Free kibbles

TAX AND SPEND:

Greeks violently protest more austerity measures. Coming soon to a city near you.

For once I agree with Bernie Sanders who said,

"We need to address the issue of the rich getting richer and everybody else getting poorer."

We need to get the government out of our economy so people will earn wages based on productivity instead of their political connections.

Government is paying millions to postal non-workers.

Harry Reid may seem out of touch with reality...

""The massive layoffs we have had in America today, of course, are rooted in the last administration, and it is very clear that private sector jobs are doing just fine. It's the public sector jobs where we have lost huge numbers, and that's what this legislation is all about," he said."

But I'm going with evil, not stupid.

REGULATION:

Samsung forced to spend more money on design to avoid infringing on Apple patents. The result is a more expensive device.

In the wake of the exotic animal release problem in Ohio today, the USA Today is already beating the drum for federal regulations.

"State laws regulating private ownership of exotic animals vary from state to state, and federal laws don't cover possession of certain animals, relying instead on state and local officials to monitor individuals."

Nobody got hurt by those animals in this incredibly unusual situation, but the press believes the federal government must regulate everything all the time.

FEDERAL RESERVE:

Bank of America moves $75 trillion in risky derivatives to Federally guaranteed status. JP Morgan too.

"What this means for you is that when Europe finally implodes and banks fail, U.S. taxpayers will hold the bag for trillions in CDS insurance contracts sold by Bank of America and JP Morgan.  Even worse, the total exposure is unknown because Wall Street successfully lobbied during Dodd-Frank passage so that no central exchange would exist keeping track of net derivative exposure."

This is what we've done to ourselves by voting for Republicans and Democrats to rule us generation after generation.

EDUCATION:

Student debt reaches record levels. Government's goal of trapping every American in debt is nearly complete. Lew Rockwell comments:

"Federal aid to higher ed has enriched the administrators and the professoriate, but decimated the kids, who end up with huge debts for dumbed-down lectures in huge, anonymous halls. Student debt now totals $1 trillion. If we want a rationalization of higher-ed, and to free the slaves, let's repudiate these debts, and end all student aid. Once again, smart kids could work their way through school, their academic overlords in (fewer) colleges and universities would earn market salaries, and the taxpayers would be partially freed, too."

And the quality of education would greatly improve.

GLOBAL WARMING AND ENERGY:

Obama has ordered the EPA to back off on some of his most unpopular regulations. He's still done plenty of damage.

A Spanish company will drill for oil in Cuban waters less than 100 miles from Florida, but US companies can't.

POLICE STATE:

Sadistic judge orders Lindsay Lohan to work at the morgue for not respecting his authoriti.

After murdering American-Yemeni cleric Awlaki, Obama subsequently murdered his 16 year old son, another American citizen.

"The boy was killed by a US drone strike while he was out to dinner with his 17-year old cousin. Nine others died."

And we lie to ourselves and say they hate us for our freedom.

Clarence Darrow explains how our so-called justice system has nothing to do with justice. This was written in 1903, but it applies perfectly to today's system.

POLITICS:

Walter Williams says leftists criticize CEO salaries for political purposes, and for the same reason they don't criticize celebrity salaries. But both CEO salaries and celebrity salaries are tremendously, artificially inflated by government intervention in the economy.

Even a big-time Democrat strategist says that embracing the Occupiers will hurt Obama in the election.

"Doug Schoen on Fox Business with Stewart Varney. SCHOEN: "They [Occupy protesters] are far-left Stewart. 1/3 believe in violence, all believe in civil disobedience and they believe in radical redistribution, that's not the way you get elected in America""

Here's an op-ed.

"Our research shows clearly that the movement doesn't represent unemployed America and is not ideologically diverse. Rather, it comprises an unrepresentative segment of the electorate that believes in radical redistribution of wealth, civil disobedience and, in some instances, violence. Half (52%) have participated in a political movement before, virtually all (98%) say they would support civil disobedience to achieve their goals, and nearly one-third (31%) would support violence to advance their agenda.The vast majority of demonstrators are actually employed, and the proportion of protesters unemployed (15%) is within single digits of the national unemployment rate (9.1%)."

This analysis shows that this isn't a homogeneous group, but the vast majority are leftists or outright Marxists, but many don't support Obama.

While Obama and Democrats are embracing the Occupy Wall Street movement and demagoguing Wall Street, they're still asking for donations from Wall Street execs. The execs are warning they can't have it both ways and are threatening to stop donating to Obama and Democrats. Naturally the Dems are promising political payback if they don't donate. Obama probably doesn't care. He's going to raise a billion dollars anyway. But Democrats in general and the Democrat Party will care. Now Wall Street is buying Romney.

LOCAL:

Ohio Supreme Court to hear case challenging smoking ban in bars. More. Appellate filing.

Free kibbles

FASCISM:

An Occupy protester wants to run the Jew bankers out of the country. The neocons like to scare us into thinking a new Nazi nation might rise and invade the world, but it's happening here. Others are calling for bringing back the Guillotine. I'll give this guy the benefit of the doubt and say he's probably exaggerating, but this is the kind of racism and violent rhetoric that's commonplace on the left and produced so much violence in the 20th century. When the Greeks first started violent rioting, I said it would come here soon. It's starting now.

ECONOMY:

In a hopeful sign for the future, more than twice as many Americans blame the government for our economic problems than blame Wall Street. Despite the best efforts of government schools, most Americans aren't dumb.

Another prediction that the US economy will collapse as fast as Argentina's.

TAX AND SPEND:

Republicans pretend they're cutting spending, but in fact federal spending is up 5 percent this year over last.

"In fact, in the first nine months of this year, federal spending was $120 billion higher than in the same period in 2010, the data show. That's an increase of almost 5%. And deficits during this time were $23.5 billion higher."

Anybody out there who still believes Republicans want to reduce spending is a fool. Republicans are conning their voters. They've been conning their voters for generations. Republicans are partners with Democrats on a divide and conquer con that has looted America into a third world country. The only reason we don't realize it yet is the Fed keeps buying government debt which makes the looting invisible.

"Nor does the claim that state governments sharply cut spending stand up well to closer scrutiny.Overall state spending continued to climb right through the recession, when all money from state general funds and other funds, federal grants and state bonds is combined.
Total state outlays in 2010 were almost 10% higher than in 2008, according to the National Association of State Budget Officers' annual State Expenditure Report."

It's all a scam. They get rich. We get poor. And anybody who votes for a Republican or Democrat is enabling the scam.

Isn't it ironic that Occupiers are killing half a million dollars of taxpayer funded Obama stimulus boondoggle sod?

It looks like the Europeans plan to emulate the Fed and print up trillions of euros. This will make the dollar appear stronger temporarily, but it will be an illusion.

FEDERAL RESERVE:

Bringing Friedman back into the monetary policy debate is not good. He carries the mantle of a free market champion, which he was in rhetoric, but in fact is a champion of Fed interventionism in economics. Friedman famously asked Phil Donahue why self-service is more virtuous in politics than in the marketplace, but he seemed oblivious to the implications of self-service of central bankers.

"But we've never been great fans of Milton Friedman (or at least not after we became "hip" to his agenda), mostly because of his strenuous attempts to justify central banking. Money as much as war is the health of the State. In fact, states seek ownership of money to FUND wars. The control of money by the State is paramount."

"Money is the health of the state." I like that. This goes hand in hand with Hoppe's explanation of why governments demand the control of money.

"It is also a fact that in the 21st century, the meme of central banking – the fear-based propaganda calling for its continued implementation – is shriller than ever. As never before in its history, central banking as a concept is under attack. It is no wonder that new and improved versions of central banking are being floated."

Exactly. Central bankers fear they might lose their printing press so they're invoking Friedman to save their phony baloney jobs.

"The biggest issue, however, is that central banking is evidently and obviously NOT set up for the benefit of the societies that it purports to support. Central banking is a methodology of elite centralization that stealthily bankrupts the middle class while supporting the ongoing globalization of government. This is why no matter what remedies are suggested, the destructiveness of central banking will never change. It's not a beneficial financial system; it's a weapon."

Great conclusion.

Talk about your pyramid scheme.

HEALTH CARE:

A month or so ago I lampooned the idea that listeria from cantaloupe was serious health issue Americans should be afraid of. At that time 12-16 people had died. It's impossible to lampoon such an issue because people are dying. It doesn't matter if it's 1 or 2 or 10. People are dying, and that's tragic. But I stand by my position that this is an absurd issue for the federal government and the media to cover. To date, only 25 people have died. Government's medical misadventure kills 100,000 Americans a year. This focus on listeria is nothing but propaganda to increase the government's control of our food supply to make us sicker and kill more Americans.

I predict that within five years the FDA will ban fast food, beef hamburgers.

GLOBAL WARMING:

Liberal causes clash: wind farm kills endangered bats.

Court correctly declares that there's no link between CO2 and polar bear endangerment. We can't depend on the courts.

POLICE STATE:

You know how government always pretends it provides the best security in the world and that only government can provide security? They can't even protect the president's equipment from being stolen.

""No classified or sensitive information was in the vehicle," the agency said in a statement. "We take incidents such as this very seriously, and a formal investigation is continuing in coordination with relevant law enforcement agencies.""

But they still failed to protect it. Do you think they can protect you? Protecting you is not their job. Protecting the teleprompter is.

Following the Cloward and Piven model, the Occupiers demand prosecutors drop charges against the hundreds police arrested or they threaten to take them all to trial, effectively shutting down New York courts. The police played right into the Marxists' hands when they arrested 700 demonstrators for blocking traffic. It may not work out that way because protest organizers don't decide who makes deals. Individuals do. Contrast how nasty this Occupy movement has become, small as it is, compared to the huge, civil tea party protests.

I'm skeptical of this report that says the Feds have chosen to obtain warrants before seizing emails. I imagine that's true when they want and not true when they don't want.

ILLEGAL IMMIGRATION:

Obama has deported a record number of illegal alien criminals. So what? All that means is there's a record number of illegal alien criminals in the US.

FOREIGN POLICY:

Clinton goes to Libya and accidentally speaks the truth.

"U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton visited Libya on Tuesday to urge its new government to establish firmer control over its people"

Government exists to loot and otherwise oppress the people. The government must kill the people who reject it.

POLITICS:

Herman Cain is using campaign money to buy stuff from his own company. He like to pretend he's an outsider, but he knows all the corrupt insider tricks.

The Occupy Wall Street crowd is more diverse, including Ron Paul libertarians and tea party members, than reported. Hopefully those small government members will convince the rest that government power is the real problem.

Contrary to what this article says, the Occupy Wall Street movement is not a revolution. They want more government, not less.

2008 Libertarian Party presidential nominee Bob Barr plans to run for Congress as a libertarian Republican.

These consequences of demographic changes in the US would be meaningless in a free society, but because we're a welfare state dominated by government, they add to our economic pain. But you can't look at this problem in a vacuum. We won't be able to afford this welfare state so political reality regarding these demographics will change.

These graphs of donations for Republican candidates are amazingly informative. Ron Paul, far and away, draws support from a much larger segment of the population than any other candidate.

MEDIA:

Washington Post blog covers all the candidates for tonight's debate and even includes one who isn't there: Huntsman. But it neglects to mention Ron Paul. In a free country, a reporter would be fired for this. In our government-dominated country, he'll probably get a promotion,

MISC:

Rothbard on land prices.

Claim that US forces helped Hitler and Ava Braun escape to Argentina.

"It was at this point that the pair were able to flee Berlin, travelling to Tonder in Denmark before returning to Travemunde in Germany.From here it is claimed that they flew to a Spanish military base at Reus, south of Barcelona, before General Franco supplied a plane to take them to Fuerteventura in the Canary Islands.A day later the two fugitives are said to have boarded a U-boat and the two body doubles were executed and their bodies subsequently burned.The book points to declassified FBI documents which contain references to Hitler having escaped Berlin to begin a new life in South America. It also includes testimony from the pilot who supposedly flew Hitler and Eva Braun out of Berlin to Mar Del Plata on the Argentinian coast.Here they say he lived in a wooden chalet in a remote village where they survived on the money from looted gold and jewellery.The book quotes a number of sources, such as cooks and doctors, who claim to have knew the Nazi leader before he died aged 73 on February 13, 1962. They claim that Hitler's bloodline survived through two daughters he had with Braun.If Hitler had escaped to Argentina, he would have been following in the footsteps of his henchmen, Mengele, Eichmann and Barbie who all fled after the war to South America."

Sounds intriguing. I wonder might motivate them to make something like this up.

"A film based on the claims called Grey Wolf is currently being made and is due to be released early next year."

Maybe a book and movie deal?

Centrally Planned Leftist Protests Fizzle

Centrally Planned Leftist Protests Fizzle
by Mark Luedtke

The leftists are desperate, angry and jealous. The 20th century will go down in history as the century in which socialism produced the most war casualties and mass murder in human history. The Marxists, socialists and hardcore leftists were forced into the closet. They’ve been planning and organizing behind the scenes, quietly infecting the environmentalist movement and our health care system as well as every other sector of our economy. They control both political parties. By printing money, raising taxes, increasing spending, increasing debt, increasing regulations and fighting never-ending wars, they’ve driven our economy into a new depression, but they haven’t been able to come out of the closet and make their socialist demands in protests like they did last century.

When the tea party exploded on the scene after the TARP bailouts, the leftists were shocked and angered. It was practically unheard of for people to protest for smaller government. For the entire 20th century, the leftists had the protest scene all to themselves. That’s because people who wanted smaller government had jobs. They couldn’t protest because they had to work. But the people on welfare had plenty of time on their hands to protest for bigger handouts. The welfare state, by design, produces ready-made protesters for bigger government. But after the economic collapse in 2008, lots of newly unemployed people had time to protest for smaller government.

The grass roots Tea Party movement adopted the protest tactic and did it better than the leftists. They gained press coverage and political power then used that power at the ballot box to thwart the leftist agenda.

That isn’t what the leftist central planners had planned. They had been following the playbooks of Marxist agitators Saul Alinsky and Cloward and Piven. These Marxists developed plans for collapsing a capitalist economy under the burden of government. The 2008 election cycle was supposed to be the culmination of all their efforts. Both Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama were Alinsky disciples. Obama had learned, taught and implemented Alinsky’s tactics his entire adult life working for ACORN. Clinton had written her senior thesis praising Alinsky. Regardless of who won the primary, because George Bush was so unpopular and John McCain was such a terrible candidate, leftist leaders were assured of putting one of their own in the White House.

And President Obama has done his part. He hired a bunch of leftist czars to amass as much power in the White House as possible. He dramatically increased the burden of government on Americans, ensuring our economy continues to go downhill. He increased spending from 20 percent of GDP to 25 percent. He exploded government debt. He piled on dozens of major, expensive regulations, to further cripple our economy. He escalated our wars. He worked with union leaders to organize unemployed youths for protests.

But despite the best efforts of the leftist central planners, no leftists protested. In frustration, President Obama finally instructed his supporters to quit whining and march when he spoke to the Congressional Black Caucus a couple weeks ago.

So they did, and the Occupy Wall Street movement was born. It’s terrifying that Republicans, Democrats and the people who vote for them, working together using a divide and conquer strategy to grow the size and scope of government year after year, have dragged America so far toward Marxism that we now have Marxist president directing Marxist protests from the White House.

The most surprising aspect of the Occupy protests is how anemic they are compared to the muscular Tea Parties. When I attended the first the Dayton Tea Party on Courthouse Square a couple of years ago, the Square was packed. I estimated 3,000 people attended. Saturday around 100 people reportedly attended the Occupy Dayton event. Organizers in DC have to pay protesters. Also the Occupy Wall Street protests have been marred by typical leftist violence and racism in stark contrast to the Tea Parties. Another interesting aspect is the blatant hypocrisy of protesters wearing Nike shoes, Levi’s jeans, Gap shirts and Proctor & Gamble makeup, carrying Apple iPhones and Eddie Bauer bags and taking pictures with Canon cameras protesting corporations.

Some criticize the protesters for lack of a coherent message or demands. That’s because they can’t say what they really want. If they say they support Marxism or want more government handouts, they lose all credibility. So they make vague demands for a living wage and social justice. Ultimately these protests will remind the great mainstream of American people of the moral bankruptcy of leftists.

The saddest part is the protesters are right to be angry that government bailed out Wall Street. That’s what galvanized the Tea Party. But these protesters draw the wrong conclusions. The corporations didn’t steal our money for the bailouts. The government did. If a dad took the piggy bank from one child and gave it to another, nobody would blame the child. We’d blame the dad because he had all the power, and he stole the money. In our case, the government has all the power, it stole our money, and we should blame it.

