Free kibbles

ECONOMY:

The virtue of hoarding.

Four predictions of a stock market crash in the next few months. Another prediction of a stock market crash in Q4.

HEALTH CARE:

After vote, Democrats change Baucus bill in secret. Democrats refuse to post the bill on the internet for Americans to read before the final vote.

Remember when Democrats pretended that they wanted to reduce health care costs? Nancy Pelosi must have forgotten because she's proposing a windfall profits tax on health insurance companies that would drive up health insurance costs.

Cato confirms what I wrote two days ago: the Baucus bill would cost over $2 trillion for 10 years of being in effect. The media is not accurately reporting the CBO's findings, and the CBO was derelict in reporting significant costs. Shocker.

GLOBAL WARMING:

Republican accuses Democrat of using corporate prostitutes to get tax and trade bill passed. That's role reversal. Usually it's Democrats accusing Republicans of dealing with corporations. I guess if it works for the goose... I get tired of people demonizing corporations. Corporate officers are out for their own interests like everybody else including politicians. The difference is politicians have all the power and power corrupts. Corporations can't force me to buy their products. Government can. Remember the health insurance mandate?

WAR:

Democrats reach deal with Obama to bring some more Guantanamo detainees to US for trial. Obama has yet to make the case that some of the detainees are only criminals and therefore deserve criminal process. He's yet to explain who these are and why they are not enemy combatants. Until he does that, Americans won't accept bringing them to the US for trial.

POLITICS:

When will the press put an end to this myth that corporations (groups of people who get together to make some money in a business enterprise - woo, scary) can contribute directly to candidates? That's illegal. Apparently corporations can contribute only $5,000 to political action committees and parties. When people say corporations give millions of dollars to candidates, they mean individuals who work for the corporations give that money to candidates. Corporations can run their own ads too and contribute to 527s, which are independent issue groups. There's no scandal here.

"The law also prohibits contributions from corporations and labor unions. This prohibition applies to any incorporated organization, profit or nonprofit. For example, the owner of an incorporated "mom and pop" grocery store is not permitted to use a business account to make contributions. Instead, the owner would have to use a personal account. A corporate employee may make contributions through a nonrepayable corporate drawing account, which allows the individual to draw personal funds against salary, profits or other compensation."

There is no problem here. We need to put an end to this myth. Funny that the people who hate corporations, a collection of people working together for a common goal - to make money, tend to be collectivists. I think they really hate profit, not corporations themselves.

Obama's media, academic and congressional supporters want him to move further left. Apparently they haven't noticed that America rejected his less extreme leftism already. I told you Obama is ripping the Democrat party apart, just like he's ripping the nation apart because he's too liberal for the country and many Democrats, and that reality keeps him from being left enough for the hard-core hate America crowd. Poor little Barack can't make anybody happy.

The House only meets from Tuesday evening to Thursday evening. Two days a week. For that they get paid over $200 grand. They spend the rest of their time with hookers smoking blunts rolled with 100 dollar bills paid for by taxpayers and lobbyists.

Democrats add expansion to hate crimes to defense budget bill in committee. I.e. nobody voted for that amendment during the legislative process. Now that combined bill is being voted into law.

House ethics committee votes to expand investigation into Charlie Rangel's corruption. Wow. Good for them.

FOREIGN POLICY:

Clearing up 10 common misconceptions about Iran. I agree with all of these except the claim that Iran's leaders are rational. This person doesn't know that more than anybody else, and I firmly believe that if the mullahs could destroy a million Israelis or Americans with a nuclear bomb and guarantee eternity sitting next to Mohammad and Allah, they would do so knowing we would respond with an overwhelming nuclear attack that would kill 10 or 20 million Iranians. On another issue, just because intelligence agencies don't have evidence that Iran is developing a weapon doesn't mean they aren't. The mullahs have been seeking nuclear weapons for 20 years. It's silly to think they suddenly stopped in 2003 as the CIA reports in the latest intelligence estimate. One thing that isn't mentioned here is Iran needs nuclear power like it needs more sand. Another thing is the only way the mullahs can retain power, since they're letting their oil well technology deteriorate, is through nuclear blackmail.

MISC:

The Nobel committee continues is foray into absurdity by giving the Nobel Peace Prize to President Obama. Apparently the Nobel committee is so dominated by Marxists, they actually like the president. The committee even its politicization.

"Members of the Norwegian Nobel Committee said their choice could be seen as an early vote of confidence in Obama intended to build global support for his policies. They lauded the change in global mood wrought by Obama's calls for peace and cooperation, and praised his pledges to reduce the world stock of nuclear arms, ease American conflicts with Muslim nations and strengthen the U.S. role in combating climate change.
Aagot Valle, a lawmaker for the Socialist Left party who joined the committee this year, said she hoped the selection would be viewed as "support and a commitment for Obama.""

They wear their irrelevance on their sleeves.

Obama to make White House Olympic Office permanent. Nothing like highlighting your most abject personal failure as president so far. But I keep saying, he cannot admit when he's wrong. His narcissism won't allow it. Obama is a fruit cake.

NASA spacecraft hits the moon - on purpose. That should be easier than hitting the broad side of a barn.

Indiana court determines that workers comp covers obesity surgery. Huh?

Men's longevity strongly increased by education level of wife.

Because private school students were using a public park for recess during the day, city council unanimously bans children in public parks during the day. You have to be kidding me.

"Brookewood's headmaster tells ABC 7 News it's a public park for all too use but Kensington's mayor disagrees. By phone he said the park is for taxpaying citizens -- not abuse by a private non-profit school."

This is a naked assault on a private school.

The Senate Judiciary Committee renews Patriot Act provisions. What naive person thought Democrats were going to fix that?

The machinery of government harms us regardless of how good the person is running the machine. And politicians, no matter the party, are not good men.

Manipulating rape statistics to get more federal funds. That's how poisonous government money is.

More argument that blackmail should not be illegal. Boycotts and non-disclosure agreements are work on the same principle as blackmail, but they aren't illegal.

20 healthiest foods under a dollar.

Investigator theorizes Jack the Ripper was mortuary assistant.

Free kibbles

ECONOMY:

While economic freedom continues to rise in the rest of the world, it continues to fall in the US which dropped to sixth in Cato's 2009 ranking of economic freedom. I still think this overrates the US. Our government does $7 trillion of damage to our economy every year because we pay for every dollar government spends twice - once in taxes and once in misallocation of resources in the economy. Sure, that leaves us with a $6 trillion economy, but when more than half of our economy is perverted by the government, you can't say our economic freedom is that high. It seems to me that on a scale of 1 to 10, we couldn't possibly reach 5 because of that. I guess there would be some overlap between what we would do voluntarily and what government forces on us - like charity versus welfare for the needy. But still, that put the number between something under 5 and something under 7.5 - much closer to 5 - just based on government spending. Every regulation, mandate, etc. Would lower it more. Every failure of the rule of law would lower it more. Every government interference in a contract would lower it more. Inflating the money supply would lower it more. Etc. This scale is too optimistic, imo.

In 1975, Chili was ranked 71 out of 72. Today it's ranked fifth, above the US. That's the kind of trajectory we need to return to.

"This revolution not only doubled Chile’s historic rate of economic growth (to an average of 7% a year, 84-98), drastically reduced poverty (from 45% to 15%), and introduced several radical libertarian reforms that set the country on a path toward rapid development; but it also brought democracy, restored limited government, and established the rule of law.
...
In a sense, it all began in Chile. In the early 1970s, Chile was one of the first economies in the developing world to test such concepts as deregulation of industries, privatization of state companies, freeing of prices from government control, and opening of the home market to imports. In 1981, Chile privatized its social-security system. Many of those ideas ultimately spread throughout Latin America and to the rest of the world. They are behind the reformation of Eastern Europe and the states of the former Soviet Union today… which demonstrates, once again, the awesome power of ideas."

