Monday, June 30, 2014

If San Francisco is the nation's most selfish community it's because it's the nation's most "progressive" community

Makes sense to me: lgbtq is the essence of selfishness.  After all what is more selfish than pursuing your own identity to the exclusion of all other human beings?  To the gender obsessed nothing matters but them and I guess their sainted orgasms.

And it's liberal progressivism that gives them permission to be such selfish prats. Any traditional religion or for that matter conservatism would have told them a long time ago to get over themselves and worry about someone else for a change.

But what is modern "liberalism" but a bundle of lusts looking for a justification?

Slate takes down the capital of bien pensant self indulgence here.

Joke: Barack Obama now googling whether an executive order can override Supreme Court isn't joke.


.@BarackObama is now googling “Can an Executive Order override Supreme Court?”

: White House will consider whether president can act on his own to mitigate effect of Supreme Court contraception ruling

For every 100 girls..

Superb chart on the challenge to boys vs girls. Plus ideas to help boys. I know I know it's incorrect to favor boys but just endure the bien pensant disapproval.

It's not surprising that we released Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi

We released the guy who now claims to lead the new Sunni Caliphate called ISIS. Of course he was no such thing when we caught him. It actually justifies Obama's "Drone first legally justify later campaign" because we don't have the balls (I certainly don't) to summarily execute all of these bad boys and shell their strongholds into women and children paste.  It was when the Euro colonialists got a conscience that their empires began to unravel. Still this boy is a big talker but he's trapped between the Shiites, Kurds and a whole mess of Sunnis who he's given every reason to fight him to the death. So the crazies slaughter the other crazies and temper the Muslim population explosion. You go boys!

Who knows? Maybe someday we'll recover our taste for prophylactic killing. That day will be a bloody day indeed.

We still have some First Amendment rights

Until one more statist gets on the High court then you'll see constitutional protections for speech and religion dissolve like a summer's mist. And most of our remaining economic freedom too. It's all so progressive.

National law journal has the story.

Voting 5-4, the justices today ruled for family-run businesses, including the craft-store chain Hobby Lobby Stores Inc., that say they regard some forms of contraception as immoral.
The ruling carves a hole in Obama’s biggest legislative accomplishment, the 2010 health-care law that the Supreme Court upheld two years ago. More broadly, the decision marks an expansion of corporate rights, saying for-profit companies, like people, can claim religious freedoms under federal law.

Just what is public employee union "work"?

Aside from using their concentrated fiscal and voting clout to loot the public fisc, that is?  The most bankrupt states tend to all be public union states. The National Legal Journal:

"Unions feared that a decision favoring the objectors would encourage more employees to become “free-riders,” not joining the union but benefiting from its work, ultimately depleting the funds that unions need to carry on their work."

A good and necessary decision. And one showing just how in thrall the leftmost Supremes are to unions. One more lefty and unions go wild.

The college cost crime of the century continues to inflate because so many articulate people have a vested interest in it persisting

A lot of journalists have spouses with tenure or sweet administration jobs. And the leftist borg increasingly runs on academic money. And the kids? Kids don't vote. Don't have money. Listen to their professors. So fuck the kids.

More about this aspect of the kinder rape here.

Shoddy Atlantic articles: because shilling for Hillary is their reason to live

Atlantic feminist advocate highlights 51 minute difference in housework while ignoring men's proportionately longer work outside the home. It turns out that all in women and men in a household work the same amount. It's just a different mix. Which if you've ever lived with a member of the opposite sex is what you'd expect. Unless you're a shrieking ideologue. Or cynical leftist pol.

In fairness, lying about housework versus total work effort for women and men is a universal. Even my very conservative pastor did so and when I called him on it he emailed me back "yes I know but I can't tell them that".

It seems women want to be lied to.

Sunday, June 29, 2014

Essays in stupidity: eliminate anonymity and wonder why sperm donations collapse

The witlessness of the clever. English style.
“The UK is facing a major sperm shortage that may be tempting fertility clinics to accept poorer quality sperm, the British Fertility Society (BFS) warns. . . . Dr Pacey warned this was limiting patient choice and increasing waiting times, which led to potential risky practices, including DIY insemination with a friend’s sperm or seeking treatment in a country with less fertility regulation.”
Who would have thought that men respond to incentives?
Hattip Instapundit.com

The logical asininity of 'promoting democracy'

Why do we say we 'promote' democracy?  Every President does it. Right, left, even nutter (Jimmy, quit fiddling with that podium) they all announce that they are going to promote democracy.  Government by the people.  Not for us, mind you, we already have a form of democracy ostensibly limited by a republican constitution (hah!).  But for others - our little brown (and white, yellow, black, light chocolate, dark orange and chartreuse) brothers.  We're taking up the 'White man's burden' again.  Except that we're not exactly white anymore.

So why do we think that everyone else doesn't have democracy in the first place?  If democracy is rule by the people and the people acquiesce to the rule of a Medieval monarchy like the House of Saud haven't the people spoken?  People aren't fleeing Saudi Arabia in boxcar lots are they?  But people are fleeing 'democracies' like El Salvador, hell they're launching their kids unguided over our borders squawking "donde esta la migra" over and over again like little kewpie dolls with microchips shoved up their asses. They're doing this because their 'rule by the people' sucks so bad. And if a 'democracy' chooses things we don't like - those Nigerians and Utahans seem to have it in for gays, for example - we dismiss their views as being 'bigoted'.  So we really don't want democracy so much as we want conformance to liberal norms of behavior - one of which is going through the motions of regular elections where there are multiple parties who all agree with our western liberal norms. Even if these need to be imposed by decidedly anti-democratic means like a bunch of old lawyers in black mummus decreeing it shall be so.

We are so tolerant of those who define tolerance the way we do, aren't we?  But that's not really democracy is it?  It's internationalist republicanism where the 'constitution' is defined by a narrow and oh so shallow liberal elite whose opinions evolve along with whatever happens to be fashionable in New York, London, Paris and San Francisco - perhaps Berlin but not much beyond them - Sorry Toronto and Boston, you're boring - you too Rome.  And Athens:  shut up.

And just in case you haven't noticed, it's not working.  The liberal consensus is dissolving all around us.  And the further the righteous push it, the more it breaks because oddly enough while most people want all the clever doodads that westernization brings they don't necessarily want all the self righteous white man's new burden crap that goes with it - maybe the Japanese do but who outside of Japan really knows what the Japanese think?

Now whether or not you can import 'modern' things without importing the 'western' cultural potting soil that they grew in is an interesting question being tested as we speak.  The Chinese, Russians and Arabs in particular are trying hard to divorce modernity and westernization so good luck with that.  But one thing is certain:  Euro-American style liberal democracy isn't really on offer, even in most of the 'democracies' that exist today.  And I would argue it many cases it's not on offer because the demos there doesn't want it.  Or at least they don't value it over other more pressing needs like culture, peace, stability, family.

In honor of this astoundingly obvious observation, I propose an updated "Good Neighbor Policy" to deal with our complicated little world.  There are two absolute rules that we all must live by in our little corner of the universe:  first, we keep our hands to ourselves - we don't mess with the neighbors, don't invade their pools or kidnap their kids (unless they want us to).  Within our own little plot of heaven (or hell) we are free to do what we want, beat the wife and kids, run medical experiments, fill our pool with jello so long as we do it quietly and the beatings happen the basement so no one outside the family can see or hear or find evidence of them without looking in our trash cans.  Because if you were to violate our second rule:  Don't embarrass the neighborhood, we might be forced to come in and replace you with someone who is more amenable to our rules.  We're not going to change your religion or your tradition of wife beating if that's your bag, baby, but we do require you to follow the two key rules or else.  If you want help, we'll help up to a certain degree - but we're neighbors, not your fucking parents.  Just keep the chaos down to a dull roar and cut your grass once in a while and we'll leave you alone, OK?

If we'd done that in Iraq and Afghanistan we'd have been out in a jiffy. And whomever we put in when we left would have  treated us and by extension our oh so liberal bien pensant allies with a thoughtful circumspection - the hammer of Thor gets a lot of respect only when it is used decisively and quickly withdrawn.  When it sits in the corner rusting people start wondering if it's really that hammery after all.  As George Washington sagely observed: we're not the guarantors of anyone's liberty but our own.  So if you want what we've got work for it and in the mean time, mind your Ps and Qs.  Okay?

Alan Colmes is a faceless mediocrity who says idiotic things because it's the only way he gets noticed

Well it'd be better than touching any appendage of the Colmester. Eeuuww.

Fox’s Alan Colmes thinks conservatives are so obsessed with the Constitution that they’d like to fornicate with it.

"Colmes is like Pee Wee Herman saying 'If you love it why don't you marry it?' Except Colmes is cruder."

"And yet it was Pee Wee Herman who got arrested for masturbating in a theater. It's so unfair!" - Ann Althouse  

If Jackie Robinson had played baseball the way that Barack Obama plays President....

...then the major leagues would have been segregated a lot longer. If you're going to get the electoral and moral benefits of being the "first" it helps if you are, you know, good at your job.

Just sayin'.

Hattip Glenn Reynolds

The logical asininity of 'fundamental transformation'

Consider this statement by Andrew Klavan:

Or consider, finally, that we were born into the freest, strongest, and wealthiest nation that mankind has ever known—and elected as our president a man who promised to “fundamentally transform” it.

Not preserve it. Not enhance it.  Not reform it.  But transform it.  Why did he say that? Did anyone ask him?  Did we take him seriously?  Did he take himself seriously? Isn't that statement a profound insult to the United States?  Would you tell your bride-to-be that you are marrying her to 'fundamentally transform' her?

Why do we tolerate statements from our leaders no less that are so hostile to our society and culture? I know that I use this type of rhetoric from time to time (all the frickin' time - the couch; piss off couch - me). But I'm not running for President or Congressman or dogcatcher for that matter.  And what would it take to fundamentally transform dog catching in this country?  Letting dogs run wild?  Or rounding up any dog found on the street, including those being led on a leash?  Either way would be a major change that we would notice.  But it would be far from a fundamental transformation - you'd just about have to kill all dogs to make a fundamental transformation. That's why anyone who ran for dogcatcher (do people really do that?) would never promise something as irresponsible as fundamental transformation. Yet we elect, indeed the press celebrates as 'saviors' those who say such things and international committees give Nobel Prizes to Presidents who've done nothing but say such things. 

Why? Damned if I know. It's just about as stupid as saying we will 'promote democracy'.

This chick would have been right at home in Mao's Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution

But what really is terrifying is this Swarthmore sophomore had to have learned to think this way from from her expensive college education. What a waste of a mind and money.

Listen to Erin Ching, Class of 16: “What really bothered me,” Ching was quoted in the Swarthmore student newspaper as saying, “is the whole idea that at a liberal arts college, we need to be hearing a diversity of opinion. I don’t think we should be tolerating [George’s] conservative views because that dominant culture embeds these deep inequalities in our society

Read about the travesty that is "liberal" education at Swarthmore here.

Saturday, June 28, 2014

If your police department has one of these then they are dangerous jackasses. Fire them.

Police who are doing their job are trying to minimize violence and their overt impact on the city.  They're trying to promote peacefulness not drive tanks through town.  Skinhead 'criminologists' have become so detached from the communities that they are paid to protect that they have turned themselves into domestic arms of the Army.  Which of course is unconstitutional.  Dumb thugs.

According to these Ohio cops, I was endangering my children throughout their childhood

And I was endangered throughout mine.  Some of our cops have turned in the most pathetic, self righteous nannie state welfare bureaucrats.  I'm surprised we let the little sensitive dears play with guns.  I really, really am beginning to question the sanity of our so called 'civil servants'.  Out of control and out of their minds.  Hat tip Reason.com

Eight-year-old Justin Williamson of Blanchester, Ohio, was supposed to board a church bus taking him and his siblings to service at Woodville Baptist Church. Instead of getting on the bus, Jusitn wandered half a mile from his home and entered a Family Dollar store. Someone at the store notified the authorities.
Police arrested Justin's father and charged him with child endangerment.
WCPO Cincinnati has the full, awful story:
The trouble started when a bus from the Woodville Baptist Church came to pick up 8-year-old Justin and his siblings, Williamson said.
"My kids run in the house in the living room here and tell me, 'Hey, Dad, the church van's here. We're leaving. We're going on to church,' " Williamson said.
"I said, 'OK.' "
Williamson said he didn't know Justin didn't get on the bus.
"He just wanted to go play in the neighborhood," he said.
Once the cops had returned Justin to his home, an officer arrested Williamson over the tearful protests of his children. After a story about the incident ran in a local newspaper, Williamson lost his job.
Over at Free-Range Kids, Reason contributor Lenore Skenazy writes that at least the incident is garnering significant media attention. Situations like this are rare, however, and parents should not be afraid to let their kids roam, she writes:
It is good that these stories of petty minds and police badgering get out to the world, as a way of perhaps, somehow, keeping power in check. But I don’t want you to now fear your own 8-year-old walking to the Dollar Store, or playing in the nabe. These stories are rare and outrageous enough that they MAKE it to the news. I report them here to remind us that there is a power structure we MUST FIGHT that can take away our rights as parents, kids and citizens. But not that any time an 8-year-old goes to buy a $1 squirt gun, he’s going to get his parents arrested. (Unless, of course, he brings that squirt gun to school.)

Gee the Chicoms HAVE mellowed - send dissidents on all expense paid vacations

"We had a good time"

It is an unusual method of muzzling dissent, but He is one of dozens of campaigners who rights groups say have been forced to take vacations – sometimes featuring luxurious hotels beside sun-drenched beaches, trips to tourist sites and lavish dinners – courtesy of the authorities.

It happens so often that dissidents have coined a phrase for it: “being traveled"

Hattip Tyler Cowen

Why Americans rightly hate soccer

Stephen Moore is spot on. It's boring, there are no comebacks, the strategy is crayon and finger paint level and the short pants are the speedos of the sporting world (well except for Speedos which technically would be the speedos of the sporting world). It's a pity that Fred Phelps didn't spend his days hating on soccer because while God clearly doesn't hate 'fags' he has GOT to hate soccer. And cricket. Don't forget cricket - the drunken man's baseball.

On top of that everyone who's good at it is a foreigner

Fred Phelps was wrong

God doesn't hate 'fags' he hates men. Or pace Phelps, maybe He just thinks we're all a bunch of f...oh never mind.

Everybody killed by lightning thus far in 2014 is a man.

Friday, June 27, 2014

Another way our Stupor State encourages inequality of wealth?

Mark Andreesen points out that the Federales virtual  extermination of the IPO has shut small investors out of the most dynamic and wealth creating part of the market.  All for their own good, don'tchaknow.  That has to have negative wealth distribution effects.  It's amazing how often the Feds are implicated in schemes to increase income or wealth inequality - reverse robin hoods indeed.  Hattip Tyler Cowen

The result of all that is the effective death of the IPO. The number of public companies in the US has dropped dramatically. And then correspondingly, growth companies go public much later. Microsoft went out at under $1 billion, Facebook went out at $80 billion. Gains from the growth accrue to the private investor, not the public investor…

Most American retirement savings is invested in the public stock market. Most Americans can’t invest in private companies and most Americans can’t invest in venture capital and private equity funds. They’re actually prohibited from doing so by the SEC. If you both prohibit them from investing in private growth and wire the market so they can’t get into public growth, then you can’t be invested in growth. That raises the societal question of how are we going to pay for retirements. That’s the question that needs to be asked that nobody asks because it’s too scary.

The full interview is here.


- See more at: http://marginalrevolution.com/#sthash.7IlTEnEd.dpuf

Stupid Republicans blow huge sums to see off most committed supporters

But the Party half wits consider the Tea party to be the enemy. A self fulfilling prophecy if I've ever seen one.

This is our Party! (Note the petulant stamp of the foot) you guys go and have your own party.

OK.

Thursday, June 26, 2014

Where is the Dems' Howard Baker?

Howard Baker died today.  He stood up to the President if his own party and in the end told him to resign. In doing so he put nation before party. Given the scandals today where is the Democrat Howard Baker?  Ht instapundut

Now the FDA has provoked a shortage of saline solution

Saline.  A basic commodity. Salt effing water.  The only reason a market economy should run out of anything made of common ingredients (NaCL, H2O) is because the regulatory environment is bollixed beyond belief by the most bollixed agency in the history of bollixed destructiveness:  the FDA.  They make it very difficult to become a supplier, protecting the incumbent suppliers who then respond rationally by not investing in excess capacity to see off the nonexistent new entrants, then they use regulation to restrict imports, making any supply crisis unmanageable. Then lest people bitch, they use their truly life or death control over industries to muffle criticism so everyone pretends that these insane events are just 'acts of God' that no one can do anything about.  The result is that events that DO NOT HAPPEN in the normal, adult parts of our economy happen with ludicrous regularity under the half wit eye of the Federal Stupor State's bestest regulator - the one that all the others aspire to be like.

But what regulates the destructive, incompetent Federal regulator that has so much power over so many people's lives?  Not a God Damned Thing, Or Congress but I repeat myself.

Ain't the United State's government swell? Golly, let's get a lot more of that.

1937 Redux?

According to the BEA boffins GDP just fell 2.9% on an annualized basis in the first quarter. Wow, that sucks.  But it's also weird - things feel stagnant, not in free fall.  But if it is the harbinger of bad things to come then it would be a lot like what happened in the fifth year of another out of control progressive administration that was dealing with very hard times.  FDR presided over a double dip depression in 1937 driven largely by his administration's overreaching based upon the false reading of the '36 election returns.

We're not there and the President has far less power today than he had under FDR - much of the real power in our nation has leached away to the unelected banker catspaws in the Federal Reserve and the immense and immovable regulatory state.  But there's no doubt that confidence in the Federal Government has collapsed and given its enormous power, mostly for bad, that's a terrible portent for the future.

Be afraid, be very afraid.

If only



If only. Ht Driscoll

Wednesday, June 25, 2014

How the "science" gets "settled" in the criminal "justice" system.

Arson testimony by "highly credible" witnesses who didn't know what the heck they were talking about lead to false convictions.

Gee where else does this happen?

http://pjmedia.com/instapundit/190766/

GDP down 2.9 percent annual rate in Q1

The data has really swung around a lot this time. I wonder what's going on?

http://www.bea.gov/newsreleases/national/gdp/gdpnewsrelease.htm

Denigrate and disincent the bourgeois values

..of faith, family, independence and liberty and you get Social Democracy.  And with our ethnic and geographical balkanization you don't get Sweden or Danish socie-dee.  You get Balkan socie-dee.

Barack Obama and the Dems did too transform America: into the stagnant, bitter, pessimistic soft fascist bureaucratic paradise of their dreams. But it took a lot of help from the vicious, criminalizing church lady set.  It remains to be seen whether the old democratic, constitutional bourgeois culture has enough power left to overcome the magic money machine powered statist, criminal injustice state or whether we'll all end up criminals in a nation where everything that is not mandatory is against the law.

More depressing dystopian discussion here.

Tuesday, June 24, 2014

Have you no sense of decency, sir? At long last, have you left no sense of decency?

After reading this I finally lost it:

Yesterday, President Obama announced America should aspire to be more like France when supplying employee benefits. The Washington Examiner reports:
“Other countries know how to do this,” Obama said. “If France can figure this out, we can figure it out.”
“Many women can’t even get a paid day off to give birth,” Obama said. “There is only one developed country in the world that does not offer paid maternity leave, and that is us. And that is not a list you want to be on, by your lonesome.”

The 'rape' epidemic is the 'hookup' culture is the practical result of modern 'feminism' - Harvey Mansfield

Harvey Mansfield pens an important article about what our utterly dishonest President has characterized as an 'epidemic of sexual assault'.  I think it's very important to read.  Particularly for young women so they can understand just how much they've lost by the abandonment of the old, derided sexual 'double standard'.  Mansfield explains in this excerpt.  But please read the whole thing:
In return for women’s holding to a higher standard of sexual behavior, feminine modesty gave them protection while they considered whether they wanted to consent. It gave them time: Not so fast! Not the first date! I’m not ready for that! It gave them the pleasure of being courted along with the advantage of looking before you leap. To win over a woman, men had to strive to express their finer feelings, if they had any. Women could judge their character and choose accordingly. In sum, women had the right of choice, if I may borrow that slogan. All this and more was social construction, to be sure, but on the basis of the bent toward modesty that was held to be in the nature of women. That inclination, it was thought, cooperated with the aggressive drive in the nature of men that could be beneficially constructed into the male duty to take the initiative. There was no guarantee of perfection in this arrangement, but at least each sex would have a legitimate expectation of possible success in seeking marital happiness. They could live together, have children, and take care of them.
Without feminine modesty, however, women must imitate men, and in matters of sex, the most predatory men, as we have seen. The consequence is the hook-up culture now prevalent on college campuses, and off-campus too (even more, it is said). The purpose of hooking up is to replace the human complexity of courtship with “good sex,” a kind of animal simplicity, eliminating all the preliminaries to sex as well as the aftermath. “Good sex,” by the way, is in good part a social construction of the alliance between feminists and male predators that we see today. It narrows and distorts the human potentiality for something nobler and more satisfying than the bare minimum.
The hook-up culture denounced by conservatives is the very same rape culture denounced by feminists. Who wants it? Most college women do not; they ignore hookups and lament the loss of dating. Many men will not turn down the offer of an available woman, but what they really want is a girlfriend. The predatory males are a small minority among men who are the main beneficiaries of the feminist norm. It’s not the fault of men that women want to join them in excess rather than calm them down, for men too are victims of the rape culture. Nor is it the fault of women. Women are so far from wanting hook-ups that they must drink themselves into drunken consent—in order to overcome their natural modesty, one might suggest. Not having a sociable drink but getting blind drunk is today’s preliminary to sex. Beautifully romantic, isn’t it? The anonymous Harvard woman by getting drunk was unfortunately helping to pressure herself into consenting to a very bad experience. But she is right that the pressure comes with the encouragement of the culture. And the culture comes from the dogmas of feminism that made this mess for women and men too.
One other point:  I believe women and men can still have the 'old' culture of modesty and consent if they want it.  It's harder and you need to search for it and probably accept compromises that earlier generations didn't but if you truly want to avoid the soul destroying aspects of the hookup/sexual assault culture you can.  And should.

Climate Change Burnout: Lying liars lose leverage with the lied to

People are increasingly disbelieving the self serving rent seekers who infest the climate establishment.  It couldn't happen to a more dishonest group of people.  Here's to seeing them shoveling snow for a living during the next little Ice Age.  More on how the wankers have wanked it here.

Pragmatism is the first refuge of a scoundrel

Good quote.  Hattip Samizdata:

In politics, many debates are polarised for a reason. There are usually profound differences in the ideological priors underlying viewpoints and the interpretation of evidence. We should therefore be suspicious of the arrogance of those who feel they don’t have to formulate arguments from first principles, and instead unilaterally announce themselves and their ideas as above debate.

How often do we hear, for example, “it’s time to take the ideology out of this debate”, or, worse, “I’m only interested in what works”? Often these are rhetorical devices which simply mean “shut up, and accept I’m right”. But in other instances, users of these banal phrases seem genuinely unaware that what they are saying has any sort of ideological assumptions underpinning it.


- Ryan Bourne

New York State: Nannies from hell

Mercatus estimates that New York is by far the least free state in the nation, lapping the next least free, California.  To illustrate the utterly obscure, buffoonish meddling I present the following.

New York state lawmakers have passed a bill banning residents from taking “tiger selfies” — a rising trend on dating websites in which single men post photos of themselves posing with the ferocious felines in hopes of impressing potential mates. - See more at: http://marginalrevolution.com/#sthash.uY9iqf31.dpuf

It is inconceivable that any rational leader of a business would put themselves at the mercy of the self styled Tiger Selfie Saviors.  Of course it could also be that New Yorkers are just so profoundly stupid that they need this level of direction for survival.  Of course if the citizens are stupid then the legislators they elect would be doublly so.  Which is my point.

This explains Chuck Schumer.

President Obama was led to understand that there would be no math on the campus sexual assault crisis

Mr. Obama makes multiple statistical claims that contradict each other arithmetically and are logically incoherent. I mean if you're going to blow something way out of proportion for political purposes you should at least get the fricking math right.

Can't anyone play this game? Detailed Presidential dumbassery at the link.

As tolerance erodes so does our civil society

Why is it that as our society says it values"diversity" we tolerate less of it? We need more people with a charitable and tolerant attitude towards those whose views differ. Whether it's a photographer who declines to participate in a gay marriage ceremony or a CEO that holds traditional views on the subject or an IMF executive, Republican ex Secretary of State or critic of Islam, we need to respect and listen to each other rather than demand that they be silenced.

"With malice towards none, with charity towards all" is a good watchword.

Ramesh Ponneru has more here.

Monday, June 23, 2014

The law enforcement thug aesthetic

Take a look at this photo of immigrant kids being escorted by Federal ICE police. Their hands are bound as they are escorted within the facility.  Kids. This illustrates one of the things that has gone badly wrong with our police : their obsessive focus on "safety" and "professionalism" drives them to treat everyone they interact with like dangerous criminals. It makes me embarrassed for my country and for these pathetic gun toting cowards in khaki that supposedly 'protect' it.
Immigration Overload Photo Gallery

And by treating people like dangerous criminals you strip them of their dignity and expand the distance between them and the police.  I've said this before but I was treated with much more respect and civility by rural Oklahoma sheriff's deputies in the 1970s and 80s when I had long hair and drove a cheap beater car than I am treated as a 50 something middle class white dude in suburban St. Louis.  Perhaps it's just that Missouri cops are thugs and the Okies weren't but I doubt it very much.  Cops used to be like everyone else, now they are skinheads with degrees in 'criminology' enforcing a legal system where so much is against the law that it is reasonable to assume that everyone is a potential felon for something. The result, the 'pros' treat all civilians as if they are likely criminals - using very polite words and trained techniques of course and the civilians, including conservative Republicans like me notice.  And we warn our kids.  Who we hope and pray never cross our bebadged bosses path.

It's a horrible trend that continues to get worse as our oh so vile progressive state criminalizes more and more behaviors in its perennial and perverted attempts to manipulate us into being 'better'.   The lust to manipulate others is the worst of all sins embedding pride, arrogance, lust for power and sadism into a self righteous liberal or social conservative package.  And it's tearing our civilization apart.


Piketty' s big book of Marxiness

Jonah Goldberg has a review of the latest book from the left's current "it" economist.  And boy does Piketty has in for the rich.  Pity his logic sucks. He also imputes greed on America that is ofttimes spurious. For example his core finding claims to show that personal income for the rich has soared but as Martin Feldstein pointed out to get that result he had to ignore some rather big changes in the way Americans report their income to the taxing authorities:

The most common and strongest complaint is that Piketty’s arrangement of the data paints a false picture of rising inequality in the United States. Harvard’s Martin Feldstein noted in the Wall Street Journal that Piketty fails to take into account important—albeit arcane—changes in the tax code that have caused business income to be counted on personal tax returns. “This transformation occurred gradually over many years as taxpayers changed their behavior and their accounting practices to reflect the new rules,” Feldstein writes. As an example, “the business income of Subchapter S corporations alone rose from $500 billion in 1986 to $1.8 trillion by 1992.” This leads Feldstein to conclude that Piketty “creates the false impression of a sharp rise in the incomes of high-income taxpayers even though there was only a change in the legal form of that income.”

This is a major point that I have neglected. As top marginal rates were lowered from 90% to 35% or so it made sense for smaller businesses shift to S corporations and LLCs and LLPs which pass income through to owners rather than retaining it in a tax advantaged corporate entity. Thus a lot of income that accumulated at the  C Corp level and was inherited without triggering income recognition in the past is now recognized making for a lot of spurious income inequality growth. Which Piketty pockets for his pet theory without a fare the well.

Bloody garlic eating pinko.

Are all Democrat women insane puritan hysterics or just the ones that work for Obama

Because this whole sexual assault explicit consent for sex and stripping citizens of their due process rights sounds more Cotton Mather than Hugh Hefner. Of course hookers always negotiate explicit consent so maybe the bemammaried Obami are just whores?

Cathy Young in incredulous disbelief here.

Rich Democrat funding group knuckles under to the union establishment

Matt Bai describes how the Democracy Alliance of rich idealists who were trying to reform the party from the outside has been coopted by the Dem crony union establishment.

It seems that power is the only ideology on the left these days. Read it and...weep? Chuckle? Cackle? Guffaw?

The Co founder of Greenpeace provides some inconvenient truths

It used to be that environmentalists were idealists. Now they tend to be global apparatchiks and rent seeking cronies. Patrick Moore - founder of Green peace provides some perspective with the following inconvenient truths.  Moore goes on to list some key facts about "climate change" which are ignored by true believers.

