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The supreme ruler of Iran says Obama hasn't appeased him enough yet and demands the US change policy to suit Iran. I'm sure Obama will oblige. The Iranians are playing Obama like a violin.

AG Holder puts an end to federal raids on medical marijuana distributors. That's a tiny step in the right direction for the nation, but huge for the victims of these raids.

It just struck me that the Kelo decision is a gross extension of welfare. Instead of just taking part of people's income to give to others in general, it takes houses and land from people and gives it to specific individuals or companies.

Email to Malou Innocent from Cato regarding her accusations that Dick Cheney supports torture:

Can you produce a quote from Cheney or a document signed by Cheney where he endorses "electric shock, near-asphyxiation, prisoners putting the urine and feces of other people on themselves, mock executions, and other forms of humiliating and degrading treatment"? If Cheney had ever endorsed those techniques, you can bet it would have been front page news for years, and I've never seen such a document or quote.

If you can't produce such a thing, you should publish a tremendous apology to Cheney and all of America. We have so much to criticize Bush and Cheney for including, as you correctly point out, invading Iraq, especially before finishing the job in Afghanistan, and for holding criminals as enemy combatants and subjecting them to harsh interrogation techniques, but irresponsibly inaccurate accusations that Cheney or anybody else in the Bush administration supported the techniques you mention above, especially by a politically independent scholar, is damaging to the country by providing ammunition for the terrorists to use against us.

I hope she responds.

It turns out that corrupt Democrat tax cheat Charlie Rangel has close ties with AIG, and before sponsoring legislation to tax AIG's bonuses, argued against such a tax. Rangel's reversal lends credence to the theory that Democrats are using the AIG bonuses to mask their real agenda - taxing income above $250,000 at 90 percent. Shocker.

I think Boortz is off base with the bill of attainder argument regarding the AIG bonuses. If the bill had named AIG, I think he would have an argument. But this is a general tax on any bonuses for people who earned over $250,000 working for companies that received TARP funds. The bill goes a lot further than a simple attack on AIG employees. I suspect the ex post facto clause of the Constitution will win out, and this tax will only apply to bonuses paid after the bill becomes law, if it becomes law. The Senate is supposed to be the more deliberate body to offset the intemperate actions of the House. It might well work out that way on this issue. A $7,500 tax credit would might make hybrids much more popular, but that's another redistribution of wealth. I don't want to pay for somebody else to buy a hybrid.

Walmart pays out $2 billion in bonuses, benefits and profit sharing to hourly employees. Walmart is so evil. Union workers are bankrupting their companies, driving themselves out of jobs, but Walmart keeps growing and sharing its profits with employees. Naturally Democrats prefer having more unions drive more companies out of business because it gives them an excuse to expand welfare and government power.

13 firms receiving bailout money owe back taxes, but the tax-cheating Democrats can't make an issue of it.

Anybody who watched the campaign new Obama was a poor communicator. He's fine reader, but it's not the same thing.

Mises scholar explains the fundamental flaw of socialized medicine is that medical equipment is always a financial loss because it can never be used to bring in money. Therefore socialized medicine systems don't buy enough equipment. That's why Natasha Richardson had to be flown from Montreal to New York for treatment. That's why places with socialized medicine look like antique health care centers. Without price signals, managers can't manage their health care systems.

According to a guy on the Wall Street Journal Report, AIG shareholders are beginning to think they would have been better off in bankruptcy. The silver lining of all this government mismanagement of companies is no sane company will ever ask for a federal bailout again. Anything's better than having Washington aristocrats having that much power over your lives.

National standards for schools would become just another way for government aristocrats to dumb down our already failing education system.

Reason interviews John Stossel. He has interesting comments on media bias.

Obama's Audacity of Hope, revised. Funny.

Reason says that the attack on tax havens signals an end to financial privacy. This is chilling. It's also an attack on national soverienty. We will all be sorry the Swiss caved.

However, basic economic theory tells us that if a country wants to reduce tax avoidance and evasion, all it has to do is lower its own tax rates and simplify its tax code. These are far more effective tools for thwarting tax evasion and reducing capital flight than tax harmonization across a number of countries. European governments should give tax reform a try instead of trying to force other nations to adopt a single, uniform system.

Like that's going to happen.

Reason defends short selling. Artificially inflated markets will fall with or without short sellers, but short selling is one of the great regulating forces of the market that limits artificially inflated markets in the first place.

Michael Barone says card check is good for unions bad for America.

This guys says the tax code mustn't be used as a weapon. What does he think a progress income tax is? At what tax rate does a progress income tax become weapon against the wealthy? What does he think a regressive payroll taxes are? Why should some people pay the tax on all their income but not others? The only tax that isn't a weapon is a tax that's exactly same for everybody. Like the FairTax.

The UN wants the US (mostly) to fund a $750 billion green new deal. Obama will probably jump all over this way to spend money we don't have.

Illegal immigrant raids lead to higher employment and wages for American workers. Duh.

Supposed photo of then KGB agent Vladimir Putin posing as tourist with Ronald Reagan.

I wouldn't have expected the world's oldest dog to be a dachsund.

Chavez grabs more power by having military seize Venezuelan air and sea ports.

Obama's steps up his attacks on business and prosperity by proposing federal caps on executive pay for all banks and Wall Street firms, and possibly more firms. Obama may be dumb, but his advisers know this will drive the top talent away from these firms, weakening our financial industry, and therefore weakening the US. And they have certainly explained this to Obama. We've had terrible presidents like FDR and Carter who seriously damaged the country, but Obama is the first president I'm aware of who intentionally is harming America. Thanks to Bush's incompetence and liberals, we've elected an amoral president who wants to do us harm and is succeeding at it. Even Democrats are going to turn on Obama quickly.

The executives of all the companies receiving TARP funds criticize limits on bonuses. What a shocker. If those bonuses didn't affect them, you can bet they wouldn't say a word. I'm against the bonus restrictions because they hurt the companies and the country, not because I'm getting one. The financial companies are attacking back because they know this kind of thing will destroy their companies. Imagine what they'll say when Obama announces his salary caps. This is getting ugly and getting ugly fast.

Senior executives on both sides of the Atlantic on Friday warned of an exodus of talent from some of the biggest names in US finance, saying the “anti-American” measures smacked of “a McCarthy witch-hunt” that would send the country “back to the stone age”.

As long as the liberals in both parties were slowly destroying the country, the American people slept through it. They're not sleeping through Obama's blitzkrieg to destroy it. This is significantly different than McCarthyism. The Soviet spies were real and McCarthy was trying to help the country by ferreting them out. Obama is trying to destroy America.

Dollar posts largest weekly drop since 1985. Inflation is here. Growth is nowhere in sight. Thanks Bernanke. It's interesting to see that our socialists in charge are dumber than Norway's socialists in charge.

EU resists US calls for more government spending. The EU socialists are smarter than our socialists too.

You can't help but ask if this is the end of the US as we know it, but I still hold hope the great libertarian mainstream of America will wake up and force government to get off our backs.

The AIG bonus firestorm is a diversion from real issues , but it puts the ghastly political classes who make U.S. law on display for what they are: ageing self-serving demagogues who have spent decades warping the U.S. political system for their own ends. We see the system up close, law-making that is riddled with slapdash, incompetence and gamesmanship.

I couldn't have said it better myself.

Reform of health care, environmental policy, education, energy, banking, regulation — every nook and cranny of the U.S. economy has been put on alert for major change. Expansion of government spending, plunging the U.S. into unprecedented deficits, is without parallel. In economic policy, through regulation and control of energy output, financial services and monetary expansion, the U.S. government has embarked on a fundamental reshaping of America. It is designed, in short, to bring on the end of America.

It's good to know I'm not the only one who recognizes the leaders in Washington are intentionally destroying America.

14 year old boy didn't want to do his health homework assignment which was to go buy condoms, bring them to school, then compete in a race to place one on a wooden penis. This is what liberals have school children do when government runs schools.

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Russia confirms contract to sell Iran surface to air missiles.

How can you ban a chaplain from using the words "God" and "Lord". What do they think a chaplain is?

