War

Americans turned against the Iraq war.

""We went into Iraq without properly anticipating the consequences of being there and without properly understanding the culture of Iraq," said Gordon Adams, a professor of foreign policy at American University in Washington. "Poor planning and poor knowledge combined to prolong that conflict way past what it should have been. ... We created a lot of damage and didn't leave anything terribly healthy behind.""

Another powerful example of the fatal conceit of central planners.

"Coming in the aftermath of 9/11, the Bush White House's case for war, particularly the argument about weapons of mass destruction, or WMDs, initially won widespread public and political support. In October 2002, the House of Representatives voted 296-133 and the Senate voted 77-23 to authorize the use of force against Iraq. A March 2003 Pew Research Center poll indicated that 72 percent of U.S. adults supported the decision to attack Iraq. But that opinion changed dramatically as the war dragged on. By February 2008, Pew had found that 58 percent believed it was the wrong decision.
For the war-weary American public, the most lasting legacy may be lingering cynicism and a loss of trust in government authorities as well as a reluctance to intervene militarily on such a scale or undertake nation-building in the future."

Better late than never.

Ten years later, the anti-Iraq-war people continue lying as badly as the pro-war people.

"Ten years after the invasion of Iraq, the war criminals are still at large. Saddam Hussein is dead and buried, but the cabal that lied us into war is still around – and not only that, they are mocking us from their podiums in the media, justifying and obscuring their crimes."

How are they war criminals? What part of congress declared war don't you understand? That war should never have happened, but that's no reason to lie about it. Intelligence agencies all over the west, corrupt as they are, said Saddam had weapons. We know he had weapons because the US sold him weapons. We know he had weapons because US troops found weapons. What he didn't have was stockpiles of weapons. And there's the key. While I'm sure a couple obscure guys knew he had no stockpiles of weapons, nobody else did. Hussein himself thought he had stockpiles of weapons. Hussein had so buried his program, he didn't know what was going on, but he thought he had one, and so did everybody else. He ordered his troops to use them. I'm sick of the lies from both sides. Here's what Kay had to say:

"Chief U.S. weapons inspector David Kay complained Sunday that initial reaction to his interim report on Iraqi weapons focused too much on the failure to find chemical or biological weapons and not enough on secret laboratories and rocket programs investigators have found. "

Guess what. There is no legal reckoning for the people who fomented war because Congress went along with it and declared it. That's like asking where is the reckoning for anti-war liars. There's none their either. Frankly, all of them profit from lying. They could all be prosecuted for fraud. But neither side is ever going to be prosecuted and whining about it isn't going to change anything.

Margolis is right only if you look at the Iraq war from a socialist perspective.

"The only victor of war with Iraq War, I wrote, would be Israel, whose nuclear monopoly and regional domination would be assured. So it has come to be. "

Halliburton was a victor. Blackwater was a victor. The CIA was victor. The Pentagon was a victor. Anybody who profited was a victor. Surrender the socialism, and you'll the truth.

"Iraq was split into Shia, Sunni and Kurdish regions. Anger against the US reached new intensity. The titanic bill for the Iraq War was $1 trillion, all of its hidden in the ballooning US national debt. Nearly 5,000 US soldiers were killed; some 50,000 wounded, many with grave brain injuries. Iraqi casualties are uncertain, though the total is likely over one million."

The earlier article claimed 100,000 Iraqis dead. It's obscene we don't know the number. If you invade a country, bring in killers behind you, start a civil war, kill bunches of civilians while all the other factions do the same, you should at least honor the dead enough to count their bodies. Who am I kidding? Asking invaders and killers to honor anybody is stupid.

"Once among the most advanced Arab nations, much of Iraq today is ruined. At least it no longer threatens its neighbors. "

Which was the Israeli government's goal from the beginning.

"The politicians who concocted this war, namely George W. Bush, Dick Cheney and Britain’s Tony Blair, have escaped any criminal censure for misleading their people into a conflict whose goal was to grab Iraq’s vast oil reserves and crush an enemy of Israel. "

Here we go again. Where's the law against politicians misleading people? Please show it to me so I can imprison them all.

"Similarly, the many print and TV journalists and commentators who acted as cheer-leaders for the war and its bodyguard of lies remain prominently in public view today. So too the so-called military experts who championed the war. Instead of slinking away after the war, they simply switched their aim to Iran."

These people did what their bosses wanted. Why should they be fired for a job well done?

"The small number of American journalists, Mideast analysts, CIA and State Department experts who dared challenge Bush’s absurd claims about Iraq’s supposed nukes and "drones of death" lost their jobs and have been sidelined to this day."

That's because they failed to do what their bosses wanted. Life isn't that hard to understand.

"Bush’s modern-day Crusade against Iraq discredited the mainstream media in the eyes of many younger Americans and led to their growing reliance on their internet. Polls showed that only 24% of Americans trusted media to tell them the facts. The US media, with key exceptions, had followed the old Soviet media in acting as a mouthpiece for the government instead of a tribune for the public. "

This is an oxymoron. As a Soviet dissident once explained, in the USSR, nobody believed the media. There was only one outlet and everybody knew it was controlled by the government, so nobody believed it. What he learned when he came to the US was that the US government was smarter, and it allowed many outlets as long as they all promoted the government position. That fooled Americans into believing lies Soviet serfs would never have believed.

" While bridges and roads across America were crumbling, the US was spending $80 billion on "rebuilding" Iraq."

This is another fallacy. Roads and bridges were falling apart before the wars to. Those wars didn't take money from repair. That money would have been wasted some other way. Politicians don't make money off repairing roads and bridges.

War

The CIA is planning to drone assassinate some of its allies among the rebels in Syria. Apparently the Syrian people back Assad, not the US-backed rebels.

Police State

Company claims to produce technology to block drones from spying. The government will ban it.

Feds admit they have used drones over the US for years.

Drones over US to carry non-lethal weapons.

"American police officers may soon be able to use unmanned aircraft not only for surveillance, but also for offensive action. The drones may be equipped to fire rubber rounds and tear gas."

That didn't take long.

Tax and Spend

I bet Ohio lobbyists spent way more than $1.8 billion.

"Lobbyists have spent about $1.8 million on free food, drinks and other freebies for state legislators and their staffs since 2009, according an analysis of lobbying expenditures tracked by the Ohio Legislative Inspector General."

That's only what they disclose. All that money ultimately is paid by our taxes.

Global Warming and Energy

Water is a scarce resource like any other, and best way to manage it is with a free market like any other resource. But we don't have that. Instead we have government control of water supplies, therefore our supplies of fresh water are dwindling and being contaminated. This plan to have water declared a right is misguided and counterproductive.

Misc

The pervasive surveillance on the internet.

Health Care

The sad truth about government's health care system:

"Americans spend twice as much on health care per capita than any other country in the world; in fact according to a series of studies by the consulting firm McKinsey & Co, the US spends more on health care than the next 10 biggest spenders combined: Japan, Germany, France, China, the U.K., Italy, Canada, Brazil, Spain, and Australia.
Despite that, we rank dead last in terms of quality of care among industrialized countries, and Americans are far sicker and live shorter lives than people in other nations. How is that possible? The short answer is: We’re being fleeced.
In the video above, CNN interviews a family blindsided by medical bills amounting to more than $474,000 after 60-year-old Bob Weinkoff spent just a few days in the ICU, suffering from difficulty breathing."

That's insane.

"In his article, Brill gives numerous examples of shocking markups on many hospital charges, such as $1.50 for a generic acetaminophen tablet, when you can buy an entire bottle of 100 tablets for that amount, $18 per Accu-chek diabetes test strip that you can purchase for about 55 cents apiece, or $283.00 for a simple chest X-ray, for which the hospital routinely gets $20.44 for when it treats a Medicare patient."

Hospitals charge that much because they can. The government uses coercion in the form of overwhelming regulations to limit competition in the health care market. That enables the few hospitals left to charge ridiculously high prices for low quality care.

"So in essence, middle-class Americans are being bankrupted to help pay for the poor and the elderly while still allowing the hospital to rake in massive profits and paying their executives some rather astounding salaries. For example, at Montefiore Medical Center, a large nonprofit hospital system in the Bronx, its chief executive has a salary of $4,065,000, the chief financial officer of the hospital makes $3,243,000, the executive vice president rakes in $2,220,000, and the head of the dental department makes a not-so-shabby $1,798,000 per year. Similarly, 14 administrators at New York City’s Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center are paid over $500,000 a year, including six who make over $1 million."

That's a great example of the non-profit scam.

War

It turns out that Blackwater was a CIA organization. As obvious as that seems in retrospect, I never thought of it nor heard of it previously.

This is an entertaining story exposing how upside down our government and its propagandists are.

"According to a "CNN exclusive" report today, prominently headlined on Drudge, the Iranian military caught a US predator drone spying on Iran from over international waters in the Persian Gulf. The Iranians launched a manned aircraft to shadow the drone, which eventually exited the area. No shots were fired.
But it was all the Iranians fault for bothering the drone as it went about its business. As CNN writes in the first paragraph: "It was the latest in Iranian efforts to thwart the U.S. military's airborne intelligence collections efforts in the region."
How dare the Iranians attempt to thwart US intelligence collection efforts (presumably including targeting information in advance of a potential US attack)!"

Too funny.

Tax and Spend

The Pentagon spends $1 billion a year on personnel who left the military voluntarily.

Local

Local military man killed in Afghanistan.

Paper compares grocery prices but fails to compare quality. This is the new philosophical normal promoted by the US government. All meat is equal. All vegetables are equal. All roads are equal. All medical care is equal.  It's a bunch of crap, but the DDN jumps right on board. The DDN should be embarrassed by this report, but I'm sure it's not.

Here's one of the more obvious headlines I've ever read:

"Cabbies say drunks drive up cost of free-ride program"

That's like saying tall people drive up the height of doorways. How stupid is that headline? It's a joke. The only thing serious about this article is that the government steals money from people and uses it to subsidize drunkenness. We should put an end to that. And because this system is based on coercion and funded by stolen money, it's rife with corruption.

"The Dayton Daily News analyzed cab company invoices sent to the county in 2012 and found many appear to charge the county more than twice the standard fare — in once case billing $15 to transport someone 1 mile."

Stop.

Police State

Local company profiting from stolen money to create oppressive drones. The DDN wants us to believe this is a good thing. Where's the morality? Where's the humanity.

This is a breathtaking observation.

"The Swiss Guard then entered the scene: a handful of men wearing helmets and uniforms of medieval origin, and carrying nothing more lethal than spears.  The Guard's numbers seem to have been exceeded only by those comprising the Vatican marching band. The wonderful Peter Sellers movie, The Mouse That Roared, came to mind. How has such a small number of defenders managed to keep the Vatican free from military attack for so many years? How can an institution, with 1.2 billion members, get along without hundreds of thousands of troops with assault weapons, nuclear bombs, ICBM missiles, aircraft carriers, tanks, SEAL teams, drones, and other tools of death?  Why haven't "terrorist" groups gone after this organization?"

The answer is self-evident.

Foreign Policy

Iran and Pakistan finalize natural gas pipeline deal, angering the US.

Politics

Rush Limbaugh and Justin Raimondo both see through the fake political divide exposed by Rand Paul's filibuster.

"Limbaugh perceptively frames the Rand Paul vs McCain-Graham brouhaha in terms of populism versus elitism:
"It was a very simple question he was posing, and all this was going on while our guys are out dining with Obama, dining with the architect of this current nationwide mess. Rand Paul was standing up opposing this while these guys were out yukking it up with the architect of it all. You know it was a great example of the ruling class and the country class, and the ruling class not liking what this country class senator was doing. It’s no more complicated than that, but a lot of people are ticked off about this, too."
Limbaugh has it exactly right: the country class versus the ruling class – that’s what it’s all about.
This explains why contempt for the Paulian upsurge extended from the neocon "right" to the "progressive" sectors of Washington’s political class: they were defending themselves against a populist upsurge, expressing their utter disdain for the peasants-with-pitchforks who came out in support of Sen. Paul on Twitter and talk radio. Putting aside their differences, the fake-"conservatives" and authoritarian "progressives" came together against the Paulian country party threat."

The establishment controls both parties. They create phony controversies to divide the American people Paul's filibuster exposed the phony divide and, by doing so, exposed the real divide between our handful of rulers and the great mass of the American people.

Of course Obama needs a food tester. All tyrants do. Why is this controversial? If Ron Paul had become president, he would likely have need a food tester more than Obama.

Global Warming and Energy

Manmade CO2 is making the planet greener because CO2 is plant food.

Top Navy Admiral calls climate change the top security threat in the Pacific. If that's true, then we don't face any threats at all. Let's disband the military.

Another fraudulent study exposed.

Corporate welfare for wind farms.

Nice analysis of the politicization of climate science.

"Proponents of the anthropogenic global warming (AGW) hypothesis are cornered. They made a political choice to prove rather than disprove the hypothesis, as the scientific method requires. It failed, as IPCC projections (range of predictions?) indicate, but instead of abandoning or modifying the hypothesis, as normal science requires, they’ve reverted to tactics they think worked in the first place."

If it doesn't follow the scientific method, it's not science. It's pseudo-science.

By their own standards, 16 years with no global warming falsifies the CAGW theory.

17 years with no global warming also falsifies the CAGW theory.

Obama cuts oil production on federal lands in 2012.

Local

Fairborn schools to cut 45 jobs.

"The school board will vote on the staffing reductions at its April 11 meeting. They are: 22 teaching positions; 20 noon-duty aides; two assistant principals; and an elementary secretarial position."

Not one bureaucrat.

