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TAX AND SPEND:

I've taken lots of commentators to task for saying Obama wants to Europeanize America. No. Obama wants to do far worse, and these fools refuse to grasp all the evidence in front of their eyes. Another case in point is that European governments are trying to cut deficits and debt and become more fiscally responsible but Obama is pushing them to increase the deficits and debt just like he's doing in America. Obama is trying to collapse not just America under a the burden of government and spark a Marxist revolution. He wants to destroy western civilization by igniting Marxist revolutions all around the world.

REGULATION:

All these financial regulations will add significant costs to finance companies, forcing smaller and less profitable companies out of business, making the remaining companies bigger, more profitable and more immune from the consequence of risk than ever. We'll all be poorer and more at their mercy as they wreak greater damage on our economy.

EDUCATION:

Most college economics classes use Paul Samuelson textbooks (mine did). Here are three quotes from Samuelson:

""Every economy has its contradictions …. What counts is results, and there can be no doubt that the Soviet planning system has been a powerful engine for economic growth." — Paul Samuelson,Economics, 1985 edition

"Contrary to what many skeptics had earlier believed, the Soviet economy is proof that … a socialist command economy can function and even thrive." — Paul Samuelson, Economics, 1989 edition

"The Road to Serfdom was 'inaccurate innuendo about the future'." — Paul Samuelson, 2009"

And you wonder why your college graduate kids are stupid. And...

"Samuelson even went so far as to say in his textbook, which was by far the biggest seller of its day, that "it is a vulgar mistake to think most people in Eastern Europe [during communism] are miserable.""

Maybe Samuelson isn't used as much any more. We can only hope.

GLOBAL WARMING:

Spanish green energy company sends unassembled bomb as threat to author of study critical of the green jobs program. This green energy scam only exists because of the violence of government - taking money from citizens at gunpoint and giving it to others. There's fortunes to be made off this criminal enterprise, so we shouldn't be surprised that it's violent like all big-time criminal operations.

This sounds scary.

"Senate Democrats believe they've found a surefire way to force Republicans to support a sweeping climate and energy bill that directly addresses greenhouse gas emissions."

...

According to a staff-written summary of yesterday's closed-door caucus meeting obtained by E&E, senators discussed a legislative strategy "more akin to the financial regulatory legislation than of health care, with Democrats bringing to the floor an impenetrable package that Republicans could not roadblock."

So Democrats are going to paint that anybody who doesn't vote for their as yet unwritten, new cap and trade bill as being supporters of BP and oil spills. I've wondered why they didn't do that since the oil leak started.

POLICE STATE:

Ontario cabinet, not legislature, gives Canadian police the power to search anybody without cause within five meters of the G20 security fence.

"The regulation also says that if someone has a dispute with an officer and it goes to court "the police officer's statement under oath is considered conclusive evidence under the Act.""

Canadians are nearly as stupid as we are.

Don't taze my granny!

"Lonnie Tinsley of El Reno, Oklahoma made a nearly fatal mistake last December 22 when he went to check on his grandma, Lona Vernon.

Concerned that Lona hadn’t taken her medications, Lonnie called 911 in the expectation that an emergency medical technician would be dispatched to the apartment to evaluate the bedridden 86-year-old woman.

Instead, that call for help was answered by nearly a dozen armed tax-feeders employed by the El Reno Police Department.

Understandably alarmed — and probably more than a little disgusted — by the presence of uninvited armed strangers in her home, Lona ordered them to leave. This directive, issued by a fragile female octogenarian confined to a hospital-style bed and tethered to an oxygen tank, was interpreted as “aggressive” behavior by Officer Thomas Duran, who ordered one of his associates : “Taser her!”

“Don’t taze my granny!” exclaimed Tinsley. According to a lawsuit filed in U.S. District Court, Tinsley’s “obstructive” behavior prompted the police to threaten him with their tasers. He was then was assaulted, removed from the room, thrown to the floor, handcuffed, and detained in a police car. At this point, the heroes in blue turned their attention to Lona.

The tactical situation was daunting; at this point, the police had only a 10-1 advantage over a subject who — according to Duran’s official report — had taken an “aggressive posture” in her hospital bed. The sacred imperative of “officer safety” dictated that the subject be thoroughly softened up in order to minimize resistance.

Accordingly, one of the officers approached Lona and “stepped on her oxygen hose until she began to suffer oxygen deprivation,” narrates the complaint, based on Lona’s account. One of the officers then shot her with a taser, but the connection wasn’t solid. A second fired his taser, “striking her to the left of the midline of her upper chest, and applied high voltage, causing burns to her chest, extreme pain,” and unconsciousness. Lona was then handcuffed with sufficient ruthlessness to tear the soft flesh of her forearms, causing her to bleed.

After her wounds were treated at a local hospital, Lona was confined for six days in the psychiatric ward at the insistence of her deranged assailants from the El Reno Police Department.

It has long been established that the worst thing to do in an emergency is to call the police. In this case, Lonnie Tinsley didn’t call the police, yet they barged in anyway and quite nearly “helped” his grandma to death."

I'm sad to say I'm not the least bit surprised by this.

WAR:

Islamic websites claim Obama fired McChrystal because the war in Afghanistan is lost. There's a lot of truth to that.

MISC:

20 percent of android apps are malicious?

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THE RIGHT TO KEEP AND BEAR ARMS:

Guns save lives. Of course they do. Nobody would buy a self-defense weapon if they didn't. They aren't called the great equalizer for nothing. More guns equals less crime. Duh. Criminals aren't suicidal.

ECONOMY:

Yes, if we stay on the path we're on right now, the path of government crushing our economy under its boot, Americans are going to starve to death.

"Since September 11, 2001 this country has faced numerous disasters both man-made and natural. It is evident after these disasters the majority of the population is unable to fend for themselves without government assistance. In only a matter of days, people run out of food and water, no longer able to take care of their families. They then expect the some level of government to open up centers which will provide the necessary sustenance to support their families during these emergencies. Basic needs cannot be met without outside assistance. In less than 60 years Americans have lost the knowledge and will to be self-sufficient."

It's true. Everybody used to have a garden when I was a kid.

"Controlling the food supply has been the plan of the federal government for an extremely long time. The creation of the FDA was fundamental to the execution of this plan. Working in conjunction with large agribusiness and complicit media they now control the destiny of the majority of the population of the United States. They are attempting to eliminate all small farming operations through overbearing regulations and a wink and a nod in the courtroom to patent regulations for the agribusiness lobby. Part of the agenda is to force all small operations to microchip every animal and provide tracking information to the federal government. The large agribusiness operators will not be subject to the same regulations as small farmers. They will be exempt from providing the same information because of the political power they wield through the purchase of politicians."

Again, it's true.

"It is historical fact that whoever controls the food controls the people. History is replete with examples of what happens when a corrupt and ruthless government controls the food supply. In the 1930’s, Russia starved 10 million Ukrainians to death by stealing all the food produced in their country because they would not support Stalin's farm collectivization program. Hitler used starvation in Poland for the mass murder of the Jews in the Warsaw ghetto. America is now poised for the same fate since they are unable to feed their families in the face of a disaster or corrupt government."

How could he leave out Mao?

"No longer are we capable of going to our seed supply and planting a survival garden. If a family does have seed, it is imperative to ask a question. Is the seed the heirloom variety or the genetically altered large agribusiness strain? If it is the genetically altered variety then it is part of the trap and that family will starve. Genetically altered seeds render them viable for one season with no ability to harvest seed for future planting. The unprepared with no stockpile of heirloom seeds will be at the mercy of the government or whoever holds the power."

Another piece of the puzzle falls into place.

Because people in Pittsburgh didn't ride the housing boom up, it didn't experience a bust, and as a result it shows no signs of recession.

Sales of new homes as a percentage of all home sales hit an all-time low last month. The bubble Obama and Bernanke were blowing in housing, leading to the construction of so many new houses, is over. Look for it to pop a second time soon.

TAX AND SPEND:

Obama has figured out how to lie about raising taxes on the middle class - Congress Democrats will take responsibility.

The US debt grew by $1.7 billion during the Isner-Mahut match.

Senate Republicans kill latest stimulus bill that would have continued to pay people not to work. Good for them.

REGULATION:

Business leaders are starting to speak out against the Obamazation of America. They're finally waking up and realizing that even though Democrat legislation promises the perks, the effect will be to collapse our economy and nobody will prosper.

The EPA classifies milk as oil.

"Also, the International Dairy Foods Association said it has learned the EPA will exempt the industry from the rule. But state lawmakers say they won’t let up until that is official."

Why write the rule then exempt the dairy industry from it? That might be stupider than writing the rule in the first place.

FEDERAL RESERVE:

Legal tender laws are unconstitutional and must be nullified. The Constitution grants government the power to coin money and set standards, e.g. for the dollar, but it doesn't not grant the government power to ban competing forms of money.

ENERGY:

I would have voted against giving subpoena powers to President Obama's kangaroo oil spill commission too. This is just another power grab by Obama. We know what went wrong. Government regulations wiped out nearly all the competition in the oil market, enabling BP, Exxon and a couple of other companies to become gigantic corporations with deep pockets. Those corporations paid tribute to the politicians and the regulators so they could take big risks for big rewards while suffering few consequences for failure. Then the regulators forced BP to drill in deep water where it was unprepared to do so, it cut corners because it was protected by the government, and the rest is history. Obama's commission is an attempt to whitewash the government's driving role in creating this catastrophe and provide a phony mask of legitimacy for its scapegoating process.

Is Obama an anglophobe? Is that why he keeps attacking BP's British roots? Is that why the British are so mad at him? It's part of a pattern of treating Britain bad. Weird.

Walter Williams is the first person I've read, other than myself, who has claimed Obama is intentionally making the Gulf oil spill worse. Williams thinks Obama is protecting unionized shipping interests.

"James Carafano, researcher at the Heritage Foundation, said, "The unions see it as … protecting jobs. They hate when the Jones Act gets waived, and they pound on politicians when they do that." Carafano asks, "So are we giving in to unions and not doing everything we can, or is there some kind of impediment that we don't know about?" President Obama has the power to waive the Jones Act to allow foreign vessels and crews to bring their expertise to the Gulf cleanup, but he fears angering American labor unions."

I think that's just a happy side-effect of his real reason - collapsing the US economy under the burden of government.

Ron Paul gets it right again.

"It should be noted that BP is not exactly a bastion of free market capitalism. Rather, they are very vested in acquiring government subsidies, favorably slanted policies, and competition-hobbling regulation. BP has even been a major lobbying proponent of cap-and-trade because of certain provisions in the legislation it could profit from. Considering who lobbies for them and what they lobby for, my concern is that attempts to hold them strictly and fully accountable could end up being nothing more than a shell game, with taxpayers ultimately holding the bag.

If the government’s idea of action in crisis is to punish the innocent, bail out the guilty, and raise prices at the pump on everybody, we should want them to do less, not more. Recent polls show sharply waning support for offshore drilling. We still need oil, and a lot of good jobs depend on oil production. It is crucial to the functioning of our economy. But if accidents continue to be handled this way, it is easy to understand why so many see more cost than benefit to off-shore drilling, and that is also a tragedy."

That's Obama's goal. To make offshore drilling look so bad that fools will ask government to ban it. He started down that path by shutting down drilling.

Unnamed government sources say that the Pentagon pushed for regulators to OK Deepwater Horizon despite its regulatory failures because that oil in the Gulf would give the US an eight month supply if war with Iran cut off supplies of oil from the Middle East. That doesn't make any sense to me since we get almost all our oil from Canada, Mexico and other non-Middle Eastern sources, but like the criminals they are, aristocrats aren't known for making sense. That may have been a consideration, but I think BP's huge donations to Obama are the primary reason the regulations were waived.

POLICE STATE:

Supreme Court unanimously strikes down common practice of expanding the law in corporate corruption cases by federal prosecutors, opening the door to many appeals.

WAR:

Truth is the first casualty of war because it is the enemy of the war effort. McChrystal was fired for publicizing the truth. Gates wanted to keep McChrystal. This article says Gates agrees with Obama. Of course he does. He doesn't want fired too. Reason says Obama made a mistake firing McChrystal, but how much weight do you give the opinion of a person who says this:

"It turns out Obama is not as much like Lincoln as he aspires to be. The 16th president, who had his own war to run, had many opportunities to take umbrage at disrespectful conduct by his highest Army officers. And he repeatedly put the nation's needs first.

Once, when Lincoln paid an evening visit to his top commander, George McClellan, the famously arrogant general came home and went to bed without so much as acknowledging the president. Lincoln shrugged it off, saying he would hold McClellan's horse if it would produce a victory.

