Laudato Si
Things are moving fast this week, so here is a redux of the aggregate post a few days ago…
- Costs of War dot org gives us some disturbing numbers concerning the human and financial toll Afghanistan and Iraq have taken on the world. Everyone extolling the virtues of the two [main] wars should examine this data. This one might be worth a bookmark…
- Wait. So why is Wikileaks a good thing again?
- A Senate panel is set to review the S&P decision to downgrade the U.S. to AA+, because 2 trillion dollars were missing on the calculations used to make the decision. Besides the fact that the rating agencies are in the pocket of the government in the first place (can you name one business underwater as far as the government that retains anything but a DDD rating?), this is hilarious. The government is going to punish an agency that is supposed to be neutral and objective for doing its job. Sure, it didn’t do a very good job before the housing bubble burst after all of the credit default swaps exploded (but the 159 government regulating agencies did, right?), but finally the S&P is doing its job and going to get hammered for it. The situation is too rich; it has to be a joke. Michael Moore is even calling for the heads of the S&P to be arrested for doing their job and advertising that anyone investing in bonds is a fool (if you ask me, we should have been downgraded to complete junk, but I digress). Oh government bureaucracy, you slay me.
- Related: Is Greenspan losing it? For someone this close to the lies of Fed money magic to admit that default-via-hyperinflation is a possible solution to our debt crisis is unbelievable. Watch the nervous tic of the central banker drone next to him at the table:
- Taking pictures from public land is legal. Know your rights, as these photographers in London do:
- The tax revenues projected by the execution of the class war that our government and media are constantly inciting do not pan out. Nor do certain policies aimed at punishing the rich come without unintended consequences. Here is Tom Sowell in video form on the same:
- It is perhaps the time when the political class is no longer protected from prosecution for their crimes, as a court just ruled that a plaintiff has standing to sue Rumsfeld for torture policies. Probably not, though (Let’s be real).
- Two questions have bothered me about the official Osama bin Laden death/capture story: Why did the SEAL team half-destroy the multi-million dollar super-secret helicopter that was being used in the operation? Why did the military (kill and then subsequently) bury ObL at sea, in violation of Islamic law and concurrently erasing evidence of his death? I don’t think the fact that he had information about US aid of the Taliban against Russia was enough to warrant his execution (after all, we had worked with Saddam for years and still insisted on putting Saddam on “trial”). This is the answer. An eyewitness says he watched the whole thing unfold, and the helicopter crashed with ObL on it, killing him and a few others of the SEAL team. Here is the transcript of his interview. Who would I rather believe – the government with a propagandist agenda, or a villager in Pakistan? It’s a toss up. I’ll probably side with the guy who was there… But part of me is skeptical of the skepticism: why would they cover up a simple botch? Is there really that much interest in not botching the job, as long as we got the guy? Hmmmm…
- Is the mainstream media catching on to the magnitude of our economic woes? Not bloody likely, but there are some shreds of truth being exposed in this CNBC article about the manipulation of unemployment data to make our economy look more robust than it is. But hey, some are speaking more truth than usual, such as MSNBC’s Dylan Ratigan, who loses his mind talking beyond the usual political points:
And he is right. There is no way that this can mathematically work out. He might think we can tax it away (there is pretty much no way an anti-statist would be allowed as a tv host on MSNBC), but he is getting the first point right. The politicians sure aren’t doing anything about it… Here is a reminder about the national debt. Thanks Bush II and III! - The fastest plane ever built is coming! And guess what?! You get to finance it!
- Yes, it’s corny. But it is a little funny in ridiculing the vague standards we use to define terrorism and terrorists: