Boys and Men? Screw 'em.

Nothing demonstrates the inherently corporatist foundations of the current Federal super state than its behavior towards men and boys.  Despite having much worse educational, health, life expectancy, and social outcomes than girls and women, a notoriously interventionist government has no interest in helping them. 

That's because like the young, they aren't part of the party of the state's power coalition.  So:  screw 'em.

“A consistent failure of the school system is reflected in its failure to educate males and females equally effectively. If the problem category were race or religion it would be politically intolerable. But boys and men–no problem. Where, for example, is the White House Council on Boys and Men, still non-existent years after the nifty one on girls and women was proudly brandished? Presumably lost somewhere in electoral politics and some dingy acceptance of payback for that vaunted 5000 years of patriarchy. We can do better.”

H/T Carpe Diem

Blob of protoplasm?

SCIENCE: Study shows human brain able to discriminate syllables three months prior to birth.

If this is the case then imagine how much pain they must feel when torn limb from limb in a late term abortion.  Remind me once again:  what is it that makes us a 'civilized' nation?

HT Instapundit

But who certifies the wisdom of the rulers?

The will to power justifies all sorts of drivel.  Here's one via Samizdata.  Sorry about the formatting.  Samizdata is a technically weird site.

Even by the standards of the authortarian depravity of people who work in the West’s places of higher education, this caught my eye:

“Against Autonomy is a defence of paternalistic laws; that is, laws that make you do things, or prevent you from doing things, for your own good. I argue that autonomy, or the freedom to act in accordance with your own decisions, is overrated — that the common high evaluation of the importance of autonomy is based on a belief that we are much more rational than we actually are. We now have lots of evidence from psychology and behavioural economics that we are often very bad at choosing effective means to our ends. In such cases, we need the help of others — and in particular, of government regulation — to keep us from going wrong.”

Via the website of Stephen Hicks.

The interest rate disaster

The price of money (interest rates) has traditionally reflected its demand.  With the Fed's manipulations that no longer governs.  Imagine:  government guaranteed bank CDs are paying a negative real rate of interest.  This is the same government that is technically bankrupt.  Banks and other government favored borrowers are cleaning up.  And investors who saved their money?  They're being crushed.

The King is mad, isn't he?

Fascist is as fascist does

Have we ever had a more contemptible Federal government?

The Drug Enforcement Administration is attempting to seize a $1.5 million building owned as a retirement-investment property by a dentist and an engineer. Grounds are a $37 sale of pot ..to an undercover agent..by one of the building’s tenants, a medical-marijuana dispensary.

As the judge in the case notes, the Obama administration (in 2009) sent a memo instructing federal prosecutors to not target medical-marijuana patients..before deciding to crack down and sending threatening letters to landlords. He even wondered aloud if President Obama would change his mind about marijuana again, after the building had already been seized.

This, in a country whose current President pretty clearly was himself a marijuana user, not to mention former President Bill Clinton, who “didn’t inhale.” Neither Obama nor Clinton are in any danger of having their property seized, however.

We no longer believe in the future.

With plummeting birth rates we have stopped reproducing ourselves biologically and that pessimism about our future has spread to new business formation.  With the advent of big government 'compassionate' conservatism and it's vicious big brother, big government progressivism the people's confidence in their ability to create the future has collapsed.  This is a much more serious problem than the deficit.  Because people and institutions that no longer believe in the future tend to die.

Scissors Beat Paper

Important fact to remember in these dark times.

It's a Depression.

We're in a depression and our fearless leaders are behaving precisely how they behaved last time:  focusing on cementing their political control over institutions and industries while society rots beneath them.  As Rahm Emmanuel, the current Capo de Tutti of Chicago famously said:  "never let a crisis go to waste".  Our leaders are fiddling to increase their power and status while the nation burns.

Mort Zuckerman isn't afraid to start using the "D" word:

If you went out this morning and saw hundreds of people lining up at soup kitchens, you'd think you were in a time machine, transported back to the Great Depression of the '30s, or the victim of a hallucination incubated by powerful images of those times. In fact, it is the absence of such images that is the illusion. We believe we live in more normal times—and we do not. Millions of people today are experiencing exactly the same struggle as the millions did in the Great Depression. They can't find work. They depend on government and philanthropy. They live on hope denied.

The big difference: Today millions are assisted by checks from Social Security and by food stamps. Food-stamp enrollment has been rising at the rate of 400,000 per month. More than 47 million Americans now depend on that program, an almost incredible record, for it is 15 percent of the population compared with the 7.9 percent who received food stamps from 1970 to 2000. Meanwhile, nearly 11 million Americans are now collecting federal disability checks from Social Security, and half have signed on since President Obama came to office. In 1992, there was one person on disability for every 35 workers. Today it is one for every 16. Such an increase simply cannot have been caused by direct disability experienced during employment. This is in effect another unemployment program, one without end. Many of the people on disability would normally be considered unemployed.

The reality is, we are experiencing a modern-day Depression.It is harder to find work than it has been in any previous economic recovery period. Typically, it takes 25 months to close the employment gap from the employment peak near the start of a downturn. But this time around, five years after employment peaked in January 2008, non-farm employment is still roughly 4 million below where it started. Never before has the job level not been at a record high during the fourth year into a business cycle 

In fact, 4.5 million fewer Americans are working today than when the recession started, and fewer are working today than in the year 2000, despite the fact that our population has grown by 31 million and our labor force by 11.4 million. Though the White House forecast four years ago that, with its stimulus policies, the jobless rate would be down to 5.2 percent by now, the real unemployment rate is 14.4 percent.

Of course if your goal is to build the perfect 'progressive' state then radically increasing normal people's dependence upon it is a core goal.  With the ongoing depression and the advent of the "Affordable" Care Act more than half of the population will either be employed by or dependent upon some form of government dole.  The Progs who rule us believe (rightly) that once the majority of electors are dependent upon the state for their daily bread, the party of the state will have effective permanent power.  "Can't make ends meet kiddo?  Well here's a (job, dole, handout, program) to help you out.  Just remember at election time who gave that to you, ok?"

Maximum dependence has always been the real object of Progressivism.  Why else would they pursue policies that inevitably drive up the cost of housing, food, energy and education?  The other 'social' values are just window dressing for their will to power.  Don't believe me?  Ask the inmates of Guantanamo.  Or a family of drone victims (well you can't ask them because they;re dead).  Or Chicago. Or our comprehensively looted children.

It's all so progressive.

Trust Tests not Teachers

Because frankly, women don't like boys very much.  A fact that has led to their felonization by society.  The funny thing is, the more boys and men are felonized, the worse things get for women.

Based upon this chart why is anyone worried over global warming?

Below is the best current estimate of prehistoric global temperature anomalies over the past 500 million years.  According to this, we are in a serious cold spell.  Kind of changes your perspective, doesn't it?  Here's the source: