Apparently, youtube sometimes censors this video, so it may vanish again:

This economy requires confidence the same way that continued participation in a game of three card monte requires confidence.

Under growing pressure from conservatives and “tea party” activists, Sen. John McCain of Arizona is having to defend his record of supporting the government’s massive bailout of the financial system.

In response to criticism from opponents seeking to defeat him in the Aug. 24 Republican primary, the four-term senator says he was misled by then-Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson and Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke. McCain said the pair assured him that the $700 billion Troubled Asset Relief Program would focus on what was seen as the cause of the financial crisis, the housing meltdown.

“Obviously, that didn’t happen,” McCain said. (Read more from azcentral.com)

I hope Arizona citizens vote for someone less susceptible to being ‘misled.’

On Thursday, a Denver news station interviewed Chris Bartkowicz about his medical-marijuana operation in the basement of his home. Bartkowicz, confident of his compliance with state laws, boasted of its size and profitability.

“I’m definitely living the dream now,” he told 9News.

The following day, the dream was over.

Drug-enforcement agents raided his home, placed him under arrest, and carried off dozens of black bags of marijuana plants and growing lights.

The Obama administration promised in October that the federal government would respect state laws allowing the growing and selling of marijuana for medicinal use, but the Drug Enforcement Agency sent a loud message with the arrest of Bartkowicz. (Read more from rawstory.com)

More change I can believe in.

At a ceremony at the White House on Tuesday, First Lady Michelle Obama announced the launch of the ‘Let’s Move’ campaign to end childhood obesity in the United States, an epidemic she said is costly and a threat to national security.

“A recent study put the health care cost of obesity-related diseases at $147 billion a year,” Mrs. Obama said. “This epidemic also impacts the nation’s security, as obesity is now one of the most common disqualifiers for military service.” (Read more from cnsnews.com)

There is no idea more un-American than the idea of a draft — the notion that my life is a tool for the ambitions of government. The first lady’s comment smacks of the same tyrannical idea.

Big Media are a mostly shills who slander all things liberty and promote the illusion of left vs. right:

The scope of a highly controversial labor bill known as “fare share” would be expanded under an amendment introduced this morning by an Iowa City lawmaker.

The bill, House File 2420, allows unions representing executive branch employees to charge nonunion workers fees for services. (Read more from desmoinesregister.com)

The article, entitled “Iran Boasts of Capacity to Make Bomb Fuel,” intersperses a handful of allegations about the Iranian nuclear program with a healthy dose of unrelated claims about protests elsewhere in Tehran today. It centers itself around the translated quote “please pay attention and understand that the people of Iran are brave enough that if it wants to build a bomb it will clearly announce it and build it and not be afraid of you.”

However, it downplayed the rest of that sentence, which was “but we have no intention of making a bomb.” It also glossed over the bulk of the speech’s nuclear content, which was that they told the US and Russia they were ready to buy fuel for the Tehran research reactor. (Read more from campaigniran.org)

SA Interviews Tom Woods
* The regulators which our progandists are calling for are the ones who said there was no housing bubble, crisis.
* Big Media slanders nullification as racist despite that it was used to fight federal slavery laws.

One good sign that the liberty movement is growing is that I’m struggling to keep up with all the things I want to post.

Keynesian Predictions vs. American History

Tom Woods is a very lucid and exciting speaker. I love this particular lecture because it reveals some monumental bits of hidden history.

Lecture begins @ 5:00.

@8:20 Tom Woods talks about how Keynesians predicted massive unemployment and a depression in 1946 because of demobilization of the military and huge reductions in government spending. In fact, 1946 was the single greatest economic year for the United States.

@18:00 Tom Woods talk about influential American economist Paul Samuelson who repeatedly praised the Soviet Union in an influential Economic text widely used in classrooms from 1973 to 1989. Samuelson wrote, among other things, that Soviet political oppression might be worth its economic gains.

In the 1989 edition he wrote “Contrary to what many skeptics had earlier believed, the Soviet economy is proof that a socialist command economy can function and even thrive.”

There was gigantic Soviet propaganda in the United States, and I like when people have the courage to point it out.

Technology and Social Change

I love this lecture by Jeffrey Tucker for its last ten minutes. Skip to 20:00 if you just want the best of it. He dispels the myths that progress is driven by government force or even by great individuals. Eli Whitney did not invent the cotton gin (people have been ginning cotton since the 5th century), and the Wright brothers did not invent the airplane. (They got one little patent, and sued the pants off everyone else working on airplanes. This set American aviation back so far that the U.S. had to buy planes from France during WWI.)

Progress, he argues, is made in little steps by ordinary people imitating success and making modest improvements. I found this very inspirational.