Free kibbles

TAX AND SPEND:

Using food stamps to buy cigarettes and beer.

Obama continues to give stimulus boondoggle money to phony congressional districts. Another phony district.

Letting the Bush tax cuts expire will lead to a $3 trillion tax increase.

Everybody is jumping on this report that government made $98 billion in improper payments. Out of a budget of $3.6 trillion, that's only $2.7 percent. I don't believe that number is that small for a second.

John Stossel explains what too many people don't get - the real problem with government is the spending. Taxes are just one symptom of that problem.

"Taxes, even counting hidden taxes, are not the real measure of what the thieves take. The true burden of government, the late Milton Friedman said, is the spending level. Taxation is just one way government gets money. The other ways—borrowing and inflation—are equally burdens on the people. (State governments can't inflate, but they sure can borrow.) "

We pay for every dollar government spends twice. First we pay for it in taxes. Then we pay for it in the economy because when government spends our tax dollars in the economy to satisfy the desires of the politicians instead of where we would spend it to satisfy our own desires, it changes the allocation of resources in the economy, making the things we want to buy more expensive. So our $3.5 trillion budget is doing $7 trillion of damage to our $13 economy. Mandates, regulations and bans do more damage. Spending, mandates, regulations and bans at the state and local levels do even more damage. And we wonder why we're in a recession. And government keeps pretending it can spend us out of it.

FEDERAL RESERVE:

Ron Paul succeeded in reinstating the guts of his audit the Fed bill in the House financial services committee. Good deal.

Robert Murphy claims we're suffering inflation right now. Of course we are. Production cycle for many finished good in America is years long. That means it takes years for inflation to flow through the production cycle to reach the consumer. Yet we're already seeing signs of it even in the consumer market.

"On his blog Free Advice in September, the Pacific Research Institute economist Robert Murphy argued that inflation is already here but economists are missing the signs. “From [December 2008] until August 2009, the unadjusted CPI level has increased 2.7%, which translates to an annualized increase of just over 4%,” Murphy wrote. He acknowledged that “ten-year yields [on Treasury bonds] are…low” but added that the price of gold has increased enormously. “Why do we assume that TIPS [Treasury Inflation-Protected Securities] traders are genius forecasters, but gold traders are morons?” he asked."

HEALTH CARE:

Harry Reid using taxpayer money to bride Senators to vote for his health care bill.

"On the Democratic side, Majority Leader Harry Reid is passing out goodies in hopes of garnering the 60 votes he needs for a motion to proceed to debate on the bill. Yesterday, Mr. Reid announced he'll hold that vote on Saturday at 8 pm after a day-long debate. Whether he has the 60 votes is uncertain at the moment, but you can bet he will open the taxpayer spigots to secure those he needs."

Politics as usual in America is criminal. He should be arrested, tried and convicted for this. They all should.

"Republicans had the option of staying on the floor and having Senator Tom Coburn of Oklahoma and others read the bill, a process that would take at least two days. They opted for a less strenuous path that will allow them to spend plenty of time at home during the Thanksgiving holiday. "Republican members oppose the bill, but they don't appear willing to stay up nights arguing against it," one former Hill staffer told me."

Thanks, Republicans.

Premature baby left to die in UK because government guidelines recommend not providing care to babies born that early. In other words, the government probably wouldn't have reimbursed the costs. Far worse will happen here and everywhere else if Obamacare passes because the US health care system will no longer be able to lift up the health care systems of the rest of the world or even our own.

GLOBAL WARMING:

It looks like Obama will order the EPA to cap CO2 emissions. Great Pharaoh need not bother with that pesky legislative process.

WAR:

The US has never tried an enemy combatant caught on the battlefield in federal court. What does caught on the battlefield mean in this war?

POLITICS:

Gallop reports Obama's approval at 49 percent.

MISC:

Robert Murphy blasts the efficient market hypothesis. I like this refutation. It is a mere tautology. Of course markets reflect the best available information available. People can't act or stay out of a market on anything but the information they have. But that doesn't mean people are infallible. Some expect one set of consequences. Others expect another. Both can't be right. To the extent people are fallible, and that's a huge extent, markets are fallible too.

Here's the Democrat party platform in 1932, campaigned on by Roosevelt:

"

1. An immediate and drastic reduction of governmental expenditures by abolishing useless commissions and offices, consolidating departments and bureaus and eliminating extravagance, to accomplish a saving of not less than 25 percent in the cost of Federal government.…
2. Maintenance of the national credit by a Federal budget annually balanced .…
3. A sound currency to be maintained at all hazards.[4]

...
It was … actually an old-time Democratic platform based upon fairly well-accepted principles of the traditional Democratic party. That party had always denounced the tendency to strong central government, the creation of new bureaus. It had always denounced deficit financing. Its central principle of action was a minimum of government in business.[7]"

Roosevelt's lies created the monstrous Democrat party of today. This is an interesting article showing how the terms liberal, conservative and libertarian got flipped during Roosevelt's reign.

Wired pans Google's Chrome OS with a pretty good argument. Why would people give up what works today? Of course, I use all those web aps because I refuse to buy software. I wouldn't be surprised if many younger people feel the same. But you'd have to expect the market to be small for a long time.

Obama nominates judge who thinks judges can amend the constitution by adding footnotes. Shouldn't our judges at least have read the document?

Victor Davis Hansen paints the sorry picture the US is facing.

"Add it all up and there is a growing sense that America is in fact hemorrhaging - as both friends and enemies abroad smell blood in the water. The president through conciliation and concession - not to mention constant talk - is trying to superficially restore the influence we once earned by virtue of our economic power and self-confidence in our exceptional past and singular values."

The burden of government has dragged America into decline. Obama is purposely accelerating that decline. We have to admit the problem before we can fix it.

Tax problems for another Obama nominee.

The scary rise of communist nostalgia. The welfare state is rotting people's brains.

Oh my goodness, this is a funny cartoon.

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SOCIALISM:

In the wake of the cash for clunkers debacle, which paid people to destroy working cars, the price of used cars has gone up significantly. Duh.

ECONOMY:

The mainstream media and economists suddenly noticed that the housing recovery was an illusion with the report that new home construction was down 10 percent and 20 percent of construction workers are out of work.

Here's a powerful reminder that we matter. Thanks to the rallies, emails, letters and phone calls, House committee considers reining in the Fed and calling for the firing of Geithner. This would never have happened without the tea parties and Ron Paul's audit the Fed bill. I guarantee you this limits Obama's power. We matter. Voting and fighting for freedom matters. What we say and what we do effects Congress. We've always mattered. The problem with government isn't that the aristocrats ignore us, it's that we continue to re-elect them then sit quietly on the sideline, or bitch about the other guys' aristocrats while voting for ours, while they destroy our country. If we cared as much about freedom as many suddenly pretend to, we'd never be in this predicament.

I'd like to see a poll that asked people if they are against big government, who they voted for recently and what actions they've taken to reduce the size and scope of government. I think the vast majority of Americans would say they're against big government, a smaller majority would say they voted for big-government Bush, and almost every one of them would say they never lifted a finger to reduce the size and scope of government other than vote for big-government Republicans like Bush. I would really like to see this poll because it might finally wake up the sleeping giant.

FEDERAL RESERVE:

Fed plans to keep interest rates at zero for two more years. That means the Fed is going to block our economic recovery for two more years. Why just two? The reality is the Fed will continue to block our recovery forever, because we're going to be in even worse straits in two years, just like the Japanese government did in Japan. Government will never acknowledge that its the problem as long as we keep electing the same two failed parties.

HEALTH CARE:

There's some dumb senator on Foxnews saying that the Senate health care oppression bill will cut the deficit by over $600 billion in the second ten years. What he doesn't say is that nobody, including the CBO, claims to be able to accurately estimate 10-20 years out. The CBO consistently underestimates costs in the first ten years.