Huber Heights politicians approve spending $18 million of money they plan to steal from others on a music center. Politicians love the stolen money.

Misc

Culture of animal cruelty in Wildlife Services agency.

"The brutal approach by Wildlife Services is part of a culture of animal cruelty that has long persisted within an agency that uses taxpayer money to wage an unnecessary war on wildlife, according to two U.S. congressmen who have repeatedly called for a thorough investigation."

This is the kind of people government attracts and rewards.

If gay people are born that way, how can one identical twin be gay while the other is straight? Being gay must be a result of environment and choices, not genetics.

War

Coordinated attacks in Iraq kill 33, wound 72.

Politics

Cardinals elect an Argentinian pope.

Tax and Spend

This headline says it all:

"Senate Democrats release first budget in four years, includes $1 trillion in tax increases"

Politicians are addicted to spending other people's money.

Misc

It's one thing to know about the eyes of neanderthals and their impact on the brain, it's another to say that caused their demise.

Freedom of Speech

Not too long ago I hoped the EU would ban porn because it would result in the abolition of the EU. Apparently EU bureaucrats figured that out, so they decided not to ban porn.

"The European Parliament passed a proposal Tuesday which included a blanket ban on pornography, including Internet porn, in European Union member states. However, Members of European Parliament (MEPs) removed explanatory wording from the porn ban section, essentially limiting the ban to advertising and print media. The proposal, titled 'Eliminating gender stereotypes in the EU,' was put to a vote in Strasbourg. MEPs passed it 368-159."

This is a good reminder that these people aren't stupid. They're evil.

Politics

Pat Buchanan understands the real significance of Rand Paul's filibuster.

"By the time he sat down, 13 hours later, Paul had advanced to the front rank of candidates for 2016, and established himself as a foreign policy leader whose views must be consulted equally with those of John McCain."

He also differentiated himself from establishment favorite Marco Rubio.

"To see these new Republicans standing by Rand Paul presented the image of a band of brothers standing up for principle. Rarely has this Republican Party looked better than it did on Wednesday."

"What made Rand’s presentation so appealing was that he began it alone, inviting the mockery of the media. Second, it was done with simplicity and dignity, without histrionics or demagoguery.
Third, it was evident that a genuine principle of Rand’s philosophy was at stake. Finally, like his father Ron and Jimmy Stewart, Rand has a bumpkin quality that fairly drips honesty and sincerity."

Bumpkin? Wow. Buchanan would have done better without using that word.

"Paul’s victory was conceded when a letter arrived from Holder conceding that he and the president now agreed with Sen. Paul."

That's a stretch. The letter was worded to leave any attack on any American open. It was designed to shut Paul up without conceding anything, and that's just what it did.

"Paul himself handled McCain’s insults well. “I treat Sen. McCain with respect,” he told Mike Huckabee. “I don’t think I always get the same in return.”"

As far as the substance of the argument, Thomas DiLorenzo is right; Lincoln long ago murdered any constraint the US Constitution put on the president's ability to kill Americans on American soil.

This guy gets it.

"What did Paul actually get from the Obama administration? Unfortunately, not as much as he thinks. The problem is with Holder’s response is the phrase "not engaged in combat." Of course, the George W. Bush administration pioneered the concept that terrorists, who were deemed given the designation "enemy combatants" had brought the battlefield to American soil. Because the Obama administration has adopted most of the Bush administration’s questionable policies on terrorism and civil liberties, Holder and company could just say that any American they killed – even while sipping tea at a café – was a terror suspect plotting combat (that is a terror strike) against the United States."

Exactly. All Paul got was a big boost towards the 2016 nomination. And he knows it. It was all about politics. Never about substance. It was another, but beautiful and well executed, political calculation.

Global Warming and Energy

Japanese company extracts natural gas from frozen methane hydrate deposits.

Foreign Policy

US calls on China to stop state sponsored hacking. That's like the pot calling on the kettle to stop being black. It sounds like Chinese hackers might be outperforming US hackers.

Education

Just like government has allowed roads and bridges to disintegrate, it's done the same with schools. Report claims it would take over $500 billion to bring them up to date. Government schools are bankrupting lives today and bankrupting futures. Let's abolish them so Americans can work together to provide quality education to children.

Los Angeles government schools has agreed to pay a multi-million dollar settlement to 58 elementary school claims. 61 claims are still outstanding. If you have a child in a government school, ask yourself how many claims of abuse against students must occur before you take your child out?

War

The Air Force, Army and Marines have stopped tuition assistance to active duty personnel. This is just the beginning. The military and higher education bubbles will pop as government goes broke.

US refuses to remove forces from province as ordered by Karzai.

Cyber threats a bigger threat than al Qaeda.  That's because al Qaeda isn't much of a threat, but I'm sure this is more about expanding the police state into the cyber world than rescinding it from the physical world.

While everybody is distracted by Rand Paul and his meaningless filibuster of now confirmed CIA director Brennan, Bradley Manning is being ignored.

"“The war against Bradley Manning is a war against us all.”—Chris Hedges, author and journalist"

I don't agree. It's a war against morality. It's a war against decency. Politics tells us that has little to do with American voters.

Local

The DDN is happy for the jobs that might come to the area to test oppressive drones. We don't need more government money perverting our economy.

In a cat fight between casinos and racinos, the Ohio casino protection agency thinks Dayton's prospective racino focuses too much on slot machines and not enough on boring horses. If they wanted to have horse racing, why not bring in thoroughbreds? I'd go watch thoroughbreds.

"Racing commissioners complained that the $125 million harness track in Dayton and the $125 million thoroughbred track in Austintown will each seat only a few hundred spectators for the horse races. “It seems very small to me,” commented Commissioner Willaim Koester. Commissioners asked Penn National to return next week with revised plans for additional seating for more racing fans."

This is what government has reduced our society to: too small-time bullies arguing over how many seats they need to provide in order for the big-time bully to allow them to steal our lunch money.

Miami Township trustees will consider allowing Christian Schools to invest $15 million of their own money to upgrade their own property. Isn't that mighty generous of our all-powerful rulers? Let's all bow down and kiss their rings. And you thought you owned your own property. The idea that adults must ask permission to spend their own money to develop their own property disgusts me.

DeGraff teacher indicted on 12 felony sex charges. He's on paid leave.

Grocery store competition leads to lower prices for consumers. This makes us all wealthier. Competition works. Who knew?

Tax and Spend

National Park whistleblower says Obama is making the sequester cuts as painful to Americans as possible.

Regulation

After being forced by US government regulations to ban US customers, Intrade shuts down. This article cites possible financial irregularities.

Casinos are trying to use government to ban internet cafes.

"There are more than 800 of the gambing sites in the state, according to filed affidavits with the Attorney General’s office last year. More than 100 of them are located in the Miami Valley.
House Bill 7 does not explicitly outlaw the establishments, but cafe owners and managers say the restrictions would put them out of business.
Under the bill, sweepstakes cafes could not award prizes worth more than $10."

