George Will’s Christmas Present
She conflates so many different things and issues it's hard to know where to start and not worth the effort to try.
Still, she might be right that his importance as a conservative columnist is much diminished from his glory days, when he and others like him helped bring back the bow tie.
Thursday, December 31, 2015
Don't bother to tax the rich. They don't don't have enough to pay for your progressive agenda.
Class warrior journalist Megan McArdle tells that same old lie in Bloomberg View.
And since the Democrats won't - can't - raise taxes on working stiffs - people of the class progressives intend to benefit - enough to cover the expense, the Sanders agenda, especially, is a hollow dream, she says.
She does not say it's a hollow dream because the Republicans control both houses of congress now and will do well enough in 2016 even if they lose the White House to deny Democrats a super-majority in the senate, and will absolutely refuse to pay for that stuff with the various taxes on the incomes of the far fewer than 1% that Bernie and his supporters are looking for.
Not a chance in hell they'll play ball with that.
And since the Democrats won't - can't - raise taxes on working stiffs - people of the class progressives intend to benefit - enough to cover the expense, the Sanders agenda, especially, is a hollow dream, she says.
She does not say it's a hollow dream because the Republicans control both houses of congress now and will do well enough in 2016 even if they lose the White House to deny Democrats a super-majority in the senate, and will absolutely refuse to pay for that stuff with the various taxes on the incomes of the far fewer than 1% that Bernie and his supporters are looking for.
Not a chance in hell they'll play ball with that.
Race politics in the LA Times
In 2016, white people must take responsibility for Donald Trump
Who did this fellow and others of his ilk demand take responsibility for black violence in Baltimore this past summer?
Ah, yes. White people.
Who provided ideological and moral cover for the rioters?
Blacks like him and their supporters of other races, notably including numerous white liberals.
Who continues to insist the struggle between the two major parties be perceived as about race rather than about class, that the Democrats be seen as an alliance of everybody else against whites, and that the Republicans be seen as the party for whites seeking to retain demographic, political, and cultural majority status?
Who continues to pretend that Hispanics of all races, East and South Asians, and all other minorities align mostly with Democrats because they see politics as a racial struggle and they see themselves as racial allies of American blacks rather than whites?
It's not just the likes of David Duke or, for that matter, Pat Buchanan.
Even people in no hurry to shout "racism" nevertheless buy into it, in the end.
Can right-wing populism be stopped?
Not too many see or are willing to say how far elements of the white working class vote Republican because, as they think, the Democrats and liberal elites have betrayed them economically, politically, and culturally and have scapegoated them for decades not only for every ill besetting minorities in America but for everything else they loathe about the country.
Who did this fellow and others of his ilk demand take responsibility for black violence in Baltimore this past summer?
Ah, yes. White people.
Who provided ideological and moral cover for the rioters?
Blacks like him and their supporters of other races, notably including numerous white liberals.
Who continues to insist the struggle between the two major parties be perceived as about race rather than about class, that the Democrats be seen as an alliance of everybody else against whites, and that the Republicans be seen as the party for whites seeking to retain demographic, political, and cultural majority status?
Who continues to pretend that Hispanics of all races, East and South Asians, and all other minorities align mostly with Democrats because they see politics as a racial struggle and they see themselves as racial allies of American blacks rather than whites?
It's not just the likes of David Duke or, for that matter, Pat Buchanan.
Even people in no hurry to shout "racism" nevertheless buy into it, in the end.
Can right-wing populism be stopped?
Not too many see or are willing to say how far elements of the white working class vote Republican because, as they think, the Democrats and liberal elites have betrayed them economically, politically, and culturally and have scapegoated them for decades not only for every ill besetting minorities in America but for everything else they loathe about the country.
The shoddiness of The Grey Lady
The most racist places in America, according to Google
The paper introduces a novel but makes-tons-of-sense-when-you-think-about-it method for measuring the incidence of racist attitudes: Google search data.
No, it doesn't.
And how do they know the races of the people doing the searches?
Blacks are far more likely than whites to make regular use of variants of "nigger," and the areas on the map this fellow thinks searches prove to be racist are both areas where the black population is high and areas with a history of racial oppression, segregation, and violence.
Only the latter makes this idiotic travesty of social science the least plausible.
Why make reference to this old thing, now?
Because there is a fresh attack on Trump in the news that calls attention to the alleged fact that his support is concentrated in the very areas this ludicrous piece of pseudo-scholarship labels racist.
Proving what, do you suppose?
Gee whiz.
Is it coincidence that the fellow who wrote the original study was hired by the NYT for its editorial page and the NYT now originates this attack?
Phooey.
All the same, leave it to the Times to know perfectly well how to make this hatchet job, not just on Trump but on his voters, sound like respectable reporting.
That Mr. Trump’s support is strong in similar areas does not prove that most or even many of his supporters are motivated by racial animus.
But it is consistent with the possibility that at least some are.
The same areas where racial animus is highest in the Google data also tend to have older and less educated people, and Mr. Trump tends to fare better among those groups — though the effect of Google data remains just as strong after controlling for these other factors.
These areas also include many of the places where Democrats have lost the most ground over the last half-century, and where Hillary Clinton tended to fare best among white voters in her contest against Mr. Obama in the 2008 Democratic primaries.
In many of these areas, a large number of traditionally Democratic voters have long supported Republicans in presidential elections.
Even now, Democrats have more registered voters than Republicans do in states like West Virginia and Kentucky, which have been easily carried by Republicans in every presidential contest of this century.
As recently as a few years ago, Democrats still had a big advantage in partisan self-identification in the same states.
But during the Obama era, many of these voters have abandoned the Democrats.
Many Democrats may now even identify as Republicans, or as independents who lean Republican, when asked by pollsters — a choice that means they’re included in a national Republican primary survey, whether they remain registered as Democrats or not.
Mr. Trump appears to hold his greatest strength among people like these — registered Democrats who identify as Republican leaners — with 43 percent of their support, according to the Civis data.
Similarly, many of Mr. Trump’s best states are those with a long tradition of Democrats who vote Republican in presidential elections, like West Virginia.
The paper introduces a novel but makes-tons-of-sense-when-you-think-about-it method for measuring the incidence of racist attitudes: Google search data.
No, it doesn't.
And how do they know the races of the people doing the searches?
Blacks are far more likely than whites to make regular use of variants of "nigger," and the areas on the map this fellow thinks searches prove to be racist are both areas where the black population is high and areas with a history of racial oppression, segregation, and violence.
Only the latter makes this idiotic travesty of social science the least plausible.
Why make reference to this old thing, now?
Because there is a fresh attack on Trump in the news that calls attention to the alleged fact that his support is concentrated in the very areas this ludicrous piece of pseudo-scholarship labels racist.
Proving what, do you suppose?
Gee whiz.
Is it coincidence that the fellow who wrote the original study was hired by the NYT for its editorial page and the NYT now originates this attack?
Phooey.
All the same, leave it to the Times to know perfectly well how to make this hatchet job, not just on Trump but on his voters, sound like respectable reporting.
That Mr. Trump’s support is strong in similar areas does not prove that most or even many of his supporters are motivated by racial animus.
But it is consistent with the possibility that at least some are.
The same areas where racial animus is highest in the Google data also tend to have older and less educated people, and Mr. Trump tends to fare better among those groups — though the effect of Google data remains just as strong after controlling for these other factors.
These areas also include many of the places where Democrats have lost the most ground over the last half-century, and where Hillary Clinton tended to fare best among white voters in her contest against Mr. Obama in the 2008 Democratic primaries.
In many of these areas, a large number of traditionally Democratic voters have long supported Republicans in presidential elections.
Even now, Democrats have more registered voters than Republicans do in states like West Virginia and Kentucky, which have been easily carried by Republicans in every presidential contest of this century.
As recently as a few years ago, Democrats still had a big advantage in partisan self-identification in the same states.
But during the Obama era, many of these voters have abandoned the Democrats.
Many Democrats may now even identify as Republicans, or as independents who lean Republican, when asked by pollsters — a choice that means they’re included in a national Republican primary survey, whether they remain registered as Democrats or not.
Mr. Trump appears to hold his greatest strength among people like these — registered Democrats who identify as Republican leaners — with 43 percent of their support, according to the Civis data.
Similarly, many of Mr. Trump’s best states are those with a long tradition of Democrats who vote Republican in presidential elections, like West Virginia.
Wednesday, December 30, 2015
Freedom of expression in Israel
As though Muslim media did not do a thousand times worse, every day.
Arrests over Israel 'incitement' video
Is Bibi really this PC-whipped?
Remember the US election of 2000
Venezuela court blocks new MPs
This is bad, but what happened to us was worse.
Tuesday, December 29, 2015
Unity of apperception and physicalism, again
Is the unity of apperception after all consistent with event level dualism?
If it is the whole brain that thinks snow is white and grass is green, though the first be correlated with - though not identical to - one brain event and the second quite another, that appears to save the unity of apperception, to be consistent with or even in some sense explain both thoughts being thoughts of the same thinker.
If instead it is suggested that one brain event in a single brain (yours, say) is itself also a thinking that snow is white while another is a thinking that grass is green, that seems to leave open the possibility that these two thinkings could belong to different thinkers, contrary to the fact.
But experience seems to indicate that at least in the supposed cases of multiple personality different thinkings in the same brain really might belong to different thinkers.
Might it not be that whether or not multiple thinkings in the same brain belong to the same subject is contingent on any number of currently unknown physical circumstances that usually obtain but in a rare minority of people do not work out?
Given this, for the mental natures of these events to play any sort of role in the life of the organism it would seem to be necessary that events misbehave, relative to what their physical natures would alone determine.
It seems incredible that experience could be utterly gratuitous and irrelevant.
And that seems the only alternative.
Afterthought.
Of course, the physical event that happens to be also a thinking that grass is green is doubtless actually a composite of many other brain events, possibly some simultaneous and others successive.
It would be the whole composite that makes up the thinking that grass is green.
If it is the whole brain that thinks snow is white and grass is green, though the first be correlated with - though not identical to - one brain event and the second quite another, that appears to save the unity of apperception, to be consistent with or even in some sense explain both thoughts being thoughts of the same thinker.
If instead it is suggested that one brain event in a single brain (yours, say) is itself also a thinking that snow is white while another is a thinking that grass is green, that seems to leave open the possibility that these two thinkings could belong to different thinkers, contrary to the fact.
But experience seems to indicate that at least in the supposed cases of multiple personality different thinkings in the same brain really might belong to different thinkers.
Might it not be that whether or not multiple thinkings in the same brain belong to the same subject is contingent on any number of currently unknown physical circumstances that usually obtain but in a rare minority of people do not work out?
Given this, for the mental natures of these events to play any sort of role in the life of the organism it would seem to be necessary that events misbehave, relative to what their physical natures would alone determine.
It seems incredible that experience could be utterly gratuitous and irrelevant.
And that seems the only alternative.
Afterthought.
Of course, the physical event that happens to be also a thinking that grass is green is doubtless actually a composite of many other brain events, possibly some simultaneous and others successive.
It would be the whole composite that makes up the thinking that grass is green.
Trump and minorities
Constant claims not only by liberals but by the media in general that Trump is a racist and his agenda is driven by racism don't seem to be having the desired effect.
Minorities line up behind Donald Trump
What if Trump is not nominated?
His voters might not show up.
Hard to believe any notable number of his white voters would vote for a Democrat.
The minorities might, some of them.
Minorities line up behind Donald Trump
What if Trump is not nominated?
His voters might not show up.
Hard to believe any notable number of his white voters would vote for a Democrat.
The minorities might, some of them.
Bill is a real pig. Trump a mere amateur.
Trump is Right about Bill Clinton
Bill is a sexual predator and a disbarred perjurer and public liar about who he had sex with and when.
While probably no Charlie Sheen, it is an open question whether he offers serious competition to Don Juan or Casanova.
He should have resigned in his disgrace and let Big Al finish out his term, but with the selfish arrogance so typical of him chose to duke it out with a Republican congress that had an excellent excuse to impeach him, wasting much of his term, disgracing his defenders, and weakening both the party and Big Al with results we saw in the election of 2000.
Hill should have dumped him and that she did not is all too often attributed to a deplorable combination (dosage varies) of ambition for the presidency and closeted - another Hillary lie - lesbianism.
And to make it worse her political loyalty to Bill tars her with his brush - free trade, the attack on welfare, and the brayed betrayal of progressivism in his declaration that "the era of Big Government is over."
Democrats have little choice but to ignore all that and make the best of it, repeatedly trumpeting how beloved and admired he is.
Gag.
Update, 12312015.
Can Trump’s Clinton-Sex-Scandal Revival Hurt Hillary?
You bet.
Bill is a sexual predator and a disbarred perjurer and public liar about who he had sex with and when.
While probably no Charlie Sheen, it is an open question whether he offers serious competition to Don Juan or Casanova.
He should have resigned in his disgrace and let Big Al finish out his term, but with the selfish arrogance so typical of him chose to duke it out with a Republican congress that had an excellent excuse to impeach him, wasting much of his term, disgracing his defenders, and weakening both the party and Big Al with results we saw in the election of 2000.
Hill should have dumped him and that she did not is all too often attributed to a deplorable combination (dosage varies) of ambition for the presidency and closeted - another Hillary lie - lesbianism.
And to make it worse her political loyalty to Bill tars her with his brush - free trade, the attack on welfare, and the brayed betrayal of progressivism in his declaration that "the era of Big Government is over."
Democrats have little choice but to ignore all that and make the best of it, repeatedly trumpeting how beloved and admired he is.
Gag.
Update, 12312015.
Can Trump’s Clinton-Sex-Scandal Revival Hurt Hillary?
You bet.
Monday, December 28, 2015
A boomer who never got over it
'Awards Chatter' Podcast — Samuel L. Jackson ('The Hateful Eight')
A tremendous actor, he always seemed to me to be the kind of guy who would make a big deal of his admiration for criminal race-haters and marginal psychopaths like Malcolm X.
At Morehouse College in Atlanta, Jackson led several lives: actor (his favorite classes were in acting and public speaking), activist (he joined the Black Power movement and served as an usher at MLK's funeral), athlete (he was a champion swimmer) and, in his words, "street thug."
For a while, his activism threatened everything else in his life — in 1969, the FBI warned his mother that if he didn't get out of Atlanta they could not guarantee his safety, so she forced him to relocate to Los Angeles, where he worked as a social worker.
(It didn't even occur to him to pursue acting at that time — "Theater was more exciting to me and more accessible to me than moviedom," he says.)
. . . .
New York-based Lee, who had seen him in A Soldier's Play and told him he wanted to work together.
Lee didn't offer Jackson a part in his directorial debut, She's Gotta Have It (1986), but from then on, Jackson says, "Every summer I did a Spike Lee job and the jobs got bigger and bigger."
Lee hired him for only a day's work on School Daze; then cast him in a colorful supporting part in Do the Right Thing; and then gave him the role of his lifetime, to that point, as Gator, the crack addict, in Jungle Fever.
Jackson got the offer while "in rehab recovering from my cocaine, alcohol, whatever, everything addiction," which ended up being great preparation.
But it turns out he's not as bad as I thought, though he is, to use his own kind of language, "a dumb-ass."
(And what a potty-mouth!)
From the ads, the movie looked like fun.
He's already made up his mind about his own vote in 2016: "I'm forever a Democrat, you know, and I'm gonna vote for Hillary.
"I mean, I love Bernie — Bernie's a man of the people — but he can't win. So I gotta cast my vote for a person that can keep those other people from winning, okay?
"Not to mention, you know, Hillary kinda knows the job, she can hit the ground running.
"She didn't have a huge learning-curve like Barack [Obama] had or some other people had.
"And hopefully she can open up the skeletal files of those do-nothing assholes that go to work, like, four times a year and not vote on things [an apparent reference to Sen. Marco Rubio and other elected officials with poor attendance records] and threaten them with whatever she and Bill [Clinton] uncovered on them years ago and make 'em do something and we can get something done."
A tremendous actor, he always seemed to me to be the kind of guy who would make a big deal of his admiration for criminal race-haters and marginal psychopaths like Malcolm X.
At Morehouse College in Atlanta, Jackson led several lives: actor (his favorite classes were in acting and public speaking), activist (he joined the Black Power movement and served as an usher at MLK's funeral), athlete (he was a champion swimmer) and, in his words, "street thug."
For a while, his activism threatened everything else in his life — in 1969, the FBI warned his mother that if he didn't get out of Atlanta they could not guarantee his safety, so she forced him to relocate to Los Angeles, where he worked as a social worker.
(It didn't even occur to him to pursue acting at that time — "Theater was more exciting to me and more accessible to me than moviedom," he says.)
. . . .
New York-based Lee, who had seen him in A Soldier's Play and told him he wanted to work together.
Lee didn't offer Jackson a part in his directorial debut, She's Gotta Have It (1986), but from then on, Jackson says, "Every summer I did a Spike Lee job and the jobs got bigger and bigger."
Lee hired him for only a day's work on School Daze; then cast him in a colorful supporting part in Do the Right Thing; and then gave him the role of his lifetime, to that point, as Gator, the crack addict, in Jungle Fever.
Jackson got the offer while "in rehab recovering from my cocaine, alcohol, whatever, everything addiction," which ended up being great preparation.
But it turns out he's not as bad as I thought, though he is, to use his own kind of language, "a dumb-ass."
(And what a potty-mouth!)
From the ads, the movie looked like fun.
He's already made up his mind about his own vote in 2016: "I'm forever a Democrat, you know, and I'm gonna vote for Hillary.
"I mean, I love Bernie — Bernie's a man of the people — but he can't win. So I gotta cast my vote for a person that can keep those other people from winning, okay?
"Not to mention, you know, Hillary kinda knows the job, she can hit the ground running.
"She didn't have a huge learning-curve like Barack [Obama] had or some other people had.