MISC:

Judge rules Army Corp of Engineers liable for flooding damage after Katrina. I can see both sides of this. The federal government had no business seizing power over a local New Orleans issue like those levies. It seized power and it failed to perform the job it was supposed to. On the other side, the people in New Orleans who didn't leave have nobody but themselves to blame for their plight. The lesson on both sides should be that personal responsibility and local government is superior to surrendering power to the federal government, but I doubt that lesson will be learned by anybody who didn't already know it. This disaster was not only predictable and preventable, it was predicted for decades.

How insurance regulation drives up prices and subsidizes risky behavior, harming consumers and society.

Great observation:

"The idea that the free market is highly popular among businessmen is one that is widespread, but not among sound economists. It was not very popular in 1776, when Adam Smith's Wealth of Nations was pulished, and it has not become terribly popular with all of them since--which is not surprising, for the free market benefits the consumer but disciplines the businessman."

The free market is the best regulator of business possible. To the extent it interferes in the free market, big business, government enables exploitation by businesses.

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ECONOMY:

Obama suddenly acknowledges that the US is facing a potential (there's nothing potential about it) secondary recession. He even acknowledges one of the reasons for that happening is government debt. So now we know that Obama knows that government debt harms the economy, but he's driving us into debt as fast as he can without pushing the people to burn down the White House. Put this down in the Obama is evil category. I like how he blames the potential recession on confidence instead of the tangible and well understood effects of taking money from people by force and spending it on politically motivated causes instead of allowing the people to spend or save their own money to fit their own needs. Look for Obama to make a token show of cutting spending while continuing to amass by far the greatest debt in human history.

HEALTH CARE:

CBO says the Senate health care oppression bill will cost $849 billion and cut the deficit by $127 billion over 10 years. There's no doubt those numbers are bogus. Now that Reid's finally unveiled the bill, I'm looking forward to seeing what accounting tricks they used and what is off budget and therefore not scored by the CBO in this bill.

MISC:

Learning that US Navy submariners sleep on duty should remind us all that there are no perfect people out there. We're all human. We're all fallible. The more power we concentrate in the hands of a few fallible humans, the more we pay for their mistakes.

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SOCIALISM:

The FDIC has become a land baron, or more accurately, a slum lord. The road to hell is paved over the bodies well intentioned socialists ruin on their march.

ECONOMY:

By continuing to stoke the illusion that he supports free markets, Bush is continuing to damage our economy and harm our future.

FOREIGN POLICY:

Israeli government approves 900 new housing units in settlements. Apparently this land isn't being used as a buffer against enemies as we've long been told. Apparently this land is being used by Israeli aristocrats to buy votes in exchange for homes. Boy am I surprised that aristocrats in Israel are the same as aristocrats everywhere else.

MISC:

FDA regulating alcohol and caffeine drinks, so don't put that Bailey's in your coffee anymore.

"The letters demand that these drink makers produce evidence within 30 days that their drinks are safe and pose no health or safety risks. The demand is ridiculous. Of course there are risks. Risks are part of life. Part of the fun of these drinks is that they are slightly more "risky" than, say, a can of V-8."

You don't see people defending risk or fun very often any more.

According to this report, hunger kills 17,000 children a day. These reports always exaggerate this stuff, but people are dying of hunger. The solution is to stop sending welfare to the tyrants who enable to happen. Economic freedom is the solution to world hunger.

Private New Zealand company to enter space race. Have you noticed no US companies are in the space race? That's because of NASA. We should privatize our space business.

McAfee report claims we have entered the age of cyber-warfare - cyber-attacks with political motives.

Author informs that both shuttle disasters, Columbia and Challenger, were caused by faulty materials that NASA was forced to use after the EPA banned the safe materials that had been used previously. 14 astronauts died because of environmentalists and the EPA. I'd never heard this before. Wow.

Make sure your water heater is over 130 degrees.

Evidence that the whole freon causing a hole in the ozone thing was a hoax.

Our Enemy, The State

I haven't read Our Enemy, The State yet, but I'm looking forward to it. But this essay struck a cord with something I was puzzling over today and often puzzle over. I agree with Nock that there is no such thing as an anarchist Utopia, it's as much a fantasy as a communist Utopia, and the best we can achieve for ourselves is a severely limited government.

"The state being what it is, it matters little who holds office and wields its inordinate powers. This truth is dawning on some persons today; but the general public, however disillusioned with politicians, still has faith in politics as the means of curing all the ills of society and improving the quality of life. Hopefully, people will someday realize that what counts is the overextension of state power, not who holds public office. The important thing is to refute statist ideas, whatever their guise, and Nock's book is a big gun in our arsenal."

As I was walking the dog today, I contemplated why people have faith in government. Every American knows the old joke, "How do you tell when a politicians is lying? His lips are moving." It's funny because it's true. In one way, professional politicians are like every other human being - they're working in their own interests and the interests of their family. They're trying to advance their careers like every other human being. They're trying to make a better living for themselves and their families: to get a bigger house, send their kids to better schools, to get an additional car for their teenage, etc.

But unlike us, because of the nature of the career, the most important thing a politician must do to get elected and to rise in power is to lie about that. Professional politicians are fundamentally different from normal people because they must have the ability to lie without conscious and tell us they are working for our best interest instead of their best interest. So from the first moment a person chooses the career path of professional politician, his success is dependent on his or her talent as a liar. In order to be highly successful, the politician must be a sociopathic quality liar. It's an fundamentally corrupting career choice that rewards liars and washing out honest people.

Thus we compress that knowledge into the joke.

Yet people still believe that government run by people who lie with sociopathic ease will work in our favor, though that's clearly impossible.

Everybody knows power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. The way to success as a professional politician is fundamentally different than the way to success in the private sector. In the private sector, people create wealth for others to get ahead. Workers who work harder and smarter in their job, creating more wealth for their employers, get promotions and raises. Businessmen who provide higher quality goods and services for their customers at a lower price make more money, expand their businesses and get rich. It's a virtuous cycle in which people are rewarded based on how much wealth and value they create for others.

Professional politicians get ahead by taking wealth and value from others by force. In order for politicians to gain more power, they need to take more tax dollars from taxpayers and apply that money to buying votes. Regardless of party, the more money a professional politician can take from taxpayers by force and funnel to special interests in return for votes, the more powerful the politician becomes. Using tax dollars, regulations, mandates, bans, etc., professional politicians funnel trillions of our tax dollars to their favored constituents, and in return, those constituents fill the coffers of those politicians with millions of our tax dollars then vote for them.

And this isn't just earmarks. Every ordinance, law or policy created by professional politicians follows this model. This is an inherently corrupt process that rewards not only the best liars, but the most adept at manipulating this corrupt process to buy votes.

I think the vast majority of Americans understand this, but they continue to think that if they just elect the right party or the right guy, government will become good government. It's impossible.

That's not the only way professional politicians are different from normal people. Because government is a process of lying, taking money from people by force and using it buy votes, the people attracted to the career of professional politician are people who covet lording power over others. Normal people who want to advance their careers become businessmen and CEOs. They produce goods and services that other people want to purchase in a system of voluntary exchange. Only people driven to bend others to their will choose the career of professional politician.

Most people understand this, yet they still convince themselves that government can work in our favor, though that's clearly impossible for this reason also.

Although we know the basic facts - politicians tend to share many character traits with serial killers and psychopaths - people continue to refuse to accept the indisputable conclusion drawn from these facts - there is no such thing as a government that works in the interest of the people. Government always and inevitably works for the interest of the professional politicians who run it at the expense of the people. There is no good government, only smaller, bad government and bigger, worse government.

It doesn't matter which party of professional politicians is in power. They're all self-interested freaks of nature who lie to get whatever they want, and what they want is to lord power over everybody else. They're all Napoleon wannabes. To the extent these people are unaccountable, and that can be measured by the size of budget of the government, the government is corrupt. Therefore corruption and harm done by a government is proportional to the size and scope of government. Everybody knows the government which governs least, governs best. But for all our knowledge, we continue to refuse to put into practice.

In the United States, all these bad qualities of professional politicians are exaggerated because we allow anybody, that means the worst of our 300,000,000 people, to run our government.

You can never separate the self-interest, character and corruption of professional politicians from the policy they make and the money they euphemistically redistribute. Everything government does is poisoned by them. There is no such thing as good government. The best we can do is keep government as tiny and powerless to harm us as necessary to keep the peace - and that's real tiny.

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TOTALITARIANISM:

Where does the federal government thinks it gets the authority to indefinitely imprison people it deems "sexually dangerous", and why haven't I hard of this before? On the general abuse of government power:

"In early September, Fox News host Andrew Napolitano asked Rep. James Clyburn (D-S.C.), the third-ranking Democrat in the House of Representatives, precisely what part of the Constitution authorized Congress to enact health care legislation. "There's nothing in the Constitution that says that the federal government has anything to do with most of the stuff we do," Clyburn replied. "How about [you] show me where in the Constitution it prohibits the federal government from doing this?""

I hope Napolitano pointed out that tenth amendment prohibits the government from expanding its power.

ECONOMY:

Ben Bernanke has inflated the stock market to a 14 month high.

TAX AND SPEND:

Boortz delivers a great quote from Bastiat:

"When plunder becomes a way of life for a group of men living together in society, they create for themselves in the course of time a legal system that authorizes it and a moral code that justifies it."

A public service announcement about the consequences of the welfare state.

"The modern state may use the illusionary rhetoric of "social justice," but the reality of political paternalism is a further loss of our individual liberty, a huge growth in political coercive power, a weakening of the independence and charactor of free men, and a massive expansion of government debt, taxes and likely inflation that threatens to stiffle the prosperity of Americans for decades to come."

That sums it up, but the long version is more informative. More character analysis of professional politicians:

"These political paternalists who are proposing to enlarge the agenda of the welfare state implicitly consider themselves superior to the rest of us. With arrogance and immeasurable hubris, they presume to know what is good for us, better than we know ourselves. They are nothing less than would-be tyrants and despots determined to make the world over in their own ideological image – and, of course, all for our own good, whether we want it or not.

In addition, they are willing to use force against their fellow human beings to attain their paternalistic ends. That is, they believe that it is morally right for the state to use its coercive powers to take the income and wealth of some to give to others."

Napoleon wannabes. This is why the same people who want to control our economy and the welfare state also loves wars. Anybody with the type of character to force their will on people of their own country, to steal the wealth of the people of their own country, will also force their will on and steal the wealth of people in other countries. It's just a matter of the capability of the military. That's why fascism, government planning of the economy, and communism, government ownership of the economy, are always associated with war.

I didn't realize somebody had to teach us the following. Nobody taught me. I thought it was obvious from observing human nature and the world around us.

"[A] number of economists, such as Nobel Laureate, James Buchanan, have taught us that the actual politics of government intervention and redistribution has little to do with high-minded notions concerning some hypothetical "public good" or "general interest." The reality of democratic politics is that politicians want campaign contributions and votes to be elected and reelected, and they offer in exchange other people's money. Those who supply those campaign contributions and votes want the money of those others, which they are not able to honestly earn through the free play of open competition in the market place."

Here I just spent an entire essay arguing everybody knows this. Maybe I'm wrong, but I don't think so. Our inherited wisdom, let alone our personal observations, inform of us this. He goes on with a nice analysis of how this works.

I didn't need anybody to teach me this, which I just argued in the previous essay, either, but I'm glad people are teaching it.

"[As] another Nobel Prize-winning economist, Friedrich A. Hayek, persuasively argued, even if we assumed that the political paternalists has the most benevolent motives in mind, there is no real meaning to ideas such as "social justice" or politically enforced “fairness.” They are all "mirages," Hayek warned. The market does not reward some hypothetical notion of "merit" or "goodness." The market rewards "service," i.e., did an individual succeed in offering to others some specialized product in the market system of division of labor that was valued by those others who were willing to pay a particular price for it?"

The author also hits on one of my common themes, the US government has degenerated into feudalism.

"The interventionist-welfare state has been creating a new feudalism with political and special interest elites who serve as the “lords” who rule over and ruin the rest of us, the modern serfs who are expected to toil for their benefit under strangling regulations, burdensome taxes, and most likely worsening inflation as the years go by."

I know people who claim to be libertarians because of what they've read, but I didn't. I became a libertarian because of what I saw and logical analysis of it. I've enjoyed refining my arguments because of books I've read, and I've learned of specific events and policy from them, but I'm happy I came to my own conclusions about freedom, government and politics through personal observation and analysis before I started reading.

FEDERAL RESERVE:

Don't you love this headline? Bernanke: Fed Will Keep Eye on Sliding Dollar. So what? According to the article, it will continue to force interest rates to zero. If you needed more evidence that Bernanke is nothing other than a standard, self-interested politician, this meaningless baloney should be enough.

HEALTH CARE:

Yet another analysis shows that Democrats' health care oppression bill will increase health care costs.

I bet Medicare payed out more than $47 billion in questionable payments.

Harry Reid considers expanding Medicare tax to all income to pay for health care oppression.

POLITICS:

Obama pretending he wants to cut spending just to get a 2010 political ploy. Anybody who believes Obama wants to cut spending is dangerously blind.

Newt Gingrich, the guy who thought Obama was a moderate, might be preparing Contract with American II. If John Boehner lets Gingrich beat him to something like this and become the champion of the Republican agenda, he's even dumber than I think he is. The other problem is Republicans aren't willing to agree on anything yet. They aren't desperate enough. This isn't 1992. They've tasted power, and they're just like Democrats.

WAR:

Al Qaeda salivating over the intelligence they will obtain from Khalid Sheikh Mohammad's trial.

FOREIGN POLICY:

Republican Sen. DeMint forces Obama administration to support the rule of law in Honduras by holding up State Dept. nominees. Nice job. Democracy is not consistent with the rule of law. Democracy knows no limits. The United States ostensibly, according the Constitution, is a republic ruled by laws, not a democracy, and we should never support democracy.

MEDIA:

This article reports that Iran recently revealed a previously kept secret nuclear facility, but it fails to mention that it only did so because the US, Britain and France had informed Iran they were going to blow the whistle on it. It also mentions concern that Iran might have other plants, but doesn't elaborate. If somebody has evidence of other secret Iranian nuclear facilities, then tell us. What is the point of these half-truths and vague comments? How can that serve anybody's agenda?

MISC:

Havard and other professors claiming copyright to the ideas they express in the classroom. In other words, Ivy League professors will teach you (or brainwash you, depending on the subject), but you can't use what you learn there without permission. I wonder if they confiscate the notes of their students because of copyright infringement. You can't help but laugh at the absurdity of the world we created with our government worship. This suggestion for professors from the University of Texas:

"My lectures are protected by state common law and federal copyright law. They are my own original expression and I record them at the same time that I deliver them in order to secure protection. Whereas you are authorized to take notes in class thereby creating a derivative work from my lecture, the authorization extends only to making one set of notes for your own personal use and no other use. You are not authorized to record my lectures, to provide your notes to anyone else or to make any commercial use of them without express prior permission from me."

If this were to be accepted, it would end the transmission of knowledge as we've known it since our ancestors developed language. By reempowering the same two failed parties for well over a century, we turned America into a bad joke. We did this to ourselves, and we're continuing to make it worse.

Mises.org's ten must haves are all on ebook.

Obama bows to another supreme leader. Other leaders don't. I don't see him bowing to anybody but supreme leaders. Not only is Obama a government worshiper and tyrant wannabe, he's a tyrant worshiper.

Apparently Carrie Prejean's other seven sex tapes weren't as big a mistake as her eighth. Liberals and their media attack dogs tried to destroy this woman, but she's been exploiting the controversy all along. This is like watching a battle between vampires and werewolves. I hope they both disappear. After I check out the pictures anyway. The ones I saw are ridiculously tame.

Is it possible that Obama's narcissism is growing? Of course. As bad as anything is, it can always be worse. There's probably nothing more dangerous than a man whose too narcissistic to understand that nobody is ever ready to wield the awesome power of the presidency. The problem isn't that people aren't ready. The problem is that awesome power in the hands of one man is absurdly dangerous. Bush was the decider, and that was a mistake. The important decisions about the lives of Americans and the direction of the country are supposed to be made freely by Americans working in a system of voluntary exchange, not by politicians wielding the threat of violence against citizens who do not submit.

Pharaoh Obama wants to seize power over all US subways.

Netherlands to tax drivers based on how far they drive. To pay for government roads, this makes more sense than licensing cars, but a gasoline tax is by far the most fair way to pay for roads. It takes into account miles and the size of vehicle, which is proportional to how much damage a driver does to roads.

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TAX AND SPEND:

Bush warns of dangers of too much government. You can't make this stuff up. Aliens can smell the hypocrisy Mars. You can't help but wonder if Bush is clueless. Or is he just playing conservatives for idiots? More commentary.

GLOBAL WARMING:

Obama postpones Copenhagen climate deal. Thank goodness for the weather. We were so lucky the planet started cooling after 1998. If it had continued warming to even 2001, climate Marxism would be a reality already. We still have a decent chance to kill it before it crushes us.

EDUCATION:

Teachers investigated for selling their services online. God forbid that teachers try to excel in the private sector. They must be regulated into mediocrity in the government sector.

CRIMINAL JUSTICE:

This is how corrupt prosecutors all over America have become.

"In 2006, Assistant U.S. Attorney Brett Grayson lined up more than 30 jailhouse informants to testify that they had sold drugs to Church Point, Louisiana homemaker Ann Colomb and her three sons. (I wrote about the Colomb case in the May 2008 issue of Reason.) Grayson had used some of these snitches before, in the trial of a Houston drug kingpin. After the Houston trial, Grayson was notified that several of his informants had lied, and that there may have been an information sharing network and perjury ring inside the federal prison system. No matter. Grayson used them again. Colomb and her sons were convicted, and spent three months in prison.

The Colombs were eventually freed, with all charges dismissed. Grayson's jailhouse snitches had lied again, and this time, federal judge Tucker Melancon ordered an investigation into new evidence that, somehow, portions of Grayson's case file were being distributed through federal prisons in Texas and Louisiana. The Colombs, meanwhile, spent their life savings on their defense, and were never compensated. According to defense attorneys, Grayson said at one point during the trial that it didn't matter if he personally believed his snitch witnesses, it only mattered what the jury believed, a notion he articulated again in his closing argument."

This is not one bad apple. Because prosecutors have immunity and they win reelection based on convictions, not justice, this is the norm, not the exception. It's nice to see that immunity challenged, but I doubt it will have any effect. Of course we want prosecutors to think twice before entering evidence. Our justice system was founded on the idea that we'd allow ten guilty men to go free before we would convict and innocent man. The arguments made in support of absolute immunity turn that upside down. Why are we concerned about the "chilling" effect of not allowing prosecutors to introduce trumped up evidence instead of the "chilling" affect of allowing prosecutors to knowingly prosecute and convict innocent Americans?

"Katyal made similar statements throughout the hearing: "When someone is introducing evidence at trial, you don't want to chill them in the performance of their duties in any way," and "the overriding interest is protecting the judicial process and not letting information be chilled and not come in." Chief Justice John Roberts underlined that formulation, twice inquiring as to the "chilling" effect of stripping immunity for prosecutors. It took new Associate Justice Sonia Sotomayor to make the obvious point: We want prosecutors to "flinch" before introducing evidence they suspect might not be true. In fact, we want them to not introduce that evidence at all. And there should be a chilling effect on misconduct as egregious as coaching witnesses to lie."

Absolutely. Thank you Justice Sotomayor.

WAR:

Fears that Khalid Sheikh Mohammand will turn his civilian trial into a circus to attack Bush administration post 9/11 policies. That's one thing the judge doesn't have to allow. 9/11 era policies came after 9/11.

Military may have missed warning signs about Fort Hood shooter. Gosh, ya think? This essay is just making excuses for the Army. There's no excuse for allowing a jihadist in the military. If we can't get and keep enough psychiatrists without allowing jihadists in the Army, maybe we should stop attacking foreign countries. And this shooter should have never made Major.

"A decade ago, 78.1 percent of captains were promoted to the rank of major. In the past year, that percentage jumped to 94.1 percent."

Should have been at least one fewer.

"[The shooter], for example, won a crucial promotion two years after cautioning colleagues at Walter Reed Army Medical Center that Muslims needed leeway to leave the Army as conscientious objectors to “decrease adverse events.” He reportedly said that the Koran took precedence over the U.S. Constitution.
...
Months before [the shooter] pinned on the golden oak leaves of an Army major, he exchanged e-mails with a radical Islamic cleric in Yemen who knew three of the 9/11 hijackers and once presided over a mosque in Falls Church, Va., attended by [the shooter]."

This entire essay is just more evidence of catastrophic institutional failure that prioritized the wrong things, like numbers, over identifying enemy guerrilla fighters in their midst.

Reason on how foolishly banning guns at Ford Hood enabled the shooter to kill and wound so many people.

Reason spends a lot of time saying the Army shouldn't have done anything different to stop the Fort Hood shooter, but in the middle of the essay the author tosses out this sentence:

"Obviously, a soldier who expresses a radical anti-American ideology demands intervention."

Hello? Don't you realize that sentence is the important part of this essay and the rest is a straw man? That's what the Army should have done different. This guy wasn't just a Muslim. He was a radical Muslim who supported jihad. The Army knew it. The FBI knew it. He should have been stopped.

Cato's box score on Iraq:

"When the Bush administration started its misguided adventure in Iraq, the president and his Neocon chorus presumed that the U.S. would be acquiring a loyal, even obseqious ally. With the American-subsidized bank embezzler Ahmed Chalabi in charge, Baghdad would create a Western-style democracy, enshrine women’s rights, recognize Israel, provide the U.S. with permanent military bases, and offer a new market for American businesses.

Alas, we’ve struck out: zero for five. Although America’s uber-hawks bridled at reference to our “occupation” of Iraq, Iraqis had no hesitation in using the word and surprised the Bushies by demanding a deadline for the withdrawal of American forces. And Iraqi opposition to the U.S. occupation has affected their attitude toward Americans in other areas."

That sums it up.

FOREIGN POLICY:

If Obama would spend just a fraction of the time implementing sanctions against Iran as he does talking about them, Iran might already have stopped its nuclear program. Just kidding. It's far too late for sanctions to work. They're too close to give up now.

MEDIA:

This guy gets Glenn Beck to a T. Beck's staff indisputably does the best investigation journalism of the Obama administration and agenda of any major media outlet in America, but his extreme manipulation and exploitation of his audience's emotions borders on the grotesque. It's putridly phony. It's staged. It's self-aggrandizing. It's irresponsible. And it's a shame. He has so much good information to share, but he can't be taken seriously because of his shameful manipulation of his audience just so he can get people to worship him and make more money.

"He is constantly urging his viewers to connect the dots and look at the big picture, even when the picture exists only in his head. He is forever advising them to consider stories not as transient, random, isolated phenomena, as most newscasts do, but as parts of a larger, ongoing narrative that grows more and more meaningful (and menacing) the longer you study it."

The frightful picture of the Obama-Democrat agenda is not just in Beck's head.

MISC:

Brazilian hacking teams fail to hack into voting machines. Brazil needs better hackers. There's no such thing as a system that couldn't be hacked (but adding a physical barrier makes it a lot harder.)

Alternate version of Star Trek pilot released.

Yet another study shows how modern chemicals are feminizing boys. Unfortunately, since our society is dominated by feminist values, this isn't considered a problem. I hope the pendulum swings back toward balance before chemistry makes it impossible.

Real ID doesn't make us safer.

Insight into the FISA debate.

