Local

Home sales strong in September.

War on Drugs

Compared to its stated goals, the war on drugs is a failure.

"The war on drugs is a failure. It has failed to prevent drug abuse. It has failed to keep drugs out of the hands of addicts. It has failed to keep drugs away from teenagers. It has failed to reduce the demand for drugs. It has failed to stop the violence associated with drug trafficking. It has failed to help drug addicts get treatment. It has failed to have an impact on the use or availability of most drugs in the United States. "

But it enriches our rulers, so it continues.

"The war on drugs has clogged the judicial system, unnecessarily swelled prison populations, fostered violence, corrupted law enforcement, eroded civil liberties, destroyed financial privacy, encouraged illegal searches and seizures, ruined countless lives, wasted hundreds of billions of taxpayer dollars, hindered legitimate pain treatment, turned law-abiding people into criminals, and unreasonably inconvenienced retail shopping. The costs of drug prohibition far outweigh any possible benefits. "

Also true.

Because of taxes, legal pot on Colorado and Washington costs more than black market pot, so the black market will continue to flourish.

Health Care

Dietary supplements could save billions in health care costs. Eating right could save even more.

This HHS tech surge to fix website problems won't work. Throwing people at the problem causes problems. It doesn't solve them.

Description of the government bureaucracy inside the doctor's office.

Kasich has some panel expand Medicaid in Ohio.

"By a 5-2 vote, an obscure committee, the Controlling Board, which normally oversees relatively small adjustments to the state budget, accepted $2.5 billion in extra Medicaid funds from the federal government. The money, recently approved by Medicaid administrators in Washington, will provide coverage for 275,000 Ohioans who have not been eligible for the program, the Kasich administration said.

The vote was an extraordinary — and possibly illegal, critics in Mr. Kasich’s own party said — end run by the governor around the General Assembly. Mr. Kasich, who initially declared himself an opponent of the Affordable Care Act and who has declined to set up a state online health insurance marketplace, has argued all year that his sense of Christian compassion, not to mention cool economic practicality, favored extending Medicaid to poor adults and those with disabilities who do not currently qualify."

I don't think stealing people's money can be called Christian compassion.

Regulation

Applying minimum wage laws to domestic help will kill those jobs.

War on Drugs

Police execute 80 year old man in his bed for this reason:

"The deputies who had invaded Mallory’s home weren’t responding to an emergency, nor were they pre-empting a criminal plot. They were serving a narcotics warrant issued in response to a claim that someone who had passed by the property smelled ingredients used to manufacture methamphetamine."

That's good enough for the executioners.

Federal Reserve

Bank runs coming.

China overtly pushing to replace the dollar as the world's reserve currency.

"China has invested heavily in domestic mine production and is now the largest producer at an estimated 440 tonnes annually, and she is also looking to buy up gold mines elsewhere. Little or none of the domestically mined gold is seen in the market, so it is a reasonable assumption the Government is quietly accumulating all her own production without it becoming publicly available."

The Chinese are smarter than we are.

Global Warming and Energy

A couple of exotic sea creatures wash up on shore, and they must be victims of climate change.

Antarctic sea ice keeps growing.

Tax and Spend

Government shutdown harmed crucial science, proving why government should not be in charge of crucial science or anything else.

"But it goes beyond even the basic funding issues; in many cases, scientific work is simply too intertwined with the government to continue without it. Andrew Rosenberg, the director of the Union of Concerned Scientists' center for science and democracy, said, 'It is all so interconnected now. Federal researchers collect data that is utilized by researchers in academia, by people working in industry, at state and local levels, so when you ask how dependent are we on the federal government in terms of science, it's a bit like asking: do you need your left leg?"

Being absorbed and corrupted by government is a disaster for science.

Lessons learned from the phony shutdown.

National Park Service spends tax dollars on video praising Muslims for advances in women's rights.

