2-3-12 Links

Congratulations, University of North Carolina-Charlotte You now have your very own SWAT team to protect the students from every once-in -twelve-millenia killer that feels like killing a few students.

27 of 35 Bush Articles of Impeachment Apply to Obama Who is not surprised?

Ohio Tries to Escape Fate as a Dumping Ground for Fracking Fluid Put it in some poor states inhabitants.

Throwing Stones From Your Glass House A Demopublican representative has no important things to worry about but what country is making our 9/11 memorial bracelets.

Israeli Officials: Attack on Iran Must Come ‘By Summer’ Orders understood, SIR!!!!!

Feds’ secret no-fly list more than doubles in a year Who is surprised?

Nine Years Of Space Policy Disaster The ninth anniversary of the Columbia Shuttle accident and our manned space program is in shambles.

FDA’s New Claim: “Your Body Is a Drug—and We Have the Authority to Regulate It!” If the FDA’s says it, it must be true.

The White Rose First Leaflet Munich, 1942 Second Leaflet.

Elderly Woman Seriously Injured After Being Attacked by Settlers Who are the real terrorists out here?

Economics Lesson 1

I Am the 0.00000000143% I am an individual. I am unique. I am the smallest minority. I am one out of seven billion or so. That’s approximately 0.00000000143%.

GE to Build 150 MW Wind Farm in Kenya Why is it not cost effective to build a plant here but it is cost effective to build one in Kenya?

The Six Enemies Of Food Storage I hope you don’t need this.

Creating Jobs versus Creating Value Creating jobs is easy; it’s creating value that’s hard.

Caproig at Dusk — Alex Tremps

The Revolution of 1913

Readers will scarcely have given any thought to the fact that they have never lived in the system of government argued for by Madison, Jay, and Hamilton in the Federalist Papers.

“It may come as a shock …” wrote John Flynn, “to be told that[you] have never experienced that kind of society which [our] ancestors knew as the American Republic …” Flynn, the editor of the popular weekly the Saturday Evening Post, had already come to this conclusion in 1955. In his book The Decline of the American Republic, Flynn observed that Americans needlessly “live in the war-torn, debt-ridden, tax-harried wreckage of a once imposing edifice of the free society which arose out of the American Revolution on the foundation of the U.S. Constitution.”

An empire needs a source of income sufficient to fund its military campaigns, regulatory regimes, and domestic schemes. It also needs a strong central authority to direct its ambitious new programs. In one short 12-month span, a year the writer Frank Chodorov calls the “Revolution of 1913,” the empire got the tools it needed. That year—the same year European countries abandoned the gold standard in preparation for World War I—the old Republic ceased to exist.

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Inflation Targeting Hits the Wall

The financial-market crisis is not over but has grown into a vicious sovereign-debt crisis. Nevertheless, monetary policy makers of the major economies go on to practice the same sort of policy that has led to the crisis. Following the model of inflation targeting, they continue to disregard the quantity of money and the amount and kind of credit creation. As they did before, central bankers cut interest rates as low as they can. Few seem to remember that the monetary-policy concept of inflation targeting was adopted with the promise that low and stable inflation rates would produce financial and economic stability. Reality has not confirmed this assurance. On the contrary, inflation targeting was instrumental in bringing about the current financial crisis.

What Is Inflation Targeting?

A central bank that pursues an inflation-targeting monetary policy model would raise the policy interest rate (which in the case of the United States is the federal-funds rate) when the current price-inflation rate tends to move beyond the target and to reduce the policy interest rate when the rate tends to fall below the range. Operationally, the inflation rate is the target variable of this approach while the policy interest rate serves as the instrument variable. Different from monetarism, the monetary aggregates play only a secondary or no role at all in the inflation-targeting model.

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It’s Fryday!!!!

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2-2-12 Links

GSK fined measly $90,000 by Argentine court for killing 14 babies in illegal vaccine trials; drug giant actually appealing The “corporate people” get away with murder all the time.

The TSA’s War on Innocent Travelers The threat of terrorism has radically diminished. Then why is it that they’re expanding?

