The Era Of The Carrot Is Ending, The Era Of The Stick Is Beginning

Charles Hugh Smith:

It is stupendously politically incorrect to note that humans respond to both incentives/praise and disincentives/negative consequences.

There is a great divide in the U.S. economy which will only be bridged by the coming insolvency of the Federal and state governments: those who can be fired/laid off and those who still feel entitled to their job regardless of their output.

One of my carpentry masters was an African-American gent from New Orleans. Back in the early 1970s when I first began working for him and his partner (a Caucasian gent), he told me that how he'd found work in tough times was to approach the foreman of a construction project, point to a worker on the site and say that he could do more work than that guy.

The foreman would give him a once-over and put him to work. The next day, the other guy would be gone and my boss would have his job.

That's called getting and holding a job based on output and nothing else.

Now we have a culture and economy based on Spoiled Brat Syndrome: only incentives and praise are allowed as motivators...

Read the rest to see how that's gonna change.

Hopeless And Changeless

GayPatriot takes it to Obama.

Cartoons

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Not That Complicated

About as clear as it gets:

It is no more practical to have "health insurance" to pay for prescription drugs and routine doctor visits than it is to expect your auto insurance to pay for your oil changes and tire rotations.

But we do.

Consider: if a health insurance type system existed for auto insurance, it would certainly result in those quick lube oil changes costing about 95 dollars instead of something like 29. It would require an army of public and private sector bureaucrats to shuffle mounds of paper with hundreds of mouse clicks to make sure you were eligible for your lube job, that you paid your 10 dollar "lube co-pay" and that the remaining 85 bucks was eventually approved by a Chevy lube specialist underwriter.

We won't even mention the fact that your wait in the quick change waiting room would likely resemble the long wait in a doctor's office, as every other customer transaction would become the paperwork root canal yours is.

(And of course, those who do not have "lube insurance" or the 95 dollars in cash to pay for the lube, will go to the emergency engine shop where they will gum up the works for real emergencies and their lube can be done at no charge to them. This is also known as a different kind of lube job to those of us who pay our own way, who will get hit with a 1200 dollar tax tab for their "free" job.)

Thus, our healthcare dollars get eaten up by processing claims and indigent care.

Bottom line? The confusion between "health care" and "health insurance" as public policy issues -- along with the near universal misunderstanding of what health insurance is (or should be) -- is making what should be a rather simple financial planning market solution a national nightmare.

Moreover, the nuanced difference in the language used has turned the issue much more emotional and much less rational, politically. We say we must reform the system to prevent families from going bankrupt over medical bills, then turn around and debate systems that micro-manage the costs of pills and routine check ups. Well, which do we really want to do? Those are entirely different issues...

Many good points in the rest of the piece.

It's So Refreshing Not To Have An Inarticulate Cowboy In Charge

Inspiring:

We are excited, uh, to see, uh, what appears to be a ro-robust debate taking place in Iran.

And obviously after the speech that I, uh, made in Cairo we tried to send a clear message that we think there is the possibility of change, uhhh, aaaand -- ehhh, yuh-- oh -- Ultimately the election is for the Iranians to decide, uh, but, uh, just a-as has been true in Lebanon, what's, uh -- can be true in Iran as well is that you're seeing people looking at new possibilities. And, uh, whoever, uh, ends up winning, uh, the election in Iran, uh, the fact that there's been a robust debate hopefully will help, uh, advance our ability to engage them in new ways.

Well Said

Wretchard, in a blog comment:

Marcos was a nothing; not to be spoken of in the same league as Ahmadinejad. But returning to the subject of engagement, it’s useful to note that most of the hard work involved in overthrowing a dictator will be done by the locals. Only on occasion will the ‘international community’ arrive deus ex machina. But for those on the inside it’s important to know that someone is on your side. Even if you never see or hear a thing, the idea that somewhere there are people on your side counts for much.

For me at least, the difference in atmospherics between the conservative movement and the Left in the last twenty years can be summed up in their attitudes toward what they say. Conservatives are often far less sophisticated in their argumentation and more simple-minded in their thinking than the Left. This has made many conservatives child-like in their sincerity, something which people in the arts never cease to parody. No subtlety, they say; people living in a world of black and white. The kind of people who say grace at a Burger King. But sometimes that kind of clarity is necessary. After decades of listening to the Left I have yet to hear them say the word “freedom” with sincerity. It has always been spelled P-O-W-E-R. Consequently their servings of freedom come in the form of huge, eyeless institutional bureaucracies; a vast list of do’s and don’ts; and the proliferation of a commissariate. I know it isn’t ‘cool’ to listen to people who believe things because the Bible told them so; but for my part that’s infinitely cooler than listening to people so practiced in sophistry that their Bible tells them so and not so at one and the same time.

And in the particular case of Iran, my own emotional curiosity is drawn toward one question alone. Does the current President in his most private moments truly and sincerely wish for the downfall of the regime in Teheran? Because even if he were only to wish it, without acting on it; without initiating a single program to overthrow the Ayatollahs, I believe the message would shine through.

Over at Ann Althouse’s there’s a poll on who is the bigger partisan hack: Glenn Reynolds or Andrew Sullivan. Last I looked Sullivan was winning the hack race by 94 % to 6%. And the reason apparently, is largely Sullivan’s credulity of Obama’s position on gay marriage and his contorted attempts to reconcile his belief in President Obama in despite of the plain facts. Sullivan’s problem was that he was listening to Obama’s words. Other people were clever enough to listen in on the second channel — the one that sends signals about who he is. Clever enough to deduce the truth from coded signals because in certain circles, engagement always means being able to say all things to all men. People learn to read the tea leaves eventually. I think that some Iranians actually know how to listen in on the second channel and they are. They want to know if the current administration is “on their side”. Maybe that’s all the help they want; all the help they need. But are they going to get it?

Neoneocon has this to add in a post of her own:

And it’s one of the reasons that Obama’s tepid words on Iran fall so flat. Listening in on the second channel, we sense absolutely no conviction behind them and no commitment to anything other than keeping the options open for negotiating with Ahmadinejad.

And, looking at the domestic picture, it is at least part of the explanation of why some of us have distrusted Obama from the start, while others are (and remain) starry-eyed.

Neoneocon highlights another excellent comment here.

Finally, A Green Movement I Can Get Behind

For the time being, in solidarity with the citizens of Iran, I think I'll head my posts with a green strip. It's about time that color stood for something useful, so I'll use it while it still does.

Feel free to use its link code in your own posts:

<a href='http://img196.imageshack.us/i/greenn.jpg/'><img src='http://img196.imageshack.us/img196/2532/greenn.jpg' border='0' alt='Image Hosted by ImageShack.us'/></a>

ABC = "All Barack Communications"

Mark Shea at his brief and trenchant best.

Here's How A Real Leader Dealt With A Similar Situation

Link

Yeah. No Doubt They'll Give A Brand New Meaning To The Phrase "Hanging Chads".

Link:

Today begins with seemingly contradictory news from Iran: the Guardian Council, a body of clerics that holds more power than the President or the parliament, has agreed to recount some of the votes from Friday’s disputed election. At the same time, the regime has expelled some members of the foreign press, forbidden Iranian journalists from leaving their offices, and arrested major reformist figures, including the former Vice-President Mohammad Ali Abtahi, the former member of parliament Behzad Nabavi, and the reformist political strategist Saeed Hajjarian. These are men with impeccable revolutionary credentials—Hajjarian and Nabavi were founders of the Islamic Republic’s intelligence apparatus—and unquestionable loyalty to the constitutional order. What is going on here?

The Guardian Council’s gambit, while not entirely without promise, should be viewed with some skepticism. First, the council is not recounting all the ballots, if they can be found; it is reviewing only disputed ballot boxes, whatever that means. Second, this is not a disinterested review of the election results; in Iranian politics, the Guardian Council is essentially the practical hand of the Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, the organ by which he most directly intervenes in the affairs of state. Through it, he has veto power over all legislation and can disqualify candidates for public office at will. Its members are directly or indirectly appointed by the Supreme Leader, and manifestly beholden to him. So this is not a neutral intervention; it is Khamenei’s next move.

Some interesting analysis follows.

Yes, Yglesias Truly Is Insane

Oh, yeah, it's all fun and games until someone gets an eye put out:

Guess Who Said, 'Ahmadinejad has a pretty sweet hipster style'?

Matt Yglesias, back on September 21, 2006:

I keep talking about this with people in real life, but it deserves a blog mention as well — Mahmoun [sic] Ahmadinejad has a pretty sweet hipster style. It all starts with a beard not unlike the one I and many of my twentysomething male friends sport. But it goes deeper. The man went without a tie to address the UN General Assembly. And I was in a bar where the TV was showing his interview with Anderson Cooper (it's DC, these things happen) and while there was no sound, he certainly looked witty and charming. There was also this clip of him walking down some hallway shooting the sh** with Kofi Annan. It's like diplomacy! Bush should try it. One gets the sense that he's getting his stody red tie-wearing ass kicked this session by sundry third world goons and it's really not a proud moment for the United States

Oh, I'm sure it was meant to be ironic or something. But in light of this scintillating analysis, the fact that Yglesias is comparing Ahmadinejad to Sarah Palin isn't quite so surprising anymore.

