Philosophical Bumper Sticker

"Honk if you lack free will"

Seen in comments here.

Quote Of The Week

Vox Day re:the S&P downgrade of US debt:

The worrisome thing is these are the agencies that still had Enron at AAA when it was going bankrupt. It boggles the mind to think how bad U.S. finances must be for the ratings agencies to actually notice.

One Can Only Hope

It is high time for the Federal Reserve to stop enabling the thieves.

Charles Hugh Smith:

Many observers expect the Federal Reserve to bail out the stock market next Tuesday with an announcement of QE3, another round of "monetary easing" to reinstall the trade in risk assets. If they do, it will fail. The basic reason it will fail is that the Fed's credibility has fallen below a critical threshold. Put another way, the quasi-religious trust in the Fed's infallibility and power to single-handedly reverse global markets has been eroded by reality: QE2 was a monumental failure.

Here's a couple of things to understand about the Fed before you "buy the bounce when they announce QE3."

1. Though nominally independent, the Fed is a political construct. The idea that public opinion and political support have no influence on the Fed is wrong; the Fed's failure to revive the economy while squandering trillions of dollars propping up banks and Wall Street bonuses was not lost on the political class. Though nobody's talking about it, the Fed's abject failure to revive the real economy has greatly diminished its political range of maneuver.

Rumor has it that the word has already gone out to the Fed not to intervene with additional trillions to prop up Europe.

2. The consensus view is the Fed has either engineered the stock market drop to give it a free hand with QE3, or it will be "forced to do something" to combat the implosion of its pet fix to the broken economy, the "wealth effect" of rising stocks.

What these views miss is the Fed is now in a no-win endgame where its best move is to minimize the damage to what's left of its own reputation and credibility. The worst move here would be to double-down on QE3, because if it failed to goose global markets in a sustained fashion, then the Fed's remaining credibility and "magic" would vanish in a puff of smoke.

Chairman Ben Bernanke telegraphed this in his recent testimony to Congress, in which he basically stated that the Fed had done all it could and there was little more it could do other than wave a dead chicken and chant a few old incantations. Though he dutifully repeated the standard reassurances, i.e. "There is always more monetary easing we can do," he was careful to lower expectations that such easing would accomplish anything.

His testimony was that of someone setting up CYA in a major way. (CYA = cover your behind from recrimination when things head south.)

3. The Fed's power rests not in the fabled printing press but in the invisible coin of trust. Now that its fallibility has been exposed, its power, i.e. the magical faith in the guaranteed efficacy of its actions, has been destroyed.

This cloak of invincibility is what generated its power, and now that its grand policy of rescuing the economy via monetary easing and "the wealth effect" have collapsed into smoking ruins, that cloak has been shredded.

The folks running the Fed are not stupid, though they may be profoundly misguided. If they announce a vast QE2-type "easing," they would be taking on a potentially fatal risk, as the entire blame for the coming debacle would fall squarely on the Fed. They know a QE2-type easing will fail, because they have undeniable evidence that QE2 failed.

In other words: since they know QE3 cannot revive the economy or the market, then why on earth would they bet the farm pursuing a policy that's doomed to fail? That would be a form of institutional suicide.

While doing nothing would expose them to political heat from politicos desperate to revive the economy by any means, the Fed is not about to step in front of the train just to satisfy inept congresspeople.

What is the least-risky course of action for the Fed? Announce some wimpy half-measures to dodge the accusation of doing nothing, but also avoid any grand QE3 measures which would shift the blame for the coming meltdown on the Fed.

The Fed is backed into a corner of the board where all the endgame choices are unsavory. The Fed squandered all its pawns, rooks and bishops in 2008, 2009 and 2010. Its political capital has been expended pursuing policies that failed to fix the financial causes of the 2008 meltdown and also failed to revive the Main Street economy. As of yesterday, the "wealth effect" created by a rising stock market has been gutted.

The Fed is on the defensive. When you're playing defense, trying to protect your King and Queen with a single Knight, the Grand Strategy is no longer an option.

...

The Fed bet the farm last August on QE2, and it lost. It no longer has the political capital or market credibility to make that sized bet again. It is on the defensive, and in survival mode. Big bets and grand gestures have no place in this endgame.

If You've Ever Owned An Old VW, You'll Want TO Watch This

My first couple of cars were '67 Bugs, which I drove from about 1982 to 2008.

This is a beautiful video tribute to old VW's.

Cool Photo

Seen here:

A Handy Formula

Instapundit:

HOW TO PREDICT YOUR SOCIAL SECURITY PAYOUT. If you’re 50 or under, try this methodology: Pick a number. Then subtract that number from itself. You’re done!

A Frank Exchange Of Views

Indeed.

If This Be Totalitarianism, Then Bring It On!

Instapundit:

Plus this: “Incidentally, nice bit of Orwellian doublethink to call the grass-roots, libertarian-oriented Tea Party ‘Totalitarian.’ This has to be the first ‘Totalitarian’ movement in the history of mankind that, if it gets everything it wants…will leave you the hell alone.”

"We?" Who Is This "We", Reporterette?

Her bias is showing, caught on tape during a Whitehouse press briefing.

"If It Doesn’t Work Out, It Will Not Be Because Of The Politics. It Will Be Because, Lacking The Will To Confront What Is Killing Us, We Were Already Doomed."

Dynamite Andre McCarthy piece, and one showing a lot more cojones than the rest of the pushovers at NRO.

What He Said

A commenter at NRO:

Ah yes, thank you Mr. Capretta, who represents the same careerist insiders with the same line... stand on no underlying principles whatsoever, compromise by caving in to the progressives, then declare victory and go home, all accompanied by marvelous nuanced political plays and ploys that exhibit the most erudite thinking of the cognoscenti.

Back in reality, let's talk about what will really happen: Reid will gut the bill and send it back to the House, daring the Repubs to do something about it. Obama will demagogue about the intransigent Republicans to not pass Reid's bill. The Old Left Media will pleasantly spin the issues his way as usual, and the great unwashed American voter (whoever that may be these days) will lap up the propaganda with nary a dissenting thought in their heads, in large part because the Repubs yet again exhibited no principled action, with the most logical conclusion being it was because they must not have had any underlying principles in the first place. The typical voting blocks living on the progressive plantation will then go marching merrily off to the voting booth in November and re-elect Obama and the Dems with a comfortable majority in the Senate, and increased power in the House.

Meanwhile, the doddering old fools who comprise the Boehner apologists will go off muttering into their beards about 'Rome wasn't built in a day', and 'psychology of the American voter', and 'wait until next year (next election, next decade, next century)'. Yes, I'm so glad this has all worked out for the best. And it will definitely trump those terrible Tea Partiers, such fanatics every one of them having the unmitigated gall to try to actually make meaningful change to this nation's march into the abyss.

"Obama Seems To Be Taking His Defeat In The 2012 Election Rather Well"

Is the title of this good read.

Pretty Darned Cavalier About Such A Sum

If you think that a $2T increase in the debt ceiling is no big deal, please try to remember that divided amongst 100 million taxpayers, this amounts to $20,000 apiece. And that's just an incremental increase to the overall debt, good for just over one year's worth of deficit spending.

Do you really think you're going to get your $20,000 dollars per year's worth? Do you see why this game is essentially over, not 20 years from now, but today, regardless of what sham the Capitol Hill crime syndicate manages to pass?

Socialism, We Hardly Knew Ye

Roger L. Simon:

President Obama’s been taking a lot of flak lately for not having a plan.

...

Well, the reason for the latter is simple: because he can’t. The minute the president evinces a budget plan, the game is up. No liberal budget will stand up to scrutiny. There is no money left for deficit spending in our aging society. The welfare state is kaput. It’s gone — probably for generations to come.

Of course, there’s always that canard about taxing the rich. That will save things. But the truth is even if you tax the rich at 100%, it barely sets back our entitlement crisis a year or two, while virtually bankrupting the few job creators who remain.

So no wonder Obama doesn’t have a plan. What would it be?

Rich Miniter put a fine point on it in a recent article for Forbes, “Why the Democratic Party is Doomed [2].”

The Democratic Party, as we have known it for the past 70 years, is now in its last days.

Yes, the House Republicans may raise the debt ceiling for a mix of spending cuts and revenue raisers. Yes, Barack Obama may win the 2012 presidential contest. Yes, bureaucrats and judges will continue to impose new and costly regulations on the economy.

But it doesn’t matter. The long-term trends are almost all bad news for the left wing of the party.

This week’s fight over raising the federal debt limit exposes a key weakness in the warfare-welfare state that has bestowed power onto the Democratic Party: Without an ever-growing share of the economy, it dies.

Miniter’s right. As an ex-lib, it almost makes me feel sorry for liberals. But I’m not because too many of them are still playing ostrich. One lib friend just sent me an email — I’m still somehow on her list — trumpeting a 1954 (!) quote from Eisenhower [3]: “Should any political party attempt to abolish social security, unemployment insurance, and eliminate labor laws and farm programs, you would not hear of that party again in our political history.”

I guess the implication here is that’s what Republicans are trying to do, when, especially in the case of Social Security, they are the only ones making a serious effort to save it (see Paul Ryan). But liberals must preserve their delusions — and actually not read the small print, in Ryan’s proposal or anybody else’s. After all, they are people with no plans. Why should anybody else have them?

Plans are dangerous because someone might scrutinize them. Someone might point out that Social Security was enacted in 1935, when life expectancy was 61.7 (It is now 77.9 and increasing), and, if it isn’t overhauled, it’s finished. No, you better stay away from these plans. Better to have vague theories and pronouncements. (No, I’m not going to say “hope and change,” but you know I was about to.)

All is not lost, however, in this most unPanglossian world. When you are finally able to shake free of liberal-statist ideas or, as Miniter explains, are forced to abandon them because the state itself is broke (not yet Greece, but close enough), you get a tremendous bonus: the pleasure of self-reliance.

When finally free from the bromides of their ultra-bourgeois ideology, even liberals realize you feel better when you do things for yourself. Most of us know from our own families and friends that the happiest people are those who have made their own way, not those who have had life handed to them, either by inheritance or from the state.

...

But time is on the side of our country and culture again. We are a giant boat finally turning in the right direction. Have patience — we will get there.

Atheists Can Be Just As Moral As Theists.

Not.

Good point by commenter over at Ilion's:

One 'trick' I'm particularly tired of is this: "Atheists are just as moral as theists, so you theists better say this if you want any dialogue with atheists." Except A) Who wants dialogue with atheists, particularly New Atheists who are bound by politics more than anything? And B) On what grounds do I say atheists are as moral as theists? My stock reply is, oh, so atheists are typically against abortion, gay marriage, premarital sex, and other things I view as immoral? And that usually seems to shut down that move, if only for that particular moment.

Indeed. And if the atheist manages to get those ones right, there is still the question of "Good according to whom?"

Atheists are--by definition--in violation of the Greatest Commandment, after all, no matter how well they do at the Second greatest commandment.

Adolph Hitler: "The Clergy Are Like Lice"

Did I say Hitler? My bad. I meant to say Myers.

But don't worry, give the atheists power and all will be sweetness, light, and universal brotherhood, as any militant atheist will tell you, and has been proven again and again and again in modern history.

So, Let Me See If I've Got This Right. Atheist Regimes Are Not Responsible For Genocide-Scale Mass Murder In The 20th Century, But Michele Bachmann Supporters Are Responsible For Teen Suicides.

Reason.

Destruction != Design

Gil Dodgen:

Where to begin? I’ll begin with two self-evidently wrong propositions of evolutionary theory.

1) Gradualism. Attempts to cram the fossil evidence into the gradualistic model display transparent desperation to make the evidence fit the theory. The fossil record testifies consistently and persuasively to three things: stasis, abrupt extinction, and abrupt appearance of new functional life forms. In addition, common sense argues that there is no gradualistic pathway for almost any biologically complex and functionally integrated system. A simple example is the avian lung. There is no conceivably logical gradualistic pathway from a reptilian bellows lung to an avian circulatory lung, because the intermediates would immediately die of asphyxiation.

Furthermore, attempts by Darwinists to explain away this kind of obvious problem strike ID folks — we consider ourselves, by the way, to be the real “free thinkers” concerning origins — as desperate attempts motivated by a desire to defend a theory in evidential and logical crisis.

2) The biologically creative evolutionary power of stochastic events filtered by natural selection.

This proposition is dead-simply, obviously, and empirically unreasonable (except in isolated pathological instances such as bacterial antibiotic resistance, in which case the probabilistic resources are available to allow informational degradation to provide a temporary survival advantage). Natural selection is irrelevant. Throwing out failed experiments does nothing to increase the creative power of random events. Simple combinatorial mathematics render the stochastic proposition completely unreasonable.

The two examples I’ve provided I find to be self-evidently wrong.

A commenter adds:

This proposition is dead-simply, obviously, and empirically unreasonable (except in isolated pathological instances such as bacterial antibiotic resistance, in which case the probabilistic resources are available to allow informational degradation to provide a temporary survival advantage).

This makes me think of taking a wrecking ball to a building and making a big hole. The building now has the advantage of a new entrance and improved ventilation. But the electrical systems are damaged and it is structurally less sound.

Is this clear evidence that a wrecking ball can add a new security system or self-repairing windows? Does it explain where the furniture came from? Who thinks that way?

Enough With The Wholly Disingenuous Talk Of Default From Both Parties, And Even The Conservative Press

I'm getting tired of this lie. Under the 14th Amendment, the government is not allowed to decide to default in lieu of being fiscally responsible. And common sense dictates that if for some reason the criminal syndicate on Capitol Hill does decide to unconstitutionally renege on making debt payments, then the entire big government game is finito for them, since the bond market will shun all new debt issuance.

In short: Enough! Stop talking pure nonsense!

Related to the overall topic is this comment by an Instapundit reader:

I’m worried. See if you follow my concern. Thus far the Democrats have proved intractable on these negotiations. But more than that, they seem to be living in denial as regards the national debt and more importantly the deficits. Right now we’re projecting deficits of 1.5 trillion every year for the next ten years. But those projections are based on growth rates of something like 3 – 3.5% from 2013 onwards. Which is unrealistic when you consider the current debt load plus piling on 1.5T more every year. It’s obvious that these projections are pure fantasy. They’re in denial about Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid sustainability and about Obamacare. They genuinely believed O-care was going to “bend the cost curve”! It’s ridiculous.

Now, we all know this. None of this is new information. What has me worried is the idea that the Democrats ACTUALLY DON’T UNDERSTAND THIS IS THE END OF THE ROAD. What if they actually aren’t capable of recognizing when they’ve lost? Or when we’ve run out of other people’s money? None of these people work for a living. Their concept of where money comes from and how wealth is created (and destroyed) is completely divorced from reality because they live in a government bubble. And the very small minority among them that do understand this from previous jobs and experience are okay with Progressive policies aimed at leveling/equalizing/delivering-economic-justice because they just assume that the economy can handle some siphoning. And usually it can. But not at this volume or for this time scale.

Here’s the position I think we may be in. We’ve been negotiating with the President and The Democrats in Congress on the assumption that they’re sane. It’s okay to play hardball with these guys because eventually, whether they like it or not, reality insists upon itself and they have to cave. It’s a painful process so you expect some tantrum throwing and caterwauling, but eventually they HAVE to accept reality. Except if they’re not sane. If they want five apples and there’s only two plus two but they CAN’T ACCEPT that two plus two equals four. Orwell wasn’t just writing a parable about the eventual end point of IngSoc. He was describing what human psychology can drive Ministers to inflict upon the populace for the sake of “justice”. I’m worried they’ll pull the trigger on default as just one more “political” step in the march towards freedom from want or whatever other principle they’re operating under. They’re playing this game as if they could win, as if taxes in a downturn are a good idea with benign consequences. As if debt equivalent to GDP is survivable for the world’s anchor economy/currency, let alone sustainable.

And so maybe, just maybe, Republican strategy (what little there is of it) has badly misread the opposition. Obama tried to add 400 billion in taxes to a deal he had already agreed with Boehner at the last minute. Boehner walks out cause Obama is negotiating in bad faith and has been all along, but what if Obama is actually incapable of good faith negotiation? I think right now that it’s actually possible we won’t see a deal at all. Because the Republicans are looking at the math and at reality and saying “Okay, Democrat demands can’t be serious because they can’t possibly work” and Democrats are looking at politics and how it works and saying “We don’t have to give in cause that’s not how you win these things. You pin it on the other guy politically and then reap the political dividends.” I wasn’t around for the start of WWI, but I get the feeling I understand Kennedy’s fascination with Tuchman’s Guns of August. I’m not talking about a shooting war, but about leaders overestimating and underestimating and just plain misjudging each other in a brinksmanship scenario. In short, it could be too late to do anything when people finally wake up. The crisis may have already arrived with an economic and fiscal momentum all it’s own that no amount of dealing or compromise or statesmanship can stop..

Also, let us note that Bill Clinton is urging the 14th Amendment, not as a reason to default, but as a reason for Obama to keep borrowing regardless of what Congress authorizes, so that kind of backs up my point, yes?

These commenters at Legal Insurrection spell out why Clinton's gambit probably wouldn't actually work:

I expect the Dems joker is the 14th Amendment ploy and I fully expect them to use it. Slick Willy said as much and there have been hints in other quarters.

...

The 14th amendment gimmick may not work. I’ve already seen commentary that some traders of government debt will avoid dealing in those cusips. Nobody wants to be stuck with paper that the courts could deem to be illegitimate because it wasn’t authorized by Congress.

A Fable (Cartoons)

All too true.

Welcome To Your Indentured Servitude

Charles Hugh Smith:

If we knock down all the flimsy screens of artifice and obscuring complexity, what we see in Europe is a continent of debt-serfs, indentured to the banks under the whip of the European Union and its secular religion, the euro.

...

