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Moderate California Republican caves to $17 billion tax increase in exchange for a couple of political favors. This tax increase will push many jobs and high income people out of California, so the state will quickly return to another budget nightmare. California Republicans remove minority leader because he supported tax increases.

Why would anybody buy a bond that pays no interest?

Mises scholar shows that deflation is over, prices increased in January, and it looks like we're headed for hyperinflation.

It turns out that an organization that led the way in predicting doom from global warming because of arctic ice melt was suffering from sensor drift and therefore significantly underestimating the amount of arctic ice.

Cute analogy of government pushing Jaguars on people instead of credit.

Boortz agrees with me that President Obama's claim to not support the Fairness Doctrine most likely signals that Obama will come up with a new name for the same idea.

Congressional Budget Office says Obama's stimulus boondoggle will lead to lower wages. Of course it will. It pays people not to work. It gives handouts in the form of subsidies to politically favored business owners. Those people become better off. All of this is paid for by the American people, who will by definition become worse off for having to pay for it. Government interference in the economy is responsible for the wage disparity in the US, and Obama's increased interference means increased wage disparity. That wouldn't happen in a free market, where companies get paid according to the quality and price of goods and services instead of how politically well connected they are.

It doesn't make sense for governors to turn down stimulus funds. That money is already appropriated, and citizens in those states are paying for it. Not taking it just means other citizens will get that tax money. If possible, governors should just give the money back to the people to save, pay off bills or whatever the citizens prefer.

The Swedes are smart enough not to bail out GM's Saab unit. Too bad Americans elect representatives who aren't that smart.

Sense of entitlement and misplaced belief that working hard entitles one to good grades harms college students. You can work harder than anybody on the planet at digging ditches and filling them in, and it won't earn you a penny. Working smart pays.

You'd have to be a koolaid drinking partisan not recognize the similarities to Obama's policies and McCain's.

Dow down again. The more government interferes in our economy and our lives, the poorer we all become.

1998 essay from Mises scholar explains then that Greenspan is no capitalist but a central planner who refused to allow markets work. Linked from a higher article explaining how a real estate bubble burst in Asia, and should be allowed to flush out bad investments. I've often written about how our collapse would be bigger than the fall of the Soviet Union, and this shows another reason why. We are repeating all the mistakes of the past on far grander scale than any in history.

OMG! Glenn Beck illustrates just how much damage Ben Bernanke is doing to our money and therefore how much damage he is doing to our economy. If you can't figure out from this presentation just how devastating government is to our lives and prosperity, you have to be hypnotized or something. This is just astounding!

Cato finds a morsel to like in Obama's otherwise terrible mortgage baolout plan.

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Here comes the next Obama boondoggle - $75 billion to prevent foreclosures. If it was in the interest of lenders to prevent foreclosures, they'd renegotiate the contracts themselves. Our housing market is overbuilt. Government policies put people in homes who couldn't afford them. Let the market correct itself. Sure, it's lovely if you're the recipient of taxpayer money, but Obama's plan harms everybody else. Propping up an overpriced housing market will delay the correction and keep us mired in recession. Apparently the plan was going to be $50 billion, but what's another $25 to Obama? We should consider ourselves lucky. Do you remember during the campaign when Democrats were going to pass a $50 billion stimulus plan? Obama turned that into $787 billion. Well in one day, Obama's housing boondoggle has ballooned from $75 billion to $275 billion.

Boortz is thinking ahead. He says that the government is going to end up owning a bunch of houses in neighborhoods all over the country, which they'll inevitably convert into section 8 housing.

GM and Chrysler seeking another $21.6 billion in aid. Money for the auto industry is just a drop in the bucket of the bailout madness, and I wonder why its even news. I'm sure the savior Obama will throw more good taxpayer dollars after bad for automakers. Maybe the news should be that Ford hasn't requested a bailout. That's man bites dog.

I don't think anybody should ever use the name "Clinton" and "delicate diplomacy" in the same sentence.

Federal Appeals Court overturns ruling ordering 17 Guantanamo detainees to be released into the US. Thank goodness, but judges should not be making these decisions - the military should according the Constitution. Because the court overreached its bounds, the 17 men are in legal limbo and will be the latest cause celebre for liberals trying to free the terrorists to kill again.

Thanks to government's massive intervention in the economy, the Fed says the short term outlook is grim. So is the long term outlook with super-inflation looming.

The mark-to-market accounting rule that sparked this credit crisis is still in place. Because of the financial emergency, Congress passed the $700 billion TARP program and Obama's $787 billion stimulus boondoggle with no debate, the Fed has committed trillions more, but we have to have 2 studies done before anybody will use the stroke of a pen to change the mark-to-market accounting rule? This has to be a conspiracy. It's not possible that people of good will would allow this to happen.

Herz said the accounting board hopes to complete the study on improving guidance for applying the rules by the send of June.

George Will remembers the doomsayers predicting an imminent ice age in the 70s. All climate scientists agreed, or so they said, so it has to be true, right? Al Gore must have been in his formative years then.

I'm happy to hear that Obama does not support the Fairness Doctrine. Unfortunately, given Obama's other positions and his supporters' relentless attacks on free speech, I'm afraid that Obama is just looking for a way to change the name, as Democrats do so well, and push it that way.

Jury awards illegal immigrants $78,000 in lawsuit against rancher who rounded them up and turned them over to border patrol. This is crazy. Now the illegal immigrants have a new way to make money. Hope to caught by citizens and sue.

Muslim man who started Muslim TV station in US accused of beheading his wife. No doubt this is the kind of guy Muslims point to to show their normalcy for American life. Yikes. CAIR had previously given this man an award. NOW condemns.

Disabled men used practically as slaves for 30 years. Wow.

Anybody who thought a man who spent his entire adult life seeking out and surrounding himself with Marxists (Obama) would reduce the power of the presidency is stupid. And on the flip side, so-called civil libertarians need to acknowledge the Constitution grants the power to wage war to the executive alone. Doing so is not expanding the power of the president. It's meeting the constitutional responsibilities of the president. I'm a civil libertarian, and I understand that. Our government is not (or at least shouldn't be) some malleable thing that conforms to the desires of liberals or conservatives or libertarians or socialists. The law is the law, and the highest law of the land is the plain language of the Constitution. Libertarians who want to put their views above the law are as much the problem as liberals and conservatives who do it.

Don't expect Obama to cut defense spending. I didn't. It's good to see this guy has a better handle on Obama's love of force to get his way.

Cato explains that health-status insurance is a market based solution to the problem is losing insurance after being diagnosed with a previously existing condition.

Army tries to grab land in Colorado.

ACORN is pushing what it calls civil disobedience over foreclosures - not leaving the house. This isn't civil disobedience. It's robbery. Failing to pay a mortgage then continuing to live there is theft.

It's refreshing to read a flaming liberal finally talk honestly about the war in Iraq. I haven't read a liberal do that since the surge began. It's good to know that at least a couple liberals aren't slaves to liberal dogma.

Ben Bernanke hasn't been radicalized. Just reading this description, you can tell he's always been a repressed radical, and he's liberated because he doesn't have to pretend to support free markets anymore. It's like this guy was hoping to play God with our economy, and he's reveling in the opportunity. Good thing the SEC didn't change those mark-to-market accounting rules or he may never have had his chance.

But the economic collapse seems to have had a salutary effect on Bernanke: The academic known for his bland answers and brown socks has been liberated in both word and deed. This student of the Great Depression has taken extreme and unprecedented actions to avert a modern-day sequel, and he's taken the Fed chairman's lexicon well beyond basis points and LIBOR and M1 and M2.

"Extraordinary times call for extraordinary measures," the radicalized Fed chairman said. To prove that, he's dropped interest rates to near zero and has the Fed lending directly to corporations and buying mortgage securities. Yesterday, Bernanke left the door wide open to the most radical step of all: nationalizing the banks.

Bernanke is so happy he can hardly contain himself. And the press is still pretending Bernanke and Greenspan, the previous dictator of our money supply, support free markets.

And no less a free-market authority than Greenspan, in an interview with the Financial Times this week, said "it may be necessary to temporarily nationalize some banks," calling this the "least bad solution" to the financial crisis.

When Bernanke was asked at lunch about his predecessor's sentiments, he voiced no opposition to the idea. While discouraging government ownership of banks "for a protracted period," he offered no such objection to short-term nationalization. "Whatever actions may need to be taken, at one point or another, I think there's a very strong commitment, on the part of the administration, to try to return banks or keep banks private or return them to private hands as quickly as possible," he said.

These smug, socialist sons of bitches pretending to be capitalists make me sick.

And he volunteered that the Fed's usual responses "have proven insufficient" to halt the fall.

"Usual responses?" Previously in the article, the author called them "extreme and unprecedented" responses. The actions of the Fed under Greenspan with the advice of Bernanke created this crisis, and the Fed's actions under Bernanke are pulling us deeper and longer into recession. Note the tone of the article and the responses of Bernanke show that he wishes he could have done more to interfere in our economy all along. Apparently he's not happy with all the damage he caused - he wants to cause more.

Meltdown debuts at #15 on the New York Times bestseller list, a record for a book on the Austrian school of economics. Excellent. I'm still waiting for my copy, which shipped either yesterday or the day before.

The price of cocaine in Europe has fallen 50 percent in the last 10 years because of booming supply and demand. The war on drugs has succeeded at killing 10s of thousands if not hundreds of thousands of people, imprisoning millions, starting a low level civil war in Mexico that threatens to become a full fledged civil war, giving Mexican drug gangs control of our southern border, funding the Taliban in Afghanistan, funding street gangs and gang violence, sucking 100s of billions of dollars out of the US economy, and ruining untold numbers of lives, but it sure hasn't reduced drug use. Let's keep doing it!

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Obama leisurely gets around to signing "emergency" stimulus boondoggle. The Dow is down 195 so far. 10 minutes later, the Dow is down 255. It ended up down 297 points. Thanks for another stock market free fall, Mr. President. It's uncanny how much this guy is just like George Bush on steroids.

Pakistan and Taliban agree to implement Sharia law in Swat valley. That doesn't sound like a peace deal to me. That sounds like government sanctioned oppression, torture and murder.

Illinois attempts to force gun owners to purchase $1 million liability insurance policy. Gun control is always an attempt to keep guns out of the hands of the poor and minorities to keep them oppressed. This is a perfect example.

All this talk about the Fairness Doctrine is scary. When there's this much smoke, there's certainly fire.

The game is almost up. China is looking to get rid of dollars. Who can blame them? Our government is deliberately destroying the dollar and our economy along with it.

Obama's stimulus boondoggle takes money from taxpayers by force to heat swimming pools in his home state of Hawaii. That's the change liberals voted for.

These aristocrats are shameless. We allow them to get away with highway robbery and more, so they do that and more over and over and over. New York Gov. Patterson, after asking state employees to take a pay cut, secretly gives his staff huge raises. And liberals want to give people like this the power to make life and death decisions about our health care. It's lunacy.

I suddenly have an urge to eat a big, juicy hamburger.

I'm happy Republicans united to vote against Obama's stimulus boondoggle, but we should never be fooled into thinking they suddenly have small government principles. They're loving the big spending as much as Democrats, but they've voted against it for political expediency - they had nothing to gain and everything to lose by voting for it.

Mises scholar explains why the left is just as dangerous to freedom as the right. I would say the left is even more dangerous, and Obama is showing us why. Bush could never have done as much damage to America in his first month as Obama has. If you read this with an open mind, you'll notice the overpowering, fundamental similarities between Bush and Obama - good figureheads for conservatism and liberalsm - both are ignorant of economics, both think the government is the solution to every problem, both use government force to force their values on the rest of us. The differences between them are nothing but window dressing.

Mises scholar says that the uncertainty created by government makes the market ripe for another crash. We saw a bit of that today. The more government interferes in the market, the more uncertainty it creates, and the more it hurts the stock market.

Mises on greed. Too funny.

I hope Cato doesn't hold its breath waiting for government to meet the guidelines for infrastructure projects it laid down.

Cato agrees with me that our Asian policy must invite Japan, South Korea and other regional powers to become regional partners in stability instead of dependents on the US in order to deal with a rising China.

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New York swimming in taxpayer dollars thanks to Obama's stimulus boondoggle.

Government taking over computerization of health care records is harming patients in Great Britain and will harm patients in America. Google already provides this service, as does Microsoft. Get the government out of my health care.

Tamil Tigers using human shields.

Don't you worry your pretty little head about socialism. We'll be fine with a lower standard of living like Britain and France. Could this essay be any more patronizing and sickening?

I just finished Economics in One Lesson by Henry Hazlitt, and I recommend it for anybody, even if you already have some knowledge of economics.

In case you didn't know of enough reasons why government registration of guns and concealed carry permits (versus freedom to carry concealed) are a bad idea, Memphis newspaper publishes the names of every concealed permit holder in Tennessee. Now criminals can stake out the homes and steal the guns of all these people. This is your government and the liberal press in action.

Republican Lindsay Graham is entertaining the idea of nationalizing banks. Maybe we should implement a 2 party system in the US instead of this 1 party with 2 names system.

I can see the positive uses of a drug that suppresses the emotional part of a fearful memory, but I'm far more scared of the abuses than the benefits. Fear is a critical emotion for human survival.

Obama replaces Tom Daschle with Rahm Emanuel's brother. Not only is Chicago-style corruption alive in well in the White House, nepotism is as well.

Norman, Oklahoma city council unanimously approved a law forcing defendants in littering cases to prove their innocence instead of having prosecutors prove their guilt. Surely this will be overturned by the courts. Right?

Obama's tax cheats will likely inspire many more Americans to cheat on their taxes. I bet the complexity of the law could be used in a defense, so Obama's tax cheats may make it harder to prosecute other tax cheats.

How much you want to bet taxpayers payed for this woman's fertility service?

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More like Obama launches socialist whirlwind. Obama's parrots try to convince Americans that the stimulus boondoggle was bipartisan despite zero Republican votes in the House, only three in the Senate, and a conference process that basically rewrote the bill with no Republican input. Now that Obama's stimulus boondoggle has passed, the one that was going to save the country from imminent collapse, the White House is dampening expectations. Maybe when Obama said his administration would be transparent, maybe he meant transparently frauds, counting on the mainstream media to cover up that they're just jerking the country around and playing liberals like a violin. Obama to sign stimulus boondoggle on Tuesday. I thought it was an emergency. I thought Congress had to stay in session because it was an emergency. I thought there could be no debate because it was an emergency. If a few days don't matter, why wasn't that time spent debating it (or even just reading it)? Tax cuts my ***. Tax credits and rebates are not tax cuts. They're just handouts. We can't allow the Democrats to redefine the term that way.

Democrats using Tom Delay tactics. Obama is like Bush on steroids. The Who understood. Meet the new boss. Same as the old boss.

I'm not holding my breath over negotiations between Pakistan and the Taliban.

US military to accept immigrants with temporary visas and special skills in return for citizenship. Sounds smart to me.

Michelle Malkin accurately describes Obama's Florida town hall as a revival meeting for savior-based economics. I watched some of it. It was sickening. Hallelujah.

Walter Williams understands that government recognizes no constitutional restrictions on its actions any more.

Michael Barone describes the politics of the New Deal.

Prohibition does not work. I would say the War on Drugs has worked as I expected. It didn't work the first time, so why would anybody expect it to work the second? Einstein would say those who expected otherwise were insane.

Anybody who uses the phrase "rethink free speech" hates freedom.

Brit advocates banning Greet Wilders's anti-Islamic film because it might incite Muslims to violence. What he's saying is the threat of Muslim violence is holding free speech hostage. That's not acceptable. If Muslims or anybody else respond to speech they don't like violently, they're criminals, and you put them in prison. We cannot allow our freedom to be held hostage by the threat of violence.

Republicans in California stand firm against tax hikes to fix the budget deficit. Good for them. California counties revolting because they've been cut off from the feed trough.

Barack Obama is showing himself to be the weak leader we expected.

Blagojevich's replacement for Obama's seat, Burris, may have committed perjury. That's nothing in Illinois.

Author points out what many are afraid to say - the Bush/Obama bailouts are fascism. We keep calling them socialism, another form of collectivism, but more accurately, when government buys stakes in companies and starts telling them how to run their businesses - that's fascism.

If you spent a million dollars a day since Jesus was born, you wouldn't spend have spent $1 trillion.

Silicon Valley folks never struck me as libertarian in the least. They were always statists except when it came to them. Anybody who thought Obama had a libertarian bent is a super-fool.

If hiring managers want to do credit checks on the people they hire, that's their business, but it shouldn't be used to exclude anybody. A credit check just shows somebody is out of work or has been out of work for a while. It doesn't tell you anything about how good an employee they would be.

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Obama's stimulus boondoggle is of historic proportions all right. Historically bad. This is just bizarre. Obama's staff and this reporter are celebrating the passing of the "most major sweeping comprehensive legislation as relates to economic activity ever" with virtually no debate, no input from the American people, no basis for expecting it to work, and passed on a purely partisan basis. Why would anybody think highly of the president or our government because of that?

Reason gives us a partial list of all the waste and pork that made it into Obama's final stimulus boondoggle despite Congress' "scrubbing" process.

Democrats want to change the census to count imaginary people. The census workers interview people and track down the homeless, but that's not good enough for Democrats. They want to add people who can't be found at homeless shelters, park benches, or under bridges and other habitats for the homeless where these individuals supposedly stay. This is nothing but an attempt to boost the census in certain districts with phantom numbers to bring more government money into these districts. The solution to this is to stop handing out government money.

G7 pledges to avoid protectionism. That's a good thing.

Suspected US missile kills 27 terrorists in Pakistan. Pakistan officials talk about defeating the Taliban, but they aren't doing anything to defeat them. We really screwed up when we undermined Musharraf's administration.

This is a great story about a 61 year old off duty police woman who stopped a pick-pocket ring by going after the pick pockets, but if I had done that, I'd be on trial for assault, and that's just wrong.

It looks like Sen. Feinstein's attempt to end net neutrality failed to make it in Obama's final stimulus boondoggle.

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Obama in 11th hour push for stimulus boondoggle. I was right about Obama putting more boondoggles back in the conference bill. He added in back in the $400 million for STDs. He also removed some tax credits. There's still time to stop it as neither house of Congress has voted on it, and many don't want to vote on it still. They're looking for reasons to vote against it. House passes final stimulus boondoggle with no Republican support. Nancy Pelosi is saying they Congress passed it by working together under the new president. These Democrats lie as easy as they breath. It's just amazing. The same 3 RINOs in the Senate gave Obama the 60 votes he needed to pass this boodoggle. I hope everybody enjoys this recession. It's going to last a lot longer now.

This monstrosity is 1,434 pages, and still contains the new health care bureaucracies with the power to interfere between you and your doctor.

Apparently my Senator Brown is the last hope to stop the boondoggle. I just emailed him. I tried to call him, but it wouldn't allow me to leave a voice mail. I guess Senators can't be bothered to listen to peons like me.

The other thing I've noticed about this whole process is it was like Congress worked for the President. I don't like that at all. Now Pelosi is giving Obama tons of credit for making this happen, like she works for him again. But we know that Obama lost control of the process early on, almost lost the bill because of it, and only put his stamp on it in the conference. I'm probably reading too much into it. This is probably just a Pavlovian move to insure Obama continues to be a rubber stamp for her radical left caucus.

Female Iraqi suicide bomber kills 32.

Hamas carried out campaign of kidnapping, torture, and murder during and after Israeli invasion.

Zimbabwe police arrest opposition party minister before swearing in. That didn't take long. The power sharing deal is a sham to give Mugabe more legitimacy.

New soft drink from cow urine. I hope this is a joke.

Microsoft to open retail stores. I hope this is a joke too.

The Heritage Foundation came to the same conclusion Cato came to yesterday - Obama's stimulus boondoggle will end up costing us over $3 trillion.

Money managers want the government to do nothing. Rewriting contracts scares them. Investing in banks the government has invested in scares them. This is a very insightful quote:

Much of the justification for government intervention comes from the assertion that markets have failed. One money manager scoffed at this idea. “The markets are working fine, but they’re giving people answers that they don’t like, so people cry market failure.” Stocks and bonds low? That’s because investors are afraid of a prolonged depression and continued government interference. House in a jobless region of Michigan worth almost nothing? A place with 50% of its former jobs only needs 50% of its houses.

Cato explains how Obama's stimulus boondoggle will increase the welfare rolls. Paying people to not work will not put them back to work.

Charles Krauthammer celebrates Iraq's slmost forgotten elections.

Despite all the historical evidence and rational analysis that Obama's stimulus boondoggle will fail, Democrats and 3 RINOs who must lose their seats passed it anyway.

Yet another email to representatives regarding Obama's stimulus boondoggle

There's still time to stop Obama's stimulus boondoggle.

The news is out today that retail sales have leveled off and unemployment claims are not as bad as expected. The American entrepreneur and the American worker, working in the most powerful and resilient economy in the world, are recovering from the damage caused by irresponsibly low interest rates, the subprime mortgage policy, and the income tax.

Obama is rushing through his socialist, stimulus boondoggle because he knows his window to exploit this crisis for his personal and political gain and to the detriment of the people is closing. Demand 1 week to read the final bill. It'll take that long to wade through 1000 pages. Please stand up for freedom, stand up for the people, and stop this destructive bill before it become law.

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So Mr. Transparency Obama negotiated with Senate Democrats and Nancy Pelosi in secret to settle the conference bill, settling on a final total of $789, after cutting some programs and adding many back in. As a result of being snubbed, House Democrats revolted and refused to vote on it. So far, nobody has seen the actual bill, nobody knows exactly what is in it, and representatives will be asked to vote on it in a couple hours without ever having the chance to read it. This is the kind of opaque, secretive irresponsible government we can believe in. Like Bush on steroids.

And here's the reason for the rush to socialism - retail sales level off. Jobless claims down less than expected. The US economy is diverse and powerful, and American entrepreneurs and workers are already overcoming the damage government caused with loose money, the subprime mortgage policy, and the income tax. Obama's window to take advantage of this crisis to pass his stimulus boondoggle is quickly closing. The next dip in the economy will be the secondary recession caused by Obama and Democrats.

Political correctness in Britain has run amok. Britain bars anti-Islamic Dutch lawmaker from entry. But they sure do welcome Islamic radicals.

Scientists sequence Neanderthal genome so they can compare human and Neanderthal DNA to determine the differences. One of the differences is not the primary speech gene, so Neanderthals may have been able to speak like us.

Barney Frank calls bonuses bribes. I wonder what he calles earmarks. Frank says companies will no longer be in the drivers seat, implying that government is taking over control of our economy. This just keeps getting better. I was one of the people who thought that because of the institutional slowness in Washington, the damage Democrats could do would be limited. Maybe that will be true over time, but they're doing a ton of damage quickly.

Deflation is over. Hello inflation. We're in for 70s style trouble at least.

Is anybody surprised that Geithner doesn't have a clue how to solve our economic problems? That's because he's approaching the problem as a central planner. We started this process with a mild recession that George Bush and Barack Obama make sound like the end of the world, but the government's subsequent intervention by both parties is a disaster and getting worse every day. The solution is freedom, but government can't stand that.