UPDATE: Yglesias, April 2006:

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is given to saying crazy stuff, but unlike Saddam, the Iranians have never waged war on their neighbors and the government hasn't even “gassed its own people” or whatever other talking points you want to break out. Nor has Iran, to anyone's knowledge, ever been involved in any terrorist attacks on American civilians.

That's a pretty stunning statement, in light of mainstream media reports from just two years earlier:

After a bombing killed 19 U.S. airmen at a barracks in Saudi Arabia in 1996, the Clinton administration struck back by unmasking Iranian intelligence officers around the world, significantly disrupting Iranian-backed terrorism, according to a high-level U.S. official and a former top official who was serving at the time of the operation.

Undisclosed until now, Operation Sapphire took place in 1997. Though the bombers who struck the Khobar Towers barracks were mostly Saudis, U.S. investigators quickly determined that Iranian intelligence officials had trained and organized the plotters. The former U.S. official said Iran was intimidated enough by the U.S. counterspy operation that it stopped targeting Americans after the bombing.

The first public hint of the U.S. operation came last week, when Richard Clarke, White House counterterrorism chief for three administrations, told a bipartisan commission investigating the 9/11 attacks that the Clinton administration responded "against Iranian terrorism ... at Khobar Towers with a covert action."

Hey, Yglesias. Ya gotta give the SS some serious credit for the awesome uniforms, yes?

Great Quip

From a Lileks commenter:

Out of curiosity, did ACORN have anything to do with the Iranian election?

Wait, Wait, Let Me Guess! You're Frickin' Insane!

Matthew Yglesias:

Ahmadinejad is in most ways a classic right-winger, a demagogic nationalist and cultural conservative. In a manner somewhat reminiscent of a Sarah Palin...

Lileks comments:

Perspective. Proportionality. But note how “cultural conservative” becomes conceptually elongated, so “right-wingers” who may, for example, not wish to redefine marriage become bunkmates with someone who denies the existence of homosexuals, and whose regime hangs them from lampposts. Well, we know the right-wingers here would, if they could, right? It’s only the possibility of bad PR that keeps Dick Cheney from setting his daughter on fire. As for demagogic nationalism, one suspects that Yglesias finds demagogy in anyone who talks about love of country and the great things America has done without landing with both feet on a big wet BUT, and then goes on read the syllabus from a Howard Zinn course.

I didn’t love America any less in the Clinton years than I did in the Bush years, or vice versa; I don’t conflate my opinions about transitory leaders with my opinion about the nation’s role in history and its exceptional, if occasionally improvised, conflicted, and compromised struggle to do the right thing. I mean, go back in history and find another one of us. (Note: small ethnically coherent Nordic states that can’t project power six feet over the border really don’t count.) But unqualified love of country unnerves some people, as though the lack of qualifications means you don’t recognize qualifying factors. Me, I think they’re obvious; we’re made of humans, after all, and every house we build has beams of crooked timber. But I don’t recall a lot of FDR speeches laying out a litany of American sins in order to bolster the case for why America should fight Hitler, despite all those troubling similarities. After all, we lynched Jews, too, ergo we must face our own demons as well as those abroad. And so on.

It’s interesting how he mentions Ahmadinejad’s demogogy, his “language of class resentment, painting his more pragmatic and reformist opponents as decadent elites out of touch with ordinary people,” and his populist use of oil revenues, and Sarah Palin comes to mind instead of Chavez - who, after all, called Ahamdi to tender a warm congrats. I swear, it’s the heels. They just make some men feel so small. In any case, when she gives a speech at the UN and later describes how she felt herself enveloped in a godly glow, give me a call.

Lileks also highlights another Deep Thinker:

People believe all sorts of strange things. I remember one of the first tweets from a famous tech columnist after the uprisings began in Iran: “shows what happens when you let George Bush teach the world about democracy.”

Well, yeah, you got that right. Nice try at an insult, Tech Doof.

A Policy Of High Inflation Would Be Suicidal To The Plutocrats In Charge, So Why Expect It?

Food for thought from Charles Hugh Smith.

I Can't Believe He Actually Did It

"Mr. Ahmadinejad, tear down this wall."

--Barack Obama, June 15, 2009


Not.

Bring It

I pray that all of this opposition is only building her up into something more formidable.

The American Thinker on Sarah Palin.

The One, The Messiah Of Hope And Change, Offers No Rhetorical Assistance To The Iranian People

Let's be honest. The guy is probably on the side of the mullahs, anyway.

Here's an Ace of Spades post about the lack of anything coming from Obama thus far, other than the hope that things will finally settle down so he can go back to appeasing the current tyrants.

The Best Iran Photo Essay Thus Far

Link

CBS Is America's Ahmadinejad

Link

Another Defense Of The Wager

Well said:

Most atheists love to point out that Pascal's wager is flawed.

But, I think they are overlooking something, or worse, being intellectually dishonest in their approach to looking at the wager. Also, when I debunk the fact that it is flawed, then the normal cop-out is to move the goal posts by saying something to the effect of: "Gee, do you really think God would want people to believe in him out of fear of going to hell?" or "Do you think God wants us to gamble on the best religion?" Which is a whole other issue. The point with the wager is that sometimes you have to overcome intellectual barriers that keep people from looking farther into the idea that God exists.

Certainly no one should believe in God so as to obtain a form of fire insurance. But like I alluded to above, the wager opens the mind to accept the fact that belief in God is just as logical, if not more logical than non-belief, or even disbelief.

The reason most atheists point to, in order to dismiss the wager, is they claim there are more than just two choices. (a.k.a. False dilemma). But what they are doing is sort of sneaky and subtle, but it is there none-the-less. They are pretending to view the wager as if they are a theist. But they are not. They are borrowing our theistic paradigm, in order to dismiss the analogy.

Because if you are an atheist, then it is silly to say "how do I know if God is the right one, what if zeus is right, or what if the pink fairy god is the right one.." because you lack belief in all of them, why would you suddenly pretend to believe in the plausability of many just because someone mentions one of them?

I guess if we were trying to get you to play the lottery. And you said "I don't believe any number combo will win, I think it's fixed." and we said, hey, pick these 6 numbers. And you were like, 'why these six numbers?' why not this other set of numbers or this other set?

But earlier you said you didn't think any set would win, so why are you lobbying for some other set? If you think the game is rigged, then simply say "nope, I don't believe your set of numbers will win, nor any other." My set of 6 numbers should rest on their own merit. They should not be compared to another set of numbers that you've already pre-determined cannot win.

If it still doesn't make sense, then follow this schematic:

1. YOU: "I don't think any set of 6 numbers will result in me winning this lottery."

2. ME: Here, try this set. I believe it will work for you. This is the winning set of numbers for you.

3. YOU: "But how do I know that this other set right here won't win for me? Or this one?"

4. ME: Because in #1, you said you don't believe any set of 6 numbers will win for you. Are you back pedaling so soon?

So if #3 is correct, and you think that some other set may win for you, then #1 was dishonest, or you have since changed your mind and are no longer a strong atheist concerning this lottery.

But if #1 is correct, then #3 is dishonest and misleading.
a.k.a. Red Herring

Some have said that the reason for the momentary 'false' paradigm shift is to make use of the reductio ad absurdum argument, where a hypothesis is assumed for the sake of argument only, and refuted afterwards by showing that it would have absurd consequences.

But even if that were true, the odds are still better to wager on the God of the Bible.

If you make no wager what-so-ever, then you automatically lose. However, if you at least wager on one god then you have a chance. And you can increase those odds by going with the God of the Bible since He is recognized by the big 3 religions in the world. Billions of people. This is one case where you can appeal to the masses. If you have ever participated in paramutual wagering, you will usually see which horse or which dog has the best chance of winning just based on the fact that 70% of the people are picking that horse/dog. Maybe they know something, maybe they are just being lemmings. But you certainly don't want to wager on the mutt with a gimp leg. That's what all these other 'gods' are. Mutts compared to God.

And still others say, well what if there were a conceivable god who would reward the unbeliever and punish the heretic?

Number one, this is borderline solipsism. Descartes said "How do we know we are not dreaming?" This has been viewed by most intellegent thinkers as an absurd way to think.

What if worms had machine guns. Analysis paralysis. Do nothingism.

If your wager is to not wager, in the hopes/belief that there is a god that will reward your unbelief in any gods, then are you still an atheist? You are allowing a deity to determine your beliefs, and you cannot do that unless you believe he actually exists. If you are abstaining because he MIGHT exist, then you are making a wager on a dog with a gimp leg. There are better choices to 'maybe' with. Jehovah is the best one.

The way I picture the scene is you and I standing in a coliseum, and we have heard rumors that the Emporer wants us to battle the lions, but we have not heard from him directly. There are several items laying on the ground in front of us, and the doors to the lions cages have not opened yet. On the ground there are two 3 foot long sticks, and two very small knives with 3" blades, and rumor has it that if you run over to the far side of the stadium and stand next to the bannister by the lion's cage, someone will slip you a weapon from the stands, but it is unknown if this is true, or even what kind of weapon you'd get. So now I survey the weapons and look at the crowd and determine that it is probably true that there is going to be a lion fight today, but I don't know for a fact. Regardless, I choose the best weapon that I think will give me the best shot, the small knife. If I start getting mauled I plan on using it to try to stab his eye or try to get at his brain somehow, or jab it's throat.