Can you smell the hypocrisy?

Ohio legislature promises to raise the speed limit. They're so generous.

Misc

Scientists discover fossilized plankton in comet fragment. This is awfully quiet. Why isn't the discovery of life in outer space the biggest story in history? Something weird is going on here. I bet the fossil is of a known earth species which means the comet was born from the earth, or something else about the fragment makes it clear it came from the earth in support of the electric universe theory.

NASA keeps talking about water on Mars to excite people, but they never say it exists. Case in point:

"Drilling into a rock near its landing spot, the Curiosity rover has answered a key question about Mars: The red planet long ago harbored some of the ingredients needed for primitive life to thrive.
Topping the list is evidence of water and basic elements that teeny organisms could feed on, scientists said Tuesday."

That sounds incredibly promising. It makes for great marketing, but...

""We have found a habitable environment that is so benign and supportive of life that probably if this water was around and you had been on the planet, you would have been able to drink it," said chief scientist John Grotzinger of the California Institute of Technology."

If? Sure, if you pored water on the ground, you could drink it, but there is no water on the ground. Where's the evidence of water? "If"s make for great marketing, not science.

"This was an environment where microbes "could have lived in and maybe even prospered in," Grotzinger said."

"Could have"s make for great propaganda, but not science.

"NASA rovers Opportunity and Spirit — before it fell silent — also uncovered evidence of a wet Martian past elsewhere on the planet, but scientists think the water would have been too acidic for microbes.
The ancient water at Curiosity's pit stop — possibly a former lake bed — appears to be neutral and not too salty. It previously found a hint of the site's watery past — an old streambed that the six-wheel rover crossed to get to the flat bedrock."

Or not. It disgusts me how these taxpayer funded parasites present "if"s, "could have"s and "possibly"s as fact. I saw the pictures labeled as an old streambed and disagree.

"Curiosity has yet to turn up evidence of complex carbon compounds, fundamental to all living things. Scientists said a priority is to search for a place where organics might be preserved.
The drilled rock isn't far from Curiosity's landing spot in Gale Crater; the rover is ultimately headed to a mountain in the crater's middle. Images from space spied signs of clay layers at the base of the mountain — a good spot to hunt for the elusive organics."

Old streambeds are good spots to hunt for elusive organics, but they didn't drill there because they might have proved their self-serving claims were wrong. Then they might not have been able to get as much funding. It's always all about the money. NASA will go down as one of the greatest suppressors of science in history, much like the old Catholic church.

"It has been slow going as engineers learn to handle the rover, which is far more tech-savvy than anything that has landed before on Earth's planetary neighbor."

How can a machine be tech-savvy?

Critics call the USDA wildlife services an outlet for perverts to abuse animals. Based on what I know about the nature of government, this rings truth to me.

Police State

New York police officer convicted in conspiracy to kidnap, torture then eat women. More evidence that coercive government, the only kind we know, attracts the most evil people to work for it.

"The trial had drawn widespread attention in part because it involved a police officer’s bizarre and disturbing behavior, but also because it highlighted some of the darkest corners of the Internet, where fetishists hide behind Web identities like Girlmeat Hunter, which Mr. Valle used, and engage in role-playing fantasy about cannibalism and sexual torture."

The dark corners of the internet? How about the pervasive darkness of government? The state is a violent institution. The very best people believe that the ends justifies the means, which is an amoral philosophy. That's why it attracts the most evil, deviant people in society to work for it.

"Mr. Valle’s lawyers told the jury that their client had merely been involved in role-play and never intended to harm anyone.

“It was all fantasy — sick, twisted, ugly fantasies, traded on the computer,” Julia L. Gatto, a federal public defender, said in her summation on Thursday. “That’s what this prosecution rests on, the ugliness of Gil’s thoughts.”

“We don’t convict human beings because of ugly thoughts,” she added."

I don't know whether he went beyond thoughts or not, but I know this is the kind of people attracted to work for government.

Google to pay $7 million for collecting people's info. The government which collects way much more and for far more nefarious purposes is the beneficiary of that money.

Health Care

Vaccine profits were up, but the vaccine was "shockingly" ineffective.

If you want to address poor nutrition, you don't start with corporations. You reject them. Buy unprocessed food.

Restaurants embracing bacon.

"The totally heart smar t milkshake includes vanilla ice cream, maple-flavored syrup and diced bacon topped with whipped cream. "

You can't make this stuff up.

All we need is for cancer-causing chemical sweeteners to be added to our milk.

Federal Reserve

This article will quash your enthusiasm for the record high Dow. The Dow is down compared to beef, bananas and gasoline and most likely every other commodity. The record Dow is a product of inflation, not increased production.

Foreign Policy

Like a pair of five year olds, the US expels two Venezuelan diplomats in retaliation for Venezuela doing the same last week.

Regulation

Judge strikes down Bloomberg's sugary drink restriction.

Local

The city of Dayton pays out several hundred thousand dollars a year in "moral obligation" claims.

"The city of Dayton has received on average about 135 moral obligation claims per year during the past three years and paid out nearly $400,000 to settle approved claims. According to the city, the majority are related to car accidents — for example collisions with parked cars and waste collection trucks bumping into private property."

What do they care? It's other people's money, and there's always more where that came from.

Police execute a wanted man by car chase. They won't say what he was wanted for. This is a good reminder that every crime in the US, no matter how arbitrary, carries a death sentence for people who resist state aggression.

"Richmond police released few details about a pursuit that ended in a fatal crash Monday, March 11, 2013."

Of course not. They have to set up the story to make themselves appear in the best possible light while making the victim appear in the worst.

Tax and Spend

The IRS violates legal tender laws by not taking cash. That's because laws are for serfs, not our rulers.

Health Care

Doctor deconstructs the CDC report on the efficacy of the flu vaccine and finds the vaccine is worthless.

"This study reported that roughly 50% of the subjects contracted the flu.  In the general population, only about 5-20% becomes ill with the flu.  This study was suffering from a selection bias—it was studying a population that was more prone to get the flu as compared to the general population.  This bias would only serve to show a false increased effectiveness of the flu vaccine.
What was not reported by the media was that the flu vaccine was totally worthless in the elderly.  This is the population that the flu vaccine was originally developed for.   Also not reported was that the flu vaccine still contains mercury—the third most toxic element known to mankind."

But the vaccine company made a lot of money and the CDC put out lots of propaganda that made itself look good.

A lot of people complain they can't afford to eat healthy, but as this story shows, it's much cheaper to eat healthy than it is to eat crap.

Police State

TSA whistle-blower explains that TSA is a joke and does little to keep people safe.

People can tell what the government is planning by watching what its agents practice. There's a whole lot of practicing of shooting civilians going on.

"What will happen if and when Food Stamp cards cannot be honored and pension checks not dispensed? Instead of heading off such a crisis by sending crooks to jail and invoking real reform in banking and currency, which might include backing the currency with gold and abolition of fractional banking, it appears the US is intentionally steering the country towards civil unrest."

