Newt Going There?

Newt Gingrich Accuses Obama of Left-Wing Alinskyite Tactics: "On the campaign trail, Newt Gingrich is trying to make some new inroads on President Obama by reviving an old charge, suggesting that the president’s past as a community organizer ties him to a “radical” tradition.

“Obama believes in a Saul Alinsky radicalism which the press corps was never willing to look at,” Gingrich told a standing room-only crowd at Tommy’s Country Ham House here. “When he said he was a community organizer, it wasn’t Boy Scouts and Girl Scouts. It was radicalism taught on the south side of Chicago by Saul Alinsky.”

Why is this smart? I think the media will cover this, and will try the "extremism" card and all that rot with Gingrich.

And what effect will this have? Well, the immediate effect is to electrify the Republican base, isn't it? The media will be essentially running primary campaign ads for Gingrich if the media takes the bait. (And can they resist it?)"

About time somebody does.

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Busted

Breitbart.tv » Busted: Ayers Admits To Obama Fundraiser That Obama Campaign Called ‘Myth’: "In 2008 the Barack Obama for President campaign went into full denial mode accusing the McCain/Palin campaign of lying about a fundraiser held in domestic terrorist Bill Ayers's home for Barack Obama's Illinois State Senate campaign.

Watch this clip from October 15, 2008 where spokesman Robert Gibbs flat-out denies the fundraiser story to an inquiring Chris Matthews. Then watch Bill Ayers, in his own words, admit to the event himself.

Either Mr. Gibbs lied to Mr. Matthews, or Mr. Obama lied to Mr. Gibbs."

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Everybody Knows

Instapundit » Blog Archive » JIM GERAGHTY: What Do Democrats Really Stand For Today? “You think the Democratic Party cares abou…: "JIM GERAGHTY: What Do Democrats Really Stand For Today? “You think the Democratic Party cares about wealth? Come on. In their minds, George Soros spending his money to help out his political views is noble, but the Koch Brothers are evil incarnate. Higher taxes are good, but no one will complain if Tim Geithner or Charlie Rangel cut corners on paying them. One might be tempted to argue that the righteousness of unions represent an inviolate principle to Democrats, but in New York, Democratic Gov. Andrew Cuomo is trimming here and there and living to tell the tale. No, the party really is about identity politics now; us vs. them. And everybody knows which side they’re on.”

Posted by Glenn Reynolds at 11:48 pm"

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COTD Bonus Edition: Keynesians Create Demand For Glass

About Those "Record" Black Friday Sales... | ZeroHedge: "The Keynesians would first have to break the glass, get the glass man out for the repair, then have the war that makes more glass so that they can go around shooting out windows to make that multiplier rise. You take care of everything all at once..."

And then there's reality for the d**mn few of us that still seem to prefer it:If you want to understand how in the double hockey sticks the world has flushed itself so far down the toilet, this video is as good a place as any to start.

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Collapse

Instapundit » Blog Archive » DAN MITCHELL: European Economic Crisis Highlights an Increasingly Important Reason to Oppose Gun Co…: "DAN MITCHELL: European Economic Crisis Highlights an Increasingly Important Reason to Oppose Gun Control.

About a year ago, I spoke at a conference in Europe that attracted a lot of very rich people from all over the continent, as well as a lot of people who manage money for high-net-worth individuals.

What made this conference remarkable was not the presentations, though they were generally quite interesting. The stunning part of the conference was learning – as part of casual conversation during breaks, meals, and other socializing time – how many rich people are planning for the eventual collapse of European society.

Not stagnation. Not gradual decline. Collapse."

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A Thimble

Orgasmic spenders flirting with insolvency | debt, government, spending - Opinion - The Orange County Register: "In the course of a typical day I usually receive at least a couple of emails from readers lamenting that America is now the Titanic. This is grossly unfair to the Titanic, a state-of-the-art ship whose problem was that it only had lifeboat space for about half its passengers. By contrast, the SS Spendaholic is a rusting hulk encrusted with barnacles, there are no lifeboats, and the ship's officers are locked in a debate about whether to use a thimble or an eggcup.

A second downgrade is now inevitable. Aw, so what? We had the first back in the summer, and the ceiling didn't fall in, did it? And everyone knows those ratings agencies are a racket, right? And say what you like about our rotten finances, but Greece's are worse. And Italy's. And, er, Zimbabwe's. Probably.

The advantage the United States enjoys is that, unlike Greece, it can print the currency in which its debt is denominated. But, even so, it still needs someone to buy it. The failure of Germany's bond auction on Wednesday suggests that the world is running out of buyers for western sovereign debt at historically low interest rates. And, were interest rates to return to their 1990-2010 average (5.7 percent), debt service alone would consume about 40 percent of federal revenues by mid-decade. That's not paying down the debt, but just staying current on the interest payments."

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The Number One Missing Skill

Instapundit » Blog Archive » HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE: Help Wanted: In Unexpected Twist, Some Skilled Jobs Go Begging. …: "Her challenge is a familiar one to recruiters, especially in industries that require workers with trade skills such as welding. Union Pacific struggles to find enough electricians who have worked with diesel engines. Manufacturers in many places can’t find enough machinists. Oil companies must fight for a limited supply of drilling-rig workers.

Read the whole thing.

UPDATE: Custom car-maker David Kirkham emails: “Your WSJ link is (depressingly) more accurate than you may realize. I would hire 5 more guys right now if I could. However, it is virtually impossible to find anyone with skills anymore. The number one skill we are missing as a society is a work ethic. I speak to employers all the time and we all are looking for the same potential employee–someone who is honest, hard working, and who has reasonable intelligence. In other words someone who willing and able to learn new things and admit it when they screw up. Notice education is not on the list.”

Posted by Glenn Reynolds at 10:29 am"

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Not Part O The Union Apparently

Blog: 157 Air Force Majors terminated without retirement benefits: "The Obama administration seems to be ready to destroy the belief that service will be rewarded as faithfully as duty was performed, one step at a time.

The latest step in that direction is the announcement that 157 Air Force majors will be terminated prior to retirement, without the opportunity to complete the 20 full years of service necessary to qualify for retirement pay."

Wow.

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The Ability To Think

RealClearMarkets - We Are All Expendable Now: "The basic pattern is that any job that requires only perceptual-level skills-complex tasks of memory and pattern-recognition-can and will eventually be done by a machine. To justify a claim to higher productivity, we will have to be working on the conceptual level, as creative thinkers and most crucially as entrepreneurs, which is a much more demanding discipline.

This new era is not a curse but an opportunity. The whole reason for automating every kind of human work that can be automated is to increase the productivity of our labor. In previous waves of innovation, mechanization made many traditional jobs obsolete. A few years ago, I noticed a trend of naming children after old-fashioned blue-collar professions, such as "Cooper" and "Hunter" and "Mason," highlighting the fact that for most people, these names no longer stand for a profession or a kind of work. But those who made the transition to the new era in which many of these old jobs no longer existed are better off because the new technology has made everyone is so much more productive. Similarly, many of today's jobs will soon be expendable, but we will all be richer because we each have so many machines working for us, from the robot in an automated assembly line to the smartphone in our pockets.

