Friday, January 31, 2014

From the "Oh dear, my eyes have gone cross department"

Her, it ,whatever.   HT Glenn Reynolds

PHIL BOWERMASTER: What’s Real? Does It Matter?

Related: Spike Jonze’s Her and the Big Question. “In other words, throughout most of the movie, Samantha may be faking it. And yet, if she is faking it, Theo’s experience is the same as it would have been if she were sincere.”

Plus, from the anything-you-can-do-I-can-do-meta department: “Spike Jonze is a filmmaker. Arguably, everything he does is fake. These people are all just actors pretending to have experiences. If I watch this film — or any film — and feel empathy or surprise or sadness, are these fake emotions? How can they be real if they result from something that’s not real?”

Me, I'm plausibly irritated by it all but I'm not sure if that's authentically, plausibly irritated or pseudo plausibly irritated.  Which pisses me off.  Pseudo plausibley-wise.

Attaboy Barack: You are really good at promoting hatred of the things you want

Call him the "Anti" Leader

GALLUP POLL: Percentage Who Think Gun Control Too Strict Triples in One Year.

But Union Rules will require three Firemen's Union Members to supervise each drone

Drone flying ambulance almost ready for prime time.  Govenment to destroy value proposition with  union rent seeking immediately.  That last part was a prediction.  But a pretty safe one.

AMBULANCE DRONES ARE ALMOST HERE. “AirMule, an unmanned flying ambulance capable of vertical takeoff and landing in extremely close quarters, has been in development for a few years. When the Israeli firm Urban Aeronautics released its initial concept art in 2008, it was easy to dismiss those futuristic, colorful pods out of hand. But last month, Urban Aeronautics announced that AirMule had successfully completed a series of fully automatic test flights.”

Ladies, I present you with the Gender Criminal: Barack Hussein Obama

The Horror, the absolute Horror.  BHO is a hate filled misogynist.  Impeach him, nay defenestrate the vile bigot!  Hey, I said 'ladies', oops.  "Women I present you with the Gender Criminal:  William Townsend Reeves".  I am not worthy.

whitehouse

Example of bad science because the investigator doesn't know their topic from a hole in the wall - Snow Days

Here's an interesting but totally BS chart.  Can you think of why?

Amount of Snow Required Before School is Cancelled
snowschool

The St. Louis data is a crock. I have never seen cancellations for one inch. Ever. Perhaps one inch on top of ice.  What you are seeing in the data is the prevalence of icing followed by snow.  Ice followed by a small amount of snow is the normal winter weather in the lower Midwest and upper South. By and large the the further north you go, the less common it is.  This is an example of asking the wrong question because of ignorance of the topic.

- See more at: http://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2014/01/how-much-snow-it-takes-to-cancel-school.html#comments

More good news about the world and the future

I always need to temper my well founded pessimism with optimism.  Here's the Motley Fool's version.  Not half Foolish and there are 50 of them for your cocktail party going pleasure.  My favorite one:

10. People worry that the U.S. economy will end up stagnant like Japan's. Next time you hear that, remember that unemployment in Japan hasn't been above 5.6% in the past 25 years, its government corruption ranking has consistently improved, incomes per capita adjusted for purchasing power have grown at a decent rate, and life expectancy has risen by nearly five years. I can think of worse scenarios.

The Game of Thrones is the best Damn Show ever

There I said it.  And you know what?  I'm proud!  Ha ha!  Proud I tell you!  Even though it is an HBO sex and bloodfest.  You can see it for free on Project Free TV - not that I don't want you to honestly pay for it to those self righteous Hollywood liberals who are mucking everything up with their cynical politics.....


Is the Federal Superstate simply fascism without the pageantry?

And the hot blondes.  Never forget the hot blondes.  HT Albertodude.

"I wouldn't call it fascism exactly, but a political system nominally controlled by an irresponsible, dumbed down electorate who are manipulated by dishonest, cynical, controlled mass media that dispense the propaganda of a corrupt political establishment can hardly be described as democracy either."

-          Edward Zehr


Show me the man and I'll find you the crime - Laurent Beria NKVD head (Murderous KGB predecessor murdered by Stalin)

Fascist is as fascist does. Hey whaddya expect from a Chicago machine bred pol?

Alan Dershowitz Rises To The Defense of Dinesh D’Souza. And he’s not the only one:
The Justice Department’s tactics remind Dershowitz of the words of Stalin’s secret police chief, Lavrentiy Beria, who said, “Show me the man and I’ll find you the crime.”
“This is an outrageous prosecution and is certainly a misuse of resources,” charged Dershowitz. “It raises the question of why he is being selected for prosecution among the many, many people who commit similar crimes. 
“This sounds to me like it is coming from higher places. It is hard for me to believe this did not come out of Washington or at least get the approval of those in Washington.”
Here is what Joseph diGenova, former US attorney and a partner at diGenova and Toensing, has to say: “What strikes me as unusual is that it involves a single donation made by an individual with no criminal record. It seems to me that a misdemeanor makes much more sense than a felony charge.”
As I note in Ham Sandwich Nation: Due Process When Everything Is A Crime, guilt or innocence is the least important issue in cases of prosecutorial targeting, because everyone is guilty of something.

If youre going to think like forest elves maybe you should dress like them and live in the trees.

IEA says European industry screwed by European forest elfery (greenery) running amok.  Couldn't happen to a sillier continent.

European industries currently pay double what their American counterparts pay for electricity, and the International Energy Agency is warning that this is not a temporary phenomenon. The costs of the subsidies propping up Europe’s nascent solar and wind industries, combined with the bloc’s increasing reliance on foreign sources of energy (such as American coal), have sent electricity prices soaring over the past six years. The IEA believes this will plague Europe’s ability to compete on the global market for the next two decades. The FT reports:
In findings likely to inflame claims EU climate change policies are damaging the bloc’s manufacturers, the International Energy Agency said Europe will lose a third of its global market share of energy-intensive exports over the next two decades because energy prices will stay stubbornly higher than those in the US.
A number of EU countries have embraced green energy subsidies, shunned nuclear power and resisted the shale exploration that has fuelled a manufacturing renaissance in the US, prompting growing anger among industry leaders who say this has been a recipe for competitive ruin. 
 
One of biggest stories of this decade is the steady erosion of the global green movement, which has almost entirely been driven by the incoherence of green policy proposals and the serial failure of signature policies. Yet the response of the mainstream green movement to critics who point these facts out is “Shut up, you evil science deniers.”

You go Hans.  An Frodo, and Bilbo, and Merry and all the other little elfses and hobbitses and gollumses and dwarfses.  You rock - well rocks and moss mostly, but you definitely rock.

Indeed

Bambam goes tea party with minwage decree

The only problem with this is that Obama has a magic money machine - he'll just print more semollians or bitcoins or whatever and shazam, it t'won't cost nuthin'.  Our kids?  Not so much.  Being progressive means never having to say your sorry so long as you say it's 'for the kids' or 'for the poor'.

Why, you may ask, is this (minwage increase for Fed programs) initiative so useful? Well, let me explain. By voluntarily paying higher prices for some goods and services the federal government procures, without clamoring for new appropriations, Obama is effectively reducing the size of government. Paying prices that are 40 percent higher than before, without the corresponding massive budget expansion, brings down the amount of goods and services acquired by almost 30 percent. And Obama believes this to be a good idea. I am sure that even conservative tea party members who are opposed to most of the president's agenda will welcome this development.

In fairness the press demands proof from Republicans

And even with proof they won't accept it. I think Mr. Tapper is straying very close to religious apostasy in the church of the mainstream media.

CNN’s Jake Tapper: Don’t Just Trust the Government, Demand Proof.

On the Hugh Hewitt radio show last week, CNN anchor Jake Tapper was asked about Edward Snowden’s leaks and government claims that they’ve done great damage to America. Every broadcast journalist in the nation ought to read his reply. The core of it: Be skeptical, and demand evidence before believing official claims!