"And hopefully she can open up the skeletal files of those do-nothing assholes that go to work, like, four times a year and not vote on things [an apparent reference to Sen. Marco Rubio and other elected officials with poor attendance records] and threaten them with whatever she and Bill [Clinton] uncovered on them years ago and make 'em do something and we can get something done."
Bernie drinks the Kool-Aid
Bernie echoes O's infamous, patronizing, and contemptuous remarks about white working class men.
This was O in 2008.
A political storm is brewing over Sen. Barack Obama's recent statements.
Last Sunday, Obama was explaining his difficulty with winning over working-class voters in Pennsylvania and the Midwest, saying they have become frustrated with economic conditions:
"And it's not surprising then that they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren't like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations," Obama said.
The comments were posted Friday on The Huffington Post, creating a wave of criticism from Sen. Hillary Clinton, Sen. John McCain, and other politicians as the April 22 Pennsylvania primary draws near.
This was Bernie just yesterday.
In a pre-taped interview for CBS’ “Face the Nation,” Sanders said many of Trump’s supporters are “working-class people” who have “legitimate” angers and fears because of decreasing wages and the rising cost of college tuition, among other reasons.
“What Trump has done with some success is taken that anger, taken those fears, which are legitimate, and converted them into anger against Mexicans, anger against Muslims,” Sanders said.
The Vermont senator said he would instead work to channel that same anger into support for proposals such as raising the minimum wage — as opposed to “dividing us up and having us hate Mexicans or Muslims.”
“We need policies that bring us together, that take on the greed of Wall Street, the greed of corporate America,” Sanders said.
It is a point of leftish Democratic propaganda - do they really believe it? - that all forms of social misbehavior from criminal anti-policing riots in Baltimore to Jihad in Syria, from drug dealing in New York to piracy off the coast of Somalia, are due to poverty, lack of opportunity, and economic frustration in general.
Not least including white working class rejection of Democrat-favored policies and support for the Republican Party, which they always also, and somewhat incoherently, attribute to racism.
It's the retail version addressing specific social ills - and these Democrats certainly regard popular support for Republicans or any of their agenda as a social ill - of the broad utopian faith of the social engineer who thinks, or says he thinks, that if only he is allowed to correctly arrange society and all its institutions misbehavior will end and all will be swell.
This was O in 2008.
A political storm is brewing over Sen. Barack Obama's recent statements.
Last Sunday, Obama was explaining his difficulty with winning over working-class voters in Pennsylvania and the Midwest, saying they have become frustrated with economic conditions:
"And it's not surprising then that they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren't like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations," Obama said.
The comments were posted Friday on The Huffington Post, creating a wave of criticism from Sen. Hillary Clinton, Sen. John McCain, and other politicians as the April 22 Pennsylvania primary draws near.
This was Bernie just yesterday.
In a pre-taped interview for CBS’ “Face the Nation,” Sanders said many of Trump’s supporters are “working-class people” who have “legitimate” angers and fears because of decreasing wages and the rising cost of college tuition, among other reasons.
“What Trump has done with some success is taken that anger, taken those fears, which are legitimate, and converted them into anger against Mexicans, anger against Muslims,” Sanders said.
The Vermont senator said he would instead work to channel that same anger into support for proposals such as raising the minimum wage — as opposed to “dividing us up and having us hate Mexicans or Muslims.”
“We need policies that bring us together, that take on the greed of Wall Street, the greed of corporate America,” Sanders said.
It is a point of leftish Democratic propaganda - do they really believe it? - that all forms of social misbehavior from criminal anti-policing riots in Baltimore to Jihad in Syria, from drug dealing in New York to piracy off the coast of Somalia, are due to poverty, lack of opportunity, and economic frustration in general.
Not least including white working class rejection of Democrat-favored policies and support for the Republican Party, which they always also, and somewhat incoherently, attribute to racism.
It's the retail version addressing specific social ills - and these Democrats certainly regard popular support for Republicans or any of their agenda as a social ill - of the broad utopian faith of the social engineer who thinks, or says he thinks, that if only he is allowed to correctly arrange society and all its institutions misbehavior will end and all will be swell.
Worse than August
During the weeks including Christmas and New Year's when the classe politique is off the most awful stuff gets written and published.
Or maybe George Will has just long since written himself out.
Or maybe George Will has just long since written himself out.
Sunday, December 27, 2015
It was war
Supreme Court Justice Doubts Mass Internment Would Happen Again in US
In both world wars of the 20th Century every belligerent country interned enemy aliens, and several neutral countries interned aliens who were nationals of the belligerent countries.
Internment, Wartime
But the internment of the Japanese was exceptional, all the same.
In both world wars of the 20th Century every belligerent country interned enemy aliens, and several neutral countries interned aliens who were nationals of the belligerent countries.
Internment, Wartime
But the internment of the Japanese was exceptional, all the same.
Ravens besting Steelers 13 to 3 at the half
They are just plain playing better.
Roethlisberger is not looking good, today.
Mallet is doing fine.
Ravens win 20 to 17.
Roethlisberger is not looking good, today.
Mallet is doing fine.
Ravens win 20 to 17.
Saturday, December 26, 2015
O thanks troops on Christmas
Thanking the Troops in Person on Christmas Day
The loons say he's a Jihader sympathizer and the "legitimate" right offers them aid and comfort.
In a new NPR interview, President Obama complains that "strains in the Republican party suggest that somehow I'm different, I'm Muslim, I'm disloyal to the country, which unfortunately is pretty far out there."
Is it?
While there's no evidence to suggest Obama is a practicing Muslim, there is plenty to suggest he is disloyal.
He not only shares Muslim hatred for America and Israel, but actually sympathizes with the endless anti-Western grievances lodged by Muslim terrorists.
The reason the president won't engage this enemy is because he sides with it, not because he can't see it or understand it.
It is not a matter of incompetence.
It is a matter of bias.
If this sounds like betrayal, that is because it is.
The Birchers said Eisenhower was a Communist.
Was GW a Muslim? A Jihad sympathizer?
Democrats Find an Unlikely Ally on Muslims: George W Bush
The Democrats are blurring distinctions, of course.
The GOP candidates are not calling for a war against Islam but boots on the ground against ISIS and a far more aggressive approach to fighting "radical Islamic terrorism."
And mostly they left Trump isolated in his call for a purely temporary moratorium on Muslim immigration and travel to the US, though a fair number of conservative pundits have gone further than he has and called for a ban without at all qualifying it as "temporary."
But the Republicans blur distinctions, too, mistaking or misrepresenting their doubts about whether the president is native-born or about his religion for evidence he is disloyal, betraying the country, or just laying down on the job of defending it.
How's this from September 2015 strike you?
[A] majority of Trump's supporters . . . also believe Obama is secretly harboring faith in Islam, according to a CNN/ORC poll conducted earlier this month.
That poll found that 54% of Trump supporters believe Obama is a Muslim.
Among Republicans nationwide, the poll showed, 43% of Republicans think Obama is Muslim, as do 29% of Americans as a whole.
Trump, ever the bomb-thrower, has repeatedly expressed uncertainty about the president being native born and about his religion as part of his political attacks on the president.
But the birth issue has to do with O's being constitutionally qualified to be president and has nothing to do with his loyalty, religion, political views or aspirations, or competence for the job.
And if O were secretly a Muslim he would be a Muslim much as a liberal Christian with some sympathy for Black Liberation Theology is a Christian, or perhaps as a secular Jew is a Jew.
Everything we know about him and have seen of his conduct in office belies he is a Muslim at all, and even more emphatically belies that he is a Muslim as the Ayatollahs are Muslims or as the Taliban are Muslims.
And it is lunatic to suppose he has any sympathy at all with the religious ideas or political aspirations of the likes of ISIS or any others of the Jihaders.
The loons say he's a Jihader sympathizer and the "legitimate" right offers them aid and comfort.
In a new NPR interview, President Obama complains that "strains in the Republican party suggest that somehow I'm different, I'm Muslim, I'm disloyal to the country, which unfortunately is pretty far out there."
Is it?
While there's no evidence to suggest Obama is a practicing Muslim, there is plenty to suggest he is disloyal.
He not only shares Muslim hatred for America and Israel, but actually sympathizes with the endless anti-Western grievances lodged by Muslim terrorists.
The reason the president won't engage this enemy is because he sides with it, not because he can't see it or understand it.
It is not a matter of incompetence.
It is a matter of bias.
If this sounds like betrayal, that is because it is.
The Birchers said Eisenhower was a Communist.
Was GW a Muslim? A Jihad sympathizer?
Democrats Find an Unlikely Ally on Muslims: George W Bush
The Democrats are blurring distinctions, of course.
The GOP candidates are not calling for a war against Islam but boots on the ground against ISIS and a far more aggressive approach to fighting "radical Islamic terrorism."
And mostly they left Trump isolated in his call for a purely temporary moratorium on Muslim immigration and travel to the US, though a fair number of conservative pundits have gone further than he has and called for a ban without at all qualifying it as "temporary."