You on the other hand survey the scene and believe that there is no reason to believe the rumor. And, you add that even if there was, how do we know the stick will help us win? or the knife? and you go about pointing out the inadequacies of each item. You decide "Well, even if there is a lion match, I believe that the emporer will save me, even if I do not choose to fight, or select a weapon. Then I say, well why don't you grab this other knife just in case? And you say "how do we know the weapon I might get over at the bannister won't be better?" And I say "ok fine, go see." And you say "Why? I don't believe there is going to be a match." and then you add "Besides, how do we know that this isn't a test, and he will reward the one that doesn't fight? How do you know that some spring loaded walls won't shoot up all around us at the very last second, protecting us, and the fellow holding a weapon loses? Maybe he will reward my bravery?"

This is why I said it is solipsism, it's the same as asking how we know we are not part of someone else's dream. I mean I suppose anything's possible. But do you live the other aspects of your daily life thinking like a solipsist?

...

Scott Adams On Pascal's Wager

An atheist who gets it:

The Atheist Who Thought He Was God

Can we ever be sure about anything in life?

Is a feeling of 99% certainty enough to say you “know” something? Or do you need to feel 99.9999999999% certain before you’re willing to commit?

If you say you need to be 100% certain, you don’t understand how human brains work. It’s common for the human brain to be certain about things that later turn out to be completely false. It happens all the time, to everyone. If it has ever happened to you, then you know you can’t trust your own powers of certainty.

This brings me to atheists. In order to be certain that God doesn’t exist, you have to possess a godlike mental capacity – the ability to be 100% certain. A human can’t be 100% certain about anything. Our brains aren’t that reliable. Therefore, to be a true atheist, you have to believe you are the very thing that you argue doesn’t exist: God.

Perhaps you will argue that being 99.999999% certain God doesn’t exist is just as good as being 100% sure. That strikes me as bad math. As other philosotainers have famously noted, a small chance of spending eternity in Hell has to be taken seriously. Eternity is a long time.

Let me put this in perspective. You might be willing to accept a 10% risk of going skiing and getting hurt, but you wouldn’t accept a 10% risk of a nuclear war. The larger the potential problem, the less risk you are willing to tolerate.

An eternity in Hell is the largest penalty there could ever be. So while you might not worry about a .00000000001% chance of ending up in Hell, you can’t deny the math. .00000000001% of eternity is a lot longer than your entire mortal life. Infinitely longer.

Now, I've seen all kinds of hooting and hollering and monkey howlings amongst internet atheists any time any thing that smacks of Pascal's Wager is asserted. So has Scott Adams. And he had this to say in his next post:

In yesterday's post I described an argument that reminded people of something called Pascal's Wager.

In a nutshell, Pascal was a dude who argued you should consider Christianity because if it's true, the downside of not believing is eternal Hell. But if you become a Christian and there's no God, all you've lost is your Sunday mornings. (Here I am simplifying.)

Many of my blog readers left comments alluding to the well-known "flaws" in Pascal's argument. Here’s a handy list of them.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pascal's_Wager#Rebuttals

Chief among the alleged flaws in Pascal’s argument is that you still have to pick the correct religion among many, or else you go to Hell anyway.

Sure. But picking any religion that promises salvation slightly improves your odds over picking an option that doesn’t. You're still probably doomed, given your bad religion-picking skills, but a one-in-a-million chance of reducing the risk of eternal Hell is a move worth taking, mathmatically speaking.

Another noted "flaw" in Pascal's wager is that you can't rule out the possibility that only skeptics are spared from Hell. Perhaps, it is argued, God loves the spunky fact-loving personality of skeptics and saves them alone, or saves them in the greatest percentage.

That argument passes the math test, but does it pass the sniff test? It’s a viewpoint that exists only as a debate tool. While we can't rule it out, surely it is the worst bet if you must pick a theory of God. No rational person on earth, including skeptics, has concluded that God prefers skeptics over believers.

...

I realize it's unscientific to try and compare one absurdity to another. But if you assume our perceptions are often flawed, you have to allow the possibility that some apparent absurdities are due to our limited powers of perception. So, for example, while the notion of a loving God who allows eternal damnation seems absurd, it is less absurd than assuming the world is run by invisible unicorns, or that God discriminates against those who believe in him.

The God theory has built into it the assumption we are not bright enough to understand the mind of an omnipotent being. That sounds reasonable. Hey, if God exists, and he does things different that I would, just maybe the problem is on my end. If you believe in God, the apparent absurdities have a reasonable explanation, even if wrong.

But what’s the reasonable explanation for God preferring skeptics? If God appreciates reasoning skills, he can’t be too impressed by the fact he created the entire Universe and skeptics still can’t find any good clues he exists. God would only be impressed by skeptics if God did NOT exist. You can’t top that for absurdity.

...

Picking the "right" religion is a long shot no matter how hard you try. But if rational thought has any value at all, it's in narrowing down options and improving our odds of making good choices. Rational thought hasn't led anyone to conclude that there's a God who only saves people who don't believe he exists. We can't rule it out, but can't we rate its likelihood compared to a God who prefers that his lumps of clay hold him in higher esteem than their own eye crud?

I’d prefer to make all of my decisions on the basis of peer reviewed science. But I don’t have that option when considering the great beyond. So I settle for looking at the competing absurdities and picking the one that seems relatively least absurd.

There are other arguments against Pascal’s wager, but none of them looked any stronger than the ones I mentioned here.

Diversity Just A Retouch Away

The genuine item.

Dr. Sanity Has Had Enough

Link:

THIS TIME, I DON'T CARE ANYMORE...LET THE ZOMBIES TAKE OVER MEDICINE

A number of emailers have written wondering why I haven't commented on Obama's health care plans for America.

Doug Ross highlights an ad/op-ed piece by Nicolas Kristof, part of the massive PR campaign in the Age of Obama to make socialized medicine palatable to the American public. Kristof calls people like me "scaremongers;" and defiantly says, "This time we won't scare." But he doesn't have to worry.

I'm done.

My entire professional life as a physician and psychiatrist I have been exceptionally vocal about the prospect of government medicine here in the US. I have given impassioned speeches (when I was younger); written essays in medical journals and elsewhere; and talked until I am blue in the face to anyone and everyone about the horrors of socialized medicine and government interference in the health care system of this country. Once it would have seemed impossible that I would ever want to quit medicine; to stop practicing psychiatry.

I have watched with dismay as every year we have inched closer and closer to the Democrats and the left's goals; goals which I firmly believe will completely destroy American medicine. I have watched up close and personal the utter soul-destroying consequences to both patients and doctors alike, of the pervasive cultural collectivist and looter thinking in my specialty. Every time this madness is killed, it just doesn't stay dead. Like some kind of putrefying zombie, the left just keeps resurrecting it. Logic doesn't matter. Facts don't matter.

Let's face it. To the zombies of the left, reality doesn't matter. With President Postmodern in office, aided and abetted by zombie hordes in Congress; why should I pretend anymore that it does?

This time around, I JUST DON'T CARE ANYMORE. If that's what people want, so be it.

I'm done. If Congress passes Obama's destructive zombie health plan in any form, I quit.

I will simply not practice medicine anymore. I will take my psychiatry books and my years of experience and do something else. I used to wait tables when I was in college. It's an honest living and Obama isn't interested for the time being in nationalizing restaurants--yet.

Let me be clear. I don't believe that people have a "right" to health care; because, what advocating such a "right" basically means is that you believe you have a "right" to my mind; you have a "right" to my professional competence; i.e., you have a "right" to enslave me.

...

"Therefore It Will Happen"

From a Charles Hugh Smith correspondent:

Oddly enough, given the fatal metaphysical error I have mentioned (debt = asset), almost all the concoctions stemming from that error have been "rationally consistent" with the irrational premise. Too bad logical consistency with false premises will virtually guarantee disastrous conclusions. Let us spell out in detail this "rational" behavior stemming from irrational assumptions.

First let us recast traditional debt in tune with the new, false assumptions mentioned above. In traditional economics, "good" debt would be a loan extended to someone with sterling credit, with a healthy income or revenue stream, and collateral that far exceeds the value of the loan. Collection is fairly simple. Risk is transparently low. The interest rate charged would be correspondingly relatively low. "Bad" debt would be someone with a low to middling credit rating, with borderline income or revenue, and with collateral that flirted with being equivalent to the loan. Risk is transparently higher. The interest rate charged would be correspondingly higher to offset the greater risk of default and failure to recoup the full value of the loan. "Insane" debt, would be someone with an incredibly low or no credit rating, whose income or revenue is well below what is necessary to pay off the loan, and whose collateral property has no, or even negative, equity in it (think of houses bought with liar loans, balloon loans, negative amortization loans).

In a traditional system, people with "insane credit" would never get a loan, because they have no way of paying it, and they do not have collateral worth anything near value of the loan. In the new system, debt is "equivalized" so that what I have called "insane" debtors actually become the most sought after market! Why? Think about it: No distinction is being made between debts that can be paid and those that cannot possibly be paid (at least without completely fantastical projections of increasing value in the property, commodity, stock, etc. upon which the loan is being drawn). All debt is seen as asset. Insane debt = bad debt = good debt = asset. This is confirmed empirically in Moody’s rating of absolute junk as secure AAA investment.

The lousier and more untenable the loan, the greater the "risk", therefore the greater interest and fees one can charge on it, and therefore the greater the ostensible return and/or profit! Combine this with the ability to externalize or pass on the liability by selling the insane loan or insuring it against default, a lender or servicer has every incentive to hand out the worst possible loans because they generate the highest fees and interest rates. "But," you may protest, "there are no foundations or fundamentals underneath these deals. They are completely irrational." In this new system, there don’t need to be fundamentals because mathematical models can now simply create and assign present value based on theoretical projections of future values accepted as if those future values were fact.

So all the incentive is toward expanding the market for heavy, pervasive debt that is impossible to pay, and then to further spawn lucrative financial derivatives (including servicing and guaranteeing loans) from that market. Add consumer industries to this balloon, like housing and automobile manufacturing that benefit from this false creation of equity based on future value, and you have a juggernaut. This house of cards is perpetuated by its own "new era" mythology ("values will always go up," "deficits don’t matter") and the fact that everyone seems to be getting richer from the loan originator to the lendee/investor—the brokers, the servicers, the appraisers, the realtors, the county property tax assessments, the furniture store owner, the homeowner.

If this situation weren’t bad enough, a new hyper-catalyst enters the picture--leveraging. Two major problems emerged here to magnify many thousand or millions fold the damage already levied by fraudulent and fantastical lending. First, unregulated private companies (equity firms, hedge funds, etc.) were able to fabricate wealth and inflate their holdings and net worth to either further invest or buy outright real companies, as Cerberus did with Chrysler. Their unregulated "money" was based in "equity" based on "marked to model" theoretical value.

Second, unregulated financial instruments like credit default swaps had no effectively no reserve requirement at all, because their reserve "money" was also based on "assets" based on "marked to model" theoretical value. Furthermore, this unregulated, self-assigned value could be, if they so desired, leveraged into investments in ratios that could defy infinity. As we know, zero multiplied by a million is still zero. Imagine if you or I could assign a 200 billion dollar asset value to our dog’s house, and use this assigned value to buy a major international conglomerate.

When people say that this is "unthinkable," what they are really saying is, "I don’t want to think about it. I don’t want to acknowledge this happened or can happen." However, just connect the dots. It’s simple. Is there anything preventing this from happening. No. Applicable regulations have been removed, and those still on the books have not been enforced. Is there any reason not to do it given the incentives and principles at play? No. Therefore, it will happen.

What we have is essentially private, unregulated money creation prompting hyperinflation in certain markets. We have an intensely large, and at this time, unknown amount of counterfeit money and value mixed in with the real. Apparently we cannot tell real money apart from counterfeit money very easily, and/or we are trying to hide the counterfeit cash through deficit bailouts from the taxpayers.

We also know that we cannot keep these fraudulence-based markets (i.e. housing) artificially inflated because they are so out of line with reality-based fundamentals and facts. However, we also largely do not have the grit to face the consequences of this rip off. So our interim strategy appears to be to try to ease into austerity by hiding the deficits, allowing companies to continue to mark to model, holding foreclosed houses off the market, etc. It is a common and understandable (but not excusable) human response. It won’t work, and it will both deepen and elongate the painful coming to terms.

Even money markets fell below 100% of principal. Think about that. That’s unprecedented in its scale and severity. You don’t need a canary to tell you what is going on. There has been a massive liquidity drain. Money has disappeared and been replaced with fraudulent substitutes of value. I’ve mentioned in other essays that this situation will eventually require massive debt forgiveness. Fraudulent or concocted wealth begets fraudulent debt. So we should come to terms with the necessity of debt erasure for larger swathes of the globe. The instigators have unfortunately, not only already been forgiven, but been rewarded with hundreds of billions of dollars of bailout money. Accountability, if it ever happens would demand these instigators go bankrupt, face criminal prosecution, and supply restitution, including returning their private, ill-gotten gains.

The Micro View:

How does this profoundly twisted macro mentality play itself out on the micro level? Let’s look at some examples...

...

Credit default swaps (CDS’s)

I’ve already written many essays on this subject, so I will only summarize the transparent fraud perpetrated under these "vehicles." CDS’s are unregulated insurance against defaults on loans. Though the mechanisms have not been officially investigated and audited, it does not take a genius to conclude that AIG and others could "guarantee" loans and receives premiums for nothing, that is, without actually possessing any reserve capital or exchange service at all. Using their once respected reputation as collateral, and dubious investments conveniently and generously assigned value by their own accountants, these institutions could create cash flow without providing anything in return except assurances. No wonder these vehicles were so attractive.

This would be like you or me receiving nice batches of money from our neighbors to insure against their houses being destroyed by fire, using our own house as collateral, with all of us living in the middle of a tinder-dry pine forest. The fire simply is going happen sooner rather than later with these conditions (akin to the poor fundamentals in the economy), and you and I won’t have anything left with which to pay others. However, we will have a huge private stash created by the fees and premiums we have charged and the bonuses we’ve given ourselves. This, at least, could help us rebuild our own mansions.

Socrates vs Dawkins

Pretty good dialog (pdf).

"I'm Guessing The Answer Might Be War There, Too"

Short, amusing Andrew Klavan video commentary.

Refreshing Sarcasm

Crowder and Zo.

Shouting "Creationist!" Like Some Southern Cracker Of 50 Years Ago Would Have Shouted "Faggot" Or The N-Word Does Not A Scientific Argument Make

Here's a blog post featuring very rational arguments from a guy who's finally had it up to here with Darwinist sophistry. Good stuff.

The Complainers And Idolaters Have No Real Principles

This just came in via e-mail:

HAVE AMERICAN'S JUST GONE DUMB?

If George W. Bush had made a joke at the expense of the Special Olympics, would you have approved?

If George W. Bush had given Gordon Brown a set of inexpensive and useless (to Gordon Brown's UK video formatting) DVDs, when Gordon Brown had given him a thoughtful and historically significant gift, would you have approved?

If George W. Bush had given the Queen of England an iPod containing videos of his speeches, would you have approved?

If George W. Bush had bowed to the King of Saudi Arabia, would you have approved?

If George W. Bush had visited Austria and made reference to the non-existent "Austrian language," would you have brushed it off as a minor slip?

If George W. Bush had filled his cabinet and circle of advisers with people who cannot seem to keep current on their income taxes, would you have approved?

If George W. Bush had ordered the firing of the CEO of a major corporation, even though he had no constitutional authority to do so, would you have approved?

If George W. Bush had proposed to double the national debt, which had taken more than two centuries to accumulate, in one year, would you have approved?

If George W. Bush had then proposed to double the debt again within 10 years, would you have approved?

So, tell me again, what is it about Obama that makes him so brilliant and impressive?

Can't think of anything? Don't worry. He's done all this in 10 weeks -- so you'll have three years and nine-and-a-half months to come up with an answer!

All For 'Choice' And 'Free Love' Unless They Can Be Used As Weapons Of Ridicule

But then, principled logical consistency can only be pursued by those who have reached the age of reason. So that leaves out leftists.

The Anchoress:

Hey, David Letterman wasn’t making sexual jokes about the 14-year old! He was just branding the 18-year old who, after all, “did get knocked up” and should therefore be forever caricatured as a slut by a 62 year-old progressive looking for adolescent laughs! And their mother looks slutty, too! Haw-haw! They’re all sluts, haw-haw!

So much for the progressive notions of “respect-for-women’s-choices” and the “tolerant” mantra that “teenagers-will-have-sex-so-what’s-the-big-deal.” I wonder how an “enlightened, progressive” sort like Letterman can reconcile those notions with his scornful reminder of the still-teenaged Bristol Palin’s terrible “sin” (shall we sew her a scarlet A?) and his willingness to subject her to sexual slurs and slutty innuendo.

I guess women-who-make-choices and teenagers-who-have-sex are only to be tolerated if they are the right sort of women and teenagers, i.e., coastal, progressive, wealthy and/or minority secular. If they are the wrong sort of women and teenagers, i.e., “fly-over,” “Christianist,” “wealthy-not-minority” well, then nothing matters but that they be diminished, de-humanized and destroyed for their choices and their sex lives. And if the perpetually adolescent bigots can hypocritically snigger about it at the same time, all the better.

In his eye-rolling, mocking non-apology to “these people” Letterman said: “These are not jokes made about her 14-year-old daughter. I would never, never make jokes about raping or having sex of any description with a 14-year-old girl…. Am I guilty of poor taste? Yes. Did I suggest that it was okay for her 14-year-old daughter to be having promiscuous sex? No.”

No. He meant to suggest that when an 18 year-old gets “knocked up” (and has the bad taste not to abort the little inconvenience, so as to hide her actions) she is forever-fodder for a foole. She is forever a slut and therefore worthy of public mockery by the perpetually adolescent.

Game Over

There's just no weaseling out of this one.

Charles Hugh Smith:

The choice just ahead is stark: either passively watch the dollar collapse as the tsunami of money expansion and Federal borrowing slams it or start defending it with much higher interest rates. Either way, the credit-dependent U.S. economy will be unable to borrow freely at low cost from the rest of the world.

