Police State

Facebook is asking users to snitch on friends who are not using their real names. The CIA is getting its money's worth out of Facebook.

How the federal government turned an Amish feud into a federal police state action, and now 15 Amish men face prison time for an act resembling a college prank: shaving hair and beards.

"The government also had to cite an "interstate nexus" to justify federal prosecution. You might think that would be a challenge, since all of these crimes occurred within a single state. But hey, look, Dettelbach says: The "Wahl battery-operated hair clippers" used in the assaults "were purchased at Walmart and had travelled in and affected interstate commerce in that they were manufactured in Dover, Delaware.""

It would be funny if it wasn't so destructive.

War

After all appeals have been settled, Italy convicted 21 CIA agents of kidnapping in five year old case.

Right to Keep and Bear Arms

A widespread gun ban in Australia has escalated crime, just like a rational person would predict.

Education

University of Auburn tyrants force student to remove a Ron Paul sign from his dorm room window, ostensibly for safety reasons, but allowed other students to put signs for other candidates in their windows. This is a good reminder that since government took over schools, they now operate for the benefit of our rulers, not the students.

Politics

Here's a good example of how politics, by its very nature, produces incompetence even the priorities of the people at the top were to do a good job.

"The newly hired director for Massport, the bureaucracy that runs Boston’s Logan Airport, frankly admits, “I’m obviously not an expert in aviation…” So why did Massport’s board choose him? There are probably many reasons, including favors owed and personal ties, but the one for public consumption is “He’s a guy that cares about public service.”
Yep, I kid you not. Thomas Glynn has spent most of his life slurping at the public trough: he was the “general manager of the MBTA, and US deputy labor secretary in the Clinton administration.” Which allows Massport’s board to gush, “He has a tremendous track record, whether it’s … in labor or in transportation. And so while he’s being modest about maybe not being an expert on flying a plane, it’s not why we hired him. We hired him because he’s a tremendous leader and public servant. And what the board expects and the governor expects is a leader to take what we believe is a good agency”"

It's the same reason a political hack like Leon Panetta because head of the CIA then Secretary of Defense. And these people do not put doing a good job at the top of their priority list. They put the political aspirations of themselves and the bosses at the top of the list.

Global Warming and Energy

James Hansen and the alarmists have latched onto this summer's record arctic ice melt to scare people. At the same time, they're ignoring the record antarctic ice extent.

Socialism

Only the government could build a car as bad as the Chevy Volt.

"Each Volt – which has an MSRP sticker price of $39,145 -  costs GM about $89,000 to build. So GM is losing – roughly – $50,000 per car. That’s a helluva way to do business. It might make more sense just to build a fire with all that money. At least some heat – as opposed to hot air – could be gotten out of it.
Even with the existing $7,500 tax credit and sweetheart lease offers as low as $199 per month designed to “move product,” not much product has been moving. As of mid-September, year-to-date Volt “sales” have yet to reach 14,000 – just a bit shy of the projected 40,000 GM anticipated."

And we're paying for it.

Local

Lane closures on I-75 through Moraine for the next week.

Economy

Here's a description of how bad our economy is right now.

"Consumers simply cannot make ends meet. Inflation-adjusted, or real, median household income declined for the fourth-straight year, plunging to its lowest level since 1995. Deflated by the CPI-U, the 2011 reading actually stood below levels seen in the late-1960s and early-1970s."

Think about how much worse it's going to be when the crash hits. And here's a prediction things will get worse than during the Great Depression. Bold mine.

"At the same time, despite the ongoing nature of the economic and systemic-solvency crises, and the effects of the 2008 financial panic, income dispersion – the movement of income away from the middle towards both high- and low-level extremes – has hit a record high, instead of moderating, as might be expected during periods of financial distress. Extremes in income dispersion usually foreshadow financial-market and economic calamities. With the current circumstance at a record extreme, and well above levels estimated to have prevailed before the 1929 stock-market crash and the Great Depression, increasingly difficult times are likely for the next several years."

Get ready for the pain.

Thomas Sowell reminds us of the role Bill Clinton's housing policies played in creating the housing boom and bust.

Misc

Airplane voted funniest move ever. It's the funniest I ever saw.

War

Claim that Iran is cyber-attacking US banks. That's what happens when the US government cyber-attacks Iran.