Why was this trooper suspended for forwarding, not originating, an email with pictures of mug shots of people in Obama T-shirts from his home while off duty? Hopefully he was suspended because the policy doesn't allow troopers to forward photos of mugshots, but given liberals' assault on free speech, it's likely he was suspended because the email ridiculed Obama supporters.

Marc Cuban starts venture capital program, calls it a stimulus program, and gets in the news. I applaud Cuban for entering the risky venture capital business, but there are plenty venture capitalists out there who don't crave the headlines like Cuban.

Australian environmentalists oppose controlled burns to limit deadly wild fires. Of course. To environmentalists, people are the problem. Better to have wild fires kill people than have controlled burns to keep forests healthy and people alive.

Big government is out of control at all levels. Boston wants to track how many miles people drive in the city. Every professional politician in America, aristocrats all, have abandoned the idea that America is free country with limited government. We're collapsing under the weight of government.

How bad must your schools be if you think having a graduation ceremony for elementary school is a good idea?

Tremendous, easy to read and understand WSJ essay advocates using gold and silver as alternate currencies because the government and the Fed are destroying our currency, and we're all paying the price. Despite all the pessimism I have about government and our economy, we might well be on the verge of ending government's monopoly on money that is as devastating as government's monopoly on education and as devastating as a government monopoly on health care would be.

Cato calls Zimbabwe's power sharing deal an illusion.

Cato explains that the cultural battle over creationism versus evolution is schools is largely an artifact of the government monopoly on schools and that scientific debate and original thinking are the biggest losers.

Cato points out that climate alarmists claim both warming and cooling in Antarctica are predicted by their global warming models. How funny. Finally a sunspot, but it's a cycle 23 spot, not cycle 24. Cycle 24 is still DOA. Whatsupwiththat wonders if we've finally the reached the tipping point where the climate change debate can become an honest debate. The Guardian and the climate scientists at the Met Office in Britain have been pushing global warming hysteria as strong as anybody, but today the Guardian led with a story from the Met Office attacking global warming alarmists. The skeptics are overcoming the alarmists, and the result will be honest science and honest debate about climate change. This is big. Let's hope Obama, Gore and power-grabbing Democrats don't implement their anti-capitalist policies anyway.

Obama urges Americans to follow Lincoln's example. I guess he wants to see a civil war with 600,000 Americans killed. We also see comparisons to FDR. Who would want that record?

Because Obama wouldn't allow the Census Department to remain in the Commerce Department with a Republican secretary, Gregg withdraws his nomination. Obama has had more screwups in weeks than most presidents have in years. It's unbelievable.

Like Bush on steroids, Obama is trying to convince the American people of impending disaster to push his liberal agenda. Reason compares this to George Bush using the specter of another terrorist attack to push legislation. The difference is the threat of a second deadly terrorist act was and still is real. The Patriot Act was bad legislation, but the threat was real. But there is no threat to our economy by doing nothing. Our economy would recover more quickly and with less pain if government would quit meddling in it. The something Obama plans is much worse than doing nothing.

Reason informs about the overlooked entrepreneurial and business career of George Washington.

Can you imagine what the press and Democrats would have done had George Bush preselected the reporters he called on at a press conference and had notified them in advance?

Dickerson must have watched a different campaign than I did. He thinks this is not the change Obama promised. But in the campaign I watched, Obama never specified the change he would bring. He worked hard to be vague so that every person would read into his statements whatever he wanted to hear. Thinking people dug into Obama's record and found a radical leftist who surrounded himself and partnered with avowed Marxists. A thug who could read golden speeches but can hardly speak English without a teleprompter. We got the change that anybody who put the work in expected. Count Dickerson among Obama's useful idiots.

Isn't it odd that after winning a fortune in what used to be one of the freeest economic segments in America, Bill Gates turns out to be a socialist? No. Like many of the ultra-rich, Bill Gates wants government to guarantee that is always on top. People who become aristocrats tend to start thinking like aristocrats.

How the stimulus bill will expand the welfare rolls.

Cato explains that the more money government spends, the more powerful lobbyists become. If lobbyists get their hooks into the stimulus bill, this bill will likely tranform into a $3 trillion bill.

Cato breaks down the $18.4 billion bonus estimate paid to Wall St. employees, but then the author seems to knock down a straw man. I didn't read anybody or hear anybody, including the president, say the bonuses were paid to executives at handful of companies. On the other hand, I don't have a problem with any company paying bonuses, so maybe I just wasn't listening close enough. What I have a problem with is politicians taking money from taxpayers by force and giving it to anybody in any form, including a bailout. As I've posted before, I agree with this Cato writer than firms who asked for a bailout opened the door to wage controls, and if these wage controls stop other companies from seeking bailouts, that's a great thing.

Economists say stimulus boondoggle will be ineffective and doing nothing would have been better. Economists have been saying that for weeks. How come these articles are only appearing in the mainstream media now? Oh yeah, the bill is a foregone conclusion.

Los Alamos has lost 67 computers, 13 in the last year. But officials say don't worry. Nothing important was on them. I feel so much better.

I find it hard to believe that the Secret Service didn't come up with solutions to the problem of Obama's BlackBerry effectively broadcasting his location all the time before he was allowed to keep it. I'm more concerned with the info Obama has in that BlackBerry. What info was so important and so private that he was scared to transfer it to a secure government device? Can't he memorize Bill Ayers's phone number?

Economists still think recovery will start in Q3, but the more government interferes, the more pessimistic the projections. This article shows how the projections have gotten worse since September as government interferes more and more.

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As I predicted yesterday, Obama is trying to restore all the spending the Republicans managed to cut from the Senate stimulus boondoggle, insuring the final bill will be the worst combination of the House and Senate bills. Hopefully Obama makes this bill so bad in conference, Senate Republicans will block final passage. I don't know if they can filibuster a bill out of conference or not. Diane Feinstein is trying to kill net neutrality in the stimulus boondoggle conference. This is another attack on free speech by the Democrats in an attempt to solidify power.

Terrorists kill 28 in attack on Afghan government in Kabul. Most of our NATO partners are letting the world down.

Zimbabwe opposition leader is sworn in as PM in power sharing deal. Crazy.

Schumer probably is right that the masses don't care about pork. But that's because no leader has explained it to them. Everything you read about pork just makes it sound like a congressman's privilege, but nobody explains the real danger. Pork is the mechanism by which incumbents steal our political freedom. They raise our taxes, then use our tax dollars to buy votes to keep themselves in power. We decry the loss of political freedom in Russia. We decry that the Chinese have no political freedom. Pork is also corruption. It's an overt bribe. If some leader would frame this argument right, Americans would get angry about pork.

In case anybody was buying Obama's baloney about his online medical record plan being for the good of the people, Google already created an online medical records service. It's called Google Health. Obama's plan is a charade for the government to take that over to interfere between you and your doctor.

House to forgo annual pay raises. Why does the House get annual pay raises?

Young Marine in trouble for having wood and duck tape replica rifles to practice for drill team.

A student conduct handbook states a dangerous weapon includes "a firearm, whether loaded or unloaded, or a firearm facsimile that could reasonably be mistaken for an actual firearm."

Our society is stupid and self-destructive.

The end of the rainbow, literally.

As an example of how government ruins mass transit, Mises scholar reminds us of the history of NYCity subways, and how a certain subway line funded by Obama's stimulus boondoggle has been promised and fully funded multiple times over 67 years, but never completed. Only government could ever get away with this outrageous incompetence. Hey, I have an idea. Let's put that same government in charge of our health care! Then we can wait 67 and never get treatment.

This guy gets it: "We need the government guys to stop talking on TV," said Todd Leone, head trader at Cowen & Co. "Nobody liked what Geithner said, obviously. The perception was not good." Government is our problem, not the solution to our problems. Government has become more important in our economy than quality goods and services at low prices.