The blogosphere is chockful of reports documenting our trading partners' not-so-subtle stampede to the dollar exit--is there any mystery here? None whatsoever. Even a so-called reserve currency like the dollar responds to supply and demand: as the Fed pushes money expansion up by 100% (you've seen the hockey-stick charts by now) and the U.S. Treasury borrows trillions of dollars to fund a widening deficit and various trillion-dollar bailouts of failed and/or fraud-filled/looted industries, then this burgeoning supply overwhelms demand, pushing down the value.

...

Such a pronounced decline in the dollar's value would devastate the bond and T-bill market as everyone fled the dollar; this would trigger a catastrophic drop in the value of every existing bond and basically evaporate the U.S. Treasury's ability to sell more debt or even roll over existing government debt. At that point the U.S. government would actually not only have to live within its means (spend no more than revenues) but it would have to pay off bonds as they came due--that is, spend considerably less than revenues.

The same of course would be true for corporate bonds, new home mortgages, etc. All U.S. debt would drop 50% in value and become increasingly illiquid as fewer and fewer investors will be willing to gamble on its future purchasing power.

For a credit/debt-based economy, the inability to float new debt and roll over old debt would be cataclysmic.

The only way out of the crisis (and indeed the only way to stave it off beforehand) would be to raise interest rates to such a high level that dollar-denominated debt would become attractive. This is not without historic precedent; buyers of long-term T-bills in late 1981 earned a 16% return.

What happens if the interest rate on T-bills and other debt jumps to 10%? Mortgage rates jump to 12%. And what would that do to real estate valuations? Since buyers can only afford X per month, then as interest costs doubles, the mortgage valuation (and the value of the underlying property) has to fall in half.

So right as standard-issue financial pundits (SIFPs) like the execrable Jim Cramer are announcing the bottom in housing, house prices could fall in half from current levels. Can't happen? Don't bet on it.

If interest rates doubled or tripled, that would eviscerate every sector of the economy which depends on credit--which means, well, all of them, but especially autos and real estate. With their collateral (house) worth half of its already diminished 2009 valuation, the average middle class household would be unable to support any new debt.

Oh, and let's not forget what happens to equity markets when interest rates double: they crash. Why take a chance on risky stocks when you can get 10% on a "safe" T-bill? And so there is another body-blow to household equity/collateral: everyone's 401K, IRA and other equity holdings will be smashed.

In the last bout of higher interest rates (for different reasons) in the 1970s, stocks (adjusted for inflation) lost fully 2/3 of their value. We would be foolish to expect anything less severe if the dollar crashes and interest rates double to defend what's left of the currency's purchasing power.

...

So the choice is stark: either drink the poison of a dollar falling in half and the subsequent collapse of the bond and credit markets, or double interest rates and drink the poison of a collapse in the value of existing bonds and the strangulation of the housing market via high interest rates.

Either way, the value of existing bonds will be destroyed. Either way, the credit-dependent U.S. economy finds itself without the ability to palm off dollars on "marks" for absurdly low rates of return. The only question is: what end-state will we choose? One in which the dollar is essentially destroyed as a store of value, or one in which we face reality and start paying a high enough return to salvage what's left of its value?

Yes, that will destroy easy, low-cost credit, and every sector which depends on it. But at least savings, incomes and assets will be conserved and not destroyed along with the dollar. The first poison (complete destruction of the dollar) is fatal; the second (raising rates to defend the dollar) is painful and wrenching, but ultimately positive. For much higher rates would rid the economy of its multiple destructive imbalances and disincentives; it would be the equivalent of a chemotherapy treatment from which the patient (the U.S. economy) emerges stronger and healthier. As the book recommended above phrased it, a "cure" is available, and it's called much higher rates of return.

Lileks Fisks Letterman

Here:

...

[P]athetic is all I can muster.

But no, it must be funny, because David is funny and hip. Right? Or maybe not; maybe he’s actually a brackish, hermetically-souled guy who’s spend the last twenty years going from table to table with a giant wooden grinder, asking anyone if they want some fresh-ground scorn with that. Say when. Or maybe he’s about as edgy as a soccer ball, and exists only to remind people they were Edgy once, and hence must be ever-blessed with the gift of Wryness and Irony. With those shields we can never grow old, you know. We’ll always be as sharp and perceptive as we were when we were sitting on a cast-off sofa in college, working through a midweek buzz, happily fellated by the preconceptions the TV so charitably provided.

Or so I remember; haven’t watched the show in years. I thought it was brilliant at first, but at some point early on Bill Wendell’s introduction stopped being Bill Wendell as Don Pardo and became Bill Wendell Intentionally and Ironically Being Don Pardo for Your Ironic Enjoyment. The introductory graphics got slick. Paul Shaffer morphed into this eyeless homunculus yes-man, like Ed McMahon on painkillers converted into handy portable Idol form (really, sometimes I see a picture of this tiny fellow wearing shades, grinning at nothing, and he reminds me of something Indiana Jones would replace with a weighted bag of sand before he stole it.)

What’s amusing is how unamusing he is in the clip. How sour he seems. Compare him to his predecessors: Carson was all midwestern charm, with unreadable yet mannerly reserve; Steve Allen was almost as smart as he was certain you thought he must be, but he was cheerful; Parr was a nattering nutball covered with a rich creamy nougat of ego, but he was engaging. Letterman is empty; he’s inert; he stands for nothing except disdain for people foolish enough to stand for anything - aside from rote obesciance to all the things Decent People stand for, of course, all those shopworn assumptions passed around in the bubble.

This posture was fresh in ’80; it even had energy. But it paralyzes the heart after a while. You end up an SOB who shows up at the end of the night to reassure that nothing matters. I think he may have invented the posture of Nerd Cool, an aspect so familiar to anyone who reads message boards - the skill at deflating enthusiasm, puncturing passion with a hatpin lobbed from a safe distance. The instinctive unease with the wet messy energy of actual people.

Yes, reading too much into it. Really, it’s just a rote slam: If your mother is a loathed politician, and your older sister gets pregnant, famous old men can make jokes about you being knocked up by rich baseball players, and there’s nothing you can do. That’s the culture: a flat, dead-eyed, square-headed old man who’ll go back to the writers and ask for more Palin-daughter knocked-up jokes, because that one went over well. Other children he won’t touch, but not because he’s decent. It’s because he’s a coward.

Oh, one more thing: it’s okay for David to say that because someone said something else about someone, and since I didn’t write about that, I’m a hypocrite. Just so we’re clear.

Well, one more thing. Some say Dave - I’m sorry, the staff members who wrote the joke and had it printed on cards for him to read - thought the daughter in attendance was the older one who had the pregnancy controversy last year. This is possible; it also means that we accept as an excuse the fact that the writers confused the daughters they wished to humiliate.

That confusion must be the reason the NYT left the joke out of its transcript of the monologue.

VDH

Good column entitled "I No Longer Quite Believe..."

excerpt:

I no longer believe . . .

…that there will be much progress on race relations under Obama. Indeed, I fear the very opposite will occur.

Almost every major speech is predicated on his race, and his father’s always changing stance on religion. In 2011 will we still hear of his father and his family with Muslim connections?

Being non-racist is judging by race

We are told not to believe what Justice Sotomayor on several occasions said and published—this is now something called “misspeak”. What was fascinating about her Berkeley speech was not just her now serial avowal that race and gender make one a better or worse judge. Two equally frightening facts emerged. She published these views in a periodical called La Raza Law Journal (“The Race’s” Law Journal). In her text, she referenced herself as a Latina or invoked Latina/Latino, according to my count, some 38 times. (I once told a student that if she did not stop prefacing every classroom remark about classical literature with “As a Latina…” I would answer back with the preface “As a white guy…”).

A promised postracial President nominated a justice who seems not just to be race-obsessed, but race-obsessed to the degree it governs her judicial philosophy. Woe to be a member of what she called “the old boy network” when you go into her chambers against a “Latina”. By her own admission, the Latina is the wiser party, based on her superior ‘life experiences.”

No progress, no nothing?

In this new racialist world, no one would ever remember that we have not had a white male Secretary of State—the world’s most powerful diplomat—in thirteen years— since the rather mediocre Warren Christopher stepped down in January 1997. There is rarely appreciation of change and what has transpired, only more anger at what supposedly must happen in the future. To read Sotomayor’s speeches, and I have now read about 5 of them, is to be subjected to a litany of statistics—always the theme being “this many judges are Hispanic, this is our percentage of the population, presto, this is what we must have…”

We are all percentages points now

There is rarely either any complexity, or appreciation of the irony to race. With between 12-20 million illegal aliens now living in the United States—the vast majority recent arrivals from Third World countries—are we to be shamed that we do not have politicians, Supreme Court justices, and professors in the proper percentages to reflect these new populations? Think of it—someone crosses the border illegally, and immediately becomes a percentage-point argument that a distant elite with a Spanish-surname is entitled to preferential treatment? (I ignore the fact Sotomayor’s racial percentages were once used by white racialists to show that minorities were inordinately responsible for violent crime in numbers far above their presence in the general population. It is unwise to quantify every aspect of the United States by racial percentages.)

The President himself never pauses and examines the irony of a half-African, half-white prep schooled person, lecturing the world on the African-American civil rights experience—with which by heritage and chronology he has had no experience.

Odd. Nobody Ever Worshipped Bush Like This. I Guess Conservatives Just Aren't Very Religious.

The latest.

Union Foolishness

Amazing:

Unions just don't get it. People are fed up with paying higher taxes to support their wages and their ridiculous pension plans. Amazingly, unions are even biting the Democrats' hands that feed them.

Please consider "State's budget crisis opens rift between unions and Democrats":

The relationship between Democratic leaders and some of their labor benefactors has turned particularly frosty: Many of the programs union members rely on for paychecks -- and the unions rely on for dues -- have been slated for deep cuts.

For example, there are pledge forms being passed around to lawmakers by a major labor union that might have attracted takers in budget battles past. The union, the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, wants the legislators to sign statements of support for up to $44 billion in new or higher taxes on the wealthy, oil companies, tobacco and other industries, products and people.

But so far the drive hasn't produced a single signed form, even from the Democrats who normally march into California's budget fights in lock-step with organized labor.

"Many public employee unions, teacher unions [are] thinking that they were thrown under the bus in the last budget," said Assemblyman Charles Calderon (D-Montebello). "So now they're asking themselves: If these Democrats are not going to stand up for us, then what good is it to have them there?"

The union leaders say they are appalled that Democratic leaders are talking openly now about decimating government programs without first making a stand for bigger, broader tax hikes that could substantially offset budget cuts.

"Democrats came to Sacramento to help people," said Marty Hittleman, president of the California Federation of Teachers. "I know they did not go there to destroy government. For some reason, they are unwilling to stand up and say 'This is not what I was elected for.' "

The next step for unions could be going directly to voters. One labor-backed group, the California Tax Reform Assn., has prepared a possible ballot measure to repeal the three corporate tax cuts Democrats agreed to in the last year to get GOP support for the budget.

I hope unions are dumb enough to go directly to the voters. The arrogance of the unions is staggering. What is it they fail to understand about the California propositions that were recently voted down?

...

People are tired of property taxes, sin taxes, taxes on the rich, taxes on the poor, taxes on oil, taxes on industries, and taxes on taxes.

American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees is brain dead to think the public will support petitions to hike taxes. What planet are these people from?

Marty Hittleman, president of the California Federation of Teachers, needs to get a clue. Better yet, he needs to get a real job instead of being a parasite dependent on tax hikes.

Actually I thank the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees and the California Federation of Teachers for being brain dead. Their arrogance is going to offend lots of people who otherwise would normally support them. The growing rift between unions and Democrats is proof enough.

One Sentence An Atheist Materialist Can Never Validly Assert

This sentence: "See, I was right."

It's strange that a philosophy can be held with such contemptuous vehemence, all the while offering not the slightest logical prospect of eternal vindication.

Do atheists have any real thirst for victory?

If they did, would they be so quick to reject theistic arguments in order to "triumphantly" cling to such philosophical asininities as "Who designed the designer?"

Would they run around shouting, "There is NO evidence for God!"? Really? There is NO evidence anywhere? Not in philosophy, not in history, not in biology, not in the fine-tuned structure of physics, not in personal experience, not in miracles, nowhere, no how, none, none, none? Really?

My advice to atheists: work on that unmanly lack of thirst for everlasting victory, and then reassess the evidence. And do not expect to work less hard at it than you have for your scientific education/knowledge. What have you got to lose other than a sure prospect of not winning?

Note: I am not saying that the evidence only makes sense due to this thirst. I think the cumulative evidence is strong and speaks for itself. The lived evidence even more so ("taste and see"). However, it can be shut out, ignored, and rationalized away. But why do such a thing for such temporary stakes? What kind of moral insanity/lack of spiritual cojones places the benefit of the doubt on the "no eternal victory" side?

Another note: Hopefully it is not necessary for me to unpack the reasons why an atheist will not be able to say, "See, I was right." But just in case: While we're alive on this earth, we can never be absolutely, 100.0000% sure about the answer to the atheism/theism question. However, if the atheist materialist does, in fact, turn out to be correct, he can never know it, since after this life he will no longer exist. He has no vindication he can actually enjoy. This problem does not exist as an absolute logical necessity for the theist. For the same reason, no shame can attach to the eternal defeat of the theist, since he wouldn't be around to suffer it, either.

New And Improved

Amusing parody.

Well, So Much For That Theory

Highlighted here:

CNN co-founder Reese Schonfeld tells the Huffington Post (huh, why would a CNN man go there to post?) that “seven months after Barack Obama’s victory, CNN’s ratings have gone down the drain”:

Nine years ago, when FoxNews sprinted past CNN to become America’s number one news network, I attributed its ratings gains to the election of George Bush and the triumph of Fox-watching conservatives. I figured conservatives would be savoring their victory while liberals were averting their eyes in disgust. For the next eight years, I measured political sentiment in the United States by comparing the size of the FoxNews audience with the combined size of the CNN/MSNBC audience. In this space, I even predicted, with reasonable accuracy, the percent by which Barack Obama won the election based on the split in the news audience.

Now, seven months after Barack Obama’s victory, CNN’s ratings have gone down the drain. From May of last year to May of this year, CNN lost 22% of its total primetime audience. MSNBC was down 2%, while FoxNews was up 24%. In the key advertising demographic (25-54), Fox was up 31%, CNN was down 37% and MSNBC was down 26%. In hard numbers, Fox had 109,000 more viewers than last year while CNN lost 113,000. CNN averaged fewer than 200,000 25-54 viewers in primetime. Even MSNBC averaged more viewers than that.

Total day was nearly as bad, with Fox up 24% and CNN down 7%. MSNBC was down 2% in total viewing. Fox is beating CNN almost two-to-one in most categories.

There’s no need to throw any more numbers at you–Fox is gaining, CNN is wilting. Why is this happening when the country still seems about 58-42 in favor of Obama? My best guess is the passion of those who detest Democrats, liberals, and in particular, Barack Obama.

Well, Mr. Schonfeld, given your track record at "best guesses", I'm going to go with a different theory. It's not the passion of those who "detest Democrats, liberals, and in particular, Barack Obama," it's the passion of those who detest those who suck up to "Democrats, liberals, and in particular, Barack Obama."

Perverse Incentives

Charles Hugh Smith on how "Three perverse incentives created windfalls of low-risk speculative fraud which have gutted the U.S. economy and led to massive distortions in investment and risk."

So I Guess It's All Just A Big Har-Dee-Har

The Today Show acknowledges the obvious but makes it all seem like some kind of endearing little chuckle. It's also interesting that the voiceover for the segment sounds like a schoolteacher reading to kindergartners. Which, I guess, is exactly what it is.

Like A Collosus, He Bestrode The Earth, All The World His Playground.

The Lord Obama blew off the French President in order to have a date night in Paris.

Read. And behold He who is above all men.

"Obama Will Suckle Them While He Must. Then He Will Eat Them. And They’ll Have It Coming."

The Anchoress responds to Evan Thomas proclaiming that "Obama is is sort of god".

Which he does in this vid:



Not also the absurdity of this news genius asserting that "We were the good guys in 1984". Does Genius not remember the massive anti-America protests all across the continent due to "euro missiles"?

Also, let me see if I understand something: Bush was portrayed by the press as a dangerous lunatic because he prayed to God, but the same guys actually think it's cool to regard the President as God?

Stewart Skewers NBC For Its Excessive Use Of Knee Pads

Good stuff.

Good Rejoinder To A Spurious Rhetorical Point

Seen in the comments to this piece:

Q: "How exactly does one bring God himself to justice? I mean, if he's in charge of everything, and he's exterminating fully half of us [via miscarriage] before we're even born, doesn't that render him culpable in some way?"

A: God also kills us when we get too old. Going by that way of thinking, maybe we should make it legal to exterminate the elderly?

Steven Crowder

Good video parody here.

An Indisputable Truth

No one can be an atheist forever.

The Ecology Of Booms And Busts

Great Charles Hugh Smith piece, in which he quotes and responds to a correspondent who says:

I was thinking about financial booms and busts the other day. I think we both believe that crashes are just the price of bubbles. Which is why I'm suspicious of any statement that the 1929 stock market crash "caused" the depression. The crash was just the end of the bubble, and the depression was the prolonged unwinding of excess debt and poor investments. Prolonged by government attempts to reflate the bubble, among other things.

So the real problem here isn't unwinding debt and so on. We know that happens eventually. Systemic effects (dominoes crashing into one another) are important, but overrated in my opinion. The real problem is manias and bubbles. Why do we do this to ourselves?

Two points:

1. No living thing (there's a general argument for you!) can ignore windfalls. If for whatever reason, the grass is greener this year, if you are a rabbit, you eat more of it. And have more kids, which survive in greater numbers. If you were some "sustainable" cautious rabbit that only had 2 kids and only ate what it usually ate, you'd lose out to the greedy ones. Nature selects for optimists that grow more or less as fast as they can.

2. We are social animals and there's a huge cost to being an outsider. Living alone is deadly -- you have no one to help you if you get into trouble, no one to look out for you, no one to hunt or gather with, and no one to share food with if you don't do well today. One mistake and, like solitary animals, you may be finished.

Similarly, we worry about our status in the group. Being unpopular means getting beat up a lot, getting no help, having to give up your food/mates to the stronger members. Also very bad news from an evolutionary standpoint.

So as social animals, we crave status (or at least acceptance) by the group. This is why group-think has such a power over us, from fads and manias to adulation of heros and kings, to religious movements, wars, and revolutions. We think of ourselves as rational beings, but it's just a gloss over those social instincts.

As long as we are human, we will have these crazy bubbles from time to time. Because as animals, we don't ask why times are good, we just try to take advantage of it. And because as primates, if everyone else is buying houses, we will too.

Regulators are just as caught up in this as the general population. They don't want to do the unpopular thing, and they don't want to kill off a boom. No one does, except cynical "doom and gloom"-ers. Wishing it were otherwise is just futile.

Instead we should be asking, "when the inevitable booms and crashes happen, how do we avoid systemic risk?" I don't think we're asking that question as we deal with this crisis. All the debate I read is about more regulation, as if there weren't enough already.

I Like The Analogy

Brutally Honest has found a really good analogy that captures the essence of the utterly worthless GOP.

If Not Supporting A Leftist Will Cost You The "Hispanic Vote", Then Maybe You Don't Really Need The "Hispanic Vote"

Excellent Dr. Sanity manifesto against the creeping racism of our politics.

snippet:

In the last few days I have seen several editorial cartoons with the following theme:

[cartoon]

Let me spell the message out for Republicans: oppose Sotomayor and you will lose the "Hispanic" vote.

Oh the horror!

The sad thing is that Republican strategists are all aflutter at that terrible possibility. I submit that is the case only because Republicans have accepted the fundamental narrative of the left and have bought into the whole system of identity politics that dominate political behavior today.
But it doesn't have to be that way.

It's the same refrain you hear repeatedly these days in our multiculti, PC, and increasingly racist society. Yes, I said racist--and I'm talking about the definition of racism that Martin Luther King used; not the postmodern version. But the postmodern left has made this kind of racism cool and chic; and is preoccupied to the point of obsession with race and sex and gender and identity in our society.

It is sick. It is insane. And it is destroying what the idea of America has always represented.

In fact, just as America was on the verge of doing away with such discrimination; just as the content of one's character was beginning to take hold as an essential aspect of the American Dream, the political left and the Democrats decreed that one's skin color--and gender and sexual orientation and ethic origins and etc. etc.--were far more important considerations.

...

Why can't the Republican Party once again be the party of the individual? Why should we pander to all these identity groups? WE ARE ALL AMERICANS and that is all that matters--or should matter.

Screw the Hispanic vote. Screw the Black vote. Screw the White vote or Women's vote. Forget the LGBT.

And speak to people as individuals.

GO FOR THE INTELLIGENT VOTE. GO AFTER THE SANE VOTE. SPEAK TO THOSE OF US WHO DON'T GIVE A FLYING F*** WHAT COLOR OR CREED OR ETHIC ORIGIN A PERSON HAPPENS TO BE.

Great Quip

Neoneocon:

Obama defends Iran’s right to peaceful nuclear energy.

Wish he would do the same for ours.

Taking It To Michelle

This video segment is very well deserved.

One Thing Leads To Another

Charles Hugh Smith: "Why the Present Depression Will Be Deeper than the Great Crash of 1929"

The piece concludes:

For all these reasons, we can anticipate the Depression currently unfolding will be deeper, longer and more destructive than the Great Depression.

Let's recount the chain of events which partly parallel the Great Depression and partly diverge in meaningfully more destructive ways from that previous era:

1. The postwar income convergence (i.e the rise of the great middle class, the reduction of poverty and the relative reduction of the Plutocracy's share of national income) reverses in the early 1970s as the "true prosperity" of the postwar era ends and is replaced by income flowing increasingly to the top as stagflation, globalization and the decline of dollar gut the purchasing power of the middle class.

2. The rising productivity of the 50s and 60s slips to the flatline through the 70s and early 80s, only picking up again as computer software and hardware revolutionize the back office, sales, manufacturing, just-in-time shipping/production, etc.

3. Concurrent with this gradual return to productivity is the rise of finance as the key profit-center of corporate America. As income skews ever more heavily to the top 1%/5%, then capital (productive assets) become ever more heavily concentrated in the hands of the financial Plutocracy. The top 1% now owns some 2/3 of the nation's entire productive wealth.

4. As profits rise (from rising productivity) then the profits flow not to wages (which remain flat to down 1975-2009 for all but the top 10% professional class) but to those who own the capital.

5. As the middle class experiences a decline in their income and purchasing power (for reasons cited above: declining dollar, rising income disparity, and wages falling due to global wage arbitrage) then they turn more and more to borrowing and ever greater debt to fund what they have been brainwashed by the media to believe is "the American dream" of imported luxury goods, bloated homes, vacuous cruises, etc.

The only other mechanism available to the middle class to increase household income is for Mom/Aunt/Grandmom to enter the workforce, which she does in the tens of millions, with sociological consequences which are still unfolding.

6. This advert/media-driven desire to borrow to fund the "good life" is hugely profitable to the money-center banks, which expand rapidly into mortgage securization, derivatives and consumer credit to the point that they come to dominate corporate profits.

7. The financial Plutocracy, observing that actually producing goods is not very profitable unless you can fix prices as per ADM (Archer Daniels Midlands) or gain government subsidies and tax giveaways (oil lease depreciation, etc.) sinks its capital into the FIRE economy (finance, insurance and real estate), eschewing real-world investments as comparatively unprofitable.

Though rarely noted, this is a longstanding trait of capitalism stretching back to 1400-era Venice. When trade became less profitable than mainland farmimg, the Venetian Elite stopped funding trading and bought farms on the mainland. As a side effect, Venice ceased to be a military and trading power. But the Elite remained immensely wealthy.

8. As the tech bubble expands, middle-class investors see the Plutocracy (those with enough capital to qualify as angel investors and vulture, oops, I mean venture capital) reaping huge gains, and they enter the dot-com stock bubble buildup with a vengeance.

9. In a happy accident, the Soviet Empire collapses just as productivity begins its computer-fueled rise in the U.S. In a so-called Unipolar World in which U.S. military, political and financial influence is unrivaled, non-U.S. investors seek the relative safety and high returns (based on appreciation of the dollar) of U.S. financial instruments.

10. The dot-com bubble implodes in a speculative meltdown (dot-bomb), and retail investors (a.k.a. the middle class 401K investors) are devastated. The ephemeral wealth they once possessed, however briefly, fuels their speculative desire to get into the next get-rich-quick game, which just so happens to be "something everyone understands:" real estate and housing.

11. Having exhausted the dot-com play, Elite capital is seeking a new high-profit home. The miracles of derivatives (CDOs, credit default swaps, etc.) and securitized debt (mortgage tranches, etc.) open up vast bew opportunities for leverage, off-balance sheet shenanigans and outright fraud/debauchery of credit. As chip wafer plants disappear from Silicon Valley (too dirty, too costly, etc.) then they're replaced with paper: mortgage-backed securities.

12. Sniffing gold in them thar exurban hills, the under-capitalized and over-indebted U.S. working class and middle class reach for the chalice of easy-money gold: leveraged real estate.

13. With the Federal financial regulatory agencies in a Republican/Democrat-enforced somnambulance, the coast is clear for brigands, shysters, fraudsters, con artists, liars, cheats, and assorted riff-raff in the realtor, mortgage and appraisal businesses, who all feed the ravenous maw of the money-center banks' apparently limitless appetite for real estate assets to securitize and leverage in exotic and highly profitable ways.

14. For a wonderful five years circa 2001-2006, the game is afoot and no-down-payment Jill and $100 million bonus Jack are immensely enriched. Meanwhile, the underlying real economy is becoming ever more imbalanced and ever more fragile as real production and real productivity plummet as everyone rushes to the speculative riches of exurban McMansions and malls.

15. This last best speculative leveraged bubble pops, gutting a Wall Street which had grown utterly dependent on leverage, debt, gamed/fraudulent accounting and bubbles for its rising profits.

16. Doubly devastated by the implosion of housing and their stock investments (mostly in retirement funds), the middle class faces the terrible consequences of its 26-year stupor of ever-rising debt and leverage. Alas, the Emperor's clothes are revealed as remarkably transparent.

17. Just as in the Great Depression, to its great surprise, the Elite has also suffered catastrophic losses and declines in capital and income.

18. Having borrowed and squandered trillions of dollars since 1981 on unaffordable entitlements, military misadventures and assorted worthless bridges-to-nowhere pork spending, the Federal government (The Fed and the Treasury) finds that its ability to borrow its way out its current debt hole somewhat annoyingly limited. The rest of the world has finally caught on to the con, and Chinese university students are openly mocking Treasury Secretary Geithner's Orwellian claim of "we support a strong dollar." The miracle is that he was not pelted with tomatoes and tarred and feathered for making such absurd statements.

19. With the global media concentrated in a scant few corporate hands (less than 10), this pulling away of the curtain is deleted/excised from media coverage in a ruthless campaign of pure "green shoots" propaganda.

20. As the wheels fall off the U.S. economy and the bubbles cannot be re-inflated, fruitless attempts at holding back the tide with incantations (stop, tide, I am Obama/Geithner/Bernanke!) and loopy sand castles (the bottom is in, buy now! Green shoots are sprouting everywhere except in the real economy!) abound. Unresponsive to propaganda, the real world grinds down into a global Depression without visible end.

Is this "edgy" enough to be worthy? I hope so.

Well Said

Neoneocon:

More from a recovering liberal

Here’s more from former liberal (and present Berkeley therapist) “Robin” at American Thinker. She discusses all you ever wanted to know about her transformation and were unafraid to ask.

And I was amused by the following from a commenter, as well:

Aren’t most conservatives former liberals to some extent? All children are liberals. They are naive, selfish, and believe the world works the way they want it to work. They throw tantrums and blame everything on someone else. They think being a kid is cool and adults are uncool.

"We've Subsidized The Features You Want, And Taxed Away The Rest!"

Great government motors commercial.

Good Comments

In the thread following the GayPatriot post "Gay Marriage Activists Who Prefer Intimidation to Education":

I resent the title of this post. Supporters of traditional marriage aren’t knuckle dragging Neanderthals who need to be “educated”. We’re quite intelligent, thank you very much. We oppose gay marriage for valid moral, religious, cultural, and/or philosophical reasons. We’re not stupid, narrow-minded haters. If you have rational arguments for gay marriage state them but don’t try to “educate” us, please.

Comment by Seane-Anna — June 2, 2009 @ 9:24 pm - June 2, 2009


Seanne-Anna, point well taken.

Comment by GayPatriotWest — June 2, 2009 @ 9:34 pm - June 2, 2009

...

Intelligent people can still be wrong. GPW is simply saying that intelligent people such as yourself need to know all the facts and the benefits that gay marriage would bring to the institution you obviously hold dear. He hopes its possible to convince you otherwise. However, I think that you probably will never be convinced otherwise. Hopefully eventually the courts will force it, so you can be convinced by the loving examples of gay spouses.

Comment by gillie — June 2, 2009 @ 10:00 pm - June 2, 2009


Seane-Anna,

You’re correct. Even the definition above implies you don’t understand the arguments of gay marriage supporters. while acceptance implies correctness. I think you and most supporters of traditional marriage understand the arguments, you just reject them as false. I reject most of them as false. The better word is persuade.

Comment by American Elephant — June 2, 2009 @ 10:40 pm - June 2, 2009


Gillie, why don’t YOU “educate” me on the benefits allowing gay marriage will supposedly bring to an institution that has successfully existed for millenia without it. That’s not a rhetorical question. I want to know.

I don’t believe, though, that gay marriage supporters give a you-know-what about benefitting marriage. Indeed, that argument contradicts another one I often hear from gays, namely, that gay marriage should be allowed because it WON’T effect heterosexual marriage. So which is it? How can gay marriage benefit marriage AND have no effect on heterosexual marriage at the same time? Sounds a little Orwellian to me. And no, seeing “loving gay spouses” won’t change my mind on gay marriage any more than seeing a “loving” incestuous couple, like that Australian father-daughter duo was supposed to be, would change my mind about incest. Nice try, though.

Please, can’t we just be honest about what legalizing gay marriage is really all about? It’s NOT about equality. It’s about destroying the Biblical moral worldview on which America, as a part of Western civilization, was based. Liberals have been maliciously undermining that value system for at least a generation. Getting an official stamp of approval on homosexuality will be a decisive victory for the Left in its war on Judeo-Christian morality. That’s what legalizing gay marriage is really about. Why don’t you gay marriage supporters just admit it?!

Comment by Seane-Anna — June 2, 2009 @ 10:49 pm - June 2, 2009

Hopefully eventually the courts will force it, so you can be convinced by the loving examples of gay spouses

Translation: Up with tyranny! Liberalism uber alles! And if you are not convinced after it is forced on you, then off to the re-education camps you go! How dare you claim heterosexuality is different than homosexuality!

Comment by American Elephant — June 2, 2009 @ 10:49 pm - June 2, 2009


“Liberalism uber alles!” is pretty much what this issue is coming down to, American Elephant. You nailed it.

Comment by Seane-Anna — June 2, 2009 @ 10:57 pm - June 2, 2009


Seane-Anna, I wish my recent marriage had become possible through legislative action rather than judicial fiat. But the change in the law means my husband and I can now unquestionably visit and make decisions for each other at the hospital, have automatic access to a variety of state services if we choose to use them, we can consolidate our health insurance wiwithout undue burden, we gain inheritance rights that some of my disapproving relatives won’t be able to interfere with, we know that words we share can never be used against us in a court of law and countless other legal benefits bestowed on couples in the civil contract named after the religious tradition called marriage.

None of that undercuts my faith in God. I can’t see how it threatens anyone else’s ability to exercise their faith, much less the underpinnings of our culture and society.

Comment by Brezhnev — June 2, 2009 @ 11:29 pm - June 2, 2009

...

I can’t see how it threatens anyone else’s ability to exercise their faith

Brezhnev,
I am glad you brought this up. I am happy to tell you how.

On of the many ways Catholics exercise their faith is by adopting needy orphaned children out to married couples who will give the children a good home and a better life. This charitable work is good for childen and good for society.

Not only do they believe that homosexuality is sinful, but their religion, and biology, also instructs them that a mother and a father is ideal.

The state of Massachusetts told the Catholic church that if they wanted to continue their adoption services they must also adopt children to same sex couples, in violation of their religious beliefs. So Catholics in Massachusetts no longer provide any adoption service for anyone. This obviously harms both their freedom of religious expression, their freedom of association but it harms society and the children who will not be adopted out as a result.

Keep in mind there are other adoption agencies in MA that already adopt to same sex couples.

Many other court cases have forced religious people and organizations to associate themselves with same sex “marriages” in a number of ways.

It astonishes me that in a country where religious expression is the primary freedom protected by the constitution, and where same sex marriage is only recognized by statute or judicial fiat in a handful of places, that statutory protections are allowed to trump constitutional protections. Nevertheless that is what is happening. And people who object to same sex marriage on religious grounds are being forced by the government to recognize and associate with them against their will.

And once established, gay activists will use gay marriage to continue their attack on the freedoms of religious exercise, speech and association as they have already done everywhere gay marriage is recognized.

You see, you may be fine with other peoples religious freedom, but a large activist segment of the “gay community” is not. They want to use government to stop people who believe homosexuality is sinful from preaching it, teaching it, saying it or exercising that belief in any way shape or form. And there are liberal activists on the bench and liberals in office who are more than happy to help.

much less the underpinnings of our culture and society.

Aside from the further destruction of the freedoms of religious exercise, speech and association, what threatens the underpinnings of our culture and society is the further erosion of the connection between marriage and the nuclear family. It is not the fault of gay marriage, but gay marriage is only able to even be considered because a large number of Americans either forgot, or never knew that the importance of marriage to society is in the structure it establishes for reproduction and child rearing.

But you cannot have an institution that is about encouraging reproduction and rearing of children by their biological parents when you say the institution must recognize no difference between homosexuality and heterosexuality.

indeed, marriage cant be about kids at all if same sex couples are allowed to marry, because homosexuality cannot create children, only heterosexuality can.

So it must become just another entitlement for adults.

Anyone who thinks that separating having children from marriage is not devastating to society, need look no further than those communities where they already have. Where the out of wedlock birth rate is over 70%. Where children are FAR more likely to drop out of school, commit crime, do drugs, be illiterate, be poor, have health problems, die earlier and any other social ill you want to name.

Mothers and fathers matter. Children matter. And marriage matters to the well being of society AND kids.

Gay marriage is just a symptom of the liberalization of marriage that has turned it from an institution that serves an important purpose, to an institution that is a meaningless entitlement. Doing so harms society.

Comment by American Elephant — June 3, 2009 @ 2:49 am - June 3, 2009

If You Wouldn't Condone Personally Storming Auschwitz, You Must Not Really Think The Holocaust Is Wrong

Or, perhaps this analogy is more apt: If you wouldn't lynch a plantation owner, you must not really be against slavery.

Some spurious moral reasoning at Slate.

The piece does, however, contain some good writing:

Several years ago, I went to a conference of abortionists. Some of the late-term providers were there. A row of tables displayed forceps for sale. They started small and got bigger and bigger. Walking along the row, you could ask yourself: Would I use these forceps? How about those? Where would I stop?

The people who do late-term abortions are the ones who don't flinch. They're like the veterans you sometimes see in war documentaries, quietly recounting what they faced and did. You think you're pro-choice. You think marching or phone-banking makes you an activist. You know nothing. There's you, and then there are the people who work in the clinics. And then there are the people who use the forceps. And then there are the people who use the forceps nobody else will use. At the end of the line, there's George Tiller.

Now he's gone. Who will pick up his forceps?

H/T Brutally Honest.

Dismantling Krugman

Charles Hugh Smith explains to a clueless leftist economist the real situation in California.

Defending Publik Skool

With a ludicrous attack on homeschooling.

But, teacher knows best.

"May Posterity Forget You Were Our Countrymen"

A pointed message to the GOP castrati.

Bravo!

You have GOT to watch this.