Eventually, he replaced the battle-shy McClellan with Joseph Hooker, who had said the country needed a dictator. Lincoln wrote Hooker, "Only those generals who gain successes, can set up dictators. What I now ask of you is military success, and I will risk the dictatorship." He was not about to let pride or other non-essential concerns get in the way of defeating the enemy."?

So a self-proclaimed libertarian claims Lincoln becoming a dictator was for the good of the country. I give that opinion no weight at all. What's missing from this analysis is that by publicly criticizing the policy-makers, McChrystal journeyed into the realm of public policy-making, and we can't allow that in the US.

Our Afghan strategy is failing, and it is doomed to fail.

"After the allied forces cleared the Marjah region of the Taliban, the Afghan government was unable to provide the security required to keep the Taliban from returning. General McChrystal, during a visit in late May, called Marjah a bleeding ulcer."

Is that the real reason he was fired?

"The Canadians and Dutch have already conceded this and announced their withdrawal."

I hadn't heard that.

The media can't seem to tell the difference between a no-brainer decision and a brilliant one. This was a no-brainer.

Lots of people are wondering if the announcement of larger than expected mineral riches in Afghanistan is a publicity stunt.

"The main news is that the deposits are significantly greater than had been thought to date. [Afghan Mining Minister] Shahrani last Thursday exceeded the Americans' claims, saying he thought their estimates were too conservative and trippling the value of the mineral deposits to $3 trillion."

Of course he did. Why stop there? Make it $10 trillion. Maybe he knows how much money the Fed is printing.

ILLEGAL IMMIGRATION:

Is Obama planning to grant amnesty to illegal aliens by executive fiat? He'd be lucky if Americans didn't burn down the White House if he did that. Obama might do it in hopes of sparking violence so he and his allies can begin his Marxist revolution in response.

FOREIGN POLICY:

Foreign leaders are realizing Obama is a fool. What took them so long?

"But whatever generosities we afforded the inexperienced junior senator from Illinois, smooth and charming he is not, it turns out. And these rookie mistakes are getting downright embarrassing.

The latest came last week, when the President sent the G-20 a pointed but pleading letter imploring Europe to quit it already with all the sensible spending cuts. He apparently believes that if we are going to spend our way into oblivion, then Europe should have the good manners to join us. Misery loves company, after all, and so does bankruptcy.

It's unlikely Europe was moved. In fact, Germany and Britain, which just announced major spending cuts, are probably laughing at us, with a sharp view of Greece in their rearview mirror. Obama's letter wasn't only myopic but terribly arrogant - the kind of thing that would have earned his predecessor another colorful "cowboy" descriptor from the oft-offended liberal press."

...

"In Britain, where our once-special relationship is growing increasingly ordinary, Tory Lord Tebbit called Obama's ineffective response to the BP oil spill "a crude, bigoted, xenophobic display of partisan political presidential petulance." The staggering alliteration aside, those are some harsh words. And Maureen Dowd, The New York Times' usually fawning Obamafan, called him "bloodless" and "self-destructive.""

The more interesting aspect of this story is how slow people have been to realize who Obama is. Many, like in this article, are just starting to figure it out. Many haven't even started yet. Few have actually gone all the way to realize Obama wants to be America's Vladimir Lenin but not smart enough and too much of an ideologue.

MEDIA:

The mainstream media labels conservatives "controversial" 30 times more often than liberals.

MISC:

About George Orwell.

Viacom versus Google case shows how phony IP rights are.

Free kibbles

ECONOMY:

"... silver is for survival, gold is to preserve wealth."

Foreclosures were up sharply in Q1.

TAX AND SPEND:

Federal government seizes $2 million from taxpayers at gunpoint and uses it to study promoting condom use among intravenous drug users in Kazakhstan.

Obama's Chicago machine has turned Illinois into America's worst credit risk, surpassing California, just like Obama is doing to the US government.

The International Monetary Fund concludes that government spending is a poor stimulus. Wow. Talk about biting the hand that feeds you. Somebody is going to get fired for being honest and accurate.

Steny Hoyer admits Democrats plan to raise taxes. No kidding.

Another piece of evidence that we've stupidly turned the world upside down: US government defends and wants to expand government debt while European governments want to cut it. We have nobody to blame but ourselves for creating this Bizzaro World.

REGULATION:

How government forced BP to drill in dangerously deep waters.

EDUCATION:

The final report on Washington D.C.'s school voucher program that Obama is killing is in:

"Even a tiny, restricted program that’s only been around for six years increases graduation rates, has a positive impact on at least some groups of students, harms no groups of students, and does this for less than a third of what the DC Public Schools spend.

DCPS spends around $28,000 per student. The last report pegged the average voucher at just$6,620. The maximum voucher cost is just $7,500."

No wonder Democrats hate it. But all government money is poisoned. The amount of poison is proportional to the amount of money involved. Right now vouchers are very little money, but if they became commonplace, they would be as poisoned as any other government program. What this program shows is that private charities could make a huge difference in the quality of education for the very poor if government wasn't seizing all our money for expensive, crappy government schools.

HEALTH CARE:

Obama starts arbitrarily regulating health care with a so-called patients bill of rights.

GLOBAL WARMING:

Arctic sea ice extent has fallen below 2007 levels. Look for a bunch of news articles to paint this as the end of the world.

ENERGY:

Judge who struck down Obama's ban in drilling in the Gulf owns oil company shares. That's a conflict of interest, and he should have recused himself. Even though he made the right decision, it's now appears tainted. Reason comments on the shakedown:

"Although Barton was widely mocked for appearing to defend a huge corporation that is responsible for the worst environmental disaster in U.S. history, he had a point. Obama's grandstanding money grab exemplifies the lawless unilateralism that he condemned as a candidate yet embraced as a president.

Since the $75 million statutory cap on damages for oil spills does not apply in cases involving regulatory violations, "gross negligence," or "willful misconduct," BP's potential tort liability is enormous. But so are its assets, and there was no danger that it would run out of money before compensating everyone with a valid claim.

Obama could have let the legal process run its course, or he could have asked Congress to create a compensation fund in the interest of hastening payments. Instead he unilaterally extracted $20 billion from BP, on top of whatever damages the company will have to pay as a result of lawsuits, and appointed a lawyer to dole it out as he sees fit.

