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FREEDOM OF SPEECH:

Thailand rulers imprisoning people for up to 15 years for posting things unflattering to them. Coming soon to the internet you use.

TAX AND SPEND:

German bond rates are starting to rise, and the pressure on the ECB to print money and buy them is increasing.

GLOBAL WARMING AND ENERGY:

Yesterday I explained that big corporations are effectively government bureaucracies: agents of the state. This Climategate 2 email shows that green groups are also agents of the state:

"In The Hague, we saw for the first time organized disruption of the conduct of negotiation and publicly staged confrontations. While organized and deeply committed environmental activism has long been an important part of the UNFCCC process through major groups suchas NRDC, EDF/ED, WWF and Greenpeace, they have operated within the structure as constructive participants in the policy-setting process, along with industry."

And...

"At The Hague, this “inside” role was supplemented by hundreds of young, relatively naïve demonstrators brought in specifically to energize the environmental presence and confront the process. Even some within the ranks of the more established participants — while disavowing the takeover of the negotiating room — saw fit to publicly offer Minister Pronk and the UNFCCC Secretariate a veiled threat of “Seattle” if the process failed to deliver."

This implies that the state corrupts every special interest group into an agent.

POLICE STATE:

Feds seize another 130 domains.

A small expose of government's all-seeing eye. This is terrible, but it's never going to go away.

WAR:

US forces kill 26 Pakistani troops on border with Afghanistan. NATO claims it was a mistake by close air support. That seems hard to believe. Pakistan cuts off supplies to US troops in Afghanistan in response and demands US vacate CIA drone base.

MISC:

More hints at corruption in the MS Global bankruptcy process.

Archaeologists have discovered a second Mayan prophesy predicting the end of the world next December. Western may collapse around then.

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FREEDOM OF SPEECH:

Senator wants Google to police terrorist blogs. This is a good reminder that giant corporations are effectively government bureaucracies. They're not businesses as we know businesses.

TAX AND SPEND:

Which global debt time bomb will explode first: the US or Europe? Peter Schiff contrasts German Chancellor Merkel's insistence that the ECB not destroy the euro through the printing press - she must still remember the Weimar Republic - with the US government policy of print, print and print some more until the dollar dies. The problem is the EU put bankers in charge of both Greece and Spain, so Merkel, while in the driver's seat because of Germany's position as the strongest economy in Europe, is being surrounded by bankers. And Greece's new banker-PM said that Greece would make no more budget cuts. So it looks like its Merkel against the bankers, and the bankers are seizing more power. Ironically,

"the prospect of sovereign default in Europe is driving "safe" haven demand for the dollar. So contrary to the political blame game, Europe's problems are actually providing a temporary boost to America's bubble economy."

That can't last, and Americans will suffer tremendous pain when the fiscal reality hits home. Italy's ten year rates climb to 7.3 percent.

"Still, Italy was not the only member of the 17-nation eurozone to have a disappointing auction this week. Even Germany — the region's strongest economy and the main funder of eurozone bailouts — failed to raise all the money it sought Wednesday, its worst auction result in decades. Spain also saw its borrowing rates ratchet sharply higher, even after a landslide victory for the conservative Popular Party, which has made getting a reduction in Spain's borrowing levels its top priority.European debt crisis contagion also hit Hungary and Belgium Friday. Moody's Investors Service downgraded Hungary's sovereign debt to junk status, a decision that the government hotly criticized. Hungary is not a member of the eurozone, but trades with many eurozone members. Meanwhile, Standard & Poor's ratings agency downgraded long-term Belgian debt a notch, citing a threat to its exports."

Let's hope Merkel holds firm against the printing press. Somebody has to be sane, and it sure isn't US politicians or bankers anywhere.

Total US debt is $52 trillion.

FEDERAL RESERVE:

Fed economists say the chance of a double-dip recession in 2012 is over 50 percent.

HEALTH CARE:

Australian government to deny benefits to families that don't vaccinate children. This is how government uses stolen money and tax policy to tyrannize.

GLOBAL WARMING AND ENERGY:

Scientists lose massive caribou herd, blame global warming. Inuit explain caribou move. Scientists find caribou herd where Inuit said to look. The government take-over of science is making us stupider.

New study forces global warming alarmists to admit that climate is not as sensitive to CO2 as they previously claimed. But we've known is true all along because if climate was as sensitive as they claimed, the earth would have experienced runaway global warming millions or billions of years in the past.

I've long explained that the coercive nature of government empowers the worst people to rise to the top and corrupts them all. This is true with scientists, or more accurately pseudo-scientists. Climategate 2 email reveals Michael Mann criticized by alarmist.

"Edward Cook tells Phil Jones that Mike Mann is “serious enemy” and “vindictive”. Mike Mann had criticized his work. Apparently Mann went “a little crazy” over a paper showing the Medeival Warm Period exists."

Disgraced CRU head Phil Jones admits he can't plot a trend in Excel, a basic scientific skill.

Example of how the frauds stack panels against skeptics.

WAR:

Now the French are proposing a "humanitarian corridor" into Syria from Turkey. That's code for an invasion route. These guys fooled so many people with their phony claims of the humanitarian mission in Libya, it's the new go-to lie. Turkey is a NATO ally, so it's a natural supply point for NATO invasion forces.

FOREIGN POLICY:

The Egyptian military has named a former Mubarak regime member as PM and given him greater powers. Meet the new boss. Same as the old boss.