Consider! Beware!

TSA tell all will cause your faith in our glorious federal stupor state to shrink like all those penises they made fun of

....well not mine, of course.

Money quote: "It's shit" - from a full body scanner trainer when asked about whether the tech worked.  Of course it's an apt metaphor for the entire TSA or indeed most of the glorious federal stupor state.

Thank god they're so incompetent because if our Federeral Klown Kar Krew were competent in enforcing the millions of pages of lunacy that they've promulgated it would cause the US to collapse.

Dumber and dumberererer is my prayer.  The obscene reality at the link.

Thursday, January 30, 2014

An economic development battle where all the participants lose

Film subsidies are a race to the bottom to subsidize rich weeny lifestyles.  The real money is never going to leave LA because that's where the deals are done.  So why blow money just to get your town to represent New York or LA in a movie. Dumbass to the right of me, moron to the left, here we are stuck in stupidville.  From Gerard Baker at WSJ.

Now the fact that the business is even in play with all of the hometown LA advantages (weather, scenery, everyone and everything you need is already there) is an example of just how totally screwed LA and California are.  Dumber and Dumbererer indeed.

Working in show business used to require a move to Hollywood. But as tax breaks offered by states like Georgia, Louisiana, North Carolina and Michigan have lured film and TV production away from California, workers have followed. Atlanta, we find, has surfaced as a filmmaking mecca. Our story notes this has led to a flurry of business for a state department formed when Jimmy Carter was governor to capitalize, oddly enough, on river-rafting tourism following the movie "Deliverance." But we report that L.A. doesn't want to give up its title without a fight and city officials are lobbying for legislation to sweeten the pot to lure business back to the state.

Gosh Darn Martian litterers!

They need a deposit law for their beer cans.  $1 Million per can.

Is the inequality issue really about money or class?

And is the left's focus on income inequality just a manifestation of their intensifying caste status seeking?  Is it the desire to pull down the 'unworthy' super rich because the are being outbid for dinner reservations at Spago by some Hedge clown?  Or they can't afford the mega mansion that the philistine built down the road? Because at the same time our elite is all atwitter about 'income inequality' they have never demonstrated a more rigorous commitment to 'social inequality' in their status seeking.

For example, the Obama administration is the most academically elitist in history with more of its top 250 staffers attending Oxford than any state university system and the vast, vast majority of them coming from the northeast Ivy ghettos.

Or the finding that the phenomenon of 'assortative mating' is intensifying in America with elites marrying elites more and more often.

Or the fact that elite colleges have never been harder to get into an that the great majority of those in them are descended from other (mostly affluent) graduates of elite institutions.  There are a whole bunch of other data points discussed at this link.  Worth a gander.

So what do you do in a winner take more world where lower wage occupations are subject to global competition while higher status people who can horn in on the government rent seeking scene earn more and more?  I guess you could punish the whole society by instituting punitive marginal tax rates or confiscating wealth and handing it to the oh so productive government for destruction but at the end of the the day the top will still be the top and the bottom won't really benefit (any gains the get in income redistribution will be sapped away by slower growth and the added chaotic rent seeking that politicians are able to do by buying the lower income votes with all that extra redistribution).  No the key lies elsewhere.

The solution? Make middle class both viable and honorable again for the great majority of Americans. How will we know we've done so?

1. When people on the coasts face a middle class cost profile relative to their incomes like that which exists in TX or GA today. Can most if not all Americans live decently on the fruits of their own labor without subsidies for housing, healthcare, education and so on?  For this to happen blue elites will need to stop pursuing elitist goals like green or smart growth and side with the little guy.  Even at the cost of sacrificing charm, style or 'Nirvana'.  (Incidentally, the latest census income data by zip code show that the greatest rich isolation is in the northeast and California where the great majority of the rich zips are. In flyover places like MN or TX  the rich live much closer to the poor and middle class. No doubt due to lenient zoning laws and incompetent lawyers - no one of refined taste should be forced to see the hoi polloi before 9am when they get to their challenging job bringing light, joy and regulation to the little ones).

2. When elites show as much respect for doers with modest educational credentials as 'thinkers' with prestige credentials.  For example, when 2008 Sarah Palin is afforded as much status for her real accomplishments (mom of 5, Idaho State, successful business builder, rapidly growing suburb mayor, successful corruption fighter against her own party's machine, state governor).  As Barack Obama was for his much more conceptual ones (dad of 2, Columbia, Harvard Law, Head of Law Review, law associate, untenured law lecturer, state senator who cosponsored one law - banning the death penalty in a state that hadn't executed anyone in a century, solipsistic author of two (!) memoirs before he was 40, US Senator who gave a popular prime time speech)*. 

In other words, when the elitists who utterly dominate the Democrats and poison the upper ranks of the Republicans and independents can have as much respect for Harry Truman or LBJ as they had for FDR or JFK.  Because the key to social equality and living in peace with each other depends upon mutual respect.  The Andy Jackson and Harry Truman Democrats understood that, even Bill Clinton did. But Hillary! and Barack and their entitled, credentialed minions? Not so much.


*For those who really want to get into this Palin-Obama thing and boy do I, try this on for size:  Imagine BHO grew up in Moscow, Idaho, as a white boy with a serious multi-year choom habit, attended Moscow High and Idaho State.  Does he make Harvard Law?  President of the Law Review (remember, he wouldn't be the first 'black' one any more), be paid a $100K advance in today's money to write a graduate 'memoir'?  Or would he have started a successful fishing business, gotten elected to the school board, as mayor of his rapidly growing suburb, planned and implemented a major water and sewer bond issue?  Given a plum patronage post on a state board would he have gone against the chairman and party and accused him of corruption, getting him fired and convicted?  And then running against the enraged party establishment won election as governor of his state?  Or would he be managing the Ketchikan Krispy Kreme?

Who's your daddy?

Read this interview about analyzing historic social mobility using surnames..

Even slaughtering the old bourgeoisie and elite in China hardly moved the social mobility needle.   Social mobility in 'chock full 'o progress' Sweden is what it was in medieval times. In both cases the surnames that dominated then dominate today.  I guess human beings are a bit too complicated to be 'saved'. But our rulers make a great living pretending to help (see 'war on poverty' or 'war on drugs' for how to play government pretend help.  First, you need looooots of somebody else's money...come to think if it, all salvationist projects start with liberal amounts of the sweat of other people's brows...then you need lots of guns and shackles and small concrete boxes to coerce righteousness. )

It turns out that inequality is driven far more by social and biological factors than economic ones (see my othe recent post on social mobility here).  Pre revolution China was a very different place than Maoist China yet the same families were on top.  Ditto Medieval and 21st Century Sweden.  And are you really 'fixing' inequality if you interventions can have no (positive, I'm sure there are many negative) impact on social mobility?  Is it just another more elaborate version of 'alms for the poor' extended to the middle class to buy more votes?

As I've argued before: appeals to fix inequality are just gussied up demands for 'more power (and therefore wealth, status,and sex) for me' in the pursuit of a goal that can never ever be reached and therefore can be used forever by the unethical to drive division, hatred and fear in fulfillment of their narrow interests.

But of course pretty much every appeal to empower the state can be boiled down to self seeking. Not every intervention is wrong but they should always be suspect.

AG Holder can't explain Constitutional basis for Obami Executive Orders

Being Bien Pensant means never having to follow the rules like little people do.  Imagine how the 'independent' press would squeal if a President Palin did this. 

The worst Dem cronies work in media.

http://m.washingtonexaminer.com/attorney-general-eric-holder-cant-explain-constitutional-basis-for-obamas-executive-orders/article/2543100

Just what kind of elitism is BHO fighting?