Here is the fundamental fact: there are trillions of euros of debt which can never be paid back. In a non-feudal system, one in which the banks were not the Masters, then this fact would be recognized and acted upon: something like 50% of the debt would be written off in one fell swoop, all the banks whose assets had just been wiped out would be declared insolvent and liquidated, the remaining debt would be sized to the economic surplus of each debtor nation, and a new, decentralized banking sector of dozens of strictly limited, smaller banks would be established.

To the degree that is "impossible," Europe is nothing but a Neo-Feudal Kleptocracy serving its Banker Lords.

The Greek worker whose pay has been slashed in the "austerity" demanded by the banks serves the Banker Lords, as does the German worker who will be paying higher taxes to bail out Germany and France's Banker Lords. Though the German is constantly told he is bailing out Greece, the truth is Greece is just the conduit: he's actually bailing out the EU's Banker Lords.

We can clear up much of the purposeful obfuscation by asking: exactly what tragedy befalls Europe if all the sovereign debt in the EU was wiped off the books? The one and only "tragedy" would be the destruction of the "too big to fail" banks, not just in Europe but around the world. As the big European banks imploded, then their inability to service their counterparty obligations on various derivatives to other big banks would topple those lenders.

While the political vassals call that possibility a catastrophe, it would actually spell freedom for Europe's 500 million debt serfs. From the lofty heights of the Manor House, then the loss of enormously concentrated power and wealth is indeed a catastrophe for the Lords and their political lackeys. But for the debt-serfs facing generations of servitude for nothing, then the destruction of the banks would be the glorious lifting of tyranny.

...

In the old, horribly risky system of independent states and currencies, any bank foolish enough to loan vast sums to weak states and its citizenry would soon find the currency in which their loans were paid would weaken to the point that even if the loans were repaid in full, their losses would be crushing.

For example, say a bank loaned Greece 1 billion drachma when the drachma was equal in value to the U.S. dollar. The loan would thus be worth $1 billion. But let's say that by the time the loan was repaid, the drachma had fallen to 50 cents. Measured in dollars, the bank suffered a loss of 50%, even when the loan was paid in full.

The euro removed all that nasty risk, and created a massive vassal class of EU bureaucrats to enforce the rules and make good any defaulted debt via the European Central Bank (ECB), the supra-national lender that served the big banks as guarantor. Ultimately, the ECB was funded by the member states' taxpayers, which spread the costs of the arbitrage over such a large number of citizens that it seemed impossible that the guarantee could be broken.

But the Banker Lords got greedy, and they overshot the carrying capacity of the EU's economy by a trillion euros; the debt loads are now so enormous that the surplus skimmed from the debt-serfs isn't enough.

...

The cloak has been removed, and the bloodied whip is now visibly in hand. In a household analogy: your mortgage has been rolled over into a new form of servitude, and your wages have been cut even as your taxes have been raised to service your debt to the Banker Lords. The vassals are bowing and scraping before their Lords, promising deeper cuts and higher taxes; yes, Master, we will obey.

But this isn't enough, of course; the Lords are demanding the rings off the fingers of the debt-serfs, and the rights to sovereign assets; they are casting a covetous eye on the comely daughter as well, and we can fully expect a discreet demand to exercise droit du seigneur, a right befitting the Lords of the new Feudalism.

Now, That's A Cop

You'll want to watch this from beginning to end.

Yup

Instapundit:

LEFTISM DEFINED? “He prefers the inequality that comes from a government hierarchy, over inequality that comes from voluntary trade.” I always figure that people who feel this way do so because they think they’re better at sucking up to authority figures than at creating value on their own. And my guess is, they’re right about that.

Worth A Thousand Words

Seen here.

Wipe The Plutocrats Out (Financially)

Charles Hugh Smith:

A simple 8-point plan would restore both the banking and the real estate sectors, and end the political dominance of the parasitic "too big to fail" banks.

Craven politicos and clueless Federal Reserve economists are always bleating about how they want to fix the U.S. economy and restore "aggregate demand." OK, here's how to start:

1. Force all banks to mark all their assets to market at the end of each trading day, including all derivatives of all types, including over-the-counter instruments.

2. Allow citizens to discharge all mortgage and student loan debt in bankruptcy court, just like any other debt.

3. Banks must mark all their real estate to market weekly as defined by "last sales of nearby properties" adjusted for square footage and other quantifiable measures (i.e. like Zillow.com).

4. Require mortgage servicers and all owners of mortgage-backed securities to mark every asset within each pool to market weekly.

5. Any mortgage, loan or note which was fraudulently originated, packaged and sold, including the misrepresentation of risk, the manipulation of risk ratings, fraudulent documentation by any party, etc., will be discharged as uncollectable and the full value wiped off the books and title records without recourse by any of the parties.

If a bank fraudulently originated a mortgage and the buyer misrepresented material facts on the mortgage documents, then both parties lose all claim to the note and the underlying asset, the house, which reverts to the FDIC for liquidation, with the proceeds going towards creditors' claims against the bank.

6. Any bank which misrepresents marked-to-market asset values will be fined $10 million per incident.

7. Any bank which is insolvent at the end of a trading day will be closed and taken over by the FDIC the following day, and liquidated in an orderly manner via open-market auctions of all assets, including REO (real estate owned).

8. All derivative positions held by the insolvent bank will be unwound immediately, and counterparties who fail to make good on their claims will also be closed, given to the FDIC and liquidated.

You know what this is, of course: a return to trustworthy, transparent accounting. And you know what the consequences would be, too: all five "too big to fail" banks would instantly be declared insolvent, and most of the other top-25 big banks would also be closed and liquidated.

At least $3 trillion in impaired residential mortgage debt would be written off, maybe more, and $1 trillion in impaired commercial real estate would also be written down. Derivative losses are unknown, but let's estimate it's at least $1 trillion and maybe much more.

If $5.8 trillion of fantasy "value" is wiped off the nation's books, that's only a 10% reduction in net household and non-profit assets, which total $58 trillion. Even an $11 trillion hit would only knock off 20%. If that's reality, if that's what the assets are really worth in the real world, then let's get it over with. Once we've restored truthful accounting and stopped living a grand series of debilitating lies, then the path will finally be clear for renewed growth.

The net result would be the destruction of the political power of the "too big to fail" banks, the clearing of the nation's bloated, diseased real estate market, and the restoration of trust in institutions which have been completely discredited.

Bank credit would flow again, and we could insist on a healthy competitive system of 250 small banks instead of a corrupting system of 5 insolvent parasitic monsters and 20 other bloated but equally insolvent financial parasites.

Those who lied would finally get fried. At long last, those who misprepresented income, risk, etc. would actually pay some price for their malfeasance. Criminal proceedings would be a nice icing on the cake, but simply ending the pretence of solvency would go a long way to restoring banking and real estate and ending regulatory capture by TBTF banks.

What's the downside to such a simple action plan? Oh boo-hoo, the craven politicos would lose their key campaign contributors. On the plus side, the politicos could finally wipe that brown stuff off their noses.

It Is, Indeed, A Red State Hell-Hole

William Jacobson:

Why are there homeless people in San Francisco?

As you know, I’m visiting here. And one thing I’ve noticed is that there are quite a few homeless people.

Why are the people of San Francisco so heartless? They must all be Tea Party supporters.

Why don’t the politicians here care about the poor? They must be Republicans.

How can citizens just walk by without helping? Probably too busy with their capitalism.

San Francisco is a beautiful city, but I don’t know if I could live in such a heartless, Republican, capitalistic place.

"We're Not About To Throw Away The Rest Of The Picture"

Great post at Rick's.

Link

Sad, But True

Michael Egnor:

The damage that the Democratic party has done to racial relations and to the black family in America is incalculable. The KKK could only dream of destroying the black family and making black neighborhoods incubators of crime and misery. But perhaps the KKK did accomplish it anyway, via the party to which it was always violently loyal.

This explains the racial policies of the modern Democratic party: several decades ago, the Democratic party realized that black people were more valuable in a voting booth than on a tree limb.

Bravo!

Edward Feser hits it out of the park with this one.

And some input by commenters on the abject-stupidity-fest in progress over at Jerry Coyne's place:

A quote from Bertrand Russell, of all people, accurately sums up 90% of the comments over on Coyne's blog: "A stupid man's report of what a clever man says is never accurate because he unconsciously translates what he hears into something he can understand."

...

Amusingly, while commentators in the one Coyne thread are trying to deny causation - no first cause if no causation! - commentators on another Coyne thread are exalting causation in order to deny free will.

Being A Learned Scientist Does Not Mean You Are Not Philosophically Insane

Case in point.

Intellectual Pygmies "Discuss" Aquinas

Edward Feser give it the old college try, and this is the result.

Bring It

Charles Hugh Smith:

1970 + 40 = 2010: That takes us to the present. Right now the nation is wallowing self-piteously in a fetid trough of denial and adolescent rage/magical thinking that the nation's bogus, debt-based "prosperity" has crashed and cannot be restored, though Ben Bernanke and the clueless "leaders" the citizenry has fecklessly elected keep trying to glue Humpty Dumpty back back together again.

Unfortunately, all they've accomplished is to glue their own fingers together.

The "too big to fail" banks and Corporate Cartels effectively own the Federal machinery of governance, the Savior State's fiefdoms are expanding their reach and power like uncontrollable cancers, and the "leadership"--mostly self-glorifying. grossly incompetent, self-absorbed, greedy Baby Boomers, but with a few equally clueless 40-somethings present just to prove that age is no protection against self-delusion and supreme greed-- has resolved to surrender to the Financial Power Elites and State fiefdoms, and fiddle around with "extend and pretend" strategies until they can exit the stage with bulging bags of swag.

Their only goal is to not be the one blamed when the whole corrupt contraption finally collapses under its own weight. If there was ever a more pathetic, corrupt, cowardly and incompetent set of "leaders" in the nation's history, they must have done their skimming during periods of relative prosperity. Now we need real leaders, not TV-ready simulacra spouting bloated slogans that contain the magic word "change."

Gen X and Gen Y, this is your "lights, camera, action!" call, if not for political power, then for a cultural revolution. I for one am ready for a Fifth Awakening, a Cultural Revolution, and a restoration of self-rule and the real, non-financialized economy.

100%

How about you?

College educators got 55%, the general population, 49%.

Via Vox Day.

We Are Not Worthy Of Him

Peter Wehner:

At one point I thought it could be attributed to an unusual degree of cynicism, but now I wonder if it goes deeper than that. What I have in mind is President Obama’s obsession with portraying himself as our moral superior. Virtually every time he speaks these days, we are treated to another journey through what William Makepeace Thackeray aptly dubbed Vanity Fair.

For example, if you listened to the president’s news conference today, a theme we are by now wearily familiar with was repeated with numbing repetition: Obama, according to Obama, is quite simply better, much better, than those around him. He is a man of pure motives and unparalleled reasonableness, extraordinary intellectual depth, and unsurpassed seriousness. Others are driven by narrow self-interest, by the political calendar, by outside pressures. They are too ignorant or too weak to do the right thing, the good thing, the hard thing.

Not Obama.


Members of Congress, from both parties, are trapped by their own ideological predispositions. Obama, according to Obama, is not. He is free from bias, able to see reality whereas others merely see shadows. It is not easy to be Obama in a fallen world.

Politics tends to draw into its orbit people who are inordinately impressed with themselves and caught up in excessive self-love. But in Barack Obama we have stumbled across someone unlike anyone we have seen before. This is a man, after all, who believed he had it within his powers to heal the planet and reverse the ocean tides. And as the hopes and dreams of his 2008 campaign continue to crash down around him — as his popularity wanes, as some of his most worshipful followers turn from him, as he is unable to extract himself from the results of his failed policies — his narcissism seems to grow, not diminish. It is hard to tell where this will all end. But I suspect it won’t be pretty. Watching what happens to those who fall in love with their own reflection rarely is.

Through The Looking Glass

Jerry Coyne is an utter fool. Edward Feser shows why, with a table-turning though experiment.

It's A Complete Mystery

The NYT wonders why certain things are not covered by the NYT. Rest assured, though, it has nothing to do with the NYT.

Link

Quip Of The Week

Here:

These days, when the President says that we have to "eat our peas", I no longer know whether he's offering a metaphor or invoking the Commerce Clause.

Atheist Slap Fight

There are some reasonable atheists (at least sometimes). One of them reads the others the riot act.

Give Them What They Agitatetd For. Good And Hard.

Heh.

The Shape Of Things To Come

Good Charles Hugh Smith piece.

We Need More Like Him

Rubio:

Let’s stop talking about new taxes and start talking about new taxpayers, which means jobs. This debt is the No. 1 issue on everyone’s minds and rightfully so. It is a major issue, but everywhere else, in the real world, the No. 1 issue on people’s minds is jobs. And I tell you, every other problem facing America — a mortgage crisis, a home foreclosure crisis, this debt problem — all of these issues get easier to deal with if people are gainfully employed across America. And the impact that unemployment is having across this country is devastating. …

Our job here [in Congress] is to do everything we can to make it easier for them to find a job, not harder. And I think that’s what we have to do when it comes to ‘a balanced approach’ and when we talk about revenue. We don’t need new taxes, we need new taxpayers, people who are gainfully employed, making money, paying into the tax system and then we need a government that has the discipline to take that additional revenue and use it to pay down the debt and never grow it again. …

So you look at all these taxes that are being proposed and here’s what I say: I say we should analyze every single one of them through the lens of job creation, issue No. 1 in America. I want to know which one of these taxes they’re proposing will create jobs. I want to know how many jobs will be created by the planes tax. I want to know how many jobs will be created by the oil company tax that I’ve heard so much about. How many jobs are created by going after the millionaires and billionaires that the president talks about? I want to know! How many jobs do they create? …

I traveled the state of Florida for two years campaigning. I have never met a job creator who told me that they were waiting for the next tax increase before they started growing their business. I’ve never met a single job creator who has ever said to me I can’t wait ’til government raises taxes again so I can go out and create a job. I’m curious to know if they say that in New Hampshire because they don’t say that in Florida. So my view on all that is, I want to know how many of these tax increases the president proposes will create because if they’re not creating jobs and they’re not creating new taxpayers, they’re not solving the problem.

Hear, Hear

Mark Shea:

The Age of Unreason

Everybody is familiar with the pop culture drama and comedy caricature of the fundamentalist preacher or rigid authoritarian priest who, possessing special knowledge his tribe trembles at, pops off about things he doesn’t understand.

He turns up in popular entertainment all the time, denouncing people as witches for building some gadget (a popular theme in time travel stories), or confidently murdering Copernicus (if you are a Dan Brown sucker) or thumping a Bible and howling about fake moon landings. The Ignorant Religious Popinjay so beloved by the Manufacturers of our pop culture dramas and comedies about Science vs. Religion is always treated like The Authority on Everything by gullible doofuses who follow him because they think that his mastery of the one class of information they value makes him a master of all classes of information they know nothing about. That’s the agitprop continually pounded into our heads by modernity: The Middle Ages (we are told) was that time when those who were masters of mystic hoodoo about the Faith were likewise anointed masters of Science and enabled to hold back Progress for centuries with their ignorant anti-science prattle until our Age of Reason dawned. It’s a beloved and venerable lie, rebutted again and again by real historians of science such as Fr. Stanley Jaki. But it remains a lie believed by millions at this hour.

The irony, of course, is that if any age should be called the Age of Unreason, it’s ours. It proceeds precisely by taking people who know a lot about one thing and anointing them Masters of Everything. It is further complicated by the fact that many of our contemporaries worship their intellects rather than use them. They “know” what the “know” because they uncritically regurgitate something some “expert” on television said was “the assured results of Science”. Case in point: the adulation and respect still being accorded the increasingly weird and ignorant remarks of physicist Stephen Hawking. Here he is, delivering the verdict from Mt. Sinai that God did not create the Universe:

“Because there is a law such as gravity, the Universe can and will create itself from nothing. Spontaneous creation is the reason there is something rather than nothing, why the Universe exists, why we exist.”

Classic. There is a law of gravity. It’s just there. Therefore this is no Legislator. Like he knows. He is a guy in a lab coat—a technician who knows a great deal about how the lights in the metaphysics classroom work. That doesn’t qualify him to tromp into the metaphysics class and bawl, “I don’t see the point of this junk.” And yet, that’s just what he’s doing, to the awed applause of suckers who, while denouncing the Old Man in Rome as an authoritarian ignoramus, will simultaneously declare “Hawking said it. I believe it. That settles it.”

...

If The GOP Had An Ounce Of Cleverness

They'd do this:

WANT NEW SOURCES OF REVENUE? If I were a Republican member of Congress, I’d be proposing big excise taxes on movie tickets, DVDs, CDs, digitial movie and music downloads, etc. Then let Hollywood scream about how the tax increase would destroy American jobs. . . .

Melee

This is highly amusing. A picnic turns into a frank and sincere exchange of political/economic views.

Asinine Trope. Refuted Thusly.

“I contend that we are both atheists. I just believe in one fewer god than you do. When you understand why you dismiss all the other possible gods, you will understand why I dismiss yours.”- Stephen Roberts

(as cited here)

"I just believe in one more God than you do.... When you understand why I don't dismiss my God, you will understand why I do dismiss all the others." - SteveK

(as cited here)

Ignorance, Schooled.

Nicely done.

Bumper Sticker

Here.

Slammed

Excellent post re: a certain raving Science!-worshiping bigot.

No Honor Among Thieves

Some excellent Charles Hugh Smith.

Link

Now, That's Succinct!

Mish:

There is not a damn thing that public unions workers can do cheaper or better than private industry. Taxpayers foot the bill for the difference.

Moral Hazard

Nice and short, as good as an explanation of moral hazard as you're going to find.

Link

Egnor Hits This One Out Of The Park

Amen.

