Saturday, May 31, 2014

US giving vs super entrepeneurs

One of the signs of a broken or 'cronied' economic system is a lot of very small businesses and single proprietorships  - the government's manipulations make it hard for companies to grow to scale and discourage employment.  These types of businesses aren't really entrepreneurial in any meaningful sense, they're just low income, low productivity coping mechanisms.  Countries with open economies tend to have very low levels of self employment because successful business scale and drive out the less innovative and productive mom 'n pops.  The US has among the lowest share of the self employed.  On the other hand, the US has among the highest share of 'super entrepreneurs', those Schumpeterian heros that create mega businesses that put the mom 'n pops out of business.  

It turns out that having a truly dynamic, Schumpeterian 'creative destruction' economy is very good for charitable giving.  Also being an Anglo Saxon Polity also seems to help.  Being scandinavian?  Not so much - but they are so compassionate.  Here's a cool chart


I got the chart and the idea here.

There's always a College Rape Epidemic, or a Runaway Global Warming Catastrophe or an Incipient One Percent Takeover that is about to wipe out all life on this miserable little planet, and the only way these people can get on with their happy lives is IF THEY ELECT DEMOCRATS!

Sometimes I feel like Agent K from the Men in Black. You know the part where he says:

  "There's always an Arquillian Battle Cruiser, or a Corillian Death Ray, or an intergalactic plague that is about to wipe out all life on this miserable little planet, and the only way these people can get on with their happy lives is that they DO NOT KNOW ABOUT IT! " 

Except instead of rallying to save the planet from  Death Rays or Plagues we Men in Red seek to stop the political equivalent of giant bugs with freakish strength (aka the Democrats) from using fraudulent statistics to goose over-hyped 'crises' to snaffle ever more money and power from the people and ship it in box car lots to their vile home world, Washington, DC where they use it to commit unspeakable acts of bureaucracy, acts so depraved that propriety prohibits their description on this blog.

Indeed there are three particular statistical plagues or 'memes' roaring their way through the DC hive mind right now.  Each of them purports (in the timeless words of top bug Al Gore) to be an 'inconvenient truth' that 'demands action' or life as we know it will end - you know the drill.  But in fact all three numbers do no such thing.  Indeed, to anyone with common sense and detachment from the eternal buzzing, roaring pressure of the hive, they are obviously ridiculous.  Nonetheless these 'statistical memes' are useful in that they give us insight into the peculiar workings of this alien race's brain pods where 2+2=3 if you carry the 1 past a ten year CBO projection window or 3-5=0 utilizing the standard Obamacare 10 years revenue - 6 years costs scoring rule.

So without further ado, I present for your mortification the current Memes infecting the Corporatist horde that rules us.

20% also known as the "One in five"

Which purports to represent the proportion of college women who have been sexually assaulted. A number that exceeds other statistical estimates by the less politically motivated by between 30 and 100 fold. In the reality based community sexual assault and rape are considered the same thing and result in long prison sentences for their perpetrators.  Prison sentences that ironically include far more rape than the rapists got in their pre prison raping days.  Who says God doesn't have a sense of humor?  Or is that god - our glorious uber powerful state?  There are so many gods to rule over us these days.

But I digress. Sexual assault at college, at least according to the survey that came up with this 'truth' defines a wide range of ambiguous behaviors including touching a woman's clothed breast without first explicitly asking:  "excuse me, ma'm, may I touch your clothed breast area?".  If that's the case them I'm a serial sexual predator.  Please President Obama, stop me before I squeeze an un-consent formed boob again.

Of course if President Obama and Majority Leader Reid were honest men they would have to turn themselves in for serial boob squeezing and probably ass slappery as well. And this, of course, would mean they wouldn't be eligible to be the standard bearers for a party who in sexual matters appears to be ruled by a coalition of neo puritan/victorian blue stockings and gay men - who apparently are the only people allowed to have consensual sex without recourse to legal counsel in the entire Demosphere.  It's enough to turn any jammie wearing neo marxist Organizing for America homeboy gay.  So where did common sense go?  Heck if I know.

But the President of the United States and the rest of his under magistrates publicly say that the 20% is Truth and they believe it.  Or at least in its power to frighten young women into pulling the 'D' lever in November.  That's why it's so important that these be college women being raped/sexually assaulted/ - ok, ok: boob and clothing touched - because for the gag to work, the perps must be college men and of course we all know that college men are really just white frat boy Republicans. Fear of hordes of 19 year old honky hound dogs in Weejuns keeps the junior blue stockings on the plantation where they belong totin' them collectivist bales and reading execrable feminist poetry to each other.

97% Agree 

Which according to our President, represents  the proportion of scientists who agree that man caused global warming is real, rampant and 'dangerous'.  OK, so you're an adult and someone comes up to you and says "Do this really expensive thing that means that you have to move into a cheaper house, send your kids to worse schools, buy a cheaper car and vacation at home because 97% of us say so.  Oh and that money that you don't spend on yourself:  a bunch of it is coming to us or to the companies that we consult with or own shares in. Chop-chop, be quick about it - we're all going to die unless you do this now..and I've got to make my plane to Bali for the next global meeting.  Business Class. Singapore Airlines.  Hyatt Regency Resort."  What do you do?

Now if you're an award winning Democrat journalist like, say Nina Burleigh* you would gladly orally pleasure the President who protected you from such a fate, no questions asked - apparently in public God help her.  No, this time I mean the real one because the Federal god will be busy literally 'doing' to us what he will be figuratively 'doing' with her if we were to believe such nonsense.

Because, of course, the 97% is a fraud.  First of all the original 'survey' didn't say anything about 'dangerous' climate change - that was Barack Obama's unique intellectual addition to the wheeze.  Second of all, the survey that came up with the meme didn't even address the areas where there is disagreement.  Andrew Montford explains:  The consensus as described by the survey is virtually meaningless and tells us nothing about the current state of scientific opinion beyond the trivial observation that carbon dioxide is a greenhouse gas and that human activities have warmed the planet to some unspecified extent. The survey methodology therefore fails to address the key points that are in dispute in the global warming debate." The 'authors' might as well have surveyed the cheese eating practices of scientists and announced that they supported the UN's climate change panel because 97% of them hate that nasty smelling brown Limberger crap.

But even this is too complicated for evaluating the issue when your common sense module is operational.  Because there are no topics worth talking about in the scientific community where there is a 97% consensus among informed scientists .  Ok, so there might be that level of consensus on the fact that water is composed of 2 hydrogen and one oxygen atoms.  Well except for heavy water where it is composed of the hydrogen isotope deuterium and an oxygen atom.  So how much money is going into 'proving H2O and 2H2O are the only two waters out there and anyone who says different is a denier'? Ummm how about none?  You see, that's what scientific consensus looks like.  Everyone agrees and no one is studying the issue because there's nothing to prove.  Yet 'climate change' and 'global warming' are the best funded science boodoggles since the invention of the compound boon+doggle.  Why do the boffins need so much money to prove the hypothesis if everyone already agrees?  If what they know is so 'settled' then there's nothing 'new' to learn that might unsettle it?  So why all the heavy lifting?  And why the need to loudly and publicly denounce 'deniers'?  Nobody denounces water deniers.

Common sense says that the Great  AGW Terror stinks to high heaven because of this dichotomy between rhetoric and demonstrated behavior and because everybody involved is making a lot of money off of the 'crisis'.

And common sense would be right.

Yet our First Magistrate and all his magistrate minions understand this and still they blow numbers like 97% by us on a regular basis seeking to justify sending more boxcar loads of our wealth and autonomy to them so that they can increase their power and glory by 'saving' us.

1% sometimes known as The One Percent

This is perhaps the perfect liberal hive mind meme because it targets the most likely and effective opponents to centralizing all power and wealth in the Uberhive. The argument is that there is a small elite, a 'one percent' if you will that is steadily accumulating more and more of the wealth and power of the nation and therefore the Federal government must step in.  Step in to confiscate the wealth of the 1% and instead concentrate it in a single institution in a single city that is already by far the richest, most powerful organization in the history of the world controlled by less than a thousand mostly old lawyers because it would be too dangerous to let that money and power be controlled by 1.5 million people of all walks and faiths and ideologies living all across the country.....hmmm.

OK, so this one doesn't even pass the smell test.  And if you broaden your common sense sniffer you start smelling intellectual gangrene everywhere.  For example, the so called 1% is in fact a churning chaos whereby 12% of the population spends at least one year at the top.  For example, your average grossly overpaid corporate Chieftain only gets to wear the headdress and run the powwows for a handful of years before getting the chop and you only get to sell your successful business or Chiropracty practice once. So 1% is really 12% while the less than a thousand old lawyers aren't turning over nearly as fast, particularly when you take into account all of the Kennedys, Bushes, Clintons, Udalls, and apparently most every urban African American Congressman that has a kid old enough to inherit the seat.

Besides where is it said that taking the wealth and influence of a given 1.5 million successful Americans and centralizing it in the hands of, <1,000 Washington lawyers is good for equality or diversity or frankly for anything other than the 1,000 power creeps that get to manipulate us with it?  If we're really worried about 'inequality' wouldn't it be better to address the inequality of political power which is far, far more concentrated than economic power (and readily translated into fortunes)?  And wouldn't that mean breaking up the grossly obese Federal super state and returning its power and money to the states and the people?  Wouldn't that spread the wealth and power around more than sending a bunch more boxloads of jack to the Federal borg?

When I hear statist, centralizing, corporatists squeak about inequality all I see is avarice and greed and lust for power.  Why feed their sinful natures?  I think we'll get more equality and diversity and justice from letting a wildly fluctuating 1% keep their money and use it as they see fit.  I'd much rather see my neighbor have that money than Barack Obama or George W. Bush.  This even applies to Warren Buffett who has poured more than $1.2 billion of his wealth into the most extremist pro abortion organizations he can find.  A viler use of wealth I cannot conceive yet I still would rather have that ukulele strumming plutocrat spew his money as he likes rather than give up the benefits of a free people making free choices.

Good News!  The demise of the 77%

Yet it's not all darkness in the hive mind.  Sometimes a small measure of reality breaks through and hive has to stop buzzing something.  This has apparently happened with the ludicrous 77 cents meme whereby it is alleged that poor, put upon women make only 77% of what their male counterparts do.  This is such a worn trope that even the drones of the Washington press corps won't buy it anymore.  The mockery of 77 cents is apparently what began Jay Carney's slide into his recent resignation:  because when a press secretary spends too many hours telling obvious lies to his target audience, you know that he's done.  It just goes to show: if you tell the truth enough, even the hive has to acknowledge it.  If you can survive all the stings until they do.

So politicians hype questionable statistics to stampede the common herd in their direction, what's the big deal?  Well first of all the President and the Majority leader among others are elected magistrates who have sworn to put the people before their party or career.  Yet in each case here, the 'data' that they are presenting to the public, often in official, government funded reports is known to be flawed if not outright fraud.  And in the case of rape and the 1% there is a clear intention to divide the nation in destructive ways.  If one in five young women are truly victims of sexual assault then that means that young men are far more violent and dangerous than we believed and that justifies all sorts of draconian, punitive policies (including suspending presumption of innocence and traditional due process - rules that the Obama Administration have effectively mandated to all colleges upon pain of losing Federal funding) to keep the 'beasts' in check.  To know that the statistic is a lie and still seek to 'rectify' it by oppressing young men is truly and profoundly wicked.

HL Mencken said it best:  “The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by an endless series of hobgoblins, most of them imaginary."





  • *Who is a graduate of my fair college, the University of Chicago, which demonstrates just how damaging a U of C education can be to young femininity. Of course Big Dave Brooks also graduated from the U of C showing just how damaging...oh hell, never mind.

    Friday, May 30, 2014

    6 years on and I'm still right

    The economy shrinks at a 1% rate in the first quarter because of shrinking business activity, not because of 'the weather'.

    It turns out that massive mandates,  bales of new regulations, a hard push to drive up the cost of energy and food, new taxes and welfare expansion aren't good for the economy. And after the 30s and 70s all I can say is: Who Knew?  Well me, for one.  I predicted at the accession of The One to the Eagle Throne that we'd have one helluva capital strike on our hands if he pulled the stunts that he promised.  And sure enough he did. And the result of putting your size 13 wingtip on the nation's trachea for nigh on six years is....well you see it all around you in broken dreams and despair.  Hell, the Mexicans ain't even coming anymore.

    I mean crony corporatism and shameless rent seeking usually work....Oh well the new neo Marxist 'eat the rich' shtick is bound to rock our economic world.  Gun it Barry: make Thelma and Louise proud . McCardle at the link.

    We used to send the Marines, now we send the party hacks

    That's because we used to understand that the rule of law and the security to life and property it brings was the essential precondition to development. Now our government is filled with neo Marxist materialists and rent seekers so the Marines are out and cargo cult development is in.  Things and 'services' owned by no one turn to nothing in no time. To which the Marines of yore, a handful of whom ruled Haiti during its "Golden Age" in the 20s and 30s with no foreign aid money would say no shit. 

    But the Clintons got some sweet PR for the taxpayer's cold and green didn't they?  A more mature press less besotted with leftists and apologists for sex offenders who just happen to support abortion would have wondered why a left wing President was handing control over a massive aid project to his party's last President who is married to the Party's front running candidate to be the next President.  

    But to do so would be racist.  And sexist.  And...and..naughty!  And that would mean no Martha's Vinyard this summer.  Eek.

    Thursday, May 29, 2014

    NYT, Wapo, WSJ say WTF? to Obama's foreign policy reboot speech

    For a President who is so dammed smart he sure gave alow watt  speech. The looney left NYT, the 'sober' center Wapo and the Rabid right WSJ all gave him a big juicy raspberry.  To blow full ideological spectrum chow indicates incompetence.

    But dear, loyal readers, you already knew that.

    Operation Choke Point: How an out of control government targets unpopular people or industries for constant regulatory harassment with no due process

    Eric Holder is the poison on the end of the progs murderous spear. Maybe if we got power we should target colleges, Hollywood and lawyers. Shut the Ivys down as a public nuisance.

    http://hotair.com/archives/2014/05/27/operation-choke-point-a-harbinger-of-big-government-activism-to-come/

    Tuesday, May 27, 2014

    Content neutral policy

    Leftists are pressuring corporations to adopt content based standards. For example PET wanted Groupon to ban Circuses in its promotions.  Conservatives are advocating a content neutral approach in response.  Pretty typical don't you you think? The left really does not care about process or impartiality,  just power. Of course if you know that you're right because the lefty Jesup said so then it would be wrong to pretend to balance between ultimate Good and depraved Evil.  Heck, I'm surprised they let us righties live at all. 

    It must be because they fear all our guns.

    White House outs Afghanistan CIA Chief

    What do you bet that this truly dangerous and destructive inadvertent leak will engender NO press interest and NO demands for Special Counsels as opposed to the Valerie Plame 'scandal' where a DC Desk jockey was inadvertently outed with no risk or damage leading to a witch hunt.

    You see the CIA was at war with the Bushies and the oh so dishonestly partisan press was happy to help.

    With The One in the house there's no need for a crusading press.

    Choices have consequences: Houston v. California

    The rest of Tejas is rocking too.

    Wasn't the VA supposed to be the eighth wonder? Socialized medicine at work right under our very noses.

    Perhaps the most comforting knowledge that a libertarian like me has is that the state will always fail or overreact. No matter what task they set for themselves it will inevitably be a balls up of incompetence, venality and cruelty. As sure as the sun rises. Which is why I label statism as a religion. Because with failure all around you must have a lot of faith in that old time religion.
    http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2014/05/27/the_lefts_health_care_paradise_122749.html

    "If people aren't allowed to work for 7.24 an hour they sure as he'll shouldn't be allowed to work for 0 an hour."

    So why do charities get to use free or sub minimum wage labor if McDonald's can't ? It's not like Harvard or the hospital are poor.....And why do white bread suburbanites get to determine their compensation freely with those they work for while inner city teens can't ?

    " If Joey Zitface wants to flip burgers, we demand that he get paid the minimum wage and not one penny less. Yet then we turn around and tell him he won't get his diploma unless he puts in 25 hours clearing brush for the municipal park service absolutely free. It makes no sense." Unless you are part of the statist borg or serve it's purposes.

    The case against those exploitative gosh darn charitues.

    http://reason.com/archives/2014/05/26/a-modest-proposal-to-ban-volunteering

    Texas has drug laws that would make a Stalinist blush

    But evidently not a Baptist or a Feminist who presumably believe 10 to life is a reasonable penalty for a tray of hash brownies. And the prosecutor and judge? Well we already know lawyers are subhuman vermin and cowards to boot.

    Senseless brutality at the link.

    http://reason.com/archives/2014/05/26/recipe-for-a-life-sentence

    Monday, May 26, 2014

    Grace and honor and gratitude on this Memorial day

    Robert Samuelson reminds us how an earlier generation, drenched in each other's blood behaved when the battle was over.  It's a reproach to we partisans of whatever side to remember what Ely Parker, Grant's secretary and a Seneca...said:  "We are all Americans" and we will all need to live here for a long, long time.

    War mixes horror and heroism. More fitting than any Memorial Day commentary I could write is this description of Robert E. Lee’s surrender at Appomattox to Ulysses S. Grant. It comes from Princeton historian James McPherson’s Pulitzer Prize-winning account of the Civil War, “Battle Cry of Freedom,” and is reprinted here with permission of the author.

    The terms [Grant offered] were generous: officers and men could go home “not to be disturbed by U.S. authority so long as they observe their paroles and the laws in force where they may reside.” This clause had great significance. . . . It guaranteed Southern soldiers immunity from prosecution for treason. Lee asked another favor. In the Confederate army, he explained, enlisted men in the cavalry and artillery owned their horses; could they keep them? Yes, said Grant; privates as well as officers who claimed to own horses could take them home “to put in a crop to carry themselves and their families through the next winter.” “This will have the best possible effect upon the men,” said Lee, and “will do much toward conciliating our people.” After signing the papers, Grant introduced Lee to his staff. As he shook hands with Grant’s military secretary Ely Parker, a Seneca Indian, Lee stared a moment at Parker’s dark features and said, “I am glad to see one real American here.” Parker responded, “We are all Americans.”

    The surrender completed, the two generals saluted somberly and parted. “This will live in history,” said one of Grant’s aides. But the Union commander seemed distracted. Having given birth to a reunited nation, he experienced a post-partum melancholy. “I felt . . . sad and depressed,” Grant wrote, “at the downfall of a foe who had fought so long and valiantly, and had suffered so much for a cause, though that cause was, I believe, one of the worst for which a people ever fought.” As news of the surrender spread through Union camps, batteries began firing joyful salutes until Grant ordered them stopped. “The war is over,” he said; “the rebels are our countrymen again, and the best sign of rejoicing after the victory will be to abstain from all demonstrations.” To help bring those former rebels back into the Union, Grant sent three days’ rations for 25,000 men across the lines. This perhaps did something to ease the psychological as well as physical pain of Lee’s soldiers.

    So did an important symbolic gesture at a formal ceremony three days later when Confederate troops marched up to stack arms and surrender their flags. As they came, many among them shared the sentiments of one officer: “Was this to be the end of all our marching and fighting for the past four years? I could not keep back the tears.” The Union officer in charge of the surrender ceremony was Joshua L. Chamberlain, the fighting professor from Bowdoin who won a medal of honor for Little Round Top [a crucial engagement at Gettysburg], had been twice wounded since then, and was now a major general. Leading the Southerners as they marched toward two of Chamberlain’s brigades standing at attention was John B. Gordon, one of Lee’s hardest fighters who now commanded Stonewall Jackson’s old corps. First in line of march behind him was the Stonewall Brigade, five regiments containing 210 ragged survivors of four years of war. As Gordon approached at the head of these men with “his chin drooped to his breast, downhearted and dejected in appearance,” Chamberlain gave a brief order, and a bugle call rang out. Instantly the Union soldiers shifted from order arms to carry arms, the salute of honor. Hearing the sound General Gordon looked up in surprise, and with sudden realization turned smartly to Chamberlain, dropped his sword in salute, and ordered his own men to carry arms.


    May all of those who fought and struggled and died, no matter how insignificant, be in a land where there is no war or pain or hatred or cruelty or slavery.  May they truly rest in peace.

    Sunday, May 25, 2014

    Stopping Fracking by any means necessary

    By Any Means Necessary is a new group advocating the continuation and extension of institutionalized racism in America. But more broadly it represents a new attitude by the left in our society. An attitude that holds that their ideological opponents aren't merely mistaken but are objectively evil. And since this is the case the left should no longer be constrained by old fashioned bourgeois liberal process or fairness constraints.  In other words: by any means necessary.

    Which is clearly in play on the great Plains where the left is manipulating the endangered species act to get a widely but thinly distributed species of Prarie Chicken listed so as to shut fracking down. Never mind that wheat and cattle farming are far more invasive and traditional oil and gas production has been going on forever with no lefties scurrying to protect the chicken.

    But now they need to stop fracking and the coastal elite dominated left will use any means necessary, including overruling the vociferous objections of Colorado's Democrat governor. More cynical exploitation of our liberal constitutional order at the link.



    Saturday, May 24, 2014

    If abortion had been legal would women have the vote?

    And would the 30s or the 60s have happened?  Would Bill Clinton or Barack Obama be alive? Fascinating question with lots of horrifying feminist comments at the link. The don't seem to come from my culture at all.

    http://theothermccain.com/2014/05/23/the-darwinian-dead-end-feminists-subtract-themselves-from-the-future/

    On Prayer to a Sovereign God

    So you say that you're praying for me.  Thanks.  But no thanks.  Because you see, I'm someone that really believes.  I believe that God is sovereign.  I believe that God preexists us and sits outside of time and space.  I actually believe the sort of sophomoric blather that you belch from time to time.  Things like "everything happens for a reason".  Really?  Then how can your prayer change what "happens for a reason"  unless the thing that happened for a reason was the prayer that you prayed? So in other words you didn't pray for me, you were doomed or predestined to pray for me, if you will, because I was me.  So why specifically did you pray for me?  And why specifically should I covet your foreordained prayer? You praying minx, you.

    You see, from my perspective as a Reformed ex-Christian, the only prayer that makes any sense at all to God (and I know that marketing spins this differently) is "Thy will be done".  And essentially that's what all prayers are:  a praise to God that God will do what God will do anyway.  Which is cool unless God happens in his infinite wisdom, to be brutally fucking you.  Then when someone comes up to you and says "I'm prayin' for you, man" what they are really doing is rooting for God to get a bigger dildo.  Thanks bunches, gang.

    The other reason that people pray is to avoid doing anything that would be hard or could cost them anything.  One of the most interesting things I've learned is that most of my Christian 'Friends' are really big on 'helping' so long as 'helping' involves slipping you a twenty or saying a prayer.  When it involves anything more they tend to blanch or turn 'helping' into manipulation - which feels a lot like God's mega dildo.  Either way the wonderful 'I'm prayin' for you, man" is anything but comforting.  My best real friends have all turned out to be non-Christians.  I guess because they don't pray m they actually have to do something in the here and now to demonstrate love.

    So thanks for the prayers.  But if it's all the same to you I would prefer that you didn't mock or lie to me anymore. Send me a card - that at least demonstrates honest to God effort in a way that costs you something - and I can start a fire with it. Cost you more than the few puffs of breath you emit in saying "I'm praying for you man". You fraudulent minx, you.

    Good, evil, evil, good, blah, blah, blah: what difference does it make?

    When I was in undergrad at the University of Tulsa, my History of Economics professor was a Marxist* and he made a rather entertaining argument that a market economy where everyone sought to give their property and time away rather than hoard it would work in rather the same way as our current one does - we would simply pay people to take our stuff rather than to get it.  Which is interesting and gave this budding economist many hours of fun arguing the intricacies of a ridiculous hypothetical - the most fun a serious economist can have with his clothes on.

    But it occurrs to me:  is this true of our moral economy? I mean does it make a difference whether God is Pure Good or Pure Evil? Would we here on good 'ol Terra Firma experience life differently if the God of the Universe was Mr. Nasty-Bad rather than Mr. Ultra-Swell?  And for purposes of this hypothetical I will assume that he's Yahweh - sorry Buddhists, get your own philosophical tradition, and you Hindus:  dude, that shit's just crazy. Anyhoo, having successfully insulted a big chunk of Asia in only the second paragraph, I shall now address the hypothetical.

    So the general theory of God and our relations to him - at least for the 'ethical' religions and no I don't know why ours is particularly ethical, I just think we got the copyright on the word. Buddhists and Hindus got 'mystical' instead which I think is cooler -  is that God preexisted everything, that God is perfect and that perfection is good.  He then for his own inscrutable reasons created Heaven and Earth and ultimately us through processes that are effectively unknowable thereby guaranteeing biologists and rural peckerwoods the same hours of pointless fun arguing creation's whats and hows that we economists get from irrational Marxist blather (see above).  When we got here we sashayed around for a while and then through our greed and arrogance loused the joint up.  Loused it up so bad that God had to throw us out into a world with no bar, no waitresses, no jukebox, no nothing. What Adam and  his termagent wife Eve did was so bad that God feels compelled to keep us 'conscious' and torture us forever.  All for messing up his lousy little Eden one day - talk about touchy.

    Now Jews and Muslims believe that by working  your ass off and nodding or squatting in the right direction and putting certain types of hankies or boxes on your head or not eating the naughty bits of certain animals and staying away from bacon completely you can work your way back into God's good graces and he'll reserve a spot for you somewhere that won't suck the way hell does.  Some Muslims actually believe that if they do enough good deeds like slaughter infidels - what the Jews call a mitzvah - not the infidel slaughtering but the good deed - then they will not only get a nice place they will get 72 virgins or raisins of particular clarity and flavor to diddle for eternity.  Me, I'd take the virgins but some Muslims are evidently really big on raisin diddling.  Go figure.

    So where was I?  Ah, yes, God and whether He's ultra swell cool and good and all or a rat bastard of the first degree and whether anyone should care either way.  Wait, that doesn't sound so good. Lemme try again:  God and whether He's a force for ultimate good or whether He in His Wisdom could just as easily become a force for Ultimate Evil and whether that choice should matter to those of us who...matter. There.  That sounds nice and academic and clever and all.

    So what about it?  The God who is ultimate good says in effect:  "I am the ultimate Gooodoodooodoood (I'm going to turn of the Moses/BenHur effects...just a sec...OK, now, let's go) and if you aren't then I am going to send you to hell where you're going to learn just how painful pissing Me off is.  Forever.  With no parole.  No chance for probation.  No trusty status.  No emeritus wing, just wastage.  Cruel, vicious, agonizing wastage for the rest of eternity.  And boy is eternity a long time, capiche?"  Which, admittedly, would stink.  But "wait!",  he says, "There 's a special deal!", "This day only we have a deal that I just can't believe we're offering.  I mean we've never done this before, not that before means a lot when you live outside of space and time but anyway it's an awesome deal.  Today we are contributing one full 'Son of God' to a special redemption program (redemption program code: God2Go) whereby if you 'accept' this particular (and only God knows how many there are) 'Son of God' as your 'personal Savior' you will be entitled to one free pass out of Hell and to the Eternal Retirement Village of your choice."  Exlusions and conditions apply, including if you are someone that God really, really wants to waste or if God is having a bad millenium or if Jesus trips and drops your redemption token on the ground or if for some other reason that we haven't defined God just decides that He, being the God of All thinks that he'd have rather more fun torturing you forever than watching your stupid mug giggle for eternity.

    So...wow!  I mean what a deal.  It's not often that you get offered a piece of the "Peacethatpassesallunderstnding" so to speak.  It's a great deal - any Consumer Reports would five star double plus it.  But what happens to the chaps that, you know, don't take the offer or don't fulfill the fine print?  As unlikely as that would be.  Well then the force for ultimate good and perfection and joy and truth and all will torture them forever.  And when I say forever, I mean for-EVER.  God is so good, God is so good, God is so good, he's so good to....well not to you or you and I'm sorry about you. But I got mine so isn't He swell?

    So the result of an ultimately good God is some of us swanning around in comfort forever because God says so and some of us howling in agony forever because....God says so.  Hmm.

    So let's reverse the polarity on this morality tale:  let's say God is Captain Nasty-Bad, the 'worst of the worst of the worst, Sir!' so to speak.  And Captain Nasty-Bad decides that he's going to (surprise, surprise) fuck everyone up.  Completely, with no chance for unfuckage, no chance for a break in the Auschwitz level cruelty.  Just ouch baby, very ouch forever and ever Unmen.  But "wait!",  he says, "There's a special deal!", "This day only we have a deal that I just can't believe we're offering.  I mean we've never done this before, not that before means a lot when you live outside of space and time but anyway it's an awesome deal.  Today we are contributing one full 'Son of God' to a special redemption program (redemption program code: God2Go) whereby if you 'accept' this particular (and only God knows how many there are) 'Son of God' as your 'personal Savior' you will be entitled to one free pass out of Hell and to the Eternal Retirement Village of your choice."  Exlusions and conditions apply, including if you are someone that God really, really wants to waste or if God is having a bad millenium or if Jesus trips and drops your redemption token on the ground or if for some other reason that we haven't defined God just decides that He, being the God of All thinks that he'd have rather more fun torturing you forever than watching your stupid mug giggle for eternity.

    So...wow!  I mean what a deal.  It's not often that you get offered a piece of the "Peacethatpassesallunderstnding" so to speak.  It's a great deal - any Consumer Reports would five star double plus it....But wait...gee, haven't we heard this offer before?  Not from God who's Nasty Bad but from God who's Swell as Hell, well not hell, but you  know what I mean.  Isn't this the same deal: get out of agony free?  And isn't Nasty God just doing what Swell God did for the the same reasons?  He wants to?  Or He feels like it?  Or it suits Him?  Or He just digs watching people grovel and pray and tithe on the off chance that they not get the hot poker forever the way that He's promised?  And doesn't God get off on the shrieking and grovelling the same way whether we call Him Nasty Bad or Swell and Good?  Indeed isn't He just the same 'cat either way? Indifferent to us His creatures who he created to entertain Himself which sometimes requires our joyful giggling and other times (sorry gang) requires our agonized shrieking?  And isn't his schtick and story stuff here on earth just designed to amp our longing and desperation and fear so when he wants a show it really is 'mega praise' or 'mega shriek' all the time?  Do Good and Evil really matter to the only creature that matters? Or is it all the same bloody thing?

    Except for the Sales Team who know that pitching God and Jesus and all as 'good' generates vastly more revenue that a God that just "is" or heaven forbid, God that is "Evil".  We desperately want to believe that there's a point to all the brutality that God, of course, created.  We really want an happy ending and the sales team need to make its numbers so a want and a need come together to create a Truth.

    The question is is it a real Truth or simply a convenient one?

    Now the rebuttal to my butting in to the theology business without a license is that our very preference for good and morality demonstrates that God who made us in His image, after all is indeed Good. But I wasn't trying to ascertain the actual "goodness" if God I was simply asking should "goodness" matter more than a hill of beans to those of us doing the living and dying (and shrieking, don't forget shrieking)?

    And the thing is, I can't see how it does.

    *My History of Economics prof in grad school at Chicago was Nobelist Bob Fogel and he definitely was neither a Marxist nor a fan of entertaining but pointless hypotheticals (he favored painful but pointless integral and differential equations instead) - so there is some use for a Marxist economist.  Incidentally, Mr. Marx had a cute daughter and he allowed me to date her - emphasis on allowed - so it's not true that Marxists are completely opposed to private property.  He was also an ex-Texas A&M Cheerleader whose prized possession was a photograph of he and the rest of his cheerleading squad (all male at the time) standing in their cheerleader getups holding their testicles in faux agony over some blown call by the referee. No, I don't understand it either.

    Financial Times debunks Piketty into detoilet

    Prof Piketty demonstrates why the politically religious (those for whom an ideology substitutes for religion and thus power is their morality) also known as' progressives' or 'neomarxists' or 'socialists' can't be trusted with data. Their religion us so tied up in their ideology what is 'right' must be true rather than the obverse that is the norm among people whose morality is drawn from older, less politically correct traditions. Because political religion necessarily worships only temporal power and therefore it's maximization must be righteous. QED.

    And yet time after time we put these wankers in charge of our destinies. And more often than not they lead us to their'heaven' which for most of us is indistinguishable from hell.

    http://pejmanyousefzadeh.net/2014/05/23/facts-are-stubborn-things-as-thomas-piketty-is-beginning-to-find-out/

    Friday, May 23, 2014

    Vet as victim - because the progressive state doesn't like heroes, only victims

    True heroes are free and independent.  Progs  hate free and despise independence so the narrative must be about veteran victimhood. And post traumatic stress disorder is a perfect 'condition' - utterly nebulous and therefore infinitely malleable into more and more new narratives of disfunction.

    PS:  Apparently I screwed up the bloody link.  Sorry.  

    Oh Piketteeee, jew got some 'splaining to do - FT debunks the Great Marxist Screed

    Apparently fat fingering, fallacious interpretation, inappropriate conflation and downright duplicity riddle the "Most Important Book Since Das Kapital".  But incoherent fraud in the service of the material religion is a tradition, isn't it?

    Screw the facts his shtick is too damn good to check. Much less quality control. After all he's on the side of the 'angels' and so his truth is poetic, deeper and truthier than everyday common garden variety truth.  Believe.  Believe.

    It's like the Gambino family ratting on the Corleones

    Liberal dark money group identifies conservative dark money groups to the press. Well it takes one to know one I guess. At the link.

    http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2014/05/23/dark-money-funded-liberal-group-lectures-reporters-on-conservative-dark-money/

    Hillary Clinton rakes in $5 Million in 15 months

    She gets 200k per speech. For a plodding, pedestrian, unaccomplished bore. Methinks they are buying insurance against the possibility she gets to sit on the eagle throne.

    Which is immensely corrupt. Far more corrupt than the 'crime' Obama critic Dines D'Souza was perp walked and now faces 16 months in prison for.

    Being a prog grandee means never having to live by the little people's rules. No humility, no shame, no class.

    http://m.motherjones.com/politics/2014/05/hillary-clinton-goldman-sachs-private-equity-white-house-2016

    In fairness DePaul has been DeNuts for a long time.

    Prog campaign on campus to trash Israel causes Jews to fear for their safety. Hating Israel and hating Jews are increasingly synonymous.

    http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Peace/2014/05/23/Jewish-DePaul-Student-I-No-Longer-Felt-Safe-on-This-Campus

    What? I'm responsible for how government agencies are run, Who knew!

    Barack Obama with a compliant press at his back never takes responsibility for anything. If course he's always 'outraged' and he 'will never rest until...' Until it's time for his Presidential record number of golf games or record setting number of vacation days.

    I don't begrudge a man his leisure so long as he gets his work done first but Obama behaves as if he's already finished being President when in several critical respects he's yet to start.

    Curl at the link.

    http://m.washingtontimes.com/news/2014/may/21/curl-obama-unaccountable-president/

    When everything is against the law, prosecutors rule

    How is it that vocal Obama critic and movie maker Dinesh D'Souza is facing more than a year in prison for a 20,000 dollar campaign finance violation while Democrat grandee,  top Obama bundler and ex MF Global CEO Jon Corzine faces no criminal prosecution for shifting client funds into a failing MF global account and then 'losing' 1 billion of them in the midst of the 8th biggest bankruptcy in US History?

    But after the IRS targeting of conservative groups I am prepared to believe the worst in terms of prosecutorial abuse in the service of our President and his party's agenda.

    A Republic only if you can keep it indeed. Read it and weep for your country at the link.

    http://thefederalist.com/2014/05/21/prison-for-dsouza-beach-time-for-corzine/

    What ever happened to the spirit of Pericardis alive or Rasuli dead?

    Miriam Ibrahim is a Sudanese wife of an American citizen who has been sentenced to death for the crime of converting to Christianity.  A century ago when primitive Muslims in Noth Africa took a naturalized Greek American hostage the President and the nation were resolute. They got Pericardis back. But given the current occupant of the Eagle Throne it is unlikely that Mr. Ibrahim will ever see his wife or children again.

    Bet there'll be an awesome Twitter hashtag, though.

    http://www.steynonline.com/6359/where-the-dream-act-for-meriam-ibrahim

    Thoughtful critique of social media - one of the first I've seen.

    This is a good piece from the Federalist that puts its finger on the heart of the problem with social media and infotech in general: Truly knowing and being known require presence. And learning to cope with difficult people requires that we be trapped with them both body and mind. If tech erodes that be here nowness (to butcher a phrase) we end up trading in depth of relationship and understanding for breadth and when it comes to knowing ourselves and relating to those around us depth always trumps breadth.

    Technology can be escapism and it can be the basis for a shallower existence. That being said I take issue with the argument that it interferes with knowing oneself. That is completely dependent upon how you use it. Do you use social media to find lost friends and make new ones or do you use it as a replacement for fellowship?

    I blog (duh) and it is only since I began regularly writing my thoughts that I have come to some understanding of who I am. It turns out that writing is how I work things out. Without blog technology and phone blog apps i would have never begun writing or come to terms with myself.
    I think the biggest mistake this author makes is the same one that all those who lament the onrush of technology and change do: they identify where they are most comfortable (usually the practices that the learned in early adulthood) and define that as the pinnacle of civilization with steep slopes downhill to the past and future. This personal preference fallacy blinds people to the fact that there is always jarring change going on and we are all changing with it but despite all the roar, underlying human nature changes very slowly.

    If teenagers are surley, distracted, obsessed over their cliques and uninterested in the outside world or the eternal questions so what? Teens have always been that way. Putting an iPhone in their hand doesn't make it worse. Or better.
    It just is.

    Thursday, May 22, 2014

    Man charged for hanging US flag upside down

    Why is everybody so easily offended these days? Man facing charges for hanging American flag upside down.  Everyone needs to take a chill pill and give each other a lot more slack.  Perhaps fewer laws and rules and more informal social interactions would help.  Anything that keeps the lawyers away/
    HT Carpe Diem

    Piketty and the "Investment Event Horizon"

    Samizdata had a great post pointing out that the ultra hot Neo Marxist tome written by Professor Piketty is strangely like a tale from Douglas Adam's Hitchhiker's guide to the Galaxy.  Piketty argues that if the rate of return on investments is sufficiently higher than the real economic growth rate then investment's share of income will continue to grow and grow, driving greater and greater inequality.  A lot of people have debunked Piketty's claim, most notably by pointing out his sloppy math and showing that past periods of great inequality didn't generate the runaway positive feedbacks that he forecasts.  But none of the critics considered the Frogstar B Shoe Event Horizon example.  Because Frogstar B was destroyed by just the kind of snowballing effect that Piketty forecasts.

    In Douglas Adams famous non-fiction series on galactic economic history, “The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy”, we are presented with a description of the tragedy of the planet Frogstar B.

    On Frogstar B, for a time shoe production increased faster than the rate of overall economic growth. As a result, with time, shoe production became a larger and larger fraction of the economy, until finally the Shoe Event Horizon was hit, at which point nothing but shoes could be manufactured, and lacking any other goods or services, their civilization collapsed.

    Thomas Piketty’s “Capital in the Twenty-First Century” describes a similar tragedy that lies inevitably in our future, the point at which the only economic activity left is investment, all money is held by a tiny minority of wealthy people, and our civilization permanently ends.


    I also note that anthropogenic global warming alarmists also posit a snowballing positive feedback loop spiraling ever upward until the Little Teapot, Short and Stout that is the earth hits 100 C and begins to 'shout'. It all fits - everything is spiraling out of control, just look at Frogstar B.

    Take that you plutocracy deniers!

    Wednesday, May 21, 2014

    Obama vows "forceful" response to VA scandal where "response" means cover up

    Just like his forceful response to Behghazi, the IRS scandal,  Syria, etc.

    He's such a forceful President. Hey maybe he'll do another Twitter hashtag!

    #studmuffin. NYT at its gap jawed credulous best at the link.

    http://mobile.nytimes.com/2014/05/22/us/politics/veterans-hospitals.html?referrer=

    Have the Clintons become radioactive? Golly I hope so!

    Most Presidents, recognizing that after 8 years the country's sick to death of them, do the decent thing and fade into the background playing golf, doddering here and there, rotting away gracefully in anticipation of a wonderful funeral. But some of these ratchet jawed geezers just won't take a hint. They swan around with their Carter Centers and their Clinton Global Initiatives and poke their noses into North Korea when nobody asked them to or even worse their damned wife starts running for President no doubt to give the poor feeb something to do on all those dark, lonely post Presidential nights. Like fiddle with the football thingy or the interns. It appears that Philadelphia at least has gotten sick of them and is saying so by telling their little codependent enabling proxy to go play in the traffic somewhere.

    It couldn't happen to a more irritating bunch of pompous would be dynasts.

    If only we could get them to play in the traffic somewhere....

    The next page turner will no doubt be the catastrophic AGW hoax.

    A tale of neuroscience that was most definitely not settled.  Science never is.  No matter how loud self aggrandizing Ivy League apparatchiks shriek. In the New York Times no less.  How ironic.

    Because if the NYT is still around when Catastrophic AGW makes its death ride through the sky, they'll be one of the dimwitted rubes of the tale.  Not that anyone will care about what by then will be a marginal website for a dwindling band of aging hipsters.

    "We are risking nothing less than the future of the entire planet" - John Kerry

    Unless we do what John John says. Which is to give John John and his friends 'n cronies huge sums of money and power. It is extortion and it is fascist.  And the really perverse thing about it is that this Harvard trained apparatchik probably really believes it's true. A Harvard education is a terrible thing to do to a mind.
    Honk, honk, honkhonkhonk, honk, honk! Honkies.
    Lest anyone confuse El Kerrito's self serving honks with the truth here is George Carlin to explain. Funny as hell and worth every minute.

    Well all I can say is that they never talked to me about it

    STUDY: Young women more open to talking  about sex than young men are.

    http://pjmedia.com/instapundit/189031/

    Stud muffins of the law show Grandmother who's boss

    Boy the popo are studs at playing army man aren't they? More pathetic, gratuitous police violence at the link.

    That sound you hear is the government's legitimacy drip, drip, dripping away.

    http://pjmedia.com/tatler/2014/05/21/exclusive-dawn-military-style-police-raid-leaves-meek-grandmother-angry-humiliated/

    One guy did three times as much for free as what the Federal stupor state did for $22 million

    Digitizing newspapers and making them available on a website for $3 per page is a sweet fricking deal. Look I just made three bucks.....ooh another three...and another and another.....

    I'd calculate the differential return to the nation of privatizing this and a boatload of other functions but it has too many digits.

    More Federal "assistance". At the link.

    That would be an Economic Trauma Center

    The Hyde Park cognoscenti (aka Obama's homies) want to replace an Obama Presidential library and temple for idolatry with a trauma center at the U of Chicago. Presumably because the South side is at the epicenter nay, the apex of The One's catastrophic irruption into space and time. Regardless of whether it is for trauma or reverent worship, all if them agree that the New Jesus should be taken up to Heaven at the very same spot where his divinity was first recognized.

    Hallelujah, amen!

    http://m.thenation.com/blog/179922-university-chicago-bidding-obama-library-activists-would-rather-have-trauma-center

    Tuesday, May 20, 2014

    I wish these people would make up their mind. Alas it's hard to do when you've lost it.

    Goldberg on trigger phobia and the paradox that while it's bigoted to question whether a woman should be in combat it's considered insensitive not to warn her about a violent scene in a book.

    Loons. We are infested with loons. At the link.

    http://www.latimes.com/opinion/op-ed/la-oe-goldberg-trigger-warnings-20140520-column.html

    QEasy time: How Banks create money by lending it. Or "If I had known that I would have gone into banking instead of cooking meth".

    When people think about banks they think of a big pot of money (like a Scrooge McDuck bathing vault) that holds all the deposits that the bank then turns around and lends.  But that's not quite right because the first thing the borrower does when he gets his loan is use that money in a way that results in it being deposited back in the bank. In other words now the bank 'has' the money it's loaned to you as an asset but because the car dealer put the money he got from you back in the bank the bank still has the money to lend again while you have a car.  So there's something new that has been made by this transaction, namely: money. It is your decision to borrow money - because you believe you will get a return in excess of the rate you will pay (reliable transportation) - and the bank to lend it to you because they think you're good for the loan that creates most new money.  Thus it is the 'animal spirits' of the economy (got a job, need a car) that inflates the money supply and a fall in that confidence in the future (might lose my job, fix the old car) that causes people to save and pay down their debts that causes the money supply to shrink.

    The central bank, by lending money to banks at preferential rates is a supplier to a process driven by the animal spirits.  They don't 'control' the money supply, rather they supply that which is demanded which results in an asset at the central bank and a liability at the commercial bank which is then turned into matching assets and liabilities all on down the line.  They can influence the pace of money creation by either refusing to lend to banks when they ask (what happened in the Great Depression in the US) or by varying the rate of interest that they charge on reserve loans to banks.

    This is why central banks undertake Quantitative Easing: because they find themselves in a situation where they can't make banks borrow money from them (they can't push rates below zero) because investors won't borrow money from them unless the animal spirits are such that they believe the extra funds will yield a return. So stymied by pessimism that they believe is unjustified (why they are qualified to determine what is justified or not is beyond me) they bypass the banks and go directly to asset holders like pension funds or hedge funds and purchase assets - usually government securities but also mortgage backed securities in America to directly push more money into the economy.  Because the pension fund will turn around and buy another on average (because the central bank sits on what it buys) higher yielding asset.

    By buying up more and more of the low risk financial assets in the economy in exchange for cash, QE tends to raise the price of other, higher risk, higher yielding assets - which is why they're doing it:  The QE faith is that more money leads to rising asset values leads to a rise in 'animal spirits' or the level of faith in the future which leads borrowers to demand more money and makes lenders more willing to lend it.  It's this 'con' game - slipping the economy a financial mickey that inflates asset values in the hope it will change the underlying assessment of the economy's fundamentals and so lead to a real change in the economy's rate of consumption and investment in productive assets and innovations (which of course are the only real ways to accelerate real economic growth and real wealth) - that is the whole point of QE.

    Thus by utilizing quantitative easing central bankers have just appointed themselves economic shrinks who use the unique abilities of a Central bank to 'buck up' an economy that is 'discouraged' and 'down on its luck'.  Think of QE as financial Paxil.  Taking it doesn't change objective reality but by changing perceived reality, the Doctor of Financial Feelgood hopes to change everything.  And we're running a global experiment on just what putting financial anti-depressants in the economic water supply does to reality.

    Because what if the reason that investors are 'pessimistic' is more fundamental?  What if the accumulated regulatory, tax and fiscal policies of the country have gotten objectively worse for wealth creation and/or based upon news reports and political realities, people expect that they're going to get worse in the future?  If this is the case then the cause of the low 'animal spirits' and the tendency of people to pay down debt rather than undertaking new, higher risk projects has nothing to do with being in a 'funk' it has to do with the math in the spreadsheets for new investment projects no longer adding up at the old rates of interest.  In other words, the 'hurdle rate' for investments at all levels of risk has risen because their underlying economics have worsened for whatever reasonor because the increased uncertainty about economic outcomes raises the level of asset volatility.  We don't know what to expect so we charge more for taking the risk.

    If this is what is going on rather than some sort of financial glandular hypotrophy as the QE'ers argue, then the impact of the Fed buying a boatload of financial assets from fund managers will just be to raise the equilibrium value of boatloads of financial assets and raise the wealth of those who hold boatloads of financial assets (the fearsome 'capitalist' and vile 'one percent') relative to the other, less asset rich participants (the downtrodden 'prole' and virtuous '99ers').* Which is cool if you're bread is buttered by Toffs like the guys who run the Fed's is but it doesn't help the underlying economy's ability to create real wealth through innovation and investment.  Indeed by pathologizing the nation's mood rather than finding the fundamental cause of the funk and treating the symptom rather than the underlying condition, Dr. FeelGood puts off necessary change and risks the patient's well being by giving him a false glow of health while his insides continue to rot away.

    Here's a little piece by the B of E on what money really is and their spin on QE.  It's shot in the bank's gold vaults which is a nice contrast - the very real gold gleaming heavily, dully in all its splendor versus the frothy insubstantiality of 'money' in an electronic age.  Ain't reality grand?


    *An even worse outcome would be if the QE provoked an asset bubble and led to a crash which would have real economic effects.  Really bad ones.  This risk doesn't seem to be well understood or realistically factored into the calculations of the government's economic policy team.  Kind of scary, huh?

    How you can get life in prison for making Hash Brownies

    The brutality, stupidity and sheer creative destructiveness of our drug war regime is an obscenity to behold.  A kid makes some brownies and the government thugs put him into prison for the rest of his life where he will be raped over and over and over.

    And they call him the criminal. The nation's claim to legitimacy is rapidly leaching away.  It's a looter's state run by the criminally insane.

    More on this profound act of unreason at Reason.

    PS:  It is the type of hateful, avariciously ambitious lawyer featured in this piece that proves Shakespeare right.

    DEA extorts silence from its victims. Forcing them to retract charges of assault and criminal action by Dr agents to be freed.

    Laws unto themselves, the Federal alphabet agencies use threats of imprisonment and harm to cover up their most egregious crime.

    The Feds are corrupt authoritarian thugs. They should be feared an opposed by all decent Americans.

    It is a thoughtcrime to oppose the powerful and unscrupulous

    Dinesh D'Souza is a strong and articulate critic of the President.  He 'violated' campaign finance laws by donating too much money to a friend's Senate campaign, helping Wendy Long amass 27 percent of the vote.  $20,000 too much.  In contrast Barack Obama deliberately accepted millions of dollars in donations from foreigners and foreign entities via the (unprecedented) trick of disabling the standard geo tracking functionality on his campaign's credit card merchant account.  Tracking functionality that is essential to avoid credit card fraud but if disabled means you can't tell where the money is coming from - whether it be the Moscow offices of a Russian Oligarch or a Little Sister's of the Poor chapter in Moscow, Idaho.  Millions and millions of dollars.

    Guess which man was frog marched in handcuffs to the blaze of press cameras?  Who was accused of a felony and faces 16 months in prison?  Who was singled out among the literally tens of thousands of similar campaign finance violators to be punished?  Now guess why.

    In a nation where everything is against the law it is dangerous to become a high profile critic of a President who really doesn't recognize any principled limit to his power. And who  has joked about siccing the IRS on his enemies and that 'when you're enemy comes to the fight with a knife, bring a gun'.

    Fascist is as fascist does.  He is a despicable man well on his way to fabulous wealth.  It's a great cautionary tale for your kids - keep your head down, cheer the winners, stay out of the line of fire because the powerful will hurt you if you don't.

    The Administration's National Climate Assessment is a tissue of lies and exaggerations

    Like his ludicrous sexual assault claim, the Obama climate change report is designed to stampede people into doing what he wants.  Perhaps the most common ploy used by fascists to get more power is the "permanent crisis". There is always a disaster that requires the state to take more power and money. "There's no time for debate or reflection, we need to act now!"

    Detailed debunking of the most ridiculous claims at the link.

    Cossetted by a happily oblivious press, Barack Obama is so predictably dishonest that when his lips are moving its a sure sign he's he's lying.


    Monday, May 19, 2014

    From Ulysses to Trigger Warnings

    The neo puritan left has conned kids into night terrors over 'naughty' literature that might represent some non PC activity that could frighten the little lit nitwits.. The pathetic dears are demanding that some adult step in and protect or at least warn them away from exposure to "the naughty bits" because they have a 'right' to not be 'offended' or some other nonsense.  Thus does the subjective 'right' to not be offended .trump the objective right of being free to say what you think.  There is no clearer signpost to what the left has become than this:  frighted, thin skinned and fearing defilement from the wrong topics or ideas, Democrat Progs have become the maiden aunts of American politics.

    Stephen Carter mocks colleges' idea phobia but gets one very big thing wrong

    Almost all of the students who he rightly mocks for their desperate need to avoid being confronted by any contrary opinion came to campus open minded. They became anti-intellectual bigots only through truly hurculean efforts of the perpetually adolescent bigots on the faculty. Without their 'sacrifices' these kids might have turned out to be decent human beings rather than the ignorant, mewling, puling grievance mongers that they've become.

    More pathetic twerpage at the link.  Its a lot of fun.  You should read it.  Seriously.

    "If I understand college administrators correctly, colleges are hotbeds of racism and rape that everyone should be able to attend."

    That was from Iowa Hawk's Twitter Feed

    Academic beclowning steps it up a notch. You know, with all this rape, sexism and racism the Ivy league is becoming a public nuisance. Maybe the cops should shut them down the way they do crack houses until such time the over privileged dears can learn to behave like decent, responsible adults.

    I think the students should straighten up too.

    Your average government bureaucrat retiring at 55 has a pension that makes him a millionaire

    Just from the NPV of their pension and associated health coverage. On a lifetime basis bureaucrats (party members is Orwell's 1984) make twice as much on average as us proles.

    No wonder they're such Democrat Party stalwarts, betraying their vows of impartiality to make sure their side wins: each of them has millions riding on the outcome.

    We don't have a civil service, we have a left handed spoils system.

    http://www.forbes.com/forbes/2010/0628/opinions-rich-karlgaard-digital-rules-millionaire-cop-next-door.html

    Folie des clercs

    The original purpose of universities was the education of the clerical, priestly elite and universities have always had the whiff of ideological fanaticism and intolerance about them. But in its ever more graduated and finely grained degrees of racial and gender grievance the university has shifted from secular pentecostal speaking in tongues fanaticism to Taliban level craziness. This at a time when its value to the broader society has never been more in question.

    It's ironic that the institution most obsessed with race and gender has far and away the most problems with it. I guess when you spend all your time focusing on "difference", on what divides us, you get more division.

    Imagine that. More horrified bemusement at the link.

    http://ww2.nationalpost.com/m/wp/blog.html?b=fullcomment.nationalpost.com/2014/05/17/rex-murphy-check-your-bigotry

    Sunday, May 18, 2014

    With nothing to the left of him on economic policy but Argentina, Cuomo demonstrates a talent for rational thought

    He capped school taxes in a state that already spends 2X the national average. He retained half of a 200 thousand-aires surtax, slightly moderating NY's well earned reputation for avaricious vindictiveness towards the productive. Governor Cuomo is demonstrating that he can take the State from an uncontrolled crash trajectory to a crash landing glide and the loons are jeering him.  Even the supposed hard nosed VOX is vexed by his newfound emergency moderation.

    And on social policy he's with the gun and gender hysterics and on fracking with the AGW shriek squad. If this is what passes for Northeast Dem moderation then God help them. 

    Decline is a choice. One that they've already made. More vexatious VOXing at the link


    Description of an Uber ride sharing experience that shows why traditional cabs are screwed.

    The sharing economy is just a lot more efficient. And rational.

    http://www.samizdata.net/2014/05/taking-a-ride-in-an-uber-taxi/

    Study finds that poor people are less healthy than the rest of us

    In other astoundingly obvious news it was discovered that pale people get sunburned more and skinny people almost never split their britches.

    That Medicaid disproportionately serves the chronically ill, the mentally challenged, the disabled and those that live disorganized, chaotic lives is obvious. I predict as Medicaid expands to less poor people its outcomes will improve. The Obami will claim credit but it's simply demographics: The near poor are healthier, more intelligent, more able bodied and live more ordered lives than the poor do so they will do better.

    I really question the true IQs of most college profs these days. This piece of dreck was produced at Michigan which is supposed to be fairly "elite". Not these cats. Bilge at the link\.


    Police murder in the time of prohibition

    Cops smash down door of 80 year old man, riddle him with 6 bullets while he's still in his bed. Prohibition begets "crime" which begets real violent crime which begets more and more extreme law enforcement which ends up with a no knock in the night and innocents die.

    Thus are the wages our nation's coercive and cruel sins.  How about leaving people alone. It's not like we're busting into your house with guns blazing. The rest at the link.


    http://reason.com/archives/2014/05/18/another-drug-bust-gone-bad

    Criticize a cop, go to jail

    Cop roaring through a subdivision going "50 or 60", homeowner tells him he was driving too fast. Homeowner arrested. There are way too many cops who have watched too many cop shows. They've also been "professionalized" and conditioned to look on normal people as a threat.  Which is what happens when everything is against the law: cops look upon everyone as a criminal. With predictably bad results.

    Until the state backs away from its orgy of coercion more and more people will be alienated from it. And more and more incidents will occur. Yet the lawyers who tend to run all this dreck make money off of expanding the rule of law to more and more human interactions and making things more and more complex in the process.  Details at the link.


    Saturday, May 17, 2014

    Modern Christianity's convenient pseudo Manichaeism or What do you do with the ringleaders of the Skunk Liberation Front?

    Manichaeism or the Manichean heresy as it is sometimes known is the belief that the world is divided into two realms -  a spiritual realm of light or good and a material realm of darkness or evil and all that happens in this world whether done by or to us is a result of the interplay between these two realms.  Some people confuse this with Christianity which is not surprising given that modern Christianity has stealthily promoted this heresy to solve a rather ticklish problem: Cruelty - God's that is.

    One of the 'problems' with Christianity in the modern world is that while being a very modern, 'hip' religion, Christianity was created in a decidedly pre-modern time. And all of its canon of holy scriptures were written and selected before 500 AD (later if you're Roman Catholic but I'm not so go fish).  This means that things that a pre-modern would consider de rigueur for your A list Godhead - sexism, racism, totalitarianism, genocide and the occasional orgy of gratuitous violence - are - how can I put this delicately - 'not done' in our modern, up to date, chock full of progress era.  I know, I know, there's tons of killing and genocide and racism and totalitarianism and so on and so forth and your average modern man is a bleeding, screeching hypocrite. But be that as it may, the fact is that we think of such things as being 'beneath us'.  And we certainly don't think of ourselves subscribing to any ideology or religion or glee club for that matter that espouses such 'incorrect' behavior.  Which is a bitch because after spending 2000 years building up Jesus to be the 'Prince of Peace' and the functional equivalent of 'love' - well, perhaps not the functional equivalent of 'love', that takes batteries and a baster but the conceptual equivalent of 'Love' - it's tough to deal with the rather bloodthirsty way he describes 'payback' for all of the Pharisees and Scribes and other desperadoes that kept obstructing his ministry.  Because 'eternal torment' to modern ears sounds a lot like torture which the UN Human Rights Commission has banned right?  I mean at least for countries that aren't members of the UN Human Rights Commission.  If George W. Bush was a war criminal for doing some admittedly over the top dunking of terrorist masterminds for a few weeks (and he's a Methodist) then how can Jesus skate by with a kajillion year dunking in hot boiling oil of most of the first century Jewish establishment?  That is if He's Mr. Peace and Love and all.

    That's where a certain nattily dressed 'man about town' comes in.  If he were honest - and he's not, he would say that he can't believe his luck - a defrocked angel, on the skids, hoping to eke out a living tattling on us for loose change here and there is elevated into the baddest baddass there is in all of history the Dr. Evil no, the Satan of all time.  Which is quite a stretch for someone that God refers to simply as the "The Accuser".

    I knew an accuser in the first grade.  Her name was Elizabeth and I swear that there could have been a concrete wall between you and that little pest and she'd still rat you out with at least three different forms of admissible evidence.  A regular CSI of the elementary set...that, that little....Hillary clone - and I hope that stings. But presumably little Elizabeth grew out of her snitchfulness - either that or she's become a Clinton staffer.  At any rate, the worst she could do to me was get me ping pong paddled by Mrs. Kulonowski who admittedly was in a permanent foul mood because her husband was a Marine Sergeant in Vietnam so she swung from being scared he was going to be killed by those...well you know, to being scared that he was sleeping with those....well you know that too. So it was whack, whack, whackity, whack-whack all the live long day at Bluestem elementary's first grade until the day Elizabeth got whacked.  Anyway, where was I, ah, yes.  Satan.  The devil dude, the Krimson King of Karnality.

    You see the problem that God's sales team here on earth has is that God is a tri-omni, non Einsteinan entity or 3O-Hold the E if you will.  God sees and knows all - O number 1.  God is everywhere  - O number 2, and God can do whatever the hell he wants - O number 3.  In addition he sits outside of the space time continuum which means he's the only entity in the universe that doesn't have to mind when Einstein snaps his fingers and says:  "You, ja, you, I'm lookink at you, you schtop vat it iss yer doink and get back on ze schpace time continuum zis minute!".  All of which just means that anything and I mean anything that happens in this Universe can ultimately be pinned on Mr. Big.  There is nothing that He's not aware of or can't change and because even Einstein isn't the boss of Him He can swing anywhere in time or space anytime he wants.  Upset about who won the Second Punic war?  He can go back and make sure that the Cannae of worms that Hannibal opened all die before they are able to fortify Rome.  If He wanted to, that is. And I'm not saying that it wouldn't be cool if the inventor of armored warfare was able to kick those candyass Roman's....candy asses with a major league armored elephant charge.  Cause it would.  Anyway, God is implicated in literally everything that happens, either as a perp or at least as a material and I might add, exceptionally credible, witness.

    Which as I said earlier, is a problem.  Because if God is involved and/or witnessing everything and if he has the power to intervene to change history and in fact has the power to go back in time and change it before it becomes history then that makes him more responsible for everything than anyone has ever been responsible for anything ever.  So anything that happens can only happen because He wants it to which is just a fancy way of saying that it's all His fault.  And if it's all His fault where does He get off telling us it's all our fault? I certainly am no 3O Hold the E, and I don't think you are either.  I guess technically it could be our fault and His fault.  After all if I'm the security guard for Disneyland and I see you setting fire to Mickey Mouse and I don't do anything about it, not even spray the rodent down so that the park has to be closed due to the well known 'burnt rat effect' then I am as guilty as you are.  But that's not what God represents to us in His book.  He says that everything was going swell until we showed up and trashed the joint.  That it's one hundred percent our fault and zero percent His.  Which is the same cockeyed math that got that stool pigeon Elizabeth her first swat.  Because Mrs. K had just gotten a rather 'ambiguous' letter back from the Sergeant and she was in a rather ambiguous mood in which right and wrong had never seemed more alike so when Elizabeth (quite rightly) nailed us for letting the skunk babies out of their (special, vented) cage she was prepared to believe that Elizabeth was (in the vernacular of the day) an 'unindicted co-conspirator' and guilty as Nixon.  So Elizabeth got 'impeached' with the rest of us so to speak.

    Because if you know that the skunk babies are going to get let out of their cage and you know that everyone is going to go "ooh, look skunk babies they stink run away run away!" even though you know that skunk babies don't stink until they get big and are just like little kitties and therefore you know that little Billy and Ted didn't really do anything wrong other than cause a teensy little riot that exploded out into the corridor knocking a few stupid kindergartners down who started to cry for absolutely no reason whatsoever and you don't snitch until after all of the 'fun' happens.  Then....well....bend over baby.

    Which is analogous to the situation that God or more specifically, God's earthly sales team has on its hands.  Culpability is an inelegant word representing a rather tricky situation and one that had to be solved pronto.  Thus the need for a CEO of Gehenna that wasn't the real CEO (Who is Jesus) but could pretend to be running hell and be represented by the sales team as the ultra powerful source of darkness and evil tied in with us mortals so that anything bad that happened up to and including the Great Bluestem Skunk Riot of '68 could be pinned on earth bound perps (me, Ted and the snitch formerly known as Elizabeth Rodham Clinton) and on 'Crimson Jack', letting Jesus and His Dad off scot-free.

    So the upshot of all this maneuvering and sales positioning is that we are stuck in a really goofy philosophical cul de sac or should I say no man's land.  On one side of no man's land we now have Jesus and His Dad and His Spirit representing Team 'Light' 'n 'Good' glowering across the barbed wire and bomb craters at a snarling Team Dark 'n Evil which we know is really just a unit in Team 'Light' and 'Good' that's been assigned to play the 'Dark 'n Evil' role so that Light 'n Good can keep its skirts nice and...Light 'n Good.

    Incidently, is Dark 'n Evil really a team?  I always think of Satan leading this howling band of....I'm not sure what - does Satan really have Demons?  Or are they just Orcs made to augment Satan's "Sauron Lord of Mordor" schtick?  I really don't know and await a theologian's opinion on the matter.  If they're not too busy backdating the Lord's daytimer to show he wasn't anywhere near Jericho on the day its "Walls came tumbling down" and in any case it was that Devil guy that made everyone kill everybody.  "Yeah, that's the ticket, the Devil did it and God couldn't do anything about it, see?  All those Jerichokies were evil, they were playing with the Devil while the Israelites were playing with...Baal, wait, they didn't want to play with Baal but the Devil got them to.  And the firstborn of Egypt, including a bunch of kids from the Glee Club at Tripoli's Quaddafi High who happened to be passing through, were killed on Satan's say so,  rather than because God suddenly drew a blank on ploys to make Pharoah let His people go short of a nationwide holy killing spree.  Yeah, that's the way it went down.  Can't be God's fault 'cause He's perfect and good and love and did I tell you about the special Bible Study we're having for all those who are struggling?  It's called 'It's all that bastard Satan's fault'. You should come."

    And you really should because blame shifting is an art. And Yahweh is the master of the genre. You sinner, you.

    Stupid and organic is no way to go through life, son

    It turns out that organic farming is not sustainable.  It quickly depletes the soil of nutrients (some put there by previous industrial agricultural practices) and its use of organic nitrogen sources that are less efficiently fixed by crops kills waterways due to eutrofication. This according to a British meta or study of studies and other research. More at the link.

    Organic farming isn't just anti human (consuming more water and land for less food) it's also turns out to be anti environment.

    Boy the world's poor can't survive much more "progressivism" can they?

    Friday, May 16, 2014

    Sic regressot transit progressia or all progressive transit options are regressive

    Look at you prog inner city and it's all yay choo choo, bike and even streetcar (!) and boo Uber, Lyft, Car2Go, Zipcar and so on. Innovation, diversity and any technology less than 100 years old is anathema to the balding ponytail set. As the link explains, using the oh so progressive city of Seattle, God help them, as an example.

    Progressive doesn't really have anything to do with progress does it?

    Anything for a tithe eh Franky?

    Pope says he would Baptize aliens.  But you don't really need to take this alien thing seriously until Jerusalem's chief Rabbi says he'll circumcise them.  And then the critical data point needed is what is the circumference to be circumcised?  

    At the link.


    A giant of journalism is gone

    Al Feldstein longtime editor if Mad is dead. Characteristically the correction  to his Obit is better than the original.

    Why the NYT is Toast: it can't generate much more traffic than one man bands

    Drudge wallops the Times and one man shows done by guys with day jobs like Instapundit generate one twelfth the volume with one thousandth the cost.

    It is very difficult for organizations who dominate one paradigm to survive the transition to the next.

    Up next: Universities

    http://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2014/05/why-the-new-york-times-is-in-trouble.php

    Duke Lacrosse case finally ends. Guilty perps walk.

    By guilty perps I mean Duke President Richard "Big Dick" Brodhead and 120 faculty members that acted with a reckless disregard for truth and due process,  throwing their own students under the bus due to both cowardice and ideological bigotry.

    Send your kid to a bigoted left wing witch hunt? Not on your life.


    Why fight real crime when you can peer into kids cars looking for BB guns and roach clips?

    Real criminals are scary.  Cowardice, apparently thy name is local Iowa Police and schoolmarms.

    Heck, that's not fair, any old fashioned schoolmarm worth her salt could stare down any BB gun toting kid much less a kid who wasn't toting a BB gun but had one in his car several blocks away from the school.

    When anti-gun hysteria hits the bureaucrats of Iowa, you know the union boys have jumped the liberal shark.  Union members and policemen used to be so tough. Now they're just progressive.  I never subscribed to the notion that to be liberal was to be a 'bed wetter', after all liberals were trying to take over the nation and coerce everyone into doing what they said - not something that people with a PP problem typically do.  But this cop clearly has his mummy fit his Depends on tightly before she tells him a scary bedtime story. About sinister BB guns. Lying in cars on public streets.  In the daylight.  It makes me shudder to even think about it.

    What a stud.

    The Global Warming Movement is religion masquerading as science

    The second rate 'science' of climatology has never been so popular or profitable. The mediocrities who run it can't believe their luck to stumble on to the most popular form of anti-human idolatry in world history - and the people that count are buying it!  Charles Ponzi never had it so good.  So when one of their number dissents from the orthodoxy, they respond like the most retrograde cult or crime family:  bitter, brutal denunciation, shunning, threats, withdrawal of custom, you name it.  This most recently happened to a Swedish scientist:

    On May 8, Lennart Bengtsson, a Swedish climate scientist and meteorologist, joined the advisory council of the Global Warming Policy Foundation, a group that questions the reliability of climate change and the costs of policies taken to address it. While Bengtsson maintains he'd always been a skeptic as any scientist ought to be, the foundation and climate-change skeptics proudly announced it as a defection from the scientific consensus.

    Less than a week later, he says he's been forced to resign from the group. The abuse he's received from the climate-science community has made it impossible to carry on his academic work and made him fear for his own safety. A once-peaceful community, he says in his resignation letter, now reminds him of McCarthyism.

    "I had not expect[ed] such an enormous world-wide pressure put at me from a community that I have been close to all my active life," he wrote in his resignation. "Colleagues are withdrawing their support, other colleagues are withdrawing from joint authorship."

    London's Daily Mail reports that Bengtsson "was also abused on science blogs, with one describing the people who condemned him as 'respectable' and that his actions amounted to 'silliness.' Another described him as a 'crybaby.' "

    Of course the entire 'progressive' project is idolatry focused on the power of the glorious state - the nation, nay the world's savior from all of these scurrying, independent humans.  Big science has become part of this oppressive project - pursuing state power and wealth rather than truth.

    The only problem is that hard scientists are trapped by hard facts. They can't manipulate and lie about what is happening very long before people notice the manipulation.  And with their predictions coming a cropper again and again and again and with no warming for over seventeen years, and most importantly with no rational scheme to stop what they characterize as an existential threat, they find that they've driven their magic money bus over a cliff. And as it falls, falls, falls to its inevitable denouement, they're panicking.

    What ? Liberal Econ profs who are known as the "Scourge of Wall Street" secretly shill for the objects of their ire?

    How Krugmanesqe. Oh and how the righteous have fallen. Stiglitz shenanigans at the link.

    God : "If there are ten righteous men I shall spare their university"

    Me: "Burn baby burn."

    http://m.nationalreview.com/article/378122/joseph-stiglitzs-curious-outside-activities-eliana-johnson

    What? The NYT hypocritically fails to live up to the standards it demands of others?

    I am shocked, shocked that leftist institutions are sexist,  elitist cesspools of intrigue.  Usually the self righteous are so moral. McCardle at the link.

    http://www.bloombergview.com/articles/2014-05-15/was-sexism-behind-jill-abramson-s-firing

    'Secret' waiting lists at VA Hospitals

    National healthcare systems ration care. This is because 'free' or deeply discounted care causes demand to soar while there is no incentive for supply to increase or for providers to exert themselves to meet demand. "Honest" and "responsible" systems like Canada's and the UK's admit this.

    Our Federal stupor state is by no means honest or responsible.  Not willing to admit that a bureaucracy giving stuff away for free leads to massive unservable mobs at the door and unable to admit to rationing they lie and cheat.

    Which is what is happening already with the VA and Medicaid and is beginning to happen with Medicare and of course O'care. The Gods of economics are not mocked and their wrath is terrible to behold.

    But hey! LBJ and BHO made demigod in the progressive pantheon off these heakthcare fiddles so they got theirs. Let the rubes get their own glory. Seventh VA office finds secret waiting list.