1. The concentration of CO2 in the global atmosphere is lower today, even including human emissions, than it has been during most of the existence of life on Earth.
2. The global climate has been much warmer than it is today during most of the existence of life on Earth. Today we are in an interglacial period of the Pleistocene Ice Age that began 2.5 million years ago and has not ended.
3. There was an Ice Age 450 million years ago when CO2 was about 10 times higher than it is today.
4. Humans evolved in the tropics near the equator. We are a tropical species and can only survive in colder climates due to fire, clothing and shelter.
5. CO2 is the most important food for all life on earth. All green plants use CO2 to produce the sugars that provide energy for their growth and our growth. Without CO2 in the atmosphere carbon-based life could never have evolved.
6. The optimum CO2 level for most plants is about 1600 parts per million, four times higher than the level today. This is why greenhouse growers purposely inject the CO2-rich exhaust from their gas and wood-fired heaters into the greenhouse, resulting in a 40-80 per cent increase in growth.
7. If human emissions of CO2 do end up causing significant warming (which is not certain) it may be possible to grow food crops in northern Canada and Russia, vast areas that are now too cold for agriculture.
8. Whether increased CO2 levels cause significant warming or not, the increased CO2 levels themselves will result in considerable increases in the growth rate of plants, including our food crops and forests.
9. There has been no further global warming for nearly 18 years during which time about 25 per cent of all the CO2 ever emitted by humans has been added to the atmosphere. How long will it remain flat and will it next go up or back down? Now we are out of the realm of facts and back into the game of predictions

Kerry "working hard to get lesbian, gay and transgendered ambassadors"

With eastern Europe and the middle east going foom it's good that someone in the administration is staying focused on the big picture.

What a maroon.

Sun addiction - the same biochemistry as drug adduction

This is unacceptable. Tanning must be banned with long prison terms for sun trafficking. Burkhas will becime mandatory fir all.

I'm sure the DEA wankers will get right on it. After all, they like hurting people.

Polish foreign minister "US alliance worthless"

Because it gives a false sense of security. I would also add because any time Dems get power they abandon long held commitments in favor of expanding the domestic state and enforcing their grubby little racial and gender orthodoxies.

They don't seem to stand for any transcendent or noble ideal anymore. It's all just rent seeking and soft fascism.  No wonder Noone trusts them.

http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Peace/2014/06/22/Report--Polish-minister-calls-US-ties-worthless

Fascinating perspective on the hidden costs of relying on the state

It costs recipients much more than 'free' would suggest.

Sunday, June 22, 2014

Criminal taxi monopolization is a crime that's coming to an end

I pray that everyone of the rent seeking thugs that own a medallion are bankrupted and end their days driving for Uber and Lyft.
Stealing from the people via 'progressive reform' should be punished brutally. Let me know if you need any help in kicking any ass.
http://pjmedia.com/instapundit/190631/

Hillary Clinton So many petards, so little time

Golly I'd do just about anything for power.
Hil caught on tape bragging on how she used aggressive legal tactics to get child rapist defendant off on a lesser charge. Victim: Hillary Clinton took me through hell.

Reminds me of all the 'good' work Billy Love Muscle did on sexual harassment. The one benefit of a Hillary campaign will be to demonstrate just how much these two sociopaths deserve each other.  Love Muscle can rape 'Em and the Hildebeest can get him off while cackling about her cleverness.

Life among the narcissistic

Are there any less appealing politicos than these two families of raging narcissists?  Well other than Harry Reid and the Pelosiraptor. Nice Hil takedown though - Billy Love Muscle must have gone scarlet over that line. And Ms Clinton truly is the fabled Hildebeest of our worst nightmares.

Posted at 10:17 pm by Glenn Reynolds  
THE FRENEMY OF MY FRENEMY IS, ER, . . . Inside the jealous feud between the Obamas and ‘Hildebeest’ Clintons.
I love this: “And so Bill continued to talk about Hillary’s qualifications . . . and the coming campaign in 2016. But Barack didn’t bite. He changed the subject several times. Then suddenly, Barack said something that took Bill by complete surprise. He said, ‘You know, Michelle would make a great presidential candidate, too

George Will: Obama needs to be sued by Congress for..

..." offenses against the separation of powers (that) have been egregious in quantity and qualitatively different (than past Presidents)."

Mr. Will is not a bomb thrower, he's a Washington insider who speaks for respectable establishment conservatism and Republicanism.  The last time we had someone with such contempt for the basic law of the land was when Woodrow Wilson was President.  But pace Will, Wilson didn't dream of usurping Congress the way that President Obama has.

This is a huge issue.  For this 'constitutional scholar' to so abuse the constitution is a travesty and a crime.

Saturday, June 21, 2014

Asymmetry, Binary Outcomes and the Iranian Bomb

In the course of corresponding about the situation with Iran's nuclear program a friend referred to the "delicate" negotiations going on between the United States and the Islamic Republic of Iran.  I agree that negotiating with the Iranians is delicate but what in fact are we negotiating?  After all, Iran has only one objective in this dance and that's to get a nuclear capability.  And the United States' only rational alternative is to stop them.  The outcome is binary - either the Ayatollahs get a nuke or they don't.  The Iranians believe that having a nuclear deterrent will greatly advance their goal of uniting the middle east or at least the Shia regions of Syria, Iraq and the Gulf into a unified Caliphate under Persian Shia leadership.  That is why they have endured years of economic sanctions and financial humiliation.  They are not about to give up and capitulate to the 'great satan' just short of the goal line. Particularly when their primary reason for getting the bomb in the first place has been to deter the US (and Israel) from retaliating as they ramp up their aggression.

So what exactly are these 'delicate' negotiations for?  I was never very good at set theory in junior high but I do know my Venn diagrams and I know that two sets that have no elements in common are represented by two circles that don't intersect.  And all of geopolitics is simply figuring out where the two circles do intersect and finding out how to amicably allocate the interests within. When nations face adversaries whose interests don't intersect, where conflict is binary so one side must lose - we no longer call it geopolitics, we call it war.

So again, what is the purpose of these oh so delicate negotiations?  We know Iran's purpose:  take the sanctions pressure off the economy for a time and freeze the US and particularly Israel from intervening in a more 'kinetic' manner.  The Iranians know the longer they draw the negotiations out the closer they get to their goal and they know that an attack on their nuclear facilities during negotiations would seriously damage (a goody two shoes Sunday school teacher of a power like) the United States' prestige and standing in the world community.  So it's a no brainer for the Ayatollahs to jaw jaw until their first successful test.  But what is our incentive to participate in these delicate but oh so useless negotiations?  I honestly don't know but if you've concluded that Iran is going to get a bomb anyway or should have one anyway because it's 'only fair' and if you then decide that there is no point in you or Israel attacking Iran - it will just upset the natives, provoke retaliation and won't stop the bomb anyway, then 'negotiations' are a way to keep your allies in the region and the opposition back home off of your back until the inevitable fait accompli shows up.  Jaw Jaw is the easiest way to avoid acting.  Call it the Neville Chamberlain gambit.

But the problem with thinking that this is just a new Munich is that Munich actually was an attempt to reapportion the intersecting interests between Germany and its neighbors in a way that would appease Germany (in the old non-pejorative definition of appease meaning: giving them just enough so they'll go pester someone else) .  In other words it wasn't objectively insane to enter into negotiations with Germany - although negotiating with Hitler turned out to be quite crazy.  Because Hitler's true goal was as binary as the Ayatollahs.  But the Obami can't pretend to be aging Tory cowards traumatized by the Great War to get our sympathy because we know what the turban topped, man-dress minions are up to.

And that means that the fake negotiation gambit is extremely damaging to US and world interests because this situation is so damn asymmetric.  Asymmetry is the extent to which two sides of a coin, a human or a negotiation are not identical or the mirror image of each other. A symmetric negotiation would be two countries dickering over a patch of land and crazed villagers between them where the two sides are similar in power and both want the land and not the crazed villagers.  In that situation neither side can overpower the other, there are lots of intermediate solutions and variables that can be traded and whatever outcome ensues will dissatisfy the most ardent proponents on both sides mostly because everyone hates crazed villagers.  Even binary negotiations can be symmetric if the outcomes of losing are similar to both sides, for example, if you and I bet on a coin flip and we each stand to gain or lose a dollar then the game is 'symmetric'.

Our little tête-à-tête with the Irano-fascists is anything but symmetric.  In fact it's more like a coin flip game where if the Ayatollahs lose they pay a dollar and if we lose we pay a trillion. This is because of who we are and because the Iranian positive outcome is a disaster for us while a win for us merely sustains the unpleasant status quo.

Failing to deter Iran is a big deal because we are The Hegemon - the "It" country, the "Polity with the Plan" so to speak who is not only representing our interests but is also speaking for our regional allies and indeed the world which would really, really prefer that people with an unnatural obsession for sex with large numbers of heaven sourced virgins not have nuclear weapons.  If we fail and the Iranians get the bomb we have failed as the world's hyperpuissance - punked by pusillanimous pip-squeak Persians.  We fail not only ourselves but betray the trust of our regional allies and damage our credibility at a time when (of course) the Iranians will be launching a number of creative new and very violent initiatives to take advantage of their new toys.  

And that's the other asymmetry:  if the Iranians lose the binary bet, big deal - they're still crazed mullahs in mullets and man dresses  - they've been that ever since the Arabs killed all of the hip Zoroastrian gurus 1300 years ago.  But if we lose the bet, then the doe eyed virgin horn dogs will have nukes - and a governing philosophy that is rather non-materialist to say the least.  Say what you will about the commies but they believed that this life was it and therefore at the existential, nuclear level they behaved like boy scouts - murderous, criminal boy scouts no doubt, but scouts all the same.  But the whole point of the Iranian theocracy is transcendent:  it is to usher in heaven on earth and if that doesn't work then send everyone to heaven (or hell depending on denomination and personal habits) where it sure as hell will.  We let them play nuclear nookie and our allies will have no choice but to go to Pakistan who have a few score hand made vapor makers. The Pakistanis (or rather a few well placed freelancers within their intelligence service) will respond to this sincere expression of consumer interest in their best bazaar Bob Barker:  "Sheikh Yourmani come on down, you have just won the right to have your very own thermonuclear warhead suitable for vaporizing Shia apostates and impressing all the the other tinpot dictators and generalissimos.  Women will swoon over your strong, radioactive aura.  All for the low low price of a few billion dollars in the First Infernal Bank of Dubai account of Mr. REDACTED."

Which is why our allies in the region are beside themselves with rage and frustration.  They cannot understand how a country could blow trillions of dollars - getting down to the level of fixing Tikrit toilets -  and then toss it all in the crapper along with much, much more besides just because we're scared of killing a few thousand Persian pencilnecks in their underground Jihadi lairs.

In my very humble opinion the asymmetric outcome is likely to be so extreme, so disastrous to us and the world at large that there is no action we can take up to and including conquering Iran and killing every pro nuke cleric and boffin we can find that would be as bad as letting the current Iranian regime get its retractable claws on nuclear weapons.  And I'm a guy who doesn't want us to get in the middle of the Islamocrazies' various Jihads and feuds.

I say this because I can foresee two different negative outcomes arising out of our leaders' exaggerated delicacy:  Outcome one with a 99% chance of happening is that the Iranians, emboldened by their nuclear deterrent try to take control of Shia Iraq and foment a revolution in the Shia strongholds of eastern Saudi Arabia and Bahrain. Further afield, Iran aggressively promotes revolutions in Syria and Lebanon while at home they attempt to occupy the former Persian province of Azerbaijan.  If they succeed they control the lion's share of middle east oil and can blackmail the world and fund Jihad to their black hearts' content.  The Arabs will fight like hell to stop this and get their own nukes.  And in the end either the Iranians or some coalition of benuked Arabs will win.  But in the meantime total war destroys a lot of the world's oil production and the world falls into a deep (but low carbon!) recession. The US and Israel avoid getting directly involved because they realize that as soon as they do their citizens will be exposed to nuclear terror. So they say 'sorry boys, good luck and all that, don't you know' or its Hebrew equivalent while keeping their deadly cohorts on the sideline.



That's the 99% probability solution - the good outcome, the best we can probably hope for and it will play out with many twists and turns over time. The 1% probability outcome is some mixture of all of the above and a nuclear detonation in a major international city either in the region or somewhere else.  The moment that happens the world's borders close.  Trade collapses, economies collapse, governments collapse.  Old rivalries become acute and countries that have been held together primarily by high commodity prices like Russia or massive exports like China fall into chaos. Their huge and heavily armed forces go freelance and their nukes go walkabout.

So if the Iran Ian get nukes there is a strong probability of a many trillion dollar disaster that could seriously hurt the world economy and then there's the bad outcome which is a hundred trillion dollar tens of millions of lives catastrophe.

Either way we will regret allowing the Iranians nukes for a very long time.

Illinois ticket quota ban is useless to stop nation's 'stationary badged bandits'

Everyone has experienced the casual corruption of tiny burgs whose only purpose in life is to loot passing motorists of their hard earned money.  Like with most things, Illinois cops are particularly corrupt in this regard, taking the speed trap to ridiculous lengths by combining it with 'criminal forfeiture' laws to target people driving expensive cars with out of state licenses so that they can 'confiscate' these four wheeled 'crime implements' and turn them into cash for themselves.  They like to target people who look like they might smoke marijuana and then follow them on the interstate until they make a mistake like failing to signal for a lane turn or some other trivial 'offense'.  I was driving through the state in my parents minivan with Texas plates and one 'county mounty' followed me through two counties at exactly the speed limit  - 45 minutes directly behind me slowing down when I slowed down, speeding up when I sped up until finally, I found a rest stop to pull over in.  Ok, just to be clear:  I do not smoke marijuana - mostly because it makes me wheeze - I am a very conventional looking middle aged white man who was driving my 80 year old parent's minnivan for chrissakes.  And the last moving violation I had was a dozen years ago.

So if they'll screw with me, they'll screw with anyone.  Which makes me very supportive of anything that might restrain the stationary bandits that line our highways and byways looking for an excuse to relieve us of our wallets and cars. But the notion of a 'quota ban' is clearly bubba bait designed by the Illinois legislature to deflect attention without solving the problem.  You can tell it is because the second most corrupt state - New Jersey is quickly taking it up.  Innovations in state criminality spread rapidly.  The real game is the criminal forfeiture and besides your average speed trap burg has only a few cops and since the entire city government is typically a criminal enterprise, omerta will protect the guilty.

No, what's needed is a limiting law.  Municipalities should be limited in the number of traffic fines that they can assess based upon the traffic volume on their busiest arteries.  Some simple number like 2 or 3 times the state median municipality infraction rate should trigger outside scrutiny and result in all the excess fines plus some solid percentage of the other fines to be forfeited to the state and rebated back to the victims on a pro rata basis.  Asset forfeiture should be radically narrowed to focus only on serious crimes and the proceeds should not go to the department that does the forfeiture.

Taking these two common sense steps would go a long way towards improving the reputation of the police in our communities.  And decent, law abiding policemen (there are some, it's not all stationary bandits out there) should welcome the elimination of corrupt practices that leave conservatives like me more frightened for my kids safety from the depredations of the police than from that of criminals.