Will everyone please stop freaking out of Ayn Rand? Thank you. She's suddenly everywhere, and I imagine overexposure will be bad for her. Trying to read one of her books is like being repeatedly hit over the head with it or listening to an interminable speech by a combination of the Pope and Stalin. It always surprised me that such a champion of freedom and atheism came off so rigid, dogmatic and repetitive. Fortunately I understood freedom long before I'd ever heard of her, so I never felt obligated to finish one of her books. Love her ideas. Can't stand her fiction.

Free kibbles

POLITICS:

Sarah Palin's new book is outstripping Steven King and Dan Brown in advance orders. The 2012 campaign is on. She's going to set the Republican party on its ear. She might just enable the creation of strong, fiscally responsible and socially liberal, third party.

Free kibbles

SOCIALISM:

Texas Governor Rick Perry doesn't mince words when he tells a crowd in Midland, "This is an administration hell-bent on taking America towards a socialist country." Sounds like he's gearing up for a run at the presidency in 2012.

ECONOMY:

Zimbabwe abandons its destroyed currency, abolishes its central bank, adopts a free market money system and its economy turns around in mere months.

"In February 2009 Zimbabwe was the only country in the world without debt. Nobody owed anyone anything. Following the abandonment of the Zimbabwe Dollar as the local currency all local debt was wiped out and the country started with a clean slate.

It is now a country without a functioning Central Bank and without a local currency that can be produced at will at the behest of politicians. Since February 2009 there has been no lender of last resort in Zimbabwe, causing banks to be ultra cautious in their lending policies. The US Dollar is the de facto currency in use although the Euro, GB Pound and South African Rand are accepted in local transactions.

Price controls and foreign exchange regulations have been abandoned. Zimbabwe literally joined the real world at the stroke of a pen. Money now flows in and out of the country without restriction. Super market shelves, bare in January, are now bursting with products."

Do you think the American people will learn from this and force our government to similar policies? Hell no.

Here's a review of the role ACORN and government policies played in creating the financial crisis. Unfortunately it doesn't mention the main culprit - the Fed.

TAX AND SPEND:

ACORN claims it has a constitutional right to federal money in law suit.

October budget deficit sets new record.

Besides California and New York, nine other states face fiscal disaster. I'm not surprised that nine of the eleven are blue states, and the other two are purple. No reds states in the list.

HEALTH CARE:

Economic burden of House Obamacare bill, a tremendous tax on labor and wage controls, will put less productive people out of work, further harming the poor.

"The effect of Obamacare on the prices of produced goods is obviously inflationary. Increasing the cost of employing every single laborer by $300 a piece is certain to increase the price of all produced goods. Combining price increases with rising unemployment is hardly a laudable strategy for improving the lives of poor citizens."

No kidding.

We need more sites like this dedicated to ending health care oppression.

Then-candidate Obama rips Hillary Clinton for supporting a health insurance mandate.

With the Bush tax cuts expiring and Pelosi's surtax on high incomes, the capital gains tax rate will jump to 69 percent in 2011. No wonder nobody is investing in America.

EDUCATION:

Obama has an unprecedented amount of money with which to further harm our schools, and that's exactly what's going to happen.

WAR:

Fort Hood shooter had business cards printed saying "Solder of Allah", and common term among jihadists, and he accessed multiple jihadi websites under different screen names. How stupid are we to trust our security to the FBI and CIA? This guy might as well have been running around with a bright, flashing neon sign over his head saying "Death to America" and our intelligence agencies and the army would have ignored it.

Muslim leaders call for maximum sentence against shooter. So do I, and I want treason to be one of the charges he's convicted of. Is this going to be a military trial? I sure hope so.

Obama and AG Holder decide to try Khalid Sheikh Mohammad in civilian court. Can you imagine if we had to try every Nazi and Japanese soldier in WWII in civilian court. Or even just the Nuremberg 24? I'm never shocked by government stupidity, but this is a new level of stupidity. I hate to say this, but the best thing that could happen given this circumstance is for the judge to through the case out and let him go free. That way we would never have to repeat this incredible stupidity. If the trial occurs and Mohammad is convicted, every soldier in any war in the future will have access to lawyers and the US criminal justice system. It's beyond insane.

And how could a judge allow Mohammad to stand trial. He was held without trial for seven years or so. He was waterboarded. He was subjected to other harsh interrogation techniques. If that happened to you or me, a judge would have to let us go and bring charges against our captors. The law's the same for Mohammad, and a judge should do the same. Let's hope whatever judge they get follows the law and releases this war criminal so we can put an end to this disastrous policy.

"What matters is that they will be afforded the panoply of rights enjoyed by defendants in U.S. courts, including a prohibition on the use of illegally obtained evidence."

That's exactly what we don't want. We do not want to pretend that enemy combatants get the protection of our constitution. They surrendered all rights up to and including their right to life when they declared war on the US. If we allow this precedent to be set, we'll never win another war. Our country will collapse under the weight of the justice system the next time.

MISC:

The number of smokers is on the rise. Apparently the war on smokers is backfiring. Smoking must be becoming cool again.

Obama had documents shredded related to the firing of that inspector general.

Free kibbles

ECONOMY:

Russian President Medvedev outlines radical embrace of economic freedom in Russia.

""Instead of an archaic society, in which leaders think and decide for everybody, we shall become a society of intelligent, free and responsible people."
...
"Inefficient enterprises must go through bankruptcy proceedings or leave the market," he said. "We won't be protecting them forever.""

Wow. That's a great idea. We should try that here. It's just stunning how far we've enabled the two parties to drag us down and behind the rest of the world.

TAX AND SPEND:

How Orwellian is this story? The government borrows $700 billion, gives half of it away to politically connected companies and now Obama claims he wants to uses some of the rest to lower the deficit. That's like blowing up a dam then trying to claim credit for putting a piece of the dam back up. But deficit reduction is the best possible use after all the damage government has done.

WAR:

Fort Hood shooter to be charged with premeditated murder. That's fine as far as it goes, but what about treason? If they don't charge this guy with treason, it will be a continuation of the institutional failure due to political correctness.

Free kibbles

ECONOMY:

All those leftists who always want America to be more like Europe must be proud of our European-style unemployment rate of 10.2 percent. Countries that refused to implement Obama-style stimulus boondoggles have lower unemployment than us, and a far lower change in unemployment than us. Obama promises and he delivers.

The US is falling behind the world in trade deals, but talking about trade deals is misleading. Governments don't trade. Individuals trade. Businesses trade. I don't need a trade deal to buy goods from a Mexican producer and an Indian doesn't need a trade deal to buy goods from me. If government involves itself in trade, all it can do is hinder the process, make it more expensive and suppress trade to the detriment of us all. Other than regulating the sale of big weapons systems or restricting trade to enemy countries, I don't see why the government should be involved in trade at all.

TAX AND SPEND:

Even the most hardworking, conscientious bureaucrat can't help his fellow men because he doesn't know what they want and what their capabilities are. The government system of force keeps him from doing good unlike a system of voluntary exchange which provides instant feedback on whether or not a producer is providing the quality goods and services the people want. Because the system precludes the angelic bureaucrat from succeeding at his goal of providing quality goods and services, it becomes an inherently frustrating and corrupting job.

"It became obvious to me at the onset that certain individuals remain in government for an extended period of time, forming their own pressure groups to secure their survival. To a great extent, the bureaucrat reflects the will of his political master. In order to move up the hierarchy, he must gain the favor of City Hall. Those that succeed form the bureaucratic core; they attain higher positions and gain the ability to exert undue influence on policy outcomes.
...
My experience is that bureaucratic action is merely the will of political pressure groups. Various groups pressure politicians to enact legislation that benefits them. Those that are successful are able to impose regulations that hinder their competition. The bureaucracy is the principal administrator and enforcer of the regulations subsequently imposed."

The biggest businesses always lobby for more regulations because it hurts their competition more than them, giving them bigger market share and allowing them to charge higher prices.

New York state is on the verge of going California - bankrupt.