But the Republicans blur distinctions, too, mistaking or misrepresenting their doubts about whether the president is native-born or about his religion for evidence he is disloyal, betraying the country, or just laying down on the job of defending it.
How's this from September 2015 strike you?
[A] majority of Trump's supporters . . . also believe Obama is secretly harboring faith in Islam, according to a CNN/ORC poll conducted earlier this month.
That poll found that 54% of Trump supporters believe Obama is a Muslim.
Among Republicans nationwide, the poll showed, 43% of Republicans think Obama is Muslim, as do 29% of Americans as a whole.
Trump, ever the bomb-thrower, has repeatedly expressed uncertainty about the president being native born and about his religion as part of his political attacks on the president.
But the birth issue has to do with O's being constitutionally qualified to be president and has nothing to do with his loyalty, religion, political views or aspirations, or competence for the job.
And if O were secretly a Muslim he would be a Muslim much as a liberal Christian with some sympathy for Black Liberation Theology is a Christian, or perhaps as a secular Jew is a Jew.
Everything we know about him and have seen of his conduct in office belies he is a Muslim at all, and even more emphatically belies that he is a Muslim as the Ayatollahs are Muslims or as the Taliban are Muslims.
And it is lunatic to suppose he has any sympathy at all with the religious ideas or political aspirations of the likes of ISIS or any others of the Jihaders.
The Greater Good, or Jihader Utilitarianism
Islamic State okays taking organs of living non-Muslims
The sources quoted do not refer to all non-Muslims but only apostates.
Bad enough, though.
The Islamic State's religious scholars have ruled that taking the organs of non-Muslims is permissible under Islamic law to save the life of a Muslim, because killing apostates to eat their flesh has previously been allowed.
The revelation comes in a January 2015 document that was capured by U.S. special forces in Syria in May and obtained by Reuters.
The news agency posted a U.S. government translation of the document attributed to the Islamic State's research and fatwa committee.
"Allah almighty knows what's best and knows what's right and what is wrong and there is evidence from texts and Islamic principles and laws supporting the notion that transplanting organs from an apostate's body into a Muslim body in order to save the latter's life or replace a damaged organ with it is permissible," the document reads.
The sources quoted do not refer to all non-Muslims but only apostates.
Bad enough, though.
The Islamic State's religious scholars have ruled that taking the organs of non-Muslims is permissible under Islamic law to save the life of a Muslim, because killing apostates to eat their flesh has previously been allowed.
The revelation comes in a January 2015 document that was capured by U.S. special forces in Syria in May and obtained by Reuters.
The news agency posted a U.S. government translation of the document attributed to the Islamic State's research and fatwa committee.
"Allah almighty knows what's best and knows what's right and what is wrong and there is evidence from texts and Islamic principles and laws supporting the notion that transplanting organs from an apostate's body into a Muslim body in order to save the latter's life or replace a damaged organ with it is permissible," the document reads.
Yikes!
My bathroom scale is a goddam liar.
Or else you really can gain close to three pounds in two days of feasting.
Jeez.
Or else you really can gain close to three pounds in two days of feasting.
Jeez.
Friday, December 25, 2015
"Eternity" defined as "two people and a ham".
The quip seems to predate Dorothy Parker by a good ways.
Christmas supper, as I plan it.
And however many days thereafter.
Christmas supper, as I plan it.
And however many days thereafter.
Far from just being Hollywood, it's a leftist post-Christian culture of the whole Occident
The Danish Girl
A celebration of those who undergo mutilations whose whole point is to escape hated reality.
Just in time for Christmas.
Meanwhile, Disney studios at once grant and deny the creationist fantasy of dinosaurs and humans living together.
A celebration of those who undergo mutilations whose whole point is to escape hated reality.
Just in time for Christmas.
Meanwhile, Disney studios at once grant and deny the creationist fantasy of dinosaurs and humans living together.
Why doesn't it "fit the narrative"?
Shows it wasn't racism, I suppose, though of course it was war hysteria and xenophobia.
The Nazi Kid From Brooklyn
After perusal of a few other articles including one by its founder and namesake I decided Taki's Magazine has become truly repulsive, obscene, and disgusting.
I thought of deleting this post because of the link to an article at that site.
But the article itself is not repulsive, disgusting, or obscene.
So I left the post.
A long time ago, Playboy published a lengthy interview with Jean Paul Sartre.
The Nazi Kid From Brooklyn
After perusal of a few other articles including one by its founder and namesake I decided Taki's Magazine has become truly repulsive, obscene, and disgusting.
I thought of deleting this post because of the link to an article at that site.
But the article itself is not repulsive, disgusting, or obscene.
So I left the post.
A long time ago, Playboy published a lengthy interview with Jean Paul Sartre.
Bernie vs. the Fed
Bernie Sanders vows to curb Wall Street by purging Federal Reserve of bankers
His criticism of the rate hike may be apt but his suggested solution is nuts.
The senator for Vermont and foremost Democratic rival to leading candidate Hillary Clinton, argued that interest rates generally should not rise until unemployment is lower than 4%, instead of the 5% rate where it currently stands, in order not to choke off economic recovery.
He accused the central bank of being influenced by the big banks “and their supporters in Congress” as they warned repeatedly in recent years that “runaway inflation is just around the corner”.
. . . .
“If I were elected president, the foxes would no longer guard the henhouse,” he said.
In order to shake up the central bank’s governance system and appoint board members from “all walks of life” its directors should be nominated by the president and chosen by the US Senate, he said.
His criticism of the rate hike may be apt but his suggested solution is nuts.
The senator for Vermont and foremost Democratic rival to leading candidate Hillary Clinton, argued that interest rates generally should not rise until unemployment is lower than 4%, instead of the 5% rate where it currently stands, in order not to choke off economic recovery.
He accused the central bank of being influenced by the big banks “and their supporters in Congress” as they warned repeatedly in recent years that “runaway inflation is just around the corner”.
. . . .
“If I were elected president, the foxes would no longer guard the henhouse,” he said.
In order to shake up the central bank’s governance system and appoint board members from “all walks of life” its directors should be nominated by the president and chosen by the US Senate, he said.
The 'reality-based' left captured perfectly in one story in The Guardian
Chelsea Manning spends sixth Christmas in prison with no end in sight
That is, of course, Bradley Manning, and the end will come in roughly thirty years, and possibly earlier with good behavior and parole.
This is their reality.
That is, of course, Bradley Manning, and the end will come in roughly thirty years, and possibly earlier with good behavior and parole.
This is their reality.
Screening for risk of terrorism
More than 20 British Muslim families denied entry to US, claims London imam Ajmal Masroor
In Britain this is being reported as something of a scandal.
Option B?
In Britain this is being reported as something of a scandal.
Option B?
This would be the O White House trying to comply with the law, I suppose
US plan to deport undocumented families angers Democratic candidates
Democrats rip report on deportation plan
They have to deport somebody.
They got beat up in court for saying they would in significant measure not enforce the law, and both presidential autocracy and their Democratic outlook on immigration provoked considerable public outrage.
To focus on the most recent arrivals makes sense.
Democrats rip report on deportation plan
They have to deport somebody.
They got beat up in court for saying they would in significant measure not enforce the law, and both presidential autocracy and their Democratic outlook on immigration provoked considerable public outrage.
To focus on the most recent arrivals makes sense.
Ho, ho! Merry Christmas!
Strange Weather Across The United States
I am absolutely fine with no snow, cold, or ice for Christmas.
Perhaps for the only time in my entire blogging life, let us briefly consider the Christmas Controversy.
To me, the most annoying feature of the liberal war on Christmas is the occasional blockhead lecture that Christmas is really a pagan celebration of the solstice.
Over several centuries, the Christians of the Roman Empire took the world away from the pagans and turned the tables on those who had formerly excluded and persecuted them.
The total replacement of pagan celebrations of the solstice by the celebration of the birth of Christ, a spectacular act of cultural appropriation that was centuries in the making, was and is integral to that success.
The part of the liberal war on Christmas that's just lesbian-feminist rejection of male sexuality and female nature is less so, I think.
That's all.
Update, 12262015, 0754 hrs EST.
So far as I know, nobody in my family went to church on Christmas Eve or Christmas day.
Haven't in years.
We don't go to church at all, come to that.
Not even those of us who are currently raising their kids to believe and pray and say grace at meals.
The same kids in whom they have inculcated belief in Santa.
And even the Elf on the Shelf.
I am absolutely fine with no snow, cold, or ice for Christmas.
Perhaps for the only time in my entire blogging life, let us briefly consider the Christmas Controversy.
To me, the most annoying feature of the liberal war on Christmas is the occasional blockhead lecture that Christmas is really a pagan celebration of the solstice.
Over several centuries, the Christians of the Roman Empire took the world away from the pagans and turned the tables on those who had formerly excluded and persecuted them.
The total replacement of pagan celebrations of the solstice by the celebration of the birth of Christ, a spectacular act of cultural appropriation that was centuries in the making, was and is integral to that success.
