The Government Makes Lying Offical

      Not content with hiding information from the citizens (for whom they work) the minions of the Federal Government have decided to changes the rules about the Freedom Of Information Act to allow lying about whether the documents requested even exist. Currently they have to reply to requests for informmation by releasing the documents or stating that they are not willing to release the document and citing an exemption. The change will simply allow them to lie and state that the requested information doesn't exist at all.

   The Daily Caller spreads out the details for you.


Most. Transparent. Administration. Ever!

Yeah

Odd, but fun

This is out of China, it reminds me of the stuff that used to come out of the USSR, brilliant in its own different way.

Hopefully they can find something productive use for this sort of technology, I doubt they can afford to put a lot of their citizens on unemployment. "Virtual mining" using a combination of robots in the pits and remote human operators comes to mind. They would probably come in handy at Fukishima if they could be sheilded properly.

It gets even better at about 2:30 when the robot is playing vs a human (they are softballing the shots but it can handle forehand and backhand).

Solyndra, the gift that keeps on giving

     This just keeps getting better (worse?, I suppose it depends on where you stand). Just when the Resident is getting rolling on his "Fuck Those Rich Bastards" new tax plan it comes to light that Obama's billionare bundler, and Solyndra Big-Shooter, George Kaiser hasn't paid taxes in, oh, quite a few years.  From the Washington Examiner article  (which is a must-read);

"As Allison describes it in his Sunlight post today, "in one six year period, during which he increased his net worth enough to land him on the Forbes list of the 400 wealthiest Americans, Kaiser reported taxable income to the Internal Revenue Service just once, totaling $11,699--equivalent to a full-time hourly wage of $5.62."

     Small wonder that he needed a half billion dollar loan for Solyndra, the poor bastard was making less than minimum wage!


      Meanwhile the Resident continues his bi-polar campaign by bashing Wall Street at every opportunity while his Big Money backers are shaken down for huge quantities of cash; see this MSNBC article. Odd how one can slander and vilify the monied classes and at the same time be at their beck and call. Sort of like biting the hand that feeds you. You would think the man has no principles at all.  Oops, I just remembered that he is both a lawyer and a politician and is thus excluded from principles on two counts. I am sure he has principals that he is beholdened too, but principles (alas), none to be seen.


    As always, when tracking a criminal enterprise; Follow The Money.

Making Friends Around the World

     The most-loved and admired Resident has reached a new level recently; on Thursday, at a State Dinner for the South Korean President, President Lee Myung Bak, he has decided to serve Japanese beef. Apparently the whiz-kids in the WH haven't done their homework and are oblivious to the long and strained history between Japan and Korea (who are only "on the same side" today because we won WW2 and occupied both nations). This tops the notorious "Reset" button and Churchill bust fiascos.


     Smartest Resident ev-ah!!


     W was such a rube.

Ludwig von Mises and the Calculation Debate

This is an hour long so get a drink and get comfortable before you start




After watching this there is one question that you need to ask yourself; Who would you trust to make the Calculation for you, the slack-jawed mouth-breathers inside the Beltway? or yourself? in essence, do you trust them ?


I don't.

Land of the Free?

Watch this short video and ask yourself just how free you feel with 81,000 pages of rules and regulations for the businesses in this country. Big Brother snuck in by way of the back door and now rules every aspect of your life. At least with the collapse of the life-span that goes with the dissappearance of economic freedom I won't have to worry about all that "old-age" stuff.

Enjoy the illusion of freedom, it won't last much longer.

It seems that the word is getting out...

     Every day I am confronted with more and more unbelievable things; first it was the Times defending Palin, now Huffington Post has become aware of the danger posed by the exposure of US banks to a Euro blow-out. By way of Robert Reich none the less. It seems our beloved Banksters have compromised their solvency by buying crap paper in Europe to the tune of $2.7 trillion (or about 1/7th of our GDP) and will likely be needing the taxproles to bail out the Euro zone, or the Banksters themselves, to avoid another Lehman-style blow-out.

     I am left to wonder when some of these criminals will end up going to jail.

The USA goes Greek

       No we aren't joining a fraternity (we certainly are in a bad way, and it is sure to get far worse, but we haven't become so tragic as to do that) we are joining a club that only requires having a debt in excess of your GDP. At the rate the Treasury is pissing through money we should be crossing that line in a very short time indeed. We are just about $145 billion dollars short of $15 trillion in the hole, almost exactly  99% of our GDP, and let us be honest here, $145 billion just doesn't go very far in D.C. these days. In fact, at the going rate, it will last just under three DAYS.

     You may say that there are some countries that already are there, indeed some (like Japan) have been there for ages, but the crucial point is that this is the USA, that happy land that is the source of the world's reserve currency, and the largest economy on the planet. Greece had a 2010 GDP of  $305,415 millions, the USA $14,526,550 millions. Frankly Greece wouldn't matter at all if the Banksters hadn't gone bonkers buying crappy Greek paper (no slight to the Greeks but your bonds aren't even usable as toilet paper). In fact the USA is bigger than the next five largest economies combined, so when our money becomes worthless there are going to be a LOT of problems. There is no escape valve, no "leaving the Euro" for us, or any other nation on the planet, the dollar goes bust and the world hits the crapper.

Federal Judge slams EPA scientists

    A Federal Judge in California has called out the EPA in its efforts to prevent farmers from getting water into the Central Valley. The EPA and the Interior Department have been depriving farmers in the Central Valley of water for years now in an efforts to preserve the breeding ground for the delta smelt. Judge Wanger was deeply unhappy with the testimony of the two scientists that testified on behalf of the EPA and Interior Department indicating that said testimony was contradictory and false. This is a big hit to the Greenie movement that values a few tiny fish over food for humans.


    A most refreshing change to see a member of the Federal Government looking out for citizens (for once).

The more it changes, the more it remains the same......

   I read yesterday that the inflation adjusted wages for the average American man have returned to the level of 1968.  As I am an old fart I was around in 1968. Being ten years old at the time the world was pretty good for me at a personal level. In retrospect there were a good many bad things going on at the time but my dad, an average working Joe, could easily provide for our family on his salary alone (and still take us on a cross-country vaction for a couple of weeks every summer, while saving to send five kids to college and putting aside money for retirement). If I was deprived of anything I wasn't aware of it. Life was good.

The Greeks and Fate

     I was watching the film Gallipoli the other day and it struck me that the Greeks are currently in the position occupied by the ill-fated ANZACs in the film; each day they find themselves facing an impossible situation, at the end of each day they are shocked to find that they are still on their feet, each night they go to bed knowing that tomorrow may be "The End". Yet somehow they move from day to day without going mad. Sure there has been the odd riot, but London had worse over the suggestion of austerity.

Really Cool new stuff

     The ability of the human mind to solve problems is matched only by its ability to create new ones; but in this case it looks like we are on the "solving problems" end of the equation. A company has developed what they call a "nuclear battery". This is a small self-contained energy producing unit that can produce enough juice to run a small town (25,000 people) for five years at a go. It uses a sort of controlled reaction to generate heat which is then used to drive a steam turbine.

     Getting this sort of thing past the Government regulators will be the fun part, I am sure.