examiner that no other speaker he knew of “would … have as much power as Paul Ryan asked for himself”:
“Those conditions include a request that the House eliminate a rule that allows a member to seek a vote to oust the speaker. That provision is part of the original rules of the House, authored by Thomas Jefferson.”
Ryan haggled until his anti-Jeffersonian “conditions” were met. These were, confirmed Time, that he “emerge as House Republicans’ unity candidate, endorsed by the three major factions of House Republicans.”
The Freedom Caucus folded.
In the Jeffersonian tradition, the most conservative of lawmakers wanted to be able to dissent from leadership without being censured by the speaker.
In the tradition of Boehner of Orange, whom the left has just about beatified, Ryan wished to further consolidate power in the office of speaker.
The Ryan, regimist takeover had been presaged by a promising coup in the People’s House, earlier in October."
The claims of rebellion were exaggerated once again.

Economy

Tech unemployment rises in some categories.

Voluntary $70,000 minimum wage pays off with higher profits and customer retention.

Here come robot buses.

Misc

Scientists surprised to discover chickens evolving 15 times faster than expected.

I predict scientists will be surprised when Cassini dives through Enceladus's supposed water jets.

Drone porn is the new rage. That's why governments but drones.

Local

City gives tax dollars to the rich lawyers at Faruki, Ireland and Cox.

Wednesday, October 28, 2015

Police State

Domestic military spy blimp breaks free and knocks out power to 20,000. Talk about a boondoggle.

British police seize journalist's laptop, with a warrant, to identify terrorist he was in communication with. I don't see why journalists should be different than anybody else in this regard. As long as they don't arrest him.

Education

Math and reading skills fall for schoolchildren.

Misc

Scientists surprised to discover oxygen on comet 67P, but EU theorists predicted it. More.

Maybe dark matter sent a comet to wipe out the dinosaurs. Or maybe it was Darth Vader.

Health Care

Google wants to monitor and fix your mind. This is the logical next step of the health care police state.

Environment

Now jack-o-lanterns cause global warming.

Rogue agency NOAA refuses to turn over science documents demanded in congressional subpoena. This is to prevent Congress from exposing the fraud in hearings about its latest temperature dataset.

War

Mainsteam media finally admits US troops have been engaging in combat missions in Iraq for months.

Of course the Iraqi government ignored US demands to block Russian overflights. Iraqs rulers want the Russians to take out ISIS because they know the US isn't doing that.

Politics

Feminists declare war on transgenders by attacking Jenner.
"Germaine Greer, the 76-year-old author of “The Female Eunich,” is making waves by lambasting the idea that Caitlyn Jenner may be honored by Glamour Magazine as “Woman of the Year.” Jenner isn’t a woman, says Greer. He’s just attention-starved and seeking to steal the limelight from the women in the Kardashian family."
Opportunist Jenner will stop playing a woman now that he's been absolved of manslaughter.

New Speaker of the House Paul Ryan is basically a younger clone of Boehner.

Catholic clergy is full of homosexuals. You don't say.

Right to Keep and Bear Arms

While gun ownership rates skyrocketed over the last 20 years, homicide rates were halved. Just as a rational person would expect.

Europeans arming themselves at record rates to protect themselves from immigrants.

Federal Reserve

Printing money causes more subtle problems than hyperinflation.

Tuesday, October 27, 2015

Foreign Policy

Ron Paul calls out both parties for politicizing Benghazi hearings, but he should have raised Obama's obfuscation. He's the biggest political obstacle to getting to the truth.

Bill Krystal supports the Empire in Star Wars.

US destroyer challenges man-made Chinese islands. What could go wrong?

Regulation

Sony files copyright case against man who licenses them his video.

War

Report claims US forces in Okinawa were ordered to launch nuclear missiles during the Cuban missile crisis, but crews refused.

Blair's apology for the Iraq war was phony.

Shamed by the Russians, Obama is taking is secret war in Iraq and Syria public.

Tax and Spend

IRS uses stingrays, of course.

Republicans begin to impeach IRS chief. If this is real, more power to them, but I doubt it's real.

Health Care

Cutting sugar produces health benefits in days.

Toxicity of sugar vastly underestimated, like many of us have been saying.

Police State

After being shot down several times, Senate passes oppressive CISA bill.

Cops using card readers to steal the money from pre-paid cards.

This idea that loved ones could be simulated after death is a red herring. As creepy as that sounds, what they're really talking about here is creating false histories to blackmail people, and NSA is already doing that.

Tax and Spend

How much money does NASA steal every time it mentions the possibility of extraterrestrial life?
"An extraterrestrial ocean is believed to be causing ice to erupt from the surface of Enceladus, and this week we may finally learn more about what lies beneath.
The historic fly-by of Nasa's Cassini space probe will be the most exciting attempt to date to unlock the secrets hidden within the scarred surface of Saturn's moon.
This mission will bring the probe to within 30 miles (48km) of the surface and it will be the lowest pass it has made through one of the plumes of ice that erupt out into space."
It's all baloney.