The part of the liberal war on Christmas that's just lesbian-feminist rejection of male sexuality and female nature is less so, I think.
That's all.
Update, 12262015, 0754 hrs EST.
So far as I know, nobody in my family went to church on Christmas Eve or Christmas day.
Haven't in years.
We don't go to church at all, come to that.
Not even those of us who are currently raising their kids to believe and pray and say grace at meals.
The same kids in whom they have inculcated belief in Santa.
And even the Elf on the Shelf.
Thursday, December 24, 2015
Pot calls Delft blue teacup black
She's practically running on contempt for and endless whining about men.
So she attacks Trump for sexism.
He's not backing off.
So she attacks Trump for sexism.
He's not backing off.
How odd
Recently went to a holiday chorale at my ten year old granddaughter's public school in Maryland.
It was only 6 songs and took less than an hour.
One song was Israeli Jewish, one was about Kwanza, and one was a vaguely Indian - East Indian - sounding happy song.
Not one was a flat out Christian celebration of the birth of Christ or the feast of that birth, Christmas, unlike the songs I sang at school for Christmas when I was ten, fifty-six years ago.
Have these kids even heard "Silent Night"?
That's a pretty multi-culti, diversity-loving program for a totally white chorus at a totally white school.
Might have been totally Christian/post-Christian, too.
Could be the power of the state government at work.
MD is deep, deep blue.
Loved the show, by the way, and wished it was longer.
The kids were great.
It was only 6 songs and took less than an hour.
One song was Israeli Jewish, one was about Kwanza, and one was a vaguely Indian - East Indian - sounding happy song.
Not one was a flat out Christian celebration of the birth of Christ or the feast of that birth, Christmas, unlike the songs I sang at school for Christmas when I was ten, fifty-six years ago.
Have these kids even heard "Silent Night"?
That's a pretty multi-culti, diversity-loving program for a totally white chorus at a totally white school.
Might have been totally Christian/post-Christian, too.
Could be the power of the state government at work.
MD is deep, deep blue.
Loved the show, by the way, and wished it was longer.
The kids were great.
Chris Christie is a lunatic
And he's not alone.
The whole gang of Republican neocons has gone mad.
Nobody in America is listening, right now.
Let's hope Putin isn't.
Time to Stop the War Party
“If you’re in favor of World War III, you have your candidate.”
So said Rand Paul, looking directly at Gov. Chris Christie, who had just responded to a question from CNN’s Wolf Blitzer as to whether he would shoot down a Russian plane that violated his no-fly zone in Syria.
“Not only would I be prepared to do it, I would do it,” blurted Christie: “I would talk to Vladimir Putin … I’d say to him, ‘Listen, Mr. President, there’s a no-fly zone in Syria; you fly in, it applies to you.’
“Yes, we would shoot down the planes of Russian pilots if in fact they were stupid enough to think that this president was the same feckless weakling … we have in the Oval Office … right now.”
Ex-Gov. George Pataki and ex-Sen. Rick Santorum would also impose a no-fly zone and shoot down Russian planes that violated it. Said Gov. John Kasich, “It’s time we punched the Russians in the nose.”
Carly Fiorina would impose a no-fly zone and not even talk to Putin until we’ve conducted “military exercises in the Baltic States” on Russia’s border. Jeb Bush, too, would impose a no-fly zone.
Rubio is nuts, too.
PB points out that Paul, Cruz, and Trump oppose Cold War II and beyond that World War III.
So why does Jewish Democrat - very Jewish, today - Dana Milbank seem to hope the GOP forces out Trump and Cruz as well, and to regard Rubio as the champion Republicans should stand behind?
Because Rubio's Wall Street positions on trade and immigration please Milbank, and the positions of Trump and Cruz on those issues do not?
Bernie Sanders, be it noted, has moved to a position on immigration whose political correctness is vouched for by The New York Times.
Hillary, by the way, supports the Syrian no fly zone notion, though O and BS and O'M all oppose it.
She was asked whether she would shoot down Russian planes and per this article replied, "I do not think it would come to that. We are already de-conflicting air space" with Russian military aircraft.
Not a re-assuring answer, though certainly better than "You bet!"
She has been consistently more hawkish than O and BS on Ukraine, the Baltic states, and generally sticking a finger in Putin's nose, anyway.
P.S., Ann Coulter wants the opposite of what Milbank wants, and no doubt it is almost entirely because the very things about Trump Milbank loathes she loves.
It’s Time For The Other 13 Candidates to Drop Out
She seems to have come a long way from the days when she wanted to conquer the whole of Islam and forcibly convert them all to Christianity, a whim whose public expression in 2001 got her fired from National Review.
Why are Republicans talking about starting a war in Syria to stop Muslim immigrants from killing Americans in America?
Is it our job to straighten out Syria?
Can’t our government just stop bringing the terrorists here?
If Rubio thinks he knows how to govern Syria, he’s free to run for president there.
(Except he’d have to stop talking about his dad the bartender because Muslims don’t drink.)
Republicans love pointing out that all the gun restrictions proposed by Democrats after every mass shooting would have done absolutely nothing to stop that particular mass shooting.
But the GOP’s demand that we take out ISIS would also have done nothing to prevent the San Bernardino attack.
As we know from Jim Comey, the director of the FBI: Syed Farouk and Tashfeen Malik were planning a terrorist attack against Americans before ISIS existed.
. . . .
Obama has said: “Let’s assume that we were to send 50,000 troops into Syria. What happens when there’s a terrorist attack generated from Yemen? Do we then send more troops into there? Or Libya perhaps? Or if there’s a terrorist network that’s operating anywhere else in North Africa or in Southeast Asia?”
Good grief!
This GOP machismo on ISIS has resulted in Obama actually making sense.
Kind words for O? Oh, my!
Here’s an idea: We let backward, poverty-stricken, misogynistic, clitorectomy-performing Third Worlders scratch out a living in their medieval hellholes, and just keep them out of our country.
Also known as: the Trump Plan.
No more regime change for Ann?
Wow.
Does she now agree that GW and the GOP responded to the 9/11 attacks in a totally stupid and wrong-headed way?
Shocking!
The whole gang of Republican neocons has gone mad.
Nobody in America is listening, right now.
Let's hope Putin isn't.
Time to Stop the War Party
“If you’re in favor of World War III, you have your candidate.”
So said Rand Paul, looking directly at Gov. Chris Christie, who had just responded to a question from CNN’s Wolf Blitzer as to whether he would shoot down a Russian plane that violated his no-fly zone in Syria.
“Not only would I be prepared to do it, I would do it,” blurted Christie: “I would talk to Vladimir Putin … I’d say to him, ‘Listen, Mr. President, there’s a no-fly zone in Syria; you fly in, it applies to you.’
“Yes, we would shoot down the planes of Russian pilots if in fact they were stupid enough to think that this president was the same feckless weakling … we have in the Oval Office … right now.”
Ex-Gov. George Pataki and ex-Sen. Rick Santorum would also impose a no-fly zone and shoot down Russian planes that violated it. Said Gov. John Kasich, “It’s time we punched the Russians in the nose.”
Carly Fiorina would impose a no-fly zone and not even talk to Putin until we’ve conducted “military exercises in the Baltic States” on Russia’s border. Jeb Bush, too, would impose a no-fly zone.
Rubio is nuts, too.
PB points out that Paul, Cruz, and Trump oppose Cold War II and beyond that World War III.
So why does Jewish Democrat - very Jewish, today - Dana Milbank seem to hope the GOP forces out Trump and Cruz as well, and to regard Rubio as the champion Republicans should stand behind?
Because Rubio's Wall Street positions on trade and immigration please Milbank, and the positions of Trump and Cruz on those issues do not?
Bernie Sanders, be it noted, has moved to a position on immigration whose political correctness is vouched for by The New York Times.
Hillary, by the way, supports the Syrian no fly zone notion, though O and BS and O'M all oppose it.
She was asked whether she would shoot down Russian planes and per this article replied, "I do not think it would come to that. We are already de-conflicting air space" with Russian military aircraft.
Not a re-assuring answer, though certainly better than "You bet!"
She has been consistently more hawkish than O and BS on Ukraine, the Baltic states, and generally sticking a finger in Putin's nose, anyway.
P.S., Ann Coulter wants the opposite of what Milbank wants, and no doubt it is almost entirely because the very things about Trump Milbank loathes she loves.
It’s Time For The Other 13 Candidates to Drop Out
She seems to have come a long way from the days when she wanted to conquer the whole of Islam and forcibly convert them all to Christianity, a whim whose public expression in 2001 got her fired from National Review.
Why are Republicans talking about starting a war in Syria to stop Muslim immigrants from killing Americans in America?
Is it our job to straighten out Syria?
Can’t our government just stop bringing the terrorists here?
If Rubio thinks he knows how to govern Syria, he’s free to run for president there.
(Except he’d have to stop talking about his dad the bartender because Muslims don’t drink.)
Republicans love pointing out that all the gun restrictions proposed by Democrats after every mass shooting would have done absolutely nothing to stop that particular mass shooting.