But benefiting from this new era will require that we make the transition to working on a higher, more productive level. And that will require the ultimate in "skilled labor": the ability to think."

And those truly are the 1% today. By design of our overlords. Maybe even the 0.001%

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Nothing To See Here, Move Along Now... (Our Betters Edition)

Instapundit » Blog Archive » IN THE WALL STREET JOURNAL, MEGAN MCARDLE REVIEWS James Roberts’ Shiny Objects: Why We Spend Money W…: "Consider the matter of status competition. Mr. Roberts, like so many before him, argues that conspicuous consumption is an unhappy zero-sum game. But this is of course true of most forms of competition: Most academics I know can rank-order everyone in the room at a professional conference with the speed and precision of a courtier at Versailles. Any competition, from looks to money to academic credentialing, both consumes a lot of resources and makes many of the participants feel bad about themselves. Why, then, does the literature on status competition always tell us that we should redistribute capital gains or inheritances and never tell us that we should redistribute academic chairs or book contracts?"

Heh.

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The Bitter Truth

Sugar: The Bitter Truth - YouTube: "Robert H. Lustig, MD, UCSF Professor of Pediatrics in the Division of Endocrinology, explores the damage caused by sugary foods. He argues that fructose (too much) and fiber (not enough) appear to be cornerstones of the obesity epidemic through their effects on insulin."

Drop everything and watch this.

So what does this have to do with my normal polico-economic fare? Time to look over on the right sidebar again at the runner-up quote of the Holocene. Do you think the politicians -- and consequently the FDA -- have been bought?

Du'O.

And here's an interesting exchange between Lustig and Gary Taubes suggesting they're reasonably aligned (ignore the misleading title):

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A Fruit, Not A Vegetable

Time Wasted - Maggie's Farm: "I'd like to thank my teens for pointing out to me that pizza has been declared a vegetable by Congress.

Years ago, the Reagan administration received abuse for suggesting ketchup was a vegetable.  Now we have Congress actually voting on this stuff?

At a point in time where the government could be shut down almost weekly, is nearly bankrupt and the Super Committee can't help forge agreement, we can agree that pizza is a vegetable.

Tomatoes, of course, are a fruit.  So pizza should be a fruit, not a vegetable.  Since they can't even get that right, it's probably no surprise Congress can't come to a reasonable agreement on the budget."

All the fruits and vegetables are in Congress. And the White House.

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It's A Turkey Day Climate "Scientist" Shoot

Click through and RTWT. It's great fun -- unless you're one of the Borg:

Quark Soup by David Appell: Sorting Through the Stolen UEA Emails: "Troublesome:

<5131> Shukla/IGES:
["Future of the IPCC", 2008] It is inconceivable that policymakers will be
willing to make billion-and trillion-dollar decisions for adaptation to the
projected regional climate change based on models that do not even describe and
simulate the processes that are the building blocks of climate variability.

<1939> Thorne/MetO:
Observations do not show rising temperatures throughout the tropical
troposphere unless you accept one single study and approach and discount a
wealth of others. This is just downright dangerous. We need to communicate the
uncertainty and be honest. Phil, hopefully we can find time to discuss these
further if necessary [...]"

<3066> Thorne:
I also think the science is being manipulated to put a political spin on it
which for all our sakes might not be too clever in the long run.

<1611> Carter:
It seems that a few people have a very strong say, and no matter how much
talking goes on beforehand, the big decisions are made at the eleventh hour by a select core group.

And this post has the COTD also:

Peter, while I am absolutely sympathetic to the way some of these remarks are being taken out of context, as a fluid dynamicist, you have unfortunately ensured that you are going to lose this war by representing results produced by immature models as inerrant, demanding trillion-dollar action by governments, and requiring near-complete destruction of the productive apparatus of society as we have known in in order to avoid armageddon.

Never do you or your colleagues present results with the necessary margins of error, caveats, or uncertainties. Rarely do you even wait for your modeling results to be vetted and run straight to the press. And frequently, you have hidden them from those who would like to examine them for flaws, on the grounds that trying to find something wrong with the models and reconstructions is somehow untoward, despite those of us in every other scientific field having to deal with this all the time.

So yes, there are some remarks taken out of their immediate context. However, the rather larger context of your unscientific behavior is not going away. You have lost the PR battle with the public, and you have no one to blame but yourselves. Here is some advice, although I am but a junior scientist--until your code is directly solving all the governing PDEs for your system with sufficient resolution to capture all the nonlinear dynamics and chemical kinetics, lay off the press releases. I know it's not as sexy, and it won't make you as famous, but you won't get egg on your face, either.

Heh.

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Probably

Instapundit » Blog Archive » “ALL OUR MODELS ARE WRONG:” ClimateGate 2.0: A Fresh Trove Of Embarrassing Emails. “There was alw…: "“ALL OUR MODELS ARE WRONG:” ClimateGate 2.0: A Fresh Trove Of Embarrassing Emails. “There was always an element of tragedy in the first ‘Climategate’ emails, as scientists were under pressure to tell a story that the physical evidence couldn’t support – and that the scientists were reluctant to acknowledge in public. The new email archive, already dubbed ‘Climategate 2.0′, is much larger than the first, and provides an abundance of context for those earlier changes. . . . To their credit, some of the climate scientists realised the dangers of the selective approach politicians demanded, which meant cherry-picking evidence to make it suitably dramatic, and quietly hiding caveats.” Others, however, not so much.

Plus this: “So the mewling infant that we call Climate Science – a 40-year-young offshoot of meteorology – has been thrust into a political role long before it’s capable of supporting the claims made on its behalf. From the archives we can see the scientists know that too, and we can read their own reluctance to make those claims, too. ‘What if climate change appears to be just mainly a multidecadal natural fluctuation?’ muses one scientist. ‘They’ll kill us probably.’”

Posted by Glenn Reynolds at 12:45 pm"

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COTD: Exalted Racism

Belmont Club » A Comment About The Human Factor: "In Detroit racism supposedly caused it to fall apart. Okay, so there was less racism in 1949 than there is today? Yes, that is the case, because the govt in its various forms imposes racism in ways and to an overall extent that was unthinkable in 1949. In 1949 we had just defeated a philosophy that calculated the percentage of a given ethnic group’s blood in a person’s veins and treated them on that basis. Today that same philosophy is exalted – and official government policy."

Kind of makes your blood run cold how massive the brainwashing has been, doesn't it?

And don't forget the Curley Effect:

Though some blame Detroit’s population losses on larger economic forces, economists Edward Glaeser and Andrei Shleifer argue in a groundbreaking paper that the city’s problems are mostly self-inflicted. (The paper, called “The Curley Effect,” gets its name from legendary Boston mayor James Curley, who favored Irish residents and pushed other groups out.) After winning election in 1973, Detroit’s first black mayor, Coleman Young, consolidated his power, driving white residents, who had voted against him, out of the city by withdrawing services from their neighborhoods. Eventually, Glaeser and Shleifer write, Detroit became “an overwhelmingly black city mired in poverty and social problems”—and shrinking fast.

Hand in glove.

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Foolishness

The Supercommittee: A History Lesson | Power Line: "The budget process began with the submission of the president’s budget plan. Analysis of that plan quickly revealed that the president’s $1.6 trillion tax increase proved totally inadequate to offset the enormous levels of new spending that would occur. Under this plan, over ten years, we would accumulate another $13 trillion in debt, never produce a single deficit less than $748 billion, produce a deficit in the tenth year of $1.2 trillion, and leave entitlement programs like Medicare in grave financial peril.

For this, the president was widely and correctly rebuked.

Next, the newly-elected House Republicans—dispatched by voters to restrain Washington’s big spenders—introduced and passed a budget plan as required by law. It was a detailed, honest, and concrete plan to put our nation on a sound footing.

The Senate Democrat majority then made a decision: Rather than introduce a plan of their own, they chose to ignore the law and craft no budget at all. Majority Leader Reid even said it would be ‘foolish’ to have a budget. After the president’s disastrous budget rollout, Democrat leaders knew their rhetoric would not hold up on paper—that the public would not accept the level of spending, taxing, and borrowing their fiscal vision requires. It was simply easier to avoid accountability."

Fools indeed.

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More Cowbell

“OWS Needs More Cowbell” | Power Line: "This one, from Minnesota Majority, is just for fun: OWS Needs More Cowbell. Just seeing part of the classic Blue Oyster Cult sketch is fun enough:"

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Newt On Hygiene

Newt Gingrich : "Go get a job ~ right after you take a bath" - YouTube: "Newt Gingrich : "Go get a job ~ right after you take a bath""

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The Thrill Is Gone

Breitbart.tv » Thrill Is Gone? Matthews Turns On Obama; ‘I Hear Stories That You Would Not Believe’: "In an explosive interview on MSNBC, Chris Matthews has harsh criticism for President Obama and his team of advisers."

Don't miss this one. Crissy says he hears stories you would not believe.

Not a problem for me.

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The Warm Embrace

Indoctrination: What the Occupiers Believe and Why They Believe It : The Other McCain: "When I deride the Occupiers as “the kind of commie scum who give commie scum a bad name,” this is taken as a jest and why so? Since the collapse of the Soviet Union, even conservative Americans have ceased to think about communist subversion as a serious threat. Yet as shown by the photo of the Workers World Party conference and the quote from CPUSA at the top of the post, there are still avowed Marxists among us. If self-declared Marxist organizations have difficulty attracting members nowadays, it is not necessarily because of the declining popularity of Marxist ideas, but rather because of competition from the Democratic Party, where such ideas are now warmly embraced."

This one is way beyond a RTWT. It's only a bit longish but worth every minute.

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Yes, It's Time For Another Chat With That Rich Know-Nothing, Kyle Bass

Kyle Bass Destroys The Ponzi-Prone Debt Sustainability Arguments Of The Status Quo...And Why Germany Can't Save The World | ZeroHedge: "Another noteworthy Kyle Bass moment as he discusses debt sustainability among major global sovereign nations. Simply and proficiently, the hedge fund manager describes how a dwindling current account surplus in Japan, US welfare economics, and the peripheral-to-core European stressors are all Madoff-like and unsustainable. Switching from broad-brush terms to the idiosyncratic complexities of each region, Bass offers his inimitable take - in a mere six minutes - on how the status quo is quivering under its own self-deception. His rightful conclusions remain extremely worrisome and should be required reading/watching for every central banker and politician trying to keep the dream alive."

Umm. Let me retract that "know nothing" part of the title. Heh.

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COTD: Socialism (OWS Edition)

How to Make an OWS Protester Melt Without Teargas - Ricochet.com: "Elena

Here's socialism for you:

My Ukranian grandparents were exiled by Stalin to Siberia, where they struggled to survive in minus-60 degree winters.

My father, an engineer, saved his entire life to buy a pathetic Russian automobile, only to die a year later, at 51, from negligence and indifference in a Soviet hospital.

Every day until I was 20 years old, my mother or myself had to stand on line for hours for a loaf of bread, a tomato or, miracle of miracles, chicken or beef.

All year long, I dreamed of the special season when fruit vendors from Chechnya came to our city and we would, if we could afford it, buy a basket of tangerines.

The wages of doctors, engineers and other educated people were held at much lower levels than those of common workers, because of the Communists' glorification of "labor". 

The KGB burst into our apartment one night and dragged my father away, because of an anonymous denouncement. 

Think that could only happen in the Soviet Union?  Think again: if people like Barack Obama and these "occupiers" have their way, it would happen here.

Edited on Nov 19 at 08:59 pm"

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Ever Opened A Soda?

It turns out the world is like that:

What Does CO2 Have To Do With Climate? | Power Line: "Recently a Japanese Research Institute published a satellite map of sources of CO2 emissions. It was virtually ignored by the mainstream media, but that has become an inverse measure of its significance to the climate debate. It showed a pattern that most would not expect because of the misleading information presented by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) amplified by most media.

Here it is:


North America is a net consumer of CO2. Dr. Ball explains: “The map is only surprising if you believe that humans are the primary source of CO2.” But he is just getting warmed up:

The oceans are the main control of atmospheric CO2 as one of the atmospheric gases in constant flux between the water and the atmosphere. The ocean’s ability to absorb CO2 is a function of its temperature – cold water absorbs more CO2 than warm water."

Apparently the warmers only drink water. Which they better not make any unreasonable claims about lest they land in prison! Good think our lunatic betters have their priorities straight!

Anyway, this is a RTWT. In which you will learn for instance the proper significance of the number 9 when compared to 140 or larger...

And when CO2 is not CO2 is not CO2. Well OK. Just thinking ahead to what they will try to answer you with ... if you were dumb enough to question stupid corrupt people with no credibility.

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Costly Domains

Belmont Club » The AirSea Battle: "Czege’s “operational exclusion zone” requirement had become reworded to what Schwartz called “domain control”. Domain control was a universal requirement. The key to achieving that domain control was knowing (ISR), moving (lift) and striking at any point along the global commons. Schwartz felt that if the Air Force and Navy got their act together and fought differently they might be capable in ways nobody has yet suspected.

It is easy to see from a layman’s point of view what thinking might be developing internally. The correct perspective would be to regard China as a specific problem of the generic requirement of domain control. If you increase the domain control capabilities the China requirement is automatically met.