Holder & Obama’s Propaganda is “Belied by a Troublesome Little Thing Called Facts” The Obama administration’s record of prosecuting elite financial frauds is worse than the Bush administration’s record, which is a very large statement.

Distancing Evil, and Searching for Rescue You expect be to believe that the gentle, kindly, big-hearted Barack has been tricked into war?

Have You Ever wondered what our world is going to look like five or ten years down the road?

Foolish Suspicion of Political Islam They decided to play the political games.

Memphis Police Delete Photographer’s Cell Phone Pictures Just another episode in the undying war against cameras.

Another Kennedy tax writeoff How does one bootlegger’s ill-gotten millions get passed on from generation to generation? Good accountants who know how to dodge tax laws his sons have helped write.

Dear Americans, We Are Surrounded We don’t need to see your papers. We already know who you are.

Romney on the Poor Mitt is lying to 90%-95% of us.

Israeli forces ‘detain 5 from Qalqiliya village’ Who are the real terrorists out here?

Heather Donahue on Growing Marijuana, Life After ‘Blair Witch,’ and the Beauty of ‘Grey’ Markets

19 Crazy Things That School Children Are Being Arrested For In America Only 19?

Jennifer Meighan

Imagining a “Clean Break” with Israel…Over Iran

Science vs. Lies

The world of science acknowledges matter-of-factly that Iran is not pursuing a nuclear weapons program. There is simply no evidence for one. The UN’s International Atomic Energy Agency, staffed by specialists on nuclear power and maintaining a tight watch on Iran’s civilian facilities, finds no evidence of a military program. Two successive reports (National Intelligence Estimates) produced in 2007 and 2010 by all 16 U.S. intelligence agencies have declared with confidence that there is no operative weapons program. U.S. Defense Secretary Leon Panetta and even Israel’s Defense Minister Ehud Barak have both recently stated or let it slip that Iran is not currently attempting to build nuclear weapons.

But then there is the political world of systematic disinformation. The world of big, bold lies which, as they are constantly repeated, acquire a certain life of their own. Thus the mainstream press and the entire political class in this country refer routinely to “Iran’s nuclear weapons program” as though there obviously were one. As though any questioning of the charge were thoroughly naive.

(By the way: try doing an advanced Google search for the exact phrase “Iran’s nuclear weapons program” and you will call up 4,640,000 results. Try “Israel’s nuclear weapons program”—which we know exists—and you’ll get 533,000. What does this tell you?)

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2-1-12 Links

The Innovation Nation vs. the Warfare-Welfare State Do we want government spending half its money on redistribution and military, or re-dedicating itself to science, infrastructure, and health research?

Occupy Monsanto with Farmers: Jan. 31, Foley Square (NYC) Where is the Tea Party at, on Monsanto’s side?

The Peacenik Republican Would Ron Paul go farther if he toned down this anti-war stuff? The New American’s are pro-war.

Jeffersonian Exceptionalism You mean that we shouldn’t go out of our way to pick fights with other countries? When did we do that?

Milton Friedman – Greed (1979) We’re stuck in re-runs!!!!

Constitutional Work Around: New Jersey Legislators Move to Ban Ammunition They have all sorts of ways to get what they’ve wanted all along.

Soldiers Invade Al-Maghazi Refugee Camp, Kidnap Two in Rafah Who are the real terrorists out here?

Occupy DC uses police against Fox News Citizens arrest!!!!!!

British pair arrested in U.S. on terror charges over Twitter jokes Let it be known that every tweet, every email, every Facebook post, every blog post, and every text message you send is actively monitored by Federal Agents.

Will We Heed The Warnings of Our Founders? Have we ever?

In 2011, Global Spending on Renewable Energy Rose 40 Percent All except for America, we don’t think of the future at all.

Do We Really Need Pickle-Flavored Potato Chips? A free-market capitalism failure?

Ex-cop on Turkish killings of women: women are to blame for domestic violence WTF?

Virginia Sen. battles abortion bill with rectal exams A Virginia Democrat wants to threaten us with a nanny state procedure in protest for a nanny state law?

