Unleash Your Inner Carnivore

Unleash Your Inner Carnivore
by Mark Luedtke

Man is a meat eater. The ancestors of modern humans stalked game, fish and shellfish on Africa’s savannas, rivers and coasts, and scientists believe that by doing so they obtained so much energy and nutrients that they developed big brains and general intelligence which fueled man’s rise to the top of the food chain. To this day, the Inuit eat almost no grains, fruits or vegetables, no sugar of any kind, thriving on a high fat, high protein diet of healthy meat from salmon, seal and whales. Because of their meat diet - they eat every part of the animal - and exercise regime, they suffer almost none of the deadly diseases of modern man including cardiovascular disease, heart disease and cancer.

A new study in Britain showed that red meat is good for you, but civilized man is rapidly losing appreciation for the benefits of eating meat. It’s cheaper, easier and therefore more profitable to grow and sell grains than to raise and sell meat, so food corporations and government agencies blanket the airwaves with advertisements and public service announcements pushing people to eat more grains and less meat. The result is the escalation of the deadly diseases of modern society.

But few people would trade modern civilization for the Inuit lifestyle despite the lower risk of disease, and most meat on grocery shelves is not healthy like Inuit meat. Naturally raised meat is lower in fat and has a significantly higher Omega 3 to Omega 6 ratio compared to grain-fed meat. Having too much Omega 6 produces inflammation and chronic disease. Additionally, most grocery meat is raised in unhealthy conditions in factory farms. Housing animals crammed together in small spaces, these farms become breeding grounds for pests and disease, so farmers shoot the animals with antibiotics and spray chemical pesticides. They feed them grains contaminated with pesticides and herbicides and pump them full of growth hormones to make them mature rapidly. Whether or not these chemicals create health problems in humans is an open question. Advocates of both sides point to studies in their favor. Regardless, Americans have options for more naturally grown food.

Certified Organic

One choice for people who want to feast on healthier meat is USDA Certified Organic meat. The USDA website describes that certification: “Organic food is produced by farmers who emphasize the use of renewable resources and the conservation of soil and water to enhance environmental quality for future generations.  Organic meat, poultry, eggs, and dairy products come from animals that are given no antibiotics or growth hormones.  Organic food is produced without using most conventional pesticides; fertilizers made with synthetic ingredients or sewage sludge; bioengineering; or ionizing radiation.” In addition, organically raised animals must be fed organic feed and have access to pasture, and both producers and processors must be certified by the USDA.

Miami Valley residents have numerous options to purchase certified organic meat retail. Healthy Alternative has a store on North Main and another on North Fairfield in Beavercreek. They specialize in supplements, processed organic food, organic produce, and they also sell organic meat. Assistant manager Laura Holland reports they have to get their organic meat from Wisconsin. Holland laments that organic meat is not a big part of their business. “I don’t think people realize how the government is using us for guinea pigs, doing GMO.” Genetically modified organisms created by gene splicing. Some argue that GMO is no different than centuries of selective breeding. Holland disagrees. “They’re not actually taking the color from butterfly wings and stuffing it in the salmon.” She explains one reason it’s easier to sell organic produce than organic meat: “I think one of the problems is organic meat is almost twice as much [money] as regular meat whereas produce is not quite as bad a bite into your pocketbook as meat would be.”

Jack Gridley has worked for Dorothy Lane Market (DLM) since 1976 and is currently VP of Meat and Seafood. DLM offers a limited selection of organic meat, much of it processed. Part of a growing trend, most DLM meats are naturally grown by local producers to keep the quality up and the price down. Gridley provides one reason organic meat is so expensive: “The only difference between the meats we sell here at DLM and certified organic is that the grain that the animals have been fed is certified organic. The trade-off for that is the organic grain is very expensive and limited in supply making the finished product much higher in price vs. the all natural antibiotic free meats.”

Locally Grown Organic, Non-certified

Dan Kremer sells his organic products in a stall in the west end of the Second Street Market on Saturdays. His E.A.T. Food for Life stall is packed with organic products and educational signs. Kremer seems more like an educator than a salesman. His website describes his mission: “E.A.T. Food for Life Farm is a 140-acre, certified organic, family farm located in northern Darke County near North Star, Ohio.  Our goal is to honor God in all that we do. Our family mission is to grow and distribute nutrient-dense, traditional, safe foods that nourish, protect, and support life for improved health and energy.”

With a mission like that, USDA certification would seem invaluable, but Kremer is dropping his. “I’m the only organic producer for my local processor. My land is certified organic, but our meats are not because my processors are not certified because they have to jump through all the hoops to certify.” The costs of certifying drive up the cost of certified organic meat and make it harder to sell.

Kremer explains the problem isn’t just the cost of the license. “It’s licensing fees, but then all of the paperwork that grows literally annually. That’s all frustrating, and boring and not productive. The whole climate of the culture is do you want more government or less government? I’d much rather say come to my farm. Let’s walk the land and let’s talk. You want to do any testing on my farm, consumer, have at it.” To him, the USDA certification is an obstacle that stands between him and his customer, and he’s tired of paying for it.

