Articles: Editgate, Spittlegate, and the Left's 'Race-Gating' Tradition: "Sacco and Vanzetti were the first in a long line of ethnics whose exploitability interested the left more than their innocence. Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, Leonard Peltier, Geronimo Pratt, and Mumia Abu-Jamal, like Sacco and Vanzetti, were all convicted of their crimes, but the evidence mattered little to those who wanted to spank America before the world.Didn't know that, did you? Read More......
With the passing of the Comintern, America's homegrown radicals picked up the playbook and directed their own game plans. Thinking anti-racism a more viable strategy than revolution, they expanded the definition of racism to include more behaviors against more groups, requiring more and more invasive remedies. Among those remedies, as George Zimmerman has learned the hard way, is that old Stalinist standby, "ritual defamation."
...
Twenty years prior, the decision-makers in that complex had even less use for a headline that read, "Clinton Tank Attack on Religious Community Kills 26 Blacks, 13 Other Minorities." So they fully suppressed the race angle. I doubt if even Al Sharpton knows that most of those killed at Waco were minorities."
Monday, April 9, 2012
Ritual Defamation ... And Waco
It's Not Humans
Blockbuster: Planetary temperature controls CO2 levels — not humans « JoNova: Science, carbon, climate and tax: "The largest increases year-to-year occurred when the world warmed fastest due to El Nino conditions. The smallest increases correlated with volcanoes which pump dust up into the atmosphere and keep the world cooler for a while. In other words, temperature controls CO2 levels on a yearly time-scale, and according to Salby, man-made emissions have little effect.I posted a while ago about this but didn't link the excellent video of the talk -- there, fixed. (Actually, the talk is excellent but the video has some issues here and there.)
The climate models assume that most of the rise in CO2 (from 280 ppmv in1780 to 392 ppmv today) was due to industrialization and fossil fuel use. But the globe has been warming during that period (in fact since the depths of the Little Ice Age around 1680), so warmer conditions could be the reason that CO2 has been rising.
Salby does not dispute that some of the rise in CO2 levels is due to man-made emissions, but found that temperature alone explains about 80% of the variation in CO2 levels."
Unfortunately, embedding is not enabled for the video so you'll have to click. You won't be sorry. Read More......
Today's Stopped Clock Watch: FDR Edition
RealClearPolitics - The Origins of Entitlement: "When Roosevelt proposed Social Security in 1935, he envisioned a contributory pension plan. Workers' payroll taxes ("contributions") would be saved and used to pay their retirement benefits. Initially, before workers had time to pay into the system, there would be temporary subsidies. But Roosevelt rejected Social Security as a "pay-as-you-go" system that channeled the taxes of today's workers to pay today's retirees. That, he believed, would saddle future generations with huge debts -- or higher taxes -- as the number of retirees expanded.Even FDR wasn't all wrong all the time. Of course he was wrong about the "almost dishonest" part. See also here and here. Read More......
Discovering that the original draft proposal wasn't a contributory pension, Roosevelt ordered it rewritten and complained to Frances Perkins, his labor secretary: "This is the same old dole under another name. It is almost dishonest to build up an accumulated deficit for the Congress ... to meet."
But Roosevelt's vision didn't prevail. In the 1940s and early 1950s, Congress gradually switched Social Security to a pay-as-you-go system."
Saturday, April 7, 2012
Often Always Wrong But Never In Doubt
BACON: Sugar shock - Washington Times: "Gupta: “So, with the best of intentions, they said, it’s time to reduce fat in the American diet.”Read More......
Lustig: “And we did. And guess what? Heart disease, metabolic syndrome, diabetes and death are skyrocketing.”
Gupta: “Dr. Lustig believes that’s primarily because we replaced a lot of that fat with added sugars.”
Lustig: “When you take the fat out of the food, it tastes like cardboard. The food industry knew that. So they replaced it with sugar.”
Prediction 1: Often wrong but never in doubt, the progressives and do-gooders will develop amnesia about the past 40 years of regulatory activism. The old “settled science” will go down the memory hole, to be replaced with a new “settled science.” With new demons to castigate and a new cause to justify meddling in peoples’ lives on the grounds that they are too ignorant, slothful or obstinate to do what’s good for them, progressives will embark joyfully upon a new crusade. Soon we’ll be hearing how sugar is as addictive as cocaine. (Oh, wait, Dr. Gupta quoted a different scientist saying exactly that.) Sugar companies will replace the fat peddlers at McDonald’s as the new villains du jour. (Dr. Gupta also interviewed a sugar-industry lobbyist.)