It's A Complete Mystery

A real puzzler:

JAMES TARANTO: The ‘Jim Crow’ Lie: How could asking for ID be discriminatory only when it comes to voting?

Today railroads and hotels, along with almost all providers of public accommodations in almost all circumstances, are prohibited from discriminating on the basis of race. So what happens when you ride on Amtrak, the government-subsidized railroad? You hear an announcement over the PA system advising you to be prepared to show your identification if the conductor asks to see it.

Likewise, these days there is a good chance you will be asked for identification when you check into a hotel. You need ID to board an airplane or to drive a car. Recently we visited a doctor whose office is in a hospital. Just to enter the premises, we needed to present ID to a security guard.

If black people have trouble producing identification, how come nobody ever claims that these requirements are discriminatory?

Another important aspect of civil rights is equal employment opportunity. Under the 1986 immigration law, when you are hired for a job, you are required to provide your employer with documents proving both your identity and your citizenship or legal residency. How come nobody ever claims these requirements discriminate against blacks?

Because ACORN isn’t involved in faking things up there.

Something To Keep In Mind

Michael Egnor:

Atheists are an amusing coterie. They are the least persecuted group in history; Christians, Jews, Buddhists, Muslims have died in the thousands and millions for their beliefs. The 20th century is the most horrible century for Christian martyrs. The Holocaust is the paradigm of human evil. Buddhists have been persecuted systematically in many nations. Muslims were slaughtered in the Crusades.

Anti-atheist pogroms? Can you name one? Of course not. The reality is that atheists have rarely been the target of organized violence or supression. SInce the French Revolution, the Reign of Terror, and Communism, atheism has been the most prolific perpetrator of violence in human history. No other ideoogy comes close. State atheism- from the Reign of Terror to Lenin to Stalin to Mao to Pol Pot to Kim Jung Il- killed more people each week of the past century than the Spanish Inquisition killed in 300 years.

When He's On, He's On

Some excellent Jon Stewart.

There Can't Be Bias, Because The Deals Are Separate!

Google's idea of fairness:

Google: Built for Favoritism? While denying Google had offered the Obama campaign a special ad deal, company spokesman Jake Parrillo advanced this defense:

Parrillo told POLITICO that the Republican and the Democratic political ad sales teams at Google are kept separate and are unaware of the other side’s projects or deals.

How does that make the situation better? It seems to make it worse. Maybe one team give the Dems good deals and the other gives the GOP bad deals! But because they never talk to each other they never find out (and never have to consciously decide to favor one party over the other–or decide whether to blow the whistle on those who do). Maybe only the Obama supporters at the top of Google know, and they approve.

Chesterton Quote

Seen here:

“Democracy means government by the uneducated, while aristocracy means government by the badly educated.” — G. K. Chesterton.

Indeed

Vox Day:

I hope you all enjoyed the brief, but glorious Anthropogenic Global Warming/Climate Change era, as it appears Science (ever to be praised, never to be doubted) has now changed her mind again and the Earth is going to be getting colder. But this time it's not Man's fault, but rather the Sun's.

What may be the science story of the century is breaking this evening, as heavyweight US solar physicists announce that the Sun appears to be headed into a lengthy spell of low activity, which could mean that the Earth – far from facing a global warming problem – is actually headed into a mini Ice Age.

...

But whether the Earth is headed for a mini Ice Age or a maxi Heat Age, we can be certain of one thing. The only possible solution recommended by Science will involve handing over more money and political power to whatever government authority pays the salaries of the scientists involved.

If They Weren't A Bunch Of Castrati, This Is What They Would Do

Jay Tea:

Finally, a lot of Democrats are calling for Congressman Anthony Weiner to resign his seat. On the other hand, a lot of them are calling for an "ethics investigation." (Which translates to "give us six months for this to die down, then we'll scold you and pretend it never happened.")

I hope he doesn't.

I hope he stays in office and completes his term.

Because I want to hang that SOB around their necks.

For years, the Democrats were proud as punch to have Weiner be one of their biggest mouths, their attack dog, their face of fierce, confrontational liberalism. He was their "loose cannon," their bomb-thrower, and they loved him for it.

But once he was caught, they still backed him. They bought into and parroted his lies and alibis and excuses. Then, when that started falling apart (thank you, Andrew Breitbart), they started hemming and hawing. They started wimping out, saying that "it's up to his constituents to judge" and "we think there should be an Ethics Committee invesigation."

Sorry, that game ain't gonna play out that way.

If I were advising Speaker Boehner, here's the game plan.

It's too late to oppose granting Weiner's request for a leave of absence so he can get treatment for being such an ass****. So, from this point, it's time to make certain that the Democrats own Weiner.

When the vote comes up for the Ethics Committee investigation, all Republicans vote "present." Then bring up an expulsion vote, and do the same damned thing. Explain that they want to give the Democrats the opportunity to take out their own trash.

And when that fails, then start up the campaign literature. Every single Democrat who campaigned with Weiner, gave him money or took money from him, who made any kind of joint appearance with the guy, gets Weinered. Run pictures of Weiner with the Democrat, then a few selections from Weiner's self-portraits. Turn every race into an art gallery showing, with the theme of "Democrats' Pride."

And, if Weiner had the slightest sense of integrity (a very doubtful proposition), he'd admit that it's exactly the kind of thing he would do if he had the chance.

Welcome To South Africa

Phi Beta Cons:

Disgusting Little Boxes

If you want to be disgusted, take a look at the front-page story in today’s New York Times, “On College Forms, a Question of Race, or Races, Can Perplex.” It’s about how selective colleges and universities are wrestling with the problem of how to deal with applicants who check more than one box for race and ethnicity: which mixes are to be most favored, whether it’s better to be mixed or pure, what do to about students who refuse to check any box, and how to tell if a student is really sincere in his or her self-identification or is just “gaming” the system. Now, maybe it’s just me, but I think a lot of people will find it really sickening to read about how these politically correct educrats sit around and give a thumbs-up or a thumbs-down to an 18-year-old based on his racial and ethnic mix. As for “gaming” the system, were we supposed to lament the fact that a black applicant 100 years ago might try to pass for white? I think our condemnation then and now should be more concentrated on the racially discriminatory system itself rather than on those who tried or try to game it.

What Color Is The Sky On Neptune, Axelrod?

If he really believes this he's a sorry creature, if he doesn't then woe to him:

As I pointed out in a post earlier today, when on John King’s CNN show yesterday, Obama strategist David Axelrod offered up this whopper, “This president was scrutinized, more perhaps than any candidate ever had been.”

Sit Yo' Ass Down, Judge Sumi!

Eat this, unions.

Dark Humor

Mark Shea:

Why Euthanasia is Coming

It wasn't enough for Generation Narcissus to slaughter it's young in vast numbers. Now, with all those missing wage earners, you serfs in Gen X and Y must be sentenced to perpetual servitude to pay for us to continue to live in the manner we've become accustomed. Respect your elders, slaves!

Wait! Why are you looking at me that way? Stop stepping on my air hose!

Stupid Is As Stupid Does

Heh:

I stopped trying to debate Libs, and now I just go straight for the jugular.

The conversations usually goes something like this:

“I can’t quantify how stupid Palin is. I can to a reasonable degree quantify how stupid Obama is.

He thinks there are 57 states (plus 2 more), and that the “P” is enunciated in the word “Corpsman “. But lest I seem too petty, he also thought giving 1 Trillion dollars to cash starved state and local governments, and widening roads in front of empty shops would stimulate the economy.

I can also most certainly quantify how stupid Obama supporters are.

They voted for a candidate that had: No executive experience, no management experience, no diplomatic experience, no military experience, no private sector business experience,

He never stayed up late trying to figure out how to meet payroll, and he never closed out the register at the end of the night shift.

He has no published academic works, and his litigation experience consisted of a handfull of cases in small claims court.

His true claim to fame consisted of working for an organization that pressured banks into giving stuff to consumers who could not afford it...

And you voted for him…. Who's the idiot again?!?!?

At that point, I calmly walk away under a barrage of F-Bombs.

Great White Hope To Great White Father To Great White Elephant To Great White Shark

This is outstanding. The lifecycle of progressivism.

A Principle Unequally Applied Is Not A Principle

More hi-jinks:

BLOG COMMENT OF THE DAY: “The Washington Post thinks it’s ‘harassment’ to request Michael Mann’s files from the University of Virginia (their Memorial Day editorial) but it’s cool with requesting and obtaining and asking for citizen-journalists to go through 24,000 of the State of Alaska’s emails involving Sarah Palin.”

He Absolutely Nails It

Maleager:

I don’t understand why natural selection is a help when trying to acquire targets of high specific function. All natural selection does is end pathways; it doesn’t create them and it has no knowledge of where such targets might exist, nor any knowledge of the best path to get there.

Since many pathways that lead to highly functioning macroevolutionary targets might in fact go down roads that natural selection would prevent, it seems to me that adding natural selection to the system can’t do anything but decrease the chances of acquiring the targets.