US budget deficit revised up to $1.8 trillion, but it's going to go a lot higher than that. CBO says Obama's budge would create a deficit averaging $1 trillion for 10 years. Obama is certifiable. I hope everybody who voted for him is willing to pay the extra for the rest of us who didn't.

Obama seeks new beginning with Iran. I have an idea for a new beginning. How about Iran apologize for seizing our embassy and for threatening to destroy Israel. It appears Obama will be the greatest terrorist appeaser in history. Anybody want to bet how that works out for us? Maybe Obama's hoping for a terrorist attack to give him a second term after he destroys our economy.

Writing back to me about my opposition to card check, Ohio Senator Brown wrote, "More than half of U.S. workers – nearly 60 million – say they want to join a union." That's not true. I recently posted a link reporting that only 9 percent of non-union workers want to join a union. Where is Sherrod Brown coming up with that absurd claim? I wonder if it comes from the 47 percent of union workers who think other workers want to a union.

Ben Bernanke is not satisfied with the amount of power he has to destroy our economy, which he's doing a great job at. He wants more regulations on banks so he can do even more damage.

I know getting stuff into space is dangerous, complicated and expensive, but taking 10 years to finally get the space station up to full power is astronomically slow. It took less time for NASA to send multiple manned missions to the moon. NASA has become just another gigantic, inefficient government bureaucracy. Space development would go much faster if NASA got out of the way.

Fermilab discovered a new, untheorized particle. Theoretical physicists don't know as much as they think they know.

Great essay explains that the ongoing circus of government aristocrats over their clumsy attempts to centrally plan our economy should remind us why the Constitution grants only very specific, severely limited power to government and we should never give bozos like Bush, Obama, Paulson, Geithner, Greenspan, Bernanke, Pelosi, Reid, Dodd and Frank any power over our lives or our economy.

These days, every politician assumes that because he has a driver's license and an ATM card, he must have all the necessary skills to run an automaker and operate a bank.

Are we sure any of them drive themselves or even use ATMs?

Politicians were shocked when Northern Trust hosted a client event featuring the band Earth, Wind and Fire. House Banking Committee Chairman Barney Frank and 17 other Democrats demanded that it "immediately return to the federal government the equivalent of what Northern Trust frittered away on these lavish events."

But Northern Trust didn't ask for federal help—it was conscripted into the bailout. It happens to be managing its money well enough to be making a profit and repaying the taxpayers.

And did anyone notice that after Earth, Wind and Fire did the Northern Trust gig, it performed at a White House dinner? Why is it OK for President Barack Obama to host "lavish events" that are financed by taxpayers but outrageous for a bank to use mostly private funds to entertain valued customers?

Don't Earth, Wind and Fire contribute to the economy?

Congress' approach [to AIG bonuses] brings to mind the sardonic workplace sign: "The floggings will continue until morale improves."

Government is force. It can never be anything but force.

Larry Kudlow thinks Democrats may be using this AIG bonus fiasco to further their agenda by permanently imposing punishing taxes on the wealthy. He thinks it isn't an accident that the $250,000 number is identical to the number Obama campaigned on. Apparently Sec. Geithner of all people has proposed a far simpler and less destructive alternative to recouping these bonuses for taxpayers, but Congress wants it 90 percent tax rate back.

Charles Krauthammer can't seem grasp that there's nothing trivial about incompetent, corrupt government. It's not all about dollar figures. It's about whatever government disaster wakes the American people up. Let's hope Geithner and Dodd are both forced to resign over this. Let's hope AIG is allowed to go bankrupt because of this. Let's hope government will never interfere in our economy again because of this.

Maybe Dodd will finally pay the piper in 2010.

Mark Levin writes Liberty and Tyranny: A Conservative Manifesto. I'm looking forward to reading this. I think I'll look for it at the library instead of lining Levin's pockets. ;) It'll be interesting to see if Levin rejects the tremendous failures of Republicans over the last 8 years, and if so, why did he wait to write this book now instead of while Bush was in office? It's twisted that no leading conservative other than Pat Buchanan had the guts to stand up to Bush.

Cato previews a study from the Journal of School Choice that reviews all the studies comparing government schools to private and free market schools, and the results overwhelmingly show that free market schools perform the highest, followed closely by private schools, trailed abysmally by government schools.

I love to read about US heroes.

Russian planes buzzing US ships.

This story about girls using animal drugs to induce abortions sounds like a legend to me. This is all second hand information.

AG Holder says Obama may release some Guantanamo detainees into the US. Every American who risked his or her life to fight terrorists should stand up and demand that Obama resign. I hope there's a firestorm of outrage over this, but our military is too disciplined to complain. But if this happens, look for significant numbers of military personal to change careers. It would be hard to field a military after that.

Charles Manson looks as insane as ever.

British government ignores D-day anniversary and refuses to pay for veterans to return there.

Interactive map of Mexican drug war.

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Obama is planning a power grab to nationalize companies. I'm sure all the liberals who have railed against executive power grabs for the last 8 years will condemn Obama just as they stridently as they condemned George Bush.

Arnold Schwarzenegger, the man conservatives want to change the Constitution for so he can run for president, is one of Obama's biggest allies. And he's done a fabulous job running California. Transcript of joint town hall included.

House passes bill to retroactively tax the people who received bonuses from AIG. Maybe our representatives don't know what "No Bill of Attainder or ex post facto Law shall be passed" means.

Obama supposedly "stunned" by AIG bonuses. Obama is either ignorant or a liar or both. But I'm sure Leno's audience will eat this up.

Barney Frank threatens to subpoena the names of AIG employees who received bonuses. On what grounds? There's nothing illegal or even shady going on here. Frank is turning his committee into a kangaroo court.

Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac preparing to pay out bonuses. Either Congress will stop this in advance (maybe that's the real target of the bonus tax legislation) or the press will be silent.

I look at this story with skepticism. Obviously anybody not involved in a war would condemn a sniper shooting a mother and her children. But I'm skeptical of the stories from supposedly "unnamed soldiers", but in the fog of war mistakes like this happen. On another note from the article, I take issue with the idea that Israeli soldiers should place comparable value on the lives of Palestinian as they would Israeli civilians. That's ridiculous. Of course Palestinian lives are far less valuable than Israeli lives to Israeli soldiers. Every government and every soldier has the responsibility to protect himself, his fellow soldiers and the citizens of his country at any cost of citizens of the enemy country.

CBS publishes surprisingly honest and accurate review of Meltdown, clearly stating the premise and why the theory makes sense compared to the popular theories that don't.

Recovery.gov is a typical government project - subpar and not transparent.

I find it hard to believe nobody knows who sent US soldiers into Alabama town. Maybe the reporter should ask the commander.

Obama plans to use a parliamentary trick to pass his radical leftist agenda including socialized medicine, cap and trade further federalization of our government schools inside his budget without fear of filibuster. Remember when evil Republicans considered bypassing the filibuster for judges? I'm sure liberals will be just as outraged at Obama for trying to bypass the filibuster on these far more serious issues. But senate Democrats have already begun pressuring Obama to remove cap and trade from the budget so it will subject to normal rules.

The people have already shot down Obama's plan to make veterans use their own health care insurance to pay for health care.

Even the politico is seeing through Obama, posting 5 myths that most of us already know, but liberals refuse to believe.

Since the Community Reinvestment Act played such a significant role in creating our economic crisis, Democrats want to expand it to credit unions. Credit unions, unlike the banks that were subject to the CRA, are currently financially stable. Democrats want to ruin them too.

“In recent months, we have seen the catastrophic effects that unsound loans can have on families and communities,” Johnson said. “Today, we take another step toward ensuring that financial institutions lend responsibly while continuing to encourage them to invest in all the communities in which they operate.”

The CRA forced banks to make those unsound loans. What a bunch of double-speak.

Obama has been lying to us about cap and trade too. White House admits its cap and trade tax will actually cost between $1.3 trillion and $1.9 trillion, the biggest tax increase in history and two to three times what Obama claimed it would cost. But what about Obama's pledge he would cut taxes for 95 percent of Americans and never raise them? Everybody who believed that lie and voted for Obama should pay all of Obama's tax increases on the rest of us. Sometimes I forget to mention this bill will have an immeasurably small impact on climate. It's not about climate change. It's about destroying capitalism.