LOCAL:

Whenever the people fail to pass a levy requested by bureaucrats, the bureaucrats punish the people by ending popular services instead of cutting bureaucrats to make ends meet.

"The West Carrollton Moraine Basketball Association has been forced to cancel its current recreational season after the West Carrollton School Districts closed its school buildings immediately after school following defeat of its Nov. 8 levy.Boy Scout troops, Taekwondo classes and other community groups left homeless by the closings are scrambling to find alternative meeting locations."

If they fired all the bureaucrats, they would save a tremendous amount of money, lose no services, and the students would get a better education. But no.

MISC:

Great description of money as power and why that's a good thing.

"Money is power. But – contrary to popular, sloppy thinking – not all power is necessarily bad. The coercive power of the state and other forms of power based on force are destructive in their essence, and the outcomes of their application tend to be negative. When you offer someone money for a service or good, you are motivating cooperation, and the transaction only closes if both sides feel they are getting more than they are giving. Win-win. That makes the power of money essentially constructive, and the outcomes of its application, absent the corrupting influence of force, tend to be creative."

Money is the power to improve people's lives because it can be traded for voluntary goods and services. The coercive power of government only destroys.

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TAX AND SPEND:

Judge rules bankruptcy filing by Harrisburg, Pennsylvania government illegal. I guess the mayor and her cronies stand to make lots of money off taxpayers, so she won't agree to it.

REGULATION:

The FCC's challenge to the AT&T-T Mobil merger costs AT&T $4 billion. And we wonder why our economy is spiraling down and jobs are moving overseas.

FEDERAL RESERVE:

We might be seeing the beginning of a modern day bank run.

"The nation's 10 largest retail banks are at risk of losing $185 billion in deposits over the next year as customers will look to move primary accounts to community and regional banks they perceive as being more customer-friendly."

The big banks must be in serious trouble despite, or because of, all the money the Fed printed and handed to them. Chase just sent me a $125 gift card if I open a Chase Total Checking account.

HEALTH CARE:

Dr. Mercola exposes government's health care system:

"With all its designer drugs and state-of-the-art machinery, you'd think modern medicine is the perfect fix for providing patient-focused care.You might also expect that Americans would be the healthiest people on Earth, seeing that the U.S. is the epicenter of all this technology, and especially since we spend more on health care than any other country in the world.
Yet, every year in the U.S., seven out of 10 deaths are due to preventable chronic diseases such as heart disease, cancer, diabetes, arthritis, stroke, and obesity.
How can that be?
How is it that we're not just chronically ill, but also lagging behind most industrialized nations in life expectancy?
The answer lies in how we approach health care: like it or not, the real focus of modern medicine is on selling disease and making money, not making you well."

This is what happens when we give government our power. Politicians and bureaucrats sell that power to the highest bidder, and those organizations use our power to advance their own interests at our expense. There's no way to reform this because the government officials and the special interest leaders are simply obeying human nature. The only solution is to take our power back from government.

Thanks to government domination of our health care system, the US ranks 28th in life expectancy despite being the most expensive system.

We should consider the FDA approved label as a warning to avoid from that product because it will cause us harm.

GLOBAL WARMING AND ENERGY:

Government's stupid smart meters are interfering with other consumer electronics. What else would you expect from government? They didn't the UL approval. They don't need it. This shows how the private sector is much more effective at regulation than the government. And it's far cheaper.

Google abandons renewable energy prospects. That's because they're not cost effective.

Climategate 2 emails provide evidence the World Bank is helping orchestrate the great global warming fraud. BBC reporter jokes about how phony the BBC's pretense of objectivity is. This is true of every news outlet. Both Climategate 1 and 2 releases came when Obama visited China.

There's no such thing as renewable energy.

It looks like nothing terrible will happen at the latest global warming conference.

POLICE STATE:

Because prosecutors are immune from penalties from prosecutorial misconduct, prosecutorial misconduct is the rule instead of the exception. The American people should revoke their immunity, but that's not enough. Police have no immunity, but prosecutors never prosecute them for their crimes. Prosecutors wouldn't prosecute each other either. That's why we need a free market justice system.

Of course bias influences every decision we make in life. How could it be otherwise? Or maybe a better way to ask the question is: what does unbiased mean? And the conviction system takes advantage of this to produce convictions.

WAR:

The ruling class thinks the way they murdered Libyans was so popular, they're repeating the playbook for Syria. European leaders promoting another "humanitarian" mission like the one that killed tens of thousands in Libya in Syria. I guess they figure that bombing people to death is a humane way to kill them. It's sickening that so many Americans support these atrocities.

Here's what Syria has to look forward to:

"Lynching, torture, kidnapping are rampant [in Libya]. Not that it matters. The US struck a blow against the Chinese companies that had been developing the oil. They were tossed out, and their massive investments lost, and the CIA-Pentagon-Big Oil complex took it all over."

Very humanitarian.

POLITICS:

Lots of people don't understand this, but Ron Paul gets more donations from the military, federal bureaucrats and military-industrial complex workers than any other candidate. Lew Rockwell explains why:

"People are capable of putting principle ahead of short-term economic interests. That's why, no matter how many are riding on the taxpayers' back, all is not lost."

This is why Ron Paul would do better than any other Republican in the general election, and beat Pharaoh Obama handily. It also shows that good people go into the government hoping to help others only to discover the system is designed to keep that from happening.