Friday, June 20, 2014

Now I get why Amazon got into the smartphone business

Their firefly phone includes a virtual show rooming app that allows you to take a photo of any object and then source it from Amazon. I guess the firefly phone was to push the standard out there sort of like Kindle is a free app now. More here.

The American political system is designed to make things difficult for politicians

Which is a good thing.  May we never make it easy by limiting political speech and money. Incumbents are too comfortable as it is.  They should be chased through the streets to remind them who they are working for.

Good piece making that case here.

For what profiteth the news media if it gain temporary power if it loses permanent credibility.

Americans confidence in the media is at all time lows. I guess that's what happens when you fake impartiality while actively campaigning for one side.

Thursday, June 19, 2014

Of course nobody is actually going to ban anybody from commenting on the Iraq crisis. We live in a free country, not some communist dictatorship or college campus.

The sad thing is that both of these sentences by James Taranto are absolutely true.  Beware the word 'justice' on a college campus - it is an Orwellian euphemism for narrowing the 'acceptable' boundaries for debate and discussion.  It's part and parcel of the notion of 'revolutionary justice'.  But it's neither revolutionary - this is what used to be called maintaining religious orthodoxy or punishing heresy nor is it just - shutting people up is never right.

But as college campuses are perhaps the most venal and bigoted places in America, it's not surprising that they would also be the most illiberal.

Maybe we should bitch less and awe more. The emotions evoked by the top 10,000 viral articles.

Clearly pissing, moaning and poor poor pitiful me-ing doesn't wow the cognoscenti.  Neither does feeling your bloody pain.

It's China's currency that's under pressure vis a vis the dollar

...and its the Fed who holds the whip hand. Analysts seem to agree that if the Fed resumes it's taper then the renminbi will plummet relative to the dollar and the trickle of capital leaving China will become a flood. It seems that the China bubble has gotten so enormous that there are essentially no good positive return investments available in the whole country at current valuations.  So money is getting hot and bothered and is liable to jump at the first whiff of smoke.

If you'd been listening to all the China pundits you would have thought it was China that held all the cards. Not this time. The 2nd Great Leap Forward looks as if it may end in an inelegant pratfall. At least millions won't starve as they did after the first leap.

This reminds me of an earlier post:  surveys indicate that 20 percent of all Chinese housing units are standing empty. The country's a giant crash waiting to happen.  The only question is what happens to the Mao Dynasty when the bubble pops? Reform?  Repression? or Collapse, chaos and a return to civil war and warlordism.  The history of China is replete with dynasties waxing and then falling apart with chaos following in its wake.  Never underestimate the ability of the Middle Kingdom to fall apart.  It's the thing that has kept China from ruling the world.

And when it happens, as it inevitably will, it will be a ginormous Black Swan.


The scale of global tax evasion is enormous.

It turns out that Europe and the US are a lot richer than we thought. For example taking into account offshore tax avoidance, Europe is a net creditor and US indebtedness falls in half as a share of GDP from 18 to 9 percent. It is a testament to the pernicious and counterproductive impact of high marginal tax rates on capital that so much money has fled its country of origin. Countries just push it away. 

When will the great "they" learn that the reason envy is a sin is because policies derived from it are destructive and therefore evil.
But progressive pride seems to demand raging envy. A case where two mortal sins don't make a right policy.

Love is hate, war is peace and not tolerating a long used name promotes tolerance: Wapo

The Washington Post calls censorship of the word Redskin by Federal bureaucrats and the effective confiscation of property without due process of law a "Victory for Tolerance".
Oh Mr. Washington Post, sir I don't think that word tolerance means what you think it does. To have a tolerant society is to have one that accepts a wide range of views, lifestyles and interpretations of reality. Censoring words because they are naughty or hurt someone's feelings is intolerant. The Redskins (eek! He said The Word!) are not proposing that anything be done to reduce society's toleration of any race, creed or lifestyle they just ask that they be allowed to use language and names the way they have been used ever since the native Americans invented the word Redskin to differentiate themselves from the newly arriving white and black skinned people.
Calling a small cabal of pressure group politicos attempts to censor the English language an advance for toleration is profoundly Orwellian.

The only question is whether Wapo is the manipulator or the dupe. Decide for yourself here.

Unpopular Redskins stripped of trademark because federal bureaucrat deemed the name 'naughty'

The reason we have a constitution is to protect the unpopular from oppression. No one needs to protect the popular. With this ruling the Patent Office has stolen (no doubt with administration support ) a valuable asset without due process of law - hopefully our courts will reassert the rule of law.  This sort of thing is happening more and more as the immense, unaccountable Federal Stupor state with the active collaboration of the oh so progressive Obami slips its constitutional restraints. And they do so here because they failed to intimidate a private business so they needed to get the ultimate heavy in to do some strong arming.  

Let's be clear:  there is no principle here that the thugs are upholding other than the 'right' of certain fashionable groups to anathematize anything that gets their panties into a bunch.  And I say if your dainties keep bunching up then don't bitch at me or Dan Snyder, be a man and go commando.  Comments below from the Federalist:

Given the equivocal history of the term “redskins” and the differing opinions—among Native Americans as well as everyone else—over whether it is offensive, this was a subjective judgment. (One observer suggests a list of other sports names that could just as plausibly be considered offensive.) When an issue is subjective, it would be wise for the government not to take a stand and let private persuasion and market pressure sort it out.
Ah, but there’s the rub, isn’t it? This ruling happened precisely because the campaign against the Redskins has failed in the court of public opinion. The issue has become the hobby horse of a small group of lefty commentators and politicians in DC, while regular Washingtonians, the people who make up the team’s base of fans and customers, are largely indifferent. So the left resorted to one of its favorite fallbacks. If the people can’t be persuaded, use the bureaucracy—in this case, two political appointees on the Trademark Trial and Appeal Board.
More here.

Feminist burns book she disagrees with sends pictures to author

The book was The War Against Boys. I guess these ladies don't get the humor that we call them feminazis and then they go and prove us right by burning books?
Story here.

Wednesday, June 18, 2014

So how bad is it that BHO has worse approval ratings than Bush at the same time?

On one level you'd have to say "big deal" to the NBC/WSJ Poll because he's not running for reelection. But his party is and boy is he a drag. Particularly when you remember that BHO's approval is artificially inflated by virtually unanimous black support irregardless of performance. Call it the Coleman Young paradox after the mayor of Detroit who was reelected time after time despite his horrible performance.

I don't have access to the cross tabs but if you assume that black approval for Obama is 85% for and 15% against and they are 12% of the sample, then the non-inflated approval rating is actually 35% positive and 58% negative versus 41% and 53% for the entire sample.  Pretty rough sledding no matter how you stack it up.

This was always the risk:  Dems put forward an untested candidate who could win easily due to the 'historic' nature of his candidacy and his ability to pump up minority turnout.  But he's turned into something of a failure as President precisely because he had not developed those political and executive skills that experience in other leadership roles would have given him.  It's impossible to not think of this as another example where a bright, talented minority fails because he's pushed too far too fast to develop the capabilities needed for the job he ended up with.

But now we'll never know what kind of man or President Barack Obama would have been if he was just on the normal 'fast track' rather than the affirmative 'superfast track'.



Tuesday, June 17, 2014

The last president to be such a boon companion of the fabulously rich was Dick Nixon

Last weekend found Obama golfing at the private courses of two billionaires.