Often people use strings of letters to represent the evolutionary process, as if the best pathway from random letters to “Methinks it is a weasel” is to simply change letter slots randomly until one locks in the sentence; but that’s not a valid way of looking at it, when those letters generate real-world, 3-D designs that can cause the organism to be selected against.

If there are X amount of pathways to achieve a macro-evolutionary feature, all natural selection can do is remove a set of those pathways from being operable. Those left may or may not even be able to reach the goal; the only availabe pathway might in fact be through an area censored by natural selection – IOW, “you can’t get there from here”.

If there was unlimited room, and unlimited resources, it seems to me that a random walk unhindered by natural selection would have a better chance at gaining macroevolutionary outcomes when one doesn’t know whether or not that outcome is even possible via steps that natural selection would allow.

Sure, we might have a bunch of organisms with malformed, dysfunction,non-functional wings that make it really hard for them to survive, but we’d at least have a better shot at acquiring “working wings” if evolution allowed every step to succeed,instead of only those that could be locally and immediately justified in survival terms.

He expresses this much better than the comments I left:

Meleagar (at comment 6),

You have nailed it precisely. The materialists would have us believe that natural selection is a probability enhancer, when, in fact (since all it is is death), it is a probability reducer.

After all, an ensemble of monkeys isn’t going to reach Hamlet faster if you continually machine-gun some substantial fraction of them.

It should be blindingly obvious, but there are many who do not want to see it.

...

Differential reproduction equates to differential destruction. Destruction is not construction.

The point is this: if one were to calculate probabilities of reaching a particular function via random variation based on no constraints of competition and no natural selection, where organisms are free to breed and reproduce their heart’s content, with no culling of the herd, those probabilities are going to be better, not worse, than if natural selection (i.e. death, i.e. differential destruction) were operating.

Again: obvious.

Well Stated

Allahpundit:

Cliche thought it may be, in this case it’s really not about the sex. (It may end up being about the sex depending upon Patterico’s next post(s) in this series, but it isn’t yet.) What it’s about is a guy in a position of power having a grip on reality so weak that he thought he might be elected mayor of America’s biggest city despite tweeting photos of his rod to random women around the country. When the average politician is unfaithful, as sleazy and shameful as his behavior may be, there’s usually at least some rational precaution taken to keep from being found out. With Weiner, it’s the opposite — photographic evidence, perfectly preserved and duplicable via the Internet, generated by him without so much as the minimal precaution of making sure that his face isn’t captured in any of the photos. You don’t have to find his behavior immoral to think, “Gee, maybe this guy, who’s clearly willing to do almost anything to impress his admirers, shouldn’t be trusted with sensitive government responsibilities.” Even now, after two weeks of saturation coverage, some of his Democratic colleagues are marveling that “I don’t think he understands how bad this is.” Of course he doesn’t. Name one fact adduced about him over the past two weeks that would make you think he has a realistic sense of anything that relates to his own ambition. For cripes sake, we’ve reached the point where Bill Clinton is allegedly frustrated that he won’t step down.

I do like the implication from this morning’s Post story, though, that Weiner needs to stick around in Congress because he has no marketable job skills to make it in the real world. That’s a perfect microcosm of our political class these days — clammy, corrupt, removed from its subjects to the point that it couldn’t survive among them if it had to, and yet somehow entitled to govern them. What a unique skill set Weiner has, huh? He’s incapable of doing anything except (a) peppering liberal talking points with soundbite-worthy wisecracks and (b) crafting the laws everyone else has to live by. Oh, and (c) snapping photos of his bare ass and e-mailing them out.

The Moral Of The Saga

AJ Strata:

The moral of the saga hit home when I watched a schizoid Democrat mouth piece on one of the evening shows start with sanity and end in the gutter. She started by admitting she was of two minds on the matter. She recognized the obvious discomfort of parents. Parents don’t want people in power using that power for self indulgence purposes, especially when that power comes from the people in a government leadership position. Even more so when the indulgence borders on the edge of sexual predator type behavior. Sending porn through email is just not something I want Congress doing to my daughters – I don’t care what the age. At this point she was making sense.

From this obvious and honorable perch, our Democrat operative pivoted to then admire Wiener. As a Democrat Party apparatchik, she felt his actions were minor and he did not need to pay any penalties. She was more worried his actions would undermine the fiction that only good emanates from the government – sullying the white knights fighting the private sector (i.e., the rest of the country).

And herein lies the problem for the Democrats. It seems we have been expecting the paragons of virtue and salvation in the government to be better than those evil corporate leaders. But they aren’t. Not only are they as greedy, corrupt and clearly distracted with personal indulgences which take priority over the needs of the nation, we cannot even object when they abuse their responsibility. Wiener says he did nothing wrong, which is laughable. He did so many things that were wrong it is mind boggling. But the protectors of the left’s flank claim it is wrong for us to require a standard of conduct. How conveniently confused.

But he did do one thing right – he tore apart the facade that government bureaucracies are run by wise saints, obsessed with doing for others. That is so laughable now, it is amazing the left has not seen how ridiculous their claims of bureaucrat solutions have become. Government is 80% incompetent. It wastes money by the mountain and produces failure. It experiments with societal balances (like who can responsibly own a home) and wipes out the savings of a generation. There are too few good jobs in America, and too many senior citizens working to stay afloat – all because liberals played God with home ownership (while lining their pockets with loan fees and bailouts). With their power over every aspect of society, the self absorbed and arrogant bureaucrat can do more damage than most private sector managers could ever do. Bernie Madoff was bad, but the left’s ponzi schemes like Medicare and Expanded Home Ownership destroyed millions of lives.

Wiener is the poster child for why Obamacare is going to destroy this nation’s healthcare. He is a leading voice in government run solutions. He is a leader in the government. He embodies the idea of government over the private sector. And look what he did with his time and energy. He was a sexual predator who destroyed his new marriage and clearly had little time for much else. He is mouthy and arrogant – not self sacrificing and able to produce a service or good of value.
The Democrat talking head also did us a favor. She showed us that she was willing to sacrifice her motherly concerns for the party’s power. She was willing to throw all of it away to help Anthony “the Package” stay in office. A choice almost no one else I would wager would be willing to make. Sorry, if it comes down to the health of my children, keeping them away from sex obsessed older men and women, or some pol’s job – the pol takes a hike into the dustbin of history.

We have seen not only the results of liberal policies run amok (deep and broad fiscal disaster, illegal wars, oppressive and intrusive government ‘authorities’), we have also seen their motivations. And these people are not saints – far from it. Neither are the people in the private sector evil incarnate.

These wildly exaggerated constructs from the left are what is required to sustain their delusion. They cannot be equals to the free market types – equally flawed, equally weak, equally morally handicapped. If this were true, then there is no reason to believe their world view, based on indulgence and handouts, is way better than hard work and sacrifice.

Because when you get down to it, that sounds like a bunch of immature nonsense. Only the idea that they sit at the right hand of goodness, and that corporations are equal to the Nazis, can over shadow such dribble. Which is why they continue to become unbalanced in their obsession with government running everything.

A truly eye opening and momentum changing epiphany – and the moral of the Wiener saga.

Triumphantly Proclaiming "At Least We're Not Hypocrites" Means You're Something Much Worse

Very good observations.

Absolutely Refusing To Be Pinned Down

The commenter Meleagar/William J. Murray (he's using both handles in the discussion) does an absolutely masterful job of arguing with some good natured pro-Darwinists in this thread.

As summed up by another commenter:

A Darwinist (D) having a conversation with an ID proponent (ID)

D: Naturalistic forces are sufficient for producing biodiversity.

ID: Can you provide any evidence to support your claim?

D: It’s all over the place.

ID: Could you point me to one of those places?

D: Well, sure if you insist. Here is the evidence for Macro Evolution.

ID: Please try to focus. We are not talking about Macro Evolution. The issue is whether or not naturalistic forces are “sufficient” to produce it.

D: Please tell me why you think an intelligent agent was responsible.

ID: Again, I must ask you to stay on topic. We are discussing your claim, not mine.

D: I believe that my neo-Darwinistic theory is adequate. Eventually, matter in motion will produce life and leave the appearance of design, even though that design is not real.

ID: I understand that you believe in the neo-Darwinism paradigm, but I am asking you if you have any good reasons for believing in it.

D: ID is not a rigorous science.

ID: ID is rigorous enough that its proponents can produce empirical evidence that lends itself to scientific measurement. Do you have any empirical, measurable evidence to support your position?

D: Please define “information.”

ID: I will be happy to do that at another time, but I am, at the moment, interested in finding out if you can make a rational case for your argument.

D: I think evolutionary processes resemble intentional intelligent processes very closely.

ID. That is an interesting claim, but I am still hoping that you will defend your original claim, which you seem to have forgotten.

D: Well, if you must know, I find the Darwinistic explanation more parsimonious?

ID: But do you have any reason to believe that this parsimonious explanation reflects reality or is consistent with the evidence?

D: Yes, thousands of scientists believe it.

ID: But that is precisely what all the fuss in about. Those scientists, like you, cannot support their beliefs, which is why we are having this discussion.