But the GOP’s demand that we take out ISIS would also have done nothing to prevent the San Bernardino attack.
As we know from Jim Comey, the director of the FBI: Syed Farouk and Tashfeen Malik were planning a terrorist attack against Americans before ISIS existed.
. . . .
Obama has said: “Let’s assume that we were to send 50,000 troops into Syria. What happens when there’s a terrorist attack generated from Yemen? Do we then send more troops into there? Or Libya perhaps? Or if there’s a terrorist network that’s operating anywhere else in North Africa or in Southeast Asia?”
Good grief!
This GOP machismo on ISIS has resulted in Obama actually making sense.
Kind words for O? Oh, my!
Here’s an idea: We let backward, poverty-stricken, misogynistic, clitorectomy-performing Third Worlders scratch out a living in their medieval hellholes, and just keep them out of our country.
Also known as: the Trump Plan.
No more regime change for Ann?
Wow.
Does she now agree that GW and the GOP responded to the 9/11 attacks in a totally stupid and wrong-headed way?
Shocking!
Tuesday, December 22, 2015
How the left regards the criminal justice system
If the killer is not found it will be considered as a government cover up.
If he is found it will be considered a frame up.
Death of a Russian Priest, Stuart M. Kaminsky, 1992.
Either A, or B, or C
We could just close the door to all Muslims and freak out the civil libertarians and the left.
Or we could do a lot more sweeping and intrusive snooping to keep out dangerous folks while leaving the rest alone and freak out the civil libertarians and the left.
Or we could skip it, do nothing, and agree terrorism is not such a threat we need to try to prevent it at quite any cost, by any means necessary.
No more than other forms of deadly crime.
Well, not generally, anyway.
Though it's worthwhile trying hard to stop it becoming a lot more dangerous than other forms of deadly crime.
And there was that rather astounding day in September, 2001, as I recall.
Jihaders gaining control of countries or creating their own (think of ISIS carving out a big piece of Iraq and Syria) would not be good.
I have it in mind that states might find it easier to lay hands on nukes or radiological weapons than terrorist groups or guerrilla armies.
I have it in mind that states might find it easier to lay hands on nukes or radiological weapons than terrorist groups or guerrilla armies.
Though one needs to remember not to create or get stuck in even more quagmires.
Bernie lunges for the black votes Clinton is counting on
Sandra Bland 'would be alive if she were a white woman', Bernie Sanders says
Sandra Bland, who was found hanged in her cell at a Texas county jail last summer, would not have died had she been white, senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont said after a grand jury declined to indict anyone in connection with her death.
“Sandra Bland should not have died while in police custody”, the Democratic presidential candidate said in a statement responding to the grand jury decision.
“There’s no doubt in my mind that she, like too many African Americans who die in police custody, would be alive today if she were a white woman."
Really?
No doubt?
So prove it.
We don't convict on the certainty of a newspaper reader.
Not yet, anyway.
A leading movement conservative endorses Trump
Phyllis Schlafly: Trump is 'last hope for America'
Check her out in Wikipedia.
She's been a leader of the movement for many decades.
She joins Pat Buchanan, another old timer, and Ann Coulter, a younger voice.
Movement conservatism has been a crowd of globo-interventionist madmen since Buckley founded The National Review and his first hero, Barry Goldwater, wanted to "roll back" Communism out of Eastern Europe.
Kennedy promised to "bear any burden" and "pay any price" in defense of free men anywhere, whether before or after he left the Cubans drowning in the Bay of Pigs I don't recall.
But Kennedy's commitment to containing Communism, though absurd enough to stick an American foot into the quagmire of Vietnam, was as nothing compared to the loonyness of the movement right, wedded from beginning to end to a policy of "rolling Communism back."
And of course they claim their other big hero, Ronald Reagan, finally not only rolled it back but brought it down in the only place it really mattered, the Soviet Empire, Russia and Europe.
And they have never got over it.
Hence the domination of the neocons and their phony new World War Three - or maybe Four - against the Jihaders or maybe even against Islam altogether.
And their rhetoric is as ludicrous as always.
Check her out in Wikipedia.
She's been a leader of the movement for many decades.
She joins Pat Buchanan, another old timer, and Ann Coulter, a younger voice.
Movement conservatism has been a crowd of globo-interventionist madmen since Buckley founded The National Review and his first hero, Barry Goldwater, wanted to "roll back" Communism out of Eastern Europe.
Kennedy promised to "bear any burden" and "pay any price" in defense of free men anywhere, whether before or after he left the Cubans drowning in the Bay of Pigs I don't recall.
But Kennedy's commitment to containing Communism, though absurd enough to stick an American foot into the quagmire of Vietnam, was as nothing compared to the loonyness of the movement right, wedded from beginning to end to a policy of "rolling Communism back."
And of course they claim their other big hero, Ronald Reagan, finally not only rolled it back but brought it down in the only place it really mattered, the Soviet Empire, Russia and Europe.
And they have never got over it.
Hence the domination of the neocons and their phony new World War Three - or maybe Four - against the Jihaders or maybe even against Islam altogether.
And their rhetoric is as ludicrous as always.
Monday, December 21, 2015
ISIS must be destroyed. And the day after?
Sanders outshone Clinton on foreign policy at the debate. But who watched?
Hill and Bern agree ISIS must be destroyed.
Are we even sure of that?
As Bern so monotonously asks about Hill's neocon enthusiasm for regime change, what about the day after?
On 9/11 GW decided al-Qaeda and the Taliban regime that gave them safety must both be destroyed.
Once Chaney caught a breath GW told us Saddam Hussein was wicked and his regime must be destroyed.
So all those things were destroyed and the Jihad evaporated and all over the world Muslim terrorism came to a halt before GW's first term was over.
Yes, I remember that.
Everyone lived happily ever after.
Once in a while, somebody observes that the Jihaders want the chaos that gives them their opportunity to remake the world to their own design, and interventions by the Occident since 9/11 have provided plenty of it.
Why are we to think that providing still more, crushing this and that bad guy or evil organization, now one and now another, day after day and decade after decade, will now have the reverse effect and diminish and perhaps even eventually snuff out Jihad?
Still, it is likely wise to prevent the consolidation of the nascent ISIS state within the territories of Syria and Iraq.
The brutal ferocity and menace of these guys make the Taliban seem like schoolboys.
Joke.
Iran's seems like a constipated regime of hate-filled old men by comparison, though the Islamic Republic remains the greatest threat to America, Israel, the West, and Jews anywhere thanks to that.
If they lay hands on nukes or radiological weapons there is a real chance they would, out of common hate, supply one to some Jihaders for use in terrorism in Israel, in Russia, or more likely somewhere in the EU or the USA.
Hill and Bern agree ISIS must be destroyed.
Are we even sure of that?
As Bern so monotonously asks about Hill's neocon enthusiasm for regime change, what about the day after?
On 9/11 GW decided al-Qaeda and the Taliban regime that gave them safety must both be destroyed.
Once Chaney caught a breath GW told us Saddam Hussein was wicked and his regime must be destroyed.
So all those things were destroyed and the Jihad evaporated and all over the world Muslim terrorism came to a halt before GW's first term was over.
Yes, I remember that.
Everyone lived happily ever after.
Once in a while, somebody observes that the Jihaders want the chaos that gives them their opportunity to remake the world to their own design, and interventions by the Occident since 9/11 have provided plenty of it.
Why are we to think that providing still more, crushing this and that bad guy or evil organization, now one and now another, day after day and decade after decade, will now have the reverse effect and diminish and perhaps even eventually snuff out Jihad?
Still, it is likely wise to prevent the consolidation of the nascent ISIS state within the territories of Syria and Iraq.
The brutal ferocity and menace of these guys make the Taliban seem like schoolboys.
Joke.
Iran's seems like a constipated regime of hate-filled old men by comparison, though the Islamic Republic remains the greatest threat to America, Israel, the West, and Jews anywhere thanks to that.
If they lay hands on nukes or radiological weapons there is a real chance they would, out of common hate, supply one to some Jihaders for use in terrorism in Israel, in Russia, or more likely somewhere in the EU or the USA.
Blah, Blah. Race, race.
Hung Jury in Freddie Gray Trial Exposes America’s Hierarchical Justice System
The bellyaching will never stop.
Sunday, December 20, 2015
Saturday, December 19, 2015
Is federal suppression of recreational drug use unconstitutional?
The federal government lacked the authority to ban alcohol without the 18th Amendment, since repealed by the 21st.
Actually, it never banned its use, but only manufacture, transportation, and sale of liquor as a beverage - that is, for recreational use.
The use of a product is not interstate commerce by any stretch of the imagination.
Nor is intrastate production, transportation, or sale.
So what about bans on manufacture, transportation, or sale of heroin, cocaine, or other drugs?
Or their mere use?
And what does this say about Obamacare?
Had it included a tax on the uninsured rather than a fine on those who disobeyed a command to buy insurance it would have been, by the letter if not by the spirit of the thing.
So Roberts lied and said it was a tax, and so it was ok.
Why?
Political cowardice?