Environment

The leftists who hate cows and other large animals have created a shortage of environmentally necessary dung.

NOAA's supposed Godzilla el Nino may be a dud.

More criticism of NOAA's frakendata set.

Al Gore still pushes lies.

Misc

Sound waves used to manipulate objects.

Exoplanets are everywhere, except for this one. Don't question the data about the others.

Physicists surprised by electricity.

Economy

Apple sets record revenue.

While we praise Germany and Sweden for their economies, if part of the US, they would be among the poorest states.

Debt curves show we're screwed.

Federal Reserve

The Fed can't raise interest rates, but it must pretend it will.

Monday, October 26, 2015

Politics

Boehner wants to give Obama all the spending money he wants.

Expect the FBI to whitewash Clinton's email scandal like it did Lois Lerner's

War

Obama sends troops to front lines in Syria and Iraq.

Misc

Petty 2016 Mustang.

Adele is a poor imitation of Kate Bush.

Foreign Policy

Thank goodness somebody is willing to remember the full story regarding Benghazi that both Republicans and Democrats are covering up. Hillary and Republicans both covered up the smuggling of weapons by CIA from Libya to Syria facilitated by Ambassador Stevens.

Sunday, October 25, 2015

Politics

Comedian wins Guatemalan presidency because he's neither corrupt nor a thief. That was before he won.

Biden praises Paul Ryan for Speaker.

GOP establishment showers Ryan with... money.

War

The explosive drone expose.

US special forces deploy to 147 countries.

Socialism

As bad as I know it is, I'm skeptical...
"You’re looking for a job. You want to get paid several times your worth, come and go when you please, work only when you feel like it, take as long a lunch as you want, and get ten paid holidays per year and six weeks paid vacation per year. There’s only one way to go: work for the federal government."
Why does anybody work elsewhere?

Marxists angry to have to pay to visit Marx's grave. Welome to Marxism.

Economy

Car sales are in a bubble too.

I don't believe collapse is coming because of Overstock.com officers, but it's coming.

Education

Student debt blamed for lack of economic growth.

Standardized tests are bad for students.

Coding academies (STEM) are nonsense.

Local

Great Miami river mussels relocated at taxpayer expense because of whitewater project. You can't make this stuff up.

Saturday, October 24, 2015

Socialism

California's bullet train over budget and schedule. What a surprise.

Bureau of Land Management sold wild horses to crony for illegal slaughter.

Sports

Seven high school football players have been killed this year. The nanny will go nuts.

Environment

Record 3652 days since a major hurricane hit the US.

Record storm leaves little damage in Mexico. The frauds must be livid.

Right to Keep and Bear Arms

There's no relationship between gun control laws and violent crime.

Foreign Policy

The Israeli Atomic Energy Commission endorse the Iranian nuclear deal.

War

US intervention in the Middle East always makes things worse.

In a bizarre bout of honesty, Tony Blair admits the Iraq war produced ISIS and says he's sorry. Bush will not.

Police State

Judge makes ridiculous argument to toss Wikimedia and ACLU's lawsuit against NSA spying.

I have no doubt that videos exposing the police brutality that has occurred for a century is part of the reason for spikes in crime.

Local

Sinclair admits it's not doing a good job because Dayton workers have a skills gap, but it says more tax money will fix the problem. It won't.

Friday, October 23, 2015

Politics

Here we go again. Republicans supposedly don't have the votes to raise debt ceiling. Baloney. They'll raise it. This is just posturing.

Health Care

More than two-thirds of patients on anti-depressants aren't depressed. Neither are the pharmaceutical CEOs or the doctors that prescribe them for kickbacks.

Economy

Five top tech titans raked in over $10 billion on stock increases today.

War

The US policy of perpetual war is a failure on all fronts.

Secretary of Defense gets confused about whether the US soldier who died in Iraq was in combat or not because he's trying to protect Obama.

Tax and Spend

DOJ whitewashes Lois Lerner's corruption, handing down no charges.

Education

In effort to keep lowering the wages of programmers, Google, Microsoft and Facebook demand CS and STEM be taught in government schools.

Police State

I knew somebody would come up with a building material that could block EM waves like a Faraday cage.

Misc

Scientists detect alcohol and sugar on comet.
"It adds to evidence that comets could have been a source of the complex molecules necessary for the emergence of life on Earth."
But this contradicts the dirty snowball theory because no chemistry can occur at near absolute zero.
"Other organic molecules have been discovered in comets, most recently in comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko.
The European space agency's Philae has found several organic molecules on 67P including four never detected before on a comet. "
They have it backward. The discovery surprised scientists.