Customers buy his product regardless of certification. During the course of this interview, Kremer sold nearly all the meat in his freezer. E.A.T. Food for Life also sells its products at the Liberty Market in Kettering, his farm in Yorkshire, and online. Kremer credits his health to eating organic. “I have hemophilia, so each time I had internal bleeding, I’d take a pharmaceutical drug that stops that bleeding. That’s good and essential, but it also ads a certain amount of toxicity to my body as drugs do. So my immune system was really being depressed and declining. So it was really by the grace of God I came to understand that the quality of what we put in our body three times a day, that’s the essence of restoration and healing.”

John Stedman at the Aullwood Audubon Farm finds himself in a similar business situation. According to the farm website: “Aullwood strives to be a model of local sustainable, organic agriculture in the Miami Valley and direct markets our farm products. Grass-raised beef and lamb, pastured chicken, pork, and eggs are available seasonally. Aullwood purchases chicken and hog feed from local organic farmers and our meats are processed by local butchers.”

But the lone certified organic processor in southwest Ohio, King’s Poultry, recently dropped its certification because of cost. Stedmen relates, “We used to be organically certified, but we stopped that. There’s no benefit to us. Not only did we pay our certification here, but we helped pay their certification there.” That became too expensive as organic producers who had shared the costs dropped their certifications. “It cost us $500 for them, plus we had to pay for processing. Well, there’s no way in the world you could justify that.” There’s only one certified processor left in the state, northeast of Columbus, but Stedman can’t afford two trips just to be certified.

Stedman reports dropping the certification had no impact on his business. “When we dropped our certification, we asked the people here buying our meat, does it bother you if we drop it, and I think we had one woman say yes, but she didn’t buy enough meat to bother about.” Because Stedman feeds his animals very little grain, the meat is more natural and Aullwood’s prices are comparable to regular meat in grocery stores, about half the price of certified organic meats. A price list is available at the Aullwood website.

Stedman also pointed out problems with the certified organic standard. There are no standards for how much pasture is available to animals nor the quality of their feed. That means businesses can meet the standard by providing virtually no pasture for animals and by feeding them low quality, organic feed, like weeds. According to the Organic Consumers Association, weak guidelines enable big food corporations to drive small, healthy producers like Eat Food for Life and Aullwood Farm out of the market so they don’t face competition.

Locally Grown with Modern Technology

The sign in the window of the Tin Roof restaurant in Troy reads, “Eat the best steaks in town.” Owner Craig Hughes knows his beef. He raises the cattle and their feed, specifies how they are butchered and cooks the beef himself. “I only use four genetic patterns of beef in here. I raise Charlet, and I cross it with Angus, Shorthorn and Maine-anjou. That’s the only four breeds of cattle you will ever eat in here.”

But Hughes doesn’t use organic feed. “I see the organic as a far off dream people chase, but you can never get there. They think they do, but they don’t.” He explains that all it takes is one decent breeze to cross-pollinate organic and non-organic crops. As far as the USDA Certified Organic label, Hughes declares, “It’s a brilliant marketing ploy.” Hughes uses GMO corn so he doesn’t have to use pesticides, and he uses modern fertilizers for his crops.

Hughes says his customers approve. “I’ve had people that have eaten here that have had the beef and said ‘My God, I’ve eaten at Christie’s in Chicago, and Morton’s in New York and Kansas City steak houses and yours is just as good or better.’” Maybe his corn-burning grill has something to do with it. “It is the first corn-burning grill in operation in a restaurant in the US today.” According to Hughes, the corn burns cleaner and keeps the air moist, allowing the flavor of the beef to shine.

Conclusion

The Organic Consumer Association warns that because of regulatory capture by big food corporations, the USDA is attempting to weaken certified organic standards to allow hormones, antibiotics, pesticides and fish meal, making it easier and cheaper for the big producers to produce USDA Certified Organic food. DLM’s Gridley claims that most organic meat is already produced by a few corporations. Small, local producers committed to producing healthy food are being pushed out of the USDA Certified Organic market, reducing it to a corporate marketing gimmick. But by meeting, talking to and buying from a growing market of local, natural producers, people can obtain the healthy meat they need to thrive. Gridley sums up, “I would rather know who is raising my food and how it is raised rather than buy a Certified Organic product with much of it being raised by large companies and much of the grain being imported.”

Free kibbles

COMMUNISM:

Maryland governor announces Soviet-style five year plan for Maryland's economy.

"Comrade O’Malley’s Five-Year Plan is actually more like the variant of socialism known as fascism. Rather than pursuing their announced goal of egalitarianism by nationalizing industries, the fascists pursued socialism on the cheap by allowing private enterprise to exist, in name only, but regulated, regimented, and subsidized it so that the product of industry would only be that which was dictated by the state."

Communism. Fascism. Totalitarians don't care.

TAX AND SPEND:

House Republicans pass Ryan budget with zero votes from Democrats.

FEDERAL RESERVE:

How inflation leads to lower quality products.

HEALTH CARE:

The FDA’s factory farms and subsidized abuse of antibiotics have created resistant strains of bacteria in grocery meat.

"Researchers have found high levels of bacteria in meat commonly found on grocery store shelves, with more than half of the bacteria resistant to multiple types of antibiotics, according to a study released on Friday."

Government is the enemy of the people and civilization.

"USDA officials could not be reached immediately for comment."

Of course.

GLOBAL WARMING AND ENERGY:

In 2005 the climate frauds at the UN claimed there would be 50 million climate refuges by 2010. They were wrong, but instead of admitting they were wrong, they tried to make the web page disappear. Needless to say, Google has it cached.

POLICE STATE:

Government shuts down three thriving online poker businesses. And we wonder why our economy won't rebound.

POLITICS:

Web site shows Mitt Romney's flip-flops on about every issue. That's awesome. This guy's a self-serving creep. He's the Republican Obama, but with business experience.

MISC:

Why Austrian economics matters.

"Pretend you know nothing about the market, and ask yourself this question: how can society's entire deposit of scarce physical and intellectual resources be assembled so as to minimize cost; make use of the talents of every individual; provide for the needs and tastes of every consumer; encourage technical innovation, creativity, and social development; and do all this in a way that can be sustained?"

That's a great formulation of the question of economics.

Free kibbles

FEDERAL RESERVE:

"Other than food, gas and rent, prices haven't risen." That's too funny.

EDUCATION:

It's good to find an oasis in the desert of education. Students build life-size model of the Trojan horse on their own initiative.

"VanVorhees says they’re pretty pleased.“We’re hoping that this kinda makes the younger classes step up and do cool stuff,” VanVorhees said."

Now that's learning. Nice job.

HEALTH CARE:

Healthful behavior is key to health care system. Yes it is, and the biggest institutional obstacle to healthful behavior we have is the federal government which promotes a bad food supply, bad exercise and bad health care. There's two ways to reduce health care costs. One is by people becoming more healthy. Two is by reducing the cost of production of health care. The best thing we can do to promote both is to abolish the FDA and Health and Human Services get government at all levels out of our food supply and health care system.

GLOBAL WARMING AND ENERGY:

Even though Americans have reduced their CO2 output to 1995 levels, the greens are coming for your refrigerator.

Solar cycle 24 has taken a big leap forward in activity.


The good news is, if this keeps up, this might keep the climate from falling into a Dalton-minimum-like cold spell. The bad news is, a return to high activity will warm the planet and more people will fall for the global warming fraud. Let's hope for something in between.

POLICE STATE:

TSA singling out people who complain about their abuses. Because that's what terrorists will do, drawing lots of attention to themselves. This is just a natural response of thugs.

"CNN has obtained a list of roughly 70 "behavioral indicators" that TSA behavior detection officers use to identify potentially "high risk" passengers at the nation's airports.Many of the indicators, as characterized in open government reports, are behaviors and appearances that may be indicative of stress, fear or deception. None of them, as the TSA has long said, refer to or suggest race, religion or ethnicity.
But one addresses passengers' attitudes towards security, and how they express those attitudes.
It reads: "Very arrogant and expresses contempt against airport passenger procedures.""

So how many of the 70 behavioral indicators did that 5 year old little girl set off? This is a load of crap.

WAR:

Theory on why the US military can't nation-build.

"Different jobs attract different personalities. The Mike Tysons of the world do not go into ballet, nor do the Mother Teresas become tank commanders. The career military attracts people who run from the merely abnormal to the frankly weird. For example, they place extreme value on ritual and ceremony, on ribbons and medals and colored things more appropriate to a Christmas tree than to a human being. They are authoritarian by nature, comfortable in a rigid, hierarchical, and conformist society that most of us would find equally unbearable and absurd. Suppose your boss told everyone in the office that they had to wear exactly the same clothes and stand at attention in the morning to that he could determine whether they had dressed themselves correctly. Militaries start with odd material."

I think this is a secondary effect. The authoritarian, bureaucratic nature of the military attracts people who like authoritarian, bureaucratic structure. And that's fine when the military is fighting another authoritarian, bureaucratic military. But that isn't the kind of enemy the military faces when nation-building. The root problem is the authoritarian, bureaucratic nature of the military, not the people who are naturally attracted to that structure. This is why I keep stressing we should go to our strength to hunt down terrorists, and our strength is entrepreneurship: people who come up with creative solutions to problems. People who are flexible so they can adapt to fluid circumstances. We should do this by issuing letters of Marque to hunt down Osama bin Laden, al Zawahiri, and others who are funding and training terrorists to attack us. Our military shouldn't be nation-building anyway.

"Constantly they are told that they are “the best trained, best equipped, most powerful and effective fighting force the world has seen.” This is not a statement of fact but of mandatory enthusiasm. The Pentagon’s record since WW II has been a sorry one. Further, effectiveness, training, and so on are relative to a particular situation: a force well-equipped for desert war against aging Iraqi armor is not necessarily equipped to fight guerrillas in Quang Tri or Helmand."

That's problem isn't caused by the personality of the officers. It's structural. Granted, the officers who are best suited for this structure rise to the top, and they naturally resist any changes to the structure.