The 4 Best Legal Arguments Against ObamaCare
The only good one is that the commerce clause does not grant congress the power to compel purchase of anything.
Nor, of course, the general welfare clause.
The 4 Best Legal Arguments Against ObamaCare
The only good one is that the commerce clause does not grant congress the power to compel purchase of anything.
Nor, of course, the general welfare clause.
The Bernie I don't like
The Bernie this mush-head riffs off of to damn capitalism.
Of course 'socialism' was most-searched term of 2015: its ideas fit our times
Stuff like this and knowing Bernie's weakness for genuine communist, socialist rejection of capitalism, even by Leninists, makes me prefer Hillary.
But Bernie's actual agenda is pretty much TR's of 1912, solidly progressive but not socialist and not communist, with Teddy's big stick attitude taken out.
And it's more progressive than Hillary's agenda, though hers is that in lesser degree.
And every progressive president has been a globo-interventionist, including JFK, LBJ, Bill Clinton, Richard Nixon, and Barack Obama.
Islamofundamentalism spreads in Indonesia
Is Indonesia winning its fight against Islamic extremism?
The matrix of Jihad pushing aside Archipelago Islam.
Friday, December 18, 2015
O crows a little
Some people think free trade is a winner by which we gain more in lower prices and boom in exports than we lose in wage drops in some industries.
Obama vs Bernie.
Adam Smith thought the opposite policy of protectionism good only for the people in protected industries and actually bad for their neighbors.
I think that view still dominates even among Keynesians.
The value of immigration to the recipient country varies with many factors.
Opponents say high immigration is needed to pay for Social Security and Medicare but simultaneously complain of the increased burden unskilled and low wage immigrants place on welfare, public education, and social services of all kinds not excluding police and prisons.
So immigration is good for Social Security and Medicare and other senior benefits but, by strengthening competing demands for the tax dollar, bad for them?
Do any economists think it makes sense to raise the minimum wage in a time of high unemployment?
Bernie complains unemployment is twice the official figure but demands a huge rise in the minimum wage.
But a rise in the minimum wage benefits only those who personally get a raise because of it.
Others face layoffs, joblessness, or higher prices.
If Hillary weren't so personally repulsive and such a hawk I might favor her.
Similar questions pertain to the social impact of unions, with their ludicrous wage demands, Luddism, and feather-bedding.
Compared to her Bernie sometimes seems a bumper-sticker radical.
The real minimum standard of wealth and well-being is determined not by the minimum wage but by the aid provided the unemployed without means of their own.
The vagabond's wage, if you will.
Failing that, society's worst off would be absolutely destitute.
African or the worst Asian poverty is not yet that bad.
It is so bad naked Indians of Amazonia are no worse off.
Argumentum ad Hitlerum
Migrant crisis: Is Germany far right rise echo of the past?
Hitler had a funny mustache and was a fascist.
Charlie Chaplin had the same funny mustache.
Hmm.
I guess that must be what being a fascist is all about.
They stopped the teaching of German in the schools
Blockheads during The Great War.
And now this.
US schools shut in Islam script row
In Virginia, students traced a single line of Arabic calligraphy.
Some students refused and the row began.
Thoughts about Netfix
Liberals used to cite suppression of Suttee as a positive example of cultural imperialism, as well as the global spread of republicanism and parliamentary institutions, and I concur.
In like manner, I approve Democrats and the Occident standing up for women's rights, gay rights, sexual liberation, children's rights, secularism, science, and religious tolerance, though we certainly don't need to be fighting wars over such things.
Republicans or others chiming in on the same side are also welcome.
Not at all an expensive form of foreign policy altruism, and essential given the relative decline in Western power and hegemony in a world that always grows smaller.
Sense8 drove that message home, in spades.
Small world, I mean.
And what a blast of cultural propaganda!
The DNC is in Hillary's pocket
Sanders campaign threatening legal action against DNC.
First the debates and now the database.
I have just sent Bernie's campaign $50.
That's my second contribution.
I have sent nothing to Hill.
If there's anything she doesn't need from an impoverished white geezer like me, it's my dinky contribution.
If she's the nominee, as I expect, I will vote for her.
I used to think that, being more centrist than Bernie she would do better in the generals.
But her negatives are deservedly high and climbing, and character shows, so maybe not.
The Republicans will red-bait Bernie, but they did that to O and would probably do it in lesser degree to Hill.
They will attack her with scandal and deserved character assassination.
Old, white guy though I am - indeed, because I am - I would have to be nuts to vote for a conservative or trust a moderate Republican.
A moderate Republican is a smiling conservative more civil in his discourse and responsible in his choice of means.
No shutdown, in other words.
GW was a moderate but he attacked Social Security in his second term.
He promised a less interventionist foreign policy and went nuts in Afghanistan and Iraq.
To the left of both O and Hill on ISIS and Wall Street
Sanders: Clinton's pursuit of 'regime change' in Libya helped rise of Isis
Less interventionist than either of them, maybe.
And less soft on Wall Street and the global, neoliberal plutocracy.
Bernie Sanders on politics, Clinton and guns: read the full interview transcript
He is so much less likely than Hill to squander trillions spreading havoc.
So much better on the core progressive concerns to control capitalism for the public good manifest in the regulatory state and the welfare state.
But she could kill him in debates, during which she would show herself a nasty knife fighter.
I fear he could come across as a nice, bumbling old man.
Some people want to be president in order to play a bully role on the world stage.
That's Hill.
Others want chiefly to fix what's broken in America, for Americans.
That's Bern.
It's a question of dosage.
Killing people to make them less poor?
Or to make China a global and regional military powerhouse?
Why China won't play ball regarding global warming, except to whine, blame, and demand money.
The love that dares not speak its name
The law traces to the Raj of 1860 but the taboo is native and much older.
But everything PC accounts bad is the white man's fault and wherever possible one must speak ill of colonialism.
Thursday, December 17, 2015
Misbehavior before the enemy
Noah Feldman on Bowe Bergdahl.
Lincoln hanged "leg cases," men who ran from battle.
Punishment of Americans was severe but not so often capital in the big wars of the 20th Century.
Such punishment is particularly unfair when used against draftees - would you draft masses of untried men into high iron work and then punish those who turn out to be terrified of heights? - and yet keeping draftees from running away by making them more afraid of leaving the battlefield is its chief use.
Here is Feldman.
As late as World War II, the charge was apparently used frequently against combat soldiers who fled or otherwise displayed cowardice.
In the long war that began on Sept. 11, 2001, desertion charges have been frequent, but the misbehavior charge has been extremely rare, used in only a handful of instances.
There’s something positively archaic about criminalizing fear, as the brilliant (and brilliantly quirky) Bill Miller of the University of Michigan Law School noted in 2000 in one of the very few contemporary academic articles about the misbehavior crime: “Making cowardice a capital offense strikes us as a kind of barbaric survival from a rougher age.”
We no longer think that pure fear in the face of combat should be harshly punished.
We?
Anyway, in BB's case either he won't be convicted on that charge or it won't stick, since it's pretty clear he didn't desert out of fear and he didn't desert in actual battle.
But the desertion charge will stick.
Lincoln hanged "leg cases," men who ran from battle.
Punishment of Americans was severe but not so often capital in the big wars of the 20th Century.
Such punishment is particularly unfair when used against draftees - would you draft masses of untried men into high iron work and then punish those who turn out to be terrified of heights? - and yet keeping draftees from running away by making them more afraid of leaving the battlefield is its chief use.
Here is Feldman.
As late as World War II, the charge was apparently used frequently against combat soldiers who fled or otherwise displayed cowardice.
In the long war that began on Sept. 11, 2001, desertion charges have been frequent, but the misbehavior charge has been extremely rare, used in only a handful of instances.
There’s something positively archaic about criminalizing fear, as the brilliant (and brilliantly quirky) Bill Miller of the University of Michigan Law School noted in 2000 in one of the very few contemporary academic articles about the misbehavior crime: “Making cowardice a capital offense strikes us as a kind of barbaric survival from a rougher age.”
We no longer think that pure fear in the face of combat should be harshly punished.
We?
Anyway, in BB's case either he won't be convicted on that charge or it won't stick, since it's pretty clear he didn't desert out of fear and he didn't desert in actual battle.
But the desertion charge will stick.
Star Wars: The Force Awakens
After all the hype and the early ticket sales I expected it to be terrible.
But the critics pretty much all are raving about it.
In a few days we'll know about the word of mouth.
But the critics pretty much all are raving about it.
In a few days we'll know about the word of mouth.
Enlightened despotism
Neocons and neo-Wilsonians just don't get it.
It's the tradition of Peter the Great.
Or Frederick.
I suppose nowadays these enlightened despots have to be regarded as a species of dictators of the right, though it was liberals who heaped their accolades.
In any case our modern neocons, leftists, and Wilsonians despise their modern epigones.
But they did much good for their peoples with their reforms, in contrast with the oceans of harm done by the reds of Russia, China, and elsewhere.
And they historically preceded and paved the way for the republicanism of the later Enlightenment.