Obama's health care plan is going to cost about $1.5 trillion too, over twice as much as Obama has told us so far. A trillion here. A trillion there. Do you think Obama ever stopped to think that if Americans had trillions and trillions of dollars to spare, we wouldn't be in a recession? I bet he did. He just doesn't care.

This should be the final nail in George Bush's legacy coffin - showing that Bush is a socialist just like Obama, and that Obama is just continuing the nation destroying policies of Bush, Bush says he wants Obama to succeed. Let's never again pretend George Bush supports free markets or the American people, or that he's anything but a Democrat and always has been. Bush is LBJ without the charisma.

I didn't get the gist of this story yesterday. Obama is so dumb and dependent on the teleprompter, he read the Irish Prime Minister's speech, including thanking himself at the end of it. This story, like other Obama gaffes, is being covered up by the press.

Update: 10:30 am PST: Still no video released. This is the third Obama gaffe with no video. First the wrong door incident at the White House, then the helicopter head bump and now this. A dangerous precedent is being set here. If any other politician made this kind of blunder it would be everywhere.

This self-censorship of Obama's gaffes is frightening.

I demand the resignation of Chris Dodd and Tim Geithner

Just yesterday Chris Dodd claimed he didn't know where the language protecting the AIG bailout money came from. This evening he admitted he changed the language himself at the urging of Geithner's Treasury Department.

Chris Dodd was also implicated in a corrupt mortgage scam with Countrywide, was prominent in protecting the corrupt activities of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, and also was an architect of the failed TARP program.

Tim Geithner is a tax cheat, was responsible for oversight of Citi while at the Fed, an architect of the failed TARP program, and is clearly incompetent.

Tim Geithner and Chris Dodd are liars, corrupt, and incompetent. I demand the resignation of Chris Dodd and Tim Geithner.

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This article once again illustrates what is wrong with our economy - the markets are watching what the Fed does. That's not how it should be. That tells us the Fed has way too much power over our economy. That tells us that concentrating power in the hands a few government aristocrats gives the power to pervert our economy. They can make it worse, but they can never make it better because free people working together without coercion is the best our economy can ever get. The markets should be independent of government because our economy should be independent of government.

Here's a total economic fallacy from the WSJ: Cheap goods from Iran stifle Iraqi economy. That's a crock. Cheap goods from Iran mean Iraqis have more wealth powering their economy. Are you better off paying $1 per brick or 75 cents per brick? Obviously you have more wealth when you pay the lower price. And that wealth circulates through the economy to the benefit of everybody except Iraqi brick makers. Only by focusing on the brick makers instead of the greater economy can you come up with the fallacy that cheap imports harm the economy. The brick makers need to find jobs in more profitable segments of the economy. Same with bus makers. Rice farmers need to find a more profitable crop. When that happens, all Iraqis will be wealthier still.

Czechs withdraw from missile defense treaty.

Ohio Democrat introduces bill to tax at 100 percent over $100,000 any bonuses from companies receiving bailout funds. I'm sure this is emotionally satisfying - I can just hear the righteous comments now - but this is a sure way to make these companies fail. The whole point of bailing them out was to prop them up. Now that taxpayer money has been dumped into them, Congress is going to kill them. Because aristocrats have no incentives to do good work and therefore Congress never does good work, Congress can't understand that in the real world, profit incentivizes people to do good work. Killing bonuses drives the best and brightest into other jobs, leaving the worst to go down the a ship laden with taxpayer dollars.

It just struck me. You can't tax something after the fact. That's ex pose facto. Boortz printed the ex post facto sections of the Constitution online today, and being half asleep when I read it, I didn't know why. I'm a little slow after a long St. Patrick's Day. Congress has no power to go after these bonuses.

Check out just how incompetent our government is... Chris Dodd claims he didn't write the language allowing previously contracted bonuses in his own amendment. Obviously he didn't read it either. Obviously nobody did. I can't believe any American would vote for any of these aristocrats.

Chris Dodd just made another statement changing his story. Now he says he changed the language at the request of the Treasury Dept.

AIG executives resigning. Who can blame them? You know these guys regret ever selling their souls to government. Congress is determined to crush AIG and continue to prop up the zombie with more tax dollars. I suppose our government could be worse, but it's hard to imagine how. This should be an object lesson in why government should never be allowed to interfere in our economy at all.

This issue is spinning away from Democrats as the press starts focusing on Democrats' support for the bonuses when the Dodd amendment was passed with Obama's stimulus boondoggle last month. Either Democrats have to admit they had no idea what was in the bill they passed or they have to take responsibility for supporting the bonuses. Either way, they're exposed for the frauds they are once again. Wake up America. Stop returning these aristocrats to Washington. Interesting that, because Democrats passed that boondoggle with only 3 Republican votes, Republicans can continue their phony outrage.

Reason was all over this issue, exposing the phony outrage of our government aristocrats.

Here's an idea: If you stop nationalizing banks, there will be no need to engage in phony-baloney indignation over bonus payments anymore.

This phony outrage has led to AIG executives getting death threats. If we had never bailed out AIG, those bonuses wouldn't have happened, and those AIG executives would have gotten what they deserved - nothing. This is an object lesson in how government interference in our economy always makes things worse and leads to more and more oppressive government interference.

This is the classic Obama we've come to know and loath: Obama takes blame for AIG bonuses while at the same time making it clear he's not to blame. Call him two-faced. Call him a double-talker. Call it doublethink. It's all accurate.

President Obama ends program allowing pilots to carry firearms on planes, instead hiring more bureaucrats to harass pilots. I guess Obama doesn't like those pilots protecting passengers by clinging to guns. Remember when Obama said he supports the 2nd Amendment? What a joke.

One Big Ass Mistake America. Funny.

Obama still considering taking VA benefits from veterans.

US companies starting to stand up to Obama. It's about time.

Obama's health care plan will actually cost $1.5 trillion over the next 10 years, more than twice Obama's estimate of $634 billion. That's pocket change to Obama and his Democrat minions. They won't blink an eye over spending that.

Reason examines historical stimulus packages and shows they never work. Logic tells us they can't work. Because administration costs money, stimulus programs always take more money out of the economy than they put back in. If administration cost no money, the perfect stimulus program would put exactly as much money back in the economy as it took out, and it would put it back in at the locations Americans would have put it in themselves, meaning the economy wouldn't change anyway. Like every government intervention in our economy, all stimulus programs can do is harm.

Despite Obama's magic stimulus plan, Caterpillar is laying off more workers. Most people won't notice this. All they'll remember is Obama grandstanding at Caterpillar claiming his stimulus plan saved jobs.

Nobody is buying hybrids, but government is forcing automakers to produce hybrids.

Though car buyers are losing interest, politicians are pushing them as key to reducing U.S. dependence on foreign oil and limiting the global-warming gases that cars emit into the atmosphere.

How do you think that's going to work out for us?

If Spector votes for card check, Republicans should kick him out of the party. Unfortunately, since Democrats control 59 Senate seats, that won't happen. Even Democrat senators know card check is destructive. Spector has Republicans over a barrel.

Socialized medicine has transformed Britain's health care system in a third world system.

Dehydrated patients were forced to drink out of flower vases, while others were left in soiled linen on filthy wards.
...
It found Government waiting time targets and a bid to win foundation status were pursued at the expense of patient safety over a three-year period at Mid-Staffordshire NHS Trust.

And this is what Democrats want to force on Americans, but they'll make it work with their magic hope unlike every other socialized medicine system in the world. Right.

Liberal bloggers, mainstream media reporters, academics and policy makers have an off-the-record online meeting place, but the couple out of 3 dozen who didn't decline an interview says this is not evidence of a left-wing conspiracy in the mainstream media. Right.

In an e-mail, Klein said he understands that the JList’s off-the-record rule “makes it seems secretive.” But he insisted that JList discussions have to be off the record in order to “ensure that folks feel safe giving off-the-cuff analysis and instant reactions.”

But liberals don't believe that applied to President Bush and his advisors. What a joke. You can be sure that some hacker will publish all the posts from this site in the future, probably soon.