Analysis shows that local temperature can change dramatically with population growth over time. Most ground based temperature gages are in populated areas, and would therefore show local rise in temperature. Looking at all of them, it would appear that temperatures are rising globally, but that wouldn't be the case. New all time low of -50 recorded in Maine. No wonder those Maine Senators are crazy.

Mises explains why the porn industry wants a bailout, and it's the same as everybody else - the established companies can't compete with the entrepreneurs.

Author of Meltdown discusses the grass roots movement to abolish the Fed.

Cato explains the moves Obama has already made to promote socialized medicine including changes to SCHIP, COBRA, and the health care bureaucracies in the stimulus bill. It seems to me that Cato's papers have been weak lately. This paper doesn't incite any urgency for stopping these plans. This essay is written more like a news article should be written (Ha!), as if Cato has no interest in the outcome, than by a libertarian think-tank.

Satellites collide in orbit.

Global warming fraud is following Rahm Emanuel's advice that no crisis should go unexploited, even it's a fake one. He says the frauds will never have a better opportunity than the next 4 years to pass oppressive global warming legislation. Duh. That's the because the people are seeing through this fraud. The planet is cooling, not warming, and if the Democrats don't pass this destructive legislation during Obama's term, they'll never get another chance. But Obama is burning political capital like a crack addict smoking his pipe, his approval ratings are already dropping after 3 weeks, so he doesn't have much time at all.

Free kibbles

What a surprise. Today we find out that Obama has hidden several new health care bureaucracies in the stimulus bill that will "affect every part of health care, from medical and nursing education, to how patients are treated and how much hospitals get paid. The bill allocates more funding for this bureaucracy than for the Army, Navy, Marines, and Air Force combined (90-92, 174-177, 181)." The federal government will guide doctors in their treatments and ration care for the elderly. This is what we voted for, so we have nobody to blame but ourselves.

Seniors should be more accepting of the conditions that come with age instead of treating them.
[The architect of these programs before he withdrew over tax problems - Tom Daschle] praises Europeans for being more willing to accept “hopeless diagnoses” and “forgo experimental treatments,” and he chastises Americans for expecting too much from the health-care system.

These quotes should send chills down the spine of every American. That's the kind of stuff Mao used to say. It's the kind of talk the useful idiots who apologized for Lenin, Stalin, and Mao used to say.

Israeli election shifts government toward hardliners against Hamas.

Irish bureaucrat bans ad telling people to turn off their lights to prevent global warming as propaganda. How funny. I guess freedom of speech is not really an issue in Ireland. Let the ad run. Just run ads that expose the lies of the global warming crowd.

UK environmentalism czar want to ration air travel to fight global warming. Rationing breathing will be next. It's for our long-term health.

I would like to thank John Kerry for reminding every American that Democrats and liberals hate freedom:

If you put a tax cut into the hands of a business or family, there's no guarantee that they're going to invest that or invest it in America.

They're free to go invest anywhere that they want if they choose to invest.

Liberals can't allow Americans to have that pesky freedom. This is why liberal elites like Kerry must direct every aspect of our lives, and the waste of $100 billion here and there is no problem. It's for our own good.

South Carolina governor says we're moving toward a savior-based economy. Sounds like the Road to Serfdom to me.

“We’re moving precipitously close to what I would call a savior-based economy,” Sanford also said Sunday on CNN’s State of the Union.

The South Carolina Republican said such an economy is “what you see in Russia or Venezuela or Zimbabwe or places like that where it matters not how good your product is to the consumer but what your political connection is to those in power.

Mises scholar explains that because jobs in the private sector belong to employers, employers may apply any standards they wish, so Hooters can refuse to hire male or unattractive female servers.

Newsweek has finally noticed that during the last 8 years, Republicans were the socialists. They basically finally admit that Bush, Paulson, Greenspan, and Bernanke were not free-marketers, they're socialists pretending to be free-marketers, and that those individuals, Republicans, Democrats and the press have been lying to us about it for 8 years. Now that they got their socialist elected, they can tell the truth. But since Republicans are socialists, we better all embrace it, and it's OK for Obama to be like Bush the Socialist on steroids.

I hope nothing comes of this lead poisoning law.

Cato provides data showing that so far, this is no crisis at all, but just a recession, not nearly as bad as the recession of 81-82 or 73-75. But when Obama's new New Deal kicks in, the secondary recession will be much worse.

Cato reports that Mexican drug gangs are winning their war against the Mexican government. I'm a little disappointed this guy failed to call for legalizing drugs.

How much does the world need Milton Friedman right now? Where is the leader with who will stand up with such a clear and powerful defense and advocacy of freedom and free markets in the face of this destructive, socialist onslaught? When you compare Friedman in this clip to the Newsweek article advocating that Americans just sit back and take it, you can't help but be struck by the contrast.

Jonah Goldberg highlights examples of the press fawning over Obama. Is this even worth talking about anymore? It'll be news when they stop.

Protectionism is rearing its ugly head. As Obama's programs drive us deeper into recession, protectionism will gain more and more support. Because we gave government a monopoly on schools, few understand that protectionism was one of the key policies that led to the Great Depression, but Pat Buchanan doesn't mention that because it destroys his position. Instead he blames our economic troubles on free trade instead of on the real culprit - oppressive government. Buchanan doesn't seem to be a stupid man, and he's often insightful, so I don't understand why he's so horribly wrong on this issue.

This random thoughts from Thomas Sowell is packed with gems.

Lunacy

Democrats bring Teddy Kennedy to the Senate for the first time since Obama's inauguration and get votes from RINO's Susan Collins, Olympia Snowe, and Arlen Specter to steal $838 billion from taxpayers to give to Democrat special interests. This is the change we knew Obama would bring, but the majority of voters voted for it anyway. Senate passes stimulus boondoggle 61-37. Stocks are down 355 at this moment. 5 minutes later, stocks are down 386. 5 minutes later, stocks are down 412. It ended up down 381. Obama and liberals are destroying our country, and they put the stock market into free fall.

Reason reminds us that because the Senate and House bills are very different and both very bad, the final bill out of conference will probably be worse than both. The committee generally takes the worst provisions from both chambers and puts them in the final bill.

As one Democrat boondoggle passes the Senate, Treasury Sec. Geithner announces another to prop up failing banks. That's like giving a heroin addict another hit of heroin to stabalize him. Let the bad banks fail so the country can recover instead of trapping us ever deeper in this recession. The economy has to heal the damage caused by government, overbuilt, overpriced housing market, bad investments, bad debt, but government is intent on sustaining the damage. This new boondoggle starts at $1.5 trillion and will certainly grow from there. Geithner calls the problem complex. That's because he's a central planner. He would call building a tree complex too, if he tried to do it. But if he got out of the way, the seed would grow into a tree all by itself. If you're looking at every individual tree in a forest, it seems complex. But from outside, it's just a forest.

You would think that the aristocrats in Washington would recognize that if Americans had a spare $2.3+ trillion (not counting hundreds of billions in interest payments) laying around to pay for these boondoggles, we wouldn't be in a recession.

I watched some of Obama's town hall in Florida today, and when Obama annouced that the stimulus had passed, the people (who must have been hand picked by Democrats) universally cheered. What kind of idiot is happy to have his taxes raised to pay for $1.2 trillion in boondoggle spending (that's how much taxpayers will have to pay for this stimulus boondoggle including interest)? They also cheered when Obama said this was just the beginning. He was going to create seperate programs to saving mortgages and health care and whatever else.

Who in their right mind would cheer for stuff like this? Somewhere along the way, liberals forgot that money doesn't grow on trees. When Congress passing spending bills, money, or more accurately, wealth doesn't magically appear to pay for it. When the Fed prints money as if it grew on trees, wealth doesn't magically appear to back up that money. We all pay for every spending bill out of our earnings. And since we're running a deficit, we pay not only for the bill, but for the interest on it or the inflation for funding it. We also pay for it in the prices of everything we buy because government spending makes our economy less efficient. We pay for it in lost jobs because of reduced investment. We pay for it in increased poverty. Americans are drowning debt public and private, and these people are cheering the creation of new debt on an unprecedented scale. It's lunacy.