"NBC says a group of alleged Middle East hackers has claimed responsibility in a statement posted on Pastebin, saying the attacks were in retaliation for the YouTube video mocking the prophet Mohammed. But a source said that was just "a cover" for the Iranian government."

That video is a cover for a lot of things.

Newly released documents show that the Bush administration was skeptical of intelligence reports warning of the 9/11 attacks.

Media

When it comes to playing audio damaging to Obama, MSNBC refused because it claims the clip hadn't been authenticated. As if that ever stopped them from playing things damaging to Republicans.

Foreign Policy

A week after the attack on the Libyan consulate, the Obama administration finally admits it was a terrorist attack.

Obama says terrorists used the protests over the video as a pretext for the terrorist attack. The only problem is that there were no protests at the time. The consulate's landlord (why does the US consulate have a landlord?) says there was no protest before the attack. A Libyan guard says there was no protest before the attack.

"Four other contracted guards, and three members of Libya's 17th of February Brigade, a group that was formed at the start of the uprising that ousted Libya's former military dictator, Col. Muammar Gaddafi, and integrated into the Libyan security forces, made up the security force protecting the outer perimeter of the consulate grounds; along with the eyewitness. According to this witness, that meant that the total security team guarding the perimeter of the compound were eight guards."

Eight to fight off 125 attackers.

Global Warming and Energy

Obama's war on coal puts another 1,200 people out of work.

Regulation

A new study claims that the cost of regulations added by Obama is $488 billion.

More on the regulatory burden:

"Last week, 1,571 new pages of regulations were published in the 2012 Federal Register, bringing the total for this year to more than 55,300 pages, according to the Competitive Enterprise Institute."

Ouch.

Politics

The God and Jerusalem fiasco at the DNC exposed the myth of US democracy.

"The elaborate farce surrounding the platform “debate” underscores the great distance between political actors and those in the audience, the voters, who are increasingly just observers of a process — a narrative — over which they have no control. The narrative is being written for them, as it appears on the teleprompter, and hacks like Villaraigosa just have to mouth the required phrases, all the while exercising their vaunted “prerogatives” to the hilt.
If every country gets the ruling class it deserves, as a roughly accurate reflection of the national ethos, then we are saddled with one that rivals the Bourbons in their arrogance, the Stalinists in their instincts, and the late Roman aristocracy in their decadence and hubris. That Villaraigosa moment was a close up snapshot of American “democracy,” which clearly showed the brazen effrontery of our rulers in action."

Nicely said.

Even the New York Times recognizes that Obama is using the power of the presidency to buy votes.

War

One of the major, unspoken impetuses for war is that women love warriors. God forbid we mention the sexual motivations for war.

"In politics we think we do things for reasons. We don’t, except in the details. We do as we do because of what we are. We have wars because having wars is what men do. Reasons are only aftermarket appendages."

In other words, rulers, not just ours, send young men to war because they can. Chimpanzees do the same. It's an instinct that must be overcome, but rarely is.

"Today the United States is the planet’s major predator, in historical company with Halter, Mao, Stalin, the British empire, Napoleon the French Hitler, the Hapsburgs, Ottomans, the Plantagenets, various Persians, thousands of men leading thousands of armies, all butchering and burning and raping and looting. It is what men do.
We are still at it. We think we have reasons: We are combating terror, or protecting our allies from evil, or disseminating democracy. No, actually. We are doing what is built into our nature. Empires expand like bubbles, collapse like bubbles, fight the rising new empires. The losses in lives and unhappiness and treasure far exceed anything gained, which is irrelevant. We fight because it is a biological imperative. We cannot not fight."

Who you calling we, Kemosabi? You took a good premise and blew it on the rocks of collectivism. Our rulers call young people to war in order to enrich themselves. They play patriotic games on the young people. Groups don't go to war. Countries don't go to war. Collectives don't go to war. Individuals go to war, and to get back to the focus of the article, rulers succumb to their own instincts and prey on the instincts of others to wage war. I do like the shots at Steelers fans. I don't want to discount the animal instinct to join the crowd, but I won't accept that as an excuse for aggression, violence and murder.