FOREIGN POLICY:

Report that Iranians capture a US covert operations team. If we caught an Iranian covert operations team, we know what they would be called: terrorists. What do you think the Iranians will call a US covert operations team? Why would they be wrong? This is an important reminder that the US government is the initiator of aggression all over the world. That's why the rest of the world hates us and so many want to kill us. We should stop that. Funny how the Telegraph article returns a 404 error. That seems to happen a lot when papers prints stories detrimental to the establishment.

MISC:

Thanksgiving is a reminder of the marginal utility theory of value. This explains why the more wealth people enjoy, the less they appreciate it. Tell that to the Occupiers. Reminder that capitalism at Plymouth colony created the bounty that produced the first Thanksgiving after years of socialism almost wiped the colony out.

IBM's idea: build a DNA sequencing machine for $100 so it can build a DNA database of every person and creature on earth. This sounds very scary to me. It sounds inevitable.

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ECONOMY:

Have you noticed that quarter after quarter the government lists rosy growth numbers to great fan fair, though the employment numbers never change, but weeks later they quietly say they made a mistake and the economy really didn't grow as much as they said previously? They did it again.

Seventeen quotes from establishment figures warning of the impending economic crash. You won't find these in the mainstream media because the media's job is to hide important information from the people and to distract the people from finding this information on their own.

TAX AND SPEND:

Palestine to adopt Chilean model of private pensions, but the US government will not allow that.

The government is stealing our money to provide cell phones to the poor. Who's surprised this program is fraught with corruption?

GLOBAL WARMING AND ENERGY:

Climategate 2 email admits the frauds were not exactly honest when dealing with criticism of the Hockey Stick. Ya think?

POLICE STATE:

Police encrypting radio transmissions to keep the public in the dark. I can remember when the police wanted the public to know what was going on because that helped their cause. But since have metastasized into predators, they don't want their prey to know what they're up to.

Amish charged with hate crimes for cutting hair. I have no doubt that Amish individuals use violence and coercion against others the same way non-Amish do, but it's sickening how the government and the media are trying to demonize the Amish with this stuff. They hate that the Amish don't bow to them.

Speculation that the anthrax attack, remember that?, was a false flag operation.

FOREIGN POLICY:

Parallels between the US-China jostling and the British-German jostling that sparked WWI. Of course the US ruling class sees the Chinese ruling class as a threat. It's like the American mafia, the greatest mafia in the world, seeing an up and coming Chinese mafia that will one day threaten it for world dominance. But if we get rid of that American mafia, the Chinese will have no interest in us except to trade. And the Chinese people will follow our example and oust their Chinese mafia rulers. The greatest threat the American people have ever faced and likely will ever face is the US federal mafia in Washington D.C. The path to peace and prosperity is for the American people to oust our mafia rulers and become the greatest trading people in the history of the world.

POLITICS:

I can't help but laugh at all this phony outrage over the so-called super-committee. Ooo, Congress is being secret. Do you really think that in the last 230 years or so, a subset of Congressmen didn't get together to privately debate policy? Give me a break. And the Constitution gives Congress the power to write its own rules, so there's nothing unconstitutional about this super-committee. The only thing wrong with it is it was a sham from the beginning. It was nothing but a cover for Republicans to raise the debt ceiling while pretending they supported spending cuts, which they never support. This is the issue that we should be talking about. Judge Napolitano usually does a fantastic job of bring up real issues. This is not one of those times. Quit distracting us with this nonsense.

MEDIA:

The USA Today, and therefore all the leftist media, is trying to use the immigration issue to sink Newt Gingrich. As if immigration is some major issue. It's the economy stupid. People should reject Gingrich for his big-government policies like war with Iran.

LOCAL:

The Dayton Police Chief is concerned about facing 2012 with the smallest police force in memory, but 2011 also had the smallest police force in memory before 2012, and crime rates plummeted. What this shows is that police create crime, and law and order is served by property owners, not government. Every police bureaucrat's nightmare is the people will discover this. I look forward to Dayton becoming even more safe than it already is.

"“Because of the staffing levels that we’ll be experiencing next year, which are really unprecedented, we’re going to have to be meticulous in paying attention to the basics,” Biehl said."

That's an admission of the bureaucratic waste of police departments.

"Biehl said despite the staffing plunge, several police initiatives have made Dayton a safer city.“I’ve never seen anything
like this in a single year in my entire career,” said
Biehl, pointing to a 15 percent crime drop this year. “There are some pretty remarkable crime reductions that are occurring. The question is, will they be sustained?”"

There's nothing remarkable about this. Police are coercive agents of the government. As such, they create crime. By reducing the number of police, the government cannot produce the same level of coercion, and crime drops. In addition, the fewer police offers available, the more property owners take responsibility for security on their own property, and since property owners have a real stake in the security of their property, they're far more effective than police. This is just another example of the failure of central planning and the pretense of knowledge. On the other hand, expect fires to increase because in our declining economy, underwater property owners have more to gain by burning their properties down and collecting insurance than by maintaining the property.

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LIBERTY:

Thanksgiving is a powerful reminder of the triumph of capitalism over socialism.

FREEDOM OF SPEECH:

The internet will produce a terrible new phenomenon of people who can protest something without giving up anything. In the real world, protesters must give up time, free time, work time or sleep time. Time has value in the real world. In the internet world, it takes no time to protest. Protesting is effectively free. That means millions or billions of people can protest activities online. I'm sure entrepreneurs will address this problem by creating tools that measure the protest time of individuals, but demagogues won't use those tools. This is going to suck.

SOCIALISM:

Only 3 percent of EU citizens have left-wing governments. The problem in the US is that Republicans are left-wing too. They support All of Karl Marx's tenets just like Democrats. I think the same is true of conservative governments in Europe.

FASCISM:

Fascist Europe controlled by banksters.

"Roberts is right, the monetary and political elites only like democracy when they know they can game the system and control the outcome of the election. German Chancellor Merkel, should support giving the Greek people the right to vote on the imposition of crippling austerity measures. In fact, given the EU problems today, every member nation should have a referendum on whether to stay or leave the EU since most countries never allowed their citizens to vote yea or nay on joining in the first place. My question is what kind of union is against democracy and voters having their say on important issues or where politicians bypass voters and suddenly announce new leaders without elections?"

They thought they were free too.

"Now the Greek and Italian prime ministers have been replaced by an EU coup d’etat with suitable EU candidates approved by Germany and the banks to make sure there is no question that the over taxed citizens of these nations as well as the other PIGGS will surely be taken to the EU slaughter house and gutted without delay. The Greek parliament appointed Lucas Papademos (former European Central Bank VP) and the Italians appointed (former European Commissioner) Mario Monti to replace Silvio Berlusconi. Mario is an advisor to Goldman Sachs which helped create the worldwide sovereign debt crisis and he is a leading member of the Bilderberg Group and the Trilateral Commission. Therefore we know where the loyalties of this EU Quisling puppet are and they certainly aren’t with the people of Italy."

This is where the ruling class has been taking western civilization for a century.

"This all happened before in the United States 150 years ago. I wonder if Merkel’s goal is to become the Abraham Lincoln of the European Union. After all if she "saves the union" then the loss of individual state sovereignty, the destruction and theft of private wealth and decades of resulting poverty and tax revenues used to bailout the leading European banks can all be covered up by news media and historians supported by the EU."

Wow. That's a frightening comparison. While I joked about how quickly Germans go to war previously, I don't think Germany will go to war to keep the EU together. But I could be wrong. Can you imagine the Germans teaming up with the French to wage war on the PIIGS? Here's one of the best explanations of what is happening in Europe that I've read:

"Any rational observer can see how the supposed national bailouts are actually banking bailouts funded by both the northern European taxpayers and those in the south who will be impoverished and economically crippled by the EU enforced austerity measures. When current political leaders in the PIIGS countries are unable or unwilling to sellout their nations in exchange for more loans to benefit the German and French banks, they are replaced by new politicians who will follow orders. This is quite an easy process because the EU proponents have already used graft, blackmail and funding to buy the parliaments earlier to force the nations into the EU against the wishes of the citizens."

How's that voting for either of the two ruling class factions working out for you now?

TAX AND SPEND:

How Canadians re-discovered prosperity by dramatically reduce the burden of government.

It's rare I agree with Obama, but I don't want payroll taxes to go up either. I doubt Republicans want them to go up either. I think this is just more phony class warfare rhetoric from Obama.

""We've long said that, while we believe there are better solutions, the payroll tax cut is an area of common ground where something can probably get done," said Brendan Buck, a spokesman for House Speaker John Boeher, R-Ohio. "We'd welcome the opportunity to work with the President on this idea, as well as discuss our solutions for job creation.""

Just pass an extension and take this issue away from Obama. What are you waiting for? Why do you need to talk to Obama?

My girlfriend and I both got emails today from our big-government representative Michael Turner trumpeting that he co-sponsored the silly balanced budget amendment. As if that makes up for a decade of big government votes. As if the push for a balanced budget amendment was meaningful. I'm sure Turner will get a lot mileage out of this charade, but I'm not falling for it.

HEALTH CARE:

Obama threatens insurance company if it raises rates. That's very fascist of him. But it's even worse. First he passes a law that forces companies to raise rates to remain profitable, then he threatens them if they raise rates. You don't have to be a rocket scientist to figure out what's going to happen. Insurance companies are going to go bankrupt. Also, this is price fixing by intimidation. That means there will be health care shortages. All these problems created by Obamacare are by design. Once they go bankrupt and the people complain about shortages, then the government plans to force full-blown socialized medicine down our throats.

GLOBAL WARMING:

Anthony Watts does a great job cataloging the daily abuses of the global warming frauds, but he's also a self-promoter. In this case, he wants to make himself the center of what he calls Climategate 2.

POLICE STATE:

Claim the New York City pipe-bomb terrorist wannabe was a NYPD patsy. That makes sense given the police had been watching him since 2009 and they claimed he was within an hour of making a pipe bomb. But he was making the pipe bombs. In the FBI patsy cases, the FBI always supplies the bombs.

FOREIGN POLICY:

This sounds like the primary reason that US rulers want to wage war on Iran:

"China and Russia, both nuclear powers, are very important trading partners with Iran. China now has very extensive oil and gas contracts with Iran. Iran currently supplies 12% of China’s oil, making Iran the third largest supplier of crude to China. The Iran/China annual trade value is expected to increase to 50 billion dollars just over the next few years. Russia and Iran trade ties have expanded to include agriculture and telecommunications, as well as energy and other goods, and Iran exports many products to Russia. Will Russia and China sit back while aggressive attacks are taking place, or will they protect their interests in Iran?"

To thwart China's growing power. US rulers don't want to compete in a free market. They don't want to trade like China and Russia. They want to dominate everything, so they start wars instead of trading.

POLITICS:

Last night my mom said that she won't vote for Ron Paul because he can't beat Obama. I fear conservatives are going to screw up again. Mitt Romney is a Democrat posing as a Republican. He support Obamacare when it was called Romneycare. His record is unequivocally one of big government. He's such a bad candidate, Obama has a chance of beating him. Rick Perry is literally a Democrat running as a Republican. His record is unequivocally one of big government. Herman Cain was a big government central banker before he was a big government lobbyist. Newt is arguably the most unpopular Republican in the country after Dick Cheney. All of these candidates are so much like Obama, Obama has a decent chance of beating all of them. The same is true of the midgets like Santorum and Bachmann. Pretty much anybody in America could beat Obama, but these guys have the worst chance. The only candidate who is virtually assured of wiping the floor with Obama is Ron Paul because he understands the economy like no other politician and has a record of small government. They call him the taxpayer's best friend for a reason. He's the most electable Republican in the field, yet stupid conservatives say he's un-electable.

CNN gives Ron Paul some decent time in their latest debate.

New poll puts Ron Paul #1 in Iowa. New poll puts Paul at #2 in New Hampshire. This is fantastic news.

The other day I was happy to see some greatly desired hope for Ron Paul based on the polls in Iowa. Today I see more hope with this headline from Drudge:

"Ron Paul's Turn To Rise?"

Drudge is the most powerful figure in the press. This is a significant milestone. Given the time CNN allotted to Paul tonight and Drudge's elevation of him, we'll see what the people think in the next week or two. I bet he continues his slow, steady rise.

One of Obama's partners in crime, Tony Rezko, the man who arraigned for Obama's sweetheart deal on his house by Bill Ayers, sentenced to federal prison for corruption.

LOCAL:

Jobless rates fall slightly.

"The Dayton rate dropped for the third straight month, to 10.6 percent, down from 10.7 percent in September, 10.9 percent in August and 11.7 percent in July.The October 2010 rate for the city also was 11.7 percent.
The county rate dipped for a second consecutive month to 9.6 percent, down from 9.7 percent in both September and August.
The county rate was down from 10.5 percent in October 2010.
The October 2011 rate for the Dayton metro area was 9.2 percent, the same as September but down from 10 percent in October 2010."

Wright-Patterson is keeping Dayton from being worse than Detroit.

MISC:

More insight into the corruption behind the MS Global collapse.

Google is shutting down Wave. I liked Wave. Too bad nobody I know liked Wave.

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FREEDOM OF SPEECH:

Michelle Bachmann pledges to ban all forms of pornography.

SOCIALISM:

Graphic shows that non-union manufacturing jobs have lost little over the last couple of decades, unionized manufacturing jobs have declined dramatically. This shows how unions harm workers.

TAX AND SPEND:

Petitioners calling to make net access an inalienable right don't know the difference between a service and a right.

Astronomy picture of the day has shown videos of the earth from the ISS three times in the last couple of weeks. I wonder why NASA is promoting the ISS so hard. Something is going on that we're not hearing about. The government is spending $2.5 billion to send another rover to Mars. I'd rather have my share of that in my pocket.

Remember when Republicans claimed they were cutting spending in return for raising the debt ceiling? I hope you didn't fall for that charade. The pass-the-buck committee was designed to fail, and both parties always planned Congress would reverse the automatic spending cuts. None of those automatic cuts will survive. This was all political theater designed to steal more of our money by raising the debt ceiling while creating the illusion Republicans wanted to cut spending.

Small government fraud Paul Ryan votes against balanced budget amendment which fails in the House. This is another political charade. The government doesn't obey the Constitution. What's another amendment that government will ignore going to do? I agree that the two big government parties would use that amendment to raise taxes to match their runaway spending, not vice-versa, but it sounds like Ryan wants us to believe he's a supporter of the discredited starve the beast philosophy. I guess that keeping taxes disconnected from spending does provide a minor obstacle to spending increases when the people get angry about the debt and taxes.

Naturally the failure of central planners that is leading to the breakup of the eurozone is prompting central planners to demand more power.

REGULATION:

Frustrated consumer wants to know if there is any option for a smartphone that respects privacy. Not that I know of, and that's because government regulations, in this case patents, severely restrict competition. Absent patent restrictions, there would be multiple companies competing in the privacy smartphone market. Here's an interesting comment.

"In spite of that, email communication and web communication is encrypted/decrypted on the BlackBerry smartphone itself, so RIM (the company that does BlackBerry) can't snoop into your data contents even if they wanted to. That's why some authoritarian countries around the world couldn't quite understand - they demanded RIM hand over the secret keys to let them read any message contents, which they just assumed RIM must have, even though they don't. Similarly, with the riots in Britain earlier this year, the authorities complained that the rioters were co-ordinating using BlackBerry phones, and they couldn't intercept those communications. To me, that's a strong recommendation for a BlackBerry if you want security and privacy."

If this is true, it is a good recommendation.

FEDERAL RESERVE:

Report that China has allowed gold to be used as money gets 404 error. If true, this is great news for the Chinese.

Speculation that the MF Global bankruptcy was a hit by the Federal Reserve to take down commodity speculators who are exposing Bernanke's inflation. More evidence of corruption making this happen. Isn't it funny how the eight largest bankruptcy in history is making no news? A broker closed her firm and explained the significance of this bankruptcy:

"I could no longer tell my clients that their monies and positions were safe in the futures and options markets, because they are not. And this goes not just for my clients, but for every futures and options account in the United States. The entire system has been utterly destroyed by the MF Global collapse."

Do you think that's a worthy news story?

"Ms. Barnhardt further explains that markets are completely fractured… that the rule of law in the United States no longer exists. She decries Jon Corzine of MF Global for having outright stolen customer funds, and various exchanges and government regulators for having frozen out customer accounts as a result."

The press wouldn't want people to know that now, would they? I've been saying the rule of law no longer exists for quite a while. It's nice to see that establishment folks see that too.

"A real economy cannot function under such circumstances. With Europe on the precipice and roughly $600 TRILLION in global derivative notional value lurking in the system, can a real collapse be that far off?Famed hedge fund manager Mark Mobius recently said, “There is definitely going to be another financial crisis around the corner because we haven’t solved any of the things that caused the previous crisis.”
Not only have the major issues not been resolved, but governments continue making things worse. More bailouts, more printing, more deficits take an enormous problem and make it unfathomable."

We're cruising to a far bigger crash.

The official list of the 29 too big to fail banks. They can do anything they want, take any risk they want and lose however much money they want because they are guaranteed to be bailed out.

HEALTH CARE:

Because government's medical establishment has created so many superbugs that render antibiotics obsolete, DARPA is looking to replace antibiotics.

The FDA bans a drug that might save the lives of people with breast cancer.

Obamacare is already killing jobs.

"While the White House continues its rhetoric on job creation, the job-killing effects of Obamacare are already taking effect. One provision of the law, its tax on medical device manufacturers, is already having a detrimental impact on a Michigan-based manufacturer.Stryker Corporation has announced that it will cut approximately 5 percent of its workforce by 2013 due to the tax. As Heritage has shown, this isn’t the first device manufacturer to voice concerns about job loss in the U.S. resulting from the tax, and it is sure not to be the last."

Thanks, Obama.

What's the leading cause of death in the US?

"In this video, Internationally renowned natural health physician and Mercola.com founder Dr. Joseph Mercola documents how American medicine frequently causes more harm than good. Further, it is evident that the American medical system is the leading cause of death and injury in the United States. His antidote is to make simple diet and lifestyle changes to live a long and healthy life."

Good idea.

POLICE STATE:

Former TSA agent tells the truth:

"honestly the worst most embarrassing job I have ever had… it is theater folks! They protect no one. Its [sic] an illusion. Want proof? Next time you travel bring with you two glass bottles. One broken and one intact. The broken one will be taken away. It is after all a weapon! You can break the other bottle AFTER they let you in with it."

It's good to know some people have the character to resign from government jobs.

Probe finds prosecutorial misconduct in Ted Stevens case. You could find the same in pretty much every case.

The FBI refused to help New York Police capture the pipe-bomb making wannabe terrorist because they didn't think he had the disposition or the ability to become a terrorist.

"Pimentel "didn't have the predisposition or the ability to do anything on his own," one official said the FBI concluded."

Except build pipe bombs in his home. This is the same agency that hasn't caught a real terrorist in years. They keep setting up patsies, pushing them into claiming they want to attack the US, supplying the money, weapons and expertise, then arresting them and pretending they saved us. They're incompetent at capturing real terrorists, but they're experts at turning people into terrorists. How is this good for us?

There's no doubt that the police state versus the Occupy movement will end badly for everybody.

On the rapid militarization of police in America.

"The government is sending a clear message: “We are in charge.”It’s no wonder that, according to a recent Gallup poll, a record-high 81% of Americans are dissatisfied with the way the country is being run. On a proportional basis, this is 25% higher than during the Watergate scandal.
What’s even more stark is that, according to the same poll, roughly HALF of Americans believe the federal government has become so large and powerful that it POSES AN IMMEDIATE THREAT to the rights and freedoms of ordinary citizens.This certainly explains why the government is increasing its offensive capabilities."

There's no doubt that the police state versus the people will end badly for everybody too.

WAR:

The US government has long resisted claims that US troops are occupiers in the Middle East, so this Occupy Bagram sign is probably not a good idea no matter how well intentioned.

FOREIGN POLICY:

The news recently trumpeted a new IAEA report claiming Iran was trying to make a nuclear weapon, but the reality is there's little new in the report.

"A new element in the UN is the claim that a Russian scientist who supposedly worked on Iranian nuclear weapons explosive technology has defected and revealed all to western intelligence.But investigative journalists now assert that the scientist may actually have worked in Russia on explosive technology to produce industrial diamonds, not nuclear weapons. This would be very embarrassing for Washington’s war party and for media agitating for war against Iran.Remember "Curveball," the key Iraqi defector whose phony claims were the basis for the US invasion of Iraq? Well, could this Russian scientist turn out to be "Curveballski? ""

"In 1992, Natanyahu claimed Iran would have nuclear weapons in 3-5 years. Shimon Peres, now Israel’s president, insisted Iran would have nukes by 1999.In 1995, the New York Times claimed Iran was only 5 years from nuclear weapons. US Defense Secretary Don Rumsfeld claimed Iran was fielding a nuclear-armed ICBM that could hit the United States.And so it has gone, a steady drumbeat of false claims."

How much money do we waste on the CIA every year? This is why we badly need competing private sector intelligence agencies. This is a really good exposition.

Pat Buchanan fears, after the Republican foreign policy debate, that a vote for a Republican is a vote for war with Iran. The candidates, other than Ron Paul, were very scary.

"But if Iran represents, as Bibi Netanyahu is forever reminding us, an "existential threat," why does not Israel itself, with hundreds of nuclear weapons, deal with it?Bibi's inaction speaks louder than Bibi's words.
He wants the Americans to do it."

This is what I keep saying: the US has no security conflict with Iran. If Israel really thought they did, they would do something about it. The Israel government is trying to bait the US government into toppling the Mullahs for them, and the American people should not allow that to happen.