In the best case scenerio for the stimulus boondoggle, Congress is giving us $838 billion in services, and we're going to have to pay $1.2 trillion for them. In what world does that make any sense? But it gets worse - government is inherently, outrageously wasteful. Optimistically, we can count on well over $100 billion of that $838 billion to be wasted - it'll probably be much more. So basically, we're paying $1.2 trillion for about $700 billion in services. But it gets worse - since government is spending our money on what the aristocrats and specials interests want instead of what the American people want, this bill perverts our economy. That means we have to pay more for the goods and services we want, and that's another hidden tax. I don't know how to quantify it since there will probably be some overlap between what government spends the money on and what the people would have spent the money on, but I would be surprised if the overlap was more than half. But everything that isn't overlapped is wasted because it takes resources away from producing the goods and services we want. So we're paying another $400 billion or so in hidden taxes in the prices of the goods and services we buy in addition to the $1.2 trillion in actual taxes, call it $1.6 trillion, for about $700 billion in services, at least half of which we don't want. We know we don't want them because American weren't already buying them with their own money.

Now multiply that by how every many Obama boondoggle spending plans Obama creates. We're doomed because our country is being run by lunatics empowered by lunatics.

Quick prediction: the economy will begin to recover before Obama's stimulus boondoggle kicks in, and he'll take credit for it anyway. But once the boondoggle kicks in, the economy will tank again, and worse. So far, this has been a mild recession, but like the secondary recession after the 1929 crash, Obama's secondary recession won't be so mild.

Free kibbles

Newsweek cover proclaims "We are all Socialists Now". We can thank Bush and the Republicans and conservatives who empowered him for this. During 8 years of poisoning the free market system with burdonsome regulations, irresponsible government spending, appointing Bernanke head of the Fed and Paulson Sec. of Treasury, then the coup de grace of the TARP program, Bush opened the door for Obama and Democrats to stampede through. This is Bush's legacy. I think I'm going to puke.

Here's the rundown of the socialist activities of the TARP program so far.

Mises scholar explains how Obama's policies are like Bush's policies on steroids. They're the same policies, only bigger and more damaging, and with different politically connected groups as the recipients of taxpayers' looted wealth.

New Gallop poll show 67 percent of Americans approve of how Obama is handling the stimulus boondoggle. The poll from last week showed 44 percent of Americans preferred tax cuts and only 37 preferred spending increased spending. What both polls tell us is that the mainstream media is once again misinforming the people about Obama's plan. Obviously many people still believe the lies that Obama's plan is cutting taxes.

Boortz reports that the third RINO supporting the senate stimulus boondoggle compromise is Olympia Snowe. It wasn't hard to guess.

Teachers unions upset that Dept. of Education spending growth was cut from $150 billion to $100 billion. How will they survive with only a $100 billion more than last year? Oh, the humanity.

President Obama signs executive order requiring all federal construction projects to be unionized. This is discrimination. Non-union workers should file suit against this.

The Associated Builders and Contractors has already come out against the executive order. The organization claims that union-only project labor agreements increase construction costs between 10% and 20%. It also says that it discriminates against the 84% of construction workers that chose not to join a labor union.

Speaking out is a good first step. Now file a lawsuit.

Even the AP thinks Obama is being partisan. Buyers remorse is getting deeper for liberals.

Yet another fine article explaining how government created the financial crisis. Not only did government create the crisis, but government's response to the crisis made it severely worse. This has been explained so well and so many times, only the most zealous followers of religion of liberalism deny it.

If you don't use your computer for much Microsoft Windows 7 will be fine for you, but if you run more than 3 applications at a time, as many of us do, especially developers, too bad. You have to pay more for that privilege.

Liberals have heard that socialized medicine means that health care will be rationed. They know that the socialized medicine plans in other countries ration care and leave people to die. They just don't care right now. They're not using their brains on this issue; it's a purely emotional drive. But as soon as they can't get the treatment they want when they want it, they'll scream bloody murder. By then it will be too late.

John McCain calls the Democrats' stimulus boondoggle "generational theft". I'm with Boortz. Where was this during the campaign? I can't come up with any explanation other than McCain choked under pressure. Now that the pressure's off, he's being effective. Our system excludes great leaders in favor of mealy mouthed wimps who spend most of their effort trying to make sure they don't say anything to piss anybody off instead of cutting to the heart of matters and communicating clearly.

The buy American clause - pure protectionism - in the stimulus boondoggle is a good way to start a depression.

Al Gore continues to lose the battle over defrauding the American people. 54 percent think global warming is overhyped. Overhyped is quite the understatement.

It's kind of ridiculous that somebody has to write an essay explaining that Wall Street bonuses, incentives for top performance, are good for financial business and therefore good for everybody in the country. But the angry mob that incorrectly blames Wall Street for our financial problems is spouting such irresponsible crap, that I'm glad the WSJ said it. The title isn't going to win anybody over though.

Why do I care that Obama's choice for the number 2 spot at the Justice Dept. represented porn magazines? I don't. Nobody should. This is just another example of a distraction from the substance of government the 2 parties use to keep America divided and angry and keep themselves in power.

I strongly agree with this Mises scholar about SI printing the story that A-Rod used steroids. For the record, A-Rod admitted using a banned performance enhancing substance. My first thought was who cares? Non-athletes uses substances to boost their memory and cognative abilities all the time. Why can't athletes use substances that boost their physical abilities? Second, who are these four unidentified creeps that broke the confidentiality agreement? Those guys should be hounded until they're forced to live under rocks.

When did our society get so worthless that confidentiality agreements don't mean anything any more? That your word doesn't mean anything? That honesty and integrity don't mean anything? Remember when 2 wrongs didn't make a right? Why isn't there outrage over those leakers breaking the rules? I can understand A-Rod using steroids. It made him better at his profession, just like cognative boosters make others better at theirs. A-Rod has a powerful incentive. The rule he broke is unfair and an affront to freedom. But what about the leakers? Did they get better at their profession when they broke the rules? There's no excuse for leaking this information.

And what about the role of the press? A responsible press would not encourage people to break confidentiality agreements. A responsible press would never have printed this story, and would have instead published the names of the creeps who leaked it.

The Fed is a Dictatorship and Can only Harm our Economy

One argument I have not heard against the Fed is that it's a dictatorship. If you think about it, the Fed is like a tribal organization. Ben Bernanke is the chief. Greenspan was the chief before him. And the chiefs are surrounded by a council of elders - the governors of the different Fed branches. And they answer to nobody. Once appointed, they are unaccountable for 10 years, yet they hold the power to destroy our economy in their hands.

Out here in the self-governing world, congress passed the TARP program and is debating Obama's stimulus boondoggle. But during the same time, Bernanke created program after program after program, manipulating our economy with no oversight from the people. Bernanke has refused FOIA requests and operates in complete opaqueness. He operates as a dictator in a shadow government. Nothing could be farther from the American ideal of freedom and self-government.

And the Fed has no power to improve our economy, only to harm it. Suppose Fed policies were as effective as possible. That would mean that the Fed was doing exactly what the free market would be doing without it. The Fed would have set interest rates exactly where the free market would set them and the money supply would be exactly where the free market would have it. That's as good as it gets because the free market is best possible system at determining those things.

But the moment the fed deviates from free market conditions, it's harming our economy. It's perverting our economy from its most efficient state to a less efficient state. No amount of good intentions can change this fact. And people are imperfect, so the Fed will never be as good as a free market. The only conclusion is that the Fed is always harming our economy.

Free kibbles

The Keynesian kooks are getting kookier by the day. Now they're claiming the reason Keynsianism didn't work in Japan in the 90s was because government didn't borrow and spend enough. Apparently $6.3 trillion infrastructure over 17 years isn't enough. It's never enough for liberals. After they take 99 percent of our wealth, they'll come for the last percent. Keynesianism is just the excuse liberals use to push Marxism.