Mises scholar advises short selling US Treasuries. This essay paints a scary picture of Obama and the Fed taking us into uncharted waters we should never enter. His analysis also shows us we're already on the verge of realizing the looming debt crisis because in the past, the federal government borrowed from the Social Security trust fund to pay off much of its deficit, but because baby boomers have reached the point in the pipeline where they are receiving social security, the amount in the trust fund available to borrow is on the decline. And foreign investors may be unable to continue funding our debt. Ouch. I said before the election that we ran a risk that Obama would accelerate us into the looming debt crisis before we climbed out of this recession. Today, that looks more likely than ever.

Obama is bringing ACORN on board to "help" with the 2010 census. This criminal organization is best known for signing up imaginary and dead people to vote. They'll do the exact same thing for the census. ACORN should be the subject of an organized crime investigation, not working with our government.

In an essay that compares the inaccurate histories written by the victors in war to the inaccurate histories written by central banks, Cato knocks down Greenspan's claim that the Fed didn't cause this financial crisis and supports the Austrians. The author also takes a well deserved shot at Tim Geithner and Larry Summers. Cato may be finding its spine after appearing to be wishy-washy and overly deferential to Obama.

Obama was trying to use political tactics to pass his radical leftist agenda around a filibuster by burying it in his budget, tells Congress to quit using political tactics to resist his budget. Obama has already taken hypocrisy in Washington to a new level.

Democrats plan to push their assault weapon ban ostensibly to fight violence in Mexico. Let's get this straight. The war on drugs has power such extreme violence in Mexico that it's spilling over into the US, and the Democrats' answer is to take away the very weapons Americans most need to defend themselves from Mexico's drug cartels. I have a better idea. End the war on drugs.

Cato defends tax havens. I didn't know the US tax code specifically treats foreign companies better than domestic companies.

In fact, the U.S. does not tax most of the dividend, interest and capital gains' earnings of foreign investors in the U.S. — which means, ironically, that the U.S. is the world's largest "tax haven" for non-U.S. citizens, and that we benefit from hundreds of billions of dollars of needed capital invested here. If the U.S. did not treat foreign investors better than its own citizens (who are double-taxed on most capital income), most of the "tax avoidance" problems critics complain about would disappear.

But this debate should not even be taking place. The US should adopt the FairTax because then it would become the greatest tax haven the world for companies foreign and domestic.

The Supreme Court upholds a case in which a person who used a drug improperly although the warning was proper won damages. This is just wrong. This is another example of the attack on personal responsibility in America. This drug maker did everything right, and is still punished. Suing the assistant and facility responsible makes sense to me, but not suing the drug company. We're making it impossible for a businesses to do business in America. One thing this points out is that the FDA introduces moral hazard in product safety. It's ambiguous who is responsible for safety and labeling - the FDA or the manufacturer.

Author makes a great case that Obama is using inflation and union card check to destroy capitalism. We know Obama is a closet Marxist, we know Obama worked with ACORN which is a Marxist revolutionary organization, and we know Obama does not have the best interests of Americans at heart, instead proscribing to Black Liberation Theology. This scenario sounds frighteningly plausible.

It looks like the Republican strategy of just letting Democrats implode is working. Republicans have pulled ahead of Democrats in the generic poll. I think Obama set a new record. In 2 months he's taken his party from significant domination and put them behind. The problem with this is Republicans won't change a thing now. Why should they? As badly as Republicans governed under Bush, Democrats are far worse, Republicans are going to get back in power, and we're going to get stuck with another crappy Republic president like Bush in 4 more years, then another crappy Democrat and so on until the country collapses, if we make it that far.

Tucker Carlson says Jon Stewart is no longer funny because he's on a ideological mission. I said I thought Stewart would be in trouble with Bush gone, and he clearly is. It's a shame he isn't a equal opportunity comedian. We could use some biting humor about Obama to relieve some of the tension of his destruction of America as we know it.

If government can't keep pot out of prisons, how can we expect to keep it out of America?

Running gun battle between vehicles kills 2 and shuts down I-75 in Cincinnati.

Jury acquits cop of brutality despite testimony from 3 fellow officers who claimed he jumped up and down on the victim's back while the victim was handcuffed.

Obama considers expanding covert attacks on Taliban in Pakistan. This has all the bad aspects of the Vietnam War and none of the good ones. We are not going to be able to build a successful state in Afghanistan. Better to reduce our forces and leave a contingent to destroy any terrorist training facilities for the sake of US security.

The recession is powering rise in neo-Nazism in Germany. Yikes.

After trashing our interest rates to zero, which had no positive effect on the credit market, the Fed is going on a buying spree, essentially printing money out of thin air to inflate, I mean increase, the money supply. This falls under Einstein's definition of insanity. Bernanke has been trying the same solution for 2 years, increasing the money supply, and the economy keeps getting worse. He won't learn from history. He won't learn from his mistakes. He keeps repeating the same behavior and expecting a different result. This is typical of socialists. It's a mental defect. Whenever socialism fails, the socialists say they didn't go far enough. Just like liberals. Unless we stop them, the end result is inevitably communism.

Get ready for the inflation. You're going to need a lot more dollars to buy the same groceries this time next year. Saving money is stupid in this environment because the Fed is lighting a significant portion of your savings on fire. Unfortunately, savings is what we need most to climb out of this recession. Ben Bernanke and Barack Obama are burning our country to the ground. They are turning the US into Zimbabwe. Nationalizing the farms will be next.

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Here's an example of the dangerous consequences of allowing a government monopoly on our schools. According to a national survey commissioned by the California Academy of Sciences:

• Only 53% of adults know how long it takes for the Earth to revolve around the Sun.
• Only 59% of adults know that the earliest humans and dinosaurs did not live at the same time.
• Only 47% of adults can roughly approximate the percent of the Earth's surface that is covered with water.
• Only 21% of adults answered all three questions correctly.

Oh my goodness, Victor Davis Hansen destroys President Obama by asking the simple question, what if Obama had been honest about how he would govern during the campaign? Hansen delivers a possible speech Obama might have given about spending trillions of dollars, implementing cap and trade that will double energy bills for all Americans, etc. This is has got to burn any idiot who thought Obama would govern as a moderate and therefore voted for him. Obama's bringing change the American people would never have voted for had Obama been honest.

There's growing concern among Americans that the Obama administration is incompetent. Tell me about it. We have a president with a dangerous combination of lack of empathy for people and love of power who nominated a bunch of dysfunctional and corrupt political insiders and who set up an organization that focused power in the White House, intentionally putting it at odds with his cabinet. To top it all off, the administration is driven a radical leftist ideology that's blind to the wants and needs of Americans. What a surprise to find out that that's a recipe for incompetence. And for anybody who did their homework on Obama, this exactly what we expected (or maybe a little worse).

Bolivian government seizes land from land owners and gives it to indigenous people. I guess he wants Bolivia to be the next Zimbabwe. Obama is taking notes.

Washington D.C. has an AIDs epidemic. This is another consequence of runaway liberalism - the scourge of humanity.

Report on child homelessness grossly inflates number.

Selling houses to immigrants in return for citizenship is stupid.

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Mises scholar makes good point about home values - home values are supposed to gradually fall over time, much slower than everything else, but fall nonetheless. The only reason we think home prices should always appreciate is the Fed is always pushing inflationary monetary policy.

Boortz rains on the parade of tea baggers. I agree. This is a meaningless, feel good gesture. I'm sure the tea baggers would feel very self-satisfied, but our representatives won't even notice, or worse, they'll laugh and write off the people who did it.

Obama will attempt to block the AIG bonuses. I have no problem with this as long as everybody obeys the law. Taxpayers own 80 percent of that company, and we don't want our money spent on bonuses for a failing institution. But this begs several questions... If AIG is failing and doesn't deserve bonuses, why did government use taxpayer money to buy 80 percent of it? Why not let it go bankrupt, sell off its valuable assets, and liquidate its non-valuable assets so they could re-enter the market working for a profitable enterprise? The country would certainly have been better off. And since when did Obama become interested in waste? He doesn't want a few hundred million in bonuses for AIG, but he allows a few hundred billion in waste by the government. That's quite a destructive double standard.