"And there is no conclusive evidence in that media-hyped report last week from the International Atomic Energy Agency that Iran is for certain building nuclear weapons. Indeed, that report was exposed as the work of incompetents within hours."

Buchanan thinks the Iranians don't want a bomb because it would make them more of a target.

"How would an Iranian bomb secure Iran, when Israel's nuclear arsenal would be put on a hair trigger, and Turkey, Saudi Arabia and Egypt would then rush to get their own bombs?"

I don't know about this. I'm sure the Iranians have watched the situation with North Korea carefully. Nothing bad happened to North Korea when they developed a bomb. It didn't start a nuclear arms race with Japan and South Korea. Obviously southeastern Asia is not the Middle East, but you can never predict what people, especially the terrible people who gain control of governments, are thinking. This is another really good article on the subject.

POLITICS:

Nobody has noticed the NBA isn't playing games. The league is really hurting itself by making itself irrelevant. But to make matters worse, now NBA players are playing an exhibition to raise money for Obama's re-election. Those guys are amazingly out of touch.

Occupy Oakland calls to for Occupiers to shut down all ports on the west coast.

A member of the Occupy San Diego movement shoots at the White House, but a journalist blames the Tea Party.

"Well, here's what we do know about Ortega-Hernandez. Police searched for him at the Occupy DC encampment after they received reports that he had spent time there.Occupy San Diego protesters decided that such reports were sufficient to claim the White House shooter as one of their own, and so they held "a moment of silence" to demonstrate their "solidarity" behind the man charged with attempting to assassinatePresident Obama."

Another example of the violence inherent in leftist ideology.

The easy path from scion of a Democrat to media fame and fortune.

Video of Barack Obama from 1991 shows the establishment has been grooming him for decades. This jives with the revelation that Obama's mother worked for Geithner's father in Asia, most likely as CIA agents, when both were children.

Rick Perry pledges to lead by example by following Ron Paul's pledge to take only half salary.

MEDIA:

Breakdown of all the media outlets owned by six  major corporations shows they own it all. And you wonder why it's all the same.

One member of the Casey Anthony lynch mob whipped up by the media tried to assassinate her. Or maybe Obama put her on his hit list.

MISC:

Ten recurring economic fallacies.

When will Obama send US troops into Syria?

Qaddafi has been ousted and killed. Syria is on the verge of civil war. The UK recently opened formal talks with the Syrian rebels. This sounds eerily similar to what happened in Libya  before NATO entered and killed so many people. So,

When will Obama send US troops into Syria?

Free kibbles

REGULATION:

Plethora of "get milk" patents illustrates that our patent system, because it's based on coercion, has entered the theater of the absurd.

HEALTH CARE:

Obamacare's chief legal advocate, not Supreme Court justice, refuses to recuse herself from case. It's funny how Democrats try to pretend Thomas has a conflict because his wife opposed the law. By that standard, every conservative would have to recuse themselves. But never Democrats.

FOREIGN POLICY:

Police and soldiers burn protester's tents in Cairo. Remember when Egyptians celebrated the military? How's that process of installing a new coercive government to replace the old coercive government working out for Egyptians? Do you think Obama will send in troops?

POLICE STATE:

This initial report makes it sound like the cops busted a real, potential terrorist, not just their usual patsy. But that's what first reports always do. But there is one important piece of information that is perfectly believable:

""The suspect was a so-called lone wolf, motivated by his own resentment of the presence of U.S. troops in Iraq and Afghanistan," Bloomberg said at a news conference. "He was not part of a larger conspiracy emanating from abroad.""

More evidence the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan make us less safe. All these patsies and would-be terrorists say the same thing. Get our troops out of there so the wars will stop radicalizing people to attack us.

POLITICS:

I agree with this assessment that Ron Paul handled a hostile interview very well. It's one his best interviews that I've seen. It's funny how liberal media guy Bob Schieffer is obviously a supporter of aggressive foreign policy for which the press usually blames Republicans. More on the hostility:

"Bob Schlieffer promised Ron 2o minutes on Face the Nation, but cut him off after 10, because he was demolishing that establishment shill. Catch Schlieffer's smirk. Also, there was a loud buzzing from Ron's earpiece during the entire interview. Deliberate? Who knows, but the flaw had been pointed out again and again 15 minutes before airtime. BTW, Ron and Schlieffer are the same age. One is vibrant, youthful, on top of his game. The other is not.And speaking of media bias, at the Christian right forum yesterday in Iowa, all the candidates were positioned so they looked directly into the camera. Ron, alone, was placed so only his profile showed."

If they can't ignore him, they'll attack him. Here's another theory of why the media ignores Ron Paul: he makes them look like stupid, old, tired shills for the state, the way Paul made Schieffer look today. As I pointed out above:

"Schieffer's knee-jerk defense of the Beltway consensus on Iran tells you all you need to know about the Beltway crowd. There really is no difference between the parties when it comes to the embrace of the liberal internationalist approach to foreign policy."

This is an important point. People who believe in government control of domestic society through force also believe in government control of foreign societies by force. There's no such thing as a non-interventionist at home who intervenes abroad or vice-versa. It's a matter of character. Either a person believes that government should in the affairs of people, in which case he supports that intervention both at home and abroad, or he believes government should not intervene in the affairs of people, in which case he resists intervention at both home and abroad. This is a hard concept for conservatives to understand because they think they believe in non-intervention at home but in violent intervention abroad. But they don't. No conservative wants to end the war on drugs. Conservatives haven't wanted to abolish the Department of Education since Reagan claimed to then didn't do it. They all claim that some, whatever some means, regulation of the economy is necessary. Conservatives want massive intervention at home and abroad, they just won't admit it to themselves.