HEALTH CARE:

Senate Democrats blames Obama for the failure of health care oppression. While this is certainly hopeful news, don't buy the hype. We knew Obama would split his own party with his radical agenda and thuggery, but health care oppression is not dead. If we get complacent, health care oppression will become law.

I know I'm going to like this essay because it begins with this:

"As an American, I am embarrassed that the U.S. House of Representatives has 220 members who actually believe the government can successfully centrally plan the medical and insurance industries."

I couldn't agree more. I'm quoting that in my next email to my senators.

How Pelosi used our tax dollars to buy the votes of reluctant Democrats to pass health care oppression.

Apparently Big Pharma is not a big loser if Obamacare passes. That's an illusion in the bills meant to satisfy Obama's base, but a back room deal actually takes care of the pharmaceutical companies if they play ball with the administration.

GLOBAL WARMING:

EPA lawyers explain flaws of cap and trade. They're going to get in trouble. Obama has the EPA working to implement "environmental justice" which is just another euphemism for transferring wealth.

The idea of carbon tariffs is gaining steam with Democrats. I'm sure Obama loves this idea because it would accelerate the collapse of the US economy.

FREE SPEECH:

In a story about why the FBI sat on emails between the Fort Hood shooter and radical 9/11 imam, the anchor read a statement from the FBI where the FBI claimed that acting on those emails would have been a violation of first amendment privileges. Privileges. Now we know what happened to our right to free speech while we slept. This isn't the first time the FBI referred to first amendment privileges. Why isn't this the lead story in the news?

And thinking about this, does it make sense that it's illegal to holler "fire" in a crowded theater? Doesn't it make more sense to hold the hollerer accountable for any consequences like paying back the theater for the lost business and if anybody gets hurt than banning the behavior up front?

WAR:

Why is Obama just now considering a compromise that sends 30,000 to 35,000 more US troops to Afghanistan? What has be been doing for months that's more important than saving the lives of US troops and Afghans? And if he's going to send 35,000, why wouldn't he just send the 40,000 the general asked for? He's playing a political game in an attempt to appease both sides, and all it's going to do is anger both sides. If this is what he decides, I'll have to chalk that one up to Obama is dumb. Bring our troops home and stop attacking and making enemies of people who never had any intention of harming us.

This from Jonah Goldberg about the Fort Hood shooter:"[The shooter] demonstrated that being a trained psychiatrist provides no immunity to ancient hatreds and religious fanaticism, nor does psychiatric training provide much acuity in spotting such things in others. For example, the London Telegraph reports that, in what was supposed to be a medical lecture, Hassan instead gave an hourlong briefing on the Koran, explaining to colleagues at Walter Reed Army Medical Center that nonbelievers should be beheaded, have boiling oil poured down their throats and set on fire."If this report is true, all those people in the room should be dishonorably discharged. That a major in the US military could get away with this is unconscionable.

Here's the quote from the London Telegraph:

"Major Nidal Malik Hasan, the gunman who killed 13 at America's Fort Hood military base, once gave a lecture to other doctors in which he said non-believers should be beheaded and have boiling oil poured down their throats.

He also told colleagues at America's top military hospital that non-Muslims were infidels condemned to hell who should be set on fire. The outburst came during an hour-long talk Hasan, an Army psychiatrist, gave on the Koran in front of dozens of other doctors at Walter Reed Army Medical Centre in Washington DC, where he worked for six years before arriving at Fort Hood in July.

Colleagues had expected a discussion on a medical issue but were instead given an extremist interpretation of the Koran, which Hasan appeared to believe."

I find it hard to blame political correctness for this. This is dereliction of duty and the clearest sign ever that the military, even our war fighters, are paralyzed by being part of a huge government bureaucracy. But this quote hints it may be even worse than it seems:

"But General George Casey, the Army's Chief of Staff, said it was "speculation" that military authorities failed to pick up on warning signs. "I don't want to say that we missed it," he said."

What if they didn't miss it? Let's say the army was well aware of his extremism and they allowed him to continue anyway. That's even worse. That makes the army complicit. Who needs to allow a Muslim extremist in their midst to kill 13 people before they can learn not to do that? Normal people know better before that happens? Political correctness is a problem with the reporting of the incident, but this is institutional failure. Or maybe we can say that when political correctness invades institutions, it causes institutional failure. I think there's got to be more to it than that.

Cato on Fort Hood and political correctness. Good point about this being an act of guerrilla warfare, not a terrorist attack.

"It was stated simply in an NPR report yesterday: “A key official on a [Walter Reed] review committee reportedly asked how it might look to terminate a key resident who happened to be a Muslim.” If this isn’t ”political correctness,” nothing is."

So I was right. This was political correctness magnified to the point of institutional failure.

FOREIGN POLICY:

Who needs the UN to foist one world government on us when US bureaucracies like the FTC can do it just by agreeing to work with foreign bureaucracies?

MISC:

Another example of the president usurping the role of priests and preachers.

Lew Rockwell on the implications of the poll showing that only 11 percent of people in the world support free markets. As I wrote when that article first appeared, probably the most successful and dangerous lie told by the haters of free markets like Bush and Obama is that we have free markets today. That lie is powering the west's suicidal spiral into socialism.

"What can we learn? Far from not having learned anything, people have largely forgotten the experience and have developed a love for the ancient fairy tale that all things can be fixed through collectivism and central planning.
...
There is nothing new in this. In the history of the world, freedom is the exception, not the rule. It must be fought for anew in every generation. Its enemies are everywhere, but the leading enemy is ignorance. For this reason, the main weapon we have at our disposal is education."

Picture of the center of the Milky Way.

The Constitution does not give federal courts power to stop states from performing actions like putting a picture of stained glass and a cross on a license plate.

Free kibbles

SOCIALISM:

Taxpayers get to pay another $5 billion, taken from us by force, to government owned Freddie Mac.

TAX AND SPEND:

I'm sure politicians know that higher income taxes don't translate into lower budget deficits.

HEALTH CARE:

Health insurance and drug companies are the big losers in the House health care oppression bill. No wonder the leftists like it. NRO is heartened by how long it took the House to pass this bill and how close the vote was. I'm not. Close only counts in horseshoes and hand grenades. Health care oppression won. Freedom lost. We lost round one, and now we have two more chances to kill it, in the Senate and if we lose there, in the conference vote in both houses, or health care oppression will become law.

CRIMINAL JUSTICE:

Did Obama guarantee the Fort Hood shooter will never find an unbiased jury? File this under Obama is stupid. Lawyers, of all people, should know better. But far more people watched that disaster on the news than listen to Obama's radio address.

WAR:

Mark Steyn tries to point out a fatal flaw in our terrorism strategy - turning a blind eye to radical Muslims in our midst, which is a real problem - but he fails to identify the real fatal flaw: waging war against entire countries, against people who are not terrorists, and doing so for years moving into decades at a time, radicalizing Muslims overseas and at home who would not otherwise be radical and turning them into enemies. Our mission in Afghanistan has nothing to do with terrorism. We ousted al Qaeda from Afghanistan seven years ago. We're trying to nation-build, force our will, style of government and way of life on the Afghans, not fight terrorists. We're waging war on the Taliban, a group who never harmed us. The invasion of Iraq had nothing to do with terrorism, though it morphed into a fight against al Qaeda after we toppled Saddam, but we defeated al Qaeda in Iraq a year ago but we're still there. Our fatal flaw is not limiting this war to the terrorists who are trying to kill us and instead setting fire to half the Middle East while trying to force our values on those people. I'm not in any way apologizing for the shooter, but if we had left Afghanistan in 2002 after we accomplished the mission of wiping out the people who had attacked us on 9/11, if we had never invaded Iraq, the Fort Hood shooter wouldn't have become a terrorist. Policy matters. Blowback happens.

Intelligence agencies didn't inform the army of the Fort Hood shooter's emails to terrorist imam.

"A top defense official said federal investigators didn't tell the Pentagon they were looking into months of contacts between Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan and Anwar al-Awlaki. The imam knew three of the Sept. 11 hijackers and hailed Maj. Hasan as a "hero" after the shooting last week at Fort Hood that left 13 people dead."

Just like on 9/11, our intelligence agencies had the information necessary to prevent this attack, they just failed to act on it. They don't need more power, and they didn't need more power after 9/11. They need replaced. They should consider themselves lucky the army doesn't wipe them out. Our intelligence agencies are unaccountable Cold War dinosaurs which don't work for us. They're monstrous bureaucracies that only care about feeding and growing themselves. Dinosaurs have brains smaller than a walnut. We can't train them. We can't change their culture. All we can do is kill them and replace them with small, nimble, accountable organizations that address our current intelligence needs then die a generation from now. The next generation needs to replace them with different intelligence agencies to meet the needs of that generation so the new agencies don't become dinosaurs. Jefferson said every generation should reinvent government. He was right.

FOREIGN POLICY:

Russian President Medvedev again threatens tougher sanctions against Iran. Nothing came of it last time, so there's no way to know if he means it this time. And the Chinese remain silent. The IAEA challenges Iran on evidence it has already tested a key component of linking a nuclear warhead to a missile. Are you telling me that after the mullahs have worked for a nuclear missile capability for over 20 years, they're still working toward the same goal? But they say they're not. Could they possibly be lying? Could their actions actually show their goals better than their words? Who would've thought. Here I was under the impression that every politician in every country was an angel who never lied. I'm scandalized. At least all American politicians are all perfect angels who never lie and work only in the interest of the American people, never themselves. Thank the Lord. Just like the old joke says:

"How can you tell when a politician is telling the truth? His lips are moving."

Amen.


MISC:

The press ignores hundreds of thousands or millions of mainstream Americans marching on Washington but publicizes a couple hundred blacks claiming President Obama supports white power.

Where does this federal judge think he gets the power to create new, cumulative voting system in this village? That's what we have elected representatives for.

I love this idea to put cameras (and I hope microphones) in every room on capital hill. Of course this will never pass, and if it did pass, the aristocrats would just move their business into other offices to hide their actions that take advantage of the people for their own benefit, which is all their actions.

Did you know there are 237 millionaires in Congress? It makes sense to me to elect successful businessmen to Congress, but that's not what's going on here. These people are using our tax money to enrich themselves. They aren't providing high quality goods and services to Americans at a low price to enrich themselves. They're doing it by theft.

Take the Berlin Wall quiz. A pretty honest quiz.

If you're rich and powerful, you can get your congressman to write a specific law to bail you out. If you're a normal person like you and me, you get to pay for the bailout of that rich and powerful person. Don't you feel special? Thanks government.

The origins of WWIII. Part II. I don't buy it. This may be the goal of some freaks in Washington, but the American people are already fed up with the endless war in Afghanistan and are only accepting of the war in Iraq because we have an agreement to withdraw all US troops in a couple years. We don't live in the WWI and WWII era when aristocrats can just take us to war over the will of the people. Americans are not going to accept an expansion of the Middle East wars unless some terrorists from other countries successfully attack us, and I doubt that's going to happen.

D.C. sniper executed. Good. His actions should have been classified as an act of terror too.

Four Facts Global Warming Frauds Don...

Four Facts Global Warming Frauds Don't Want You to Know

by Mark Luedtke

A dangerous misconception in the US today is that when we defeated the Soviet Union, we also defeated communism. Nothing could be further from the truth. Many of the ideologues who want to see Marxism implemented world-wide invaded and hijacked the environmental movement and instigated the man-made global warming fraud. Over the last decade, these Marxists, capitalizing on the earth's natural warming cycle and disasters like Katrina, organized with power-hungry professional politicians, news organizations craving sensational stories, and self-interested scientists who wanted to climb the economic ladder to create a perfect political storm. That storm threatens the entire world in the form of CO2 cap and trade legislation.
But a funny thing happened on the way to implementing the biggest wealth redistribution scheme in history: the American people noticed it was getting colder. More Americans today believe in haunted houses than believe human activity is warming the planet. With public support for cap and trade falling like a hailstone, the global warming frauds are frantic to push through cap and trade legislation before the window closes. With that in mind, Senators Barbara Boxer and John Kerry introduced cap and trade legislation in the Senate while British Prime Minister Gordon Brown, doing his best Chicken Little imitation, screamed that we have only 50 days to act or the sky is going to fall. The frauds are counting on us to not see through their transparent performances or learn these four facts:

The planet is cooling, not warming

The warmest years on record were 1998 and 1934. After 1934, the planet cooled until the '70s (when alarmists tried to convince us we were entering a new ice age), then it heated up until a confluence of the warm phases of natural climate cycles that change over decades in both the Atlantic and Pacific oceans coincided with the yearly warm cycle of el Nino in 1998 to tie the record. Since then, the planet has been slowly but steadily cooling.
To hide these facts, the global warming frauds pointed to the infamous hockey stick graph which showed that temperatures had been relatively constant for centuries until the last couple of decades. But the NASA scientist who created this graph hid his methods for years until finally a skeptic uncovered them and discovered he intentionally manipulated the data so that any data set would produce a hockey-stick graph. Subsequently another set of government funded scientists produced another hockey stick graph from tree ring data. For nearly a decade, they refused to produce the data they used so other scientists could reproduce their findings. That graph forms the basis for the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) claim that the earth is warming.
But the same skeptic finally forced those scientists to produce their original data and discovered they had cherry-picked their data to produce the hockey stick they wanted. Using more complete data from their data set produced a graph with no hockey stick. Shortly afterward, this government funded scientific institution deleted all their raw data so nobody else could see it. This is a scientific scandal of epic proportions, but the press must not think it will sell papers.
This is the inevitable and predictable consequence of funding science with government money. Government money can never be separated from the powers that dole it out. Partisan agendas attach to government money like poison and corrupt whatever the money touches. The more money involved, like the billions the US government spends on global warming research every year, the more corrupt the results.

Cap and trade wouldn't solve the problem of man-made global warming even if it existed

The frauds claim man-made CO2 is dangerously heating the planet, and we must adopt cap and trade in order to save the planet. This story is wrong on both counts. Not only is the planet cooling, but even if the man-made CO2 was dangerously heating the planet, cap and trade legislation wouldn't help.  A recent analysis applied the IPCC models to the House cap and trade bill, Waxman-Markey, and showed that reducing US CO2 output by 83 percent by 2050 would only lower global temperatures by nine hundredths of a degree, a meaningless change. Just like health care oppression isn't about making us healthier, cap and trade isn't about saving the planet. Both are about elites seizing more power and money.

Cap and trade will kill jobs and impoverish Americans

Americans would suffer severe pain for that nine hundredths of a degree. In a priceless moment of candor before the election, candidate Obama informed his supporters that his energy program was designed to kill the coal industry and drive up gas prices. Half of all electricity in the US is produced by coal. Cap and trade is intended to put Americans out of work and make every product in America more expensive, impoverishing us all. Because it's the biggest tax in history, it should be called tax and trade.
To distract Americans from these facts, President Obama borrowed an idea from Spain and promoted the myth of green job creation (remember Obama's Marxist green jobs adviser Van Jones?). The Spanish government promoted this myth for the last 10 years, but a recent study showed that for every green job created in Spain, 2.2 Spaniards lost their jobs, which only makes sense. When government takes money out of the productive economy, wastes a bunch of it on non-productive government jobs, then injects a portion of if back into the economy in an inefficient industry, the result can only be lost jobs, lost productivity, and a poorer society.

CO2 is no more a problem or pollutant than O2

Both C02 and O2 are required for the process of life, and the more present in the atmosphere, the more life thrives. Far higher concentrations of CO2 existed in the atmosphere in the past than today.The planet has natural feedback processes that prevent runaway global warming because if it didn't, we wouldn't be here to have this debate.
President Obama, Al Gore and the global warming frauds know these facts. They're harming us on purpose to gain more political power for themselves and line their pockets and those of their cronies with our money.