BP, facing an administration that will decide whether to lift the moratorium on offshore drilling and whether to pursue a criminal case that could bankrupt the company, felt compelled to cooperate. "Mr. Obama had no legal basis for the demand," The New York Times noted, "but concluded he did not need one."  

That's precisely the attitude for which Obama rightly castigated his predecessor, who believed that obeying the law was optional, especially if it stood in the way of measures aimed at fighting terrorism. "The law is not subject to the whims of stubborn rulers," Obama declared in 2007, condemning "unchecked presidential power"  and promising that in his administration there would be "no more ignoring the law when it is inconvenient.""

What a magnificent liar. Obama had every intention of being the most lawless president in history, but his remarkably lying skills enabled him to win the election anyway, and now we're all paying the price. Now we find out one of the reasons BP agreed to the deal was Obama's appointee would make people who wanted a piece of the $20 billion agree not to sue BP for more liability in the future. So this stinks for them too.

Obama blocks another effort to clean up the oil spill. Obama doesn't want the spill cleaned up. He wants people out of work. He wants damage to spread. He wants to bankrupt BP and loot the taxpayers to clean up the mess. He wants to collapse the US economy under the burden of government and spark a Marxist revolution, and this oil spill gives him an opportunity to advance that cause.


Oil and natural gas are not fossil fuels. The chemicals and pressures in the earth constantly replenish them.


Eco-theater is a good term.

"A wildlife biologist visiting my town is “saving birds” in the oil spill, as he did after the Exxon Valdez leak. When the media is around, he and his colleagues are seen carefully cleaning birds, though this is virtually always futile. When the media are absent, they simply twist the poor animals necks, since they are dying. The whole business costs about $5,000 per bird."

Fraud is at the heart of all politics.

Web designer and budding entrepreneur building nuclear fusion plant in nearby warehouse in Brooklyn.

POLICE STATE:

Why must one comply with the police?

"Marilyn Levias, a 19-year-old Seattle girl involved in a jaywalking incident during which a police officer assaulted another 17-year-old girl, displayed "a dangerous refusal to observe a cardinal rule that civilians simply must comply with instructions from police officers," insistsSeattle City Attorney Pete Holmes."

When did we get this backwards? Government in general and police in particular are not our bosses. They are our servants. They exist to protect our rights, but we've allowed them to become far and way the major violators of our rights. The burden must always be on the police officer to show he was protecting somebody's rights, and if he wasn't, if he was instead oppressing a citizen, he should be punished. This idea that we give police the "benefit of the doubt" which really means we let them get away with literal murder, is absurd. The citizen should always get the benefit of the doubt against the powerful government agent with the license to kill.

"For this, Miss Levias faces a gross misdemeanor charge of "Obstructing a Police Officer." During the confrontation, Levias's 17-year-old friend, Angel L. Rosenthal, intervened on her behalf and was punched in the face by officer Ian P. Walsh. As is typically the case when a Mundane's face obstructs the trajectory of a police officer's fist, the victim is the one facing criminal charges."

God forbid you use your face to obstruct the police officer's fist. Why was this guy writing a jaywalking ticket anyway? People jaywalk without getting tickets all the time. I bet he needed to fill a quota.

"City Attorney Holmes offered the mildest possible limp-wristed swipe at the Seattle Police Department by saying that the incident illustrates the need "for de-escalation training for officers." Holmes also cited an observation by Judge Michael Spearman, auditor for the police department's Office of Professional Responsibility, that "The use of force in a [jaywalking] situation as a best practice is questionable.""

You think? This is another stark reminder that all government action is violence or the threat of violence, and that cops, no matter how well intentioned, are uniformed tax collectors much like mafia henchmen that extort protection money from shopkeepers. "Pay up, or it's going to go hard for you and your family." No doubt.

"Accordingly, the use of overwhelming force is entirely appropriate: "Officers are trained to enforce the law and not to 'de-escalate' (walk away) simply because a violator objects to being stopped. That would simply lead to lawlessness.""

The "I was just following my training" defense was quashed at Nuremberg, but now it's rearing its ugly head in America. It doesn't matter what you've been ordered. It doesn't matter what you've been trained to do. You personally are responsible for the consequences of your actions, and this officer assaulted a citizen, initiated the violence, and should be prosecuted.

"As I've noted elsewhere, the idea that "civilians" are to render instant, unqualified obedience to any armed individual in a government-issued costume is the chief characteristic of the martial law mind-set."

It's the police state mindset, and we have it.

"It was the assumption of police impunity, not the requirement to "de-escalate," that led to Walsh's lawless assault on 17-year-old Angel Rosenthal – unless we are to assume, as do O'Neill and his ilk, that the individual police officer is the law."

That's what I keep harping on. The reason we see all this police abuse and corruption is there's no accountability. Until we start holding cops like this accountable for their crimes and reject this bogus defense that the officer was just following his training, our police departments will continue to be criminal organizations.

"Jesse and Aline are both employed by Chattanooga's Erlanger Medical Center. Aline, who lost her leg to cancer a few years ago, is undergoing chemotherapy, and the possible side effects of her treatment include stroke. Last Wednesday, when Aline's face began to droop and her speech became slurred, Jesse called the Medical Center and informed them of her condition. En route, Jesse treated stop lights as if they were stop signs – pausing at each and then proceeding through them before they turned green.

Daves, who was lurking near one stop light, hit his siren and followed Jesse and Aline to the hospital. When they arrived, Jesse grabbed Aline and, carrying her in his arms, tried to get her into the emergency room. His path was suddenly obstructed by Daves, who ignored the obvious fact that Jesse was dealing with a life-and-death emergency.

For Daves, the really important thing was not to render aid, but rather securing compliance from a Mundane – even if this meant prolonging the encounter while his stroke-afflicted wife suffered permanent brain damage. Aline's symptoms were visible and unmistakable – yet Daves was fixated entirely on enforcing the "cardinal rule" of contemporary law enforcement: Make the Mundane Submit."

This is another one of those passages that just blazes with painful truth. In another incident,

"Martin was speeding in his cruiser in a frantic rush to get nowhere in particular, and had his feelings hurt when the ambulance – which was actually providing a useful service by ferrying Stella Davis to the hospital – didn’t pull over for him. He then compounded his useless rage by imagining that the driver flipped him off.