Obama's aid to small businesses will just put taxpayers on the hook for more bad businesses. Everybody knows how to help small businesses - cut their taxes (and everybody else's taxes too, and cut spending to go along with it) - but Obama doesn't really want to help small businesses. He wants to control them.

US shoots down an Iranian drone over Iraq. We fly drones over places with perceived threats. The Iranians fly drones over places with perceived threats.

Obama wants to tax private health care benefits to pay for government supplied benefits. As we all know, if you want to destroy something, you tax it. If you want to create an entitlement, you have government provide something. This is a naked attempt by President Obama to destroy the private health care market and implement socialized medicine in its place. It's blatantly obvious.

Geithner urges banks to make bad loans. Banks are currently making loans to low risk people and businesses. Urging them to make more loans means making loans to higher risk people and businesses. Maybe Geithner didn't get the memo about how that got us into this mess in the first place.

It looks like Obama got us in a trade spat with Mexico.

Obama's approval rating is already below 60 percent. He's setting records for alienating the American people.

South Carolina Governor Sanford to reject more stimulus funds because it can't be used to pay off debt.

Wells Fargo pushes back against Obama's new regulations on TARP funds and Geithner's stress tests. Good for them. It's about time the banks went on the offensive against this huge government power grab.

This is great news - 8 Senate Democrats want cap and trade yanked from Obama's budget. This will make cap and trade subject to filibuster.

Stimulus requires state governments to pay workers union rates instead of market wages. This fits the Keynesian idea that all that matter is wages. We're lucky Obama didn't require the states to pay twice as much for people to sit at home.

I agree that newspapers are the best choice for media supplied news. But the internet is better and is killing newspapers. It'll take over eventually.

It's pretty stupid to label a robber a sex offender just because the store he robbed employed a minor. Government application of that sex offender label is out of control.

Only 9 percent of non-union workers want to join a union. Duh. If more wanted to, there'd be a lot more union workers.

Despite California's budget catastrophe, the number of state employees continues to grow. Government is inherently stupid.

EU to ban the terms Miss and Mrs. because they are sexist. The EU is stupid.

Mayor says bloggers are a danger to her city. Yeah, that free speech thing is really dangerous to government. Government should do something about that.

Asking when will Atlas shrug is very convenient for conservatives today. Atlas has been shrugging for a decade. US companies are moving overseas and have been for quite a while. US companies are outsourcing jobs overseas, and have been for quite a while. That is Atlas shrugging, and the accomplice press has been ignoring it for a long time. It will definitely get worse under Obama, but this isn't some partisan issue. The big government of both parties has been causing Atlas to shrug for a while, and the brain-dead accomplice press hasn't even noticed. Conservatives are suddenly pointing it out, but where were they the last decade when Bush's big government was sending jobs overseas?

Guess who emerges out of the government aristocrats as the eloquent voice of government intervention in our markets and champion of President Obama's policies? Ben Bernanke. I bet the accomplice press continues to call him a free marketer. Interesting that Greenspan regretted his interview because he made some inadvertent news. This tells us the dictators of our money supply know they should keep a low profile so the people don't realize the extremely destructive power they wield. Bernanke's interview with 60 Minutes.

Evil savers are harming the economy, and are supposed to start taking risks, but President Regulator is sending mixed messages, promising more regulation while increasing moral hazard.

Top Republican on the Senate Finance Committee says AIG executives should resign or commit suicide. Nice. It's always good to see Republicans standing up for private enterprise. Democrats propose excise tax on bonuses.

Tom Woods rants against the Harvard Conference pretending that supporters of free markets have a mental problem. Great quote, italics in original:

In short, the conference was about this: Why do people still think the interaction of free individuals is a superior economic system to one directed by Harvard Ph.D.s like us? I mean, apart from the failure of central planning in every case in which it's been tried, a failure so staggering that only a blockhead could miss it, why would people cling to the idea that being herded into a collective run by the experts isn't the best way to live?

This the first shot in a new attempt by the socialists in academia to avoid debate on free markets by smearing the supporters of them with baseless accusations of mental illness. This is nothing but an elaborate, extremely dangerous, ad hominem attack.

The opening statement of this article shows you just how far America has been transformed into a banana republic. "Apparently, the Obama administration doesn't hold a grudge." Bloomberg's term limit issue should be a matter of law, but while we pay lip service to the rule of law, every American knows that the rule of law is virtually meaningless in America anymore. It's window dressing to keep the people from revolution. Political connections matter. If you are in favor of the current power, you can do anything. If you're not, you're screwed. Just like in a banana republic.

Red light cameras are solely intended to raise revenue, not boost public safety.

Russia puts new pressure on Obama with rearmament plan.

Cato welcomes Obama's announcement that he would keep Washington D.C.'s school voucher program, recently killed by Democrat legislation, alive with subsequent legislation. Cato rightly recognizes that Obama won't expand that program, but the bigger question in why in the world would Cato believe he'll keep it alive at all? This is just more rhetoric to deflect criticism, and it's highly unlikely he has any intention of actually carrying through. That's Obama's mantra. We'll control spending later. We'll cut the deficit later. We'll do earmark reform later. I don't want to grow government. I'll put that school program in legislation later. Obama is an abject liar, even by aristocrat standards, and Cato is naive for not being skeptical.

Cato reminds us Republicans have no credibility when they complain about Democrats growing the size of government.

Cato video explaining how the war on drugs powers Mexican violence.

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AIG to pay $450 million in bonuses in its financial products unit - the unit who's failure led to their taxpayer bailout. I didn't realize taxpayer now own 80 percent of AIG and the CEO is a government installed stooge. This is a bad, bad deal for taxpayers.

Bomb kills 4 US soldiers in Afghanistan.

Long Mises essay explains the boom bust business cycle, has wonderful section describing how we got into the current crisis and concludes that in order to recover from this crisis, we need more savings and capital investment, not increased consumer spending and boondoggle stimulus programs.

Swiss researcher claims markets stimulate invention better than patent systems. I like this article because it's the first I've read on the subject that explains how the inventor gets paid.

Aristocrats can't seem to survive without a war. Now Obama has declared war on our economy and Republicans. Like the war on drugs, this is another war on Americans. Our economy is losing, we're losing, and President Uniter has once again been exposed as a fraud as he daily. I'm tired of government aristocrats trying to keep the people agitated, unthinking and divided by pretending every issue is a war. I'm sure the liberals who though George Bush was evil for fighting a war against terrorists who were trying to kill us will kiss Obama's anointed feet for fighting a war on our economy.

Obama's stimulus plan gives Microsoft $11 million to build an overpass connecting 2 of its campuses. Like Microsoft needs stimulus money. That's nothing but vote buying money, just like the rest of Obama's stimulus boondoggle.

Dayton is experiencing a bridge building bubble right now. In typical government fashion, this page hasn't even been updated in 2009. I think 8 bridges are either being repaired or have been demolished and are being replaced at one. The city is suffering traffic problems, costing us money because of it. Granted, it some of this construction is probably worth while, but certainly not all of it, and probably not most of it. And the resources to build these bridges are either being sucked from productive private sector jobs our from the unemployed. When the bridge building is over, hopefully there will be productive private sector jobs for all these people, but since Dayton is on the decline, and taking these resources away from the private sector and messing up our traffic is accelerating that decline. I predict when the bridges are fixed, the bridge bubble will pop and Dayton's recession will grow deeper.

Ben Bernanke says the biggest risk we face is lack of political will. Bull. The biggest risk we face is putting such tremendous power into the hands of a fool like Ben Bernanke who is destroying our economy while we sit and watch. The reason our financial system is still unstable is because Bernanke, Paulson and Geithner won't let failing banks and other failing institutions fail. Until they allow that to happen, our financial system will remain unstable. The era of high living was created by the Fed's infationary monetary policy, and Bernanke is repeating that same mistake, but even worse this time. You can't keep a burst bubble inflated, and Bernanke's inflationary policy will blow up another even bigger bubble. Ben Bernanke should resign immediately.

Michael Barone exposes the failure of Obama's agenda - his health care, cap and trade and education proposals would all harm our economy. Obama doesn't give a damn about our economy. He wants it bad so he can exploit it for his real agenda. But that approach is already backfiring on him, and Obama can never fix our economy because he's a central planner and our economy needs more freedom to recover.

President Obama's approval ratings are worse than Bush's at this time, and Bush didn't even have a majority of the popular vote when he was elected. This essay highlights the laundry list of Obama's failures and why the people are so worried about him. Some of the numbers are staggering.

George Will explains how racial gerrymandering went wild.

Words mean things, and Obama lies about the meaning of words. He's dishonest and unethical.

The President’s inconsistencies have become so egregious that Peter Whener of Washington, DC’s Ethics And Public Policy Center was compelled last week to describe Obama as an “agent of cynicism.” Writing in Commentary magazine, Wehner stated that Obama is pretending that “the politics of cynicism“ is the “politics of hope,” and is displaying a willingness to “vulgarize and invert the meaning of words” so as to advance his own “narrow aims.”

We need a leader to take back the meaning of words.

Many people don't listen to real climate experts, and the global warming frauds are doubling down on their lies and their allies in the press are repeating them because they sense their window to implement draconian anti-capitalist policies is rapidly closing.

The first in Copenhagen, billed as "an emergency summit on climate change" and attracting acres of worldwide media coverage, was explicitly designed to stoke up the fear of global warming to an unprecedented pitch. As one of the organisers put it, "this is not a regular scientific conference: this is a deliberate attempt to influence policy".

On the other hand, the conference of real climate scientists went largely ignored by the press.

Yet the terrifying thing, as President Klaus observed in his magisterial opening address, is that there is no dialogue on these issues. When recently at the World Economic Forum in Davos, he found the minds of his fellow world leaders firmly shut to anything but the fantasies of the scaremongers. As I said in my own modest contribution to the conference, there seems little doubt that global warming is leading the world towards an unprecedented catastrophe. But it is not the Technicolor apocalypse promised by the likes of Al Gore. The real disaster hanging over us lies in all those astronomically costly measures proposed by politicians, to meet a crisis which in reality never existed.

Oh my goodness, Mark Steyn is a national treasure. Thank goodness we gave that guy citizenship. Check out this quote from his latest essay on spendapallooza and the debt we're piling on our children:

The Bailout and the TARP and the Stimulus and the Multi-Trillion Budget and TARP 2 and Stimulus 2 and TARP And Stimulus Meet Frankenstein And The Wolf Man are like the old Saturday-morning cliffhanger serials your grandpa used to enjoy. But now he doesn't have to grab his walker and totter down to the Rialto, because he can just switch on the news and every week there's his plucky little hero Big Government facing the same old crisis: Why, there's yet another exciting spending bill with 12 zeros on the end, but unfortunately there seems to be some question about whether they have the votes to pass it. Oh, no! And then, just as the fate of another gazillion dollars of pork and waste hangs in the balance, Arlen Specter or one of those lady senators from Maine dashes to the cliff edge and gives a helping hand, and phew, this week's spendapalooza sails through. But don't worry, there'll be another exciting episode of "Trillion-Buck Rogers Of The 21st Century" next week!

Too funny.

And this Mark Steyn parody comparing Obama's big government to a superhero is hysterical:

If you find it hard to keep track of all these evolutions, the president in his address to Congress finally spilled the beans and unveiled our new hero in his final form: the Incredible Bulk, Statezilla, Governmentuan, a colossus bestriding the land like a, er, colossus. What superpowers does he have? All of them! He can save the economy, he can reform health care, he can prevent foreclosures, he can federalize day care, he can cap the salary of his archenemies the sinister Fat Cats who "pad their paychecks and buy fancy drapes." No longer will the citizenry cower in fear of fancy drapes: Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain! With one solar panel on the roof of his underground headquarters, Governmentuan can transform the American energy sector and power his amazing Governmentmobile, the new environmentally friendly supercar that soon we'll all be driving because we'll be given government car loans to buy the government cars! He'll have hundreds of thousands of boy sidekicks, none of whom will ever be allowed to drop out of high school because (in the words of his famous catchphrase) "that's no longer an option!" "Gee, thanks, Governmentuan!" says Diplomaboy the Boy Wonder, as he goes off to college to study Gender As A Social Construct until he's 34.
...
Is the new all-powerful Statezilla vulnerable to anything? Unfortunately, yes. He loses all his superpowers when he comes into contact with something called Reality. But happily Reality is nowhere in sight. There are believed to be some small surviving shards somewhere on the planet – maybe on an uninhabited atoll somewhere in the Pacific – but that's just a rumor, and Barack Obama isn't planning on running into Reality any time soon.

I had no idea that the French had rewritten histories claiming that the French liberated themselves from German occupation in WWII, even though everybody in France knew full well that wasn't true. I also had no idea that that bitterness about having been freed by Americans, Britons, and other English speaking people had fueled their anger and resentment of America ever since.

France, he said, had made peace with Germany, had forgiven Germany for the brutality of invasion and the humiliation of four years of occupation, but it could never - never - forgive the British and Americans for the liberation.

Wow.

Why is it the stupidest things always happen in Ohio? (Don't answer that.) Court says it will only take cases from people who bring their own paper because the court can't afford to buy any more paper. State of Ohio wants to cut down on kickball games on the Statehouse lawn during the summer to save the grass which is obviously more important to our state aristocrats than citizens. Detroit is pointing at Ohio and laughing.

Judge orders homeschooling mother to put children in government school even though they test 2 grades higher than their age because she's teaching them from the bible, i.e., she isn't teaching them science. I can see why the state has a problem with this because if she isn't teaching them science, then she's failing to provide them a full education that the state would require. Of course, I don't remember having any science classes until junior high anyway. But the state should not set curriculum requirements anyway. If parents fail to provide a quality education for their children, that's their own fault. The country needs menial laborers too.

Iowa Supreme Court rules that despite liability waiver, mother can sue city for damages because her daughter got hit in the head with a baseball bat a baseball game. How stupid. This ruling means liability waivers are worthless, and no children will get to go on field trips anymore. Personal responsibility is under a full out assault in America.

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Jonah Goldberg is absolutely right when he calls Obama's desire to exploit this crisis for a big government power grab forcing his radical liberal agenda down the throats of the citizens amoral. I've been trying to think of a good word to describe Obama, and evil didn't quite fit. Amoral fits perfectly. Obama has no compassion. He has a dangerous lack of empathy for other people. He doesn't care about his brother living in poverty in Kenya. He doesn't care about what's good for Americans and America. All he cares about is power. All he cares about is forcing people to do what he wants. He's a liar. He's manipulative. He's amoral. And so is his administration.

Thanks to socialists like Greenspan, Bernanke, Bush, Paulson, Dodd, Frank, and 100 years of socialist policies, the US lost $11 trillion in household wealth in 2008. Socialists in other countries were inflating with their central banks too, leading to one estimate that this crisis destroyed 45 percent of the world's wealth.

Time is running out on Obama. The sooner, the better.

Obama plans to more than double taxes on entrepreneurial partnership structures, driving venture capitalists out of the country, and threatening to turn Silicon Valley into a ghost town. I hope Obama fails at this, and I bet he will. But I can't help but be reminded of this essay in which a guy claims his "libertarian" Silicon Valley friends voted for Obama. My experience with silicon valley people is most were hard core, kool-aid drinking liberals who liked to pretend they were libertarians. They might just get what they deserve.

I don't feel the least bit sorry for Tim Geithner. Besides being a tax cheat, that's the jerk who forced TARP on us, along with Hank Paulson. This guy is the classic central planner. He thinks he can single handedly run our economy better than all 300 million Americans combined. Fact is, he doesn't have a clue what to do because central planning is not the answer and is never the answer. Freedom is the answer. We can't run Bush, Paulson and Greenspan out of town on a rail, they're already gone, but I hope we run Bernanke, Obama, Geithner, Dodd, and Frank out of town ASAP.

Obama's third pick for deputy Sec. of Treasury withdraws. Maybe Obama should stop looking at just corrupt Washington, Chicago and other insiders.

Freddie Mac sucks down another $30.8 billion from taxpayers. Thanks, aristocrats.

