"Trust" ?

"Leaving aside the seriousness of lawlessness, and the corruption of our civic culture by the professionally pious, this past week has been amusing. There was the spectacle of advocates of an ever-larger regulatory government expressing shock about such government's large capacity for misbehavior. And, entertainingly, the answer to the question "Will Barack Obama's scandals derail his second-term agenda?" was a question: What agenda?

"The scandals are interlocking and overlapping in ways that drain his authority. Everything he advocates requires Americans to lavish on government something that his administration, and big government generally, undermines: trust."
http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/george-will-obamas-tapped-out-trust/2013/05/16/4c50ff12-be5e-11e2-9b09-1638acc3942e_story.html

Economy Carberation

Nicely framed model describing why our economy has failed to bounce out of stagnancy.

"The analogy between our economy and a car engine holds in another important way. The power output of an engine is governed by controlling the airflow into the engine. A well-designed fuel injection system simply reacts to changes in airflow, spraying in the precise amount of gasoline required to match the mass of air moving through the combustion chambers. From the standpoint of power and efficiency, too much gasoline is just as bad as too little.

"In the case of an engine, the idea of an active, ad-hoc, discretionary "fuel policy" would be crazy. The engine would keep stalling, as it alternated between flooding and lean misfiring. Similarly, the very idea of a discretionary monetary policy is insane. Money cannot drive economic growth any more than gasoline input can determine the power output of an engine."
http://www.realclearmarkets.com/articles/2013/04/08/the_fed_is_quantitatively_easing_americans_out_of_their_jobs_100247.html


"As the months go by, it is becoming clear that the Federal Reserve's "QE3" program, which is supposed to be "doing something" about unemployment, is having the exact opposite effect. We can only wonder how long it will take Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke to realize this.

"Friday's "Employment Situation" report from the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) was really, really, really bad. The reported 0.1 percentage point decline in the "headline" unemployment rate (from 7.7% to 7.6%) fooled no one. Total employment actually fell by 206,000. The only reason that the reported unemployment rate went down was because 496,000 Americans gave up on looking for jobs.

"The most striking feature of President Obama's so-called "economic recovery" has been the exodus of Americans from the labor force. The unprecedented 2.5 percentage point decline in labor force participation under Obama amounts to 6.2 million Americans being pushed out of the job market."

Gold Standard - History

This article is a must read to start understanding how government's control over money hits your pocketbook.  The BLUF: they aren't smart enough to do what they want to do, and if they were, absolute power still corrupts absolutely.

http://www.realclearmarkets.com/articles/2013/04/26/the_great_recession_crisis_how_about_relearning__100282.html

Classic Quote, Hornberger

"If you are not free to choose wrongly and irresponsibly, you are not free at all."
Jacob Hornberger, 1995

http://www.lpboulder.org/quotes/

Classic Quote, Roosevelt

"Happiness is not a goal; it is a by-product." Eleanor Roosevelt

Global Warming or Cooling?

"So since 2000 the CET shows an annual temperature diminution at the rate of -0.49°C / decade or -0.59°C in 12 years: this negates almost the entire CET temperature rise since 1850. Although this is a very short period, the extent of the climate change that has been observed since the turn of the millennium is remarkable.Using the March 2013 CET value it is possible to show the winter temperature values up until March 2013 with a combination of the four months December – March for the first 13 years of this century. The diminution of the four winter months temperatures is more remarkable at a rate of -1.11°C / decade or -1.41°C in the last 13 years. This compares with a winter temperature increase rate from 1850 to the year 2000 of +0.45°C / century or +0.68°C for the whole 150 year period."
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/04/25/temperature-change-in-perspective/?utm_source=co2hog


www.fireofthegodsfitness.blogspot.com

Why We Didn't Want This

"A plurality [of adults] (47 percent) describe themselves as either "angry" or "disappointed" about the failure of the gun legislation but 39 percent call themselves "relieved" or "happy" about what happened. That's a far cry from the 90-ish percent support that expanding background checks - the centerpiece of the proposed legislation - enjoyed. And, among those who said they were "very closely" keeping tabs on the vote, the split was even closer; 48 percent said they were angry/disappointed while 47 percent were relieved or happy.

"Liberals like Scarborough, and the whole set of MSNBC's "Morning Joe," had so completely surrounded themselves with like-minded people that the 90 percent poll number they were citing actually sounded accurate. While, in actuality, if they had been in any real contact with real Americans outside the New York-Washington corridor, they would have known that opposition to Toomey-Manchin was very widespread.

"If the White House wants to know why their agenda has stalled, they are not going to find the answers on MSNBC."

http://washingtonexaminer.com/morning-examiner-the-lefts-epistemic-closure-on-guns/article/2528012

Folks like us no longer believe it when politicians say they are taking some symbolic but utter insignificant step to restrict our liberty "for our own good." The pols' paper thin veneer of good intentions is no longer enough for folks to pretend they don't notice.