Prediction 2: Progressives will not engage in the slightest bit of introspection. It will never occur to them to think, “Gee, if the science wasn’t really settled about heart disease, could the science really be settled about, say, global warming?”"
They Have The Ring
Video: ObamaCare, the NDAA, and the Ring of Power « Hot Air: "One of these is Bill Whittle’s latest Firewall, in which my friend manages to tie together ObamaCare, the recently-passed NDAA, the Constitution, and Lord of the Rings. That’s way too tempting for me to pass up — and not coincidentally, that’s the point Bill wants to make in this video:"
Much Obliged, Idiots
NW Burglars Continue To Not Get It: Another Burglar Killed, More Flee | The Truth About Guns: "While the George Zimmerman/Trayvon Martin saga unfolds in Florida amid protests and death threats, a different story is quietly playing itself out in the opposite corner of the country. But you might not know much about it, because this Northwest self-defense story isn’t getting much airplay on network news. Maybe because it doesn’t play into their race-baiting, anti-gun narrative.Read More......
This story just keeps going and going, because NW burglars continue to practically beg to be shot by breaking into other people’s homes. And NW homeowners keep obliging them by shooting them."
The Problem With Pacifism
Belmont Club » Soy Un Perdedor: "The problem with pacifism, Michael Walzer once observed, is that “you may not be interested in war, but war is interested in you.” Americans all throughout the Vietnam War were assured by the press that it was “unwinnable” — but Ho Chi Minh and Giap never believed it was anything other than winnable — and proceeded to win it themselves. Some authors have argued that the primary cultural impact of Vietnam was to permanently destroy America’s evil “victory culture” and permanently relocate the enemy to within its borders. We have met the enemy, and it will always be us.And also with fascifism -- apologies to Eric Blair. Read More......
But as the New York Times reminds its readers, nobody else has bothered to buy into the culture of impotence. “The senior leadership of the Chinese government increasingly views the competition between the United States and China as a zero-sum game, with China the likely long-range winner if the American economy and domestic political system continue to stumble, according to an influential Chinese policy analyst.”"
Today's O Wow
A Saturday Word from Tocqueville | Power Line: "Not that many people–me included–spend much time reading one of Tocqueville’s other books, The Old Regime and the Revolution, in which he offers this sage observation that is quite apropos the Age of Obama:Did I forget to mention that O Duce absolutely radiates contempt? Read More......
“A man’s admiration of absolute government is proportionate to the contempt he feels for those around him.”"
A Historical Corruption Reminder: The "Reconciliation" Measure
Why the Supreme Court Will Strike Down All of Obamacare - Forbes: "Barack Obama made a national laughingstock out of himself with his recent comments on the Obamacare law now before the Supreme Court. Obama said on Monday, “I’m confident that the Supreme Court will not take what would be an unprecedented, extraordinary step of overturning a law that was passed by a strong majority of a democratically elected Congress.” (emphasis added).Reconciliation measure my *ss. This "government" is worse than a mafia -- at least the mafia's sheep know something's not right. Read More......
President Obama is not stupid. But he thinks you are. He knows the Obamacare health care takeover was not passed by a strong majority. But he figures you’re so dumb he can rewrite recent history in plain sight. The law passed a House with a huge Democrat majority at the time by only 219-212. It did not get a single Republican vote, but the opposition was bipartisan.
The law also barely squeaked past a Senate filibuster despite an overwhelming 60 Senate Democrats, and even then humiliating buyoffs were necessary. Public opposition was so strong that the ultraliberal Democrat controlled Massachusetts, the only state to go for George McGovern in 1972, elected a Republican in a special election for Sen. Ted Kennedy’s seat, to terminate the Democrats’ filibuster-proof majority. That required final passage of the law improperly in violation of Congressional rules as a reconciliation measure, which is only to be used to clean up the budget and so cannot be filibustered."
Tuesday, April 3, 2012
Pyongyang On The Potomac
Belmont Club » The View From France: "The turnover in Washington is now comparable to turnover in Pyongyang. Death from old age, not defeat in primary elections, is the biggest agent of change in the bureaucratic ossuaries by the Potomac."Of course, Mike Church's "Mordor On The Potomac" is hard to beat. But if anyone can it's Wretchard. Read More......
Bolsheviks In Disguise
The Corner - National Review Online: "Because the trials were taking place behind a curtain of foreignness, parochial British readers might have thought that such things as old Bolsheviks confessing to having been Trotskyite saboteurs all along were inexplicable Russian oddities rather than the Big Lies characteristic of all totalitarianisms. So Orwell translates the trials into the terms of British political life of 1938 (when Neville Chamberlain was Tory prime minister and Winston Churchill a rebellious Conservative backbencher.) The result is as follows:Welcome to Comrade O's world. Except substitute Sarah Palin for Trotsky. Read More......Mr. Winston Churchill, now in exile in Portugal, is plotting to overthrow the British Empire and establish communism in England. By the use of unlimited Russian money he has succeeded in building up a huge Churchillite organization which includes members of Parliament, factory managers, Roman Catholic bishops, and practically the whole of the Primrose League [a highly respectable organization of Conservative ladies.] Almost every day some dastardly act of sabotage is laid bare — sometimes a plot to blow up the House of Lords, sometimes an outbreak of foot-and-mouth disease in the Royal racing stables. Eighty percent of the Beefeaters in the Tower [of London] are discovered to be agents of the Comintern. . . . And meanwhile the Churchillites . . . never cease from proclaiming that it is they who are the real defenders of Capitalism and that Chamberlain and the rest of his gang are no more than a set of Bolsheviks in disguise. "
Hot Rails To H*ll
Dismantling the Time Bomb - By Andrew Stuttaford - The Corner - National Review Online: "A month or so ago, I linked to a piece by the FT’s Gideon Rachman on the German view of the euro zone crisis, quoting, in particular, this:Read More......Behind the scenes, however, some of the brightest minds in the German government have a sense of deep foreboding. Twice in the past year I have found myself sitting next to different senior German officials at a dinner who have proceeded to tell me that the whole single currency was a terrible mistake. Speaking of the euro, one of my companions said: “It seems to me that we have invented a machine from hell that we cannot turn off.” The image was so bleak and Strangelovian that I laughed. But, I am afraid, it’s not really very funny."
Backyard Takedown
Guest Post: Four Signs Of Asia’s Rise Over The West | ZeroHedge: "3) According to a new study from the Inter-American Dialogue, China is now dominating emerging market development finance, especially in Latin America.RTWT. Read More......
In the past, countries like Brazil, Ecuador, and Venezuela went to the World Bank and IMF when they needed money. But now these vestigial organizations of the old western hierarchy are becoming a sideshow to Chinese financial muscle.
The study shows that, since 2005, Chinese banks have loaned more money and made more loan commitments to Latin America than the World Bank and International Development Bank combined… and they’re doing it at higher interest rates.
Why? Because developing nations have figured out that when you take the World Bank’s money, you have to put up with them telling you how to run your government. Chinese bank loans don’t come with political strings attached.
It’s extraordinary that this is happening in the US’s backyard."
"The Broken Window Fallacy" (Part 7,593,527)
"The Broken Window Fallacy": Why Government Stimulus Spending Will Keep The Unemployment Rate High | ZeroHedge: "In our busy days, it is all too easy to fall into the trap of hearing (and believing) the latest headline and its associated spin. For some reason, three minute videos can quickly and easily remove these 'spins' without the need for a PhD. In today's 3:06 un-spin, the broken-window-fallacy is addressed as the seen versus unseen impact of the idiocy of a broken-window's (or war, or destroying homes, or...) positive impact on an economy is explained in cartoon style. The sad fact is that this fallacy remains at the core of mainstream policy-making"
All A Misunderstanding ...
Obama Walks Back Supreme Court Threat, Still Gets It Wrong | Power Line: "This is, of course, entirely different from what Obama said yesterday, but it comes no nearer the truth. First of all, when did Obamacare become an “economic issue,” a matter of “commerce”?” I thought it was all about women’s health care, like Roe v. Wade. Evidently that was a misunderstanding.... or bullsh*t hip deep. If you can't pick correctly by now you I hope you like the cave you'll soon enough be reduced to living in. Read More......
But that’s a minor point. Is there any truth to Obama’s claim that the Supreme Court hasn’t invalidated any statutes that are “economic” and relate to “commerce” since Lochner v. New York, which was in 1905? Of course not. To name just a few examples a great deal more recent than 1905, the Court ruled unconstitutional provisions of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act that had permitted only “for cause” removal of members of the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board in 2010; the 1990 Mushroom Promotion, Research and Consumer Information Act in 2001 (this case was actually quite similar to Obamacare because the Court held unconstitutional provisions that required mushroom growers to contribute to mushroom promotion programs); provisions of the Patent and Plant Variety Remedy Clarification Act, the Trademark Remedy Clarification Act, and the Copyright Remedy Clarification Act in 1992; the Harbor Maintenance Tax Act in 1998; the Transfer Act which authorized the transfer of operating control of Washington National Airport and Dulles International Airport from the Department of Transportation to the Metropolitan Washington Airports Authority in 1991; and many, many more dating back to 1905.
