Ludwig von Mises Institute scholars on our economic problems

Misis Institute explains why the Fed's zero percent interest rate policy won't work, and will create a future inflation trap, leading to another economic crisis.

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The Federal Reserve Bank has now undertaken unprecedented measures intended to "stimulate the economy." The federal funds rate is now set at 0.0 to 0.25%. This move by Federal Reserve Chairman Bernanke should be considered alarming for several reasons. First, this interest-rate reduction indicates that Federal Reserve economists are genuinely panicked regarding current economic conditions. Given that Chairman Bernanke and his staff are better informed than even most economists (let alone the public) and capable of differentiating good news from bad, this is cause for concern. Second, this interest-rate reduction indicates that Chairman Bernanke and his staff are incapable of differentiating between good policy and bad policy. The Federal Reserve is pursuing a policy of inflation out of an erroneous fear of deflation. This is not to say that deflation is itself unlikely, but rather that the consequences of deflation are not what Chairman Bernanke expects.

Misis scholar shows that not only did the housing market experience a bubble, but so did the commodities market. Remember when investors were fleeing the falling dollar into commodities? Oil prices were rapidly rising? A nice chart shows this bubble began about 2005, and like the housing market, is now correcting. Author predicts government attempts to keep the correction from occuring, to stop deflation, will lead to New New Deal (that's no great prediction) and another depression.

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For this reason I will use the peak of 249.9 at the end of July 1974 as my baseline. From this point to the end of January 2006, there was a 25% increase in commodity prices. Over this 31.5 year period, this is an annualized rate of 0.8%. In the 2.4 year period between the end of January 2006 and the peak at the end of June 2008, there was an annualized rate of increase of 22%! This is hardly consistent with the preceding three decades and is not a reasonable rate of growth. If we look at the annualized growth rate between the end of July 1974 and the end of October 2008, after the fall in prices, the growth rate is a much more modest 1.1%. Based on the historical average this "corrected" growth is approaching the normal market variation. This correction is a drop in demand, rather than a contraction of the money supply, but in the same way an overinflated balloon must pop, the demand was never sustainable from the outset. Much of the demand in commodities as well as other assets was based on the pyramid-scheme belief that another buyer, hungrier than the last, was just around the corner. As with all such schemes, someone finally decides they are done with the game, and the downward spiral begins. If the scheme was built on credit or margin, the fall is all the more precipitous.

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The same mistakes that were made during the Great Depression are being made now. The call to prop up prices will grow to a din as the self-interests of businesses push themselves on the Federal Reserve and Treasury. This desire for price controls is no different from the mercantilist policies of colonial Britain, which forced the British populace to pay the higher prices of British producers, to the boon of the businesses and the pain of the populace. Talk of today's "illiquid" assets is just a resistance by the owners of those assets to sell them at the market-clearing price. I assure you, I'll buy a mortgage for one dollar! The business and economics establishment will soon call for a new New Deal, and all the socialist policies of FDR will be dusted off and respun to the unwitting public, and the years that follow will be ones of pain, high prices, and a real fall in the standard of living. As long as our central government has the ability to dole out these favors, there will be special interests lining up to receive them.

It's interesting that he compares these bubbles to pyramid schemes, which is exactly what the house flipping craze was, because another Mises scholar uses Madoff as a metaphor for the financial crisis, the strategy for recovery (dropping interest rates to zero), and even social security. Like Madoff's operation, all of these government programs are pyramid schemes. Trying to get something for nothing by paying dividends today that future investors must pay off until they cost goes so high they collapse.

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There is a saying in the world of Austrian economics about the business cycle. The puzzle is not to explain business failures. Those are part of the normal course of life, and the sign of a healthy economy. The puzzle is to explain the "cluster of errors" that appears at the beginning of a recession. How could so many have been so wrong about so much at the same time? The business cycle is a system-wide failure, not merely the mistaken judgment of a few. So it is with Modoff's scheme. The mystery isn't how one person was able to fool a few. The scheme in which yesterday's "investors" are paid off with the money of today's victims is known in all places and probably all times—and it always goes belly up to the originator's complete disgrace. It is a classic example of how moral laws are self-enforcing in the world of economics. The critical difference this time is that Madoff ran his scheme during an economic boom, a time when people's normal sense of incredulity is put on the shelf. This is part of the grave cultural distortion introduced by funny money. Money is the most widely demanded good in society, and the Fed is making new quantities of it not as a reflection of new real wealth, but purely as an administrative decree. There is a sense in which funny money literally drives everyone crazy, leading to what is sometimes called the "madness of crowds." Guido Hulsmann explains it all in his remarkably timely and revealing new book: The Ethics of Money Production. With artificial stimulation from the credit machine, multitudes are willing to believe in something that cannot possibly be true. In Madoff's case, it was that he could, even in falling markets, earn 15-20% a year without risk. Why not? Most everyone believed in some version of the myth. We believed that house prices would go up and up despite the reality that houses are physical things that deteriorate from the instant they are finished, just like cars or computers or anything else. Why did we believe this about houses? Again, you have to look to the fraudulent money system to see why. And we believed that we could all become millionaires by putting our money in the stocks of companies that weren't actually earning money or paying dividends, companies whose wealth was entirely based on infusions of cash from the stock market which in turn were based on the belief that others would buy the stocks and so on. In other words, we believed that something out of nothing was possible, and anyone who didn't believe it was a chump. It’s exactly what people believed during the other great inflations of history.

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The left is big on attacking the salaries of investment bankers, and they were indeed outlandish. But these too represented not a unique problem, but more evidence of inflationary finance. In a bubble economy, the money chases what is most fashionable, and financial services qualified. So the salaries were market. What was wildly distorted was the market itself. Now let's talk about government finance during these years. The market tried to correct itself from 1999-2001, but the government wouldn't tolerate it. Instead, it used every sign of downturn as an excuse to keep the illusion going, creating billions and billions in new dollars. The Fed drove interest rates lower and lower despite the non-existence of savings available to back them up.

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Madoff's scheme played into the belief that wealth was not something to work for, but something to scheme for. It could be generated by playing your cards right, hooking into the right networks, and finding the right "investments." The people with whom he dealt had, it turns out, some internal sense that there was something a little bit shady about the whole operation. But they dispensed with this sense when the fat checks arrived, and concluded that whatever was making this perpetual motion machine operate, it did work.

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But listen: the government right now is using the same tactic to convince you that it is saving you from the recession. The whole scheme partakes of the same sense of denying reality that characterized Madoff's scheme. And I'm not just talking about Social Security, which is almost an exact replica of the Ponzi version, except that at least Charles Ponzi didn't force people to give him money. I'm speaking of something broader. The entire financial system that is propped up by the Treasury and the Fed is based on the same idea: that something out of nothing is possible. So they will jail Madoff. Wall Street would flog him if it could. He is disgraced for all of history. But meanwhile, the likes of Bush, Bernanke, Paulson, Obama, and all the rest are still riding high, even though their scheme is far larger and more egregious. Most of us like to believe that we wouldn't have been tricked by Madoff. But are you being tricked by the elites who claim that they can conjure up a trillion dollars to stabilize our economy by clicking a few buttons on a computer screen? Most people are. Certainly the press seems to have bought it. Many people were outwitted by Madoff. Many more people are today being outwitted by the government and its central bank. And it will all end in disgrace and disaster, only on a far, far grander scale.