Yes it is.

War

The US cannot be at war with al Qaeda and support it too.

Insider attack kills two Americans and five Afghans.

Politics

Jury convicts former Detroit mayor for corruption.

"Prosecutors said Kwame Kilpatrick ran a private profit machine out of Detroit's City Hall. The government presented evidence to show he got a share of the spoils after ensuring that Ferguson's excavating company was awarded millions in work from the water department. "

They all do this. They're all corrupt. This guy must have challenged the wrong people.

New German political group calls for an end to the euro.

Education

Supposedly the pastry the child chewed into a gun and got suspended for was a Pop Tart. That's probably the worst pastry made. Boortz is losing it if he really thinks he can deny the vote to people he doesn't want to vote. Apparently the kid said, "Bang. Bang." God forbid.

Politics

The establishment which controls Republicans and Democrats exposes itself with attacks on Rand Paul's filibuster from both left-wing and the supposed right-wing.

Tax and Spend

Study finds that for high government debt countries, every additional dollar of government spending destroys 2.30 cents of production.

Misc

Our cavemen ancestors were fashion conscious.

Health Care

Low carbohydrate diet starves cancer cells.

Walking desk.

Superbugs continue to spread through government's hospitals. This is another disaster created by government. If we had a free market health care, people would stop patronizing hospitals as soon as superbugs showed up. The hospital would go bankrupt and be razed, and the spread would be ended. But government control of our health care facilities precludes robust competition, so hospitals become longterm breeding grounds for super-bugs. Government makes us pay higher prices for lower quality care, and it gives us super-bugs.

American eggs would be illegal in Britain and vice-versa.

More corruption of science by politics, this time regarding BPA research.

War

Karzai accuses US of negotiating with Taliban. The US has been negotiating with the Taliban for a couple years.

"Afghan President Hamid Karzai on Sunday accused the Taliban and the U.S. of working in concert to convince Afghans that violence will worsen if most foreign troops leave — an allegation the top American commander in Afghanistan rejected as "categorically false.""

It rings true to me. The US doesn't want to leave because they haven't secured the oil pipeline and rare earth minerals, and if they can convince Afghans to ask them to stay, that may make it possible to stay.

Misc

Because government has so thoroughly corrupted science, theoretical and experimental, I'm skeptical of government's discovery and the implications of the Higg's boson. If you believed that magic made balloons fly, seeing a balloon fly would bolster your belief in magic.

Global Warming and Energy

I'm always skeptical of new claims, and as much as I respect Anthony Watts for categorizing the skeptic case against the global warming frauds, Watts can be a prima donna. Therefore I'm skeptical of his claims about this video.

Regulation

Ohio Stste, funded by federal and state money, bans smoking. Ohio State is only doing this because they are subsidized by money stolen from federal and taxpayers, so they can afford to stab costumers in the face.

Local

This music center in Huber Heights must be getting some resistance based on all the propaganda the DDN is giving it. Now it will improve the quality of life for people, as if stealing their money could ever improve their lives.

Boil government water in Waynesville.

FEMA is training locals to oppress their neighbors.While I'm all for people learning to provide CPR to others, this is creepy.

War

Bradley Manning justifies publicizing war documents to expose not only war crimes, but the terrible execution of the wars. Double standard for Petraeus and Manning. That's because Petraeus has value as a glorious warrior, and he also has dirt on everybody.

The US pretends not to be arming the al Qaeda rebels in Syria, but everybody but Americans know...

 "Today the UK Telegraph is reporting that the United States has facilitated the shipment of some 3,000 tons of weapons left over from the Balkan wars of the 1990s to Syria via Croatia."

Maybe that will make Middle Eastern Muslims love us.

Economy

Peter Schiff reminds Lew Rockwell that as bad as things are in Europe, they're worse here.

Foreign Policy

In his comments about Hugo Chavez's death, Eric Morgolis makes a seemingly unintentional comparison.

"Chavez was a "caudillo" of the old Latin American model: an oversized, boisterous, macho personality loved by women; a man enraptured by is own voice, impatience with the rules of democratic government, indifferent to the needs of commerce and industry. For journalists, what a delightful change after the EU’s mind-numbing politicians. "

Change the name, and that's an excellent description of Obama.

Global Warming and Energy

The batteries necessary to store power from variable renewable energy like solar and wind have a large carbon footprint. But this is an up front footprint, so I don't think this is much of a criticism of renewables.

The real crises we face all stem from politics, not climate change.

Climate fraud blames nature, not models, for bad weather forecast.

Regulation

I don't understand this vitriol against daylight savings time. Daylight savings time is much nicer than otherwise. Having it get dark at 5pm is ridiculous. It should be daylight savings time all year long.

War

A reminder of the Iraq war disaster.

"As it happened, the country that we were going to garrison for a lifetime (to the thankful cheers of its inhabitants) while we imposed a Pax Americana on the rest of the region didn’t want us.  The government we essentially installed chose Iran as an ally and business partner.  The permanent bases we built to the tune of billions of dollars are now largely looted ghost towns.  The reconstruction of the country that we promoted proved worse than farcical, as former State Department official Peter Van Buren, author of the already classic book We Meant Well: How I Helped Lose the Battle for the Hearts and Minds of the Iraqi People, reminds us.  And an outfit proudly carrying the al-Qaeda brand name, which did not exist in Iraq before our invasion, is now thriving in a still destabilized country.  Consider that just the start of a much longer list."

That's an interesting start in that it fails to mention any loss of life.

Local

Another I-75 construction crash.

Gas prices fall 20 cents.

A local soldier killed in Afghanistan, but not in combat.

Politics

The best thing Obama ever offered was uplifting rhetoric. Now his rhetoric is as a much a downer as his policies.

Police State

California Senator Diane Feinstein is afraid drones will compromise the privacy of Hollywood stars. Who cares about us serfs?

New York man ticketed for laughing too loudly in his own home.

9th circuit bars border agents from searching laptops and phones without probable cause. That's surprising.

Obama supports right of journalist to photograph cops in public. That's even more surprising.

Education

Eighty percent of New York City high school graduates must take remedial courses in reading, writing and arithmetic before entering community college.

Misc

I've long said that the US is degenerating into a feudal society. This description of California illustrates what I mean.

Tax and Spend

Politician wants to tax email to fund the post office.

Economy

The official unemployment rate dropped to 7.7 percent as 236,000 jobs were created in February, but 130,000 more people dropped out of the job market.

Ohio's unemployment rate jumped from 6.7 to 7 percent.

"The rate is skewed by the fact that 11,000 more people were looking for work in January than in December, jobs agency spokesman Benjamin Johnson said. An increase in job searchers is typical during an economic recovery, he said."

11,000 doesn't seem like enough to skew the numbers much.

Education

The motivation behind truancy laws.