Federal Reserve

Sometimes I hate keeping up with the new. This debate is one of those times. The question is, will the US default or not? The answer is yes, but will it be outright or monetarily. That's like debating whether we'll die from starvation or being murdered. It's not like we care because we're all going to suffer then die. Here's the description of how government decivilizes us including how our government will decivilize us:

"The expansion of the monetary base can go on until such time as commercial banks monetize all of the reserves on their books. Prices then rise to such levels that transactions no longer take place in the official currency unit. The division of labor contracts. The output of capital and labor falls. At some point, people adopt other currency units. They no longer cooperate with each other by means of the hyperinflated currency."

Welcome back to barter. Our government will reduce us to prehistoric, barter exchange.

"No nation can long pursue a policy of hyperinflation. It destroys the currency and destroys the division of labor. The result is starvation. The policy of hyperinflation ends before this phase. Members of society shift to other forms of money."

Those left alive.

"This is why the policy of hyperinflation is useless in dealing with the 75-year obligations of the federal government to support old people through Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, and federal pensions. These obligations are inter-generational. Hyperinflation lasts for months, not decades. When the government ends its policy of hyperinflation, it finds that it is still saddled with these obligations."

So it will default. It has no choice.

I've pointed out several times that this new bought of money printing by the Fed is designed to steal the last bits of wealth we controlled, but don't take my word for it. Take it from this guy:

"Last week was a momentous one when the financial world passed the point of no return. Right after a German court cleared the way for massive European QE to get underway, steamrollering opposition from German politicians and the German public in the process, the Fed announced not just QE3, which was expected, but open-ended and unlimited QE and suppression of interest rates over a longer timeframe. The Fed has declared open warfare not just against the dollar and savers in general, but against the entire American middle and lower classes, who will be progressively stripped of their assets and impoverished, the better to serve the interests of the banking class and the elites at large. "

As bad as you think it might be, it's going to be worse. We're screwed. As I pointed out yesterday:

"It is interesting that the Fed fired its biggest guns right after the German courts cleared the way for Europe to do QE on a grand scale in a similar manner. This means that the dollar and euro are going to go down in value pretty much in lockstep, so we are going to have to take this into account when looking at dollar index charts, which have a very heavy euro weighting, as going forward the dollar index chart may partially mask the ensuing dollar collapse. This brings us to another point – is the rest of the world going to stand by and watch and do nothing as the dollar accelerates into a downward slide, which will have the advantage for the US of devaluing its huge debts in real terms and increasing its competitive advantage re exports? – the answer to that is no – everybody is going to be in on the game and the fiat race to the bottom will intensify fuelling accelerating global inflation even as economies shrivel. "

Buy gold, food and more gold and food.

Peter Schiff exposes the moral and economic bankruptcy of Bernanke's open-ended money printing. He's going to steal every last dime from every American saver.

"Fortunately, the crude limitations of the Fed's only policy tool have become more apparent to the markets. If you must stick with the nautical metaphors, QE3 has sunk before it has even left port. The move was explicitly designed to push down long-term interest rates, but interest rates spiked significantly in the immediate aftermath of the announcement. Traders realize that an open-ended commitment to buying bonds means that inflation and dollar weakness will likely destroy any nominal gains in the bonds themselves. To underscore this point, the Fed announcement also caused a sharp selloff in Treasuries and the dollar and a strong rally in commodities, especially precious metals."

Bernanke's announcement of unlimited QE3 backfired already. We're so screwed.

Freedom of Speech

The frightening attack on freedom of speech regarding Kate Middleton's topless photos. Freedom of speech doesn't go away just because she's the princess. If she wants to keep her boobs private, she should keep her top on when exposed to the public.

Right to Keep and Bear Arms

Whenever I read a headline like this:

"ATF ripped over Fast and Furious"

I know the article describes a whitewash. This headline guarantees nobody lost their job. It's a charade. If somebody lost their job, it that would be hidden on page 12 in the small print that nobody reads. This headline is intended to fool people into believing somebody paid a price and something change. That's a lie.

"The 471-page report is likely to be the most thorough and objective review of Fast and Furious, in which Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives agents followed instructions to let drug cartel middlemen purchase and smuggle guns to Mexico - a tactic widely known as "gun walking.""

The 471 pages piles on the charade. All that is intended to insure no reporter reads the report. It's a farce. The vast majority of news outlets and reports are already in the bag, protecting the government about this story, and this 471 page report shows how bureaucracy overwhelms the last vestiges of honesty in reporting. No reporter has the time to read that crap because nobody will pay a reporter to read it.