That's what economic freedom produces. Reducing economic freedom leads to serfdom and totalitarianism, and that's the path we're on.

TAX AND SPEND:

The 2009 budget deficit is $1.4 trillion. According to the articles, Republicans pounced on this news to criticize Obama. Who are Republican to criticize Obama over this deficit? Sure Obama added a couple of billion to it. Sure Obama plans to add a trillion to it every year for the next 10 years. Sure, we should fight Obama's increases in spending tooth and nail just like we should have fought (and many of us did, but not very many) Republican spending tooth and nail. But nearly every bit of that budget deficit was set up while Bush was president and Republicans controlled both houses of Congress. The aristocrats of both parties are a bunch of destructive, self-serving pieces of crap. I heard John Boehner on the radio today acting like he was some supporter of fiscal discipline. Listen to this load of crap from Boehner:

""This new CBO data makes it clear that our children and grandchildren will end up buried under a mountain of debt if we continue taxing, spending and borrowing at these dangerous levels," House Minority Leader John Boehner, R-Ohio, said. "How many alarm bells have to be set off before Washington Democrats get serious about tackling dangerous budget deficits?""

Like Republicans have a record of fiscal discipline. It's just that Democrats are so terrible that Americans have already forgotten that Republicans are just a hair less bad. I haven't forgotten, and I'm sick to my stomach over the thought that even worse Democrats are re-empowering terrible Republicans just like the terrible Republicans empowered even worse Democrats. One thing is constant though: whichever party is in power, we all lose.

And what's this about history not being kind to presidents who tackle the deficit? The reason these presidents were punished is they raised taxes to cut the deficit. If they had cut spending to cut the deficit, they would have become more popular.

WAR ON DRUGS:

Outrage that people are being arrested for buying too much Sudafed.

"To get the real stuff, you have to go to a drug store, not just the convenience store. Then you have to ask. Then you have to show your license. Then they ask how many you want and you get the sense that you are begging like an addict. Then you sign some national registry. Then later, one presumes, you are checked to make sure that you are not buying more than your officially allotted amount.
Don't lose what you have because then you can't get more. Nor can you keep some at the office, some in the car, and some at home. No, you must guard the stuff with your very life, lest you run out and are denied more by the Stuffy Nose Czar."

Excellent rant.

WAR:

Terrorist bomb kills 17 outside Indian embassy in Kabul.

Details of Gen. McChrystal's request for more troops.

ILLEGAL IMMIGRATION:

The federal government has stripped Sheriff Joe Arpaio of his power to arrest illegal immigrants because he was doing it, and the Obama administration has decided to house illegal immigrants in hotels on taxpayer dime instead of jails. Sheriff Joe says he'll continue arresting illegal immigrants anyway. This may set up a perfect opportunity for Arizona to step up and nullify the federal government.

MISC:

Gun sales continue to skyrocket after Obama's election even leading to ammo shortages.

Hacking robots.

Government lovers divided again: patent could block import of Toyota hybrids.

Obama's FCC chairman worries about bandwidth for mobile devices. Central planner wonders how to solve that problem. A free market would solve that problem before it ever arose, but government can't.

Why does the federal government own 50,000 homes?

Free kibbles

ECONOMY:

Contrasting Michael Moore's socialist propaganda piece, Capitalism: A Love Story, and a film by Michael Covel that accurately explains why we suffered this economic meltdown, Broke: The New American Dream.

Obama administration setting salaries for executives of TARP recipient companies. But remember, Obama doesn't want to run these companies. We know that because he told us so.

Chrysler may not survive the year.

TAX AND SPEND:

Nancy Pelosi informs that Democrats are considering adding a VAT tax to our tax burden because Americans aren't taxed enough yet. Did you ever used to believe that Paul Volker and Alan Greenspan supported free markets?

"White House economic adviser and former Fed chairman Paul Volcker suggested it's one way the budget deficit could be closed, and another former Fed chief, Alan Greenspan, went a step further by calling it "the least worst solution" to our budget problems."

Least worst? What about cutting spending, Greenspan?

HEALTH CARE:

Medicare overpays. I thought government was going to bring down the costs of health care.

I've long suspected that Shepard Smith was a liberal, but I was never sure. His Katrina coverage pointed to him being a liberal and other hints appeared in his broadcasts. He proves it with this naked advocacy of the public option. This Republican Senator does a fantastic job responding to him, and to his credit Smith gives enough air time to do it.

Medicare denial rate higher than all insurance companies. I thought we wanted government insurance because evil insurance companies denied claims? The government is worse. Government is always worse. And Medicare pays for amazing waste. So despite paying for tremendous waste, it's denial rate is still higher than insurance companies.

Democrats fighting to keep final health care bill secret from Americans before vote.

White House, holding funds over California and New York like swords of Damocles, pressures Republican governors Schwarzenegger and Bloomberg to speak out in support of Obama's health care reform agenda. After both doing so, White House claims plan has bipartisan support.

Thanks to new taxes, cuts in Medicare, transfer of costs to insurance providers, health care providers, and states and delaying the implementation of the program for several years, the latest Senate health care bill appears to cost only $829 billion over 10 years. This is a phony number based on dishonest budget gimmicks designed to hide the costs. In fact, this bill will still cost us $2 trillion or more over 10 years once it takes effect. I hear senators also have land to sell us in Florida too.

GLOBAL WARMING:

At least this liberal understands that tax and trade won't created jobs - it will destroy jobs.

Obama using the EPA to threaten businesses with punitive CO2 regulations if they don't support tax and trade. Of course the EPA is politicized. All government is politicized. So far the only speed bump Obama's plan to crush our economy and turn us into a third world country has hit is resistance to health care oppression. The rest of the plan is going perfectly.

Taxpayer funded climate research facility destroys original data, collected on the taxpayer dime, used many papers that promote the fiction of man-made global warming. This makes it impossible for other scientists to replicate these studies. This is in the wake of the revelation of cherry-picked data being used for a number of other influential propaganda pieces masquerading as science. United Nations pulls the hockey stick graph copied from Wikipedia from United Nations Environmental Program (UNEP) report. This propaganda masquerading as science scandal just keeps growing and highlights how government money corrupts everything it touches. These frauds should all be fired. Don't expect Obama and his Democrats to admit the fraud though. Expect them to accelerate their attempts to destroy American productivity before more people catch on.

Lack of understanding of cloud formation and longevity put enormous uncertainty into climate models. You don't say.

Transfer of wealth included in draft of Copenhagen Climate Change Treaty. We have a new concept of environmental justice too.

Solar cycle 24's number of spotless days keeps growing to historical proportions.

WAR:

US surrenders Afghan territory to Taliban.

Two Vietnam books frame the White House debate on Afghanistan.

After weeks, or is it months, of politicizing the Afghan war, Obama finally officially accepts request for more troops.

POLITICS:

Republicans try to oust corrupt Charlie Rangel from his chairmanship for his serial tax fraud, but Democrats rally around corruption and defeat the resolution.

Harry Reid is so slimy that even Nancy Pelosi slinks away from him when tries to get close to speak about Afghanistan. Start the video at about 4:30.

This ridiculously long article discussing the different political dynamic between Republicans in 1994 and 2010 fails to mention the most important difference - the positive agenda expressed in the contract with America.