What these leftists don’t understand is that corporate power comes from the government. Corporations have no ability to rob us on their own. The bigger the government gets, the more wealth it funnels into the hands of the few. The bigger government advocated by the Occupy protesters would make the wealth disparity worse, not better, because the bigger the government grows, the bigger and wealthier corporations and special interests grow. The solution is to dramatically reduce the size and scope of government so wealth will flow back to the people.

Free kibbles

FASCISM:

The American Nazi party supports the Occupy movement, reminding everybody that fascism is a form of leftist socialism now just like it always has been.

ECONOMY:

Another great essay from Mark Steyn on the decline of the US.

"But a society can live on the accumulated capital of a glorious inheritance only for so long."

You have to produce before you can consume. This is a fundamental economic truth far too many Americans no longer understand. And failing to understand it leads to the consumption of capital.

"As more and more middle Americans are beginning to notice, they lead more precarious and vulnerable lives than did their blue-collar parents and grandparents without the benefit of college “education” and health “benefits.” For poorer Americans, the prospects are even glummer, augmented by ever grimmer statistics on obesity, childhood diabetes, and much else. Potentially, this is not decline, but a swift devastating downward slide, far beyond what post-war Britain and Europe saw and closer to Peronist Argentina on a Roman scale."

I'm happy to see people in the mainstream media pointing this out.

FEDERAL RESERVE:

Watching all the volatility of the stock market, I came to the conclusion the big banks were manipulating it on behalf of master government. I'm not the only one who suspects as much.

"After the market collapse of 2008 and 2009, where losses were generally around 55%, the markets have gone up substantially. During that same period were QE1 and QE2. This is no coincidence. Bernanke took full credit for the rise in the stock markets, and for good reason. The "Quantitative Easing" programs were structured to transfer money (out of thin air) from the New York Fed to its primary dealer banks. This is done when the Fed purchases treasury bonds from these dealers, some of which include Goldman Sachs and J.P. Morgan, along with 18 others. This process infuses the banks receiving this money with instant liquidity. During QE2 for example, from November 3rd of 2010 through June 30th of 2011, the New York Fed bought from its primary dealers $770 billion worth of treasuries, not the $600 billion it claimed. These banks acquired many of these treasuries during the bailouts by trading worthless securities for full value treasuries. This was, by the way, at taxpayer expense.There is a direct correlation between these bond purchases and stock market performance. When QE1 ended, after an increase of approximately 90% in the markets, the markets began to fall.  After falling about 23% from those highs, QE2 was announced, and began in November of 2010. The markets proceeded to go up again until QE2 ended in June of 2011. After the money stopped flowing, there was a sudden drop of over 18% from July through September of this year."

I also was skeptical of Operation Twist, which reportedly would leave the Fed's balance sheet unchanged. That made no sense to me. I predicted the Fed would actually just buy long-term bonds without selling short-term bonds to pay for them. Now we read this:

"Now it gets even more interesting. In just the past two weeks, the stock markets have gone up about 11%. During that same time frame, the Fed has purchased $39.9 billion of treasuries from its dealer banks, in the same manner as it did during QE1 and QE2. If continued, this is an $85 billion a month pace, similar to that of QE2. But remember, there is no announced QE3, and no report that I’ve seen has mentioned anything about this bond buying, but it is going on nonetheless."

Bernanke knows there's tremendous opposition to printing more money. Ron Paul, the Mises Institute and Lew Rockwell have made that a big issue. So he's doing in secret. He doesn't have to tell anybody, so he isn't. And all that newly printed money flows from the Fed into the Wall Street banks directly into the stock market, artificially driving it up.

HEALTH CARE:

I have tremendous skepticism that scientists are preparing a drug for release in a decade that will increase life expectancy to 150 years. If something sounds too good to be true. Even if they did produce this magic drug, the government would let anybody but ruling class cronies have access to it for a long time.

Yesterday we discovered the lawless Obama administration would not implement a provision of Obamacare because it was too expensive. Today we learn that Obama won't support repeal for that provision. He just plans to ignore it, but he still wants it on the books. It's not just that he's the most lawless president since Lincoln, it's that he flaunts it so openly, like he's proud of being a tyrant.

GLOBAL WARMING:

The IPCC is using private email accounts to hide their crookedness from the public.

WAR:

Yesterday, USA Today pandered to left by proclaiming "Obama won't keep troops in Iraq past 2011", but today it reports the US is still negotiating to keep troops there.

POLITICS:

Ron Paul finally comes out with a serious economic plan that has a chance of resonating with voters.

"Paul, a longtime critic of federal spending not authorized by the Constitution, will call for eliminating the federal Education, Commerce, Energy, Interior, and Housing and Urban Development departments.He'd also eliminate all foreign aid and spending on wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and freeze government spending to 2006 levels -- the last year that the GOP had complete control of establishing the federal budget."

He's talking about cutting spending by $1 trillion a year. That's a good start.

Former Fed officials support Herman Cain. This is not good for him. Ron Paul is going to tie the Fed around his neck like an albatross.

Speaking of outrage...

"The outrage by the political and economic situation in the Western world is justified. In Europe and the United States, the gap between financial elites and the rest has widened, while politicians have become a sort of modern nobility completely detached from the realities of the ordinary man."

Somebody must have been reading all comments on how our politicians are aristocrats like any other. The only difference being anybody can become one which means far worse people become aristocrats here than in the past, and it shows.

Rush Limbaugh claims Ron Paul stole his idea of dramatically cutting the size and scope of government. Riiight.

MEDIA:

More documentation of the media bias against Ron Paul.

LOCAL:

Ohio ban on bath salts goes into effect today. By definition, this will create more crime.

VA whistle-blower reportedly suffered a heart attack before fatal crash. I still find this suspicious. I hope he wasn't be treated at the VA.

Free kibbles

REGULATION:

More lawlessness from Obama.

"In any case, the US and several countries signed the agreement earlier this month.² Also President Obama signed the agreement on behalf of the US, there are no plans to submit it to Congress for congressional approval.³ The Obama administration has long argued that the President has the authority to “implement” ACTA by “Executive Agreement” alone, and that Congress’s ratification is not needed, because ACTA is already fully consistent with current US law and would not require Congress to enact implementing legislation."

But treaties must have Senate confirmation.

FEDERAL RESERVE:

Look how accurate this political cartoon from 1912 is:


EDUCATION:

Comprehensive graphic illustrates the severity of the high education bubble.

HEALTH CARE:

How the FDA undermines our native skepticism of drugs, putting us at risk.

WAR:

This graph is very telling.

POLITICS:

List of comments from Herman Cain denying we were going into recession and in a recession. It's impressive how wrong he was.

LOCAL:

Dayton V.A. whistle-blower killed in one car crash. His wife, also a whistle-blower was in the car but survived. That's not suspicious.

Free kibbles

FEDERAL RESERVE:

Newt Gingrich has gained a lot of press and poll support for copying Ron Paul on his criticism of the Fed. But his real convictions are pro-Fed.

HEALTH CARE:

To highlight the unprecedented in modern times lawlessness of the Obama administration, Obama won't implement a provision of his own health care law. If he believes it constitutional, the law demands he implement it. But since he's declared himself a dictator, he just ignores the law including his own.

POLICE STATE:

A former NYPD detective admits we all know:

"NYPD narcotics officers routinely trump up drug charges against innocent people so they can meet their arrest quotas."

It's not just NYPD. This is commonplace around the country.

POLITICS:

After decades or years or months of being vague, Ron Paul will present specific cuts he will make to government. I imagine this isn't too little, too late. He's almost been bounced from the election by now. Why wait so long? Why not present a principled position from the beginning? Why not tell the American people he would abolish the income tax from the beginning? I'm sure his advisors tell him to wait, don't actually take a stand, and that works great for a typical crook. It doesn't work well for a man of principle. He still misses the main point Americans are concerned about: taxes. He should have launched his campaign declaring he would abolish the income tax and forced every Republican to respond. This isn't rocket science. I've always said that libertarianism is the ultimate populist philosophy. Ron Paul has failed to grasp that and because of it, for decades, he's failed to be successful at winning national prominence. I'm a supporter of Paul. We have many beliefs in common. But he continues to run a misguided campaign. You talk about cutting taxes first and cutting spending second.

MISC:

How the free market transformed Steve Jobs from petty tyrant into a social giant. I'm unimpressed. Jobs had a knack for imparting style to technology. And he was a fantastic marketer of that style. I understand that bazillions of iZombies love to pay more Jobs's style than for more functionality. But that says more about the intellectual bankruptcy of iZombies that Jobs. Granted, he made technology easy to use. In other words, he dumbed it down for iZombies. Much like people revere software designers today, those people are stupid. Most software designers suck. If you were to compare the majority of software in the world to the majority of airplane or clothes or sewers or haircuts, you would realize that today's software designers are the absolute worst people in the world at their jobs. Garbage collectors are way better at collecting garbage that software writers are at writing software. No offense to garbage collectors. If you come up with the a profession which you think is the worst at accomplishing its task in the world, I think software designers are even worse. Hardware rocks. Hardware, computer chips, are so fast and execute their tasks so perfectly, they're arguably the best product every created man. But every piece of software I use fails constantly. It's absurd how bad software is. And that's by design. Decades ago we had quality software languages like C to write in. Only smart people could program in C, and therefore software was excellent. But over time, misguided professionals dumbed down programming languages so idiots could program. As a result, most software sucks. Maybe somebody will make programming languages to simple that babies can program, and make computers completely worthless as a result.

Free kibbles

ECONOMY:

During a general deflation, gold historically loses less value than other investments.

TAX AND SPEND:

The longer government keeps people unemployed by paying them unemployment benefits, the more unemployable they become. They're doing this in purpose. The plan is to turn these people into permanent dependents of the state so they will become reliable voters for increasing state power.

Taxes never collect as much revenue as projected because people change their behavior to avoid the tax. All they do is bankrupt businesses and stop other businesses from coming into existence.

FEDERAL RESERVE:

Prediction that the European Central Bank will join the Fed in the money printing leading to global inflation and soaring socks and commodities.

HEALTH CARE:

Paramilitary cops raid farm for producing and selling raw milk.

POLICE STATE:

Documents support the suspicion that the so-called Iranian assassination plot was actually an FBI/DEA sting operation.

"Although the legal document, called an amended criminal complaint, implicates Iranian-American Manssor Arbabsiar and his cousin Ali Gholam Shakuri, an officer in the Iranian Quds Force, in a plan to assassinate Saudi Arabian Ambassador Adel al-Jubeir, it also suggests that the idea originated with and was strongly pushed by a undercover DEA informant, at the direction of the FBI."

The FBI manages to catch another of its own patsies.

"If you ask the leadership of the FBI, most of whose field agents are tireless, dedicated, Constitution-supporting professionals, it will tell you that it has foiled about seventeen plots to kill Americans during the past ten years. What it will not tell you is that there have been twenty foiled plots; and of them, three were interrupted by members of the public. The seventeen that were interrupted by the feds were created by them."

This is another charade.

Judge Napolitano exposes the sad truth about the FBI so-called terrorist busts.

WAR:

Thanks to the US invasion of Afghanistan, there are zero churches left in Afghanistan.

Obama sends 100 US troops into a civil war in central Africa. This is another undeclared, unconstitutional war he's dragged us into. Dinesh D'Souza theorized Obama was an anti-colonialist. Wrong. He's a Marxist and a colonialist. Now we're going to have Ugandan terrorists trying to kill us.

Qaddafi loyalists are fighting to retake Tripoli. Rumors of Qaddafi's demise have been greatly exaggerated.

POLITICS:

Why the worst people rise to the top of government.

"Honorable people, taking a wrong turn and blundering into positions of political leadership, would last no longer than a nun in a brothel. If ruthless rivals did not displace them at the earliest opportunity, the scrupulous people would soon remove themselves in disgust. People who lack pugnacity do not succeed as prize fighters; people who lack a talent for lying, stealing, and if need be, abetting homicide do not succeed in modern politics."

The author fails to make the link between public choice theory and why the worst get on top: the first qualification of every politician is he or she must successfully lie about his motives. He can't say he's out for himself. He has to lie and say he's working for the benefit of everybody. That makes politicians different than the rest of us. They are the worst of the worst people who meet the requirements for the position.

Boortz gets this one right: the Occupy movement is helping Republicans, not Democrats. The protests are a good reminder that leftists want to use government to steal from others so they don't have to work for a living. Wealth envy is why Marxists will never go away no matter how many times they are discredited. Lovers of liberty have to overcome the Marxists in the battlefield of ideas every day of every year of every century. George Will gets it right too.

"Its meta-theory is, however, clear: Washington is grotesquely corrupt and insufficiently powerful."

I wish I had said that in my essay on the Occupiers.

The Republican establishment wants Marco Rubio for VP. That means I don't want him.

Obama plays the race card.

All the Republican candidates sound more and more like Ron Paul.

MEDIA:

Comparison of the media coverage given to the tea party versus the occupiers.

"The Occupy Wall Street protestors have received overwhelmingly positive coverage from the Big Three (ABC, CBS, NBC) news networks, as they used their airtime to publicize and promote the aggressively leftist movement. In just the first eleven days of October, ABC, CBS and NBC flooded their morning and evening newscasts with a whopping 33 full stories or interview segments on the protesters. This was a far cry from the greeting the Tea Party received from the Big Three as that conservative protest movement was initially ignored (only 13 total stories in all of 2009) and then reviled."

Is anybody surprised? This image says it all.

Check out the dates.

Google threatens to remove lewrockwell.com from Google news. Their argument seems bogus.

MISC:

Dangerous water problems created by government control of water sources.

Free kibbles

ECONOMY:

Government is slowly dragging us into poverty when it isn't dragging us down in leaps and bounds. Many of you may think I'm nuts for saying this. You may say the modern household is far more wealthy than the household of the fifties. That fallacy is driven by two factors. First, technology advancement has made many things cheaper and higher quality. For example the phone. Second nearly every household today requires two incomes to maintain a middle class lifestyle compared to the one income in the fifties. Despite the fantastic advancements made by the people in the private sector, today, two people have to work to provide the lifestyle one did 60 years ago. That's the measure of how government has dragged us into poverty over the last 60 years. And it doesn't compare to the poverty government has created in the last decade, let alone the last couple of years, all of which we've yet to realize. But we inevitably will. There is no escaping our fate. We're going to wake up one day soon realizing that we're in abject poverty, and most people will wonder how it happened.

FEDERAL RESERVE:

The M2 money supply metric jumped quite a bit over the summer. Even that inflation wasn't enough to keep the phony growth going.

Why the state creates central banks. Here's the result of monopolizing the production of money and making people accept worthless paper money as if it had value:

"In a way, you have thus accomplished what all alchemists and their sponsors wanted to achieve: you have produced something valuable (money with purchasing power) out of something practically worthless. What an achievement. It costs you practically nothing and you can turn around and buy yourself something really valuable, such as a house or a Mercedes; and you can achieve these wonders not just for yourself but also for your friends and acquaintances, of which you discover that you have all of a sudden far more than you used to have (including many economists, who explain why your monopoly is really good for everyone)."

Nice work if you can get it.

POLICE STATE:

Was the timing of the bust of the FBI's Iranian stooge an attempt to deflect attention from Holder's role in fast and furious? I'm afraid it's timed to allow Obama to attack Iran shortly before the 2012 election.

FOREIGN POLICY:

Diane Feinstein, Chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee, says that a chain of Iranian plots are possible. I wonder if that means that the FBI found number of Iranian patsies to set up, and we'll see more arrests soon.

Guess why the underwear bomber attacked the US.

"I had an agreement with at least one person to attack the United States in retaliation for U.S. support of Israel and in retaliation of the killing of innocent and civilian Muslim populations in Palestine, especially in the blockade of Gaza, and in retaliation for the killing of innocent and civilian Muslim populations in Yemen, Iraq, Somalia, Afghanistan and beyond, most of them women, children, and noncombatants."

Just like the rest of them.

POLITICS:

Apparently the Bloomberg debate didn't harm Cain but boosted him. According to this poll, he's now leading the field with 27 percent. It's absolutely sad that when people like Herman Cain are exposed as lying tools of the establishment - i.e the status quo - by people like Ron Paul that voters flock to them.

Obama is already running against Romney. The establishment is trying to make Romney's nomination a fait accompli. But then again, the establishment was wrong about Hillary in 2008. The people still ultimately decide elections.

The Occupiers escalate their violent rhetoric. There's already been low-level violence, but the violence will escalate until the press can't hide it any more and the American people will once again recognize how poisonous and violent leftist ideology is. The contrast with the peaceful, tolerant tea parties is profound.

Herman Cain recommended investing in housing in 2006. Oops. I think anybody who failed to foresee the housing bubble-financial-economic crisis coming should be disqualified. I think that leaves only Ron Paul.

MEDIA:

Wall Street Journal busted for scam in which it secretly bought its own papers at a discount rate to make its circulation look bigger than it is.

MISC:

Hayek was not a liberal. Mises was.

"According to Hayek, government is "necessary" to fulfill the following tasks: not merely for "law enforcement" and "defense against external enemies" but "in an advanced society government ought to use its power of raising funds by taxation to provide a number of services which for various reasons cannot be provided, or cannot be provided adequately, by the market." (Because at all times an infinite number of goods and services exist that the market does not provide, Hayek hands government a blank check.)"

He thought government should provide a safety net: welfare. That's not a liberal. But we can still take advantage of the good things he taught.

Gloria Steinem, on Chelsey Lately, just said that everybody who has a womb doesn't have to have a child in the same way everybody who has vocal chords doesn't have to be an opera singer. How stupid is that analogy? I didn't realize Gloria Steinem was stupid. Her analogy completely backfires because the basic function of vocal chords is to speak, not sing opera, and the basic function of a womb is to produce children. Her simplistic analogy implies every woman should have children in the same way that everybody should speak. What she fails to acknowledge is we have free will. We're not slaves to instinct or tradition. So people with vocal chords can refuse to talk and people with wombs can refuse to have children. But, assuming each is healthy, there's nothing natural about refusing.

Free kibbles

RIGHT TO KEEP AND BEAR ARMS:

In the absence of police protection, Russians are arming and defending themselves. Why do you need the police then?

FASCISM:

All the Occupy protesters need when they march at private homes are brown shirts. It may look fascist, but it's really Marxist. They should wear red. It's so hard to tell the difference between communism and fascism. They've got the same leftist protesters, the same gulags, the same totalitarianism, the same violence, the same racism, etc.

ECONOMY:

Homicide rates are inversely correlated with economic freedom.

TAX AND SPEND:

Two Senate Democrats join Republicans in killing Obama's latest job killing stimulus boondoggle. The ideologue can't even make a proposal his own party unanimously supports.

FEDERAL RESERVE:

Feds write new regulation that prohibits banks from trading for profit.

"“Only in today’s regulatory climate could such a simple idea become so complex, generating a rule whose preamble alone is 215 pages, with 381 footnotes to boot,” American Bankers Association Chief Executive Frank Keating said in a statement, according to Reuters."

Obama knows these rules are crippling our economy. He's doing it on purpose.

The Fed joins the police state.

"The Federal Reserve wants to know what you are saying about it. In fact, the Federal Reserve has announced plans to identify "key bloggers" and to monitor "billions of conversations" about the Fed on Facebook, Twitter, forums and blogs. This is yet another sign that the alternative media is having a dramatic impact. As first reported on Zero Hedge, the Federal Reserve Bank of New York has issued a "Request for Proposal" to suppliers who may be interested in participating in the development of a "Sentiment Analysis And Social Media Monitoring Solution". In other words, the Federal Reserve wants to develop a highly sophisticated system that will gather everything that you and I say about the Federal Reserve on the Internet and that will analyze what our feelings about the Fed are."

And keep track of us.

Governments are cranking up the war on gold and silver with France banning the cash sale of both. This is about tracking those sales so the government can confiscate the gold and silver later. Claim that governments will not confiscate gold. Then why ban cash sales? Government exists to confiscate wealth. Confiscating gold is a good way to do that. If we return to a gold standard, government would like to have all the gold it could. In the previous essay, North's argument depends on the differences between today and the 1930s. In this essay, he wonders if the government will take us back to the 1930s. I'd say it is.

HEALTH CARE:

People in Sweden are fed up with Sweden's socialized medicine system and are opting out for private insurance and health care. The same is happening in Britain and Canada.

POLICE STATE:

Police arrest super-hero wannabe for breaking up a fight. How dare he make the police look bad by trying to stop violence?

Our abusive justice system and possible reforms. I think the title of this article would make a powerful campaign slogan.

The government is mining your internet traffic again.

Greenwald on the Awlaki assassination. American "collateral damage". Raimondo on the Awlaki assassination. Raimondo on Obama's death panel. In January of 2010, Obama's hit list reportedly included three Americans.

WAR:

On the US government's disastrous war in Afghanistan:

"Washington’s imperial goal was a favorable political settlement that would produce a pacified Afghan state run by a regime totally responsive to US political, economic and strategic interests; a native sepoy army led by American officers in the manner of the British Indian Raj; and US bases that threaten Iran, watch China, and dominate the energy-rich Caspian Basin."

Fail.

"Washington’s real objective in South Asia was clearly defined in 2007 by US Assistant Secretary of State Richard Boucher: to "stabilize Afghanistan so it can become a conduit and hub between South and Central Asia – so energy can flow south."The Turkmenistan-Afghan-Pakistan TAPI gas pipeline that the US has sought since 1998 is finally nearing completion. But whether it can operate in the face of sabotage remains to be seen. CIA is reportedly creating an 8,000-man mercenary force to protect the pipeline which runs smack across Pashtun tribal territory."

I doubt 150,000 troops can protect it.

A little bit of history of the Afghan invasion I'd never heard before:

"The US then allied itself to the Northern Alliance and invaded Afghanistan. Contrary to fables about CIA agents of horseback, Russian generals and troops conducted most of the ground operations, aided by US B-52 bombers. The northern Tajiks became the power behind the US-installed figurehead, Hamid Karzai."

