if you want to enjoy a few good laughs, with the understanding that much of the movie sucks, give it a spin. it could never have been funnier than these sketches with charles barkley though. gotta dig will forte’s singing.

if not your thing, sit down and savor Wild Target and the unsurpassed emily blunt. the most salivation.

The law of comparative advantage shows us that people can consume more than they would be able to produce on their own. […]

ugh. this law of x formula’s a fallacious crutch. he should simply write, “Comparative advantage shows us”, or similar. as noted here, referring to a “law” explains nothing. so why is he even calling it a law? because it’s a tradition from economics (and other) blowhards. it’s a tradition because it’s normally the fallacy of argument by authority. should be tossed in nearly every case, including probably every time i ever did it.

Taxpayers Footing Bill for Tiger’s New Mansion?

Published: Thursday, 2 Sep 2010 | 1:00 PM ET
By: Diana Olick
CNBC Real Estate Reporter
[…]
“Why take out a mortgage? That’s the easy part,” says [Bankrate.com's Greg] McBride. “A rate of even 5.5 percent would only cost 3.3 percent on an after tax basis (assuming the top federal tax bracket of 39.6 percent that will take effect in 2011 if the Bush tax cuts are not extended.). Factor in an inflation rate that over time averages 3%, and on an after-tax, after-inflation basis Tiger is borrowing the money for free (as are many other borrowers taking out loans in today’s marketplace).”

And there you have it.

Not only is the Federal Government paying much of America to stay in their homes and paying the banks to keep them there, we taxpayers are also footing the bill for Tiger Woods’ new mansion.

You’re welcome, Tiger.

mind blowing, the snotty indignation of foolish peasants. note that this type of filth is the highest brand of “protest against government” the born slave can muster. it always equates to “my problem with the state is that its worthlessness isn’t yet all-encompassing.”

Karzai’s brother calls for U.S. to shore up Kabul Bank as withdrawals accelerate

By Andrew Higgins and Ernesto Londoño
Thursday, September 2, 2010; 10:57 AM

DUBAI – As depositors thronged branches of Afghanistan’s biggest bank, Mahmoud Karzai, the brother of the Afghan president and a major shareholder in beleaguered Kabul Bank called on Thursday for intervention by the United States to head off a financial meltdown.

"America should do something," said Karzai in a telephone interview, suggesting that the U.S. Treasury Department guarantee the funds of Kabul Bank’s clients, who number about a million and have more than a billion dollars on deposits with the bank.

[…]

"If the Treasury Department will guarantee that everyone will get their money, maybe that will work," said Karzai, who holds 7 percent of the bank’s shares, making him the third-biggest shareholder. […]

as is the tradition, the article smuggles in some sense after the “objective” bit (i.e., framing state as problem solver):

[…] At a nearby branch where many government workers cash their paychecks, tellers were giving out no more than $1,000 to each customer. Zaburzay, 40, a surgeon who works at a government hospital, said he gave up on trying to withdraw his money because the branch was too crowded and tellers were only giving out $20 notes.

"All these people are thieves and we don’t trust them," he said. "Whether or not it collapses, I want to take my money out." […]

oops. bad poofitty posh poodle. but who could’ve foreseen? only those few million who rationally opposed the disaster for what we knew it would be. unlike the poodle, we tend to practice MYOB doctrine, not stepping on our sociopathic dicks at the expense of millions.

nothing rewards like failure when you’re in with the syndicate. who will “we” look to during times of failure but the “leader” who directed the failure? good plan. march of the worship of the dick steppers.