"The norm is a wild overestimation of one’s own powers, disdain for the enemy, and inattention to tactical facts. Why? Not because soldiers are actually stupid, but because they prefer martial ardor to thought."

This is another failing of the system.

Free kibbles

TAX AND SPEND:

It seems Obama has figured out that Paul Ryan is the most dangerous Republican, so he invited him to sit front and center at his speech. Here's Ryan's comments.

"Exploiting people’s emotions of fear, envy, and anxiety is not hope. It’s not change. It’s partisanship. We don’t need partisanship. We don’t need demagoguery. We need solutions. And we don’t need to keep punting to other people to make tough decisions. If we don’t make tough decisions today, our children are going to have to make much, much tougher decisions tomorrow."

So Obama gives a campaign speech that masquerades as a policy speech. Ryan responds with a campaign attack. This is a personal battle for control of the government's looting apparatus between these two.

The city of Sandy Springs, Georgia is doing well during this recession because they outsourced everything. Well, not quite everything. They still have some employees, so there's room for improvement.

"The best government is government that is closest to the people."

The least-worst government is the government that's closest to the people, but no matter how small or how close, all government exists to loot the people. In this case, the smaller, closer government pushed away a larger, further away government, and that's an improvement.

Progressives are doing a rolling fast, whatever that is, to protest immoral spending cuts by Republicans. Those progressives know how to work the media.

Government wants to give the IRS the power to pre-determine your tax liability before you file, and if your filing is different, audit you. When will Americans finally put an end to our travesty of a government?

Thomas Sowell thinks giving young people to option to opt out of Social Security and Medicare will dramatically cut the the expense. But who will pay for today's seniors?

Republican controlled House passes budget compromise they claim cuts $38 billion from the budget but which the CBO reports actually increases the budget by $3.3 billion.

"The final vote on the fiscal 2011 budget deal was 260-167.In the end, 179 Republicans and 81 Democrats backed the measure, which was agreed to late last week just an hour before the federal government was slated to shut down.
Boehner, R-Ohio, lost 59 votes from his GOP majority."

One hundred seventy nine Republicans voted to increase spending and only 59 voted against it. With small government friends like those, who needs enemies?

REGULATION:

FAA bureaucrat resigns over sleeping air traffic controllers. Wow. That almost never happens in the US.

GLOBAL WARMING AND ENERGY:

Researchers accidentally discover that light striking an insulator can create a magnetic field. The process produces hardly any heat, unlike traditional solar power, potentially opening the door to much cheaper solar power.

POLICE STATE:

Parents who allowed their child to be molested by TSA agents now blame the TSA agents.

"The Drexels said they stood powerless, watching as their daughter was patted down."

What a load of crap. These parents were not powerless. That's an excuse. They could have chosen not to fly in the first place. They could have chosen not to fly once they saw their child was going to get molested. They had plenty of power. They just refused to use it, and as a result, the TSA molested their child. They're just as responsible for the molestation as the government is.

POLITICS:

Obama's approval drops below 50 percent with poor people. His class warfare rhetoric and the consequences of his policies are costing him the people they're designed to attract.

Fighting for government to end its corruption is like fighting for water to stop being wet.

LOCAL:

Now Dayton city government is going to choose police and firefighters based solely on interviews, ignoring the written test scores in hopes that more blacks will get hired. The Feds made them change it.

MISC:

Private bus service thrives because it isn't regulated or subsidized by government. Includes Wi-Fi.

Free kibbles

SOCIALISM:

Proof that the teacher's sick-out in Wisconsin was really a strike. Duh. Anybody who thought public sector unions wouldn't strike was a fool.

RIGHT TO KEEP AND BEAR ARMS:

Sometimes it's hard to believe how effective brainwashing is. In this case, survivor of the Virginia Tech massacre, a situation in which all the victims had been disarmed by government so only the criminal had guns, calls for gun control. He's oblivious to the fact that gun control is what allowed this massacre to happen in he first place. The more powerful the gun control, the more power criminals have over the law-abiding.

ECONOMY:

Recommendation to not just buy gold, but buy gold coins and physically hold them.

Here's the fundamental truth about this market:

"The major, natural tendency of this market is towards contraction. The market wants to correct. No kidding. After a half-century of credit expansion, it’s time to pay up…to settle debts…to recognize bad investments and to write off mistakes. That’s what’s happening in the housing sector. That’s why about 12 million Americans don’t have jobs"

The problem is the government and the Fed won't let it correct. These two conflicting forces create tremendous uncertainty.

TAX AND SPEND:

Right after Obama was elected he he said he wanted to have a transformational presidency like FDR or Lincoln. That's code for wanting to kill a bunch of Americans, because that's what those two did more of than any other presidents in history. Obama again invokes Lincoln as an excuse for big, murdering government.

Yet another Republicans pledge broken as predicted. How are Republicans going to screw us next? By raising the debt ceiling. The CBO provides a more honest insight into the so-called record-breaking budget cuts than the media.