Russian generals?

FOREIGN POLICY:

I wonder what the politicians think they'll gain by imposing more sanctions on Iran. These guys aren't dumb. They act to advance to advance their own interests. So who benefits from these sanctions? Maybe it fools voters into thinking they're acting in our interest, but that seems awful vague and questionable. Maybe the goal of sanctions is always to weaken a regime in preparation for war. The country being sanctioned never gives in. This article says the US is going to unite the world against Iran. That sounds like preparation for war to me. It sounds like western rulers think they finally have the trigger they've been hoping for that will ignite a war against Iran..

"Biden also said that U.S. action against Iran could go beyond sanctions, but added that "we're not going there yet.""

Yikes.

Claim that the supposed Iranian plot to kill the Saudi ambassador was another FBI setup.

"The long narrative spun by the indictment tells us everything but what we really need to know, which is: how is it that these two Iranian “terrorists” just happened to meet up with a Mexican drug cartel assassin who just happened to be a longtime DEA informant?"

A New York Times article answers the question:

"For the entire operation, the government’s confidential sources were monitored and guided by federal law enforcement agents, Preet Bharara, the United States Attorney for the Southern District, said in the news conference. ‘So no explosives were actually ever placed anywhere,’ he said, ‘and no one was actually in ever in any danger.’"

In all these plots it seems nobody was actually ever in danger. That tells us these plots are being set up by the FBI.

"The credibility rating of this story, taken on its face, is close to zero. Let’s say the Iranians really were plotting to kill the Saudi ambassador on American soil: would they contract it out to the Mexican Mafia, send all kinds of traceable money wires from Iran to the US, and not care if they killed a hundred Americans in the process of achieving their goal? Or would they send some fanatic, who would not only do it for free but also eliminate himself (or herself)? This flimsy cock-eyed tale is sotransparently fake that it’s an embarrassment to the United States of America. Can’t our spooks do better than this?"

All that matters is they scare people, and I expect it will do just that.

"This story is very scary – not because it’s credible, or believable, because it is neither. However, it’s the most frightening story I’ve heard in quite a while because it shows that the US government is bound and determined to go to war with Iran, no matter what the consequences. Throwing caution to the winds, our rulers have decided to go all out against Tehran – all the better to mask our current economic malaise under the damage done by the tripling and quadrupling of oil prices. This way, Obama can blame our crashing economy on Tehran, rather than his own discredited policies – and sideline the Republicans, who have been criticizing him for being “soft” on Iran."

Yikes again.

"Here is where the administration has probably miscalculated: people are just angry enough to wonder “why now?” They’re just broke enough to resent being asked to pay for yet another holy crusade overseas. And they’re just tired enough of the bullsh*t that gets reported as “news” day after day to start asking all kinds of uncomfortable questions about this latest offering by the Washington fable factory."

So Obama is hoping that starting a war with Iran will win him the 2012 election. Obama has miscalculated about a lot of things, and I think this will be another. Let's hope the people put a stop to this before he starts another war because once it's started, it won't matter that he gets defeated. The Republican will continue the war. More skepticism.

Neither Israeli government nor the Palestinian government wants peace. The bankrupt US government can't support Israel for long. It's scary how much the Israeli idea of expansionism sounds like Manifest Destiny which justified the genocide of American Indians.

POLITICS:

Ron Paul looks really good in this debate. He really takes it to Herman Cain. Cain's pollsters obviously told him to focus on his 9,9,9 plan, but Paul brought him back to the Fed, and Cain looked terrible trying to defend himself. Hopefully, just like Cain supplanted Perry, Paul will supplant Cain. But I'm not holding my breath. Unfortunately this debate wasn't televised.

As if the economy wasn't bad enough for Obama, now he has two significant scandals to deal with: AG Holder's role in fast and furious and the Solyndra scandal. This kind of stuff is inevitable in a fascist system.

The Onion capitalizes on all the political issues with a story of Obama punching a Wall Street banker to improve his ratings. Too funny.

Jeffrey Tucker explains that because of the economic illiteracy of the left, the Occupier's slogan might as well be "Up with the Man!" because of their unerring support for strengthening the status quo. He also notes the striking similarities of the fascists and Marxists I mentioned above.

"These people are radicals only in the sense that the youth of the Red Guard in Mao's China and the Nazi youth movement in Vienna in the early 1930s were radical: they are only urging the regime to be truer to itself and stop compromising with its enemies. In this sense, these street protests are not benign; they might be a foreshadowing of dark times ahead."

There are dark times ahead because of all the damage done to our economy by government but not because of these protesters. These protesters are going to remind the vast majority of Americans of the violence, racism, intolerance and moral bankruptcy of leftists which will make them more amenable to libertarian ideas.

Despite being third in the national polls, Ron Paul consistently gets the least amount of talking time at debates.

Here's a good reminder that if John McCain had been elected, he would have been pretty much just as bad as Obama. On the plus side, Obamacare wouldn't have passed. On the minus, he's probably already be waging war on Iran.

How the establishment lifted Obama to president practically from birth.

LOCAL:

Government is blaming humid air and a breeze for making local school kids sick, not the spraying of chemicals. God knows we never have humid air and breezes around here. Sometimes I can't help but laugh. We've allowed morons to seize control of our children and their education.

MISC:

The monopoly controlling domains for .com and .net wants the power to arbitrarily shut down domains. This is an example of the corrupting power of monopolies.

Showing the resiliency and adaptability of the private sector, Sony thwarts new hack attempt. Compare that to the government which has been hacked over and over and has yet to figure out how to stop it.