D: Well, I’ve been busy, and I’ve slightly lost track of the challenge. But yes, I do think that unintelligent processes can generate intelligent ones. I don’t see any good a priori reason to think they couldn’t.

ID: But do you have any evidentially-based reasons for believing that?

D: I have already presented the evidence?

ID: Again, you have presented summaries of arguments on behalf of Common Descent? You have not, in any way, presented an argument to support the proposition that naturalistic forces can take life through all the taxonomic levels or produce even one new body plan.

D: Please define “naturalistic forces.”

ID: They are what you thought they were when you said they were “sufficient.”

Darwinists are fun. You have to love it!

90 Pound Weaklings Throwing Their Weight Around

Very astute and entertaining analysis of the modern union menace.

Link

"Worship Is Blasphemy To Atheists. Why Are We Enforcing The Blasphemy Requirements Of ANY Religion?"

Says a commenter to this post.

Cartoon Summation

This nails it.
Idiots are as idiots do.

The Triumph Of The Human Spirit

Some Friday inspiration.

Predators

A most excellent Charles Hugh Smith piece.

You Have To Get The Players Right

Instapundit:

WILL AMERICA SEE EUROPE-STYLE RIOTS? Newsweek sounds hopeful, but in America, unlike Europe, it’s usually the taxpayers who are behind the revolutions, not the parasites.

UPDATE: Reader William Stoddard emails:

I have to say I find the 18th-century analogy that Newsweek offers fairly plausible; it’s one of my possible historical models. But I think they have the actors wrong. Consider what things were like in France under the ancien régime, the dominant Great Power of the time:

* Rule by two cooperative elites, the noblesse d’epée and the noblesse du robe, the latter of whom were the intellectual, political, and legal class of the day, with both groups profiting from massive government subsidies and tax exemptions denied to the commoners

* Massively unbalanced government budgets, with the rulers spending money several years before they collected it in taxes

* Early experiments with printing-press money under John Law, which gave rise to the South Sea Bubble, which was, I believe, the first to be called by that name

If we are headed for revolutionary times, I have my own theory as to who will be the aristos fleeing from the embrace of Mme. la Guillotine: the people who’ve visibly profited from their control of government offices and budgets.

Indeed.

It's Scientific. If You're An Atheist You Must Be A Leftist.

Case closed.

Facing The Music

Denninger:

Here we go.....

"I am forced to speak openly," Damanaki was quoted as saying in a statement by the semi-official Athens News Agency. "Either we agree with our lenders to a programme of tough sacrifices ... or we return to the drachma."

Do it.

Here's what happens if they do:

The Drachma would be devalued against the Euro. Sovereign debt denominated in the Euro would be recast into Drachmas, instantly haircutting them by whatever the devaluation is.

The Eurozone folks will scream. No matter; what enforcement mechanism to prevent this do the ECB and Eurozone folks have have? None, other than an armed invasion. And therein lies the solution for Greece - their external debt which has become impossible to pay suddenly becomes payable, as it's cut by 20, 30, even 50% overnight. This is a forced restructuring crammed down the creditor's throats.

Greece is forced to cut spending to match their tax revenues as borrowing will remain prohibitively expensive. This has to happen anyway - everywhere, not just in Greece. Doing that is going to suck. There's no avoiding the fact that it is going to suck nor is what has to happen avoidable on an indefinite forward basis. The sooner Greece runs a primary surplus the sooner the damage stops compounding.

To those who claim this sort of adjustment is "unjust", please square it with what Obama did to GM bondholders, who were forced at government gunpoint to agree to a roughly 70% devaluation. I know, I know, it's a sovereign .vs. a corporation. Or is it, when a firm has been effectively nationalized? Hmmm....

Contrary to the screaming in the media and elsewhere, Greek banks survive this. Their currency is converted; they get "haircut" but only in purchasing power, not numerically (think about it.) On the other hand foreign institutions take it up the ass. French and German banks, in particular, are deeply exposed to this, as is the ECB itself. Is this enough to throw the chessboard to the floor? To calculate that you need to know what the actual leverage ratio is on these institutions and how much actual capital they have to absorb losses. Can you come up with those numbers and defend them? I can't, and I presume the reason I can't is that the "interested parties" want me to be unable to do so. I am therefore forced to assume that material numbers of large French and German banks would detonate if this happened.

The Greek people's standard of living gets hit. Hard. This is unavoidable too. When you make $20,000 and spend another $10k on your credit cards a return to spending less than $20,000 so you can pay down the debt, or defaulting on the accumulated debt, is inevitable. It is better to choose the "when" yourself than to have it chosen for you. This move by Greece would be a choice to elect "now" as the time to do that.

The CDS written against these bonds will trigger, of course. Who's holding that risk and do they have any money? We know the answer from the last time around on the second part - no, they do not have the money. Did any of the regulatory institutions fix this since 2008? We know the answer to that too: No, they did not. Therefore we must assume the money does not exist, the swaps cannot be paid, and much hilarity will immediately ensue.

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Their Reach Vastly Exceeds Their Grasp

Charles Hugh Smith:

The single greatest conceit of the Status Quo in the U.S., China and Euroland is that systems and trends can be tightly controlled. That conceit is slowly being revealed as hubris, as all sorts of things are spinning out of the control of the centralized authorities and financial elites in each geopolitical power center.

Does anyone really think the people of Greece will stand idly by while the state treasures of their nation are transferred to the banks which foolishly lent billions to a visibly risky enterprise? The banks, of course, lent freely to insolvent governments throughout the European Union, confident in the backstop of the E.U. itself.

The analogy to subprime mortgages in the U.S. is near-perfect: banks lent freely to extremely risky borrowers, breezily confident that their worker-bees in the Federal Reserve, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the Treasury and Congress would all toil feverishly to transfer the risk to the U.S. taxpayers, by whatever means were necessary.

Does anyone really think the uprisings against this transfer of national wealth to the "too big to fail" banks in Europe will fade as unemployment rises and the true costs of the transfer become apparent to all?

Does anyone really think there is no chance that the citizens of one of the nations lined up to be stripmined by the E.U. will openly rebl against the stripmining, throwing out their government until they find some politicians who are not spineless lackeys and factotums of the financial Status Quo?

Does anyone really think the banks are really that precious to the people they are stripmining? Just how awful would it be if all the big banks with exposure to sovereign debt in the E.U. went belly up and were declared insolvent? A handful of very wealthy managers would lose their jobs, a handful of very wealthy owners would lose their stake, and all the pension funds and mutual funds which bet on the inifinite passivity of the citizenry and the infiite checkbook of the E.U. would lose, too.

It's called Capitalistic risk and return, baby, and return can be negative. All the big players assumed the citizenry would quietly line up to have the clothing ripped from their backs and their flesh flayed to extract the pound of flesh "owed" the banks. But as the citizenry of Europe wake up to costs of the stripmining, which extends now to the taxpayers of Germany, Finland and beyond, they are withdrawing their support of the financial Status Quo.

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Lunatics

How progressive.

"Leave Israel Alone And Roll Back The U.S. Government To Its 1967 Size"

Heh.

Follow The Money

Excellent Charles Hugh Smith piece.

Two Leaders As Young Men

Netanyahu and Obama.



Any questions?

Got the image from here.

Good Observation

Instapundit:

Funny, it’s easy for some people to accept that artistic freedom is good for art, but they still have trouble accepting that economic freedom is good for the economy.

Death Before Discomfort

Leftist principles on full display:

The media is buzzing because for the first time in recent history a journalist actually demanded an answer from a liberal to a logical question. Following the Navy SEAL hit on Osama bin Laden, Chris Wallace, host of Fox News Sunday, interviewed Tom Donilon, President Obama's National Security Adviser, and broached the obvious inconsistency in the administration's argument that water boarding is "over the line," but "shooting an unarmed man in the face [is] legal and proper."

...

Nevertheless, Chris asked Mr. Donilon a valid question which could be paraphrased in the following way: "Why is putting a couple of bullets into the head of an unarmed man acceptable, but pouring water over an enemy combatant's face ‘over the line?'"

...

According to Tom, obtaining intelligence through unacceptable means like facial holding, muscle fatigue, and being confined with a caterpillar in a small space is less tolerable than blowing a hole through the face of a person who nonetheless deserved it. Life-saving intelligence-gathering deemed illegal and achieved through the cruel and inhuman practice of feigned drowning is, according to liberals, better left not attempted, even if the potential interrogation "victim" is planning to murder a few thousand Americans.

To normal people, i.e., those who think clearly, Donilon's explanation is a bit peculiar, but to anyone who understands the skewed and illogical manner in which liberals think, the National Security Adviser's response makes perfect sense.

For liberals, killing is an acceptable route, but discomfort on any level is never "consistent" with liberal values. If the prevention of uneasiness ends in death, then so be it.

Case in point: Abortion. Think about it -- for some women, carrying a child to term can be as uncomfortable as water boarding. Just ask Planned Parenthood. Unplanned pregnancy is scary and problematic, not unlike enhanced interrogation. However, if "gutsy" liberals are in charge, terminating a pregnancy is, more times than not, the preferred solution.