Pluto has two double-lobed moons.

The inside of stars sound like plasmoids.

Facebook is killing phone batteries.

Thursday, October 22, 2015

Economy

Google offers top YouTube artists revenue-sharing deal, but threatens to block their videos if they refuse to sign.

Socialism

Secret Service officers asleep on duty, so naturally they need more money for more officers.

Misc

Author accuses CIA director Dulles of having JFK assassinated.

War

The global war on terror is a failure, proven by the ease with which terrorists take over cities from US-trained armies.

After Russia embarrassed the US by attacking ISIS's capital, the US claims it will target it too.

Environment

How dare Volkswagen and other car companies make better cars than government allows?

Exxon strikes back against accusations it hides science. The accusation.

NOAA claims 2015 was hottest summer ever.

Police State

DHS claims people have no rights when crossing the US border.

New Jersey court authorized warrantless searches of vehicles for any or no reason.

Spy agencies take revenge on security researchers who identify their hacks.

Hackers battle to control surveillance satellites.

The reason government pushes connected cars isn't safety. It's they can be easily tracked.

Secret Service claims power to track cell phones without warrant or probable cause.

Foreign Policy

Judge Napolitano crushes Hillary Clinton in mock cross-examination about Benghazi.

Speaking about Clinton's testimony, Charles Krauthammer gets one right.
"CHARLES KRAUTHAMMER: That's They knew it was a terror attack. They got it from Gregory Hicks, who was on the ground in Tripoli who told them that. He had ended up demoted in the State Department for having transgressed against the Secretary. And yet, they go ahead, they put Susan Rice on that weekend. And tell a tale that is completely false. Spontaneous demonstration, out of control, et cetera, of the video."
"We're not going to get the contradictions, we're not going to get the facts, we're not going to get the real story underlying it. We're living in an age where what you say and its relation with the facts is completely irrelevant as we see in the presidential campaign. And it's carrying over into the hearings. "
This is why elections don't matter.

Documents leaked by Chelsea Manning show the US planned to assassinate Bolivian President Morales.

Regulation

Governments can't shut down Popcorn Time, a site for streaming torrents.

Politics

Now Jeremy Renner is supposed to help Jennifer Lawrence negotiate a higher salary, as if Lawrence is too weak or stupid to do it herself.

Republicans consider electing a Democrat Speaker.

White House praises Ryan.

Local

Local colleges push drone education.

Liberty Center is another skyscraper-curse-like malinvestment. Malinvestment activities at Liberty Center.

Health Care

Much of the healing associated with health care comes from placebo effect.

History of US dietary guidelines.

Wednesday, October 21, 2015

Regulation

LA county to require cats, spayed or neutered and micro-chipped. You're next.

Federal Reserve

Bank regulators move toward 100 percent reserves.

Prepare for gold confiscation.

Tax and Spend

California taxpayers pay for prisoners to have sex change operations.

War

The degree to which the US created havoc in the Middle East.
"But here’s the truly grim reality of the Greater Middle East today: what the Americans started didn’t end with them. The skies of the region are now being cruised by French, British, Jordanian, United Arab Emirates, Kuwaiti, Qatari, Bahraini, Moroccan, Egyptian, Saudi, and Russian planes and drones, all emulating the Americans, all conducting “counterinsurgency,” all undoubtedly blasting away civilians. In Yemen, the Saudi air force, backed and supplied by Washington, recently took up the twenty-first-century American way of war in the most explicit fashion possible – by knocking off two wedding parties and killing more than 150 celebrants."
The nth degree.

Politics

Trump rails against war and blowback.

The Roman origins of divide and conquer.

93 percent of Republican voters disagree with Ryan on immigration, but he will become Speaker anyway. Dems love him.

Environment

Models claim rich poor nations will lose compared to rich nations because of global warming. That's capitalism, not global warming.

Contradicting the shallow alarmism, birds, like every all plants and animals, respond to changes in climate in ways that enhance their survival.

Lightning, not erosion, shapes mountains.

Five-year-old underground fire could reach nuclear waste from Manahatten project in months.

Misc

We're supposed to be scared super-volcanoes erupt within a few hundred years of filling their magma chamber. I consider that good news. That will give people a few hundred years to avoid or mitigate the damage, and people can perform miracles in that amount of time.

How a car engine works.

Police State

Apple tells judge it can't unlock iPhones because of default strong encryption. This will boost the movement to make back doors mandatory.

Google unleashes full disk encryption.

British spy agencies get new hacking powers to spy on computers to defeat encryption.

New York City police fight to keep backscatter X-Ray surveillance vans secret as if it was a spy agency, not a police department.