"Congressional Budget Office data, posted Wednesday morning, shows that total non-emergency appropriations will fall to $1.0498 trillion, a nearly $38 billion reduction from their level at the beginning of this year. But the impact on outlays or direct spending before the 2011 fiscal year ends Sept. 30 will be just $352 million compared to prior CBO reports reviewed by POLITICO."

$38 million from the level estimated at the beginning of the year. Not lower than the previous year which is what most people think of when they hear the term "budget cut". But remember, not matter how bad it is, it can always get worse, and it does:

"In fact, once overseas contingency funds related to Afghanistan and Pakistan are counted, the news gets worse: CBO now says that total discretionary outlays for 2011 are higher –not lower—by about $3.3 billion than it had estimated in December."

So after the historic budget cuts, the budget is actually bigger than at the beginning of the year. Imagine that. It would be funny if it wasn't so evil.

REGULATION:

I've often explained how government regulation costs us productivity and wealth, but a new study has quantified the cost, and it's fantastic.

"A new study by the Phoenix Center for the Advanced Study for Legal and Economic Policy Studies found that federal regulators cost taxpayers more than $200,000 each, but cost the economy over $6 million in jobs and productivity."

Each regulator makes us over $6 million poorer. Wow. Get rid of all of them.

FEDERAL RESERVE:

Bernanke and company bailed out the wives of some Wall Street fat cats when their personal investment scheme went south. This is one of the many scams Bernanke tried so hard to keep secret. It must be nice to be a member of the ruling class.

"Now, following an act of Congress that has forced the Fed to open its books from the bailout era, this unofficial budget is for the first time becoming at least partially a matter of public record. Staffers in the Senate and the House, whose queries about Fed spending have been rebuffed for nearly a century, are now poring over 21,000 transactions and discovering a host of outrages and lunacies in the "other" budget. It is as though someone sat down and made a list of every individual on earth who actually did not need emergency financial assistance from the United States government, and then handed them the keys to the public treasure. The Fed sent billions in bailout aid to banks in places like Mexico, Bahrain and Bavaria, billions more to a spate of Japanese car companies, more than $2 trillion in loans each to Citigroup and Morgan Stanley, and billions more to a string of lesser millionaires and billionaires with Cayman Islands addresses. "Our jaws are literally dropping as we're reading this," says Warren Gunnels, an aide to Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont. "Every one of these transactions is outrageous.""

This is exactly what the Austrians have been telling us for a century. The Fed exists to print money and give it to its cronies. It exists to line the pockets of the ruling class at the expense of the people. It exists to inflate the currency, not control inflation as it pretends. And because that's why it exists, that's what it's done for a century. It's a private slush fund of unlimited funds for the ruling class, including these two wives.

"The technical name of the program that Mack and Karches took advantage of is TALF, short for Term Asset-Backed Securities Loan Facility. But the federal aid they received actually falls under a broader category of bailout initiatives, designed and perfected by Federal Reserve chief Ben Bernanke and Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner, called "giving already stinking rich people gobs of money for no fucking reason at all." If you want to learn how the shadow budget works, follow along. This is what welfare for the rich looks like."

We're witnessing history. The Fed has never been this exposed before. The funniest thing about this article is the author keeps attacking Republicans as if Obama didn't just renominate Bernanke and Geithner wasn't one of the architects of these bailouts.

The Fed not only wipes out savings, it erases the savings ethic from the people, and undermines many other ethics in the process.

"Impetuous, high-time-preference behavior displayed by the young appears rational in an inflationary period, while prudence and conservatism appear to be not even quaint but downright silly."

And undermines the family by driving a wedge between generations.

If you use the same methodology to measure CPI as they used in the 1970s, CPI is around ten percent as it was in the 1970s.

HEALTH CARE:

In addition to all the great benefits of eating blueberries we already know about, apparently they get rid of fat cells too.

GLOBAL WARMING AND ENERGY:

The push to release oil from the strategic reserve is another example of a government non-solution to a government-created problem. The real solution is to get government out of the marketplace.

I don't even know where to start.

WAR ON DRUGS:

The war on drugs claims Barry Bonds as another victim on the phony crime of obstruction of justice.

"Jeff Novitzky, the federal agent who started the BALCO probe, had been hoping the Bonds case would be part of a wider investigation of doping in baseball. Last year, the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that Novitzky and his team of investigators illegally seized urine samples and records from 104 players in 2004.Separately, Novitzky has helped develop the case against former star pitcher Roger Clemens, who is scheduled to stand trial in July for lying to Congress by denying he used performance-enhancing drugs. Novitzky also is a key player in the federal doping investigation of pro cyclists, including seven-time Tour de France winner Lance Armstrong. Rep. Jack Kingston, a Georgia Republican, recently suggested that the federal agent is motivated by a desire to bring down a celebrity."

And wouldn't he be? What's his motive to do otherwise? A little insight into the agent who targeted Bonds.

"Barry Bonds may be headed for prison because he piqued the malevolent interest of a squalid little person named Jeff Novitzky, described by reporter Matt Welch as “an ex-jock IRS agent who didn’t appreciate Bonds’s famously surly attitude.”"

This is an example of how the law is a weapon of aggression against the people and is applied by personal whim. That's not the rule of law. Also, this is another conflict that couldn't exist in a free society. In a free society, Bonds wouldn't hide that he did steroids. Neither would Clemens, who just as obviously did them as Bonds. If Armstrong did them, how come he didn't show any physical signs?

The link between inflation and war.

POLICE STATE:

This video of a cop afraid of a baby squirrel he subsequently pepper sprays is amazing.

I keep saying our government is conquering us, and this case shows what I mean.

WAR:

Calls for the US to escalate the war in Libya. I prefer to end it. Pat Buchanan reports that the rebels are on the verge of defeat unless the US re-engages Qaddafi's troops. Apparently we will be blamed if they lose. Of course.

POLITICS:

My contentions that big-government lover Paul Ryan is the most dangerous man in Washington because he's fooled people into thinking he supports small government and that the tea party is a fraud comprised of angry Republicans, not small government supporters, just got a big boost with the revelation that Paul Ryan is the number one favorite presidential hopeful for the tea party despite his grotesquely huge new budget proposal that doesn't even manage to balance the budget in a decade. You have to hand it to both Ryan and the tea party. They've fooled just about everybody. And we're all going to keep paying through the nose because of it.


Accusation that Bill Buckley split conservatives from libertarians by supporting intervention to defeat communism which actually allowed it to survive for decades longer than it would have otherwise. It also invited the neoconservatives to become the dominant force on the right. But I can't tell the difference between the policies of neoconservatives and progressives. All this makes perfect sense for a CIA agent because the CIA profits from bigger, more aggressive government.


LOCAL:

Perpetual construction in interstates is one of the great looting programs of modern America.

"The project is one of 74 new and continuous construction projects in the area announced Monday by the Ohio Department of Transportation for the 2011 construction season."

Construction season? Now we have construction seasons. Maybe they have a construction funding season, but every season is construction season from decades ago until government goes broke on I-75.

"All of the projects promote economic development and safer driving conditions, officials said."

That gave me a good belly laugh. Stealing money from people and using it to tear up roads, cause wrecks and kill people promotes economic development and safer driving conditions. Give me a break.

"“Even if it is minor inconvenience for the time being, down the road it is going to make a much smoother commute,” Abner said."

Another good belly laugh. I doubt the families of all the people who have been killed in these never-ending construction zones consider it a minor inconvenience. And this article is about one specific project that took four years. Four years. A woman could have three babies in that time. And I live right by malfunction junction. That's my exit. I drive or walk through some of that construction every day. Nobody is ever working on it.

"Transportation officials warn that construction zones can prove tricky for drivers because of the barrels, lane shifts and congestion problems. Last year, there were 5,038 work zone crashes in Ohio, resulting in 1,262 injuries and 10 fatalities, said Kurt Bailar, District 7 safety manager."

That's what government considers a minor inconvenience that never ends.

Note to Ohio politicians: I know how NASA determined the locations which would receive space shuttles. They did it by deciding what would best loot the people.

MISC:

It looks like Facebook and Zuckerburg, after finally winning against the Harvard twins, might be facing a bigger legal challenge as a man produces emails as evidence Zuckerburg promised him fifty percent of the company in return for funding which he seemingly provided.

Not too long ago I wrote that Kinect was the final piece of technology necessary to bring about Orwell's Big Brother watching through the TV system. Tell me this doesn't sound like Big Brother.

""Microsoft has given more information on the Kinect SDK to be released later in the year. It will include the body tracking software that is used by the Xbox version of the Kinect, allowing it to track up to two people at the same time and stay locked on to them even if they leave and re-enter the frame. In addition, they promise to allow the microphone array to be used with the PC's speech recognition API. So, not only will future Kinect projects be able to track you — they can listen to what you say.""

You know government will create an app to monitor every system. I'd unplug it when not in use. They'll require us all to buy one and make unplugging it illegal soon. They'll use safety of the children and infirm as an excuse. Let's hope the individual mandate to buy health care is struck down.

Free kibbles

ECONOMY:

The establishment is demonizing hoarding, which could well be called saving or investing. This is part of a campaign to convince people to spend and consume instead of saving.

EDUCATION:

Here's another example of a conflict that couldn't happen without government. This couldn't happen in a free society. In a free society, these people would educate their children as they see fit. Nobody could force them to do otherwise. And if child services should be called every time a parent forces a child to do something against the child's will, they'd be at every home every day.

GLOBAL WARMING AND ENERGY:

Jerry Brown continues pushing people out of California.

New continuing resolution cuts all funding for NOAA's climate boondoggle. Wow. Even a blind dog can tree a coon once in a while.

POLICE STATE:

Libertarian reforms for the justice system.

WAR:

I don't think that listing a handful of crimes committed by US soldiers in any way makes a case against wars of aggression. That would be like listing a handful of murders committed by free people and using that to make a case against freedom. The case against wars of aggression is the systematic killing of people who never did anything to us and the consequences that follow.

POLITICS:

Trump panders to the Christian right. It's looking more and more like he's running for real.

MEDIA:

Thriving, free internet news site reports on the damage done to the New York Times by erecting a pay wall.