Slain white supremisist angry over Obama election had desire, know-how and parts to build a dirty bomb including depleted uranium supposedly from a US company. Instead of being on trial for murder, it sounds like we should give his wife who killed him a medal. Apparently this isn't huge news because the mainstream media doesn't want terrorist threats to boost Republicans. Now we know where the press ranks the people's right to know on their priority list.

1951 essay from Mises describing the political enemies and chances of classic liberalism (libertarianism) could have been ripped from today's headlines. I've often lamented that Americans don't learn from history, but when you read these decades old essays from the Mises guys, it's just amazing how much they sound like they were written yesterday.

Subconscious inferiority complexes and envy push people toward the parties of the Left. They rejoice in the policies of confiscating the greater part of the income and wealth of successful businessmen without grasping the fact that these policies harm their own material interests. Disregarding all the objections raised by economists, they firmly believe that they can get many good things for nothing.

Even in the United States, people — although enjoying the highest standard of living ever attained in history — are prepared to condemn capitalism as a vile economy of scarcity and to indulge in daydreams about an economy of abundance in which everybody will get everything "according to his needs." The case for freedom and material prosperity is hopeless. The future belongs to the demagogues who know nothing else than to dissipate the capital accumulated by previous generations. Mankind is plunging into a return to the Dark Ages. Western civilization is doomed.

The main error of this widespread pessimism is the belief that the destructionist ideas and policies of our age sprang from the proletarians and are a "revolt of the masses." In fact, the masses — precisely because they are not creative and do not develop philosophies of their own — follow the leaders. The ideologies which produced all the mischief and catastrophes of our century are not an achievement of the mob. They are the feat of pseudoscholars and pseudointellectuals. They were propagated from the chairs of universities and from the pulpit, they were disseminated by the press, by novels and plays and by the movies and the radio. The intellectuals converted the masses to socialism and interventionism. These ideologies owe the power they have today to the fact that all means of communication have been turned over to their supporters and almost all dissenters have been virtually silenced.

Mises observation about the media of the day being dominated by statist forces should remind everybody of the need to keep the internet free.

Flanagan's Pub is hosting St. PatRocks' Day 2009.

Series of videos by John Stossel on the bailout madness.

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Chinese Premier worried about China's US treasury holdings. Who can blame him. Those idiots in Washington are destroying our country, and the Chinese know it.

The pressure on the Swiss convinced them to loosen privacy rules for banks. I don't like this one bit. The key to reducing tax cheating is to change oppressive tax laws, not attack privacy. It looks relations with the Swiss may be going downhill. Energy companies are fleeing to Switzerland to avoid President Obama and his hunt for tax money.

The tidy towns and mountain vistas of Switzerland are an unlikely setting for an oil boom. Yet a wave of energy companies has in the last few months announced plans to move to Switzerland -- mainly for its appeal as a low-tax corporate domicile that looks relatively likely to stay out of reach of Barack Obama's tax-seeking administration.

This article really shows the benefits of low taxes, but apparently the Swiss are caving to modern economic fallacies too.

Barney Frank looking to determine compensation for Wall Street executives. Corrupt Frank and his government have enough damage already. Leave our economy alone so we can fix it.

It sounds like the Obama administration is trying to differentiate between enemy combatants and criminals in Guantanamo, but completely abandoning the term enemy combatant sounds counterproductive. Some, if not most, of the detainees really are enemy combatants.

South Carolina Governor Sanford compares Obama's economic policies to Zimbabwe's economic policies. Good for him. Bad for us.

Maxine Waters busted for corruption, using her influence to obtain bailout funds for a bank she owns a significant stake in. But that can't be the first time. She was also a huge defender of Fannie and Freddie, and along with Barney Frank, who's lover was an executive at Fannie or Freddie, I can't remember which, blocked efforts to regulate those corrupt government sponsored entities. Let's hope the FBI takes her down like she and Frank deserve.

Obama considers plan to force veterans to use their private insurance to pay for medical treatment. This really is outrageous. Basically Obama's saying socialized medicine is too expensive for veterans, but he's trying to convince us it's not too expensive for everybody else in the country. Obama is the uber-hypocrite. Fortunately, it looks like this plan has no legs. We end socialized medicine for veterans by giving them vouchers for private health care and government should get the heck out of our health care business.

In 2006 interview, Jim Cramer explains how the big hedge funds use deceptions to manipulate the market to make extra money. Pretty interesting. If you have the kind of money he's talking about, you can do that. What's interesting is that these are small duration manipulations. The real value of the market does shine through in the long run.

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I find it hard to believe that IE is faster than either Chrome or Firefox, and I don't trust Microsoft as far as I can throw them, but even if it's true, IE still doesn't implement CSS correctly after many years. IE is a joke, and Microsoft is a crappy software developer.

Great quote explaining how corrosive the Fed is to the private sector.

Hardly ever do the advocates of free capitalism realize how utterly their ideal was frustrated at the moment the state assumed control of the monetary system…. A "free" capitalism with government responsibility for money and credit has lost its innocence. From that point on it is no longer a matter of principle but one of expediency how far one wishes or permits governmental interference to go. Money control is the supreme and most comprehensive of all government controls short of expropriation.

That's exactly what we've seen for 100 years.

The perils of ignoring the Austrian economists.

Boortz proposes a 1 year tax amnesty on dollars currently working overseas. This sounds like a great idea to me, but the FairTax is a better idea.

President Obama and his Democrat allies have spent $1 billion of our tax dollars every hour since he took office.

FBI raids office of Obama's pick for chief information officer in corruption investigation. Obama taps yet another Washington insider. Every person he's tapped is a Washington insider, a professional politician, a lobbyist, or Chicago crony. He's limited himself to the worst of all possible choices. I'm telling you, they're all corrupt, and Obama wouldn't know how to work with an honest man if he had to, and that's why he's limited himself to just corrupt people.

Walmart to offer online health records in competition with Google and Microsoft. But Obama is trying to destroy this efficient, private sector tool by having government take it over, not to help patients, but so he can stick a health are cop between you and your doctor.

One new bureaucracy, the National Coordinator of Health Information Technology, will monitor treatments to make sure your doctor is doing what the federal government deems appropriate and cost effective. The goal is to reduce costs and “guide” your doctor’s decisions (442, 446). These provisions in the stimulus bill are virtually identical to what Daschle prescribed in his 2008 book, “Critical: What We Can Do About the Health-Care Crisis.” According to Daschle, doctors have to give up autonomy and “learn to operate less like solo practitioners.”

Do you want incredibly successful businesses like Walmart and Google, which have an interest in your continued patronage, assisting your doctor, or do you want to put your life in the hands of an organization like the DMV and a government that's salivating to take half of your stuff from your family as soon as you die?

The death tax makes it in government's interest for you to die, and if we give government control of our health care, they can insure that happens sooner rather than later.

Orbital junk threatening space missions. We need an orbital vacuum cleaner. Or lasers and water.

Because big government created this economic crisis, we need bigger government to make sure it won't happen again. Geithner suggests new regulations for the economy. They'll either make the next crisis worse or harm the economy. The solution is to get government out of our economy.

Newt Gingrich highlights a study showing that for every 3 workers coerced into joining a union by card check, 1 job will be eliminated in America. Wow. He also has an online petition opposing card check. The bill has been introduced in the Senate, but the House doesn't want to touch this disaster in the making unless the Senate passes it first, so now's the time to contact your Senators.

Madoff pleads guilty. I wonder if the supporters of Social Security will ever plead guilty for their Ponzi scheme. Text of Madoff's confession.

British officials says it's incredibly hard to work with the Obama administration. No doubt. So Obama is alienating the British while considering opening ties to Iran. All those people who were afraid Obama was a Muslim Manchurian Candidate are getting more sure every day.

Our tax dollars are going to preserve and strengthen the legacy of the Kennedys. That's outrageous. If you like the Kennedys, preserve their legacy yourself and stop taking money from the rest of by force to support your anti-American heroes.

Florida bill would stimulate the economy by abolishing the government agency responsible for economic growth. Hallelujah! Every dollar government spends on economic growth sucks more than a dollar out of the economy. Somebody gets it, and it has a chance of going somewhere.