More of his top 250 attended Oxford than any single state university system. 60 attended Harvard.

Hey, he's fighting for the little guy so he doesn't have to have the little grubbies underfoot.  Noblesse oblige and all that, don't you know.

http://www.nationaljournal.com/white-house/obama-s-love-of-elites-20140129

My father led South China Sea oil exploration efforts in the early seventies.

Until China began invading various islands so he shifted to Indonesia. That's what thugs do: they destroy the process that creates wealth for all.  Usually in the name of the nation or the poor or the environment.  Either way, it's jackboots all the way down.

"China leading first China Sea oil exploration in decades"

http://www.the-american-interest.com/blog/2014/01/29/china-leads-first-oil-gas-exploration-in-south-china-sea-in-years/

Another sign the left doesn't believe in the future or Globalism....

..or any of that Kumbaya 'we are the world crap' that they spew. 

Harry Reid and Dems seek to kill free trade deals.  See link.

Modern leftism is a quasi-fascist ideology of power that uses appeals to save the poor or the whales or the snails to rig markets on behalf of its various corporatist interests.  Like Colleges, Unions, high tech info utilities, uncompetitive businesses, government employees, green frauds and Mega banks.

It would be a very ugly spectacle if not successfully obscured by the corporatist media.

All the Boni have Bonis for each other.

http://www.the-american-interest.com/blog/2014/01/30/harry-reid-to-obama-no-to-fast-track/

Textbook Cartel breaking up

This is how civilization advances: the dissolution of one state sponsored authoritarian cartel after another. Now on to schools and colleges themselves.

Burn baby, burn.

http://www.aei-ideas.org/2014/01/the-era-of-the-textbook-cartel-and-300-textbooks-is-ending-as-the-college-textbook-bubble-shows-signs-of-deflating/

Wednesday, January 29, 2014

Another example of statistical malpractice by the Warmist establishment: data homogenization edition

The temperature record has been statistically manipulated in ways that male the adjustments stronger than the underlying warming and in the same direction. Why am I not surprised that the books are cooked?

http://wattsupwiththat.com/2014/01/29/important-study-on-temperature-adjustments-homogenization-can-lead-to-a-significant-overestimate-of-rising-trends-of-surface-air-temperature/#more-102367

What he said - State of the Union address is a farce wrapped in a joke, submerged in sewage and fed to snakes who poop it out and present it to the public. Or something like that. Anyway it's nasty.

The State of the Union has been a bipartisan obscenity as long as I have been alive.  Please kill it someone.  Williamson tells it:

The annual State of the Union pageant is a hideous, dispiriting, ugly, monotonous, un-American, un-republican, anti-democratic, dreary, backward, monarchical, retch-inducing, depressing, shameful, crypto-imperial display of official self-aggrandizement and piteous toadying, a black Mass during which every unholy order of teacup totalitarian and cringing courtier gathers under the towering dome of a faux-Roman temple to listen to a speech with no content given by a man with no content, to rise and to be seated as is called for by the order of worship — it is a wonder they have not started genuflecting — with one wretched representative of their number squirreled away in some well-upholstered Washington hidey-hole in order to preserve the illusion that those gathered constitute a special class of humanity without whom we could not live.

It’s the most nauseating display in American public life — and I write that as someone who has just returned from a pornographers’ convention.

It’s worse than the Oscars.

But worse than the Oscars?  Well, that's puttin' it out there.

Doj revolving door enriches lawyers at the expense of justice, democracy, truth, decency, you name it.

It wouldn't be so bad except that these cats deliberately make things insanely complicated so that they can exploit the confusion and chaos that results.  They're human ticks. Or tapeworms.  Or leeches or something. First thing we must do is kill all the lawyers was a prayer not a joke.

SPINNING THE DOJ REVOLVING DOOR. “A cynic might say that what is corrupt here isn’t the practices of American companies overseas but a regulatory regime so arbitrary and complex that it winds up enriching the regulators (once they pass through the revolving door), because they are the only ones who understand how it works well enough to advise on it. Another case for the Glenn Reynolds anti-revolving door tax of ‘A 50% surtax on anything earned within five years after leaving the federal government, above whatever the federal salary was.’”

Jimmy Carter in Mulatto Face

So now it's limits again is it? Every Dem President ends up berating the country and justifying why the salvationist rhetoric of their first term has turned out so bad because, well the damned country faces limits or "Its the war and that sonofabitch Johnson or something".

They always have an excuse "malaise", 'Gridlock', 'triangulation', 'nasty, mean conservative hater evil testicle lickers' or some other reason why their grandiose 'promises' turn to social and economic shit.  And the press swallows this baloney without even mustard.  They are so gullible.  But no one is more gullible then those who want to be lied to.

Perhaps it's them.  Just a thought.



Press won't talk about the real abuses of power because their homie is doing them

Glenn Reynolds says that focusing on Christie is a displacement response for the press failing to do their job. in the face of gross abuses of power  Indeed.

Consider the government shutdown last fall when the president authorized the needless closing of federal parks and museums in an attempt to smear Republicans. Obama’s team got so carried away that they even tried to close state-run parks in Wisconsin that weren’t dependent on federal funds. Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker had to defy federal orders to keep them open.
The now-former Christie associates are amateurs compared to President Obama's team of pin-striped tough guys
Then there were the Tea Party groups that challenged the Obama agenda and soon found themselves targeted and harassed by the IRS. Yes, the tax official who ran the program claimed her Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination in a congressional hearing, but don't expect any criminal charges to emerge from the IRS scandal. Attorney General Eric Holder's Justice Department sees no evil in it, perhaps because the government attorney in charge of the investigation is a long-time Obama donor.
Another example of "the Chicago Way" as applied in Washington emerged this week in a legal filing by Standard and Poor's, which faces federal fraud charges. An executive recounted how then-Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner said the feds would seek payback for S&P downgrading the U.S. credit rating. Recall that back in August 2011, S&P dropped its credit-worthiness rating for the U.S. from AAA to just AA+. It was a reasonable decision, given the staggering U.S. debt load and the chronic inability of Congress to agree on annual budgets.
It was also highly embarrassing to a White House then gearing up for a re-election campaign. Two days after S&P’s announcement, McGraw Hill CEO Harold McGraw got a call from a steaming-mad Geithner, who told him the rating agency had made a huge mistake. “You are accountable for that,” Geithner reportedly said, adding that “you have done an enormous disservice to yourselves and to your country.”
The Treasury secretary then said S&P had made other mistakes in the past and would be “looked at very carefully." McGraw said he also recalled Geithner saying "such behavior could not occur without a response from the government." It wasn't a threat. It was a preview. Last year, Holder's Justice Department filed charges against S&P, claiming it defrauded investigators by falsely rating home loans as AAA. S&P denies the charges. A Treasury spokesman told Politico that McGraw's allegation regarding Geithner was “false,” while a Justice Department official wondered why the story was only being told now, more than two years after it “purportedly happened.”

What makes leftists such obscene totalitarian bootlicks?

British labor party edition. John Prescott being an entitled prat in Cuba.  Ick.

http://www.samizdata.net/2014/01/thankee-kind-sir-john-prescott-overtips-a-chambermaid-in-cuba/

"We burned this tight-assed city (Washington) to the ground in 1814 and I'm all for doing it again."

So am I Malcolm, so am I.  Sorry about the Jesus End Times ad. And all the effing. And the Anti-Americanism, but who isn't these days?  Go to 2:30 for the burning down Washington bit.  An

Maybe MOOCS shouldn't be online versions of wetware courses?

The Khan academy thinks so and they've been at this longer than anyone without any glossy University brand.

http://pjmedia.com/instapundit/183223/

Study: Gossiping has positive societal benefits

Next up: studies of the utility of bitching, whining, ragging and nagging.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/10601241/Gossiping-benefits-society-study-claims.html

Poorest state in nation opposes future

They just hate science, innovation, prosperity, reality.  But hey it's good to be the poorest.  And some state has to be the policy crash test dummy, may's well be the state with the least to lose.
Poor and stupid is no way to go through life, Hawaii.

If you want to find a winner country look at how it treats winners

Oddly enough those jurisdictions that treat winners well get more of them.  Haters never prosper. No matter the reason.  Hint:  it's not New Jersey or New York.

The EU finally gets wise and says Frack this green shit and the usual suspects squeal

The establishment press: so supine, so stupid, so gone. And a little Ezra shall save them all? Ha ha, sir is funny.  Read this LAT crock. Better yet don't. You won't learn anything.

Preet Bahara: the thug enforcer to punish the Presidents political enemies

All criminal gangs need thugs to punish those who step out of line.  In the criminal enterprise called the US government the thug dujour is Preet Bahara.  The Obami are so open about this because our press are filled with left partisan cowards more interested in their next paycheck or cocktail party than truth.

Tuesday, January 28, 2014

The police and every other part of our obscene state apparat are out of control and need to be stopped.

Decency demands it.

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/jan/27/darrin-manning-high-school-deserving-victims?CMP=ema_565

Combine a super powerful government agency with a deeply corrupt culture in the service of a hyper partisan left wing President and bad things happen

So bad that even the NYT can no longer completely cover it up (and retain any shred of self respect)  I give you the curious case of the Friends of Abe - a Hollywood Conservative Political group that requested 501-c4 status years and years ago.  In no way shape or form is the bureaucracy of our glorious Federal Superstate unbiased and apolitical.  It is a left handed spoils system where only lefties get the government job.  It sucks and is one of the big reasons that we need to break it up, break it all up.  Democracy can not long survive when one faction controls the machinery of an immense, vastly powerful state.  Hattip best of the web, wsj.

These days "IRS Targets Conservative Group" is a dog-bites-man story. But this one was man-bites-dog by virtue of its placement: on the front page of the New York Times, a newspaper that is usually supportive of this administration's efforts to suppress domestic dissent. Put it down to a sudden outbreak of news judgment.

The news value to the Times may lie more in the nature of the organization than its trouble with the IRS. "In a famously left-leaning Hollywood, where Democratic fund-raisers fill the social calendar, Friends of Abe stands out as a conservative group that bucks the prevailing political winds," reads the lead paragraph.
Getty Images/Image Source
 
But Friends of Abe--as in Lincoln--has sought nonprofit status under Section 501(c)(3) of the U.S. Tax Code, which would allow it to collect tax-deductible contributions. The IRS has been reviewing the application for some two years, seeking information about meetings where politicians spoke. A 501(c)(3) is prohibited from engaging in campaign activity, such as hosting a fundraiser, but as the Times notes, "tax-exempt groups are permitted to invite candidates to speak at events."

The most troubling revelation in the Times account is that at one point the IRS "included a demand--which was not met--for enhanced access to the group's security-protected website, which would have revealed member names." The Times points out that FOA "keeps a low profile and fiercely protects its membership list, to avoid what it presumes would result in a sort of 21st-century blacklist" and that "tax experts said that an organization's membership list is information that would not typically be required."

With the possible exception of academia, show business is about as totalitarian a subculture as you will find in America. Conservatives are a tiny minority, and they fear for their livelihoods if exposed. A few high-profile celebrities are exceptions--the Times mentions Gary Sinise, Jon Voight, Kelsey Grammer and Lionel Chetwynd--but for lesser-known actors and people who work in off-camera jobs, confidentiality is crucial.

This column obtained a letter that Jeremey Boreing, FOA's executive director, sent members last week in response to the Times story. Its tone demonstrates how seriously the group takes its members' privacy:
At one point, as we were pushing to get the situation resolved, the IRS asked for access to those portions of our website that contain the names of our members. We refused to give them this access, and we will continue to refuse it.
At present, that is no longer one of the demands that they are making. . . .
We will not name names in Hollywood--not for the New York Times and not for the IRS. If the day should come that the IRS makes seeing the list an essential demand for our determination, we will simply remove our request for exemption and structure the organization in a different manner. This office will never reveal the names of our members, and we ask that none of our members reveal their fellows either.
We should note that, true to his word, Boreing names no names in the letter.
FOA members have good reason to fear being identified to the IRS. Last year the agency was revealed to have leaked confidential donor information about the National Organization for Marriage to the Human Rights Campaign, an antagonist in the debate over same-sex marriage. HRC promptly posted the purloined information online. LifeSiteNews.com reported in October that congressional investigators had identified the leaker, "but in an ironic twist, the Internal Revenue Service is forbidden from disclosing whether the employee has been prosecuted, fired, or even reprimanded."

The IRS's intrusive tactics thus have a chilling effect on people who wish to exercise their First Amendment right of free association without attracting public attention--or, more precisely, the attention of vicious ideological antagonists. Even calling attention to those tactics can compound the problem, as illustrated by FOA's need to reassure its members in the wake of the Times story. The gradual accretion of power by a vast administrative state, combined with an administration intolerant of dissent, has produced a clear and present danger to basic American freedoms.

Giving up on middle classness

It turns out that fully one sixth of the US population that considered itself to be middle class in 2008 has revised it's assessment of their social standing downwards.  It's one thing to have economic hard times but along with all the discouraged workers, this is an indication that the people are giving up on the American dream. 

From those Obama haters at Mother Jones.

Progressive Hope and Change indeed.

In global warming hucksterism all the numbers are terrible.

An outstanding explanation of just how trace CO2 is.  Raises a whole bunch of questions. I include the whole thing here.  From wattsupwiththat.com.

With the possibility of the coldest Super Bowl ever coming this week, this story about CO2 concentration seemed appropriate.
Ryan Scott Welch writes:

Anthony as you know, many people don’t know much about the earth’s atmosphere.  For example, when questioned about how much CO2 is in our atmosphere most people give me a guess of somewhere between 30% and 70%.  When I tell them that CO2 is only 0.04% or really about 395 ppm (parts per million) they generally look at me as if I was speaking some kind of foreign language.  The layman simply cannot convert 0.04% of the atmosphere or 395 ppm into anything they can picture or relate to.  In searching for some way to help the layman to understand the earth’s atmosphere, CO2, and the human contribution to atmospheric CO2, I came upon the idea of relating a sample of the atmosphere to something that nearly every person has seen, a football stadium.

So, instead of talking about ppm atmosphere, I talk about seats in a stadium.  I put together a presentation using football stadium analogy and it goes something like this.
How much atmospheric CO2 is from human activity? If a football stadium represented a sample of our atmosphere, how many seats would be human caused CO2? The Dallas Cowboys Stadium seats 100,000 for special events.
welch_slide1
Each seat represents one molecule of gas in our atmosphere.
welch_slide2
Nitrogen is 78% of the atmosphere, Oxygen is 21%, and Argon is 0.9% giving you a total of 99.9% of the atmosphere.
welch_slide3
So, where is the CO2?  CO2 is a trace gas that is only 0.04% of the atmosphere which in this sample = 40 seats.
welch_slide4
But of the 40 seats, or parts per 100,000 of CO2 in the atmosphere, 25 were already in the atmosphere before humans relied on hydrocarbon fuels (coal, gas and oil) leaving 15 seats.
welch_slide5
And since humans only contribute 3% of all CO2 emitted into the atmosphere each year (97% is from nature), the human contribution is 3% of the 15 remaining seats in our sample.  3% of 15 is 0.45.
welch_slide6
welch_slide7
So in our stadium sample of 100,000 seats the human contribution of CO2 is less than half of one seat.  That is less than one half of one seat from 100,000 seats in a Dallas Stadium sized sample of our atmosphere is human caused CO2.
welch_slide9 welch_slide8
[NOTE: per Dr. Robert Brown's comment pointing out an oversight, this half-seat visualization analogy is on a PER YEAR basis, not a total basis - Anthony]
Here is my presentation uploaded on slideshare.net
http://www.slideshare.net/ryanswelch/how-much-atmospheric-co2-is-from-human-activity-23514995
REFERENCES:
Mauna Loa CO2 data: ftp://aftp.cmdl.noaa.gov/products/trends/co2/co2_mm_mlo.txt
Wigley, T.M.L., 1983 The pre-industrial carbon dioxide level. Climatic Change 5, 315-320 (lowest value of 250 ppm used)
Increasing Atmospheric CO2: Manmade…or Natural? January 21st, 2009 by Roy W. Spencer, Ph. D. http://www.drroyspencer.com/2009/01/increasing-atmospheric-co2-manmade%E2%80%A6or-natural/
Water Vapor Rules the Greenhouse System, Geocraft, http://www.geocraft.com/WVFossils/greenhouse_data.html
The Carbon Cycle, the Ocean, and the Iron Hypothesis, Figure based on Sabine et al 2004, Texas A&M University http://oceanworld.tamu.edu/resources/oceanography-book/carboncycle.htm
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Coldest SOTU ever to include more wamist propaganda

Can you say irony?  I knew you could. The McKibbenites will be standing in the sub zero in the altogether, no doubt.  Regardless, a bunch of freezing, aging hipsters shrieking against people's livelihoods should be suitably obscene.

Nutters.

http://dailycaller.com/2014/01/24/obama-to-talk-global-warming-in-coldest-sotu-address-in-history/

Tin soldiers and Nixon's coming.

Well Obama, really. Stay tuned for the new Imperial Presidency. Like the old Imperial Presidency.

'we're finally on our own
'IRS running wild in Ohio.'
'How many more?'
'How many more?'

And our deeply corrupt, toothless,  left wing press will probably embarrass itself once again and slobber all over the new Jesus.

http://www.nationalreview.com/article/369560/governing-pen-and-phone-victor-davis-hanson

Pete Seeger: The Leni Reifenstahl of the Left

Advocating for jack booted thugs was no way to go through life, sir. RIP.
http://pjmedia.com/instapundit/183195/

More evidence of our slide into social democraceeee

When fixed costs of employment are high and rising employers have an incentive to push overtime rather than add workers.  The manufacturing work week is now highest in the history of the stat. (Hint: it's not because of our economic boom).

 
It's fascinating: those yelling loudest about 'inequality' do their damnedest to increase it.   While 92 million working age Americans slowly rot. But most of 'em already vote for the social already so screw 'em they're gettin' their check.  Social 'Democracy' indeed.  Sigh.

Interesting take on the notorious death of the rentier aka: ZIRP

Worth the time for a brief perusal.

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2014-01-27/gavekal-explains-emerging-market-panic

Best AGW skeptic presentation ever

The post asks only one question: when did CAGW begin? He takes us back half a million years and gives us something sadly lacking in the debate: long term perspective.

From wattsupwiththat.com

Here's the whole thing:

By WUWT regular “Just The Facts”
There have been a number of statements made recently about “Global Warming Deniers”, e.g. “White House: Global Warming Deniers Wrong to Reference Polar Vortex” US News, “Watch The Daily Show mock Trump and other global warming deniers” The Week and “Global warming denier Jim Inhofe: ‘Fewer and fewer’ senators believe in climate change ‘hoax’”. The Raw Story
Given the apparent prevalence of “Global Warming Deniers”, it seems prudent to take a look at the data so that everyone is clear when Global Warming began and what is undeniable. As such, from the following EPICA Dome C Ice Core record from Vostok, Antarctica, over the last 450,000 years Earth has experienced numerous Glacials, commonly referred to as Ice Ages, and Interglacials,  like the Holocene Interglacial we are experiencing today:

EssayWeb.net – Click the pic to view at source
“The Last Glacial Maximum (LGM) refers to a period in the Earth’s climate history when ice sheets were at their maximum extension, between 26,500 and 19,000–20,000 years ago, marking the peak of the last glacial period.” As such, one could argue that Global Warming began about “19,000–20,000 years ago”.
However, there was “the Late Glacial Maximum (ca. 13,000-10,000 years ago), or Tardiglacial (“Late Glacial”)” which was “defined primarily by climates in the northern hemisphere warming substantially, causing a process of accelerated deglaciation following the Last Glacial Maximum (ca. 25,000-13,000 years ago)”. “As such, one could also argue that Global Warming began about “13,000-10,000 years ago”.
Now looking at the GISP2 Ice Core record from Greenland, over the last 10,700 years, you can see the rapid warming that occurred at the end of last Glacial and that the current Holocene Interglacial reached it’s maximum peak between 8000 – 7500 years ago:
climate4you.com – Ole Humlum – Professor, University of Oslo Department of Geosciences – Click the pic to view at source
Since the peak of the Holocene Intreglacial, Earth has experienced several additional descending peaks, including the Minoan Warm Period between 3500 – 3000 years ago, the Roman Warm Period between 2250 – 1500 years ago and the Medieval Warm Period between 1250 – 750 years ago. The Medieval Warm Period and subsequent Little Ice Age can be seen clearly on the following temperature reconstruction based upon Alexandre, 1987 and Lamb, 1988, found Page 250, Figure 7.1 of IPCC Assessment Report 1:
JoNova – IPCC AR1 – Click the pic to view at source
The Little Ice Age “has been conventionally defined as a period extending from the sixteenth to the nineteenth centuries, or alternatively, from about 1350 to about 1850, though climatologists and historians working with local records no longer expect to agree on either the start or end dates of this period, which varied according to local conditions. NASA defines the term as a cold period between AD 1550 and 1850 and notes three particularly cold intervals: one beginning about 1650, another about 1770, and the last in 1850, each separated by intervals of slight warming.” As such, one could argue that Global Warming began in “about 1850″.
However, generally when referring to “Global Warming Deniers” there is an implication that the “Global Warming” that’s being denied is caused by anthropogenic carbon dioxide emissions. Anthropogenic CO2 emissions were de minimis in 1850. In fact, anthropogenic CO2 Emissions from Fossil-Fuels did not become potentially consequential until approximately 1950:
Carbon Dioxide Information Analysis Center – Click the pic to view at source
This is why the IPCC only claims to be;
“95% certain that humans are the “dominant cause” of global warming since the 1950sBBC
As such, one could argue the Global Warming began in “the 1950s”.
However, if you look at the Met Office – Hadley Center  HadCRUT4 Global Surface Temperature record for the last 163 years you can see that temperatures didn’t warm during the 1950s, nor the 60s:
Met Office – Hadley Center – Click the pic to view at source
In fact it was not until approximately 1975 that temperatures began to rise. As such, one could argue that Global Warming began in approximately 1975.
However, in 2010 Phil Jones was asked by the BBC, “Do you agree that according to the global temperature record used by the IPCC, the rates of global warming from 1860-1880, 1910-1940 and 1975-1998 were identical?” Phil Jones responded that,”Temperature data for the period 1860-1880 are more uncertain, because of sparser coverage, than for later periods in the 20th Century. The 1860-1880 period is also only 21 years in length. As for the two periods 1910-40 and 1975-1998 the warming rates are not statistically significantly different. I have also included the trend over the period 1975 to 2009, which has a very similar trend to the period 1975-1998. So, in answer to the question, the warming rates for all 4 periods are similar and not statistically significantly different from each other.”
The warming during the periods of “1860-1880″ and “1910-1940″, before anthropogenic carbon dioxide emissions became potentially consequential, is “not statistically significantly different” from the warming during the periods “1975-1998″ and “1975 to 2009″. Thus there is no indication that the warming between “1975-1998″ and “1975 to 2009″ is unnatural, unusual and/or caused by anthropogenic carbon dioxide emissions. Global Warming may have started in 1975, but there is no observable evidence [of] anthropogenic CO2 emission based Global Warming began in 1975. As such, one could argue that anthropogenic CO2 emission based Global Warming began sometime [after] 1975.
However, if you look at following UAH Satellite Lower Atmosphere graph for the last 34 years;
University of Alabama – Huntsville (UAH) – Dr. Roy Spencer – Click the pic to view at source
and this NASA GISS Mean Monthly Surface Temperature Anomaly graph for the last 17 years;
National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS) – Click the pic to view at source
you can see that Global Warming stopped in the late 1990s or early 2000s, which has been refereed to as “The Pause” in Earth’s temperature. In fact, looking at the Werner Broznak’s recent article, the Pause in each major temperature data set is as follows:
For GISS, the slope is flat since July 2001 or 12 years, 6 months.
For Hadcrut3, the slope is flat since July 1997 or 16 years, 6 months.
For Hadcrut4, the slope is flat since December 2000 or 13 years, 1 month.
For Hadsst3, the slope is flat since December 2000 or 13 years, 1 month.
For UAH, the slope is flat since October 2004 or 9 years, 3 months. (goes to December using version 5.5)
For RSS, the slope is flat since September 1996 or 17 years, 4 months.”
Shown graphically, that looks like this:
WoodForTrees.org – Paul Clark – Click the pic to view at source
As such, one could argue that for the last 17 – 9 years Global Warming hasn’t been occurring, and thus Global Warming began in 1975 and ended between 1996 and 2004.
However, this would not  resolve the question of when the “Global Warming” that’s being caused by anthropogenic Carbon Dioxide emissions began. If you look at Global CO2 Emissions from Fossil-Fuels and;
EPA – Carbon Dioxide Information Analysis Center, Oak Ridge National Laboratory, U.S. Department of Energy – Click the pic to view at source
and Cumulative Anthropogenic CO2 Emissions from Fossil-Fuels, you can see that emissions have been growing rapidly in the last few decades:
Carbon Dioxide Information Analysis Center – Click the pic to view at source
In fact the Economist noted in 2013 that “The world added roughly 100 billion tonnes of carbon to the atmosphere between 2000 and 2010. That is about a quarter of all the CO₂ put there by humanity since 1750. And yet, as James Hansen, the head of NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies, observes, ‘the five-year mean global temperature has been flat for a decade.’”
Thus, while anthropogenic CO2 emissions are the highest they’ve ever been, and growing rapidly, Earth’s temperature has been in a 9 – 17 year Pause. And the only period of warming that anthropogenic CO2 emissions could have had a significant influence on, 1975 – 1998, is “similar and not statistically significantly different from” the periods of 1860-1880 and 1910-1940 when there is no evidence of anthropogenic CO2 emission influence. As such one could argue that “Global Warming” due to anthropogenic Carbon Dioxide emissions may not have begun, that Earth’s sensitivity to CO2 may be low, that natural processes may be large enough to outweigh the effects of anthropogenic CO2 emissions, and/or that preparing for a period of rapid and catastrophic Global Warming, when there is no observational evidence that it is in fact occurring, may be a historic folly.
Anyway, what do you think, when did Global Warming begin?


Monday, January 27, 2014

I want to party with these snails

Pierce car tires, eat houses, the Giant African Land Snail - Escar- no, Esbusgo.  Here.

caption

It's Elephants all the way down and the mice are coming

There's an old no doubt apocryphal story about an Indian boy and his father walking along the road.  The son asks: "Papa, we are standing on the world but what is the world standing on?" His father wrinkled his brow in thought and then answered:  "Why son, the earth rests on the back of a God in the shape of a huge elephant"
"What does he stand on?"
"An even larger elephant"
"What does he stand on?"
"An even more enormous elephant"
"What does he stand on?"
"Look kid, it's elephants all the way down."

And that in an Elephant's nutshell describes the philosophical problem that we all confront.  Where do we come from? God?  Gaia?  Evolution?  It doesn't matter which you believe for none of us can really explain how we got here. We have our theories and doctrines and dogmas but the little boy in the story can overcome the most philosophically sophisticated exigesis with the simplest of questions.  It truly is elephants all the way down.

And don't tell me that 'science' has 'proven' anything about the origins or life or the Universe.  By definition science can not see beyond our 'time-space envelope' and any pseudo transcendent claims made by 'evolutionary theory' are just that: theories that can't be falsified and therefore are bad scientific theories (but potentially good religious doctrine).

So each of us hew to our own pespective on what Douglas Adams called 'The answer to life, the Universe, everything!" and seek to persuade others of the rightness of our interpretation of the incomprehensible.  I'm a great believe in micro-predestination:  it seems obvious to me that our genetic makeups predispose us to certain beliefs about the infinite:  some of us are very spiritual but unfocuses, some spiritual and dogmatic and some dogmatically hostile to spiritual things.  We inherit these stances from our parents and then adjust them to reflect the culture and circumstances that we find ourselves in.

By the time you're my age, 52, almost everyone has decided what they believe and how they will live.  Whether it's elephants or DNA strands all the way down.  Unless and until the mice of failure, self doubt and confusion begin scurrying around the precarious pachyderm pile and threaten to upend your world.

So I guess the science is settled?

The American, British, French, and German academies of science all say that GMO foods are safe and nutritious.  Just like they say that Catastrophic Global Warming is real.  So 'the science is settled' yet the same people who say that about CAGW refuse to acknowledge scientific authority on GMOs.  It's almost like they don't believe the heavies when they pronounce on science that doesn't fit their politics.

Odd, that.

Finally Science Rag gets serious about science

We have a catstrophic reproducability crisis in modern science.  Science Magazine, one of the big few scientific journals is addressing the crisis by stepping up it's scrutiny of the shoddy statistics that characterize much of academic science in the world today. From now on the statistical standard of proof needs to be defined up front.  And statisticans will be part of every review team.  There are so many damned number that it's easy to lie, or accidently tell a falsehood with no one notincing.

Creative destruction accelerating among SP 500

This chart ought to make you somewhat more comfortable about the part of the plutocracy that comes from corporate wealth:  it's become harder and harder to stay at the top of American industry.  CEOs come and go and companies are destroyed faster than ever.  Good news for the rest of us.

Irish democracy

Glenn Reynolds points out that the only way to defeat the superstate is mass civil disobedience as is happening with Marijuana and Obamacare today.  I agree.

But it is ironic that the people must use 'Irish Democracy' on 'their' government, isn't it?

Break it up, break it all up.

Sunday, January 26, 2014

Gulls attack peace doves released by Pope

Reality: she's a vicious bitch.

http://news.yahoo.com/birds-attack-peace-doves-freed-pope-39-window-131852384.html

Who's really the Amazon drone?

Read this you won't be sorry.

http://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2014/01/from-the-comments-20.html

Saturday, January 25, 2014

Keep snubbing your friends and pretty soon you don't have

You would think a lightbringer would be bright enough to know that .  But never underestimate the malign power of elitist arrogance.

Keystone up or down: c'mon Barry be a man and make the call.  Ha ha, I  crack myself up.

http://www.google.com/gwt/n?u=http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/charles-krauthammer-stop-kicking-canada-around/2014/01/23/0398b8fa-846a-11e3-8099-9181471f7aaf_story.html?wprss=rss_todays-opeds

Media not curious about D'Souza indictment

In fairness, when you believe that conservatives are objectively evil it's hard to give a damn if they're railroaded by corrupt light bringers.  The Federal superstate is a bloated, criminal obscenity.

http://pjmedia.com/tatler/2014/01/25/media-not-very-curious-about-dsouza-indictment/

A lot of people recognize that prepaid healthcare is a looney idea. Thats why they're not signing up and why you shouldn't either.

Carl Rove has a good column on why very few people that didn't have insurance want this prepaid dreck that the Obami are shoving down our throats.

Email the Constitution

This is probably a good idea : email it to everyone on the off chance that a politico or law enforcement type will accidentally read it and become, you know, constitutional.

None of the Bien Pensants want to talk about status inequality

But Instapundit points out that 'connections' are as important as money and people who disdain great wealth get great power through, family, friends, classmates, neighbors.  The high end universities are finishing schools, mating grounds and networking grounds for the cognitive elite to meet the financial elite and flourish.
Most Americans can't get anywhere near it.


Statist authoritarian double standards on campaign finance

One of the moral challenges for Dems is that they make up the vast majority of the bureaucracy even when they don't hold the Presidency.  Because of this they have the temptation and opportunityto politicize Govt behavior that that really isn't available to Republicans. Without having to actually 'tell' the bureaucracy what to do, they will if not checked tend to target those whom they disapprove of.

Here's a good example:  Dinesh D'Souza is a famous and resourceful critic of the President but he is a bit player on the campaign finance game, bundling $20,000 in donations to a failed Senate candidate.  Nonetheless, the Obami are prosecuting.  By contrast Barack Obama deliberately engineered his Presidential fundraising website to obscure the illegal collection of tens of millions of foreign donations, even disabling standard features that would tell them where the money came from.  So the government employees are on their own persecuting their political enemies even though their President of their party was not prosecuted for vastly more egregious violations.

DOJ, FBI, IRS, NSA - the Feds have huge power and aren't doing a very good job showing impartiality or restraint these days.Read the sordid tale here.

Zywicki on Haidt and Libertarians

Zywicki explains why Conservatives think liberals are mistaken or deluded but liberals think conservatives are evil and why Cons have greater empathy for lib perspectives than vice versa.  Talks about Libertarians too.

Particularly good discussion of gay marriage.

The worst news: our politics are visceral, and aren't usually open to rational argument. Good thing we Conservatarians have most of the guns.

I'm a poor conservative.

Only scored 68% on Jonathan Haidt's survey.

http://science.time.com/2014/01/09/can-time-predict-your-politics/

Friday, January 24, 2014

What he said

Tim Worstall talks honestly about GLBT and the rest of the world.  His perspective is nuanced and recognizes the various perspectives and 'rights' involved.  Don't get this very often.  Worth the time.

They're opposed to income inequality, not expense account inequality

THE MORE THEY TALK ABOUT EQUALITY, THE MORE THEY ACT LIKE AN ARISTOCRACY: Dems Discuss ‘Income Inequality’ at Grammys, Posh St. Regis.

At least the Beeb isn'tt totally PC.

Ten myths of World War I.  Very good in my opinion.  Worth a gander.

Boy am I glad that almost all the women who I offered to donate sperm to turned me down.

Kansas Judge demands that sperm donor pay child support.


BHO lies for the Fembots. Or is too stupid to apply vasic loguc to tgeir ludicrous claims.

This matters because the Obami have suspended the Constitution in college and lower school sex cases.  Which is classically fascist behavior.  BHO doesn't really care what us true only what is power maximizing.

http://www.aei-ideas.org/2014/01/a-renewed-call-to-accurate-government-reporting-of-statistics/

(Institutional) Resistance (to tge truth getting out) is futile

The Vogons of the University set get schooled.  And will never be able to declaim their poetry as torture again.  Go free range bulldogs.

http://reason.com/blog/2014/01/23/student-bypasses-yales-website-ban-gover

Even in Omaha the police are conspiratorial thugs

Watch  vid and decide yourself whether you're ashamed of our so called 'peace officers'.  Bebadged thugs.  Fear them.

http://reason.com/blog/2014/01/23/omaha-cop-reinstated-after-being-fired-f

Barack Obama: Inaction Figure

I think BHO is certain of his place in history and that the establishment for their own selfish reasons (look how racially cool we are!) will present his Presidency as a triumph from beginning to end thwarted only by those Evil Morlocks from Teabag Land.  From John Dickerson.  Here



The president used it again in his Saturday radio address. Though Congress may block him, the president says he’s determined to use every tool at his disposal to get something done. “Where Congress isn’t acting, I’ll act on my own to put opportunity within reach for anyone who’s willing to work for it,” the president said on Sunday.

Sounds exciting, plus the slogan “A Year of Grinding Torpor” or “More of the Same” don't really fit the spirit of the enterprise. But on the eve of the annual speech, a New Yorker profile of the president doesn’t paint the picture of a man of action—at least not the way that word is being used in the White House’s slogan. Instead of coming across as a man engaging his considerable faculties in an energetic effort to overcome the limits of his office, the president seems content with tending the store, confident that the verdict of history will smile on him. He’s not worried about being measured against the vestiges of an old notion of the presidency. This may be a realistic view of things, but it doesn’t really match the call for action.

Thursday, January 23, 2014

The power of the One compels you

OK so it doesn't, never mind.  NPR:  "If history repeats Obama's state of the union won't compel Congress to act"

I look forward to a day when little black progressive boys and girls can play with little black conservative boys and girls without calling them extreme right tea bagging puppets

If this denunciation of Sen Tim Scott is an indicator, I fear you'll be waiting a long time. Hatred is worth too many votes.  Particularly if "Reverends" like the head of NC NAACP feel free in 2014 to use such obscene and frankly racist rhetoric against black conservatives.  Pathetic and a sign of incredible social and political immaturity.  Racial solidarity is for losers.



Changing the measure for global warming when your side is no longer winning is like shifting from points to yards in the middle of a football game

And that would be cheating. Robert Traciski observes:

Last week, I wrote about how the record cold temperatures of the polar vortex and impenetrable ice in the Antarctic are being cited as evidence in favor of global warming. That makes global warming an "unfalsifiable" theory in the sense that any evidence against it will be reinterpreted ad hoc as evidence for it.

After I published that, my friend Jack Wakeland sent me a link to an even more brazen reinterpretation of reality: the claim that the 15-year pause in global warming doesn't exist—so long as we use a new and totally different measure of global temperatures.

This is an obvious shifting of the goalposts. The measure of warming that they all thought was fine and dandy when temperatures seemed to be rising now doesn't show rising temperatures. So they have to reinterpret the data to get the result that fits their theory.When someone posted my article on Facebook, commenter Jordan Phillips named the basic pattern of global warming arguments: "In a real scientific theory, you have to make some kind of blind prediction that makes you vulnerable and accountable, so that if later observations contradict the prediction then your theory has no squirm room to avoid its fate. But catastrophic manmade global warming theory is the opposite: it's based on waiting for a weather event to happen, then rationalizing how that event was caused by global warming."
So global warming science is not just ad hoc but post hoc.

Post hoc, ergo propter  hoc, hoc a loogie, bullhoc, it's all hoc all the way down.   The warmistas are shameless.




Read more: http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2014/01/23/what_is_a_normal_temperature.html#ixzz2rGn0ULk9 
Follow us: @RCP_Articles on Twitter

http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2014/01/23/what_is_a_normal_temperature.html

Three new studies: Americans think that income inequality is much worse than it is

Three profs find that envy is alive and well in chock full 'o goodness modern America.  Because one of the keys to envy is to magnify your 'beenvied's' financial wealth, exaggerating the difference between you and him.

New York Times: Income mobility has not declined

The NYT is reporting on a new study that doesn't fit the Obami income inequality line which as articulated very recently by Himself is that: "we have a wonderful, splenderiferous recovery but rat bastard richie riches (excluding  my donors) are stealing it and no one can get ahead at all which of course has nothing to do with me (or my rich donors) so get those other rich bastards, particularly the Koch boys, yeah it's their fault and ignore that Obamacare thing, completely, leave it alone, seriously.  I'm paraphrasing of course, the teleprompter has about 11,000 more words of this blather.  Which was the amount of time BHO had available to repeat 'look income inequality squirrel' over and over and over until he needed to leave to make his tee time.

The study found that income mobility hasn't changed.  Over the past fifty years, the distance between the quintile 'rungs' has widened - in statistic speak the 'cross sectional variability has grown' but the 'longitudinal variability has remained constant'.  This is something one would expect in a society which requires more years of education to enter the work market and sees more and more people living long into retirement.  So does that make us more unequal or not?:  It depends if you want to look at equality at a point in time:  "my effing parents are oppressing me because they make 50 times what I do.  My gosh darn grampa is even worse, the plutocrat plumber is taking down 74 times my part time Barista wage.  Me and great grandma who says Grampa is an 'ungrateful little whelp' have formed the Johnson-McTavish Rouge to overthrown these damned dirty plutocrats.  Death to the capitalist roaders in my family!"\

Or one could look at it across a lifetime:  "heh, heh, Dad and Grampa have it good now, but with the information insecurity secrets that I'm learning from my internship at the NSA I am going to systematically overthrow their ageist hegemony.  I've also automated Great Grandma so I can continue to get her Social after she dies.  Rich! I'm gonna be rich!  They'll all bow down before Maddy Mactavish! Buwhahahahah!

But the question is why did the NYT contradict The One?  Normally this is not done, the s BPs (bien pensants) follow a strict code of Omerta - not speaking ill of each other's statist and rhetorical wheezes.  But now, the NYT is frolicking off the reservation, getting dangerously close to the Koch Boy's Liberal Blind. And without Omerta, so much is at risk.

Feminists lie wildly about sexual assault for fun and profit.

Claim one in four U Pittsburgh women a victim or 3700 assaults yet only four (4) cases reported to the police in the most recent year.  And the press Poindexters report the Fembots lie because it's just too damned good to check.  My progressive friends are decent, well meaning people betrayed by people who put ideology above truth.  This 'revolutionary' truth has often been a fixture of Marxist groups but now it has seeped into our culture wars via the incompetence of a highly credentialed but credulous press.

O'care site failing even in Darkest Minnesota

If even the cleanest, best run states can't replicate complex service distribution channels overlayed by wildly complex and irrational 'Barack Goldberg' rules then how will our supremely incompetent Federal 'Stupor-state' giterdone?

I have to admit enjoying the left's misery after being told for most of my life how I was an evil hater for disagreeing with their healthcare salvation scheme du jour. But now the mestastitizing catastrophe is not just sizzling lefty fat but is burning into the bone and sinew of our nation.

Please God, make them stop.

http://hotair.com/archives/2014/01/23/video-mn-obamacare-exchange-failing-panel-recommends-scrapping-system/

And the statists wonder why we don't believe them

Only conservative Hollywood group in existence  screwed with by IRS for over two years to get approved. All the lefty 'yay more state cruelty and coercion' groups? Not so much. Was it Ghandi when asked what he thought of western civ said "It would be a good idea".  I think honest and impartial Fed, state and local governance would be swell.  But what we increasingly have is Lefty authoritarians enabling their pals and screwing their critics.

Which of course is a catastrophe for so called good government liberals'. Because if government is just a racket organized by and for the party of government and its clients then there is no reason for decent people to continue paying the historically ridiculous level of taxes to support a gangster state.

And eventually we won't.  As I tell my liberal friends: 'your dream is being killed by your allies - better get another dream'

http://pjmedia.com/instapundit/182930/

Wednesday, January 22, 2014

Holy Crap! Some MIT schmuck says he discovered God and that He's an equation. A really big nasty one with lots of Xs and Ys and sigmas. Or something like that, I don't speak MIT Geek

Here's the 'goofy truth'.  In short:  It's Quant, it's all Quanta these days.  Quantarific, I've always wanted my own Quantapony.  Precisely why do we think 31 year old Asperger's syndrome Physicists knows the Answer to the Meaning of Life and Everything?  I mean Big Thought was an entire planet and it took Him billions of years to come up with the question that defined the 'answer'.  And yet this schmuck who judging from his physiognomy, can't get a date with a chick who shaves her extremities knows who God is, where he brunches and whether He's an Eggs Benedict or Waffle God?  Exsqueeze me?

Enjoy.

This is hilarious, only beltway dumbasses like Eleanor Clift think that this is a Christie Clinton race

Of course Ms. Clift has built an entire career around being the 'go to' beltway dumbass.  Christie, a 'moderate', swaggering New Jersey pol has no effing chance of getting the Republican nomination.  The RP is now half southern and there ain't a state that says y'all that he can possibly win a primary in.  We don't like fast, tough talking Yankees and looking at the states they run, we sure as hell don't want to end up like them.

Piss off Eleanor, go to another Beltway cocktail party and blather incoherent and irrelevant thoughts.  It's what you do, darling.

I won't link to her sophomoric idiocy because it would be irresponsible to promote such dreck.

What is it about San Franciscans? Are they Psychotic? Drugged? Genetically altered? The damp? The fog?

Because their deranged opposition to common variety human flourishing is starting to get a bit scary.  Maybe we need to dose the water to get this group of 'cats back  in balance.  This is worse than weird, these guys are anti-human.

ANTI-GOOGLE SENTIMENT IN SAN FRANCISCO IS GETTING WEIRD: Protesters show up at the doorstep of Google self-driving car engineer. Three things: (1) These people always have to be hating somebody. (2) If you’re successful at anything, sooner or later they’ll probably get around to hating you. (3) You folks probably thought you were on their side, or they were on yours. But you were wrong.

Crazy, they're going crazy!

Because highly 'ethical' 'not for profit' finishing schools for the cognitive and financial rich shouldn't be evaluated by the hoi polloi

TRANSPARENCY: Yale Blocks Course-Rating Website.

Two truly depressing charts for poverty and equality 'warriors'

You can do lots of stuff and blow lots of money but it doesn't help. We burn about $20,000 in government funds per poor person per year today. Here's a graph of just the Federal portion that has been adjusted for Inflation:
Picture
Leave it to the Feds to take a steadily improving trend and turn it into an insanely expensive permanent racket.
 
But it's unfair to compare the 1972 poverty rate to today's because in '72 most of the poor were in intact families, today almost none are and in '72 they had a 25 year history of declining poverty to give them hope. Yet poor people have never been more isolated, depraved and felonized than they are today. But of course the reason there are so many poor people in America today is a lack of spending on poverty programs administered by Democrat party stalwarts.  Sure.  Right.  Whatever.
 
And of course the other 'standard' 'remedy' that the left trots out any time it wants to obscure the government's catastrophic anti poverty record - the minwage hike - positively screws kids. Particularly poor minority kids. 
 
Teenemployment

The way to read the chart is that the black lines are the pre-Minwage hike employment trend and the red lines the post Minwage  hike trend. In six of seven most recent instances increasing the minwage lead to declines or sharply lower growth in youth employment.  Here's a summarry of a bunch of other research on the topic.  One of their findings is that minwage hikes have the most deleterious impact on youth employment in the least regulated labor markets like the US.  So I guess the next left argument is that we should lock up our labor market like France so we can raise minwages with impunity.  That makes about as much sense as minwages...or blowing so much money on 'anti'-poverty programs that if we gave it to them straight without the party stalwart cut they wouldn't be poor.

It would really improve people's confidence if the inequality and class warriors had ever demonstrated any capacity to lift the poor and weak up because I don't think a strategy of just dragging the rich down is going to work.  But you wouldn't know that listening to the rhetoric coming from the Obami.  It's almost as if they have poverty Alzheimer's - they seem to discover the problem of poverty anew each day with each discredited, useless 'intervention' being new and exciting. And after a century of them being 'responsible' 'advocates' for the 'poor' the naïve shrieking is getting a tad tedious.