FOREIGN POLICY:

Somali pirates accidentally attack French Navy ship. The French should have sunk them, not just captured them. I still don't understand why governments subsidize shipping companies that ship past Somalia with Navy support. If they stopped doing that and shipping went the other way for a while, the pirates would disappear. I can see where India, China and other Indian Ocean and South Pacific nations would want to wipe out pirates along Somalia because of the advantage to shipping oil that route, but not the US, South American or European countries.

Cato has gone off the deep end with this advocacy that the US welcome Iran as a trustworthy, friendly nation in return for the government's pledge not to build nuclear weapons. I hear Cato also advocates we release Charles Manson if he pinky swears he won't hurt anybody. Cato analyzes the cost of deterrence versus preventive war against Iran. The question we have to answer is are we better off containing any unintended consequences of destroying Iran's nuclear program or containing the predictable consequences of nuclear blackmail and attack by nuclear armed mullahs. I find it hard to believe that the unintended consequences of destroying Iran's nuclear program could be worse than the consequences of Iran vaporizing Tel Aviv or Miami. And the people who tell us that radical Muslim tyrants can be deterred are the same people who preach to us that we don't understand radical Muslims. They can't have it both ways. They're 100 percent accurate about the latter and therefore their opinion about the former is worthless.

Iraq should not be used as the model for preemptive war. Thoroughly destroying Iran's nuclear sites should take no more than a few days and use only air strikes. If we have to hit sites 10 - 20 times to pulverize them, then we'll hit them 10 - 20 times. If some sites are too hardened for air strikes, we'll use ground troops then extract them afterwards. If we have to hit some facilities again in three months, we'll hit them again in three months. We don't have to get involved in nation building. It's far cheaper in blood and treasure to strike multiple times than to nation build.

MEDIA:

MSNBC host says conservatives don't care if half the country dies as long as they take down Obama. I wonder how many viewers MSNBC lost over that comment. Probably not many because they don't have many left to lose.

MISC:

Spitzer space telescope discovers new ring around Saturn.

Myspace blocks user from streaming his own music because Myspace doesn't acknowledge his copyright.

The damage caused by housing regulations described by housing regulator.

"In the Big Apple, there are several agencies having direct jurisdiction over the housing market and several other agencies whose actions impinge upon housing. These agencies employ several thousand employees whose only job is to "get the landlord." Even those programs that seem landlord oriented — rehabilitation financing, for example — are really tenant-oriented programs designed to keep rents low and to exert more bureaucratic control over the market."

This is just crazy. Government is crazy. There's a lot more tenants than landlords to buy votes from.

Google caught in government catch-22 for trying to scan in millions of out of print books. That means it has to get around the copyright law, but in doing so, it was accused of violating anti-monopoly law.

Conservative blogger claims Bill Ayers admitted writing Obama's first book, Dreams From My Father. This story rings true, especially because Obama is fracturing the liberal coalition by being too liberal for the mainstream but not leftist enough for his radical roots. However, I can't help but be skeptical of this specific claim. This blogger, who nobody ever heard of before this claim, has too much motive to lie for me to just accept the story on her word alone. But the Obama biography ends speculation anyway. Ayers wrote the book.

I think Boortz is right with his prediction that Democrats will try to seize retirement assets just as the leftist in Argentina did.

ACORN and SEIU too close for comfort.

Cato calls for ending the lone wolf provision of the Patriot Act. I never understood this provision, and I don't have a much better understanding after reading this essay. This provision must be very vague. I'm all for ending other provisions too, such as writing your own warrant and demanding business records without a warrant.

Nothing is too frivolous for Obama to wield presidential power on.

"Obama's failed Olympic gambit was dumb politics. But it's also bad policy for the president to involve himself in nonpresidential issues, reinforcing as it does an infantile and unhealthy view of presidential responsibility."

Nice.

Polish President Vaclav Klaus won't let the EU power grab via the Lisbon treaty pass.

Even a Broken Clock

Even a Broken Clock in Afghanistan is Right Twice a Day

by Mark Luedtke

 

In the wake of 9/11, Congress declared war on the people who had attacked us, not knowing at the time who that was. Our intelligence organizations quickly determined that al Qaeda had attacked us from a base in Afghanistan. President Bush ordered our military to invade Afghanistan in response. By early 2002, in one of the most successful military campaigns in history, our troops toppled the Taliban for providing a safe haven and drove al Qaeda out of Afghanistan.

We had won. Al Qaeda had been reduced to isolated cells of resistance in the same way the Nazis had been reduced to that after we won WWII. We should have pulled out then, brought our troops home victorious and kept a wary eye on Afghanistan in case al Qaeda re-organized back there in the future. If they did, we could defeat them again.

Instead Bush tried to play God in Afghanistan and create a functioning, self-governing state where one had never existed and where none of the prerequisites for self-government were in place. The Bush
administration and many Americans made the mistake of confusing an
election with freedom. An election is the final step in freedom. Before
a nation can get to that point, it needs certain prerequisites:
security, economic freedom and an educated population among others.
Unlike Iraq, none of those prerequisites have ever existed in
Afghanistan and our attempt to nation-build there is a lost cause.

Bush must have been channelling Soviet President Leonid Brezhnev, and the result will be the same for us as it was for the Soviets. The Soviets withdrew from Afghanistan after nine years of futility and loss of life. We're approaching eight years of futility and loss of life. According to iCasualties.org, 61 American and 81 coalition troops had been killed in Afghanistan by the end of 2002. Since then 789 American and 1340 coalition troops have been killed, and we have nothing to show for those losses.

Like a broken clock, the anti-war left is right this time, and President Obama is stuck in the corner he painted himself into. After Democrats betrayed our Vietnamese allies and lost the Vietnam War our troops had won, Americans wouldn't trust Democrats with the presidency. Until 2008, the only two Democrat candidates who had won since were Carter after Nixon and Watergate and Clinton won a plurality twice because Perot attracted the small government vote away from Republicans.

Obama understood that while fighting two wars, no matter how unpopular George Bush was, Americans would not vote an anti-war candidate into office. So Obama made the case that Afghanistan was the good war and Iraq was the bad war. At that time, he was wrong on both counts. There was nothing to be gained by fighting in Afghanistan, but Iraq was still in danger of becoming a new safe haven for al Qaeda. Fortunately for Obama, US and Iraqi forces eliminated the threat from al Qaeda in Iraq before the election.

But now Obama is stuck fighting the war we can't win and we gain nothing even if we could win. Even if a functioning government did arise, it couldn't stop al Qaeda from using the mountains on the Pakistan border as a safe haven. Proponents of the war claim we're fighting to keep al Qaeda from getting a safe haven. Using that logic, we should invade Somalia, Sudan, northern Africa and more countries and stay in all of them forever too. Why should we lose thousands of lives and hundreds of billions of dollars denying al Qaeda a safe haven in Afghanistan when it's far cheaper in blood and treasure to take them out if they get a safe haven there?

And there's no good reason to think al Qaeda will ever be welcome in Afghanistan again. Al Qaeda brought the awesome destructive power of the US military down on the heads of the Taliban. If the Taliban regain power in Afghanistan, they're unlikely to want to repeat that experience.

Proponents of the war also claim that anti-war supporters want to revert to a pre-9/11 mentality. That's absurd. Americans couldn't stick our collective heads in the sand like that again even if we wanted to. And nobody wants to.

We should end the Afghan war because it costs lives, money and makes us less safe. The war has destabilized nuclear armed Pakistan. The war has put us at Russia's mercy for resupply, weakening our international position. The war has empowered and emboldened Iran. It has transformed people formerly uninterested in the United States into enemies. The longer we stay, the worse those things will get.

And there's nothing to gain by staying. The recent fraudulent elections show that Afghanistan is the same as it's always been. Tribalism still reigns. The Taliban hunt down and kill any Afghans with ink on their fingers from voting. It's a disaster. And the US Navy is capable of keeping al Qaeda from regrouping in Afghanistan.

But don't expect the Narcissist-in-Chief to admit he was wrong any time soon. The Messiah thinks he's more god-like than even Bush did. Obama told top Afghan General McChrystal to withhold his request for more troops not to reevaluate strategy but to give his administration time to appease his rabid anti-war supporters. General McChrystal gave us a hint at the truth- he said 40,000 more troops won't win the war, but without them it's lost. He should have said that with them it's lost too. All they can do is prolong the war, costing us more lives and money.

But some day in the near future, Obama will no longer be able to deny reality. Like Brezhnev before him, Obama will have to admit that there are limits to the power of the US government, and transforming Afghanistan into a self-governing nation is beyond those limits. When that time comes, Obama will blame Bush for losing the war, then bring the troops home. We should bring them home now instead of later.

Free kibbles

ECONOMY:

How GM and the UAW killed Saturn:

"Saturn's chief UAW apostle was Donald Ephlin, the visionary head of the union's GM department who passed away in 2000. Ephlin strongly believed that Detroit's auto makers and the UAW had to change from confrontation to collaboration."

Exactly. That's why I keep saying unions and management have to become partners in productivity, but as long as the unions have the power of coercion, which is inherently corrupting, that won't happen.

I don't see any new info in this article, but it bears repeating. Bush and Paulson forced financial to take TARP money against their will. Paulson lied to the people about TARP. I keep saying Paulson and Bernanke executed a coup and Bush ignorantly went along with it. Contrary to the accepted history, a horrible crisis didn't lead to TARP. TARP created a horrible crisis and guaranteed the election for Obama. Credit was flowing until TARP passed. Remember this all happened as Sarah Palin pulled McCain back into the lead in the polls.

TAX AND SPEND:

Post-mortem on the failed cash for clunkers programs:

"Last week U.S. automakers reported that new car sales for September, the first month since the clunker program expired, sank by 25% from a year earlier. Sales at GM and Chrysler fell by 45% and 42%, respectively. Ford was down about 5%. Some 700,000 cars were sold in the summer under the program as buyers received up to $4,500 to buy a new car they would probably have purchased anyway, so all the program seems to have done is steal those sales from the future. Exactly as critics predicted.
...
Rather than stimulating the economy, the program made the nation as a whole $1.4 billion poorer.
...
In the category of all-time dumb ideas, cash for clunkers rivals the New Deal brainstorm to slaughter pigs to raise pork prices."

Just like many of us said.

So Obama is trying to force a second stimulus down our throats, but Democrats aren't calling it a second stimulus because the knows the people will jump down their throats if they do.

"White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs yesterday highlighted those political sensitivities, saying there “were no plans” for a second stimulus like the $787 billion package passed earlier this year. Instead, he said, the administration is looking at “extensions” of existing programs.
...
“More of a stimulus package is much more difficult at this point than it was in February,” said Julian Zelizer, a professor of public affairs at Princeton University in New Jersey. “The deficit can become a political straitjacket to the Democrats.”"

Ya think? Obama and his Democrats are sneaky, sneaky aristocrats. Needless to say, this will cost more jobs. Remember when idiots used to claim Obama would cut spending just because he said so? Those people should do us all a favor and never vote again.

Did you know that "the federal government is a major owner of more than 600 U.S. financial institutions and banks, as well as two auto makers, an international insurance conglomerate, and numerous other businesses?" Thanks TARP. Get us out of here.

FEDERAL RESERVE:

The dollar takes a huge blow as oil-rich Middle East nations work with China, Russia, Japan, France, India and Brazil to use alternative currencies to buy oil. We can thank the wise central planners at the Federal Reserve and their supporters in Congress for this.

"The decline of American economic power linked to the current global recession was implicitly acknowledged by the World Bank president Robert Zoellick. "One of the legacies of this crisis may be a recognition of changed economic power relations," he said in Istanbul ahead of meetings this week of the IMF and World Bank. But it is China's extraordinary new financial power – along with past anger among oil-producing and oil-consuming nations at America's power to interfere in the international financial system – which has prompted the latest discussions involving the Gulf states.
...
China imports 60 per cent of its oil, much of it from the Middle East and Russia. The Chinese have oil production concessions in Iraq – blocked by the US until this year – and since 2008 have held an $8bn agreement with Iran to develop refining capacity and gas resources. China has oil deals in Sudan (where it has substituted for US interests) and has been negotiating for oil concessions with Libya, where all such contracts are joint ventures."

This is also a result of our interventionist foreign policy.

"Furthermore, Chinese exports to the region now account for no fewer than 10 per cent of the imports of every country in the Middle East, including a huge range of products from cars to weapon systems, food, clothes, even dolls. In a clear sign of China's growing financial muscle, the president of the European Central Bank, Jean-Claude Trichet, yesterday pleaded with Beijing to let the yuan appreciate against a sliding dollar and, by extension, loosen China's reliance on US monetary policy, to help rebalance the world economy and ease upward pressure on the euro."

And this is a result of our interventionist domestic policy.

"Iran announced late last month that its foreign currency reserves would henceforth be held in euros rather than dollars. Bankers remember, of course, what happened to the last Middle East oil producer to sell its oil in euros rather than dollars. A few months after Saddam Hussein trumpeted his decision, the Americans and British invaded Iraq."

I'm sure it was just a coincidence.

FREE SPEECH:

Who would have guessed that the internet, not the Federal government, was the biggest threat to America? The Obama administration is hyping the threat from the internet in preparation for seizing control of it, and that's the real threat. Government control of our infrastructure has made us vulnerable. More government control will make us more vulnerable.

More on how the FTC claims it can regulate blogs."As I reported last year, the FTC has been waging war against small retailers of medicinal herbs. This rampage is directed against any website that dares to even suggest there may be some benefit to the use of herbs in treating diseases like cancer. The FTC is emphatic: No individual may speak about the health benefits of a product - even a legal product - without the express consent of the federal government. All speech not permitted is forbidden."

HEALTH CARE:

Big government health care oppression video.

Senate won't read Baucus bill because "the legislative language is among the more confusing things I've ever read in my life."

The Baucus bill severely harms health care for seniors.

"It gives the Secretary of Health and Human Services the power to define quality, cost-effective care for each medical condition and penalize doctors who spend more on their patients.
The law establishing Medicare in 1965 barred the federal government from interfering in doctors' treatment decisions. Slowly, Medicare regulations have begun unraveling that protection. Now the Cantwell amendment finishes the job.
This is the most extreme change to Medicare ever. Dr. David McKalip, a Florida neurosurgeon and a board member of the Florida Medical Association, predicts: "The only doctors left in Medicare will be those willing to ration care and practice cookbook medicine.""

A lot of doctors will quit if this becomes law.

GLOBAL WARMING:

Barbara Boxer introduced her job killing tax and trade bill in the Senate.

WAR ON DRUGS:

We should end the war on drugs not just for utilitarian reasons but because of the principle of liberty.

WAR:

Obama wasn't waiting on a new strategy for Afghanistan. That was a ruse to buy time to rally support from his base. Harry Reid reports that he got support from Democrats, so we'll hear from the president soon on Afghanistan. Nice article from Great Britain on how Obama is playing politics with Democrats on Afghanistan.

"The divisions between some of Mr Obama’s civilian White House advisers and senior military personnel have become so heated in recent days that Robert Gates, the Defence Secretary, was forced to appeal for calm as he admonished the top commander in Afghanistan for a speech he delivered in London last week."

You're not likely to read this in the mainstream media. Boy did I call that right.

"Mr Gates made one thing clear: that the US is not about to pull out. “We’re not leaving Afghanistan,” he said."

That too.

POLITICS:

Victor Davis Hanson exposes fraudulent cries of racism leveled at Obama's opposition.

Obama preparing a scapegoat because he won't be able to close Guantanamo on time.

MISC:

British Ministry of Defence report on how to stop leaks is leaked. Only government. The private sector has almost no leaks. This may be trivial to report, but this is the inevitable consequence of big government. Because government divides the people into winners and losers on every issue it touches, it alienates the entire population on some issues, including the population of government workers. The bigger government is, the more divisive it is and the more people in government who are alienated. Thus uncontrollable leaks.

Is California America's first failed state? Not in the terms we use for overseas countries, but it's an interesting application of the term.

Interesting story about possible execution of innocent man and a cover-up of the investigation into it. I don't know what Perry's motives to cover it up would be. It's in his best interest to uncover all the facts, and if this man was innocent, fix whatever was broken.

Top ten most frequently banned classics.

Rent control makes landlords look like greedy bastards and other policies that make workers and consumers angry at producers.

"Rent control is not the only example of the adverse effects of price controls. All price ceilings reduce the quantities traded, wiping out the wealth that would otherwise be created by mutually agreed-upon arrangements. They also increase discrimination (and evasion efforts) by lowering the cost of saying "none for you." And people blame the greedy bastards they deal with directly rather than the greedy bastards in government who are the actual cause and who impose the cost of doing their will on others without compensation."

I always wonder why the people who complain about greedy capitalists never complain about greedy politicians like politicians are somehow better than the rest of us and immune to human weaknesses. Power corrupts. Absolute power corrupts absolutely. And the politicians have all the power.

Obama biography conclusively exposes that Bill Ayers ghost wrote Obama's first book Dreams From My Father.

"With the deadline pressing, Michelle recommended that Barack seek advice from 'his friend and Hyde Park neighbor Bill Ayers.' Despite a large advance, Obama found himself 'hopelessly blocked.' After four futile years of trying to finish, Obama ‘sought advice from his friend and Hyde Park neighbor Bill Ayers.' This he did 'at Michelle's urging.'"

This is huge news, but where's the coverage? Don't tell me leftists in the mainstream media and academia are going to let Obama skate on literary fraud. Author also exposes the cozy working relationship between Obama and Ayers.

"Andersen explains their rationale: "Everyone knew they were friends and that they worked on various projects together. It was no secret. Why would it be?""

From the main article:

"It is old news now that Ayers and Obama served on the boards of the Chicago Annenberg Challenge and the Woods Fund together, but in total, Obama worked with Ayers and other radicals on least six related non-profit boards and shared the same office for three years with Ayers and fellow radicals, Susan and Mike Klonsky."

This is it in a nutshell:

"He is looking more and more like a mere construct, a carefully crafted mouthpiece for a cabal of anonymous radicals furiously working to secure a permanent foothold in the halls of power."

That's exactly what Obama is, and we knew it before the election.

I hate it when people who have benefited so much from economic freedom like Warren Buffet call for higher taxes that would reduce economic freedom and harm us all.

Free kibbles

ECONOMY:

Rothbard's discussion of what government did wrong in the 30s to extend and deepen the depression reads like a laundry list of Obama policies.

Boortz reports that Democrats are mulling another stimulus bill. I'm sure Democrats mull stimulus bills 24/7/365/always, but boortz thinks this is something serious, and he has inside connections. I can't find anything about this in the regular news, but that doesn't mean it isn't true. After all, Democrats wouldn't want a good crisis, one they made deeper and longer, to go to waste. Boortz suggests a tax amnesty on $13 trillion in overseas savings coming home as a stimulus. But then the crisis would over. How would Democrats benefit? Or Republicans? If aristocrats can't buy votes with it, it ain't happening.

HEALTH CARE:

Naturally health insurance corporations are upset that the Senate Finance Committee has reduced the use of force against Americans who don't by health insurance. Corporations always want more mandates and regulations because they always favor the big corporations. Put a gun to the head of 2 million Americans and make them buy insurance! Do it for the insurance corporations! That's big, liberal government in action.

The Olympian-in-Chief says if we pass health care oppression, our economy will recover. I thought it had already recovered. Obama's stooges keep telling us the economy has recovered. I thought the Obamulus boondoggle had already created and saved trillions of new jobs. Every week I hear the wonderful news that the jobs that have been lost and the people on employment has risen slightly less than the tremendous amount government hacks had predicted. I'm shocked to find out our economy hasn't recovered, but I'm thrilled that Obama knows how to fix it, because he's done so well so far - by taking well over $1 trillion more from the people by force and giving it to his supporters in the form of free health care. Obama gets my gold medal.

"The National Federation of Independent Business says, "Forcing employers to offer health insurance, plain and simple, will cost America jobs and revenue, and inhibit small businesses from growing. It's a bad idea any time, but is particularly destructive in the current economic environment.""

How hard is that to figure out?

MISC:

Honduras restores civil rights in run-up to election.

The FTC declares that bloggers must disclose paid reviews. I thought laws were supposed to be written by Congress not the FTC.

How villages in Iraq used sheep, bottled water and cigarettes as money. This is where we're headed to.

Apparently this top ten list is from somebody's email. Letterman should hire this guy as a writer. Maybe he'd become funny again.

"Top 10 reasons Chicago did not get the olympic bid.
10. Dead people can't vote at IOC meetings
9. Obama distracted by 25 min meeting with Gen. McChrystal
8. Who cares if Obama couldn't talk the IOC into Chicago? He'll be able to talk Iran out of nukes.
7. The impediment is Israel still building settlements.
6. Obviously no president would have been able to accomplish it.
5. We've been quite clear and said all along that we didn't want the Olympics.
4. This isn't about the number of Olympics "lost", it's about the number of Olympics "saved" or "created".
3. Clearly not enough wise Latina judges on the committee
2. Because the IOC is racist.
1. It's George Bush's fault."

This is hysterical.

Boortz on Chicago's loss of the Olympics to Rio:

"Do the math; 89 men, 17 women voting on whether to hang out for the next seven years in Chicago or Rio. Now just how difficult is that?
...
Let's face it, Chicago is not known as the city of lights. I happen to love the place, but overseas Chicago is gangsters. It's Al Capone. It's the St. Valentine's Day massacre and Elliot Ness."

It's not that hard to figure out, is it? Who said Chicago was the favorite? Oh, it was President Obama's public relations corp commonly known as the mainstream media. They're the ones who set Obama up for this fall.

Free kibbles

ECONOMY:

Why everybody should own gold.

"If we divide the money supply by the number of ounces the U.S. could back its paper with – and here we’d have to decide what measure of money supply we want to use. Nobody, including the Federal Reserve, actually knows how much money they have floating around out there. It would seem that there are about six trillion dollars outside the U.S. alone. Let’s estimate that M0 in the U.S., the narrowest measure of money supply that consists of just notes and coins, amounts to one trillion. So, 265 million into seven trillion gives you about $26,420 dollars per ounce of gold."

TAX AND SPEND:

2010 Tax Foundation ranking of state business climates. Ohio is 47th again.

MISC:

Explaining fractional reserve banking. With video. Interesting point that NO fiat currency in history has survived. Our fiat currency is doomed too.

Free kibbles

ECONOMY:

Here's a little story that was significantly underreported - job losses increased again in September. Who cares about this insignificant fact when the big story is the failure of the Messiah to bring the Olympics home to Bethlehem.

One thing we can always count on is the stupidity of aristocrats. Robert Reich says the government needs to take more money from us by force and spend it to turn the economy around. It's worked so well so far, we need to do more of it.

Peter Schiff lampoons the idea of a jobless recovery.

"For those market boosters who are prattling on about the possibility of a "jobless recovery," I offer an invitation to join me for a breakfast of "fat-free bacon," "eggless omelets," and "no-carb bread." As unappetizing as such a meal may sound, it would nevertheless offer more substance than the oxymoronic concept of an economic resurgence without job creation.
...
If we refuse to allow the economy to experience a real recession, we will never have the benefit of a real recovery. Instead, we get the "jobless recovery," a veneer of apparently positive indicators that merely obscures the underlying rot."

There is no such thing as a jobless recovery, only the illusion of recovery that comes from inflating a bubble by printing worthless money. I wish Schiff was running for president instead of just running for the Senate.

GLOBAL WARMING:

Great quote summarizes my reports from yesterday on the humanity of scientists:

"When the search for truth is confused with political advocacy, the pursuit of knowledge is reduced to the quest for power."

Essay explains the collectivist motives of this phony environmental movement. This is a great call to action.

POLITICS:

More people are slowly seeing Obama for what he really is, but why is it taking so long? We knew this before the election.

"The President's messianic self-understanding is not that of the compassionate, non-confrontational peacemaker made popular by post-WWII, 20^th Century preachers who forged their theologies in the classrooms of liberal protestant seminaries. It's more compatible with the words in Matthew 10:34: "I come not to bring peace, but a sword." Not the sword of international warfare, but armed political assault on American capitalism. He comes to bring retribution upon those institutions that have, by his reading of history, oppressed the poor in America and exploited the Third World -- hence his sponsorship of the Global Poverty Act of 2007 while a Senator."

Better late than never, I guess.

The growing secessionist movement shows Americans' frustration with big Federal government.

WAR:

Iraqi forces stage successful large-scale terrorist hunt around Mosul.

And where does this idea that conservatives are more inclined to war than the left? Do these libertarians who keep repeating that not know what party Wilson, FDR, Truman, JFK and LBJ belonged to? Granted, since Vietnam the left has been allergic to war, but only since then. I guess that's when a bunch of liberals turned into neo-conservatives. This statement is 100 percent accurate:

"But the ideological apparatus constructed by the modern American state relies on a false dichotomy of left and right, and so have the fascist impulses of the American people been channeled into both parties, with different rationales underlying each statist program."

Here's another misunderstanding of Obama:

"This relates to the question of whether Obama represents a dramatic shift toward radical socialism or a further consolidation and solidification of America’s fascist tendencies. The latter is clearly closer to the truth. Obama does not seek to abolish private property entirely, nor is he a consistent egalitarian. He is a Goldman-Sachs socialist, not a Marxist one. While ACORN is part of the Obama repertoire, so too is the military-industrial complex, and a much more important one at that."

Obama is only a Goldman-Sachs socialist because reality forces it on him. Obama can't declare Marxism, or he would. He isn't really the Messiah. He doesn't have a magic wand. He has to work within the constraints of our system until he succeeds at collapsing it. Obama wants the military-industrial complex on his side when the country collapses to he can use that military-industrial complex to force Marxism on us. He's a Marxist thug in the tradition of Lenin.

"[Conservatives] seem to always want government to be as small as it was about three years ago..."

Oh my gosh, how funny and how true.

FOREIGN POLICY:

Pat Buchanan wonders at the futility and cost of our adventures in the Middle East.

Victor Davis Hansen explains why foreign policy is dependent on domestic policy and our domestic policy makes any attempt at foreign policy useless and empowers dictators.

"Last week, three dictators -- from Iran, Libya and Venezuela -- delivered lunatic hate speeches at the General Assembly of the United Nations.
Why do these anti-Semitic dictators feel so free to damn America from downtown New York? Why do their abettors spurn our requests for help? And why do creepy regimes plot to get nukes, and fund terrorists.
Easy. They do not fear, much less listen, to an indebted and energy-hungry America that either needs their cash or oil -- or both."

They don't respect us. We're not the leader of the world or even the free world. Our two big-government, anti-American parties have made us the butt of the world's jokes. If we dramatically reduced the burden of government, developed our own energy resources and transformed to a free economy, oil prices would drop significantly. We'd be the envy of the world once again and petty oil tyrants would be the nobodies they ought to be.

It's accurate to claim that the US is the aggressor in the Middle East and that our aggression and Israel's development of nuclear weapons has led Iran to covet a nuclear deterrent. But claiming that Iran would never nuke the US doesn't follow and it shouldn't be our only concern. Iran is likely to strike Israel first. The mad mullahs are fanatics, and we have to believe they would happily nuke Israel and enjoy the paradise they think would come with retaliation. We have to believe that at the very least, the mullahs would use nuclear blackmail to retain power. Despite our role in driving Iran to get nukes, we still have the responsibility to stop them from developing them for the sake of our own survival and the survival of others. Since Israel is the most likely first target of nuclear armed mullahs, we should support Israel's destruction of Iran's nuclear facilities.

Israeli president confronts Kremlin with list of names of Russians who are helping Iran develop a nuclear bomb.

IAEA reports that Iran has enough information to build an atomic bomb.

I don't understand the pacifism from so many libertarians regarding Iran and nukes. In a libertarian society, one with no government and no police, where individuals were responsible for their own security, if a fanatic told you over and over again he wanted to kill you, you family and your friends Britain and Israel, and you found out he was sneaking around checking out guns but he didn't have the money to buy one yet, you would stop him before he bought the gun. Nobody would risk their own life or the lives of their family on the belief that he doesn't really mean it. If he keeps saying he's not going to buy a gun, but he keeps telling you he's going to kill you and he keeps checking out guns, you wouldn't say he's really just going to buy a gun to defend himself. You wouldn't take that chance. I understand the natural libertarian inclination not to trust the government, but when suicide bomber-type fanatics say they want to see us and our allies wiped off the face of the earth, we should make sure they never get the opportunity to make that happen.

MISC:

There's no way to predict whether an Olympics will be good or bad for a city. If the haul brought in exceeds the amount looted and lost to central planning, then it's a plus. Otherwise it's a minus.

"More often, the win-win of the Games for any city is the chance to direct significant funds toward urban infrastructure, including subways, bridges, housing, parks and, of course, all sorts of stadiums."

Don't you like how the supposedly unbiased press just assumes that government spending on infrastructure is a win-win? They must not have driven through Dayton lately. That money would be better spent by individuals to fulfill their own needs than by government to fulfill the needs of the aristocrats. Bringing the Olympics to town sparks an orgy of central planning that is guaranteed to be wasteful.

Apparently most Chicagoans recognized that bringing the Olympics to Chicago would empower the corrupt politicians to be even more corrupt and bigger looters, so in hindsight, I'm happy the people of Chicago got their way and the Olympics went to Rio.

Apparently Make-A-Wish Foundation is not just for terminally ill children anymore. It sounds like this kid had a blast.

Ireland backs EU Lisbon Treaty. Only Poland and the Czech Republic have not done so. This article says it "streamlines decision-making". I bet it's a big power grab. The EU is turning into the United States of Europe.

Film questions whether AIDS is really caused by HIV and whether the drugs administered to HIV positive patients are killing them and concludes that the claim that HIV causes AIDS is a concoction of government bureaucrats trying to save their taxpayer funded jobs.