One of the reasons Afghanistan is harder than Iraq is we're funding the Taliban through the war on drugs. We're our own worst enemy. NATO leader calls for 5 year surge. The surge in Iraq produced tremendous results in far less time. Let's hope it doesn't take 5 years in Afghanistan. If anybody hasn't realized the war on drugs is a destructive fundamentalist attack on freedom yet, maybe now that Obama plans to team up with Iran's Mullahs to fight the war on drugs in Afghanistan, you will.

Thanks to the 3 RINOs, Democrats are confident they can pass Obama's stimulus boondoggle Tuesday. That leaves a few days for the people to contact the RINOs, unless Sen. Specter leaves his email down and his voicemail full.

Just a fantastic essay from Mises scholar describing the understandable anger and the mob mentality that's driving these bailouts, but it calmly destroys the belief that capitalism and capitalists should be the target. Except for bankers. He throws them to the wolves. The mob is pointed in the wrong direction. A couple of paragraphs to wet the appetite.

How does this computer guarantee it executes the correct instructions? And if the instructions are immune from noise, why not the data? The instructions must have some sort of redundancy or error correction not used on data to save transistors.

Email to Sen. Brown

I've sent both my senators a number of emails about the stimulus the last few days. Here's the latest I sent to Ohio Democrat Senator Brown (I sent a very similar one to Senator Voinovich):

President Obama keeps saying he doesn't want to repeat the failed economic policy of the last 8 years, but irresponsible spending is the failed economic policy of the last 8 years, and Obama and Democrats are doubling down on that failed policy. What worked during the last 8 years, like it works every time, is real tax cuts like the 2003 tax cuts. Couple tax cuts with comparable spending cuts to reduce the deficit, and the economy will rebound almost immediately and stronger than ever.

I understand Obama's frustration at big spending Republicans suddenly pretending they have small government values, but 2 wrongs don't make a right. Republicans out of control spending the last 8 years was wrong. Obama's spending boondoggle is wrong. Now that Republicans are out of power, they're getting it right. Do the right thing for the people and reduce the burden of government by cutting taxes and spending so the American people can make our economy rebound stronger than ever.

--

Yet another email to my Senators:

Barack Obama won this election by promising the people he would cut taxes for 95 percent of Americans and that he would cut more wasteful spending from the budget than he would add, bringing about a net reduction in federal spending.

Obama's stimulus boondoggle is the exact opposite of what he told Americans he stood for and the exact opposite of what Americans voted for.

Stand firm against Obama's stimulus boondoggle and support an alternative proposal that actually cuts tax rates for the lowest 95 percent of taxpayers. That's a real stimulus.

--

I sent off similar emails to Sen. Collins and Sen. Snow. I don't know if Snow is the third RINO or not, but I figured it couldn't hurt to send her an email. Sen. Specter is the 2nd RINO, but his email doesn't work and his voicemail is full. How convenient.

Free kibbles

It looks like 3 RINOs are going to enable Obama's stimulus boondoggle to pass the senate after they reduced the cost to $820 billion. Let's hope their constituents stop those RINOs. It's interesting this article doesn't name the 3 RINOs, almost like the paper doesn't want the people to call them, but one of them has to be Susan Collins of Maine since she negotiated the compromise.

I don't have a big problem with Russia building a nuclear power plan in Iran as long as it can't be used for weapons, but it does help prop up the Mullah's regime, and I don't care for that. But European trade does that as well.

I'm with Russia that the EU needs a new security architecture instead of continuing to have the US provide security welfare in the form of NATO. I hope this does stop the expansion of NATO. NATO is a cold war dinosaur, a titanic welfare program that actually funds Europe's welfare states, and it needs to be dissolved in favor of a security structure in which Europe pays for its own security and becomes full partners with the US in securing western interests around the world. I hope this idea takes off. The problem is, like all welfare, this arrangement is poisonous. The recipient is addicted to the seemingly free security from which they can criticize the provider without consequence and the provider is addicted to the power and control.

State employee gets paid $93,803 to do nothing.

University holds global warming conference in minus 6 degree weather. I bet even Al Gore laughs at the gullibility of global warming true believers. All the way to the bank.

City owned power company shuts off power to WWII vet, leading him to freeze to death. As tragic as this story is, and the city certainly has culpability for turning off his power in winter, this man could have saved himself from freezing to death by either paying his bill or visiting a neighbor or family member.

This article on Obama pulling a power grab over the Census Bureau is disingenuous. It's standard operating procedure for the party in power in Congress to gerrymander congressional districts to their benefit. Tom Delay didn't do anything any different than Democrats had done for decades, though Democrats help power for so long, there didn't need to be much gerrymandering from decade to decade. But Mr. Bipartisanship's power grab to pull the Census Bureau into the White House is extremely dangerous.

You can read the stimulus if you have time to wade through the 1,588 pages, so far. You can bet our representatives haven't read it all.

I'm not the only one who thinks Obama is stupid. And I don't mean that flippantly. The man has repeatedly and often shown he's far less intelligent than either Dan Quayle and George Bush. Mises scholar puts it bluntly:

Barack Obama is stupid. This isn't a case of name-calling. The man has demonstrated a frightening lack of intelligence during his first days holding the honorary title "president of the United States". He thinks redistribution of consumption - in the amount of nearly one trillion fiat dollars - will "stimulate" the economy, and that failure to do this will unleash "catastrophe." It's one thing not to understand the basic tenets of economics, but to publicly stomp your feet when others refuse to ignore reality and embrace your false beliefs can only be interpreted as a lack of basic intellectual capacity.

I couldn't agree more. Obama keeps saying he doesn't want to repeat the same tried and failed policies from the last 8 years, but irresponsible spending is the tried and failed policy of the last 8 years, and Obama is doubling down on that failed policy.

The stimulus ideas keep getting sillier. This guy recommends government send every American a $2,000 gift card so the people can't save the money or pay of debt - they'd be forced to spend it. This won't stimulate the economy either. These one time "benefits" (they're not really benefits because we have to pay for them and we have to pay the interest on them) like tax credits and gift cards don't change people's behavior so the economy isn't stimulated. If implemented, this idea would give retail stores a month of big sales, then it would be over. Except for paying the exorbitant bill.

Billion is the new million. Corollary: trillion is the new billion. Yikes.

Mises scholar explains that banks should raise interest rates, not lower them, during a recession. Doing so causes short term pain as it washes bad investments out of the economy, but the resulting economy is stronger than ever.

The Fed continues to pump reserves into banks which now hold over $700 billion. Just looking at the spike at the end of this graph should tell any observer the Fed is doing tremendous damage to our currency.

I think calling President Obama's overtures to bipartisanship "window dressing" is an accurate description. Obama has done nothing but invite Republicans to vote for radical leftist positions. When they didn't, he stopped inviting them and started bullying them. That's not bipartisanship. That's thuggery.

Look at what we have done. We've empowered a few aristocrats to sit isolated in the back rooms of Washington and plan the takeover of our banking industry. To make the program more popular, they're going to change its name. That ought to do it. This is the definition of central planning. Everybody keeps calling for a plan, and the root problem is central planning itself. Stop calling for plans and start calling for freedom. Freedom is the solution to our problems, not central planning. I feel like I'm in a bus going over cliff, half the people in the bus are saying we need one plan to go faster, and the other half are saying we need a different plan to go faster, and only a few of us are trying to stop the bus. And once we're in free fall, the parties who were arguing on how to race faster to our destruction will blame each other.

Thomas Sowell says Senate Republicans, who proposed price controls - fixing mortgage rates at 4 percent - are still acting like Democrats. Sowell likes Michael Steele because he's a good communicator.

Walter Williams explains that the promise of Social Security is a lie because it is a Ponzi (pyramid) scheme.

Charles Krauthammer shows how quickly Obama changed from the man of hope into a fearmonger and how Obama nominated quite a few lobbyists despite pretending to be against lobbyists. That's change we knew was coming.

The Age of Obama begins with perhaps the greatest frenzy of old-politics influence peddling ever seen in Washington. By the time the stimulus bill reached the Senate, reports The Wall Street Journal, pharmaceutical and high-tech companies were lobbying furiously for a new plan to repatriate overseas profits that would yield major tax savings. California wine growers and Florida citrus producers were fighting to change a single phrase in one provision. Substituting "planted" for "ready to market" would mean a windfall garnered from a new "bonus depreciation" incentive.

What the hell is Obama doing negotiating with Russians before he's president? Remember how many times he stood up and said there's only one president at a time? This guy is a world class liar in the Bill Clinton tradition. If Henry Kissenger can work out a deal with the Russians to reduce nuclear arsenals on behalf of Obama, more power to both of them, but Obama should have waited until he was sworn in. Unfortunately, Kissenger was incredibly weak in dealing with the Soviets during the Cold War, and Obama's weak now. I hope they don't negotiate a deal that gives the Russians an advantage.

Reason calls for abolishing the corporate income tax. Good luck with that.

This liberal can't seem to understand the difference between tax cuts and spending increases. Tax cuts reduce the burden of government while spending increases increase the burden of government on the people who make America work and make it great. Bush's tax cuts were good for the economy. Unfortunately, he didn't cut spending to match. He irresponsibly increased spending, drove up the debt, and that spending and debt did great harm to the economy. I'll write the rules real simple so this liberal can understand them. Tax cuts good. Spending increases bad. That should clear everything up.

Alaska's senate finds Sarah Palin's husband and several state officials in contempt for failing to respond to subpoenas. I'm sure the offenders are quaking in their boots. The senate was smart not to pursue punishment because the courts would have slapped them down. The legislative branch is a co-equal branch of government, not the boss of the executive branch, and it can't force the executive branch to bend to its will no matter how many temper tantrums like this it throws.

Michigan senator who happens to be the wife of man who's twice failed big-time at liberal talk radio wants to use the Fairness Doctrine so her husband won't have to compete to be on the radio. This is more corruption in Washington.

Even NPR thinks we're being overexposed to Obama.

Rich Lowry has it right. Obama's only argument for this stimulus stimulus boondoggle is that he won. But he didn't run on this horrible stimulus boondoggle. He ran on a platform of cutting taxes. He claimed he was going to cut taxes for 95 percent of Americans. Well, Obama, if your stimulus bill had reduced tax rates for the lowest 95 percent of earners, this bill would have passed in minutes. You could have fulfilled a campaign promise right off the bat and had 95 percent approval ratings. But instead you pushed this $900 billion earmark for Democrats special interests, and you're paying for it. This bill is the antithesis of what he fooled people into believing he supported.

The Democrats' Marxist roots aren't just showing - they're flying like flags. Barney Frank says Democrats might expand executive pay limits to every business in America. Obama's Treasury Sec. Geithner agrees with Frank. Frank also wants government to regulate conflicts of interest in businesses. This from the guy who protected Fannie and Freddie from regulation while his lover was making millions working for them while they were cooking the books. We did this to ourselves by voting for the 2 failed parties that are destroying our country.

This story about the Mexican drug cartels is just scary. They're hiring soldiers right out of the military. 17,000 soldiers deserted in 2008.

Free kibbles

Is anybody surprised that the companies which received bailouts pumped $114 million into politicians coffers before hand? This is a fabulous investment. Why bother with quality goods and services when you can just pay aristocrats to give you tax payer money? That's protection money. Our government is a protection and vote buying racket. And we keep electing the crooks from the same 2 parties every election and wonder why they're stealing us blind. Frankly, this is qrotesque, but it's our own fault. Fortunately the founding fathers gave us way to have a revolution without torches and pitchforks. We have to vote out both these crooked parties instead of falling for their phony partisanship election after election.

Boy did Obama screw up again today. He had planned to meet with 17 families of the victims of the Cole bombing to discuss the potential of dropping the charges against one of the terrorists who bombed it. But before he sat down with them, he ordered the judge to drop the case. When the families heard, they realized Obama wasn't interested in what they had to say, so they canceled the meeting with him. That highly public snub can't do anything but hurt Obama. The commander of the Cole wrote a letter attacking Obama for denying justice to the victims of the Cole. Good for those families and good for the Commander. Obama is more concerned with live terrorists than the families of dead Americans.

It turns out some families are still meeting with the president while others have backed out.

Right now Obama is giving a speech attacking Senators for debating the stimulus bill. This continues the Obama camp's nasty attacks on free speech that were used during his campaign. If a stimulus bill is going to be passed, Americans deserve to have Congress thoroughly debate it to insure that the bill works for Americans, not against them. Obama's bill is not a good bill. It will harm our economy. Our representatives should stand firm against the president because America can't stand to have government do yet more harm to our economy.

2 and a half weeks into his presidency, Obama is losing his cool and melting down. He mocks Republicans for having the temerity to debate and try to improve his stimulus bill. Obama's definition of bipartisanship is Obama stays on the radical left and Republicans cave to the radical left. That's not bipartisanship. You have to remember that Obama's entire career revolves around Marxists terrorists like Bill Ayers and Marxist thugs like Saul Alinsky and ACORN. Obama is a thug, Rahm Emanuel is a thug, and it's showing. Republicans lost power because they spent our tax dollars like radical Democrats. It seems they figured that out about 8 years too late, but better late than never.

Obama steps up his alarmist rhetoric and his bullying tactics regarding the stimulus. I think his attempt to bully senators will backfire with both parties. Obama can no more be bipartisan than fish can breath air.

Boortz makes a good point about Obama - he wants unconditional talks with Iran but he wants to end debate on the stimulus boondoggle. I'm sure Obama would defend Osama bin Laden's free speech rights, but not Republicans'. In one way, I can understand Obama's frustration. Republicans spent the last 8 years implementing gratuitous, irresponsible spending programs like Democrats, but now that Obama and Democrats are in power, Republicans have pretended to suddenly rediscover small government principles. That has to be frustrating for Obama. Too bad. Two wrongs don't make a right. Republicans are finally doing the right thing. Obama's refusing to admit the only reason he won this election is because of the irresponsibility of Republicans for 8 years.

Republicans have managed to cut $150 billion out of Obama's stimulus boondoggle, lowering the price to $780 billion, but they shouldn't cave. This price tag is still uber-outrageous. This entire bill is a bad bill that will harm Americans and empower Democrats if passed. Nobody should vote for it.

Congressional Budget Office says what most of us have known all along - Obama's stimulus boondoggle will make the economy worse. Great quote from Margaret Thatcher as a bonus.

Hamas doesn't give a damn about the people of Gaza. UN halts aid shipments to Gaza because Hamas keeps stealing them. Good for the Ban Ki-moon. Under past directors, the UN would have ignored these thefts and just kept supplying Hamas.

Stimulis parody of Cialis.

Democrats will hike your taxes, but you won't have to pay them.

Republican fund raising chairman compares Republicans trying to improve the stimulus to the Taliban. You can't make this stuff up. Joe Biden would have a hard time sticking his foot deeper in his mouth. This would be comical if it wasn't so dangerous.

The New York Times wants us to believe that after years of war and rebellion in Sri Lanke, the people will be worse off with peace.

The WSJ has caught on to what Mises has been telling us for weeks if not months - we're in for a period if significant inflation, and Obama's stimulus boondoggle will only ad to is as the Fed is forced to print 1 trillion more dollars to pay for it.

The husband of Obama's Sec. of Labor nominee finally paid off back taxes he'd owed for 10 years after she got nominated. Everybody should be Democrats so they can get away with not paying taxes. Maybe that's their master plan....

Democrats don't want to acknowledge the consequences of freeing the Guantanamo detainees and stopping the interogations that stop terrorist attacks.