Local

Trotwood high school evacuated.

Main Street construction finished. Where? More.

Socialist market at RTA hub caused by government interventions. The food will stink.

Grand opening for Liberty Center malinvestment.

Four steps to urban recovery.

Health Care

Tamilfu isn't beneficial, and it causes side effects, but the science has been buried.

Bacteria communicate electrically, like brain cells.

Overload of iron reduces testosterone.

Tuesday, October 20, 2015

Socialism

Air Force steals family's land next to Area 51.
"Last month, the U.S. Air Force condemned the Groom Mine property when the family who owns it rejected a government buyout they felt was unjust."
Government hates that family.
""This has been like I said a 60-plus year nothing short of criminal activity on the part of the federal government, the AEC, Black Ops, CIA and you can go on and on," said Joe Sheahan, Groom Mine heir."
Government is organized crime.

Immigration

ICE supervisor organized swinger sex parties with employees.

Economy

ESPN to cut 350 jobs.

The rich keep getting richer while everybody else struggles.

Politics

Democrats support Paul Ryan for Speaker.

Ryan is Obama's new best ally. What a charade.

Obama's National Archives withhold 1996 draft of Clinton Whitewater indictment.

Environment

Sunscreen, not acidification, is killing coral reefs.

Japanese cars join list that fail emissions standards.

Misc

Scientists surprised by Pluto.

Former CIA director withheld information from Warren Commission to ensure it concluded Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone when he killed Kennedy.

Foreign Policy

Sibel Edmonds accused Dennis Hastert of working for foreign governments amid speculation he was blackmailed.

Media

Media shows naked football players in locker room, illustrating what I've always said: no reporters belong in the locker room. Nobody gains. Everybody loses.

Environment

In a story downplaying the alarmism of the growing el Nino, NASA says it may rival 1997, 1998, which led to the hottest years on record since the 1930s by honest measurement.

Monday, October 19, 2015

Economy

It doesn't matter how hard you work. All that matters is what people are subjectively willing to pay for it.

Tax and Spend

China continues to massively sell US Treasuries.

Politics

The CIA wanted to assassinate Joe McCarthy, but today, the NSA can ruin anybody with a few keystrokes.

The fringes are running away from the establishment, a reminder of Lenin.
"Lenin is said to have declared that the best way to destroy the capitalist system was to debauch the currency. By a continuing process of inflation, governments can confiscate, secretly and unobserved, an important part of the wealth of their citizens. By this method they not only confiscate, but they confiscate arbitrarily; and, while the process impoverishes many, it actually enriches some. The sight of this arbitrary rearrangement of riches strikes not only at security but [also] at confidence in the equity of the existing distribution of wealth. Those to whom the system brings windfalls, beyond their deserts and even beyond their expectations or desires, become "profiteers," who are the object of the hatred of the bourgeoisie, whom the inflationism has impoverished, not less than of the proletariat. As the inflation proceeds…, all permanent relations between debtors and creditors, which form the ultimate foundation of capitalism, become so utterly disordered as to be almost meaningless; and the process of wealth-getting degenerates into a gamble and a lottery. Lenin was certainly right. There is no subtler, no surer means of overturning the existing basis of society than to debauch the currency. The process engages all the hidden forces of economic law on the side of destruction, and does it in a manner which not one man in a million is able to diagnose."
Government schools make this possible.

Police State

Americans show clueless willingness to allow email surveillance. Socialist schools have won.

Whistleblower decries treatment of whistleblowers.

LA bows to Saudi, refusing to charge Saudi Price with rape.

Apple apps secretly accumulated information, now banned.

Foreign Policy

The FBI, Secret Service and DHS are looking into reports the CIA director's email was hacked. Why isn't the CIA looking into it? Nothing sensible will come from this alphabet soup.

We're supposed to be unhappy Chinese firms are still targeting US firms, as if the US isn't doing the same but more aggressively and better.

Hubris has replaced discourse in foreign policy. For a while now.

I love that somebody is picking up my mantra: are warhawks stupid or evil?

Heavily armed by the US. Saudis threaten Iran.

Regulation

Drone owners must register with FAA.

Local

Liberty Center is another local, skyscraper curse malinvestment, but it has the advantage of location.

Police chased driver into crash at North Main and Great Miami Blvd.
"Henderson said the vehicle collided with another that had the green light. He said there were three vehicles involved, and the occupants in one of them, a mother and four children, were taken to a local hospital. Henderson said they are expected to be OK."
Thank goodness. This can hardly be characterized as a chase.

Socialist projects run rampant in county.

Beleaguered Huber Cricket's Tavern can operate sometimes according to rulers.

New Miami speed cameras back in court despite glowing review from DDN.

Misc

The theory that the two lobes of comet 67P came together in a slow collision and stuck is ridiculous.