Ron Paul could win California, which would go a long way toward him winning the nomination. Let's hope.

It looks the Spaniards have ousted the socialists. Let's hope Americans are as smart in 2012.

"State television TVE gave Rajoy's party between 181 and 185 deputies in the 350-seat lower chamber. The socialists, meanwhile, were on target for one of their worst defeats ever with between just 115 and 119 seats."

That's an improvement, but don't expect conservatives to be much better.

Spanish civil servant pithily sums up politics and government:

"'We can choose the sauce they will cook us in, but we're still going to be cooked."

That's what voting for the lesser of two evils gets you. For all those dumb people who think they have to vote for the Republican to beat Obama - I guarantee they used that same argument to vote for every Republican ever - that's baloney. If 20 percent of voters voted Libertarian and Obama won a plurality, he'd be paralyzed. His socialist agenda would be stopped in its tracks because both parties would be forced to pander to libertarians. On the other hand, if Obama beats the Republican by 51 - 49 , he will advance his socialist agenda. In addition, if the Republican wins by any margin, the Republicans will advance their socialist agenda. If you're against socialism, there's only one way you can vote to stop it: vote Libertarian.

MISC:

This is a really interesting point:

"With at least 12 compulsory years in public schools, one would think that most of the twenty-something Wall Street protesters would have some understanding of capitalism, its actual history, and its accomplishments. Well, maybe not. One can only wonder what passes for economic education these days."

I had no economic education in high school, and my history class was a history of governments, not people or societies. It really never struck me before how biased that perspective was. The problem is this guy, and so many others, either fails to understand the partnership between corporations and government or intentionally whitewashes them. For example:

"Corporations such as Apple and Wal-Mart and Allstate are all large organizations that compete in an open market with other businesses (large and small) for the favor of consumers. Their overall success depends not on any government grant of "power" but solely on their internal efficiency and their ability to convince consumers to purchase their products and services every hour of every day; if they fail, they get smaller, and their employees and investors suffer."

Bull****. Apple at least has thousands of patents that prevent all a but a few gigantic corporations from competing with it. If you don't believe me, build your own iPhone and see what happens to you. Allstate agents work with government agents to write regulations that prevent competition from all a but a few gigantic corporations from competing with it. I'm not aware of any comparable, huge government intervention in retail that Walmart lobbies for and exploits, but I'm sure there's some. Corporations are like government agencies. Their agents and government's agents team up to benefit both at the expense of the rest of us so thoroughly you can't tell where the government ends and the corporation begins. Anybody who minimizes the impact of the corporate partnerships with government is ignorant or dishonest.

Free kibbles

GLOBAL WARMING:

Here's a good reminder that the reason global warming frauds are pushing this scam is to get rich: NASA fraud James Hansen has amassed over $1 million in outside income from promoting this scam in addition to the taxpayer funded income. I bet you Phil Jones and Michael Mann both live like kings too.

In another example, here's an excellent breakdown of how government subsidies guarantee rich people make a ton of money for investing in inefficient green energy.

"Ripping off both the consumer and the taxpayer to allow millionaires to make a guaranteed 29% return on a not-ready-for-market technology, and charging ratepayers 50% above market for the electricity? That is reprehensible and indefensible. In particular, the rate hikes hit the poor much harder than the wealthy, so we are billing the poor to line the pockets of the 1% … and all this in the name of enlightened carbon fears."

But of course the Occupiers want more green energy.

POLICE STATE:

Expose of fake terror plots ginned up by the FBI.

FOREIGN POLICY:

It looks like western countries are starting another civil war to topple another Arab government, this time in Syria.

"As the UK Independent newspaper reports in its Saturday edition, the British government has formally opened talks with the Syrian opposition movement. This move parallels early Western efforts in Libya in advance of the overthrow of the Gaddafi regime and installation of the Benghazi rebels to ruling position in the country. Surely direct military intervention, likely under the NATO flag but with US as the majority partner, is not far behind."

But as in Libya,

"The 'Free Syria Army' is literally an army of militant extremists, many drawn not from Syria's military ranks, but from the Muslim Brotherhood, carrying heavy weapons back and forth over the Turkish and Lebanese borders, funded, supported, and armed by the United States, Israel, and Turkey. The latest evidence confirming this comes in the form of a report out of the International Institute for Strategic Studies where Senior Fellow for Regional Security at IISS-Middle East Emile Hokayem openly admits Syria's opposition is armed and prepared to drag Syria's violence into even bloodier depths."

Why are western rulers toppling moderate governments and installing Islamists? Is it because those government's weren't scary enough? Is this to limit China's influence in the Middle East? In Libya at least, the Islamists promised to sell oil to the west using the dollar. Is it the same in Syria? Don't expect them to keep that promise. Muslims don't think it's a sin to lie to infidels.

POLITICS:

For four years now, I've said that Ron Paul is the only candidate in either party with the knowledge and a plan to minimize the damage that's been done to our economy and our country by government already. But I've been looking for a sign that he can break through and win, and so far, I hadn't seen such a sign. Today the New York Times is talking about him potentially winning Iowa. That's a big sign.

Article explains the impact the state has on capitalists-entrepreneurs, and it isn't pretty. I would love for every Occupier to read this essay.

MISC:

How the market made Shakespeare.