By increasing the ISR, mobility and strike capabilities of the Air Force and the Navy (especially its stealth platforms) the US can non-threateningly deter China in the same way that Beijing can fortify itself without seeming aggressive. This gets around the ‘timing issues’ raised by Czege. For as long as peace prevails not a cloud will darken the sky. China will build up its bases. America will build up its generic global capability. If the dreaded day ever comes, then that global capability will be focused like a laser beam somewhere to turn the sunlight off when and if an act of aggression or a failure of diplomacy makes this necessary.

But the problem remains: can the Air Force and the Navy continue to do this with the money at hand? Only time will tell."

How else to explain this?

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A Kerry Coincidence

Instapundit » Blog Archive » #OCCUPYCONGRESS: The Kerrys’ Curious Stock Trades. “BigGovernment.com has obtained records of Ma…: "#OCCUPYCONGRESS: The Kerrys’ Curious Stock Trades. “BigGovernment.com has obtained records of Massachusetts Democrat Senator John Kerry and his wife Teresa Heinz’s stock portfolios that show almost perfectly timed pharmaceutical stock trades during the Obamacare debate, which fattened their already enormous personal fortune.”

Peter Schweizer is right.

Posted by Glenn Reynolds at 2:14 pm"

Yup. Just a coincidence. Nothing to see here. Did I mention that Dancing with the Stars is on? Move along now folks...

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Hypocrisy, Thy Name Is Warren

Ace of Spades HQ: "NetJets also claimed that the IRS hadn't attempted to assess such taxes on rival fractional-jet businesses, placing the company "at a significant disadvantage."

Now on the face of it it seems Buffett's company is right. Why should people who own the jets pay a "ticket tax"? You don't buy a ticket to ride on something that you own.

But "corporate jet owners"? Aren't they the lowest of the low or something? And Buffett is suing to keep their costs down and protect them for unfair taxation?

Oh and remember when Obama wanted to change how evilllll "corporate jet owners" were taxed? Yeah, Buffett opposed that too.

Buffett and his management team have a fiduciary obligation to fight this on behalf of their clients. But the idea that Buffett then will turn around and say other people (presumably including most of these same clients) should be taxed at higher levels to satisfy his moral vanity is an amazing twist of logic.

Hypocrisy thy name is Liberalism (and always has been)."

Why does anyone believe anything these people say? Because of many decades of massive brainwashing and dumbing down, perhaps?

SHUT. THE. T.V. OFF. NOW.

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Lessons From Europe

Video: 5 lessons from the European fiscal crisis « Hot Air: "As Americans watch the latest EU fiscal crisis unfold, what lessons can we learn from it? Dan Mitchell brings us a new video from the Center for Freedom and Prosperity with five key takeaways for US policymakers, as part of their Econ 101 video series.  The first two are the most applicable in the short term:"

1. Higher taxes lead to higher spending, not lower deficits. Miss Morandotti looks at the evidence from Europe and shows that politicians almost always claim that higher taxes will be used to reduce red ink, but the inevitable result is bigger government. This is a lesson that gullible Republicans need to learn – especially since some of them want to acquiesce to a tax hike as part of the “Supercommitee” negotiations.

2. A value-added tax would be a disaster. This was music to my ears sinceI have repeatedly warned that the statists won’t be able to impose a European-style welfare state in the United States without first imposing this European-style money machine for big government. ...

But wait! I thought it was Europe that we were supposed to emulate? They've got high taxes and are the example of socialism done right. After all, Westerners aren't stupid thugs like the Russians -- we won't make those same deadly mistakes here ... will we? Ummm... isn't it starting already?

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Strangle hOld

Obama’s Job-Destroying Machine Grinds On | Power Line: "I can’t figure out whether it is due to malice or incompetence; all I know is, if you wanted to hurt America’s economy, you would do pretty much everything the Obama administration does. Energy policy is the absolute worst. First Obama delayed (and perhaps killed) the Keystone pipeline. Michael Ramirez sums up that decision, which can be explained only as an economically irrational attempt to shore up the president’s liberal base in advance of next year’s election:"

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Failed Government Policies: A Success Story

Just in case you didn't realize the scope and depth of your fleecing. And why it hurts so much.

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Making Pitchforks And Rope

Friday Night Irony: According To The Fed, Just Over One More Year Of ZIRP Will Lead To 38.36% Annual Inflation | ZeroHedge: "The laughter really begins when one recreates precisely what the Fed is doing: namely the policy of Zero Interest Rates, now well in its third year, that things take a turn for the surreal. We challenge any reader to play the Fed simulation game, and to do what Bernanke has done: namely lock the Fed Funds rate at the legal minimum: between 0.00% and 0.25%. In our personal experience, we were dismissed as Fed Chairman after annual inflation literally went off the charts and hit 38.36% following 4 years of ZIRP. And according to the Fed, inflation would now, 2.5 years into ZIRP, realistically be running at about 17%. Which incidentally is exactly where it is, at least for those who have not mutated sufficiently to be able to metabolize iPads and fly to and from work using their own pair of wings. Of course, every hyperinflation has a silver lining: US unemployment will be just 1.5%. Granted everyone will be making pitchforks and rope, but they would be employed."

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A Feature Or A Bug?

Belmont Club » Plugging Every Loophole: "While this investigation is just beginning and will likely take months to complete, what we already know is troubling enough. The story of regulators fixing the problem after the failure of a financial firm sounds all too familiar. Moreover, it seems that the patchwork of regulations and regulators may have allowed the full extent of these problems to remain undetected.

A thicket of regulations, so comforting to Occupy Wall Street, might be the perfect place for noxious financial instruments to lie in wait. The question is whether the undetectability of MF Global’s problems was a bug or a feature is an interesting one. One of the reasons MF Global got away with its high level of risk was that it was designed to fly under the radar — custombuilt to live in the data shadows. ...

That implies that one answer to preventing more MF Globals is not a forest of new regulations but to resolutely ensure that whoever misjudges his business goes bankrupt; and that whoever is guilty is tossed in jail for a long time. If so, there’s an investment opportunity in jail construction and room to fill a lot of soon to be empty places in Washington and New York."

How many times to I have to refer you over to the upper right sidebar's "RUNNER-UP QUOTE OF THE HOLOCENE"? Read it. Then put Wretchard on your daily reading list.

Don't have time to read every day? Turn off the ***d**m TV then.

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Good (Soaking Wet) God

Belmont Club » Hydrophobic: "After an exhaustive three year study involving 21 experts, an agency of the European Union determined that drink manufacturers should be banned from claiming that water can prevent dehydration. “Producers of bottled water are now forbidden by law from making the claim and will face a two-year jail sentence if they defy the edict, which comes into force in the UK next month.”  Critics said the decision was a perfect example of bureaucratic waste.

Conservative MEP Roger Helmer said: “This is stupidity writ large.