DNA claims dogs emerged near Nepal and Mongolia.

Scientists discover we're more likely to breed with genetically similar people, i.e. bigotry. I wonder how much taxpayers paid for that.

Dating of the solar system by isotopes on the moon is wrong.

Asteroid has rings.

Sunday, October 18, 2015

Health Care

Civilized humans need to sleep more than hunter-gatherers to heal the additional damage we do to our bodies with our lifestyles.

Long distance running isn't pointless. It's counterproductive.

Police State

Cops request and will eventually seize DNA data from ancestry sites. FBI too.

Federal Reserve

Banks reject big cash deposits.

Politics

Every election some crazy leftist draws big crowds and surprising polls early in the Democrat primary, then he blows up. Sanders just blew up when he declared he would raise taxes on everybody. The bizarre part was Obama won while being that guy. Of course he lied about raising taxes.

Economy

Sprint forced to throttle big data users because bandwidth is a limited resource.

This Russian understands America and its precarious situation better than Americans.

OPEC nations hurting because of high production and therefore low price of oil.

Saturday, October 17, 2015

Immigration

Federal Judge rules Texas can deny birth certificates to children born in Texas from illegal immigrant parents. Illegal immigrants aren't under US control by design.

Foreign Policy

Leaked memo shows Blair had signed on to Iraq invasion with Bush a year in advance.
"The documents, obtained by The Mail on Sunday, are part of a batch of secret emails held on the private server of Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton which U.S. courts have forced her to reveal."
How did Clinton get this? NSA?

Health Care

Doctors kill woman with measles by suppressing her immune system, then blame lack of vaccination although she was vaccinated.

Environment

France's top weatherman suspended, censored, for speaking out against the climate frauds. He's been fired.

The RICO20 called for prosecution of climate skeptics, but they're the ones guilty of racketeering.

How a former global warming true believer switched to a skeptic by doing his homework.

Tax and Spend

Leftists like Bernie Sanders use bogus poverty comparisons to push for more welfare.
"We get much more insight, though, once we have a look at what UNICEF means by "poverty rate." In this case, UNICEF (and many other organizations) measure the poverty rate as a percentage of the national median household income. UNICEF Uses 60%. So, if you're in Portugal, and your household earns under 60% of the median household income, you are poor. If you are in the US and you earn under 60% of the US median household income, then you are also poor.

The problem here, of course, is that median household incomes — and what they can buy — differs greatly between the US and Portugal. In relation to the cost of living, the median income in the US is much higher than the median income in much of Europe. So, even someone who earns under 60% of the median income in the US will, in many cases, have higher real income than someone who earns the median income in, say, Portugal."
Don't mess up their arguments with facts.

States stealing people's unclaimed property, and the state defines unclaimed.

Misc

Teeth discovered in China show modern humans there 20 thousand years earlier than thought.

Economy

TMS growth remains slow.

Police State

Swedish beard club raided because only terrorists have beards.

If you're not paranoid, you're crazy.

War

The US intelligence paradigm can't work.
"Whatever the efforts of that expansive corps of intelligence analysts (and the vast intelligence edifice behind it), when anything happens in the Greater Middle East, you can essentially assume that the official American reaction, military and political, will be “surprise” and that policymakers will be left “scrambling” in a quagmire of ignorance to rescue American policy from the unexpected. In other words, somehow, with what passes for the best, or at least most extensive and expensive intelligence operation on the planet, with all those satellites and drones and surveillance sweeps and sources, with crowds of analysts, hordes of private contractors, and tens of billions of dollars, with, in short, “intelligence” galore, American officials in the area of their wars are evidently going to continue to find themselves eternally caught “off guard.”"
There's too much data and too many analysts to distill intelligence into something useful. Lack of information - no matter how much you have, it can never be enough - colored with pretense of knowledge is the downfall of all central planning.

Number of Iraqi refugees tops 3.2 million.

The US won't say Russia is attacking al Nusra Front because the US is allied with that al Qaeda group.

Syrian President Assad makes more sense than US rulers.

Despite 15 years and much money, Obama says the Afghan army stinks.

US scrambles to cover up war crime of attacking hospital in Afghanistan.

Condolence payment absurdity.
"Turns out the basic payout for a dead civilian in one of our war zones is . . . brace yourself . . . $2,500. That’s the sum we’ve been quietly doling out for quite a few years now. Conscience money. It’s remarkably cheap, considering that the bombs that took them out may have cost, oh, half a million dollars each."
Amazing.

How the US co-opted the Arab Spring.

Obama to send troops to Cameroon to fight Boko Haram.

Politics

Of course Hillary Clinton is above the law. Rules are routinely above the law unless they turn on other rulers.

The common theme between Trump and Sanders is both opposed the Iraq war.