An Arizona man is in trouble with his homeowners’ association over flying the Gadsden flag, which features a coiled rattlesnake and the words “Don’t Tread on Me.” […]

if flags are your thing, few are more admirable than the gadsden. however, as with backward confederate “sympathizers” and their battle flags, many of these hacks are placing the gadsden underneath the fedgoon flag. there’s a direct cancellation and mark of the lackey.

don’t tread on me? what about that 50th star of the redwhiteblue? represents nothing but treading on others, and it’s only the start. remove all copies of the goon flag, recognizing that it is not properly associated in any way with liberty. it is the flag of the official crime gang, perpetual marauders everywhere and of the peaceful folk here who, depressingly, generally have the worst case of stockholm syndrome ever seen.

the state is not you. you are not the state. they are parasites, you the host.

oh, and don’t join oppressive HOAs, morons. not a “right to free speech” issue once you sign on the line which is dotted. interesting though that private entities are increasingly mimicking the state as much as they can get away with. seen it plenty, psychos nearly everywhere.

in his first post today he asserts that there are not three ways a state raises money, but two. this is because “borrowing” must always be paid back with stolen wealth.

good point in isolation, but what of his sticking with counterfeiting and theft as the two remaining ways? absurd. there is only one method of the state enriching itself, and it is theft. this includes “borrowing”, “taxation”, and counterfeiting (printing “money” others are forced — as in force — to use).

update 20100901:
what a fucking undeservedly arrogant bootlick child. he now writes,

UPDATE: Many people have written to me to point out that by printing more counterfeit money (therefore lowering the value of the money already in circulation—i.e., inflation), counterfeiting is also a form of theft. (Another expression that has been around for years is that inflation is a “hidden” tax.) Up until a month ago, I would have agreed with all of these people. But as Austrian economists Hans Hoppe and Walter Block pointed out in a paper they wrote back in 2002, you own your physical property but NOT the value of it. The value is what other people think it is worth at a certain particular moment. Therefore, although printing more “Federal” Reserve notes is obviously lowering the value of your dollars, they are not “stealing” its value (i.e., it is not theft). When the government taxes you, it is forcibly taking physical dollars from you—therefore, that would be considered stealing your physical property (i.e., theft).

“legal” tender, ya fucking child, learning in public at the world’s most prominent liberty-oriented site. you are forced to accept this rotten counterfeit shit. fuck papers by H-cubed and block which don’t discuss “legal” tender; go no further than this blog:

forgot to address overtly that another thrust made by anti-FRBers is debasement of the currency via credit expansion. that’s the main reason i mention fedgoon illegal legal tender[…] above. absent contract, no one has a right to non-debasement of a voluntary currency through credit expansion. tough shit. convert to one that isn’t being so debased. invent a digital currency impervious to expansion. do something peaceful. perhaps soon a radically cheap method of gold production will be discovered or invented, through which gold religionists may embrace the true and extra-statist swath of currency debasement. state fixation regarding currency ultimately leads to advocating mind control, for value is and must always be subjective. state fixation is the first hurdle of the anti-FRBer.

what retard boy’s alleging is that someone counterfeiting currency he’s coercing you to accept isn’t aggression. the balls of the snot-nosed douche. WTF has the LRC/LvMI world been bitching about for decades? they can throw it all out the door now, for genius noob kramerica’s on the case, bringing enlightenment to the darker regions of the earth with his fallacy-of-accident mutation of newer LRC/LvMI deities.

but what prevents liberty fiends from immediately converting fiat currency to the currency of their choice, thus protecting its value from constant debasement?

sadly, this isn’t easy. it’s expensive, inconvenient, privacy-raping, and is then subject to “taxation” again on the value you didn’t let get raped by fiat. one who’d transacted in a currency other than fiat would know this and hesitate before leaping into a pool of idiocy.

but david kramer is an asshole from birth. recently lew rockwell spoke on a radio show about being born with a hunger for liberty, and a corresponding understanding of statism’s bullshit. kramerica didn’t have that, and i allege he’s merely posing now, as many disintegrated types often do while crossing lines for the reception the other side offers.

no reception here, dickboy. you’re a posturing flake with a self-admitted longstanding socialist bent, and you don’t have the integrity to weigh your words even when publishing them at LRC. you tool.

when you’re required by “law” to accept shit currency and pay penalties for avoiding the shittiness of it, you’re being robbed. with the disincentive toward regular conversion from fiat dollars, that leaves the state open to print and profit from counterfeit, as it’s the creator of counterfeit who profits the most, then the next users and so on, until the debasement filters through and victimizes those not constantly churning and converting. this doesn’t even discuss how these fucks pretend we’re in a “legal” contractual relationship called the constitution, one violated increasingly since the ink was wet.

know who would use the continually debased goonited states fiat currency without threat of force? answer that and you’ll have your refutation of david kramer’s lightweight shit. you do not have a right to the retention of value for objects transacted voluntarily, but you sure as fuck have a right to not have constantly-value-losing objects forced upon you in exchange for created or existing wealth. being forced to accept currency debased by the second is, with every second that passes upon receipt of the paper, theft. and there is more beyond, for the aggression is not only against those smart enough to evade it were evasion not discouraged to the point of prohibition.

BTW, walter block argued long ago (.PDF) that counterfeiting counterfeit money is not only acceptable, but “heroic”. bypassing the H-word, i agree it’s beyond acceptable, and clearly in the land of that which should be encouraged. would be fun watching blockhead kramer bounce his noob head up against block’s prior material on the subject.

update 20100901
he’s feeling the pressure. this is a good one. time for dickboy to change the subject. but there’s a catch! from the top:

There Are Only TWO Ways a Government Ultimately Raises Money

Posted by David Kramer on August 31, 2010 11:09 AM

Over the years, I’ve noticed a very common misconception about how a government raises money. Interestingly, this misconception has been stated by Austrian economists as well as all the other “economists” in the world.

The misconception is that government raises money three ways: taxation, printing, and/or borrowing. But in truth, borrowing is just a detour from the only two ways that a government actually raises money: taxation and/or printing. Unless the government is going to default on its borrowed funds, it still needs to pay them back by taxation and/or printing—like it pays for everything else. (Unless, of course, it borrows more money to pay back the original borrowed funds!! But even then, unless it is going to completely default on any of its borrowed funds, the only way government raises money is through taxation and/or printing.)

As far as I’m concerned, for anyone—Austrian economists, or otherwise—to keep repeating the “three ways a government raises money” misconception obfuscates the real issue: that government can only raise money by theft and/or counterfeiting (i.e., fraud).

UPDATE: Many people have written to me to point out that by printing more counterfeit money (therefore lowering the value of the money already in circulation—i.e., inflation), counterfeiting is also a form of theft. (Another expression that has been around for years is that inflation is a “hidden” tax.) Up until a month ago, I would have agreed with all of these people. But as Austrian economists Hans Hoppe and Walter Block pointed out in a paper they wrote back in 2002, you own your physical property but NOT the value of it. The value is what other people think it is worth at a certain particular moment. Therefore, although printing more “Federal” Reserve notes is obviously lowering the value of your dollars, they are not “stealing” its value (i.e., it is not theft). When the government taxes you, it is forcibly taking physical dollars from you—therefore, that would be considered stealing your physical property (i.e., theft). By the way, I’m not implying that what the government is doing is “okay” because they are not “stealing” your value. Counterfeiting is still fraud. The reason why people don’t realize the true value of this paper commodity is because the government has a monopoly on the printing of it. I’ve always maintained that if everyone started printing up these counterfeit “Fed” Notes tomorrow, they might soon realize (because of the ensuing rampant inflation) what a medium of exchange really is supposed to be (something that has a market value outside of its being used as a medium of exchange—that’s why it is initially accepted as a legitimate medium of exchange) and how they were being screwed by the government and the banksters who have controlled the “Federal” Reserve for the last 90 years.

People have also been writing to me to say that government “owns” property that it can sell. Oh really? Where did it get the money to purchase that property? Through taxation and/or printing? Did it just expropriate that property or piece of land? “Government”—like a corporation—is a group of people. Only people can own something, not some invisible entity. If I own shares in a company, I own part of that company’s assets. It may not be specified exactly which of its assets I own, but I can sell my share for cash. Which people in the government hold the shares in this “public” property? Do you and I, as taxpayers, really believe that we own part of GM—as Pres. Obama never tires of telling us? If so, I need to sell my share of GM because I’m a little pressed for cash at the moment. (Perhaps royal families actually do own vast amounts of their own countries due to homesteading centuries ago—though I wouldn’t be surprised if it was due more to aggressive wars.) The idea that Obama owns the Grand Canyon or Bloomberg owns the Brooklyn Bridge (actually, I sold the Brooklyn Bridge to some tourists back in 1977…and 1985…and 2003) is a fiction. There is no “public.” (More fiction from our ruling establishment over the centuries.) If you believe in some “public,” then you must believe in the validity of anti-discrimination laws because we are informed that businesses—unlike individuals in their private lives—can’t discriminate because they are dealing with the “public.” Here’s something else you can read by Austrian economist Hans Hoppe which explains what I’m talking about much better than I could ever hope to do.

yeah, get the fuck off that “non-aggressive fiat” tack. now it’s whether the state owns property. the fun part: in haste to provide backup for his diversion, he links to a huge piece by H-cubed that does later discuss fiat currency, refuting dickboy’s prior position that it isn’t aggressive. he does this using the lamest of lame tactics, pretending his prior dispute’s in H-cubed’s hands now. yeah, go read 400+ pages from triple-H to see what dickboy means — the blog equivalent of “my brother’s going to beat you up.”

hoppe:

[…] The question to be addressed in this paper is how is a fiat money possible? More specifically, can fiat money arise as the natural outcome of the interactions between self-interested individuals; or, is it possible to introduce it without violating either principles of justice or economic efficiency? […]

end of the chapter:

[…] Only a system of universal commodity money (gold), competitive banks, and 100-percent-reserve deposit banking with a strict functional separation of loan and deposit banking constitutes a just monetary system that can assure economic stability and present a genuine answer to the current monetarist fiasco. […]

he’s not quoted here as rebuttal to anyone but those who quote him for rebuttal in pussified semi argument-by-authority.

wow. just caught this new K-man edit: “Counterfeiting is still fraud.”

WTF?

coincidence that after i email kramerica he adds to his mess post, “I’ve always maintained that if everyone started printing up these counterfeit ‘Fed’ Notes tomorrow, they might soon realize (because of the ensuing rampant inflation) what a medium of exchange really is supposed to be” […]?

what a confused, backpedaling quack.

Ben looks to me suspiciously like a greenhorn lost in the woods who used up all his ammo shooting at shadows.

a modified version of that on a gravestone may be a pretty good fit. more polite than “master of official crime, king of obfuscation”.

if looking to be seriously bummed out by the human condition, here’s a good starting post.

[…] Most recently, the Center on Wrongful Convictions of Youth was asked to submit an amicus brief in the case of Thomas Cogdell, a 12 year old boy who was convicted of murdering his younger sister in Camden, Arkansas in 2006. The boy’s confession was patently false, the product of police coercion that reduced him to an incoherent mess. He had a breakdown of sorts after being repeatedly accused of the crime and told that the crime had to have been committed by him or his mother. The interrogation is one of the most riveting examples of psychological torture I have ever seen. There is no physical abuse and much of what the cops did was probably legal and permissible when used to question adult suspects. But when police use the same high pressure tactics on children that they use on adults, they not only risk traumatizing a child but they risk obtaining a false confession. In Thomas’s case, after his breakdown, they turned off the cameras, fed him a meal, and then questioned him further before he finally confessed. They rehearsed the story with him, brought him back in and put his “statement” on tape. When his mother was finally allowed to see him, you can hear him whisper to her that he made the whole thing up.

Thomas’s DNA was not on the sewing tape used to bind his sister (another male’s was) nor were his fingerprints or DNA on the bags that were placed over her head to suffocate her. He also could not lead the police to where his mother’s wallet had been tossed. To the extent that some of the facts in his confession were consistent with crime evidence, we’ll never know whether the police fed him those facts during the dinner break because they stopped recording.

Thomas was tried and convicted of the murder and the conviction was upheld on appeal. Dorcy Corbin of the Public Defender Commission took the case to the Arkansas Supreme Court which reversed the conviction on the ground that police had not properly secured Thomas’ waiver of his constitutional rights because Thomas expressed a lack of understanding of the word “waiver” and the police gave him an erroneous definition. He is free today but prosecutors have not formally announced whether they will seek to retry him. A retrial is unlikely, however, as the State has no case without the confession. […]