An 11-pound hero. (Thank you, S&L, for the news.) Another great dog story. Okay. Equal time for cats. This is not only amazing cat news, but the implications for severely injured humans are pretty awesome, too. Gold. Yes, it’s likely to end up as a bubble. But in the meantime, take a look at that chart. Besides, the Dow really could go to 5,000. Are any actual humans investing in stocks any more? Or is it all just banks and computers? “A Sermon on Ethics and Love.” (Hail Eris! All Hail Discordia!) Tip o’ hat to C2 for this and…
Category: Government
Government evils — but I repeat myself
Can our Dear Leaders actually put a “kill switch” on the Internet? No doubt, they’d love to. No doubt, if uber-authoritarian Joe Lieberman has his way, they’ll set up a plan to do exactly that. But is it possible? Or is this just more wishful thinking from powermad damnfools who believe the Internet is “a series of tubes”? Denny Hansen, my editor at S.W.A.T. magazine, has asked me to write an article on that subject. I have opinions. But they’re of the “everybody has one” variety. I have a little bit of knowledge. But I know this blog is read…
Perfect example of the broken-window fallacy. Not to mention public relations idiocy. Yes — the Gulf oil spill is good for you! Every person who ever takes a government office should have this tattooed on his or her forehead. Backwards so it’s readable in the mirror every morning: “Truth never damages a cause that is just.” — Gandhi (and Wikileaks) You remember that “ending welfare as we know it” thingie back in 1996? Uh. Well … not quite.. (That chart is from a June 1 Heritage Foundation report, which contains many other “fedgov by the numbers” charts guaranteed not to…
After blogging about it yesterday, I’ve been taking Kent McManigal’s challenge, “What would YOU do if you woke up in liberty?” My first thought was, “Not much different than I’m already doing.” After all, I’ve been consciously pursuing (and preaching) freedom for a long time. I’m out here in the hills, doing pretty much what I want, with people I want to be with. I live in a place where you can strap a gun on and go downtown (such as downtown is) and nobody will give you a second glance. A place where the neighbors are self-sufficient and helpful…
If this is true, I really feel for all you folks who live in the Gulf states or along the South Atlantic coast. (Some NSFW language behind that link.) Heck, every person with a heart already feels for you — and for the critters that dwell in the Gulf. Hoping it’s not really as much worse as the latest allegations imply. But satellite photos and other evidence from the last few days have been ominous. Good luck to us all. (And be glad you’ve got some preps to get you through hard times.)
Housing. It’s double-dipping. Anybody here surprised? “Tax Hikes and the 2011 Economic Collapse.” Arthur Laffer says the illusory recovery of 2010 will go blooey on January 1. Bounty hunter offers Colton Harris-Moore $50,000 to surrender. Don’t fall for it, Colt. The secret wars expand. “Special Operations commanders have also become a far more regular presence at the White House than they were under George W. Bush’s administration … ‘We have a lot more access,’ a second military official said. ‘They are talking publicly much less but they are acting more. They are willing to get aggressive much more quickly.’” Forget…
So. You think government’s a joke? In Iceland, they know it is. “Two lessons from a rogue ex-cop.” Love that Barry Cooper. “A casino run by the banks, for the banks.” Well said. Darned well said. But there are billions of billions of reasons to be cheerful, anyhow. Or 85 of them. I think this op-ed says it all about Monday’s disaster at sea. Via Jim Bovard: Right to the end, I was about to say that this New Yorker article on Julian Assange and his heroic WikiLeaks was brilliant. It’s an intimate portrait of a secretive man, his world,…
Total follies: How wonderful! The federal government is going to pay for Medicaid expansion so we won’t have to. Seriously. If allegedly astute commentators spew stuff like that, it’s no wonder that 24 percent of Americans believe the fedgov has its own money supply, completely independent of taxpayers. (And we’re not talking about the famous printing press here.) And hey, while we’re still partying along on other people’s money, how about lifetime mortgages in which the principal is never paid? In the old days, I do believe we’d have called that “rent.” But Aussies are apparently up for it. And…
Okay, we all knew the Wall Street regulatory bill wasn’t really going to regulate Wall Street. And we could be sure that the new “consumer protection” bureaucracy the bill proposes wasn’t going to protect consumers, right? But there was still a shoe that hadn’t dropped. We hadn’t yet heard about the inevitable something in the bill, the teeny, tiny little let’s-not-mention-this provision that would turn out to be the real purpose of the upcoming new law. The shoe has struck. Via LRC.com, here it is: The bill, if it becomes law, would create the Bureau of Consumer Financial Protection and…
I tried. I did. I really tried to work up enthusiasm about Tuesday’s red-hot primaries. I mean, Arlen Spector being thrown out, Rand Paul being thrown in (maybe) … that oughta be exciting. Especially to an old political junkie like me — who started collecting politicians’ autographs when she was 12 (I still have my Richard Nixon) — who used to stay up into the wee hours to track election results — who, as recently as 1994 actually went to the local courthouse to be among the first to get precinct results. But no. Couldn’t even work up a good…