MISC:


Ninth Circuit rejects endless lawsuits against Facebook. This quote says it all:

""The Winklevosses are not the first parties bested by a competitor who then seek to gain through litigation what they were unable to achieve in the marketplace," three Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals judges said in a ruling."At some point, litigation must come to an end," the judges continued. "That point has now been reached.""

Zuckerburg made them multi-millionaires. If they really have any ability in the marketplace, that's more than enough seed money to make billions. Go earn something.

New image of Yellowstone super-volcano suggests the plume that builds to eruption is worse than previously thought.

Free kibbles

FASCISM:

The reality about fascism in America.

"There is a difference between a fifth columnist working in America for Hitler, Mussolini, or Stalin, and an American who would give his life for his country but would also like to see its social and economic life changed in the direction of the fascist pattern. You will get no such American to admit that what he believes in is fascism. He has other and more agreeable names for it. He would be provoked to knock you down if you called him a fascist. That is because he does not know what fascism is and makes the mistake of supposing that a fascist is one who is on the side of the Führer or the Duce."

America's top fascists don't wear uniforms. They're more subtle. This essay is even more applicable today than it was in 1944.

TAX AND SPEND:

Suddenly Obama is going to cut the deficit. But not by cutting spending. By playing class warfare.

REGULATION:

Call to abolish speed limits. They're just another way the ruling class loots us.

EDUCATION:

Government school bans students from bringing their own lunches. The lesson here is obvious. Families are too stupid to feed themselves. They must look to the government for sustenance. Government schools are crippling the minds of children.

GLOBAL WARMING AND ENERGY:

New gasoline engine claims to be five times more efficient, 20 percent lighter and 30 percent cheaper to manufacture. The downside is it has lower power, but that won't stop it from being marketable if it achieves those other goals.

WAR:

US Navy tests ship-mounted laser.

Pakistani government demands and end to US drone strikes and a reduction in US special forces and intelligence teams in Pakistan. This is going to cause some friction. On the one hand, you can't blame them. On the other, they have no control over what happens in this territory. They want it both ways. This is a situation that could only exist because of government.

FOREIGN POLICY:

The aristocrats are working up to invade Mexico. Why not? They kill and bully Arabs for decades, then they use the retaliatory terrorist attacks as an excuse to expand their aggression in the Middle East. Since they empower drug gangs with the war on drugs, and they've already invaded South American countries in the name of the war on drugs, it only makes sense they use drug gang violence as an excuse to expand aggression into Mexico.

"Over the past five years, an estimated 37,000 people have been killed as a result of the U.S.-funded war between the administration of Mexican President Felipe Calderon and various narcotics syndicates. Several months ago, Texas Governor Rick Perry suggested that Washington should invade Mexico for the supposed purpose of ending the violence.  The only trivial impediment to that plan, Perry observed, is that Mexico's government would have to "approve" of the invasion."

I'm sure Washington wouldn't have to wait for approval. Or even a declaration of war. Of course Columbia invited US troops down there.

"The "electronic intelligence systems" he describes are already operating in Mexico; huge amounts of money are being poured into training and equipping Mexican military and police; and U.S.-trained paramilitaries are actively involved in the Drug War – on both sides of the conflict. "The U.S. agents generally provide intelligence and training, while Mexicans do the hands-on work," explains a recent AP dispatch from Mexico City. Brad Barker, president of a "private"mercenary firm called HALO Corporation, told the AP: "Yes, we're tracking vehicles, yes, we're tracking people.... There's been a huge spike in agents down here."For the nonce, however, the huge and growing population of U.S. military and intelligence "advisers" infesting Mexico have to "play down" their role, in order "to avoid rubbing nationalist raw spots.""

The DEA and border patrol have been operating in Mexico for years if not decades. I'm not surprised that US military advisors are operating there too. Americans are fools to support this.

"This assassination was hailed as a significant "victory" in Washington's drug war in Mexico. Indeed, from the perspective of the people who manage that war, it was an ideal victory – the kind that helps perpetuate the conflict, rather than bringing it to an end. As the AP points out, in the year following the killing of Beltran-Leyva, arrests of drug cartel leaders were up, cocaine seizures expanded, and the frequency of drug-related extraditions to the U.S.  increased – "and yet, killings jumped to a record high ... and more heroin and marijuana are being produced in Mexico and smuggled into the U.S." "

That's why only a fool would support it.

"Of course, the most effective way to destroy the criminal syndicates – as a growing number of war-weary Mexicans understand – would be to de-criminalize narcotics, which would mean an immediate end to the grotesquely inflated profits that sustain the cartels."

Only a fool wouldn't support legalization. Everybody is entitled to their opinions, but we all have to acknowledge facts, and the fact is the war on drugs is far, far more destructive than drugs themselves and that's because it's immoral to use violence to keep another from peacefully producing, trading or using drugs against his will.

"As Hillary Clinton admitted in a moment of stunning candor, de-criminalization of narcotics and de-escalation in the drug war simply aren't possible, because there is "too much money" to be made through prohibition. One illustration of this can be seen in the fact that when the global finance system went into cardiac arrest in 2008, laundered narcotics proceeds were the only liquid capital available for inter-bank loans."