"The most recent ploy to separate taxpayers from their hard-earned dollars and render them criminals comes in the form of school truancy laws. Disguised as well-meaning attempts to resolve attendance issues in the schools, these truancy laws are nothing less than stealth maneuvers aimed at enriching school districts and court systems alike through excessive fines and jail sentences, while the ones being singled out for punishment – more often than not from middle- to low-income families – are the very ones who can least afford it."

Yep.

Economy

Ohio casino revenue up in February. So what? This government boondoggle is going to be in the news all the time.

"Horseshoe Casino Cincinnati, which opened Monday, collected $227,752 in AGR during a Feb. 27 invite-only preview.
The casino split its share of the proceeds — $152,595 — between non-profits ArtsWave, the Cincinnati-Hamilton County Community Action Agency, Freestore Foodbank’s Cincinnati Cooks and Talbert House, then added $1,850 in non-gaming proceeds for each organization, according to Rock Gaming."

The government is operating these casinos like utilities companies.

Finally a sane article about China. It calls China the biggest real estate bubble in history.

Federal Reserve

In a speech at the Mises Institute, former Reagan budget director David Stockman explains in detail what happened in 2008, what's happening today, and what's likely to happen, and why.

"The last $600 billion of C.P. is where the real crony capitalist stench lies. There were two huge users of the finance company C.P. sector – this last $600 billion – GMAC and G.E. Capital. At the time of the crisis, G.E. Capital had asset footings of $600 billion, most of which were long-term highly illiquid and sometimes sketchy corporate and commercial real estate loans. In violation of every rule of sound banking, more than $80 billion of these positions were funded in the super-cheap commercial paper market. This maneuver, of course, produced fat spreads on G.E.'s loan book and big management bonuses, too. But it also raised to a whole new level the ancient banking folly of mismatching short and hot liabilities with long and slow assets. Under free-market rules, an inability to roll $80 billion in C.P. would have forced G.E. Capital into a fire sale of illiquid loan assets at deep discounts, thereby, incurring heavy losses and a reversal of its prior phony profits. Or in the alternative, it could have held the loan book and issued massively dilutive amounts of common stock or subordinated debt to close its sudden funding gap. Either way, G.E. shareholders would have taken the beating they deserved for overvaluing the company's true earnings and for putting reckless managers in charge of the store.
So my point is that the financial meltdown during those eventful weeks was not triggered by the financial equivalent of a comet from deep space, but resulted from leveraged speculation that should have been punishable by ordinary market rules.
Viewed very broadly, or more broadly, the carnage on Wall Street in September 2008 was the inevitable crash from a 40-year financial bubble spawned by the Fed after Nixon closed the gold window in August 1971. As time passed, the Fed's market-rigging and money printing actions had become increasingly destructive, leaving the banking system ever more unstable and populated with a growing bevy of too-big-to-fail institutions. The 1984 rescue of Continental Illinois, the 1994 Mexican Peso crisis bailouts, the Fed's 1998 life-support operation for long-term capital were all just steps along the way to September 2008. Then, at that point, faced with a collapse of its own handiwork, Washington panicked and joined the Fed in unleashing an indiscriminant bail-out capitalism that has now thoroughly corrupted the halls of government even as it has become a debilitating blight on the free market."

I'm not sure Washington panicked. I think they used this manufactured crisis as an excuse to take taxing and spending to a new level.

"Now monetization, as I'm sure you all know, can be done in two ways. First, there is out-right monetization as is now being conducted by the Fed through its POMO program; that is, it's daily purchase of $4 billion to $8 billion of treasury debt. Indeed, the Fed's Q.E.2 bond purchases of late have been so massive that it is literally buying treasury paper in the secondary market almost as fast as new bonds are being issued. During January, for example, fully 40 percent of the Fed's $100 billion bond buy was from numbers of F Series of bonds that were less than 90 days old. Needless to say, putting brand new treasury bonds in the Fed's vault before they have paid even a single coupon is functionally equivalent to printing greenbacks. After all, under this type of high-speed round trip, virtually all the coupons from newly issued bonds will end up as incremental profit at the Fed and be remitted back to the Treasury at year end. Hence, the money never leaves. Stated differently, in the present era of massive quantitative easing, newly issued treasury securities amount to non-interest bearing currency without the circulation privilege.
But over the last several decades, the preferred course has been indirect monetization. That is the world's legion of willing mercantilist exporters from China to the Persian Gulf have printed their own money in vast quantities, ostensively to peg their exchange rates, but with the effect of absorbing trillions of U.S. treasury paper. To be sure, the people's money warehouse in China and those in other mercantilist lands are pleased to label these accumulations as sovereign wealth portfolios. But the fact is these hordes of sequestered dollars are not classic monetary reserves derived from a true sustainable surplus on current account. Instead, they are simply the book entry offset to the inflated local money supplies that have been emitted by this global convoy of peggers; that is, the mercantilist nation central banks tethered to the Fed."

The description of indirect monetization is instructive.

"In fact, foreign central banks hold $2.6 trillion of U.S. treasuries at the New York Fed, while the Fed itself owns $1.2 trillion of treasury debt. Add in at least a half trillion more treasury paper that is officially held elsewhere and you have the startling fact that about $4.5 trillion, or 50 percent of all the publically held federal debt ever issued, has now been sequestered by central bankers. With such a mighty bid from the world's central bankers, we have thus experienced what our classically trained forbearers held to be impossible, a prolonged era of fiscal deficits without tears."

And we're going to have to pay the price. 

"To be sure, lowering the burden of taxation on the American economy is a compelling idea from both a philosophical and an economic policy viewpoint. But deficit-financed tax cuts are a politician's snare and illusion. Such fiscal actions do not actually reduce tax payments; they just defer the timing. Moreover, the evidence of the last 30 years shows that preemptive tax cuts don't actually, quote, "starve the beast," not withstanding the popularity of this nostrum among certain K Street philosophers whose day job involves panhandling outside the Ways and Means Committee hearing room."

They still promote starve the beast? You got to be kidding me.  Stockman shows how the budget numbers are even worse than they appear.