Holy crap. What is up with this tiny city economic development department to build this giant, high security jail? This sounds like something from Monty Python. The city doesn't even have a police department. And how frightening is the name American Police Force? This story just shows how incredibly dangerous government can be.

Free kibbles

TAX AND SPEND:

Obama moving closer to pushing a VAT tax in addition to all our other taxes.

FEDERAL RESERVE:

Because the Fed has done such a wonderful job at running our economy (how's that working out for you?), Ben Bernanke wants Congress to seize regulatory control of all big businesses and give it to him. Why can't people understand that this too big to fail baloney implies that nothing will ever change. If we don't let big companies fail, they will dominate our lives forever. They will become part of the government, using government to squash competition right and left. They'll be able to destroy our resources and our wealth like Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac without repercussion. For all those people who wanted change, why would you support institutionalizing the corporatist status quo that Obama, Geithner, Bernanke and Democrats are pushing?

"Bernanke also urged lawmakers to set up an oversight council, and said the broad task of monitoring and addressing systemic risks "may exceed the capacity of any individual supervisor.""

So Bernanke thinks a single central planner maybe overwhelmed, but a handful of central planners will work just fine. How transparent is this guy?

HEALTH CARE:

Mises scholar explains why health care is so expensive. List of health care essays by Mises scholars.

Now we have government deciding what lifestyle choices insurance companies can charge more for. I'm all for insurance companies charging more for higher risk lifestyles, but government letting government make these decisions is frightening.

Senate Finance Committee finds a way to get government option into the Baucus bill. If you thought this battle was won, you were wrong.

Luxury items commonly scene on welfare cases getting health care paid for by the taxpayers.

GLOBAL WARMING:

More on how British scientists cherry picked tree ring data to create the phony hockey stick graph.

"But an even more disquieting discovery soon came to light. Steve searched a paleoclimate data archive to see if there were other tree ring cores from at or near the Yamal site that could have been used to increase the sample size. He quickly found a large set of 34 up-to-date core samples, taken from living trees in Yamal by none other than Schweingruber himself!Had these been added to Briffa's small group the 20th century would simply be flat. It would appear completely unexceptional compared to the rest of the millennium.
...
I have been probing the arguments for global warming for well over a decade. In collaboration with a lot of excellent coauthors I have consistently found that when the layers get peeled back, what lies at the core is either flawed, misleading or simply non-existent. The surface temperature data is a contaminated mess with a significant warm bias, and as I have detailed elsewhere the IPCC fabricated evidence in its 2007 report to cover up the problem. Climate models are in gross disagreement with observations, and the discrepancy is growing with each passing year. The often-hyped claim that the modern climate has departed from natural variability depended on flawed statistical methods and low-quality data. The IPCC review process, of which I was a member last time, is nothing at all like what the public has been told: Conflicts of interest are endemic, critical evidence is systematically ignored and there are no effective checks and balances against bias or distortion."

Scientists are people too, with all the political biases, selfish motivations and human weaknesses as any other people. The process of peer review was devised to mitigate the errors and corruption natural from human weakness. Carbon credit markets are collapsing. I think this is a growing scandal. When a scientist or group of scientists refuse to turn over the data for peer review, their papers should not be published, let alone sensationalized by frauds like Al Gore. Maybe this will finally put the dagger through the heart of this global warming scam. Then opportunistic Democrats will start pushing for legislation to regulate and control scientists and science papers. Want to bet?

The Yamal scandal in layman's terms makes clear just how much of a cover-up these frauds were engaged in. The British scientist in question doesn't disagree that the data set was cherry picked. He just blames Russians for doing the cherry picking, not himself. But he still used it. He still didn't use the more representative data that was available to him. He still covered it up. This is a growing scandal, and at some point in the future the people are going to see through this scam in huge numbers. Maybe not from just this scandal, but from everything. When that happens, the politicians are going to jump off this bandwagon like crazy and blame the fraudulent scientists.

Just to drive the point home about scientists being human and therefore as weak as any other human, NASA climate scientist busted for funneling no-bid contracts to his wife's firm and failing to disclose.

Because of the lack of solar activity in no-show solar cycle 24, galactic cosmic rays at space age high leading at least one scientist to claim they are responsible for global cooling.

WAR:

Obama takes Copenhagen opportunity to meet with top Afghan general. It was a convenient side-meeting for him. You would think that our troops fighting and dying in Afghanistan would be higher priority to the commander-in-chief than partying with a bunch European aristocrats, but not for Obama.

House overwhelmingly votes to block Obama from bringing Guantanamo terrorists to US. Will the Senate? Will Obama veto if the Senate agrees? Obama continues to split the Democrats. Enemy combatants have no due process rights. They forfeited all rights when they took up arms against the US.

MISC:

Obama's ego and image trashed when Chicago eliminated from Olympic contention in first round. I've consistently bashed Obama's policies, but now I resent him personally for making me choose between what's good for my country overall versus what's good for my country in the short run. I would have loved for Chicago to get the Olympics, but it's more important for America that Obama's agenda fail. By injecting himself in this Olympic decision, which no president had ever done and he shouldn't have done, Obama made me root against my own country, and I resent him for it.

"When Obama himself decided to go, it seemed like the wind was behind the U.S. bid. No one has better vote-counters than the president, and political wisdom held that he wouldn't stick his neck out if there weren't a very good chance of a win."

Apparently not. Once again the so-called experts and mainstream media cheerleaders are exposed as idiots. I wondered why Obama, after spending 9 months traveling the world and trashing America, would put his reputation on the line by personally lobbying to bring the Olympics to the country he hates. Then I remembered Chicago has the most corrupt political system in the country. Mayor Daley has all the dirt on Obama and therefore has power over him. I think it's likely that Daley forced Obama to make a personal plea to bring the Olympics to Chicago. And now Obama lost, which will harm him politically, and that's good for America.

Congratulations to Rio and Brazil. They must be thrilled to be the first city and country in South America to host the Olympics. I like how the media is trying to spin the loss as resulting from European domination of the committee, like the Europeans were homers. If that was the case, Madrid would have won. I think it's more likely the reason Chicago lost is Obama has trashed America all over the world. He's running unheard of deficits and debt and the IOC would be fools to think the US would be in good shape to host an Olympics in 2016 after all the damage Obama will have done. And who would want to put the Olympics in the hands of the most corrupt political system in America?

According to Mises, Chicagoians are better off without the Olympics. I'm sure much of this is true. But I'm also sure that local businesses get big boosts in income during and after the Olympics, and that boosts the local economy for everybody. I wouldn't be surprised if it was a net loss because of the taxes and diversion of resources by government though.

Amazing image from Herschel Space telescope shows section of Milky Way in unprecedented detail.

Interesting take on the Letterman extortion. What is the crime here? Everything was purely voluntary. Letterman could say no or yes to paying the $2 million. Either it was worth it to him or it wasn't. He could have bargained for a lower price in a purely voluntary exchange. Why should the staffer have been arrested for this? Why is blackmail a crime? Because rich, powerful men want to behave badly without having to pay a price for it. They want to have affairs. They want to be corrupt. They want to use their money and power to do bad things, and they don't want staffers to be able to profit from their knowledge of the bad deeds or have any power over them. Since rich, powerful men control government, they make this purely voluntary activity into a crime to protect each other from exposure of their bad actions.

Another way of explaining it: If you think you have something that would be valuable to somebody, say labor to clean their house, you make an offer. If they're not interested, you go away. If they are interested, you negotiate the terms, make a contract, either in writing or not, and you each carry out your part of the contract. If one party breaks the contract, you reach a settlement or go to court to obtain a settlement. How is that different than blackmail? The staffer has something he thinks is valuable to Letterman - his silence about Letterman's affairs. He goes to Letterman and makes an offer for this silence. If Letterman doesn't like the offer, he can either refuse the deal or negotiate until a deal is reached or the parties end negotiations. If they reach an agreement then one subsequently breaks it, they should have the same recourse to settlements. There's no reason for this to be a crime other than rich, powerful men don't like regular people being able use the rich man's bad behavior to advantage against them.