Obama offers Faustian bargain to business leaders: support his unprecedented power grabs on education, health care and destroying American's energy companies, and he'll compromise on the corporate income tax rate and cap and trade. Even with the corporate tax rate cut, American businesses and citizens will lose. Business leaders should offer an alternative: cut the corporate tax rate, abandon the cap and trade policy, and they won't move their companies out of the US.

Desperate global warming frauds try to alarm people about rising sea levels once again. They know if they don't get their anti-capitalist legislation passed soon, it'll never happen.

Cato thinks the companies that are in the biggest trouble are unionized. Unfortunately, that's not true. The financial sector isn't unionized, and it's in the biggest trouble of all. It's probably true that outside the financial sector, the companies in the worst shape are unionized.

Cato exposes the self-serving motives of Democrats who ended the school voucher program in Washington D.C. and compares the costs of a D.C. government school education and a private school education. You probably already know which one costs significantly more.

Cato explains how Obama's budget is an extension of Bush's precedents.

Cato projects that protectionist policies will be short lived. Let's hope so.

Not exactly pro-life, Reason still argues against funding embryonic stem cell research on moral grounds.

George Will says Obama is overexposed. Tell me about it.

Beautiful ugly pictures of Detroit show how much devastation big, bureaucratic, corrupt, liberal government and their corrupt, big-union partners wreak on society. Wow.

Britain changes no smoking laws so G20 representatives don't have to go outside to smoke. We are not free. We are ruled by government aristocrats, and it will stay that way until we take our power back. Never be fooled into thinking otherwise.

Now that government has taxed cigarettes into the stratosphere, caffeine is next.

Off duty cop arrests man for dropping a couple of F-bombs. WTF?

Germany charges 88 year old retired Ohio auto worker with 29,000 counts of accessory to murder as a Nazi guard. I hope they got the right guy.

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A shooter in Alabama and one in Germany managed to murder about a dozen unarmed people each. Had any of the victims been armed, these would be totally different stories.

Obama calls for concerted G-20 action on economy. Governments acting independently aren't causing enough damage for Obama. He wants supra-national intervention to cause significantly greater damage to our economy. Geithner says we need global action. In other words, everything Obama has done to us so far hasn't helped. In fact, it's made the situation worse.

France to return to NATO. I guess Sarkozy is afraid of losing the security welfare provided by the US.

A new Star Trek TV series with the original characters may be coming back after years of having the franchise butchered by Rick Berman.

Good essay wonders why Fox is trying to kill its sci-fi shows. The bipolar description is insightful. It's like somebody in Fox keep greenlighting cool sci-fi shows, but somebody higher up wants to get away from them and is trying to kill them.

How dumb and hypocritical is Nancy Pelosi over the way she abuses the Air Force?

What kind of central planning baloney is this universal savings account thing? I have a far better plan. Just get rid of the income tax on savings accounts. How hard is that? Better yet, get rid of the income tax and payroll tax and adopt the FairTax.

Just say no to card check. Analyst downgrades Walmart because of card check.

53 percent of Americans think the country is headed into depression.

Nancy Pelosi open to a second stimulus bill. Democrats are going to have a hard time with this. You know they want a second bite at taking a trillion dollars from the American people and using it to buy votes, but they either have to claim the first stimulus worked, in which case we don't need a second, or it didn't, in which case we shouldn't let them screw us over again. It'll be hard to get a second bite at the apple.

List of the top 20 earmarkers. 3 of the top 5 are Republicans. Apparently the people haven't sent them the memo about using our tax dollars to buy votes.

Dying paper the Atlanta Journal Constitution admits its liberal bias and intends to become more fair. Funny how facing death will change one's outlook. Atlanta is not exactly a liberal town.

Alan Greenspan is trying to cover his ass to save what little shred of his reputation remains by blaming the Asians for the housing bubble, not his low interest rates. How petty and typical. When aristocrats don't want to take blame for the consequences of their socialist policies, they love to incite hatred of the evil, conniving Asians. At least he didn't try to blame the Jews. I guess that would have been too transparent. It's the evil Asians' fault for raising their standard of living. Greenspan should crawl under a rock and never come out.

Self-righteous essay nevertheless successfully defends the Austrians' record of successful predictions against the Keynesians' record of failure.

The Fed wasn't the only central bank which created an inflationary bubble. The European Central Bank did the same thing, and Eastern Europe is paying a price.

Released memos from the Bush Justice Dept. in the wake of 9/11 show that US officials decided the military could enter any place in America and detain any American for however long it wanted. These memos describe a police state. To George Bush's credit, he didn't utilize this approach, though the American people might well have supported it for a short while. In a time of war, the commander in chief can wiretap and break down doors and grab suspected enemy combatants, that's part of waging war, but he can't hold American citizens indefinitely nor can he hold criminals as enemy combatants. I don't know of any way he could justify using the military to do this on US soil. Unfortunately, Obama's policy is virtually identical to the policy laid out in these memos.

At the third day of the International Conference on Climate Change, retired NASA climatologist John Theon called the global warming fraud a fraud and said he regretted not firing James Hansen. So do I. Unfortunately, Hansen was protected by Al Gore. Shocker. Global warming frauds assume clouds provide a positive feedback mechanism to the greenhouse effect, but they're wrong. Clouds provide a negative feedback mechanism to global warming, and we know that because if it was otherwise, the Earth would have evolved to be like Venus long ago. But documenting the feedback mechanism hasn't happened yet. These scientists have evidence of it and are trying to get more.

Obama to step up the war on drugs. Because that's worked so well so far.

Walter Williams explains that it shouldn't matter whether or not an idea is good policy unless that policy is constitutional. Wishful thinking.

John Stossel reminds us that a handful of central planners thinking they can spend our money wisely than we can, that a few of them are smarter than all 300 million of us put together is stunning hubris and a fatal conceit.

I'm not surprised that Hillary Clinton is a crappy Sec. of State.

Obama signs pork laden bill while talking about earmark reform. Hypocrite.

I have no idea who Camille Paglia is other than some liberal icon, but the first page of this essay about the incompetance of the Obama administration is dead on.The only thing she gets wrong is her faith in Obama himself, as if his staff is the problem, not him. I didn't read the second page because it started talking about her trip to Brazil. I think the comparison of Pharaoh Obama to Pope Leo X is particularly entertaining.

Michael Barone recommends another book that explains how low interest rates and other government interferences in the marketplace caused the housing meltdown.

Russia's richest man is on trial for having the temerity to donate money to Putin's political opposition.

Kremlin funded youth group claims responsibility for 2007 cyber attack on Estonia. When a youth group labels itself an anti-fascist group, you know it's a fascist group.

Obama and Geithner receive failing grades from me too.

"A prominent Massachusetts anesthesiologist allegedly fabricated 21 medical studies involving major drugs. Yikes." I hope they lock this guy up and throw away the key.

Detroit mayoral candidate falsely claims to have masters degree. Big government makes lying ubiquitous.

50 percent of Americans 2 paychecks away from personal financial crises. That's because the income tax punishes savings and rewards debt and the Fed's inflationary monetary policy punishes savings as well. We can complain about the low savings rate of Americans all we want, but until we address the root cause - government - it's just hot air. And of course the idiot pundits, Keynesian economists and government aristocrats keep telling people to spend, spend, spend.

The Tamil Tigers in Sri Lanka may be on the verge of defeat, but even reduced to suicide bombers, they're still deadly. This video of a suicide bomb attack is graphic.

Maryland's red light cameras issueing tickets to stopped cars as well as moving ones. These red light cameras are a travesty.

Good for Chicago police department for reviewing cases after top DUI cop caught falsifying report.

It's the nature of government to do anything it can think of to take our money. Maine considers tax for kayaking and canoeing. I don't really have a problem with the $20 rescue card. People who have to be rescued should pay for the rescue.

Sand storm engulfs Saudi capital.

Supposedly moderate Democrats will put lipstick on Obama's pig of a budget.

Bailout mascot.

Smart ads in malls watch who is watching them and change content accordingly.

Carbon cap and trade in trouble - funny cartoon.

EPA to require companies to report how much greenhouse gases they emit. I assume that means all the breathing done by employees too. Companies need government to add another cost to their system because they're doing too well right now. Note the graph showing falling global temperatures versus rising CO2.

I'm not too concerned about the world's billionaires.