References:
More on how British scientists cherry picked tree ring data to create the phony hockey stick graph. Taxpayer funded climate research facility destroys original data, collected on the taxpayer dime, used many papers that promote the fiction of man-made global warming.

UK PM Brown says we have 50 days to stop global warming or we're all going to die a horrible, hot death.

he BBC seems embarrassed to report that the planet has been cooling since 1998.

Data on the warmest years
still has 1998 listed as the warmest, even though NASA found and
corrected an error in that data and 1934 and 1998 are tied as the
warmest years on record. 2006 is 3rd. 1921 is 4th. 1931 is 5th.
Printing the real numbers doesn't have near the propaganda effect of
the incorrect numbers, does it? Here's the corrected data, obviously ignored by the press in an attempt to mislead the public.

Waxman-Markey will have no impact on climate. Cap and trade likely to be the biggest tax in history. Spain loses 2.2 jobs for every green job created. More Americans believe in haunted houses, 37 percent, than believe that man is warming the planet, 36 percent.

Free kibbles

ECONOMY:

Is this your idea of a recovery?

TAX AND SPEND:

Lies and more lies about Obama's stimulus boondoggle:

"President Barack Obama's economic recovery program saved 935 jobs at the Southwest Georgia Community Action Council, an impressive success story for the stimulus plan. Trouble is, only 508 people work there.

The Georgia nonprofit's inflated job count is among persisting errors in the government's latest effort to measure the effect of the $787 billion stimulus plan despite White House promises last week that the new data would undergo an "extensive review" to root out errors discovered in an earlier report.

About two-thirds of the 14,506 jobs claimed to be saved under one federal office, the Administration for Children and Families at Health and Human Services, actually weren't saved at all, according to a review of the latest data by The Associated Press. Instead, that figure includes more than 9,300 existing employees in hundreds of local agencies who received pay raises and benefits and whose jobs weren't saved."

Lying is business as usual in Washington.

Far reaching consequences of the welfare state.

"For many of the working poor, the implicit marginal tax rate is greater than 100 percent. The long-run consequence of undermining the positive incentive to work is, of course, the creation of an underclass acclimated to not working; the supplement of cash and noncash benefits with income from crime and the underground economy; and the government resorting to negative incentives such as mandatory work programs."

Government creates poverty.

FEDERAL RESERVE:

Another perspective predicting wild inflation.

"It goes without saying that deflation would have been very painful for any debtor. Consider the most indebted entities: the government, banks, powerful corporations, homeowners, and private equity funds run by insiders. Given these debtors, is it any wonder that the government chooses bailouts rather than letting the market work its exorcism? Every time there is even the slightest deflation, we'll hear Bernanke et al. saying that all hell will break loose unless something is done about it.

If the market were allowed to work, loan defaults would cause bank failures en masse. Bank failures would also wipe out the savings of depositors, because the banks' debt holders will have seniority in bankruptcy proceedings. Yes, all hell will break loose, but only for the people who took imprudent risks like borrowing recklessly or depositing money in unsound banks.

If one bank is allowed to go under and its depositors allowed to be wiped out, you can bet your last dollar that there will be a run on every bank the next day, exacerbating the problem exponentially. The entire banking system would be ruined in a couple of days, with utter chaos, pandemonium, and possibly violence being the rule rather than the exception."

Thanks to fractional reserve banking. Can't have the powers that be that live off of debt pay the price with deflation, can we? Nope. Inflation it is.

HEALTH CARE:

Health care producers petition the government. This will be about as effective as banging their heads against a wall. It starts off wrong by assuming our representatives have good motives. At least it questions their motives at the end which would be wise if our representatives were to read it at all which they won't.

POLITICS:

Rothbard explains why conservatives-Republicans pay lip service to free markets while continually attacking them, and it's basically the same reason I said they pay lip service to small government - to show they're in the club and hypnotize people into continuing to give them more power.

"In domestic affairs, the free-market rhetoric has become simply that: after-dinner talk carrying no enthusiasm or true conviction. Indeed, the promise of laissez-faire now performs the same function for the new American Right as the promise of unlimited abundance under communism did for Stalin. While enslaving and exploiting the Soviet people, Stalin held out a splendid future of utopian abundance that would make current sacrifices worthwhile.

The present-day Right holds out the eventual promise of freedom and the free market after communists shall have been exterminated. If there are any survivors emerging from their civil-defense shelters after the holocaust, they will presumably be allowed to engage in free-market activities, provided, of course, that some other "enemy" shall not have raised its head in the meanwhile."

If you don't believe it's all talk, show me when a Republican other than Reagan (that was a revolution, not the norm) ever actually freed the market. Republicans hated Reagan, and apparently conservatives don't like him either. Paying lip service to Reagan is another meaningless phrase to show you're in the conservative club. That's why they universally support big government candidates like Bush, McCain, Romney, Huckabee, etc. over candidates who actually want to free the market and reduce the size of government. You are what you vote. Rhetoric is meaningless.

WAR:

Now we find out that the Fort Hood shooter had attended a radical mosque in Virginia, he had tried to contract al Qaeda, and intelligence agents knew it. Yet this man was still in the Army counseling US soldiers. This guy is the poster child for who shouldn't be in the military, yet nothing was done. This highlights again how inept our government is. I hope they charge this guy with treason as well as murder, but government is so stupid, I wouldn't bet on it. The imam who advised the shooter also advised three of the 9/11 terrorists. Boortz says what we're all thinking and I've written:

"OK ... excuse me, but I have a question. Here we have this Army Major - a Muslim - a Muslim who apparently posted some rather radical and violent messages on the Internet. Now we learn that he very well have attended this radical Mosque in Virginia. All of this ... and he's still in a position to purchase handguns and murder 13 Americans at Ft. Hood? Where in the hell were our intelligence forces while all of this was going on? Do we have another incidence here of various intelligence agencies keeping tabs on parts of this Muslim goon's life, but not communicating with each other?"

Lieberman says it too.

MEDIA:

Mises's theory of the business cycle makes it into the Wall Street Journal. The mainstreaming of the Austrian School of Economics continues.

MISC:

These people did lose weight by exercising. The headline makes no sense. Exercise burns calories. If you burn more than you take in, you'll lose weight. Of course I always add calories when I exercise, and I imagine other people do to. You get hungrier.

Somali pirates attack tanker 1,000 miles off coast. It's just amazing to me that ships traveling off Somalia aren't carrying snipers and hand held rocket launchers to sink pirate attack boats. Some retired military snipers could make a small fortune in a short period of time hiring out on these ships.

It was kind of sickening watching some of the anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall today. Russian President Medvedev, British PM Gordon Brown and Sec. of State Hillary Clinton all spoke, but these three leaders all have much more in common with the Soviets that with free people. I don't know much about Medvedev, but Brown and Clinton never saw an opportunity to take power from the people through government they didn't want to seize. I had to turn the TV off while Clinton struggled not to choke on the word freedom. While Germans celebrate the fall of the wall, the tyrant wannabes continue to transform western countries closer and closer to communism, and we pretend they're champions of freedom.

Obama has turned the slippery slope of government intervention vertical. Just like we knew he would.

"This is not a slippery slope. This is falling off a cliff. As one news story pointed out: "The restrictions were the latest in more than a year's worth of government intervention in matters once considered inviolable aspects of the country's free-market economy and represent a signal moment in the history of the American economic experiment."

Sometimes it's hard to make a case for slippery slopes, because you're trying to oppose an immediate benefit by warning of a future cost. Not this time.

If you put a frog in lukewarm water, and then gradually turn up the temperature to boiling, the frog won't sense the danger, and will eventually be cooked to death, or so the metaphor goes. Throw a frog into boiling water, and it will jump out immediately, rather than be scalded."

Thus the tea parties. Government has been heating us up with little more than croak out of us for a century, but Bush and Obama turned up the heat to fast. People are finally complaining. Better late than never, I guess.