I love it when politicians are accidentally honest.

POLITICS:

Republican Congressmen don't like any of the Republican candidates. How do you think the people feel? I bet all this hate on the Republican candidates is a precursor to drafting Chris Cristie. They have to lay the groundwork that defeat is sure without him before he can walk away from New Jersey.

The opening sentence says it all.

"An Indonesian MP who helped pass a tough anti-pornography law has resigned after being caught watching sexually explicit videos on his computer during a parliamentary debate."

All aristocrats are thoroughly corrupt.

MISC:

I don't want to smell blood perfume on anybody, but you know a bunch of weirdos will buy it.

FBI releases memo showing that a government agent originally reported finding three flying sauces with aliens at Roswell. This isn't surprising because that's what the original published report said.

Japanese government raises the rating of the Fukushima nuclear disaster to seven, the same as Chernobyl.

Free kibbles

TAX AND SPEND:

NASA is probably the most conspicuous example of government looting to Americans. Can this guy be any more confused?

"“I think it’s a shame that our country allowed us to be in this situation,” said Michael Heil, president of the Ohio Aerospace Institute in Cleveland. “But I view it as being temporary.”Heil said cooperating with the Russians isn’t all bad because it will allow the U.S. to continue important work, such as crucial climate research, while buying time to develop faster and cheaper ways to gain access to space through the public-private partnerships."

Our country? How do our country do this? Our government is not our country. And climate change research? That's another conspicuous example of government looting intended to enable more government looting.

Video on China's economic bubble:

"A stunning video documentary by Dateline (Australia) about the 64 million vacant apartments in China, a result of the government building 10 new cities each year. All this to keep up the appearance of endless economic growth. A classic example of what happens when policy is determined by chasing favorable statistics (reality be damned). It goes without saying that the only thing that makes this possible is the fact that it’s paid for with “public” spending."

GDP is a flawed statistic because it pretends government spending is beneficial.

Fools that we are, after the media spends days and weeks telling us how great this budget deal is, I bet we'll see polls showing most Americans approve of the $38 billion in slower growth of government.

The world didn't end.

"States and communities across the country are coming together to commemorate the Civil War's sesquicentennial without federal funding or a national commission."

I'm shocked. Who knew that people could actually get together and accomplish things without government funding?

EDUCATION:

Back in the health days of American education, before government started funding it, universities competed for top students. Includes Harvard entrance exam from 1869. And unless you're well versed in Latin and more, you can't pass it.

HEALTH CARE:

This is the sad truth that makes me crazy when I hear from libertarians bubbling with optimism about the coming collapse:

"While I completely abhor government involvement in  healthcare, and I do believe these programs need to be phased out, I know the clowns won’t let that happen.It seems that the only way to “reset the system” is with the imminent dollar collapse, but that’s a heck of a way to reset the system. And I can tell you for sure that there will be many people, particularly the chronically ill and elderly, who will die when the dollar crashes."

It's true. I know I and others have made this case over and over, and many public libertarians have modified their messages of optimism, probably because of angry feedback from people like me. We need to do the best thing we can for these people who are dependent of government, and that means managing the dramatic reduction in government so people significantly less burdened by government can develop an alternative support structure for the most vulnerable Americans before government is forced by economic reality to abandon them and they're left to die alone.

GLOBAL WARMING AND ENERGY:

Another global warming true believer opens his eyes and sees through the fraud.

"The debate about global warming has reached ridiculous proportions and is full of micro-thin half-truths and misunderstandings. I am a scientist who was on the carbon gravy train, understands the evidence, was once an alarmist, but am now a skeptic. Watching this issue unfold has been amusing but, lately, worrying. This issue is tearing society apart, making fools out of our politicians."

I agree with almost all of this, but this issue isn't making fools of politicians. They couldn't care less one way or the other. They're working on behalf of themselves and their cronies regardless of the science and pseudo-science. They'd support a scientist who said up was down and left was right if they thought they and their cronies could profit by doing so.

WAR ON DRUGS:

The war on drugs pushes Manny Ramirez out of baseball.

WAR:

UN helicopters fire on palace in Ivory Coast. Now the UN is directly waging war? I thought it was all about dragging others into war on its behalf, but apparently now it can wage war all by itself.

FOREIGN POLICY:

British Prime Minister Cameron busted for telling the truth that Britain's imperial era created much of today's international conflicts.

POLITICS:

At first I thought Trump was pretending to run for president as a marketing ploy, but now I think he thinks if he can find the truth behind Obama's birth certificate, he can win. And he may be right. We all know Obama's hiding something - if he wasn't, he would produce his full birth certificate - but we don't know what. If Trump uncovers the greatest fraud in modern history, he has a very good chance of winning the presidency. Even if he didn't win, it would be the greatest marketing coup in history. Trump has nothing to lose.

MISC:

Dying brick and mortar company rails against Google. What's funny about this is Google is already becoming the old, uncool digital company. It's following Microsoft's path, but much more quickly. Get used to change. It's only going to come faster.