The rise of nationalism and racism in Israel. It seems to be everywhere.

Boys should say no to consent classes.

Trump realizes the Fed is protecting Obama from a recession just like it did with Clinton. The Fed plays politics.

Friday, October 16, 2015

Police State

British rulers discover GCHQ spies on them, and suddenly domestic spying is a problem.

War

Major leak of drone war documents.
"Perhaps most eye-opening is the disclosure that as much as 90% of attacks over a five-month period hit the wrong targets. According to The Intercept: "When the Obama administration has discussed drone strikes publicly, it has offered assurances that such operations are a more precise alternative to boots on the ground and are authorized only when an 'imminent' threat is present and there is 'near certainty' that the intended target will be eliminated. Those terms, however, appear to have been bluntly redefined to bear almost no resemblance to their commonly understood meanings.""
Wow.

As predicted, Obama plans to keep US troops in Afghanistan as long as he's in office. I thought that war was over.

Regulation

Judge rules Uber legal in London.

Google books wins copyright appeal case.
"The court found that Google is engaging in fair use, and reminds all that "[t]he ultimate goal of copyright is to expand public knowledge and understanding." The ruling (PDF) adds, "while authors are undoubtedly important intended beneficiaries of copyright, the ultimate, primary intended beneficiary is the public.""
Boy is that a bunch of baloney.

Economy

Wittenburg retirees lose benefits. This is the wave of the future.

Large numbers of tech and STEM workers voluntarily quit jobs.

Socialism

Socialists attribute Sweden's success to socialism, not its economic freedom in the past.
"But, imagine if LeBron James took up smoking. Any success on the court would be despite his destructive habit not because of it. Sweden’s economic success has come in spite of its socialism."
That's a great comparison.
"Licensing czars, an oppressive guild system, and a litany of other onerous regulations on free exchange were dramatically reduced or eliminated. In the century from 1850–1950, the population doubled and real Swedish incomes multiplied nearly tenfold. Despite the almost non-existence of a welfare state or any major state control of economic sectors, by 1950 Sweden was the fourth richest nation in the world. Sweden’s extraordinary growth during that century rivaled even that of the United States (Sweden was not a participant in the two World Wars). As a matter of fact, capital formation and wealth creation proved so abundant in Sweden during the global depression of the 1930s that even social democrats in the legislature practiced a form of salutary neglect to ensure the prosperity would continue. As with any other country, Sweden’s impressive capital stock was built by entrepreneurs operating in a free market system."
But then, socialism.
"Sweden has managed to live comfortably for decades despite its many heavy-handed socialist policies only because so much capital stock was created in the decades prior (not to mention a sane monetary policy). Yet this capital consumption is eroding Sweden’s wealth. In 2007, Professor Mark J. Perry from George Mason University pointed out that if Sweden were to be admitted as a 51st state to the Union, it would be the poorest state in terms of unemployment and median household income. Yes, even poorer than Mississippi."
Ouch.

Socialism is also causing decline in Norway.

Wednesday, October 14, 2015

Health Care

We're supposed to be scared of dietary supplements because of a few idiots.
"More than 23,000 visits to emergency rooms occur annually due to complications from taking dietary supplements such as herbal or complementary nutritional products, vitamins, and minerals, according to scientists from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the U.S. Food and Drug Administration who coauthored the study. About 2,154 of the visits resulted in hospitalizations, the scientists reported."
That's almost zero. Medical malfeasance kills hundreds of thousands of Americans every year.

Police State

Georgians charged with terrorism for taunting with Confederate Flag.
"“We do want to say that we respect the rights of all citizens to exercise their First Amendment right, but we’re going to require them when they’re doing that to respect the right of all of the citizens to feel safe,” Fortner said at a news conference attended by FOX5."
There can be no right to feel safe.

Media

Washington Times show first profitable month in 33 years. How is that possible? I thought the IRS wouldn't allow that.

Foreign Policy

European government believes Obama mentally unwell.

Politics

Judge throws out charges against former Ron and Rand Paul staffers, citing prosecutorial misconduct.

Ron Paul accuses prosecutors of trying to hurt Rand's campaign. Of course they were.

CNN deletes comments from Bernie Sanders' supporters to help Hillary. Clinton claims she looked at the final, classified, unreleased text of TPP.

CNN propaganda.


I remember when the Fed tried to keep the dot.com bubble from popping while Clinton was in office. Trump claims the Fed is doing the same now to protect Obama.

People are right to fear government corruption more than any other issue.

If women want to be equal, they have to register for the draft, and they shouldn't want that.

War

Russia's success in Syria exposes US was faking war on ISIS.

Secret CIA training of al Qaeda-affiliated fighters in Syria exposed.

US policy in the Middle Easy belies the propaganda.
"We are told again and again, in both explicit and implicit ways, that we are locked in an existential struggle with Islamic extremists in that region and the rest of the world.
Assuming that this is, in fact, the case, a number of strategic emphases in that battle are – or at least should be – axiomatic.
The first would be a clear priority on attacking those places in the Islamic world where Islamic fundamentalism is most powerful and well financed.
The second would be to actively prop up those governments where the cultures of secularism, and from there, inter-group tolerance, are most highly developed."
But no.

The US government gave ISIS all those Toyotas.

Tax and Spend

It's funny how in just a year, scientists have gone from speculating about water on Mars to declaring it a fact without any direct evidence.

Michigan taxes internet sales.

I'm skeptical about this plan to radically shrink particle accelerators and make them cheap and ubiquitous because it would take tax dollars away from top scientists.

Misc

Magnets can change people's beliefs. This is scary.

Cato's Human Freedom Index ranks the US 20th, but terrorists supposedly hate us for our freedom.

Environment

Alarmist claims 400 US cities will be inundated because of global warming no matter what we do.

Benefits of increasing atmospheric CO2. It would be great if winters shrank by three weeks, but don't believe that either.

Negotiators give up on enforceable deal in Paris. That's good news.

Desperation drives the alarmists. The Arctic is not unraveling. Ocean food chains will not collapse.

Local

Dayton to subsidize burying Water Street power lines.

Socialism

Progressive corporatism wraps the profits in bigger schemes and cartels.

Tuesday, October 13, 2015

Socialism

BLM trying to steal land from Texas rancher.

Police State

New York police keep backscatter surveillance vans secret.

Health Care

Americans fattest in the world, especially fattest, most unhealthy children. SAD.

Politics

White House covers for Obama about Clinton's email server.

Poll has Clinton losing to any Republican.

Republicans preparing to make another Obama favorite, Paul Ryan, Speaker.

The Conservative Review gives Ryan an F rating.

Misc

Scientists assume smooth Martian pebbles must have been smoothed in running water, and they call their assumption proof.

War in Drugs

Instead of just legalizing marijuana in Ohio, the advocates want to create a growers' cartel. It's like the casino deal.

Local

Two Franklin School District employees plan to double dip.

Economy

Worst tech bubble since last bubble.

Worst year for Apple since the last tech bubble popped. Yawn. I act like I'm so smart. I wasn't so smart last time or the half dozen times before.

Twitter lays off 10 percent of workforce.

Environment

Pressure to expose newborn giraffe at VIP event, kills the baby. I guarantee government that subsidizes this zoo was behind this.

Foreign Policy

Clinton's Chief of Staff while Secretary of State also was paid by Abu Dhabi to lobby. For a normal person, this a criminal conflict of interest. For Clintons, this is business as usual.

Police State

Drones being used as peeping Toms, just as I predicted, but government is shocked.

Sports

NFL ratings drop like I said they were going to.

Media

Playboy commits suicide by ending nude pictorials.

Tax and Spend

It's smarter to spend profits on bonuses than taxes.

Monday, October 12, 2015

Misc

Economics is not a science.
"A Nobel prize in economics implies that the human world operates much like the physical world: that it can be described and understood in neutral terms, and that it lends itself to modelling, like chemical reactions or the movement of the stars. It creates the impression that economists are not in the business of constructing inherently imperfect theories, but of discovering timeless truths."
It's not a hard science.

Right to Keep and Bear Arms

Lots of assumptions in this article complaining there's too little research into gun violence, as if gun violence was more special than other violence.

War

Just as wars of aggression typically end badly for the US, Russia's war in Syria will likely end badly for Russia.

Politics

Obama exploits shooting victims in Oregon while ignoring bombing victims in Afghanistan.

After enjoying Boehner as his best ally, Obama demands Paul Ryan as his best new ally speaker. As you would expect from an Obama acolyte, Ryan demands unquestioning loyalty.

We're supposed to believe Republicans have no power to even repeal Obamacare, but they have the power to "ram through" crime legislation.

Sunday, October 11, 2015

War

Army using big data to predict which soldiers will commit violent crimes.

US refuses to say why it attacked hospital in Afghanistan.

Syrian rebels use US anti-tank missiles against Russian tanks. It's a proxy war for sure.
"More missiles are on the way, he said. New supplies arrived after the Russian deployments began, he said, and the rebels’ allies have promised further deliveries soon, bringing echoes of the role played by U.S.-supplied Stinger antiaircraft missiles in forcing the Soviet Union to withdraw from Afghanistan in the 1980s."
The insanity will continue.

Economy

American women out of work surpasses most OECD nations.

Banks to accumulate reserves to protect against a downturn. That should reduce the money supply and create the downturn.

Politics

California makes voter fraud easier.