"It's widely known, of course, that the Bush income tax rate cuts expire promptly at midnight on December 31, 2012, causing a $200 billion per year pickup in the revenue baseline thereafter, at least in the projections. But what also happens on January 1, 2012, is that the $100 billion abatement of payroll taxes abruptly expires and so does the so-called AMT patch. The latter means that the number of taxpayers facing the alternate minimum tax jumps from four million to 33 million, causing the projected annual revenue take to rise from $34 billion under the patch, temporary, to $129 billion, permanent. Likewise, the 15 percent tax rate in corporate dividends will jump to 40 percent in 2013. The estate tax goes back up. All the tax credits that are now in place expire and so forth.
Taken together, the December Christmas tree contained temporary tax provisions worth 3.8 percent of GDP, the equivalent of $650 billion annually, that will have completely expired by 2014. The resulting big uptick in revenue seems antiseptic enough when viewed on the computer screen. However, were these provisions to expire in real life, upwards of 100 million different taxpayers would take a hit. Consequently, most of these tax breaks won't expire; their due date will just be kicked down the road a couple of years as part of the annual, quote, "rinse and repeat exercise" –
(Laughter)
– which now passes for budget making.
The picture is not much different on the spending side. Something called the Doc Fix has been enacted repeatedly; a measure which temporarily waives the 20 percent drop in Medicare fees built into current law. Now upon passage, the politicians collect their election year medications from the grateful physicians lobby while taking credit for a $30 billion future annual spending reduction when the waiver expires. But, of course, it won't.
Likewise, under extended unemployment benefits, 10 million workers get various, quote, "extended tiers" of the Unemployment Insurance Program at an annual cost of $150 billion. But under current law, nearly two-thirds of this cost is deemed temporary; meaning that out-year budget projections only show $50 billion of annual expense. The reality, however, is that to avoid a cold-turkey shock, Congress has repeatedly voted extensions at the 11th hour and will again in 2012." 

Everybody knows this temporary spending will be renewed. 

Police State

Australian foriegn minister reveals than an Australian-Israeli Mossad agent who had worked in Iran and elsewhere had been secretly imprisoned in Israel and was found hanging in his cell two years ago. The death was never reported. He was called only Prisoner X.

"Little is known publicly about what Zygier was doing for Mossad, why he was jailed in secret and how he killed himself in a cell monitored by video."

That he killed himself is a big assumption.

"Ross said Zygier worked in a unit that fielded operatives known as "combatants," assassins and spies whose work comes about as close to the fictional British 007 agents as exists in real life."

Are you kidding me? This is an admission this guy was a terrorist.

Hamilton County Court strikes down red light camera law as Ohio legislators consider banning them.

"In his decision, Judge Robert Ruehlman noted the lack of signage to warn motorists and that cameras are calibrated only once per year by the for-profit camera operator.
“Elmwood Place is engaged in nothing more than a high-tech game of 3-card Monty,” Ruehlman wrote. “It is a scam that motorists can’t win.”
There’s no state law on the books allowing or prohibiting cameras that detect speeding and red-light violations.
Bipartisan legislation has been introduced to prohibit the traffic cameras in Ohio. Bill sponsor Rep. Ron Maag, R-Lebanon, said sending millions out of Ohio has been a poor business decision and that money would be better spent on law enforcement and public safety."

This sounds promising, but the money would be better left in the pockets of the people. I love it when the divergent interests of government crooks reduce the burden of government.

"Dayton collected about $2.4 million from camera citations in 2012. Dayton keeps about $55 of the $85 civil citation and sends the rest to Phoenix-based RedFlex Traffic Systems. RedFlex also operates cameras in Hamilton, Middletown, Springfield, Trotwood and West Carrollton."

That describes a money grab designed to enrich politicians, bureaucrats and their out of state plutocrat crony.

Holder's statement about using drones to assassinate Americans.

"It has come to my attention that you have now asked an additional question: `Does the President have the authority to use a weaponized drone to kill an American not engaged in combat on American soil?’ The answer to that question is no."

What it means:

"What Holder is saying, in substantive terms, is that the President does have the supposed authority to use a drone to kill an American who is engaged in “combat,” whether here or abroad. "Combat" can consist of expressing support for Muslims mounting armed resistance against U.S. military aggression, which was the supposed crime committed by Anwar al-Awlaki, or sharing the surname and DNA of a known enemy of the state, which was the offense committed by Awlaki’s 16-year-old son, Abdel."

They'll kill whomever they want, and they'll trot out goons posing as experts to convince Americans they needed killing.

DHS secretary Napolitano and TSA chief Pistole caught with different stories about the effect of the sequester on lines at the airport. This is just the standard lies we always hear from politicians.

Politics

Rand Paul's filibuster praised for its length.

"The Kentucky Republican comes in at No. 9 on a draft list of longest Senate speeches kept by the historian's office, clocking in at 12 hours and 52 minutes. "

That's the least praise-worthy thing about it I can think of, but he really raised his profile with the establishment, and he might have gotten a lot of name recognition out of it. Though nothing of substance will come of it, he definitely boosted his chances in 2016.

The warmonger twins John McCain and Lindsay Graham criticize Paul for his filibuster. Paul fires back saying pro-drone Republicans are on the wrong side of history.

Senate confirms Brennan as CIA chief despite Paul's filibuster, as expected.

Global Warming and Energy

USA Today couldn't pass up an opportunity to use the bogus term "Superstorm Sandy" again.

"In Ocean City, N.J., resident Wayne Dull told The Press of Atlantic City that Thursday's flooding was typical, but frustrating.
"We're sick of it. We're done," he told the Press. "We're moving some place offshore, far away from water.""

People make rational decisions. Government just perverts incentives through coercion and seduces people into making bad decisions.

Global warming fraud disses global warming skeptic and exposes his political motives in the process.

"He no longer contributes to the science and is irrelevant to policy."

His focus is on policy.

BP gets out of solar energy business after 40 years.

Freedom of Speech

The EU might ban all internet porn. What a stupid law. You can't legislate away the differences between men and women. It sounds like it may ban all porn. I hope it passes. If it does, it could bring down the EU. It'll certainly shorten the EU's existence. Our governments are crashing and burning, and they're taking us with them.

War

CIA reportedly captures bin Laden's son-in-law, an al Qaeda big-wig.

"The Turkish newspaper HJurriyet reported that Ghaith was passing through Jordan, on his way to Kuwait, shortly after leaving Turkey.
The newspaper said that Ghaith was taken into custody more than a month ago at a luxury hotel in Ankara, the Turkish capital. But Turkish officials decided he had not committed any crime in Turkey, and released him, the newspaper reported.
In Ankara, Turkish officials refused to confirm Ghaith's deportation or his capture in Jordan to The Associated Press. In Amman, the Jordanian capital, a security official said he had no information on the CIA arrest in Jordan."

Funny how he can sit in an Ankaran hotel for a month, known by Turkish authorities, but freed, then picked up by the CIA in Jordan, not Turkey. When did the CIA get arrest powers in Jordan? How did it get them? This sounds fishy.

"[Rep Peter] King said Ghaith took part in the Sept. 11, 2001, plot against the World Trade Center and Pentagon." 

Then it must be true because no politician would ever lie.

Air Force sells a record amount of weapons overseas, most of which will be used to attack Americans in the future.

"The Air Force Security Assistance and Cooperation Directorate handled a record $32.9 billion in foreign arms sales last year, fueled by the sale of 84 F-15SA fighter jets to Saudi Arabia, according to Department of Defense officials.
The $29.4 billion fighter jet deal is believed to be the largest export sale the Department of Defense has had, according to Charles E. Taylor, a Defense Security Cooperation Agency spokesman in Arlington, Va.
The agency and the State Department also had a role in the sale, Taylor said."

A criminal conspiracy if I ever saw one.