Donilon confirmed that liberal judgment dictates that the finality of violent death is consistent with liberal values, while inconvenience, irritation, and minimal emotional pain are objectionable to liberal sensibilities. A suspected terrorist gasping for air for a few seconds is unconscionable, but a fetus bleeding out from a purposely inflicted mortal head wound is perfectly acceptable.

...

In reality, Chris Wallace's probing question was a scratch-your-head inquiry and an honest attempt to understand an illogical way of thinking. The Fox News Sunday host acknowledged that most would agree that shooting Osama dead was justifiable. However, Wallace, as well as most right-thinking people, just couldn't grasp the dichotomy between the unbridled elation associated with blowing a hole through the skull of a vicious murderer and the endless moral indignation expressed over holding the head of an equally monstrous beast under water for 35 seconds.

Wallace pressed on: "What I am second-guessing is, if that's OK, why can't you do water boarding?" In other words - what's the rationale behind evading distress in favor of death?

Hey Chris, the answer is simple. There is none.

Why wasn't the relatively benign enhanced interrogation of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, "who was just as bad an operator" as the now-deceased Osama bin Laden, acceptable? It's because death is always embraced by the left as ethically superior to placing an individual in a painful situation. If the opportunity presents itself, the benefit gained through character-building coercive means will always take a back seat to offing someone. If the revered right-to-choose is presented, the left will almost always side with sacrificing a life over depriving comfort.

...

Abortion over adoption -- a shot to the skull over enhanced interrogation -- for liberals, the loss of abortion rights would be like subjecting America to an ongoing water boarding session. To liberals, abortion on demand is similar to shooting bin Laden in the head: necessary, better than the alternative, and lauded on the left as "gutsy" and worthy of rationalization.

So when Chris Wallace attempts to make sense out of what seems senseless and asks reasoned, well thought-out questions, the left's response exposes the foundational liberal principle that when given a choice, killing is preferred over avoidable discomfort and at all times will be vigorously justified by an ideology rooted in irrational absurdity.

The Establishment Has Gone Off The Rails

Very good Walter Russell Meade essay. Instapundit excerpts a section here, and here is another:

The Evaporation of Religion

The religion gap between the elite and the rest of the country is a big part of the problem — and in more ways than one. I can’t help but notice that the abandonment of serious religion by most of the American elite has coincided with a massive collapse in both the public and private morality of the American establishment. Kids who weren’t raised in church or synagogue or mosque, who were taught that ‘right’ and ‘wrong’ were simplistic categories in a complex moral world of shades of gray, who were told that their highest moral duty was to be true to their inner passions, who were the first generation in American history to be raised in a Scripture-free educational medium, turn into self-indulgent, corner-cutting, self-centered adults.

What a surprise! We raised a generation of bright kids without a foundation in religion, and they’ve grown up and gone to Wall Street. We never told them that the virtuous life was both necessary and hard, that character was something that had to be built step by step from youth, that moral weakness was both contemptible and natural: and we are shocked, shocked! when, placed in proximity to large sums of loose cash, they grab all they can.

Religion is no guarantee of righteousness; Elmer Gantry is not the only sticky-fingered preacher in the history of the world. But at least in western history when the culture and habits of mind of an entire social milieu have lost touch with their cultural foundations in ethical monotheism, trouble is usually on the way. The estrangement from religion is also an estrangement from the ideas and cultural values that bind society into a workable whole.

The French aristocrats laughed at the manners and the morals of the common people and ridiculed the faith that lit the darkness and softened the harsh conditions of ordinary lives. Enlightened and cosmopolitan, the establishment mocked the attachment of the ignorant peasants to the king. The well educated, well connected elites accepted no limits on their ability to convert their social privilege into personal wealth; they accepted no limits on the gratification of their physical desires — flaunting their romantic affairs in the same spirit in which they feasted at Versailles while the gaunt peasants starved. They used and abused to the fullest all the privileges that came with their status while mocking and rejecting any sense of duty and obligation.

It was fun while it lasted.

There's No Such Thing As Government Charity

Excellent piece.

And So It Begins

Ireland is going to impose a wealth tax on money in private pension accounts. To pay off the idiot EU bankers, of course.

No doubt Congress can't wait to get its paws on your 401k and IRA money.

Absolutely Outstanding And Heartfelt Hitchens Essay

Best introduced by this Anchoress post.

Part Of The Total Lack Of Principles

Brutally Honest:

Interesting that the justification for shooting an unarmed bin Laden in the head (we're at war with Al Qaeda) is justification we can't use to support enhanced interrogation of Islamist radicals.

Going back to John at VerumSerum, he speaks for me when he writes:

Gitmo and waterboarding are moral horrors which show America to be a ruthless, murderous monster-state run by Chimpy McHitlerburton. On the other hand, if President Obama orders an unarmed man shot in the face that’s not only legal it’s heroic and deserves a victory lap through ground zero.

Memo to the left: One of these two positions is wrong. You can not have it both ways.

Reason Itself Calls For Subscribing To Every Leftist Cliche In The Book

Koch-brothers-inspired paranoia is now officially part of Science!.

Link

Leftism Has No Need Of Criticism

It can do no wrong. VDH (the whole short piece is very good):

It’s also easier to conduct assassinations abroad if the Commander-in-Chief is liberal. This neutralizes criticism from the media, universities, the legal community, and Hollywood. Obama the law professor can assassinate bin Laden in Pakistan, dump his body in the ocean, and with first-person emphasis boast of our brilliant mission in a way Bush the Texan could not get away with—in the same manner that killing the son of Qaddafi, and the effort to kill Qaddafi himself, are not really forbidden targeted assassinations under Obama, and in the manner that Guantánamo, tribunals, renditions, preventive detentions, Predators, wiretaps, and intercepts that so bothered Senator Obama and others are now deemed essential. This paradox is just the way it is; the media will report a liberal president’s Predator drone attack or commando hit as done with reluctance and without other viable choices. Were a conservative leader to take the same actions, he would be portrayed as a trigger-happy war-monger reveling in the violence. Thus, the street celebrations that ensued when news of bin Laden’s death broke are seen by the media as a new unity inspired by Obama. Three years ago, they would have been seen as macabre triumphalism.

Through The Looking Glass

"If Supermarkets Were Like Public Schools"

Link

No doubt the Democrats are already working on doing this.

Yup.

Instapundit:

IOWAHAWK: American Pride is Back Out of the Closet! “Who is to credit for this rebirth in American national unity? First and foremost, we must cite the leadership of President Obama. Like many Americans – and the Nobel Peace Prize committee – I naively feared he was actually serious when he initially proposed shutting down Guantanamo, trying detainees in American civilian courts, and prior consultation with the international community. Little did I know that this untested young Commander-in-Chief would muster the courage to read his weekly Gallup numbers and, in one daring unilateral extra-judicial targeted hit job, toss aside every single idiotic foreign policy principle of his election campaign. Perhaps most satisfyingly, it was a mission made possible thanks to information extracted by methods he previously banned as ‘illegal torture.’”

Also this:

Nobel Peace Prize laureate Barack Obama ordered Cheney's assassination squad to murder Osama bin Laden in cold blood, based on intelligence gathered through a combination of illegal torture of unlawfully detained civilians and warrantless wiretapping of private communications.

Anything I left out? Why are the Democrats celebrating? Doesn't this make Obama a war criminal, just like Bush? What am I missing here?

(Don't get me wrong. I'm as pleased as anyone that Osama has assumed room temperature. I just want to make sure that I don't say the wrong thing if Joe Biden or Nancy Pelosi shows up on TV wearing an "I ♥ Waterboarding" t-shirt.)

Absolutely No Principles

Pelosi!

Powerline:

Nancy Pelosi, press conference, September 7, 2006:

[E]ven if [Osama bin Laden] is caught tomorrow, it is five years too late. He has done more damage the longer he has been out there. But, in fact, the damage that he has done ... is done. And even to capture him now I don't think makes us any safer.

Nancy Pelosi, earlier today:

The death of Osama bin Laden marks the most significant development in our fight against al-Qaida. ... I salute President Obama, his national security team, Director Panetta, our men and women in the intelligence community and military, and other nations who supported this effort for their leadership in achieving this major accomplishment. ... [T]he death of Osama bin Laden is historic....

Motion Pictures

These are cool.

True

Ace of Spades headline:

Confirmed: Trail That Led To Bin Ladin Began With Enhanced Interrogation Methods of High Value Targets That President Obama And His Suddenly Rah-Rah Kill-Crazy Media Allies Completely Opposed and Campaigned To End

Indeed.

What Vox said.

"When Carter Is Your Best-Case Scenario, You're In Trouble"

Full length Glenn Reynolds piece begins strong and goes from there:

People on the right have been comparing President Obama with Jimmy Carter for a while now: The rise from nowhere via inexplicable press adulation, the smarmy moralizing, the excessive faith in his own abilities, the tendency of everything he touches to turn to crap -- all seem eerily reminiscent of the Carter presidency.

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