Obama defends Clinton's private email server. He'll regret that.

Tax and Spend

Nations reach deal to steal more taxes from corporations saving profits in tax havens.

Regulation

Hundreds of thousands protest TPP in Berlin.

Environment

Rising CO2 levels indicate a thriving environment. Falling CO2 levels indicate a coming ice age and mass extinction. I know which I prefer.

Health Care

Monsanto pressures professors to promote GM crops.

Saturday, October 10, 2015

Tax and Spend

Old Cubans move to Florida to retire with US benefits.

EPA spends millions on military weapons.
"The Environmental Protection Agency has spent millions of dollars over the last decade on military-style weapons to arm its 200 “special agents” to fight environmental crime.
Among the weapons purchased are guns, body armor, camouflage equipment, unmanned aircraft, amphibious assault ships, radar and night-vision gear and other military-style weaponry and surveillance activities, according to a new report by the watchdog group Open the Books."
We're the stupidest people in the world.

Foreign Policy

China arrests hackers at US request.

Education

Khan has introduced a paradigm shift in education.

Federal Reserve

Bernanke parties with rich and powerful cronies.

Economy

Stockman crushes Bernanke for claiming to have saved the economy.

Monsanto stock falls because people aren't buying GM seeds, thank goodness.

Health Care

Reduce carbs to control diabetes.

Politics

Even Clinton's media supporters don't believe her.

158 families have donated half the money so far in the presidential race. We're supposed to be outraged because they're older, white and male. I guess that's because most donate to Republicans.

Environment

The USGS refutes claim of 1,000 year floods in South Carolina.

Climate fraud caught in biggest science scandal in US history.

Volkswagen stock is already rebounding.

War

When doctors without borders treat Taliban fighters, the US bombs their hospital, but when Israeli doctors treat al Qaeda fighters and send them back to Syria, the US doesn't intervene.

ISIS kills Iranian general in Syria.

Turkey is reaping the whirlwind as bombs kill 86 in Ankara.

Another way the state promotes war is encouraging civil war.
"One of the great virtues of liberalism is that, it alone among the political worldviews, discovered a way for people from different ethnic, racial and religious groups to live together in relative peace.  In all systems of powerful government, including progressivism, these groups struggle with each other for control of the state.  As I demonstrated in a paper presented at the Mises Institute in 2002, the major cause of war in the last fifty years was conflict between or among competing ethnic, racial and religious groups inside states: civil war.[1]  The state system has not only failed to solve the problem of peace among disparate groups but in fact is itself the major cause of conflict and violence among these groups.  The cause of the violence is the fear of or the actual exploitation and domination of ethnic, racial or religious groups by a state controlled by hostile groups."
Then the US take sides and invades.
"It is also a myth that the best way to smooth over multicultural differences is through the ballot box.  This is false. The ballot box is simply a means to determine how state violence is to be used against the losers of the election and how those losers will then be exploited economically and in other ways by the majority.  Thus, the incentive for minority groups to attempt to secede or seize control of the state to avoid such domination and exploitation exists in democracies and dictatorships. In 23 of the 25 recent intrastate wars, the prevailing regime was democratic throughout the dispute or at least at certain times during the dispute.[2] In certain cases, a democratic government was overthrown because of the feeling of an ethnic or religious subgroup that its interests were not being protected or advanced by the democratic state."
Another leftist lie.This is a great, small essay.

North Korea claims it has long range nuclear weapons.

Pentagon tries to buy off victims of hospital attack with condolence payments paid for with other people's money.

Friday, October 09, 2015

Right to Keep and Bear Arms

There's no correlation between gun ownership, murder and mass shooting rates, but that doesn't stop opportunists from pushing gun control laws.

Tax and Spend

My goodness. Now Pluto may have an ocean under its surface which hold life. It's like a broken record.

Economy

Rise of party houses.

Politics

Google chairman starts company to get Hillary elected.

War

Obama abandons failed jihadist training plan in Syria. Good for him, if true.

Health Care

After Amish family spent to years in hiding to protect their daughter from chemotherapy that was making her sick, the girl is declared cancer free.

Regulation

Wikileaks releases harsh new IP rules in TPP. More.
"One chapter appears to give the signatory countries (referred to as “parties”) greater power to stop embarrassing information going public. The treaty would give signatories the ability to curtail legal proceedings if the theft of information is “detrimental to a party’s economic interests, international relations, or national defense or national security” – in other words, presumably, if a trial would cause the information to spread. "
That doesn't sound good. More.

Environment

More cars don't meet emissions requirements.

Fukushima disaster blamed for spike in child thyroid cancer.

Thursday, October 08, 2015

Economy

IMF warns of $3 trillion debt wipeout globally. Let's hope it's only that small.

Wall Street has noticed we're on the path to recession.