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This headline drips with irony: Obama's transition team exonerates itself in Blagojevich affair. With Obama and his henchmen aggressively silencing all critics, this is what we have to look forward to for the next 4 years. Of course the "investigation" has a closed loop quality. It was closed loop predetermined to exonerate itself. Obama, Emanuel, and another Obama top aid were questioned by prosecutors about the case.

Terrorists continue rocket barrage into Israel. If the citizens of Gaza won't stop it, and if Israel can't stop the rockets with regular military action, Israel should line up a bunch of bulldozers and push Gaza into the sea. It's unconscionable the citizens of Gaza and the Israeli government allows this to continue. Government's primary reason for existence is to protect the people. By that measure, Israel has a failed government.

Cato weighs in on George Bush's Monty Pythonesque comment that he "abandoned free market principles to save the free market system," noting they warned Bush was no friend of free markets before he was elected.

Cato explodes the myth that deregulation caused the financial crisis. The federal government has 12, 113 regulators regulating the financial markets. That's hardly deregulation. But that oppressive amount of regulation failed to prevent the crisis, and no amount of regulation in the future will prevent the next crisis. The regulators are part of the problem, not the solution.

Retailers ask Obama to give them 3 periods of 10 days without sales tax. There is no federal sales tax. They're asking Obama to override state and local tax codes. These are the same state and local governments that are asking the feds for a bailout. We created this situation by voting for the same 2 parties over and over, and it won't end until we stop voting for them.

Cato describes why Obama's economic plan, like all Keynesian plans, will fail. I think every modern politician understands that Keynesian economics does not work. I bet even Paul Krugman understands it can never work. The theory is bogus. That's why it never has worked in practice and never will. Politicians just use it as an excuse to spend money the government doesn't have to buy votes from special interest groups and socially engineer the country in their own image like the gods they fancy themselves. From Wilson then Hoover and FDR to LBJ, Nixon, Ford and Carter to Bush the Elder, Clinton, Bush the Younger, and Obama, they all play god with our country to our detriment.

This Cato video on the failure of Keynesian economics explains that tax rebates are another form of Keynesian economics. At least tax rebates leave money in taxpayers' pockets instead of allowing politicians to redirect it, so it's not a double whammy. Like I always say, every dollar government spends is a tax. It must be paid for by the people either through direct taxes, taxes on subsequent debt or inflation.

Cato lists 10 reasons the government should not do another Keynesian economic stimulus. My favorite: Rising federal debt is fiscal child abuse.

Scientist claims to make radio waves travel faster than the speed of light.

This is cruelty to animals. These people need to get help and quit abusing their dogs to make themselves feel good.

Phenomenal photographs from 2008.

So you want to be an air traffic controller?

Government's monopoly on schools enables special interests to rewrite history in textbooks. If we had school competition, those schools teaching accurate history would rise to the top.
John Stossel calls Obama's desire to take advantage of the current economic crisis to transform America in his own vision an arrogant conceit. Isn't that redundant? He points out that even Keynes, on whose work FDR based his New Deal, openly criticized FDR for prioritizing reform ahead of recovery. It's like we have a great old video of a conductor driving another train into a wall, which everybody has seen, and we know exactly all the mistakes he made to do that, but the conductor of our train is doing everything exactly the same anyway.

Thomas Sowell has some random thoughts. My favorite: representatives should wear uniforms like NASCAR drivers with patches of special interest groups proportional in size to how much money they paid the representative.

Amateurs tinkering with genetic engineering in home made labs. How scary is that?

Plain clothes cops attack and beat 12 year old girl under the auspices of fighting prostitution.

The NYTimes continues to pay the price for being a liberal propaganda organ - Nov. ad revenue drops 20 percent.

"Scientists" warn Christmas lights promote global warming. Christmas lights are a wonderful target for liberals. They can attack capitalism and Christmas at the same time with this propaganda. Now we know the real truth according to liberals - global warming is Jesus's fault.

Quote of the year is Chris Matthews talking about Barack Obama sending tingles up his legs while claiming to be objective. You can't make this stuff up.

Bush hate fueled Springsteen's latest album. I diagnose him with Bush Derangement Syndrome.

Home prices may stabilize because of refinancing. Or they may stabilize because the housing market correction is over. It'll be interesting to see a graph showing if housing prices have dropped to where they would otherwise have been without the Fed created housing bubble. Yesterday I posted an article with a graph showing that commodities had done so, so I wouldn't be surprised if houses have as well.

As more and more governments increase spending, the recession gets deeper. Duh. Maybe somebody ought to notice this and stop increasing government spending. China and Russia warn of bad 2009.

Russia announces massive rearmament plan including 70 new strategic nuclear missiles. Obama plans to counter by reducing the US nuclear arsenal, missile defense, and advanced weapon systems. He's so smart. Putin is salivating at the prospect of Obama in the White House.

Obama's infrastructure boondoggle just keeps getting worse. He doesn't want to spend fixing our roads and collapsing bridges. He wants to build expensive mass transit systems that Americans continually reject in order to "go green".

With $100 million, Caroline Kennedy is a shoe-in to buy Hillary's New York Senate seat.

Why did the German navy release these captured Somali pirates?

Interesting, predictable, irrational, human economic behavior patterns.

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Now that Christmas is on top of us and nobody is paying attention, Obama releases report of contacts with Gov. Blagojevich.

Government regulator accused of helping IndyMac alter records to appear better off than it actually is. Corruption is the inevitable result of all government power.

Iraqi parliament passes law allowing foreign troops to stay in Iraq.

History and status of the current progress of creationists attempting to discredit evolution. It highlights a scathing legal rebuttal of intelligent design.

Sony provides mechanism to use real money to buy items in Everquest.

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Muslim leaders complain about conviction of 5 Muslim men for conspiracy to attack Fort Dix. One leader says this conviction doesn't promote trust with the Muslim community. Let me get this straight - 5 Muslim men conspired to kill American soldiers, and Muslims are complaining about not being able to trust non-Muslims? Hello! It Muslims who were planning to attack Fort Dix. It was those Muslims who can't be trusted. If the Muslim community would purge itself of these extremists, we could finally build trust, but we see no signs that Muslims are doing that.

Russia continues to cause mischief in Georgia. Causing mischief is not an invasion.

California could be broke in 2 months. Nobody is surprised.

Finland police arrest man because his blood matches the DNA in blood from a mosquito found in the car. Imagine the consequences. When and where did the mosquito bite the man? How did the mosquito end up in the car? I'm sure well paid government "experts" will explain all this to the jury. This is the kind of gross abuse of power that comes from our surveillance society mentality.

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It's sunny and 15 at 1:30 PM. I could use a little global warming about now.

Students copying license plates then speeding past red light cameras so a ticket is automatically sent to their enemy.

George Will highlight's the president's use of TARP funds to bail out the auto makers even though Congress had explicitly voted not to bail them out as an example that big government inevitably leads to lawlessness and the marginalization of Congress.

Ill. Gov. Blagojevich denies any wrong doing. Of course he does. He knows that what he did is the same thing every politician does every day. Politics as usual in America is corruption. The press wants us to think Blago is an exception. He's not. They're all corrupt, though certainly some more than others.