Last weekend Barack Obama played his 175th and 176th rounds of golf as president. He played first at Sunnylands, the famously private course on the Rancho Mirage, California estate of the late billionaire Walter Annenberg. Obama next played at Porcupine Creek, the equally private course on the nearby estate of the very-much-alive tech billionaire Larry Ellison.
Not since Dick Nixon hung with BeBe Rebozo and all the other cronies have we had such a crony....well capitalist is the wrong word - a crony protection racketeer in the White House. But to be fair Dick Nixon never, ever traded policy favors for a hundred million dollars the way that BHO has traded the Keystone pipeline for Hedge Hound Tom Steyer's political jack. Tricky Dick was in the minors compared to the current President - playing AA crony while the One is leading off in the majors. 

Although I suppose the billionaires in question may simply be trying to keep the Duffer in Chief distracted so that he won't spend his time actually trying to govern because the country can't take much more Obamaian 'leadership'.  As it is we're nearing critical toxicity now.  

Golf Barry, Golf!

The only thing that saves us from the bureaucracy is inefficiency

Ok.  So there's a bright side to the intergalactic incompetence of our Federal stupor state.  Any institution so maladroitly constituted is limited in it's ability to oppress.  Gene McCarthy - a liberal who has a lot to answer for in this regard (indeed, I hope there's a purgatory and he's in it for a good long, liberal spell before he gets to heaven) said it best:   "The only thing that saves us from the bureaucracy is inefficiency. An efficient bureaucracy is the greatest threat to liberty." 

And all I can say in response is thank God for that.

Love is hate, war is peace and our Federal government is good and protects and provides for us

Orwell taught us that one of the keys to successful totalitarianism is persuading the masses to accept obvious lies as the truth.  Hence the war is peace meme.  Our current crop of would be totalists don't put it in such crude terms but essentially are saying the same things.  For example, I note that GM has been forced to recall another 3.4 million cars.  Ok, so it goes for the worst run major car company in the US.  But GM in its incompetent extremity has delivered over the past 25 years (and I know because 20 years ago I was consulting full time to GM)  better product at lower real prices year after year after year to the extent that economy cars built by GM today perform better than many luxury cars did back then.

It is ironic that an organization that has gotten much worse, delivering less for a much higher cost, incapable of doing the most basic things and routinely implicated in large political and criminal scandals is tasked with dictating 'good business practice' to businesses that by and large are vastly superior in performance, efficiency, responsiveness and ethical behavior to the entity that supposedly regulates them.  Truly the meme that the government is all of us working together for our good and protects us from venal private industry is the greatest of the great Orwellian lies.  Yet it is taught at every school, preached from virtually every news pulpit and is the highest of the high holy truths imparted from our Ivy covered universities.  Who by the way equal the Federal Stupor State in exemplifying incompetent venality while loudly anathematizing it in others.

War is peace, love is hate and our Federal government is good and protects and provides for us.  Yep, we've been at war with that lie longer than we've been at war with Eastasia and Eurasia combined.

It seems the IRS can't find anybody's old emails...

...if they were implicated in the Lois Lerner/White House political enemy intimidation crimes.  This country cannot survive this type of partisan criminality in the executive branch.  Failure to root out and eradicate it would be an enormous blunder for the party that claims that state action is good and moral and necessary.  For what does it profit a man to gain the whole government if no one trusts it?


The ugliest American is the IRS

Our drone program is aimed at our enemies while the IRS screws our friends. Corrupt at home and thuggish abroad and incompetent all over is there any part of America that love the tax toads? Well aside from the Obami?

It is instructive that the rate of citizen renunciation is soaring under Obama. Under the current tenant of the eagle throne the value of those little blue passports is falling fast. 

Chart
Eek Obama! Run!
Even at the height of the war under Bush when lots of people wanted to kill Americans we didn't run away from our citizenship so fast. I guess it takes truly anti American leadership to turn so many Americans against their country.

Yes he can!




To a liberal like Dana Millbank everything conservatives do is racist

So when he doesn't scream "racist" and sexist and homophobe he believes he is exhibiting remarkable forbearance in favor of people he considers to be evil.  His inability to see reality without his blinders really makes you wonder about his other so called "reporting". And Dana is by no means one of the worst of left wing character assassins floating in the DC sewer.

Watch the video at the link and read the story and see who you think the bigot is here. Smug, and bigoted is no way to go through life, Dana.

Even my 82 year old father knows that the IRS "the dog ate my email and the backup server and the backup tapes and all the backed up email recipients' email archives too" is a pathetic lie.

I mean even he who has very little technical knowledge knows that there must be multiple backups in multiple places and forms.  Everyone knows that - even the press.

It's a pity our "crusading adversarial press" has such a bad collective brain damage that they can only see, write or think about right handed scandals because this IRS abuse of power story has Pulitzer written all over it.  Except that our "crusading adversarial selection committee" for the Pulitzer is even more left brain damaged so it could never even conceive of a story about committed lefties using the government to screw righties.  Don't think so?  Name me the Pulitzer prize winner who wrote accurately and critically (because to be one you must have done the other) about the Soviet Union.  You know, an anti - Walter Duranty, the famous NYT "reporter" who reported on the 'wonders' of the Soviet Union while living in the Soviet Union while Stalin was murdering ten to twenty million of his own people, many through man made famine.  To give a Pulitzer to that progressive putz for his lies about the soviets and refuse to rescind it when they are uncovered really tells you all you need to know about 'progressive' morality, doesn't it?

And of course you proggos who are reading this are thinking "it's even more of a pity that the Obami aren't good at techno lying".  Just remember:  What profiteth a man to gain the whole if he lose his eternal soul?  Just sayin'.

Obami 2011: Iraq is our achievement. Obami 2014: That gosh darn George W Bush and his Iraq

Narcissism is believing you can do no wrong because anything that goes wrong is always someone else's fault. And Barack Obama is a very good narcissist. Mark Theissen in Wapo:

In 2011, the situation in Iraq was so good that the Obama administration was actually trying to take credit for it, with Vice President Joe Biden declaring that Iraq “could be one of the great achievements of this administration.”

Now in 2014, as Iraq descends into chaos, Democrats are trying to blame the fiasco on — you guessed it — George W. Bush. “I don’t think this is our responsibility,” said House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, declaring that the unfolding disaster in Iraq “represents the failed policies that took us down this path 10 years ago.”

Sorry, but this is a mess of President Obama’s making.

Hattip Instapundit.

If "Science is one of the most trustworthy of human activities" as the Economist says then I've got a solid gold toilet

I'll go look and see if I do. Oh wait. The data's not available because I've been branded a gold toilet denier. And my study showing that 99.7 % of gold toilets are in fact extra shiny plastic have been rejected by every journal even after I funded it myself because no one will hire a "plasticist". And the UN agency formed specifically to prove that everyone who owns a toilet has a gold one has announced that indeed "the sewage is settled" on the aurum crapper conundrum and that I am interfering with the necessary global response: providing gold toilets or at least gold filled holes in the ground for the 2 billion with no access.

Of course drilling 2 billion holes in the ground and filling them with gold would be cheaper and more useful than most of  the very political   recommendations to stop global warming ginned up by the IPCC cabal of rent seekers and bureaucratic bully boys. Who have managed to tip the Economist's extravagant claims for science's credibility...into a very porcelain toilet. Where they sit stinking to high heaven.

The truth is that as more and more science funding has been allocated by government the quality of science has fallen. Whether it's goal driven global programs like AGW or social "science" to justify the latest bureaucratic manipulation, more and more science could use a solid gold toilet.

Flush!