“The euro is burning, the EU is falling apart and yet here they are: highly-paid, highly-pensioned officials worrying about the obvious qualities of water and trying to deny us the right to say what is patently true.

“If ever there were an episode which demonstrates the folly of the great European project then this is it.”"

They're smarter than you and me. Nyet.

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Throw the Witch In Jail

Pelosi Leads List Of Conflict Of Interest Dems - Latest Headlines - Investors.com: "After a Pelosi staffer left to lobby on behalf of credit-card giant Visa, Pelosi delayed bringing to the House floor a bill to end lucrative "swipe fees" for Visa and other credit providers.

The bill couldn't have come at a worse time for Visa. It planned to launch an $18 billion public stock offering, so stalling Hill action became a priority. The San Francisco-based company curried favor with Pelosi by pumping cash into her re-election efforts, earning its CEO a rare one-on-one meeting with the speaker.

At the same time, Visa offered her husband a VIP cut of the IPO. Paul Pelosi jumped at the offer, buying 5,000 shares at the $44 initial price. In a couple of days, the shares soared to $64. Pelosi later bought 15,000 more, raising the total value of his investment to about $5 million. In the end, the legislation Visa fought starting in 2007 was forestalled two full years."

Surely I didn't forget to mention that she should be in jail?

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Factless Fail

Instapundit » Blog Archive » #OCCUPYFAIL: Facts Are Not My Concern: The sign at her feet read “For a nuclear free, carbon f…: "#OCCUPYFAIL: Facts Are Not My Concern:

The sign at her feet read “For a nuclear free, carbon free future.” The one in her hands an equally predictable “Excessive wealth and consumption are dying paradigms. Renew American with a Green Revolution.”

Before her stood Alex Epstein, energy expert and frequent PJTV guest commentator. Noting the sign on the sidewalk, Epstein asked, “You’re opposed to nuclear power and [carbon dioxide] generating power?”

“Yes,” she answered.

“Do you know what percentage of power in the world those generate right now?”

“That’s not my concern. My concern is the people that are profiting off of power that is unsustainable….”

Calm among the hubbub of Zuccotti Park, Epstein endured a lengthy non-response, then answered the question for her.

“We’re talking about something that’s producing 95% of the power in the world,” he stated flatly. “This is the power that’s keeping people’s lights on. It’s keeping the food going. And you’re saying we ought to dismantle that somehow. And I’m saying, if that happens, the entire world as we know it will collapse.”

It’s nice to see someone stand up to the green know-nothingism.

Posted by Glenn Reynolds at 6:20 pm"

And brainless too.

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Loose Lips Lang

Chinese TV Host Says Regime Nearly Bankrupt | Business & Economy | China | Epoch Times: "China’s economy has a reputation for being strong and prosperous, but according to a well-known Chinese television personality the country’s Gross Domestic Product is going in reverse.

Larry Lang, chair professor of Finance at the Chinese University of Hong Kong, said in a lecture that he didn’t think was being recorded that the Chinese regime is in a serious economic crisis—on the brink of bankruptcy. In his memorable formulation: every province in China is Greece.

The restrictions Lang placed on the Oct. 22 speech in Shenyang City, in northern China’s Liaoning Province, included no audio or video recording, and no media. He can be heard saying that people should not post his speech online, or “everyone will look bad,” in the audio that is now on Youtube."

RTWT. Waking up yet?

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Suffering The Remedies

This Week’s Applied Hayek: NPR Slip-Up Edition | Power Line: "It has been well said that, while we used to suffer from social evils, we now suffer from the remedies for them.  The difference is that, while in former times the social evils were gradually disappearing with the growth of wealth, the remedies we have introduced are beginning to threaten the continuance of that growth of wealth on which all future improvement depends.

These last passages could have been written with the present Euro crisis, and America’s entitlement funding crisis, in mind.  The late economist Herbert Stein famously said, something that can’t go on forever, won’t.  My AEI colleague Alex Pollock (author of a fine short book on this whole matter, Boom & Bust) offers his own close corollary: Loans that can’t be paid back, won’t.  (See: Greece.)  To which I offer the Hayward Welfare State Codicil: Entitlement promises that can’t be kept, won’t."

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Some Jack*sses Are More Equal Than Others

» REVEALED: Nancy Pelosi Blocked Credit Card Reform While Investing Millions in Exclusive Visa Stock Offering - Big Government: "The Credit Card Fair Fee Act was exactly the kind of bill one would think then-Speaker Pelosi would have backed. “She had been outspoken about antitrust problems posed by insurance, oil, and pharmaceutical companies,” Schweizer notes, “and she was vocal about the need for controlling interest rates individual banks charged to use their credit cards.”

Initially, the Credit Card Fair Fee Act cleared the Judiciary Committee on a 19-16 vote, and the National Association of Convenience Stores began lobbying for a vote on the floor of the House. “It is imperative to tell your Representatives to request a vote on the House Floor from Nancy Pelosi,” the association urged its members. Still, with at least ten percent of the Pelosi family’s entire stock portfolio invested in a single stock, Nancy Pelosi clearly had a vested interest in ensuring that Visa’s profits were protected. And that is exactly what she accomplished. Despite broad public support for the bill—77% in one study—Pelosi saw to it that the bill never made it to the House floor.

Shortly thereafter, a second bill limiting collusion by the credit card companies on interchange fees was proposed. The Credit Card Interchange Fee Act of 2008, while not as strong as the first bill, would have required greater transparency from credit card companies in informing customers how much they were paying in interchange fees. Yet again, reports Schweizer, “this second bill suffered the same fate as the first, never making it to the House floor.”

By 2009, both bills had garnered even broader bipartisan support and were reintroduced. Under Speaker Pelosi, however, neither bill lived to see a vote on the House floor.

Pelosi eventually supported something called the Credit Card Reform Act. Curiously, the all-important interchange fees went untouched by that legislation. Instead, the bill stated that the interchange fee issue should simply be “studied.” The bill’s other measures would not affect Visa but rather its client banks. In short, the Credit Card Reform Act ensured that Visa and the other credit card companies dodged a potentially costly bullet.

None of that, however, prevented Pelosi from grandstanding. She publicly declared that the Credit Card Reform Act sent a “strong and clear message to credit card companies” that they would be held to account for their “anti-consumer practices.”

In the wake of the bill’s passage, the Pelosis’ shares of Visa stock rose. Indeed, according to Throw Them All Out, “the IPO shares they had purchased soared by 203% from where they began, while the stock market as a whole was down 15% during the same period.”

Nancy Pelosi is hardly the only member of Congress to be given IPOs, but Pelosi has been especially “lucky” at landing them. She and her husband have participated in at least 10 lucrative IPOs throughout her career."

Oh, I'm sorry. She's just "lucky".

Throw the d*mn corrupt donkey in jail. Now. And any corrupt elephants too.

Of course, by rational ethical standards they'd pretty much all be in jail now wouldn't they? It pretty much tells you all you need to know about the "free press" that it's taken them this long to highlight that Congress has made sure that insider trading laws don't apply to themselves...

And ten to one this story sinks without a trace...

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That Stupid Crank Friedman On The Euro

From the Archives: Mundell vs. Friedman on the euro | FP Comment | Financial Post: "Milton Friedman My difference with Bob reflects what [I see as a major problem]. Namely, the political consequences of a monetary area that is not conterminous with a political entity. This exemplifies my pessimism and his optimism about the euro. We agree that the euro has no historical precedent. I believe we also agree that its attainment was driven by political, not economic, considerations, by the belief that it would contribute to greater political integration — the much-heralded United States of Europe — that would in turn render impossible the kind of wars which Europe has suffered so much. If achieved, political integration would render the monetary and political areas coterminous, the historical norm.

Will the euro contribute to political unity? Only, I believe, if it is economically successful; otherwise, it is more likely to engender political strife than political unity. And here, I believe, is where Bob and I differ most. Ireland requires at the moment a very different monetary policy than, say, Spain or Portugal. A flexible exchange rate would enable each of them to have the appropriate monetary policy. With a unified currency, they cannot. The alternative adjustment mechanisms are changes in internal prices and wages, movement of people and of capital. These are severely limited by differences in culture and by extensive government regulations, differing from country to country.

If the residual flexibility is enough, or if the existence of the euro induces a major increase in flexibility, the euro will prosper. If not, as I fear is likely to be the case, over time, as the members of the euro experience a flow of asynchronous shocks, economic difficulties will emerge. Different governments will be subject to very different political pressures and these are bound to create political conflict, from which the European Central Bank cannot escape."

Mundell was the genius and Friedman was the stupid crank. Really?

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Libtard Devo: TB It Good

Occupier Devolution | Power Line: "If you have ever wondered what would happen in a society consisting entirely of liberals, the Occupier movement is providing the answer: devolution. It is almost impossible to keep up with the downward spiral, but here are some of the highlights of the last 24 hours:

* In Portland, an Occupier was arrested for throwing a Molotov cocktail down the stairwell of a building.

* In London, employees of St. Paul’s Cathedral have had to clean up human waste left by Occupiers inside the cathedral. (What is it with the Occupiers and toilet issues?)

* In Portland, another drug overdose.

* In Vermont, a man was shot to death at the Occupy Burlington encampment.

* At Occupy San Diego, a citizen journalist was violently assaulted.

* In Atlanta, tuberculosis has broken out among the Occupiers."

Most of you have no idea where that title came from. Those that do might be chuckling though...

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The Truth Hurts (Part 5,592,593)

19 true things generals can't say in public about the Afghan war: A helpful primer - By Tom Ricks | The Best Defense: "My list of things to remember I can't say

Pakistan is now an enemy of the United States.

We don't know why we are here, what we are fighting for, or how to know if we are winning.

The strategy is to fight, talk, and build. But we're withdrawing the fighters, the Taliban won't talk, and the builders are corrupt. 

Karzai's family is especially corrupt.

We want President Karzai gone but we don't have a Pushtun successor handy.

But the problem isn't corruption, it is which corrupt people are getting the dollars. We have to help corruption be more fair.

Another thing we'll never stop here is the drug traffic, so the counternarcotics mission is probably a waste of time and resources that just alienates a swath of Afghans.

Making this a NATO mission hurt, not helped. Most NATO countries are just going through the motions in Afghanistan as the price necessary to keep the US in Europe

Yes, the exit deadline is killing us. ..."

H/T Ace.

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Thanks Barack

Al-Qaida affiliate chief tells Mauritanian site his group got Libyan weapons, as West fears - The Washington Post: "NOUAKCHOTT, Mauritania — A desert chief with al-Qaida’s North Africa branch has confirmed fears that his terror organization procured weapons from stockpiles left unguarded in Libya after the fall of Moammar Gadhafi.

Mokhtar Belmokhtar was quoted by the private Mauritanian newspaper Nouakchott Infos and its online version Nouakchott Information Agency as saying that “it’s totally natural we benefited from Libyan arms in such conditions.”"

They couldn't have done it without you.

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The Mocking and Derision Begin

China mocks U.S. political model - Washington Times: "HONG KONG — Chinese political and business leaders are increasingly triumphant after two decades of rapid economic growth that lifted unprecedented millions of people out of poverty and turned the nation into an economic superpower, saying their success proves its political and economic system is superior to the Western model.

In extensive talks with a series of Chinese leaders, an oft-cited point of criticism is the gridlock and “dysfunction” they see in Washington. They say fawning by U.S. political leaders seeking re-election has created an “entitlement culture” where the public has grown dependent on government largesse. Now, with the United States facing monumental economic and debt problems, the political system has been unable to curb generous entitlement programs or counter the economic downturn."

Well this is certainly a RTWT.

Let me see if I've got this right. First they and foreign commies of every stripe do all they can covertly to fuel and foster the lunatic OWS/bama culture that is the world epitome of entitlement. And then they point out how disastrous this is and agree with the Tea Party about how disastrous OWS/bama world is?

Perfect.

Of course, if we actually still had the Republic instead of the lunatic filled democracy the Chinese (ironically rightly) criticize -- and that they helped all they could to tear down -- perhaps things might be a bit different, no?

“A lady asked Dr. Franklin Well Doctor what have we got a republic or a monarchy? A republic replied the Doctor if you can keep it.”

It was not kept, was it?

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Coulter Stalks the Real Predator

Ann Coulter - November 9, 2011 - DAVID AXELROD'S PATTERN OF SEXUAL MISBEHAVIOR: "Herman Cain has spent his life living and working all over the country -- Indiana, Georgia, Minnesota, Nebraska, Kansas, Washington, D.C. -- but never in Chicago.

So it's curious that all the sexual harassment allegations against Cain emanate from Chicago: home of the Daley machine and Obama consigliere David Axelrod.

Suspicions had already fallen on Sheila O'Grady, who is close with David Axelrod and went straight from being former Chicago mayor Richard M. Daley's chief of staff to president of the Illinois Restaurant Association (IRA), as being the person who dug up Herman Cain's personnel records from the National Restaurant Association (NRA).

The Daley-controlled IRA works hand-in-glove with the NRA. And strangely enough, Cain's short, three-year tenure at the NRA is evidently the only period in his decades-long career during which he's alleged to have been a sexual predator. "

Click and RTWT. Your jaw will need surgery after slamming into the floor though...

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Occupying the Occupied

Crowder OCCUPIES WALLSTREET!! - YouTube: "Crowder OCCUPIES WALLSTREET!!"

Crowder is a hoot!

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Alerting Ayman

Ace of Spades HQ: "There was no lengthy battle. The entire operation took only 90 seconds (before Bin Laden died) and 12 bullets. From the sidebar link to The Telegraph:

The men who killed the al-Qaeda chief have decided to speak out because they are tired of their "shabby treatment" by politicians who claim they were on a "kill mission".
They insisted there was no lengthy gun-fight in the compound and claimed they would have captured Bin Laden if he had surrendered, The Sunday Times in the UK reports (behind a paywall). . . .

He said the men were angry with President Barack Obama for announcing Bin Laden’s death on TV just hours after they completed the mission on May 1.

"There isn't a politician in the world who could resist trying to take credit for getting Bin Laden but it devalued the 'intel' and gave time for every other Al-Qaeda leader to scurry to another bolthole," he said.

"The men who did this and their valorous act deserve better. It's a pretty shabby way to treat these guys.""

O Duce that is. Alerting Ayman. Give me a better theory.

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Too Socialist For The Chinese

Instapundit » Blog Archive » EUROPE: TOO SOCIALIST FOR THE CHINESE: Also last night, the chairman of the supervisory board of…: "EUROPE: TOO SOCIALIST FOR THE CHINESE:

Also last night, the chairman of the supervisory board of China Investment Corporation, the country’s sovereign wealth fund, put further distance between China and the eurozone bail-out, saying that Europe’s bloated welfare state meant that people did not work hard enough.

“I think if you look at the troubles which happened in European countries, this is purely because of the accumulated troubles of their worn out welfare societies,” Jin Liqun said in an interview with Al Jazeera television. “I think the labour laws are outdated – the labour laws induce sloth, indolence rather than hard working. The incentive system is totally out of whack.”

Eurozone leaders had been hoping that China would use some of its trade surplus to back the bail-out fund.

I couldn’t say it better myself.

UPDATE: Malaysian reader Daniel Riveong sends the link to the original interview. He blogged about it here.

Posted by Glenn Reynolds at 10:31 pm"

Why bother with parody when reality trumps all?

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For Once, I Believe Him

Instapundit » Blog Archive » OBAMA DENIES MEETINGS WITH EXTRATERRESTRIALS. I believe him. Nobody looking for intelligent life w…: "OBAMA DENIES MEETINGS WITH EXTRATERRESTRIALS. I believe him. Nobody looking for intelligent life would visit this White House.

Posted by Glenn Reynolds at 11:53 pm"

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Good God

Instapundit » Blog Archive » #OCCUPYFAIL: “Let it sink in: Their protests now need rape shelters. This is actually happening. An…: "#OCCUPYFAIL: “Let it sink in: Their protests now need rape shelters. This is actually happening. And New York City lets it go on. . . . This can’t be repeated enough: With a few exceptions, foremost among them the New York Post, the coverage of OWS protests compared to the coverage of tea-party protests is the worst media double standard in recent history. Nothing compares, because nothing else involves this much distortion on both ends of the coverage.”

UPDATE: A roundup.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Rampaging Occupiers Attack 78-Year-Old Woman."

Well, what title would you give this kind of lunacy?

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And Not Just Nut-Jobs, But Nuts With No Jobs

Instapundit » Blog Archive » I GUESS THEY REALLY ARE TAKING TAHRIR SQUARE AS THEIR MODEL: Female Reporter Harassed at #Occupy Pr…: "I GUESS THEY REALLY ARE TAKING TAHRIR SQUARE AS THEIR MODEL: Female Reporter Harassed at #Occupy Protest. “I actually don’t feel safe going back to those protests. . . . I actually did not feel comfortable, because at one point there were a whole group of men surrounding me saying, ‘F—Michelle Fields.’ And I went to a police officer and I told him that I felt these people were harassing me. And the police officer said he’d take care of it, but it never ended.”

Posted by Glenn Reynolds at 10:52 am"

And why no jobs you ask? I think that should be self evident, shouldn't it? You're telling me you would hire people that behave like this?

Case closed.

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Steyn On Anarchists For Statism

Roger’s Rules » Quote of the Day (on Occupy Wall Street): "From Mark Steyn, writing about the Occupy [Fill in the Blank] at NRO:

At first glance, an alliance of anarchists and government might appear to be somewhat paradoxical. But the formal convergence in Oakland makes explicit the movement’s aims: They’re anarchists for statism, wild free-spirited youth demanding more and more total government control of every aspect of life — just so long as it respects the fundamental human right to sloth.

“Anarchists for statism.” It has a nice ring to it, doesn’t it? It used to be that anarchists were anti-government. But out new, improved anarchists, most of then privileged beneficiaries of an economic system they pretend to loathe, are positively Whitmanian in their embrace of contradiction. (“Do I contradict myself? Very well, I contradict myself. I am large, I contain multitudes . . . “)

It is hardly surprising that this fragile compact yields an unusual harvest. “What’s happening in Oakland, ” Steyn writes, where the city authorities have actually urged people “to collborate” with the protestors,

is a logical exercise in class solidarity: The government class enthusiastically backing the breakdown of civil order is making common cause with the leisured varsity class, the thuggish union class, and the criminal class in order to stick it to what’s left of the beleaguered productive class. It’s a grand alliance of all those societal interests that wish to enjoy in perpetuity a lifestyle they are not willing to earn. Only the criminal class is reasonably upfront about this. "

And it ends with Rudy Giuliani asking the nut-jobs: "How about you occupy a job?" Heh.

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Nothing To See Here, Move Along Now...

Instapundit » Blog Archive » CORZINE CONFLICT? Corzine’s regulator, a former Goldman colleague, gave NJ Dems $10k as Corzine ran…: "CORZINE CONFLICT? Corzine’s regulator, a former Goldman colleague, gave NJ Dems $10k as Corzine ran for governor. “Gary Gensler, the regulator overseeing the investigation of Jon Corzine’s collapsed securities firm, built close ties to Corzine as they rose through the ranks of Goldman Sachs. Later, they collaborated on Capitol Hill to pass an anti-corporate fraud law. When Corzine ran for New Jersey governor, Gensler gave $10,000 to the state Democratic Party, which was trying to get Corzine elected. Now, Gensler, head of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, is leading an inquiry into how hundreds of millions vanished last week from client accounts at Corzine’s firm, MF Global.”

Posted by Glenn Reynolds at 11:20 pm"

Some people believe that regulation is the answer to whatever the problem is. They would be morons. And I'm being polite.

Look over right at the sidebar's "RUNNER-UP QUOTE OF THE HOLOCENE".

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But O Duce Had Nothing To Do With It

ACORN Officials Scramble, Firing Workers And Shredding Documents, After Exposed As Players Behind Occupy Wall Street Protests | Fox News: "Officials with the revamped ACORN office in New York -- operating as New York Communities for Change -- have fired staff, shredded reams of documents and told workers to blame disgruntled ex-employees for leaking information in an effort to explain away a FoxNews.com report last week on the group’s involvement in Occupy Wall Street protests, according to sources.