Taxation: Theft Legalized But don’t tell that to any Democrats or Republicans.

Carcinogenic Dioxin Set Free: EPA Kneels to Monsanto and Big Agriculture What can you expect from our fascist government.

Boy, 10, Arrested After Pointing Toy Gun at Woman HE IS A TERRORIST!!!! DISAPPEAR HIM!!!!!

Blue Spiral Flower — Shaohua Wu

Iranian Aircraft Carriers in the Gulf of Mexico

It Can’t Happen Here

Exclusive: New Iranian Commando Team Operating Near U.S.

(Tehran, FNA) The Fars News Agency has confirmed with the Republican Guard’s North American Operations Command that a new elite Iranian commando team is operating in the U.S.-Mexican border region. The primary day-to-day mission of the team, known as the Joint Special Operations Gulf of Mexico Task Force, or JSOG-MTF, is to mentor Mexican military units in the border areas in their war with the deadly drug cartels.  The task force provides “highly trained personnel that excel in uncertain environments,” Maj. Amir Arastoo, a spokesman for Republican Guard special operations forces in North America, tells Fars, and “seeks to confront irregular threats…”

The unit began its existence in mid-2009 — around the time that Washington rejected the Iranian leadership’s wish for a new diplomatic dialogue. But whatever the task force does about the United States — or might do in the future — is a sensitive subject with the Republican Guard.  “It would be inappropriate to discuss operational plans regarding any particular nation,” Arastoo says about the U.S.

Okay, so I made that up.  Sue me.  But first admit that, a line or two in, you knew it was fiction.  After all, despite the talk about American decline, we are still on a one-way imperial planet.  Yes, there is a new U.S. special operations team known as Joint Special Operations Task Force-Gulf Cooperation Council, or JSOTF-GCC, at work near Iran and, according to Wired magazine’s Danger Room blog, we really don’t quite know what it’s tasked with doing (other than helping train the forces of such allies as Bahrain and Saudi Arabia). 

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Worship of the Mob

Democrats never regard existing democracy as their preferred political system.

Several months ago, I was visiting some friends in Sydney and was invited to the house of a friend-of-a-friend for some late night drinks and a chat. My host and his friends were left-wing bohemian types and had been informed by my friend that I am a "free-market anarchist," or something like that. They found this notion intriguing, and so they quizzed me on what that means, and this naturally led into a discussion of the merits of a free market versus a democracy.

The discussion was a cordial one, and went as most of these discussions do when one is chatting with people who have never previously been exposed to consistent libertarian philosophy. My host and his friends raised most of the standard objections to the free market and to the idea of a stateless private-law society, and I explained why I regard each of those objections as erroneous.[1] Though the attending group appeared to find my arguments on these individual points thought provoking, they remained unconvinced. The main sticking point to the discussion was a pervasive concern that the free market does not allow for democratic state action — that "the people" should have the right to collectively determine "the rules of the game" by voting their preferred politicians into power, and that their determinations should legitimately bind the members of the society they are in.

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A new tagline

A new tagline is unveiled here today. I said earlier that I would replace the tagline once a month, so here it is.

If you make people think they’re thinking, they’ll love you; but if you really make them think they’ll hate you ~ Don Marquis

This is from his Wiki page:

Donald Robert Perry Marquis (July 28, 1878, in Walnut, Illinois – June 16, 1937, in New York City) was a humorist, journalist, and author. He was variously a novelist, poet, newspaper columnist, and playwright. He is remembered best for creating the characters “Archy” and “Mehitabel”, supposed authors of humorous verse.

Marquis’s best-known creation was Archy, a fictional cockroach (developed as a character during 1916) who had been a free-verse poet in a previous life, and who supposedly left poems on Marquis’s typewriter by jumping on the keys. Archy usually typed only lower-case letters, without punctuation, because he could not operate the shift key.

You can read more about him here.

Last month’s tagline:

Liberals want the government to be your Mommy. Conservatives want government to be your Daddy. Libertarians want it to treat you like an adult ~ Andre Marrou