One could be charitable and say that Barack Obama is a bullshitter who makes stuff up whenever he is in a tough spot, or one could say that he is a habitual liar. Take your pick."
Criminal By Assumption
Carbon Emissions Are Good - National Review Online: "In contrast, the role of humanity in raising global CO2 levels is relatively clear, and power allegedly needed to suppress it is enormous. The problem may be the direct opposite of what was previously alleged, but the solution is the same — more control. The fact that increased CO2 is constructive and highly beneficial to both mankind and the natural world is ignored.The real criminals are our rulers. Read More......
This is deeply irrational. Indeed, consider for a moment what the situation would be if not only temperatures, but atmospheric CO2 levels, were to resume falling. That would truly be a cause for alarm, as it would imperil all life on earth.
But for those seeking the power to oppress humanity, any change in nature effected by humans, no matter how beneficial, is criminal by assumption."
Sunday, April 1, 2012
Every Species O Fraud And Injustice
Fast Forward Through Fiat's Fantastic Fabrications | ZeroHedge: "Paper money has had the effect in your state that it will ever have, to ruin commerce, oppress the honest, and open the door to every species of fraud and injustice."
George Washington -- in a letter to Jabez Bowen, Rhode Island, Jan. 9, 1787"
Churlish
Swingin’ Kennedy - National Review Online: "A land of laws decays almost imperceptibly into a land of legalisms, which is why America has 50 percent of the world’s lawyers. Like most of his colleagues, lifetime legislator John Conyers (a congressman for 47 years) didn’t bother reading the 2,700-page health-care bill he voted for. As he said with disarming honesty, he wouldn’t understand it even if he did: “They get up and say, ‘Read the bill.’ What good is reading the bill if it’s a thousand pages and you don’t have two days and two lawyers to find out what it means after you read the bill?”Read More......
It would be churlish to direct readers to the video posted on the Internet of Representative Conyers finding time to peruse a copy of Playboy while on a commuter flight to Detroit. So let’s take him at his word that it would be unreasonable to expect a legislator to know what it is he’s actually legislating into law. Who does read the thing? “What happened to the Eighth Amendment?” sighed Justice Scalia the other day. That’s the bit about cruel and unusual punishment. “You really want us to go through these 2,700 pages . . . ? Or do you expect us to give this function to our law clerks?”"
April Fools
Why Regulation Is Good For Growth | ZeroHedge: "The biggest problem with “free” markets is the stupidity of the common people. How can they possibly know what they want, or what they want to achieve when they have not attended prestigious universities like Oxford, Harvard, or Yale? Without help from central planners working with fact-based information derived from simulations, mathematical models, and empirical studies the common people will never be able to make informed economic choices. Thanks to the genius of central planning for the common good — as well as the hard work and self-sacrifice of central planners — the common people are liberated from making difficult economic decisions. They can concentrate on what they are qualified to decide — what to have for lunch (so long as its contents have been approved by central planners for consumption), what to name their children (so long as it comes from a list of names pre-approved by central planners), or what to watch on television (so long as the transmission has been approved by government censors)."Of course, on ZeroHedge this is an April Fools piece complete with a derisively noted Krugman quote.
But at the NYeT this is on the front page every day. Topsy-turvy world indeed. Read More......
They're Baaack...
Internet activity 'to be monitored' under new laws - Telegraph: "Under legislation expected in next month's Queen's Speech, internet companies will be instructed to install hardware enabling GCHQ – the Government's electronic "listening" agency – to examine "on demand" any phone call made, text message and email sent, and website accessed in "real time", The Sunday Times reported.And soon to be Baaa(r)aaack... no doubt. For all us sheeple know it's already in operation over here. Read More......
A previous attempt to introduce a similar law was abandoned by the former Labour government in 2006 in the face of fierce opposition.
However ministers believe it is essential that the police and security services have access to such communications data in order to tackle terrorism and protect the public.
Although GCHQ would not be able to access the content of such communications without a warrant, the legislation would enable it to trace people individuals or groups are in contact with, and how often and for how long they are in communication."
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