Another problem of big government and bailouts is the restrictions of freedom that come with them. For example, besides forcing auto makers to make cars people don't want to buy, the auto bailout bill would have forced the auto makers to drop lawsuits against environmental regulations.

Satisfying rant from Cato founder about listening to the government officials who created our problems blaming our non-existent free markets. I share his frustration.

Canadian PM close to caving on Big 3 bailout. Let's hope he holds firm. We need some leader somewhere to be sane.

Is this guy really proposing repeating the mistakes that caused our problems, inflation, as a way of alleviating them?

Essay exposes the outstanding double standard of liberals and their media allies regarding resumes. Liberals love Obama and Caroline Kennedy despite both having empty resumes yet attacked Sarah Palin's experience despite her rather large resume. It also speaks to the elitism of liberals, who think anybody named Kennedy or from a big city political machine like Chicago, no matter how little experience they have, are better than the self-made men and women of mainstream America. And I think that was the real hatred of the left for Sarah Palin - she was self-made and her very existence repudiates modern liberalism.

Israeli candidate vying for presidency both vow to topple Hamas. No Iraeli leader ever thought of that before? There will be no peace in the Middle East as long as Hamas and Hezbollah are armed.

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Bush hands over $17.4 billion of taxpayer's money to bailout auto makers until Obama can hand them over more.

Rear touch screen provides users more precision. I'd like to see how this works.

US to send 30,000 more troops to Afghanistan.

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It looks like Bush changed his mind again, and he's not going to bailout auto makers. Instead, he's considering "orderly" bankruptcy. That should bring the unions back to the bargaining table for a new round of negotiations.

Bill Clinton releases the list of donors to his foundation which include numerous foreign governments and sovereign wealth funds. All this does is highlight the conflict of interest Hillary has as Sec. of State - it doesn't diminish that conflict. She's a dangerous pick for Sec. of State.

Who are these guys kidding? How scientific is "most likely do not contribute to climate change"? What kind of science is that? I have a feeling other scientists, looking at the exact same data, will have a different conclusion.

Nice of Boortz to link the IE security patch. Windows update already installed it on my desktop, but not my girlfriend's notebook.

Government spending increased 25 percent in 2008 before the bailouts started. That put us $1 trillion in the hole before the bailouts. I'd like to thank Bush and his Democrat congress for bringing the financial destruction of the US significantly closer. How could the long term cost of veteran's benefits jump so much in 1 year to account for the $339 billion of the increase, almost well over the previous year's total?

By renaming new taxes fees, California Democrats side step the 2/3 majority rule and Republicans and raise taxes in California. I'm sure Texas and Nevada will be happy to have more Californians move there. Or maybe not.

Obama's energy secretary supports raising gasoline taxes to change people's driving behavior. That's social engineering, and it will cost Americans more money, harming Americans.

The Washington Post adds a new classified section to congratulate Barack Obama on becoming president, but only positive comments are allowed. That's our unbiased press at work.

Study suggests 60 percent of Muslim schools in Britain are connected to extremists. This is pretty vague, but it does illustrates that non-extremist Muslims are not isolating the extremists. And that reflects the broader Muslim world in which Muslim political organizations like Hamas, Hezbollah and many others have terrorist wings. We'd done a terrible of dividing the non-extremists from the extremists in the western world and the Arab world. About the only place we've been successful is Iraq.

Primary owner of both GM and Chrysler finance divisions looking to merge them.

Appointing Caroline Kennedy to the senate would be a farce.

Jonah Goldberg pokes fun at the Democrats widespread corruption, most notably in Barack Obama's political hometown of Chicago as illustrated by Gov. Blagojevich, and the press that pretends it isn't so while going broke trying to invent non-existent Sarah Palin corruption. Democrats have always been the party of corruption, because power corrupts and Democrats long held power, but Republicans have evolved to give them a run for their money. Michelle Malkin describes the corrupt wives of the corrupt politicians of Chicago.

Walter Williams explains inflation, the dangers of the central banks including the Fed, and recommends removing taxes on precious metals so they can function as an alternative currency.

Democrats have adopted Al Gore's tactic of claiming there is no disagreement with his views, ducking debates because he knows he can't win them, and are applying it to all their policies. This is another reason the Justice Dept. should charge Al Gore with fraud. Al Gore and Democrats cannot be allowed to continue to harm Americans for their personal gain in profit and power.

GM shows how Ford made changes in the last few years to weather this storm, unlike GM and Chyrsler.

Israeli police injure each other in riot control exercise. Somebody took their roles a little too seriously.

Dick Morris explains that Israel is moving toward a hardline government at the same time Obama brings in weaker support for Israel, setting up a conflict.

Ann Coulter highlights some of the more egregious cases of Democrats stealing elections. And the efforts to steal the senate election in Minnesota continue.

Reason explains that inflation is a much more powerful driver of our society than we think.

Reason compares our current financial problems with Japan's financial problems from the 80s and compares the mistakes Japan made propping up zombie businesses with the mistakes we're making today.

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OPEC record output cut.

Chrysler shuts down all US production for a minimum of 30 days, citing consumer credit problems. I can't help but think they're playing a game of chicken. Bush has already announced he will cave on a bailout, so the auto makers have everything to gain by putting big time pressure on Bush before his administration can develop a bunch of strings for the bailout. Babies are better stewards of candy than our government is of taxpayer's money.

Woman shoots man who came to rape her a second time. This article should be a celebration of the weak over evil, but instead, it carries the assumption that people who defend themselves from attackers are subject to being prosecuted by government. This article illustrates how sick our society has become.

These freaks can decorate their own cakes. Shame on Walmart for doing it for them.

In typical blue state fashion (I hate that Ohio has been on the road to blue, and finally reached it) New York Gov. Paterson unveils 88 new fees and taxes including an Ipod tax along with budget cuts. The worst part of blue state mismanagement is that it drives even liberals into red states and harms them too.

OMG, this guy trashes the election of Obama. He must be a racist. But wait, he's black. That's why he can say bluntly what many of us have gingerly pointed out.

President Bush says, you can't make this stuff up, "I've abandoned free market principles to save the free market system." Let's write that on the tombstone of his presidency. And I hope he spends the rest of his years hiding under that same rock. What a crock. Bush campaigned on and implemented incredible amounts of regulation on our economy. He was never a supporter of free markets. He was a saboteur of them, and a phenomenally successful one at that.

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The brother of the shoe thrower reports his captures have broken his hand and ribs. If this is true, the press will pretend it's Bush's fault. The press blames everything bad on Bush, but gives him no credit for his rare successes.

Reason analyzes the Fed's monetary policy and shows that it's the most dramatic peacetime experiment in monetary policy in history and shows that government's actions have made our financial problems worse. To prove Reason's argument, the latest Fed development is - FREE MONEY! The Fed sets a key short term interest rate to zero. The Fed has performed a miracle and made money grow on trees. How'd you think that will work out for us?

Consumer prices fell for the second straight month. I like lower prices, but I don't like the reason for them. Housing starts are also down. That's because we over built because of the Fed's irresponsibly loose monetary policy and the subprime push.

Since the $15 billion Congressional bailout, which Bush was originally against on "principle" (like Bush has any principles), for automakers failed, the Bush administration is planning on giving the automakers a $40 billion bailout. I guess Bush is afraid part of his legacy might be the collapse of one of the Big 3. I think Toyota, by announcing a delay in that plant opening, is just setting itself up to get some federal money too.