The ambulance driver, intent on getting the elderly patient the care she needed, hadn’t noticed that the trooper had been behind him with lights flashing. When Trooper Martin zoomed by, he made radio contact and snarled that the driver "should consider checking [his] rear view mirrors."

A little while later, Martin cut off a car driven by a family member of the patient and signaled for the ambulance to pull over. Seeing a woman sitting next to the Trooper, and thinking she might need medical care, White – who was supervising the driver – complied – only to find himself under assault and the subject of a spurious arrest on the way to the hospital.

...

Episodes like this are hardly uncommon. Indeed, it's reasonable to believe that treatment of this kind – if not necessarily this severity – is becoming the rule, rather than the exception, during encounters between police and citizens."

I agree. Every abuse of power we have tolerated from police over the decades has led to greater and greater abuses until today dangerous abuse of power is the norm for all police departments. The only way to fix that is to start prosecuting these criminals in government uniforms and replace prosecutors who won't do that duty. If we prosecute the worst of the worst for couple of years, and I don't mean just the few isolated incidents that get prosecuted every year, police departments will change dramatically for the better.

The G-20 should stop meeting if it's going to change every city they visit into a police state.

By prosecuting a non-crime, federal prosecutors have harmed a family, their former employees, their former business partners and everybody who participated in that market. Real crimes have victims. Any law that criminalizes behavior that doesn't have a victim is an abuse of government power.

WAR:

Obama replaces McChrystal with Petraeus. More.

"But the comments' impact has been magnified by a series of public setbacks for the war effort that has produced a widely held perception in Washington that the war isn't going well: continuing violence in Marjah; the firing by Afghan President Hamid Karzai of two highly regarded Afghan security officials; and a delay in operations in Kandahar."

Damn straight it isn't going too well.

Interesting take on McChrystal:

"McChrystal has fired his media aide. McChrystal is so busy destroying Afghanistan and Pakistan to save them that he almost certainly does not have time to read and discovert that Rolling Stone publishes the truth. He has dealt with CBS, NYT, and all the rest without having his truthful words show up in public. They all protect Obama and the Conspiracy of Incompetence and Corruption in the White House. McChrystal’s aide apparently also does not read Rolling Stone. Fatal error."

That makes more sense than any theory I've come up with.

"IF Obama had any knowledge of the final years of the Vietnam U.S. Catastrophe, he would see McChrystal as Westmoreland on Steroids. He is actually pursuing the Ink Spot, Mass Murder, AID to win hearts and minds, totally corrupt Puppet Regime, and all the rest the U.S. pursued so avidly to produce a catastrophe for everyone in Vietnam."

But this is a poor comparison. Westmoreland was hunting for the big, set-piece battle and resisting calls to implement a strategy of pacification and counter-insurgency. McChrystal is trying to implement pacification and counter-insurgency, and instead of mass murder, his rules of engagement harm Americans to save Afghan civilians. The problem is Americans at war in Afghanistan don't want to die because of restrictive rules of engagement, so it can't work like McChrystal wants it to. It's doomed to fail. He's right about the corrupt puppet regime though.

POLITICS:

The double standard of Bush being blamed for local failures during Katrina and Obama getting free pass on federal failures during Gulf oil spill.

What Obama doesn't understand is the American people can't stand him.

"Barack Obama and his administration are quickly developing a reputation for something that is not sitting well with the American public: Generally defying common sense, statistical evidence or even the rule of law, the Obama administration will ultimately do whatever it wants and justify those actions by whatever means necessary."

Exactly, but Obama's messianic complex leads him to think he's still wildly popular. He surrounds himself with sycophants. He selects who he speaks with. And I have no doubt he thinks he'll be able to keep Democrats in power in November and win a second term in 2012. Reality has no power to dent his narcissism. He's a loon. A dangerous loon.

LOCAL:

After losing nearly 40 percent of its population over the last 40 years, Dayton officials are happy we lost a smaller percentage of population than other rust belt cities. This article wants us to believe that's good news. Yay. Dayton is dying slightly more slowly than other cities. Only government and its accomplice press would consider this good news.

The disconnect between some theories and history.

Magnitude 5.5 earthquake on the Ontario-Quebec border shakes central Ohio. I didn't feel it here. Others felt it in Dayton, but I was probably driving then.

Intel drops support for the dinosaur PCI bus while government continues to bail out dinosaur companies and expand dinosaur bureaucracies.

MISC:

According to The Cult of the Presidency, page 130, President Carter created FEMA by executive fiat, so it's doubly unconstitutional.

The amount of work to be done is infinite.

"There is as much work to be done as there are unfulfilled desires. Since human desires are, for all practical purposes, limitless, the amount of work to be done is also limitless. Therefore, no matter how much work the eager young man completes, he cannot possibly exhaust or even make an appreciable dent in the amount of work to be done."

Therefore, in a natural economy, the only people unemployed would be unemployed by choice. Unemployment would effectively be non-existent. Government interference in the economy creates unemployment.

Free kibbles

SOCIALISM:

Port Authority cops in New York City collect overtime while not working.

ECONOMY:

As sovereign debt collapse nears, gold is returning to its traditional role as money and a store of wealth.

In everyday life we often interchange the terms money and wealth, but Robert Murphy reminds of the huge differences.

TAX AND SPEND:

Democrats concoct a scheme to get around voting on a budget with a trillion dollar deficit before the election.

REGULATION:

This headline is a good reminder that every government interference in the market divides us into winners and losers:

"Auto dealers win while banks lose in Wall Street bill"

This has union influence written all over it.

FEDERAL RESERVE:

Greenspan is at it again.

"[T]hese words of Greenspan’s are profoundly safe things to say right now, and probably stem from Greenspan’s desperate bid to remain relevant while covering up his 19 years of profligacy and horrendously bad forecasting while at the Fed. Now after almost two decades of enabling deficit spending through Federal Reserve policy, Greenspan has decided to lecture the feds on the dangers of deficit spending."

Hypocrite.

The Fed has released a comic book to inform Americans of the evils of inflation, but they obviously forgot to include the fact that the Fed is the source of inflation. Chutzpah indeed. "The Fed has always been at war with inflation." Orwell is laughing at us from the grave.

US governments will issue nearly as much debt this year as all other countries combined.

EDUCATION:

Politicians refuse to either understand or acknowledge that the reason education costs keep rising is government subsidies keep rising. If you want to lower the price of college, cut off the government funds. That will make college affordable for every student is prepared to profit from attending college.

HEALTH CARE:

Record number of doctors refusing to treat Medicare patients because payments are too low. Government drives up costs and reduces quality of care. That's all it can do.

Page 10 of the Primal Blueprint tells us what's really wrong with our health care system:

"Of the one million dollars America spends annually on healhth care, the Centers for Disease contrel and prevention (CDC) estimates that 70 percent of that is spent on lifestyle-related diseases, such as obesity, diabetes, and heart disease."

So the way to cut health care costs is to embrace paleo-style eating habits. (Don't call it diet - people immediately stop listening when you call it that.) Government propaganda about how to eat is responsible for our health care costs.

GLOBAL WARMING:

Climate fraud publishes climate skeptic blacklist as peer reviewed paper. No need to be concerned about the peer review process.

Sea surface temperatures continue to plunge as la Nina takes hold.

500 penguins die of cold. You won't read about that in any alarmist news outlet.

Nancy Pelosi really pushing for tax and trade in wake of Gulf oil spill. Obama couldn't get Obamacare passed, but Pelosi did, so this is very dangerous. I think Pelosi is in charge in Washington.

Green subsidies wreak havoc on German economy.


ENERGY:

Do the long-term effects of oil spills include health problems? I wouldn't be surprised.

Between the summer driving season, the Gulf oil spill and Obama's ban on drilling, gasoline prices are going up. Obama likes that. He wants make us all poorer.

Calling Obama's Gulf drilling ban arbitrary, a judge strikes it down. But Obama will not allow any opportunity to harm Americans pass, so he's appealing. Not only is he appealing, he's going to issue a new ban that will have to be challenged again. Obama refuses to let a little thing like the law keep him from putting Americans out of work and collapsing our economy.

This is a fine time to remember Carter's energy fascism.

WAR:

Afghanistan General McChrystal and his staff harshly criticize Obama appointees for their handling of Afghanistan war. Of course they're infighting. They're fighting a no-win war, and nobody wants to take the blame. Rolling Stone article on McChrystal. You know McChrystal is in big trouble when his strongest ally is Karzai.

"Gen. McChrystal also failed to get direct support from the man who recommended him for command, Defense Secretary Robert Gates. "I believe that Gen. McChrystal made a significant mistake and exercised poor judgment in this case," Mr. Gates said in a statement.

On Capitol Hill, three of the war's biggest supporters in the Senate also declined to offer any backing in a joint statement. Sens. John McCain (R., Ariz.), Joe Lieberman (I., Conn.) and Lindsey Graham (R., S.C.) called comments in the article "inappropriate and inconsistent with the traditional relationship between commander-in-chief and the military."

Gen. McChrystal's strongest show of support came from Kabul, where President Hamid Karzai called him the "best commander" of the war. A spokesman said Mr. Karzai hopes Gen. McChrystal will stay on."

Ouch.

Afghanistan's $900 billion in natural resources will most likely condemn it to a future of constant wars of conquest, empire and civil wars as country after country and faction after faction attempt to plunder those resources for their own gain.

ILLEGAL IMMIGRATION:

I didn't need Chuck Coburn to tell me that Obama was playing politics with border security, but I'm glad he did. The problem is the border security conservatives want is impossible as long as the war on drugs goes on. The economic incentive is so great that drug dealers and the illegal alien coyotes who piggyback off of them will defeat any border security. The greater the security, the higher the price of drugs and the richer, more violent and more capable to defeat the security the drug dealers become.

POLITICS:

The American people are really beginning to get it. They realize that government always wants more of our power and more of our money, and a majority of Americans want to keep more of their power and more of their money. This is a good thing.

Liberals have had enough of Barack Obama.

"They doubted him during the health care debate. They second-guessed his Afghanistan policy. They’ve fretted over his coziness with Wall Street and his comfort with executive power.

But now is the summer of their discontent. From MSNBC to “The Daily Show,” from The Huffington Post to the halls of Congress, movement liberals have had just about enough of Barack Obama."

But all Obama has to do is run over a church with a tank and liberals will once again proclaim he's a god.

"The catalyst was last week’s lackluster Oval Office address, but the real complaints run deeper. Many liberals look at this White House and see a presidency adrift — unable to respond effectively to the crisis in the gulf, incapable of rallying the country to great tasks like the quest for clean energy, and unwilling to do what it takes to jump-start the economy."

There you go. They're complaint is he hasn't been tyrannical enough.

Then Congressman Emanuel tried to trade favors with then Governor Blagojevich. Yawn. They all do it. That's what politics is. Wake me up if you find an honest politician. The press has known this for years. They know Obama traded favors with Blago. Why print it now? I have a feeling this story is leaked by Obama to lay the groundwork for ousting Emanuel.

Dogmatic feminists explode, fearing strong conservative women. They're basically calling leading women conservatives Uncle Toms.

MEDIA:

US military would like to talk to wikileaks founder about video of the Apache massacre he posted. He's smart to stay away from them while building his image.

MISC:

The downside of GPS: Apple wants to sell your location to other companies, and if users don't agree, Apple is blocking their ability to downloads apps from the Apple store. This is going to spark alternative app stores for iPhones.

Old man scam at Home Depot.

Thomas Sowell just noticed the US is headed toward tyranny. Too bad he didn't notice it while Bush was in office or anytime during the decades before. Sure, Obama is taking us that direction at a faster rate, and that's got people scared, but because they don't have principles, it's only the rate that scares them.

Backyard homesteading: how to grow all the food by turning your backyard into a mini-farm.

Apple has already sold 3 million iPads. That's crazy.

Summary Justice is No Justice at All

Summary Justice is No Justice at All

by Mark Luedtke

Who needs that pesky evidence stuff for a conviction anymore? It used to be that police had to shoot radar guns or time drivers past landmarks to prove they were speeding. As easy as it was to abuse these techniques - radar guns intentionally don't snap pictures so they can't be used as evidence  - the system at least acknowledged that due process was necessary for a conviction. The police had to do some work, and defense attorneys could challenge them. But not anymore.

Two years ago officer Christopher Santimarino ticketed Mark Jenney for going 79 miles per hour (mph) in a 60mph zone. Jenney took the case to trial, claiming Santimarino must have clocked a tractor-trailer that was passing him at the time because he had not been speeding. On the stand Santimarino claimed he had estimated Jenney was traveling at 73mph, but testified his radar reported 82mph on direct examination then 83mph on cross-examination. According to Santimarino's own testimony, his estimate was 9 or 10 mph off. Close enough for government work. Santimarino wrote the ticket for 79 miles an hour "to give him a break." I doubt Jenney appreciated it.