Documentary claims to expose torture centers in Iraq.

Right to Keep and Bear Arms

Ohio Senators want to block journalists from viewing gun registration records. It's hard to see how they'll do that since those are public records. This is another problem created by government. A while back, a New York paper published a map of all the houses with registered guns, and it caused an uproar, and rightfully so. But if the government hadn't used coercion to force those people to register their firearms in the first place, this problem wouldn't exist.

Local

Police cruiser spins out of control and hits parked car. Owner of parked car will get license suspended for not having insurance. Not only that, but...

"However, when Conklin contacted the city’s insurance carrier Monday, she was told the city would not be paying for the damages because the officer was responding to an emergency."

You can't make this stuff up. Rulers rule. Serfs suffer.

"“The lesson learned here is to make sure you have insurance,” Whitman said."

That's not the lesson. The lesson is rulers are above the law, and the rest of us have to pay the price. It makes no sense to legislate away a person's responsibility for their actions, ever. I'll bet the damage caused by this cop was far worse than the supposed emergency he was responding to.

Misc

NASA's theory of the sun has been repeatedly falsified by observations, but government funded scientists won't abandon the theory as they should.

"However, reputations and salaries are at stake. Also, changing theories is expensive: textbooks would have to be rewritten, curricula changed, computers re-programmed. The incentives are for patching. But that’s expediency, not science. For many decades now, expediency has crowded out science: We live in a dark age of science, a fact obscured by technological feats."

Government research money is always allocated to advance political goals.

Another myth verified as true as divers find Viking sunstone on ship wreck.

"Sunstones were once considered "mystical," since they were said to be able to pinpoint the sun's position even through the clouds, but a 2011 study found the stones were actually real."

More hubris and inaccuracy from scientists.

Yahoo CEO says data showed telecommuting workers were slacking off. I wonder how that's measured. When I work from home, I can work much more quickly because I don't have an office full of people distracting me.

Russian scientists believe they have discovered a new form of bacteria in Lake Vostok.

Global Warming and Energy

While atmospheric CO2 has steadily increased, water vapor has fallen. The positive feedback effect predicted by global warming frauds is wrong. Of course we've always known that, because if they were right, the earth would have been rendered uninhabitable a hundreds of millions of years ago or more. The worse news is for the people, because this means it's going to get cold since water vapor is a much more powerful greenhouse gas than CO2.

Solar cycle 24 sunspot count still way below NASA's modified prediction because NASA doesn't have a clue what powers the sun.

Another analysis shows global warming has stalled.

Federal Reserve

The editorial board at USA Today wrote an essay tying the stock market record to Fed money printing. That's how mainstream this has become. Thanks to the Mises Institute, Lew Rockwell and Ron Paul for making this happen.

War

The New Yorker ridicules US foreign policy of aggression.

"WASHINGTON (The Borowitz Report)—The spending cuts mandated by the sequester may hamper the United States’s ability to invade countries for absolutely no reason, a Pentagon spokesman warned today."

That's good.

This article sets up four arguments for putting women in combat, then refutes them.

"The most fundamental differentiator between men and women of course is mutual sexual attraction. That fact has become an increasing source of weakness to US military units, and will weaken them still further when full combat integration is achieved. Where men and women are put together, sex will follow. So will pregnancy - which is of course grounds for removing women from active duty. Sex is sometimes consensual. It is is sometimes coerced. And it is sometimes sold."

And it always adds stress to people who already facing the greatest stress in the world because they are fighting for their lives.

"It is on the point of "fairness" that Browne expresses himself most scathingly. It's not the military's job to be "fair." It is the military's job to win wars. Our society values freedom of speech. It values the right to elect leaders. It values individual choice and market competition. All of those values are suspended in the military, sacrificed to the paramount need for military effectiveness."

This is a good job, but I don't believe it address the real motives for putting women in the military. The primary motive is the military needs bodies. Perpetual war is using up bodies and degrading the military, so they keep expanding roles for women to obtain new bodies. The second reason is that when a woman is killed or captured, it whips up support for the war in the US. With the vast majority of Americans wanting to end the wars, our rulers need a game changer to re-energize support for perpetual war. Setting up women to be killed, captured and tortured provides that game changer.

Obama claims power to assassinate Americans on US soil.

Syrian warplanes and rebels attack Iraq.

Foreign Policy

Warning that the US plans to instigate a proxy revolution in Venezuela like it did in Libya and Syria.

Education

Police handcuff eight year old girl for two hours because she threw a temper tantrum at school.

Retired generals remind us that schools are for creating soldiers.

Tax and Spend

Large bipartisan House majority passes $1 trillion spending bill to keep the government running until September. Nobody in Washington wants spending cuts.

Politics

Rand Paul launches an old fashioned one-man filibuster of Brennan as CIA chief over concern of drone attacks against Americans on US soil. This should give him a boost in the 2016 Republican primary which at the moment seems to be between Paul and Rubio. Paul seems to be charting his own course. Rubio seems to be following the establishment.

Praise for Paul's filibuster.

"And, the fact that [Paul] stands nearly alone should frighten anyone who is still uninformed enough to think there is a functioning system of checks and balances in Washington. Paul's stand should also serve as a source of everlasting shame to the so-called Progressives who obviously care not one iota for human rights, democracy or decent government at all, as long as one of their own is the current elected dictator."

Sad but true.

Local

A few days ago the Dayton Daily News reported that the guard base in Springfield was well positioned to avoid cuts or even gain from consolidation. Today it reports that 50 jobs are being cut. The so-called experts were wrong again. Don't believe any of the propaganda you read in the mainstream media.

Snow falls. Power fails to 2,500. That's probably the fewest number of people who lost power in any of these reports I've documented.

Auditor's crony to photograph properties.

"State law requires counties to maintain updates property information on each parcel to ensure fair property values, according to the auditor’s office. The city has contracted Tyler Technologies, based in the city, to photograph the exterior of every property in the county."

This is an economic fallacy. The only way to determine the value of a property is to sell it. It's worth the highest price it can obtain on the market at any given time. That price will fluctuate from day to day. This process has nothing to do with determining value. It's about fooling people into allowing the government to steal their money and enriching Tyler Technologies and its political patrons.

The government is granting imminent domain powers to a pipeline company to build an underground pipeline through Ohio. Here's why they do this:

"While upsetting some residents, the underground pipelines boost revenues for local governments."

The government doesn't care about the people. It's all about stealing more money.

Oakwood zoning restrictions prohibit business plan.

"Firehouse Subs wants to have 50 seats, the norm at its more than 500 other locations. Oakwood’s zoning code for a deli in a Neighborhood Business District permits only 24."
"“Zoning code is not something you sit down and read at night. I did think the negotiations had all been pretty much worked out with Firehouse,” Routsong said."

Oakwood government officials don't know their own zoning restrictions. And we wonder why our economy is in decline.

Kettering schools near the top in the state. This is faint praise.