Senator Tom Coburn lists the worst government spending abuses. I saw in an interview last night that Coburn would only serve one more term. That's terrible news for Americans. Nobody else in government has the committment and the power to rein in government spending like Coburn.

Illegal immigrants returning home because of recession.

British restaurant refuses service to blind man because Muslim employees were offended by his service dog.

Lawrence Kudlow explains that the UAW killed the auto bailout bill because it expected Bush would bail it out.

Dick Morris explains that low oil prices are on the verge of defeating our enemies in Iran, Venezuela and Russia. The US government could have done this as well by allowing a free market in energy and adopting the FairTax, increasing our supply of oil as well as other energy supplies which would decrease our demand for foreign oil. We have the power to disarm our enemies, but our government won't do it.

Dick Cheney praises Obama's national security team. I can't help but laugh.

Obama's Sec. of Education nominee supports gay high schools. You got to be kidding me. It's segregation all over again.

Blagojevich's conversation shows he tried to sell Obama's Senate seat to Obama, appointing a close ally to Obama, in return for a cabinet post. Obama turned Blago down. Why didn't Obama blow the whistle? Rhetorical question.

Chart illustrates national debt and GDP.

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UK makes anti-terror pact with Pakistan. Why wouldn't this have been done after 9/11?

Touch computing to go mainstream. This is great for handhelds, but not for computers. Can you imagine if you had to reach up and touch your screen all the time to move your cursor. A mouse is inconvenient enough, but touching the screen is much more inconvenient, plus there's not fine control.

Good for the Illinois legislature for immediately starting to impeach Gov. Blagojevich. Democrats recognized if they have a special election, a Republican might win. Too bad Obama isn't as forthcoming. He's refusing to release the information regarding his team's contacts with Blagojevich until Christmas week when nobody is paying attention. The fox clears himself from raiding the hen house.

This Iraqi shoe thrower deserves to be arrested. Assault is not freedom of expression. His country could still be at the mercy of Saddam Hussein. Maybe this guy is a Baathist.

What a surprise. Obama chose the superintendent of Chicago schools to head the Dept. of Education despite that school district being the 20th worst in the nation. There's no cronyism going on here.

So far Obama's economic stimulus plan has reached $1 trillion over 2 years. Here's another $3 trillion bailout plan. Remember a month ago when "experts" said Obama wasn't going to be able to spend much because of the financial situation he inherited? Remember when "experts" said Obama picked a first rate economic team that would be fiscally responsible? I said that bull then, and I'm saying it's bull now. We're in for a disaster as big as our government. Charles Krauthammer explains that Obama's centrist picks are merely practical so he can do his business of transforming the country like FDR. Clearly there's nothing centrist about Obama's plans, and I don't think his picks are all that centrist. Hillary Clinton, for example, is a radical leftist much like Obama. She just thought pretending to be a centrist would win her the election. She was wrong.

Residents complain about air base at Myrimar. But they'd complain even more if the government planned to close it. If they didn't want to live by an air base, they shouldn't have purchased a home there. Idiots. These are people who won't take responsibility for their own decisions.

Even Gen. Petraeus is starting to sound optimistic about success in Iraq. Condoleezza Rice reports that US efforts in Iraq have pressured Iran to reduce efforts to destabilize the country.

Government computer errors have denied widows of war veterens millions of dollars and sometimes even led to the government seizing money from the widows' bank accounts. It took the government 12 years to notice the problem. I'm sure that since the government set up a phone number, everything will be fine now. This is the same government that people think should control our health care and check our IDs.

Americans who make their house payments or who didn't buy a house because they couldn't afford one are mad that their tax dollars are bailing out irresponsible borrowers. Mad is one thing, but are they ready to take back control of our government from the aristocrats?

Did we really need a study to inform us that teachers unions and the certification tests they control harm the education of students? I hope not.

California city council passes law to force hard working mayor to leave early. Only government. Other people are obviously afraid of looking bad compared to the hardworking mayor.

More lies from the global warming con men. Article claims the 10 warmest years on record occurred after Clinton's second election. But the fact is 1998 is tied 1934, when CO2 was much lower, as the hottest years in the very short record since 1880, and the planet has been cooling ever since 1998, even though CO2 continues to rise.

Texas spends $677 million each year on health care for illegal immigrants. That is crazy. Our government could stop this madness, but it doesn't. Our government, and us for electing the same 2 failed parties every election, is our worst enemy.

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The transfer of wealth from rich to poor nations, the real goal of the new communism based on the man-made global warming scam, has begun. The UN will begin transferring millions of dollars to fight the non-existent sham in poor countries, and they are looking at ways to transfer billions. I think poor countries should send millions of dollars to New England to help them recover from the ice storm since the poor countries aren't doing enough to keep the planet warm. Gore's tough message to leaders is a pack of lies. Gore realizes the window of opportunity to implement the new communism and make hundreds of millions of dollars on it is rapidly closing as scientists learn more, get actual science news to the people, and as solar cycle 24 and the Earth's natural climate cycles brings about a cold period.

Bush the Democrat has no principles. At first, he said the Wall Street bailout money couldn't be used for automakers, but now that Republicans have blocked the congressional bailout, Bush wants to use Wall Street bailout money. He'll spend any amount of taxpayer dollars to help out his Democrat buddies and ruin the US economy. At least outed Democrats don't pretend to hide behind principles.

Obama is busted for lying to us about his administrations role in the Blagojevich scandal. Obama said none of his staff had discussed the Senate seat with Blagojevich. But now we know that his chief of staff, Rahm Emanuel, discussed the Senate seat several times. It looks like Emanuel is caught on the wire taps talking to Blagojevich about the seat. Obama, who chose to partner in education reform with Bill Ayers, chose Rev. Wright as his pastor, funded Tony Rezko's slums with taxpayer money, and chose Blagojevich and Emanuel as a political parnters, all the while swimming in the Chicago and Illinois corruption, is undoubtedly as dirty as the political system that produced him. We knew it before the election, and it's already biting us in the ass. Just imagine how bad it's going to be once Obama takes power. Now, straight out of the Democrats' playbook, Emanuel is stonewalling while playing the victim. This is what we voted for. This is what we deserve.

Biggest and brightest full moon in 15 years tonight. Naturally, we have snow falling.

Portugal offers to take some Guantanamo detainees off our hands. About time.

One time chairman of Nasdaq accused of defrauding investors out of $50 billion (that's with a B) over decades. Holy crap.

Indian fighter jets cross into Pakistan airspace. India calls an accident, but that seems unlikely.

Defense Sec. Gates says US troops in Iraq are in the "end-game". Let's hope he's right, and the end is successful.

Scientists display images from dreams on computer screen.

Pollution is causing males of all species to become more feminine. Yikes!

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Little to no progress in pushing the climate change fraud in Polish meeting, thank goodness. Houston gets about an inch of snow, tying a 64 year old record. Boortz highlights the UN's role in the scam, declaring scientists have proved beyond any doubt that global warming is real. 650 scientists disagree with these lies. We should prosecute every one of those frauds profiting off these lies, fraud, starting with Al Gore.

Obama continues to deny any connection between his administration and Gov. Blagojevich. I bet this question continues to dog him for a while.

Boortz on Rep. Gohmert's 2 month tax holiday.

Obama supporters continue their attack on free speech with a mechanism on his transition teams website where users can effectively censor questions that would make Obama uncomfortable by flagging them as inappropriate. Users have used this function to censor all questions about Illinois Gov. Blagojevich. Obama supporters are pushing censorship to a new level and trying to rewrite the past by removing news articles about Obama meeting with Blagojevich to discuss who will replace him as Illinois senator. This is crazy. Obama supporters make Orwell look naive.

Senate Republicans resisting the auto bailout. Good for them.

Imported cars are stacking up at ports all around the country. Why not sell them a greatly reduced price instead of paying to warehouse them?

Author explains how the professional politician (aristocrats) and big government have led the extreme corruption of our government.

Tthe mainstream media is covering up Obama's connections to Blagojevich. Do you think they would do the same for Bush if he had such close ties to Abramoff?

Congress lowers the salary of the Sec. of State to meet the Constitutional requirement that elected officials cannot profit from increasing the salary of an appointed official before accepting that position. I'm surprised and impressed they bothered to acknowledge the Constitution. Even though there's a history of doing this, I doubted that today's aristocrats would bother.

Nice diatribe about the dishonesty of politicians and their made up disasters. Language warning.

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Obama claims he didn't know anything about Illinois Gov. Blagojevich trying to sell his Senate seat, claiming he had had no contact with the Gov. Unfortunately for Obama, David Axelrod, who works on Obama's transition team, reported that Obama and the Gov. had discussed his replacement on Nov. 23. That Illinois corruption is reaching all the way into the White House whether Obama was involved or not. It'll be interesting to see how the media covers this story. They would have already been calling for Bush to be hanged.

Reason provides a list of the infrastructure projects requested by mayors that Obama and Democrats plan to fund. Before Obama was elected, we called these pork barrel projects, and we understood they were really bribes to buy votes. But now that Obama and Democrats are taking power, they're critical infrastructure projects. Every one of these projects takes wealth producing jobs away from private sector.

It's negative 81 degrees in Siberia, and that cold air is headed to southern California. A second, colder storm follows that one. That man-made CO2 is really heating up the planet.

Fred Thompson provides a scathing satire of the bailout madness in Washington. Man, it's too bad this guy wasn't serious about running for president.

Proving once again that Bush is more of a Democrat than a Republican, the White House and Democrats agree on an auto maker bailout against the will of the people and Republicans. Too bad Republicans didn't exercise small government principles until voters kicked them to the curb.

Wonderfully entertaining diatribe by a conservative about how conservatives ruined the conservative era with their big government ways. The scary thing about this essay is the author seems surprised that when conservatives got power, they used it to expand the size of government and force conservatism on everybody else. Apparently this guy was unaware of that aspect of the history of the 20th century. But my favorite aspect of the article is when he explains that after everything we learned about the evils of collectivism in the 20th century, liberals are insane and can't be held responsible for their actions. But that gets back to the scary part - he doesn't realize big government conservatives are just as insane. Liberalism is not the problem. Conservatism is not the problem. Free people can be either and society thrives. Big government - coercion and force - reduced freedom - using government to force one's viewpoint on everybody else is the problem.

Essay shows how conservatives like Bill Krystal are corrupted by power into expanding the size and scope of government.

Scientists find water vapor and CO2 on planet 63 light years from Earth.

Neutrino telescope built in 1 cubic kilometer of Antarctic ice.

Democrats Sec. of State in Minnesota is chosen to use either election night counts or hand recounts, whichever favors Al Franken. Democrats' are cherry-picking in an effort to steal this Senate seat. This is naked corruption.

Reason shows the oppressive, irresponsible increase of government regulation forced on the US economy by Bush which helped drive the economy into the tank. Contrary to the lies told by liberals, the record is clear. Bush the Democrat is the most oppressive regulator of business since Nixon the Democrat. It's horrendous how big government Republicans like Bush, Nixon, and Hoover always get labeled as supporters of free markets against all evidence, and that misrepresentation is used by Democrats to implement even more oppressive government. At least we didn't allow Carter 4 terms like we did Roosevelt. Hopefully voters will kick Obama's big government to the curb just as quickly.

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Congress identifies Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac as the cause of the current credit crisis. That's an important step. Some congressmen are also fingering Congress, which is even better. Government understands that government is our problem, but it won't ever solve it by reducing government. They failed to identify the Fed's huge role in creating the crisis. I wasn't aware of Bernanke's personal role for Greenspan's loose monetary policy.

Boortz recognizes that Obama's economic plans for government to control businesses are fascist. The automaker bailout is a specific example, but that's a general principle for Obama and Democrats. Government aristocrats are transforming the US into a fascist country right before our eyes.

African leaders are finally getting serious about ousting Mugabe. Better late than never, I guess.

Argentina using social security to subsidize auto makers. Huh?

Test shows that brain development differs in wealthy children versus poor children. I'm sure environment has much to do with this, but I wonder if genetics plays a role.

I'm happy the military hasn't bought into the man-made global warming fraud, but the frauds don't like it one bit. But Congress surehas bought into it. A new federal law may charge farmers for cows and pigs that produce methane. This is a lot of money. It won't effect the climate, but it will sure put a bunch of farmers out of business, which is the real goal of the liberals pushing this crap.

Louisiana Democrat noted for keeping $90,000 in bribe money in his freezer William Jefferson was defeated. Finally we got that crook out of Washington.

Most of the homeowners who had the terms of their mortgages renegotiated to keep them in their homes are defaulting on the new terms as well.

Our current 6.7 percent unemployment rate is still better than under Clinton, when it went to 7.1 percent.

Aanother 12 ballots have magically appeared in Minnesota, and they undoubtedly favor Al Frankin.

Albert Einstein famously defined insanity as doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result. Americans don’t need a Nobel Prize winner to understand we can’t solve a crisis caused by the reckless issuance of debt by then recklessly issuing even more debt.

Then how come everybody in Washington says just the opposite? The Democrats infrastructure projects are really just earmarks.

Author wants Obama to bail out laid off journalists. Liberals taking money from taxpayers to hand out to liberals in order to promote more of the liberalism that's bankrupting America.

Illinois Gov. arrested for soliciting favors for naming Obama's replacement. Illinois is a breeding ground of corruption. Obama was a close political ally of Gov. Blagojevich.

Phyllis Schlafly exposes the horrendous result of Massachussets socialized medicine plan that Congress is using as a model for national socialized medicine. Of course, we have Mitt Romney and Democrats to thank for that Massechussets plan, which is also supported by Arnold Schwarzenegger. I don't know why we bother with the facade that America had 2 parties any more. This is a must read.

Cato adds up all of Obama's programs and wonders where he's going to find $4.3 trillion to cover it all.

Pakistan has arrested 40 members of the terrorist group that assaulted Mumbai. So obviously Pakistan knew all about this terrorist group before the attack.

59 percent of Americans prefer smaller government, fewer services and lower taxes while only 28 percent prefer larger government, more services and higher taxes. That's from Nov. 19th after month of the phony drumbeat that free markets harmed the economy. America is still a libertarian nation at heart. This last election was about punishing Republicans for governing like Democrats, and since it doesn't seem Democrats have learned that lesson, we'll most likely see Republicans back in power in 4 years. This statistic shows the abysmal failure of the LP, the only party that supports smaller government, fewer services, and lower taxes.

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Parent company of Chicago Tribune files for bankruptcy.

Continuing our fascist advance, the government may buy shares in the Big Three automakers. The automakers bailout package includes significant government "oversight" of the auto industry. This is fascism pure and simple.

Illinois governor implicated in corruption. Obama skates away.

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Taliban in Pakistan destroy 2 truck stops and 150 vehicles containing supplies for NATO forces in Afghanistan. Pakistan is about to explode.

Is sucks that Plaxico Burress is the poster boy for unconstitutional, draconian and stupid gun laws.

Reason exposes the dismal effectiveness of no knock and SWAT raids compared to the horrendous cost in lives, but police agencies have no intention of limiting them.

Mark Steyn shows that because of our political correctness, we're our own worst enemy when it comes to fighting terrorism. If we don't clearly identify the enemy every time he attacks, if we don't unite behind killing that enemy before he kills us, we won't win the war on terror. But we're our own worst enemy in almost every way. The income tax. Welfare. Socialized medicine. Government schools. Domestic energy production. Global warming. Big government. On every issue, we continue to make the choices that are leading to the destruction of western civilization.

Article claims that skepticism to Al Gore's bogus church of man-made global warming is increasing. It ought to be. Despite the propaganda of the liberal media machine, some scientists are still doing honest science, and that science is available to those who don't count on the liberal media machine to inform them.

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Another successful missile defense test.

Boortz lampoons the auto executives for their PR stunt of driving tiny hybrids to beg for taxpayer money.

Australia considers giving unions the power to examine private salaries at non-union businesses and to influence those salaries? You've got to be kidding.

Charles Krauthammer celebrates the almost overlooked alliance between the US and Iraq which highlights just how close to victory we are in Iraq. This is a phenomenal achievement won by the US military overcoming the most powerful enemy to American success in history - radical liberals. Somehow I doubt the liberals are going to stand up and say they were wrong and apologize for ripping the country in half with phony, destructive declarations that we couldn't win the war in Iraq.

Excellent essay decrying the power of government aristocrats and socialism. It's nice to see Canadians who know what's going on.

Obama plans to suck money and jobs out of the private sector for huge public works projects in the largest infrastructure programs since the '50s. Repairing degrading infrastructure should be done, but it should be done with the money we already make available for that purpose. And local governments be building local projects. But what Obama is proposing sounds like make-work, not wealth creation. This reminds of FDR having people dig holes one day and other people fill them in the next. That kind of government work mired the US deeper and longer in depression, and Obama's repeat of history will be just as damaging. I don't understand why anybody would support repeating the proven mistakes of the past.

The WSJ says we should use the anniversary of the repeal of prohibition to repeal modern drug prohibition.

If a liberal president had spent as much of our money to fight AIDS in Africa as George Bush, liberals would give him a medal.

The terrorist group (LET) that attacked Mumbai has strong historical links to the Pakistani intelligence service (ISI), and India has evidence linking the attack by LET to the ISI. According to the author, the ISI is a rogue organization infiltrated by Jihadis. Pakistan's ISI protects, trains, funds and supplies the Taliban. Scary stuff.

Left wing bloggers continue to say Trig is not Sarah Palin's son.

Economist shows that virtual worlds provide a model of economies. The economies in the games are so strong that they have become significant in the real world. One man makes six figures in the real world by buying stuff in the game and selling it on his website. A company call IGE exists soley to buy virtual items in games and sell them in the real world. This article is amazing, and it's from 2004. I can't imagine what it's like now.

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November job losses worst since 1974 in raw numbers. Of course as a percentage, they were smaller.

Suicide car bomb kills 12 in Pakistan. Pakistan is reaping the rewards of coddling terrorists and providing them a safe haven. So is the rest of the world.

Mortgage delinquencies and foreclosures at 29 year high.

Despite all of Frankin's tricks, he's still behind in the recount.

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Python 3 is released and it's not backwards compatible.

Google backed out of the advertising agreement with Yahoo because the government threatened an anti-trust lawsuit against them. The agreement would have given them an effective monopoly.

Israeli forces evict Hebron settlers by force.

Chrysler executive says that if taxpayers don't bailout the auto makers, the country will go into a depression. Where have I heard this before? Oh yeah, just a couple months ago when Bush, Paulson, Dodd, and Frank railroaded us into the last bailout. How's that bailout worked out for us so far? Every time government interferes further in the economy, the stock market plummets and the projections for the recession get deeper and longer. That's not a coincidence.

I've been pointing out that it seemed to me that Paulson was in cahoots with Dodd and Frank all along, every couple of months he'd show up in Congress and say the worst of the credit crisis was over, and now we find out that Paulson is actually in cahoots with Clinton's Treasury Sec. Rubin and Obama's Treasury Sec. Geithner. The Democrats created the housing crisis, blocked Republicans from fixing it (though Republicans certainly didn't try too hard), and they put a stealth Democrat working on behalf of other Democrats in the Treasury under Bush the Democrat. And now even though Geithner was part of the oversite team for Citi and promoted the subsequent $300 billion bailout for Citi, Obama rewards him by making him Sec. of Treasury. This is insane. We are being robbed blind, played for fools, and we just keep bending over and taking more.

British school cancels Christmas events in favor of Muslim holiday.

Obama appoints La Raza leader to White House staff. La Raza is the organization dedicated to taking southwestern US back for Mexico. Obama's giving them a powerful helping hand.

And international agreement to regulate the internet would be devastating to the internet. Government hates not having control of the internet, and the internet stands as a shining example of how much progress can be made when government doesn't have control of some aspect of our lives.

Calling how Democrats keep finding "lost" ballots that favor Al Franken in Minnesota "odd" is an understatement. It's corruption in an attempt to steal an election from the people. Ann Coulter compares this corrupt process to the corrupt process Democrats used to steal the gubanitorial election Washington in 2004. It's the same process they tried to steal the presidential election in Florida in 2000. They're perfecting it.

Updated list of Obama cabinet appointments.

After being savaged by liberals for his poll and documentary exposing how the media had grossly misinformed and uninformed liberal voters - liberals claimed McCain voters were just as poorly informed - analyst commissioned a second poll comparing McCain voters versus Obama voters. The results are devastating to the left. McCain voters were much better informed about government and the candidates than Obama voters. This shows that the mainstream media succeeded beyond all expectations at misinforming the public in order to get their chosen one elected. I've pointed out before that liberalism depends on misrepresentation of facts and reality to survive, and this poll proves it.

UK judge grants compensation to prisoners because prison officials made them go cold turkey after they were incarcerated. Give me a break.

Oil below $45.

John Stossel's politically incorrect guide to politics from before the election.

If Barney Frank thinks 2009 will be the best year for public policy since the New Deal, we're in a lot of trouble.

Cato explains that the Wall Street bailout is unconstitutional. A lot of good that does us now.

Well deserved tribute to Laura Bush.

Opposition parties in Canada unite to oust Canadian PM, even though his Conservative Party won 143 seats in Parliament a month ago compared to 77 for the Liberal Party, which came in second. This aristocrat's revolt is happen against the will of the people because the PM is keeping his campaign promise of no bailouts.

Walter Williams discusses Americans' overwhelming ignorance of our history and government. The numbers are truly frightening. You can take the quiz here.

George Will exposes Barack Obama for once again using vague terms about jobs so in the future he will be able to claim a success which by normal standards won't be any success at all.

Now that it's become public knowledge that Saddam Hussein had 550 tons of yellowcake, enough for 140 nuclear bombs, which Bush kept secret so that terrorists wouldn't attempt to steal it, do you think liberals will apologize for lying about him? Of course not. As bad as Bush's legacy is, the legacy of the Democrats who ripped the country apart during his administration for political gain is worse.

I'm happy to hear Putin doesn't want to build bases in Cuba or Venezuela, but the fact that he's even talking about it shows how badly we've mismanaged our interests in Central and South America.

Analysis shows conservatives abandoned Republicans at the polls because Republicans abandoned them with their big government ways and ran a big government candidate, providing Obama's margin of victory.

Thomas Jefferson's wife owned slaves that were her own family members including a half-sister that ended up being Jefferson's mistress.

While prohibition cut total alcohol consumption, it only did so with responsible drinkers. Alcohol related problems increased during prohibition, and we suffered from the black market. Sounds familiar.

Reason explains the causes of the financial meltdown.

Reason shows that the pendulum is swinging the other way in the gays rights debate, with gays wanting to use government force to make people accept homosexuality.

Piercing the Illusion sounds like an interesting book on the federal income tax and the IRS.

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Comet may be from another star system.

GM threatens that if taxpayers don't loan it money, it will go down and take the country with it. Let GM declare bankruptcy so it can be reborn with a competitive business model.

Congressional bailout watchdog says the government has no coherent strategy to fix the economy. Gosh, ya think? Government can't fix the economy. Government needs to get out of the way so the people can fix the economy.

Democrat election officials magically find 200 ballots in Minnesota that put Al Frankin with 50 votes of winning. They should have found 251 ballots to insure they stole the election.

United Auto Workers consider concessions. The Democrats green lobby butting heads with auto workers. The greenies want more restrictions on cars. The auto workers want less. This is one of the reasons why Democrats have so much trouble governing - their constituencies are often at odds.

Why is a judge stopping the suspension of players by the NFL for taking a masking agent? On what grounds? Sports is a bizarre situation because leagues are effectively government sanctioned monopolies, but what happens in them sets precedents for every other business. It seems to me that the league should not be a monopoly. Teams should compete freely for players. But at the same time, scheduling games is collusion, and you can't get away from that without waiving the law against collusion - creating a monopoly. I need to study this issue more.

I don't even want contemplate the ramifications of talk powered cell phones.

Proving along with Obama's and liberals' embrace of Bill Ayers that no depth of depravity is too low for liberals to embrace, The Washington Post's online magazine Slate hires Eliot Spitzer to write bi-weekly column. Try finding Mark Foley in the Wall Street Journal.

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I love this plan for using the rest of the bail out money to give Americans a 2 month tax holiday. Government will hate this idea because it would allow Americans to finally realize just how much money the government sucks from them every month. Americans would see how good their lives could be if not for the burden of government. It will also give the FairTax a big boost since the FairTax will allow Americans to keep all of the paychecks every month.

US warned India of terrorist attack from the sea a month before the terrorists struck. That doesn't look good for India's government. India demands Pakistan arrest and hand over 20 militants wanted in India and suspected of hiding out in Pakistan. The US is caught in a tough spot since we attack terrorists inside Pakistan, but we don't want India to do so.

Pirates fire on US cruise ship in Gulf of Aden.

Microsoft Windows market share drops below 90 percent for the first time since 1995.

NATO to resume talks with Russia since it pulled out of Georgia.

Texas Governor Rick Perry and South Carolina Governor Mark Sanford speak out against the federal bailouts of the states. It's no coincidence that the biggest blue states, California and New York, are asking the federal government for budget bailouts, while the largest red state, Texas, is not. I bet if you compared the state debt of red states and blue states, you'd find red states much more fiscally responsible, with much lower budgets, than blue states.

I believe that Bush's biggest regret was the bad intelligence on Iraq's weapons of mass destruction. It undermined his entire presidency almost as much as his policies did.

Arnold Schwarzenegger and the Democrats have put California in a fiscal crisis with out of control spending, and now they want to raise taxes. That's the aristocrats' way. Make the people pay for their bad government.

Britain considers removing fire extinguishers from apartments in the UK because they are fire hazards. You can't make this stuff up.

Company proposes to replace metal detectors with biometric scans.

Ford and GM sell restructuring plans to Congress in order to get some taxpayer cash. Needless to say, they include expensive, unproven, green cars that most Americans don't want. Thanks to these bailouts, government now has the power to coerce businesses all across America to do what government wants instead of what's good for business. This is going to be disastrous.

Well referenced article with figures and analysis by economic experts showing FDR's New Deal drove us deeper into depression, and Barack Obama's new New Deal will harm the economy too.

Thomas Sowell explains that the policies of the left tend to be anti-freedom. He specifically targets requirements for community service. He's being nice. Almost every liberal policy is anti-freedom.

Pat Buchanan compares the Mumbai terrorists to the killer of Ferdinand and the 9/11 terrorists and explains that if India attacks Pakistan, it will divide India even more than invading Iraq divided the US.

Russia and Venezuela end grandstanding naval exercize in the Carribean.

Reason says a bailout won't save the auto makers.

Republican Saxby Chambliss wins senate runoff in Georgia, denying Democrats 60 seats. Whew. Hopefully Al Frankin's bid to steal Minnesota's senate seat will fail too.

Chicago to cut back on plowing roads to save money. This is complete bull****. This how politicians make citizens pay for the politicians poor performance. Chicago has a hundred wasteful programs that are just used to buy votes from constituencies that could be cut first, but the politicians chose something that harms citizens and makes them mad so they can come back later and ask for more money. That's the inherent corruption of big government.

The New York Daily News "steals" the Empire State Building in 90 minutes in scheme to highlight how ineffective New York City's government is.

Thanks to Democrats undermining the Bush administration's attempts to credibly threaten to bomb Iran if it didn't stop developing a nuclear weapon, Iran is likely to develop a nuclear bomb in Obama's first year. Just great. Because of Democrats, we've almost certainly lost our chance to stop Iran from developing the bomb peacefully. Low oil prices does leave a small window of opportunity, though. But if there is no credible threat to bomb them before they develop the bomb, we'll face nuclear blackmail almost immediately afterward, and we'll lose a major world city to these maniacs in the next decade or 2.

Judge dismisses indictment against Cheney and Gonzales. This prosecutor sounds whacked.

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This is scary. There's an international proposal to create an international environmental court. With Obama the international man in office, the US might agree to such a boondoggle. And guess who will get dragged to that court all the time. Just say hell no.

India raises security status to war level. The silver lining after this attack may be that Pakistan finally gets serious about fighting the terrorists.

Pentagon to increase domestically deployed troops to 20,000. As long as they remain subject to Posse Comitatus.

Russia to upgrade missiles to avoid US missile shield. The paranoia in this article is scary.

Report claims we've been in a recession since Dec. '07, but the headline is misleading. I think there's a lot of validity to that report, but this group does not officially define a recession. An official recession is simply defined as 2 straight quarters of negative economic growth, and that hasn't happened yet, though it's certainly going to happen. This report is a more comprehensive analysis and probably more accurate, but it's not official. Correction: It looks like I was wrong. The rule of thumb seems to be 2 quarters of negative growth, but this organization is the official definer of a recession.

Contrary to this headline about the FCC providing "free" internet, the internet is not free. This is a poorly disguised plan for government control of the internet.

Bittorrent decision to use performance critical protocol for bulk file transfers will cut typical internet performance by 75 percent. Yikes! Bittorrent calls this report nonsense, saying switching their protocol will reduce internet traffic, not increase it, by implementing their own more sophisticated congestion control. It sounds experimental at best.

Florida Gulf Coast University reverses decision and allows Christmas on campus. I'm happy they came to the right decision in the end, but how stupid were they to ban it to begin with?

Obama will nominate Hillary to be Sec. of State. Appoint Bill Clinton to replace Hillary in the Senate? Please, no.

Since the people of Minnesota didn't elect him to the Senate, Al Franken is pulling out all the legal stops to steal the election.

Paul Krugman is on drugs if he really thinks the New Deal failed because it didn't spend enough money. Amity Shlaes sets Krugman straight.

United Auto Workers beg for a bailout so the auto companies won't renegotiate their deals.

Who cares about freedom of the press anymore? Let's have government fund newspapers. The liberal assault on freedom of speech continues. Of course liberals want government to fund their propaganda organs.

The National Black Republicans have asked Barack Obama to apologize for 150 years of racism by Democrats. This is symbolic grandstanding, but it does highlight the Democrats' history of racism that was so blatantly displayed this primary season. The press can't attack these Republicans because they're black, so they will bury this story.

I'm not surprised that rugged individualism correlates to drinking lots of beer.

Withdrawing US troops from Iraq in 16 months and allowing Iraq to degenerate into chaos would insure no country in the world would ever be an ally to the US for a generation at least.

I'm skeptical of this report linking fast food to Alzheimer's disease. It's a little too convenient, and it doesn't explain how how fast foods deposit metals in the brain. And Alheimer's affects people like Ronald Reagan who were far too old to be caught up in the fast food craze.

The global AIDS crisis is overblown compared to other health problems because it's part of the liberal agenda.

Scientists unexpectedly discover water vapor in Mercury's "atmosphere".

Government's absurd interference in our economy has created an outrageous ping-pong effect on the stock market, with the Dow dropping today 680 points in the fourth worst loss ever.

It's good to see at least one pundit who understands that power corrupts, so the fundamental conflict in politics is between the aristocrats and the people, and that's why the people tend to vote for term limits.

Obama using harsh rhetoric against terrorists. I bet they're scared. You can bet that the Mumbai attack was purposefully planned after the election, not before it.

Many liberals are unhappy with the appointment of Hillary (and therefore Bill) to Sec. of State.

Clinton Sec. of State Drama

The Never Ending Clinton Drama

by Mark Luedtke

Americans can't seem to escape the Clintons' public displays of dysfunction, and this time we have Barack Obama to thank for it. Within hours of last weekend's meeting between Obama and Hillary, the Clinton camp leaked that Obama had offered her the job of Sec. of State. Shortly thereafter, the supposedly tight-lipped Obama team expressed their anger at the Clinton team for leaking that information. If the Obama team, most of whom used to be on the Clinton team, is so disciplined, why did they leak their anger at the Clinton team's leak? The Clintons corrupt everything they touch, and just one meeting with Hillary dragged the Obama transition team into an incestuous family feud.

What was Obama thinking anyway?

It wasn't too many months ago that Hillary told reporters that during Bill's administration, he had sent her to Bosnia because it wasn't safe for him to go. She told reporters she had ducked sniper fire running across the tarmac from the plane to the airport. Reporters politely corrected her, reminded her there was no sniper fire and that her daughter Chelsea, Sinbad, and Sheryl Crow had been on the trip with her. Then they buried the story. Undeterred by the truth and emboldened by her accomplices in the press, Hillary Clinton repeated the lie the next day. It wasn't until Sinbad made an issue of her lie in his comedy routine that it became news. Hillary was eventually forced to compound the lie by pretending her memory was faulty. The press let her get away with that too.

And this is no isolated incident for Hillary Clinton. In 1996, billing records from her days in the Rose Law Firm that had been subpoenaed by investigators 2 years previously were discovered in Hillary's office. Under oath, Hillary claimed she forgot them.

But hiding files from authorities is a pattern for Hillary Clinton. In 1974, then Hillary Rodham worked for Jerry Zeifman on Richard Nixon's impeachment inquiry staff. During that inquiry, Zeifman directed Rodham to investigate the publicly accessible impeachment files of William Douglas, who was given legal counsel, and write a brief based on that investigation. Instead, Rodham hid the Douglas files from the public and wrote a brief that contradicted them, trying to keep Nixon from obtaining legal counsel during the proceeding. Before Zeifman fired her, she also gathered information that she never sent to Congress but which she subsequently published.

The Clinton corruption in Arkansas and in the White House that got 16 of their cronies sent to prison is well documented. As Henry Ruth, the lead courtroom prosecutor during Watergate, told the Wall Street Journal, “The Clintons corrupted the soul of the Democratic Party .” And now Obama has invited that corruption into his administration, and Hillary has reportedly accepted the position as Sec. of State. We can only hope those reports are premature.

But it's not surprising that Obama welcomes corruption in his administration. He's a product of the Chicago political machine – arguably the most corrupt political machine in the country. He's loaded his administration with Chicago machine insiders. As a state senator, Obama funneled hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars to corrupt slum lords in Chicago including Tony Rezko, who helped Obama buy his home at a greatly reduced price in what has all the earmarks of a quid pro quo deal.

Much has been made of Bill Clinton's agreement to disclose information about his income and charitable activities, but it's all a smokescreen. We already know the Clintons have a huge conflict of interest. Bill Clinton makes multiple millions every year from foreign, mostly Middle Eastern, governments. No disclosure will change that. And when has Bill Clinton ever cared about ethics anyway? As soon as Hillary is confirmed, Bill will have Sandy Berger steal that agreement from the National Archives and shred it.

The Clintons have Obama over a barrel. Obama must have promised Hillary a sweetheart position to keep her from staging a floor fight at the Democrat convention. Hillary has 18 million supporters that Obama needs on his side, and he dangled the Sec. of State job to keep them in the fold. But the Clintons immediately stole the initiative by leaking the job offer to the press. The real reason the Obama team is upset with the leak is the Clintons outmaneuvered them and took control of the situation. You could see it on Obama's face in his 60 Minutes interview. If Obama doesn't give Hillary the job, he'll lose the support of her voters. If he fires her during the next 4 years, he'll lose the support of her voters.

On the plus side, Hillary is not the foreign policy wimp that Obama is, and she has no reason to toe Obama's line. She has her own constituency to answer to. But it's impossible that a woman who lies with near sociopathic zeal can be effective as Sec. of State. She's bound to get caught in her own web of self-promoting lies that will undermine US foreign policy. She can't help herself. And because Bill covets the spotlight and is still trying to invent a legacy, he will undermine her - and Obama's - efforts at every opportunity.

Obama made a deal with the devil, and the devil always gets his, and her, due. But in this case, all Americans will pay the price.