I purposely focus on men because I don't think that if men were virtuous and generally never had to worry about blackmail, that they would create the crime of blackmail to cover-up the bad behavior of women. The crime of blackmail was created to use the power of the state to protect men of power from suffering the consequences of their misdeeds. The rich and powerful didn't create blackmail laws to protect others. They did it to protect themselves.

I have no problem with these TSA scanners. I have a problem with government running security at airports. Let the airports and airlines take care of their own security. Who do you want keeping you safe on a plane, some bureaucrat buried in a cube in D.C. or Captain Sully Sullenberger?

Glenn Beck blames godlessness for America's problems. Give me a break. I agree that government usurping the role of religion is a problem, but blaming godlessness is ridiculous. This is why I can hardly stand to watch Beck.

Memo from ACORN counsel telling ACORN to straighten up ASAP.

"ACORN, as it turns out, is an ugly, corrupt organization. It is just as bad, just as evil, as people said it was. If you don't believe me, ask Elizabeth Kingsley."

Who would have guessed?

North Carolina requires plastic bottles be recycled.

Reason brings some sanity to the issue of Roman Polanski's arrest:

"The subsequent skirmish over Polanski's arrest—not exactly a momentous international incident—isn't between right and left or blue state and red or secularist and social conservative. It's a gaggle of actors and directors against everyone with a moral IQ higher than Woody Allen's."

Thank you.

Free kibbles

HEALTH CARE:

That same fruitcake Florida congressman called Republicans "knuckle-dragging Neanderthals" and says they should bow down and kiss Obama's ring. That that last part is a paraphrase, but it's pretty accurate. Grayson compares health care in America to the holocaust. It's too bad to find out this guy is a nutcase. He did a great job questioning the Fed's inspector general and showing nobody has a clue what's going on at the Fed.

Medicare rations care, just like the Democrats' plan will."National coverage decisions (NCDs) are assessments issued by Medicare's medical staff that define who is eligible for new but often expensive treatments. Medicare then assigns medical products and procedures with "codes" that determine which regulated category they fall into. Finally, price "schedules" are developed by Medicare's staff each year to assign each unique code with its own updated payment rate. The process for getting a favorable code on a new product is a source of intense lobbying. It can make or break a technology."

Part 6 of Ann Coulter's liberal lies about health care.

FOREIGN POLICY:

Apparently a US diplomat exchanged words in private with an Iranian diplomat over lunch about Iran's nuclear program. The Obama teams calls these significant talks. The reporter says the Obama team is intentionally overstating their importance because nothing happened.

"The BBC's Jon Leyne in Geneva says the Americans seem to want to play up their importance, perhaps as evidence that President Barack Obama's so-called "hand of friendship" is generating a positive response.
Later, the representatives of Iran and the six powers agreed to hold further talks by the end of October, according to Iranian state television.
However, our correspondent says, overall the nuclear talks do not seem to have made much progress."

The talkers agreed to talk again later, after Iran further develops nuclear weapon technology. Yay. What a joke, and it's on us.

Iran to invite the IAEA to inspect its recently revealed nuclear plant some time in the future. This is all part of the ongoing delaying tactics Iran is using to buy time to develop the bomb. You can bet the inspectors won't be granted access to the part of the plant devoted to weaponization. Then the UN will have to meet for a few months. Then there will be more delays. Blah blah blah. Then BOOM.

Iran agrees to ship uranium to Russia for Russia to enrich it. Why not? It saves Iran some money and doesn't impact their development of nuclear weapons. This is a ruse to buy time. They could have agreed to this years ago.

MISC:

Exoplanet is so close to its sun that heat vaporizes rock which then cools and rains down as pebbles.

Depressing experience at a private preview of Michael Moore's Capitalism: A Love Story.

4.4 million year old ancestor or cousin of pre-humans presented.

Obama trying to corrupt online education with Federal money.

Hayek explains why he is not a conservative:

"It is that by its very nature [conservatism] cannot offer an alternative to the direction in which we are moving. It may succeed by its resistance to current tendencies in slowing down undesirable developments, but, since it does not indicate another direction, it cannot prevent their continuance. It has, for this reason, invariably been the fate of conservatism to be dragged along a path not of its own choosing. The tug of war between conservatives and progressives can only affect the speed, not the direction, of contemporary developments. But, though there is a need for a "brake on the vehicle of progress,"[3] I personally cannot be content with simply helping to apply the brake. What the [classic] liberal must ask, first of all, is not how fast or how far we should move, but where we should move. In fact, he differs much more from the collectivist radical of today than does the conservative. While the last generally holds merely a mild and moderate version of the prejudices of his time, the [classic] liberal today must more positively oppose some of the basic conceptions which most conservatives share with the socialists.
...
Advocates of the Middle Way[4] with no goal of their own, conservatives have been guided by the belief that the truth must lie somewhere between the extremes - with the result that they have shifted their position every time a more extreme movement appeared on either wing."

Reason's analysis of Scarborough's book makes this point very well. I've often pointed out that liberals made their biggest advance in decades during the Bush administration by vacating the field of ideas. As the liberals vacated, the conservatives raced to the left to fill the void. Medicare Part D. No Child Left Behind. Bailout madness. Thanks to Bush and Rove, conservatism today has boosted the leftist advance. Obama is the result. Hayek understood that conservatives are liberals-lite.

"Let me return, however, to the main point, which is the characteristic complacency of the conservative toward the action of established authority and his prime concern that this authority be not weakened rather than that its power be kept within bounds. This is difficult to reconcile with the preservation of liberty. In general, it can probably be said that the conservative does not object to coercion or arbitrary power so long as it is used for what he regards as the right purposes. He believes that if government is in the hands of decent men, it ought not to be too much restricted by rigid rules. Since he is essentially opportunist and lacks principles, his main hope must be that the wise and the good will rule - not merely by example, as we all must wish, but by authority given to them and enforced by them.[7] Like the socialist, he is less concerned with the problem of how the powers of government should be limited than with that of who wields them; and, like the socialist, he regards himself as entitled to force the value he holds on other people."

This essay is full of wonderful observations which shed light on US policy. When Hayek says "socialist", he's referring to the modern liberal. When he refers to liberal, he means classic liberal or a libertarian.

A bunch of pictures of Obama with Blagojevich. Apparently Obama claims he only met Blago one time. I don't know if that quote is accurate or the context, but it's worth blogging the link anyway.

How can anybody defend Roman Polanski? Why should he be above the law? Liberals have shown once again that they hate the rule of law. They prefer the rule of men as long as those men are liberals. I still wonder why Switzerland suddenly arrested him. Polanski has a house in Switzerland. He's visited Switzerland many times over the last 30 years. Why arrest him now? There has to be some political motivation.

Jesus Camp leaders get kids to praise cut out figure of Bush. This is just twisted, just as liberals coercing schoolkids to praise Obama is twisted. The difference is Jesus Camp is a tiny, voluntary event. Government schools control virtually every child in the US by force.

Roving wiretaps legalized by the Patriot Act helped thwart New York terrorist plan. I'm all for the roving wiretaps, but not other parts of the Patriot Act.

Hot conservative women calendar. This cracks me up.

Cato launches downsizinggovernment.org.

Supreme Court to hear gun control case from Chicago.