Santimarino was unable to produce a certification to operate the radar gun so the court tossed the radar evidence, but instead of throwing out the case, the judge arbitrarily modified the ticket to 70mph - a number he pulled out of his seat - undercutting Santimarino's visual estimate. The judge wouldn't take Santimarino's word he could use a radar gun but did accept his inaccurate speed estimate. An appeals court upheld the conviction, so Jenney appealed to the Ohio Supreme Court. It concluded, "Given Santimarino’s training, OPOTA certification, and experience in visually estimating vehicle speed, his estimation that Jenney was traveling at 70 miles per hour was sufficient to support a conviction for driving over the posted speed limit of 60 miles per hour in violation of R.C. 4511.21(D)." But Santimarino didn't estimate 70mph; a judge invented that number.

Clearly justice was not the goal in this case, and it's pretty easy to figure out what was. Money. The police, the prosecutors, and judges up to and including Supreme Court justices all get paid by the same people: taxpayers. They're all on the same team confiscating money from us. We've long known that traffic tickets were about raising revenue, never about safety, and right now, there's no money for government. Ohio state government projects a $436 million shortfall for 2011 and a $3 billion shortfall for 2010, 2011, and 2012. Judges need to eat like everybody else. This decision is about raising revenue by arbitrary confiscation.

Think about it. It costs money to train police officers on radar. It costs money to buy the equipment. It costs money to have multiple officers patrol a speed zone with one operating radar and others picking up speeders. All those costs are gone now. Police departments say they're going to continue using radar - what else would you expect them to say? - but that's a cover. Beat cops can and will sit in donut shops and pick out passing cars to ticket. The accomplice press will dutifully cover it up. No matter how lawfully you were driving, if a cop gives you a ticket, you're guilty. Case closed. Due process is history. Summary judgment rules. Ticket quotas will rise. Yes, Virginia, there are ticket quotas. I don't envy anybody dating a cop's ex-girlfriend.

But this problem is far bigger than cops using this law to carry out personal vendettas and write more tickets because power corrupts, and this ruling gives cops arbitrary power. Police used to troll for vehicles they thought might have drugs or alcohol in them. Working in a local defense attorney's office, I saw this over and over. The police see an old, beat-up car with young black men in it, and they ride its bumper, trying to intimidate the driver into making a mistake like speeding or failing to signal. When the driver makes a mistake, they pull the car over then get the driver out of the car and search him, pretending it's for their own safety. It's called a Terry stop, but instead of a pat-down with the back of the hand for weapons as required by law, it's typically an unconstitutional search for drugs. Some officers go further and search the car even though they have no permission or probable cause. Unfortunately we only know about the victims who possessed drugs because they end up in the court system, and nobody cares about evil drug users. The victims who didn't possess drugs are invisible.

Because police cars have cameras and the cops can't disable them all the time without being obviously corrupt, lawful driving could protect a citizen from this abuse of power. Not any more. Though the system is rigged in favor of the police, defense attorneys could challenge the pretext for the stop and the other abuses. The judge almost always defers to his police teammates, sanctioning the abuse no matter how obvious (if you don't believe me, look up the records yourself), but a victim of the fraudulent Terry stop occasionally won in court. Not any more. Thanks to this ruling, police don't have to bother with the charade. A police officer can pull over any car he wants and start the abuse by claiming it was speeding whether it was or not. Good driving no longer offers protection against police lying in wait outside bars either.

This ruling is a tremendous step backwards for individual rights. Fortunately enough people are outraged that state representatives claim to want to fix it. But they're on the same team, paid by confiscation, so don't count on it.

Free kibbles

FREEDOM OF SPEECH:

Joe Lieberman says we shouldn't worry about giving the president the power to shut down the internet because the president would never do if it wasn't necessary and China already has that power. I guess he'll advocate giving the president power run over freedom protesters with tanks on the same grounds.

Supreme Court upholds law criminalizing even speech with organizations the government labels terrorist. I'm not talking about conspiring with terrorists to perform attacks, which should be criminal...

"The primary plaintiff in the case, retired U.S. administrative law judge Ralph Fertig, is a civil rights activist and college professor who said he sought to instruct the PKK in ways to advance its goals through the peaceful use of international law."

How could it be illegal to try and convince terrorists to pursue their goals peacefully? That's nuts.

"While some terrorist groups may conduct both peaceful and violent activities, Congress found that they may be "so tainted by their criminal conduct that any contribution to such an organization facilitates their conduct," [Chief Justice Roberts] wrote, joined by other conservatives and liberal Justice John Paul Stevens.

When considering national security and foreign-relations questions, courts should give great weight to such judgments by Congress and the executive branch, he wrote."

Where does the First Amendment say that it can be ignored if the Congress and the president says so? I must have missed that clause. Where does the Constitution say anywhere that it can be ignored if Congress and the president say so?

SOCIALISM:

Obama's Labor Sec. wants to dictate wages that he considers fair for everybody in America including illegal immigrants.

Socialism always ends this way.

"The two government-created creatures to spur home ownership have turned into the largest homeowners in the U.S. of A. according to the New York Times. The GSEs combined portfolios were close to 164,000 at the end of March, a quarter where the entities took ownership of a home every 90 seconds.

“Our business is the American dream of home ownership,” Fannie Mae declared in its mission statement, and in 2001 the company set a target of helping to create six million new homeowners by 2014. Now Fannie is spending $10 million a month just to mow its lawns.

The taxpayers have propped up the two GSEs to the tune of $146 billion, the stocks of the entities were just de-listed from the NYSE and are now selling for pennies, but back in the day a few on Capitol Hill were defending Fannie CEO Franklin Raines and his “outstanding leadership.” Raines told congress that mortgage loans were “riskless.”"

There's no such thing as good socialism. Government is socialism.

ECONOMY:

The world is switching to a gold economy despite the will of governments.

TAX AND SPEND:

Having compassion for the poor is a good thing. The policies we allow government to enact to supposedly help the poor are the problem. If you want help the poor, help a poor person find a job. Don't give them a handout.