Police State

Government attorneys claim that the Supreme Court has no jurisdiction over NSA or the FISA court. I wonder what they think the word supreme means. I think this is a distraction. NSA has blackmail information on Supreme Court justices like they do everybody else, and they will use it to get a favorable ruling. Having the court validate their spying works in their favor.

Man posts article lampooning NSA, and his site goes down. I'm sure there's nothing fishy going on.

Multiple polls show Americans are against widespread NSA spying.

Foreign Policy

NSA hacked Mexican president's email account. Mexican are not happy.

Local

Power out in downtown Celina.

Eleven regional universities get federal grant from NSF to double minority STEM graduates. What's the matter with graduating the best and brightest instead? Why are we focused on skin color instead of excellence?

Man arrested for possessing copied DVDs and CDs  Oh, the humanity. How is this a crime?

While Dayton government razes abandoned houses with tax dollars, people in the private sector are building new homes.

Federal Reserve

Get your money out of banks. A second bank is making it hard to move money.

Media

Article about JFK murder includes reading list and this great quote from Rothbard:

"All States are governed by a ruling class that is a minority of the population, and which subsists as a parasitic and exploitative burden upon the rest of society. Since its rule is exploitative and parasitic, the State must purchase the alliance of a group of “Court Intellectuals,” whose task is to bamboozle the public into accepting and celebrating the rule of its particular State. The Court Intellectuals have their work cut out for them. In exchange for their continuing work of apologetics and bamboozlement, the Court Intellectuals win their place as junior partners in the power, prestige, and loot extracted by the State apparatus from the deluded public."

Excellent.

Economy

Another economic fallacy: Cincinnati development bureaucracy credited with boosting Cincinnati economy.

War

I'm surprised that only 600 out of 2,200 Pakistanis killed by drone strikes were non-combatants.

Obama nominates lawyer who justified assassinating Americans with drone strikes to head DHS.

US to sell $10 billion of sophisticated weapons to Saudi Arabia and the UAE.

I hadn't realized that another motive for the Civil War was the the south embraced free trade which would have attracted trade away from the north. 

Foreign Policy

Saudi Arabia rejects seat on UN Security Council.

Politics

Tea party people are more scientifically literate than non-tea party people.

Business groups plan to oust tea party members because they love big government, but they claim they support a free market. Too funny. This is costing tea party members campaign money.

Police State

Chinese telecom banned by US government for potential spying promotes itself as a secure alternative to US telecoms controlled by NSA.

I doubt new EU rules to limit data sent to NSA will have any real effect on NSA spying.

Air Marshal arrested for taking upskirt pictures.

Deathbed confession of CIA bigwig explains how government attracts the worst people to work for it, and that the worst of the worst rise to the top.

"Fundamentally, the founding fathers of U.S. intelligence were liars. The better you lied and the more you betrayed, the more likely you would be promoted. These people attracted and promoted each other. Outside of their duplicity, the only thing they had in common was a desire for absolute power. I did things that, in looking back on my life, I regret. But I was part of it and loved being in it . . . Allen Dulles, Richard Helms, Carmel Offiie, and Frank Wisner were the grand masters. If you were in a room with them you were in a room full of people that you had to believe would deservedly end up in hell. I guess I will see them there soon." 

Like libertarians say.

India government arrests crew of ship that protects other ships from pirates. No good deed goes unpunished.

Health Care

Feds bribing Ohio to expand Medicaid with $26 billion over ten years.

About 476,000 applications for insurance have been filed on Obamacare exchanges so far.

"However, the officials continue to refuse to say how many people have actually enrolled in the insurance markets. Without enrollment figures, it’s unclear whether the program is on track to reach the 7 million people projecting by the Congressional Budget Office to gain coverage during the six-month sign-up period."

Sounds bad.

Four decades of CDC research into nutrition is fatally flawed.

Local

Oakwood wants to raise school taxes.

Back pay for the four days Pentagon workers were furloughed is due in next paycheck.