NYCC also is installing surveillance cameras and recording devices at its Brooklyn offices, removing or packing away supplies bearing the name ACORN and handing out photos of Fox News staff with a stern warning not to talk to the media, the sources said.

“They’re doing serious damage control right now,” said an NYCC source."

Good God. The country has become a herd of brainwashed morons for letting O Duce constantly skate on criminal bullsh*t like this.

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Ineptocracy

Instapundit » Blog Archive » WALTER RUSSELL MEAD: The Comprehensive EuroFail. “Having spent months warning readers about the in…: "WALTER RUSSELL MEAD: The Comprehensive EuroFail. “Having spent months warning readers about the incompetence of Europe’s political leadership and the incoherence of its institutional structures, I thought I had seen the worst. But for even this hardened and cynical observer who has had years of watching European ineptitude the last 24 hours have been a revelation: the Europeans are totally at sea. . . . Europe’s institutions cannot cope. Decades of building intricate rules and complicated institutions have failed to create an institutional architecture than can resolve basic disputes.”

They have mastered the art of ineptocracy, which brings with it the inevitable fruit. We, alas, have eagerly been following in their footsteps, especially over the past two or three years.

Posted by Glenn Reynolds at 10:56 am"

Perfect. Welcome to the West's version of the Tinfoil Apocalypse. Remember WWI and WWII? What do you suppose is next?

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Your Tax Dollars Electing O Duce

Solyndra Execs Leave With Cash. Yours. | Power Line: "At The Corner, Andrew Stiles notes a report from Green Technology that Solyndra’s executives substantial bonuses shortly before their company declared bankruptcy, having run out of your money. The taxpayers likely will be stuck with a $530 million bill. Here is where some of it went:

Karen Alter, senior vice president of marketing, received two $55,000 bonuses on April 15 and July 8 of this year, on top of her $250,000 annual salary.

If it weren’t our money, this would almost be funny: how can you award someone in charge of marketing $110,000 in bonuses when the company wasn’t making enough sales to stay out of bankruptcy? Ms. Alter’s recent political contributions, according to Open Secrets:

* Barack Obama, $2,300.
* David Sanders (D), $1,000.
* Alan Khazei (D), $3,000."

Why don't we just stop the charade and have the Bernanke just direct deposit whatever O Duce thinks he needs for his campaign. It would be incomparably more honest.

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Whiplash

UK Preparing to Join In Attack On Iran? | Power Line: "The Guardian assures us that President Obama would really prefer not to attack Iran prior to next year’s election:

They made clear that Barack Obama, has no wish to embark on a new and provocative military venture before next November’s presidential election. But they warned the calculations could change because of mounting anxiety over intelligence gathered by western agencies, and the more belligerent posture that Iran appears to have been taking.

Times certainly have changed since 2008. One of the West’s most left-wing newspapers reports that President Obama is planning a pre-emptive attack on a Middle Eastern country, and, rather than being critical of such a strike, the paper merely wishes to run interference against any suspicion that it may be politically motivated. It’s enough to give you whiplash."

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Infighting

Instapundit » Blog Archive » NEW CLASS INFIGHTING: “Lower Elites” vs. “Upper Elites,” cont’d: NYC arrest records: Many Occupy W…: "NEW CLASS INFIGHTING: “Lower Elites” vs. “Upper Elites,” cont’d: NYC arrest records: Many Occupy Wall Street protesters live in luxury. “Among addresses for which information is available, single-family homes listed on those police intake forms have a median value of $305,000 — a far higher number than the $185,400 median value of owner-occupied housing units in the United States. Some of the homes where ‘Occupy’ arrestees reside, viewed through Google Maps and the Multiple Listing Service real estate database, are the definition of opulence.”

Posted by Glenn Reynolds at 8:59 am"

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Richard Feynman Is Resting Peacefully Tonight

- Bishop Hill blog - Scientific heresy: "Experts are worse at forecasting the future than non-experts.

Philip Tetlock did the definitive experiment. He gathered a sample of 284 experts – political scientists, economists and journalists – and harvested 27,450 different specific judgments from them about the future then waited to see if they came true. The results were terrible. The experts were no better than “a dart-throwing chimpanzee”.

Here’s what the Club of Rome said on the rear cover of the massive best-seller Limits to Growth in 1972*:

“Will this be the world that your grandchildren will thank you for? A world where industrial production has sunk to zero. Where population has suffered a catastrophic decline. Where the air, sea and land are polluted beyond redemption. Where civilization is a distant memory. This is the world that the computer forecasts.”

"Science is the belief in the ignorance of the experts", said Richard Feynman.

Lesson 6. Never rely on the consensus of experts about the future. Experts are worth listening to about the past, but not the future. Futurology is pseudoscience.

Using these six lessons, I am now going to plunge into an issue on which almost all the experts are not only confident they can predict the future, but absolutely certain their opponents are pseudoscientists. It is an issue on which I am now a heretic. I think the establishment view is infested with pseudoscience. The issue is climate change."

Wow. Run, don't walk to RTWT. Then make sure your friends read it.

And may Michael Crichton now rest peacefully also. Not to mention that the living should finally be respected like Svensmark and Kirkby.

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Broken Window Fallacy Update

Krugman, Keynes, and war: "As the Hayek character in The Fight of the Century says in response to the claim that WWII ended the Great Depression:

Wow. One data point and you’re jumping for joy
The last time I checked, wars only destroy
There was no multiplier, consumption just shrank
As we used scarce resources for every new tank

Pretty perverse to call that prosperity
Rationed meat, rationed butter… a life of austerity
When that war spending ended your friends cried disaster
Yet the economy thrived and grew faster"

Du'O.

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The Smoking Gun Found

Smoking-Gun Document Ties Policy To Housing Crisis - Latest Headlines - Investors.com: "President Obama says the Occupy Wall Street protests show a "broad-based frustration" among Americans with the financial sector, which continues to kick against regulatory reforms three years after the financial crisis.

"You're seeing some of the same folks who acted irresponsibly trying to fight efforts to crack down on the abusive practices that got us into this in the first place," he complained earlier this month.

But what if government encouraged, even invented, those "abusive practices"?

Rewind to 1994. That year, the federal government declared war on an enemy — the racist lender — who officials claimed was to blame for differences in homeownership rate, and launched what would prove the costliest social crusade in U.S. history.

At President Clinton's direction, no fewer than 10 federal agencies issued a chilling ultimatum to banks and mortgage lenders to ease credit for lower-income minorities or face investigations for lending discrimination and suffer the related adverse publicity. They also were threatened with denial of access to the all-important secondary mortgage market and stiff fines, along with other penalties."

And once the slimy mortgage issuers put the liar's loan mechanisms in place, guess what? It wasn't just minorities that got to use them until... KaBoom!

RTWT.

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