Taxes have raised the price of a pack of cigarettes to $11 a pack in New York City. You know they have a black market in cigarettes that's becoming more violent and more powerful by the day.

Instead of making a do not pay list to stop government from writing checks to dead people, we should just take away government's power to hand out checks.

GLOBAL WARMING:

This weird article paints the picture (literally - look at the picture) that the sun is super-active when in fact, it's unusually quiet as solar cycle 24 has been for unusually long.

ENERGY:

It can't be good for Obama and Democrats when accomplice press member Reuters complains about needless bureaucracy holding up the Gulf spill cleanup. Needless bureaucracy is redundant.

Chemical dispersants and burning oil on the sea kill wildlife too, but not as much.

POLICE STATE:

Maryland cops arrest another citizen for recording the police.

"The city of Annapolis, Maryland recently received a Homeland Security grant for 20 new surveillance cameras in the downtown area. The city of Baltimore already has nearly 500. According to the watchdog site PhotoEnforced, the state of Maryland has at least 375 red light cameras and 80 speed cameras. Your government is watching you, Marylanders. But don't think for a second that it's going to tolerate you watching back.

On Saturday, Yvonne Nicole Shaw, 27, was arrested by sheriff's deputies in Lexington Park, Maryland. According to the Southern Maryland News, Shaw was cuffed and booked for recording deputies who had come to an apartment complex in response to a noise complaint. Sheriff's Cpl. Patrick Handy's report explained that Shaw was standing about 12 feet from him, and that Shaw "did admit to recording our encounter on her cell phone for the purpose of trying to show the police are harassing people.""

There you have it. Anybody recording cops to show they harass people is subject to arrest, prosecution and imprisonment. How's that "land of the free" stuff working out for you?

WAR:

There is no good way to fight the Afghan war. We won that war by ousting al Qaeda eight years ago, and there's no way to win anything else. The only smart thing to do is come home so Americans, our allies and the Afghans won't keep dying.

Because our wars in the Middle East create terrorists faster than we can overcome them and because we've made al Qaeda the heroes of 10s of millions of Muslims, maybe hundreds of millions, they probably will successfully launch a huge attack against the US soon. Then they'll do it again. And again. There used to be thousands of al Qaeda. Now there are tens of thousands. Soon there will be hundreds of thousands. If we don't stop killing Middle Eastern Muslims, there will be millions of al Qaeda soon. Al Qaeda will keep attacking the US until we quit waging war in the Middle East and start engaging Middle Eastern Muslims in a mutually beneficial system of voluntary exchange that will transform mainstream Muslims into allies who will turn on al Qaeda and stop them from attacking us.

The bald guy arrested for the Times Square fake bomb attempt even though the guy caught on surveillance cameras isn't bald pleads guilty and calls the attack "a war". Isn't that convenient? And isn't it really convenient that this terrorist who is so dead set on war against America built a bomb that was designed to make a lot of noise, smoke a lot, but not blow up?

"On May 1, street vendors spotted the smoking vehicle almost immediately and notified the New York Police Department, which cleared the area. After firefighters doused the flames, the search began for whoever had left the vehicle. It was quickly traced to Shahzad.

“In this case, the speed with which they broke the case because of the terrorist overtones was breathtaking,” says Randy Mastro, former deputy mayor under Rudolph Giuliani and now co-chair of Gibson Dunn & Crutcher’s Litigation & Crisis Management Group in New York. “They actually identified him faster than his arrest because they wanted to track him to figure out if he had any accomplices.”"

The speed with which government agents broke this case is super-convenient too.

"After his arrest, Shahzad waived his Miranda rights – the right to have an attorney present during questioning. Instead, he spent weeks talking to federal investigators before getting a lawyer."

Gosh. Isn't it lucky this guy is the perfect, incompetent, guilty terrorist who makes life so easy for government agents? Government agents couldn't have captured a more convenient terrorist if they had created one themselves. Obama is so great at defending America.

In today's reminder that central planning is doomed to fail in all things comes a report that the US is funding corrupt Afghan politicians, warlords and even the Taliban in order to supply US troops in Afghanistan.

"The U.S. military is funding a massive protection racket in Afghanistan, indirectly paying tens of millions of dollars to warlords, corrupt public officials and the Taliban to ensure safe passage of its supply convoys throughout the country, according to congressional investigators.

The security arrangements, part of a $2.16 billion transport contract, violate laws on the use of private contractors, as well as Defense Department regulations, and "dramatically undermine" larger U.S. objectives of curtailing corruption and strengthening effective governance in Afghanistan, a report released late Monday said."

Get our troops out of there before anybody else gets killed in this doomed to fail war.

POLITICS:

President Obama took the most money from BP of any candidate in the last 20 years. He's handed out more of our money to big corporations than any president in history. Democrats take more money from corporations than Republicans. But Democrats are trying to paint Republicans as the patron of big business.

Obama is worse than Jimmy Carter. Jimmy Carter didn't nationalize our health care system and steal trillions from us.

This conservative vision of "excellent" central planning is as frightening as the liberal version. There's no such thing as good government. Government as we know it begins with taking money from people by force. Government begins with theft. It's inherently corrupt.

Sarah Palin is the most effective politician the Republicans have seen since Reagan. As conventional has her views are, she's carved out a niche as a maverick, and with the exception of Ron Paul, she's the only Republican who boldly challenges Obama and the Democrats. The rest constantly show they're just Democrats-lite.

Now that I've bought a Sony e-reader, Amazon and Barnes and Noble have slashed prices of the Kindle and Nook respectively. Sometimes I hate being such a trend setter.

Obama to boot Rahm Emanuel because Emanuel isn't enough of an ideological leftist and too prone to compromise. You think I'm joking?

"Differences in style between the cerebral Mr. Obama and the confrontational Mr. Emanuel are said to have played a role. In addition, Mr. Emanuel is reported to be frustrated at the inability of the White House to "knock heads together" to fashion political compromises.

Mr. Obama sent a signal by choosing the respected but hard-charging member of the Congressional leadership almost immediately after his 2008 victory to become his top aide. Mr. Emanuel had a reputation as a tough partisan but was also known to exhibit impatience with left-wing members of his party who have overly ambitious ideological agendas."

You can't make this stuff up.

Engineers know that Twitter is stupid except when it's the only way for Iranians who are being shot at and beaten to communicate to the outside world. Why doesn't everybody else? Twitter should be treated like an emergency channel, not an everyday communication tool.