Their work had to come first.
Wednesday, December 16, 2015
Realist vs Neocon, Cruz vs Rubio
Trump is still way out ahead, but some people cling to the idea he somehow will be stopped and will not be the nominee.
The real contest, for these folks, is among what look right now to be the also-rans.
How Cruz and Rubio exposed the GOP’s rift on foreign policy
This is an interesting piece about a foreign policy fissure putting the likes of Pat Buchanan on the one side and Charles Krauthammer on the other showing up among the aspirants for the Republican nomination.
The neocons - Krauthammer is a well known example among pundits - are a species of altruistic globo-interventionists optimistic in varying degrees about American power and committed to a Marvel Comics foreign policy of fighting evil-doers and doing good.
Mostly this comes to fighting dictators and spreading democracy even as we fight the Jihaders and struggle against terrorism, but also keeping up and expanding our Cold War alliances and continuing struggles against Russia, China, and the remaining Communist regimes, as well as various forms of foreign aid.
Among these folks, Barack Obama is among those less sanguine about the utility of military intervention and John McCain among the most optimistic, with Hillary in between but closer to McCain than to O.
Opposed to the neocons and generally sharing neither their optimism nor their altruism are those sometimes dubbed realists but also sometimes labeled by interventionists as isolationists or neoisolationists.
Of these, Pat Buchanan is an example among the pundits.
The interventionist Wilson's name is bandied somewhat misleadingly in these discussions as his vigorous advocacy of and support for tribalism in the forms of ethnic nationalism and racism did far more to shape his aims and projects than his commitment to democracy.
And, in current ideological quarrels, the tribalists are more to be found among the realists while the neocons - Democrats much more obtrusively than Republicans and their loyalty to Zionism conspicuously excepted - are in varying degrees and ways post- and even anti-tribalist in their politics.
Rubio-Cruz Debate Clashes Will Shape GOP Race
Despite trailing Trump and Cruz in most polls, Rubio got a taste Tuesday night of what it’s like to be the frontrunner.
Both Cruz and Rand Paul pounced on the Florida senator for what they characterize as his neoconservative approach to foreign policy -- from defense spending to government surveillance programs to intervening in foreign wars.
Rubio wore the assault as a badge of honor.
“The isolationist tag team duo Ted Cruz and Rand Paul tried to take on Marco. They got beat, badly,” read a campaign fundraising email sent after the debate.
Lots of good detail in this piece on the differences concerning national security and also immigration between neocon Rubio and realist Cruz, with Paul thrown into the mix.
On the other hand, this article is utter crap.
The real contest, for these folks, is among what look right now to be the also-rans.
How Cruz and Rubio exposed the GOP’s rift on foreign policy
This is an interesting piece about a foreign policy fissure putting the likes of Pat Buchanan on the one side and Charles Krauthammer on the other showing up among the aspirants for the Republican nomination.
The neocons - Krauthammer is a well known example among pundits - are a species of altruistic globo-interventionists optimistic in varying degrees about American power and committed to a Marvel Comics foreign policy of fighting evil-doers and doing good.
Mostly this comes to fighting dictators and spreading democracy even as we fight the Jihaders and struggle against terrorism, but also keeping up and expanding our Cold War alliances and continuing struggles against Russia, China, and the remaining Communist regimes, as well as various forms of foreign aid.
Among these folks, Barack Obama is among those less sanguine about the utility of military intervention and John McCain among the most optimistic, with Hillary in between but closer to McCain than to O.
Opposed to the neocons and generally sharing neither their optimism nor their altruism are those sometimes dubbed realists but also sometimes labeled by interventionists as isolationists or neoisolationists.
Of these, Pat Buchanan is an example among the pundits.
The interventionist Wilson's name is bandied somewhat misleadingly in these discussions as his vigorous advocacy of and support for tribalism in the forms of ethnic nationalism and racism did far more to shape his aims and projects than his commitment to democracy.
And, in current ideological quarrels, the tribalists are more to be found among the realists while the neocons - Democrats much more obtrusively than Republicans and their loyalty to Zionism conspicuously excepted - are in varying degrees and ways post- and even anti-tribalist in their politics.
Rubio-Cruz Debate Clashes Will Shape GOP Race
Despite trailing Trump and Cruz in most polls, Rubio got a taste Tuesday night of what it’s like to be the frontrunner.
Both Cruz and Rand Paul pounced on the Florida senator for what they characterize as his neoconservative approach to foreign policy -- from defense spending to government surveillance programs to intervening in foreign wars.
Rubio wore the assault as a badge of honor.
“The isolationist tag team duo Ted Cruz and Rand Paul tried to take on Marco. They got beat, badly,” read a campaign fundraising email sent after the debate.
Lots of good detail in this piece on the differences concerning national security and also immigration between neocon Rubio and realist Cruz, with Paul thrown into the mix.
On the other hand, this article is utter crap.
Where splitters will go in 2016
If they don't write in Bernie they might go Green, says Ron Chusid, whose loathing for Hillary reminds me of some people's loathing for Richard Nixon in decades past.
Tuesday, December 15, 2015
Pat Buchanan: the GOP elites made Trump
Will Elites Blow Up the GOP?
What the Republican collectivity has to realize is that it is they and the policies they produced that are the reason Trump, Carson and Cruz currently hold an overwhelming majority of Republican votes.
It was the elites of both parties who failed to secure our borders and brokered the trade deals that have de-industrialized America and eviscerated our middle class.
It was the elites of both parties who got us into these idiotic wars that have blown up the Middle East, cost us trillions of dollars, thousands of dead, and tens of thousands of wounded among our best and bravest.
That Republican elites would sit around a dinner table on Capitol Hill and discuss how to frustrate the rising rebellion against what they have done to America, and decide among themselves who shall lead us, is astonishing.
To borrow from the Gipper, they are not the solution to our problems.
They are the problem.
What the Republican collectivity has to realize is that it is they and the policies they produced that are the reason Trump, Carson and Cruz currently hold an overwhelming majority of Republican votes.
It was the elites of both parties who failed to secure our borders and brokered the trade deals that have de-industrialized America and eviscerated our middle class.
It was the elites of both parties who got us into these idiotic wars that have blown up the Middle East, cost us trillions of dollars, thousands of dead, and tens of thousands of wounded among our best and bravest.
That Republican elites would sit around a dinner table on Capitol Hill and discuss how to frustrate the rising rebellion against what they have done to America, and decide among themselves who shall lead us, is astonishing.
To borrow from the Gipper, they are not the solution to our problems.
They are the problem.
Monday, December 14, 2015
The Ring and the Book
Browning believes in Pompilia's innocence and her husband's guilt.
I believe in the guilt of both, but her adultery is no crime today, though it was capital then.
Half Rome may even have been right that the child was not Guido's.
Apparently, valid legal authorities at the time differed as to whether an enraged husband might spare the courts time, the executioner trouble, and the state expense.
Nothing in the poem thus far indicates whether Guido's faults as a brutal husband, at least - Pompilia accuses him as well of licensing his brother's raping her - , were ever recognized, and beating one's wife and marital rape may not have been crimes, then, at all.
I have read the poem before and I don't recall that ever being cleared up.
I have no idea why these Brits living in Italy took so much poetical interest in Italian family violence of earlier centuries against girl children - Pompilia was married off by her parents at twelve.
Think of Shelley and The Censi.
Reading Browning.
I note that many of the crimes that Islam commits today Christendom committed only yesterday.
Thank God for the Enlightenment.
So to speak.
About her parents, they seem to me a pair of confidence tricksters.
About the law of adultery and why it more peremptorily required chastity in wives than husbands see David Hume.
CNN, liberalism's ally on gun control and the "public health" fraud
What happened to the CDC's courage on guns?
Hence the extreme right use the expression "Communist News Network."
Hence the extreme right use the expression "Communist News Network."
Le Pen's FN makes no breakthrough
Overall, the conservatives took 40.2%, the Socialists 28.9% and the FN 27.1%.
Their share of the vote was bigger but they didn't win control of any regions at all.
It seems they failed to gain control in a couple of regions only because the Socialist Party withdrew its candidates and Socialist voters turned out in droves to vote for Sarkozy's Republicans.
Anti-National Front voters turn out to deny Le Pen
The Socialists think they have saved France from Nazis.
On Sunday, Ms Le Pen saluted the fact that her party had become the “largest opposition force in most regional councils” and that it had attracted more voters than when she ran for the presidential elections in 2012.
“At least the second round of voting has made clear the links [between the mainstream parties] which share power,” she added.
Ms Le Pen attracted 42 per cent of the vote, while her centre-right opponent, Xavier Bertrand, reached nearly 58 per cent.
Mr Bertrand, a former minister under former President Sarkozy, thanked Socialist voters for helping him beat Ms Le Pen in the north.
“History will remember that it was here that the FN’s ascension was stopped,” he said.
Their share of the vote was bigger but they didn't win control of any regions at all.
It seems they failed to gain control in a couple of regions only because the Socialist Party withdrew its candidates and Socialist voters turned out in droves to vote for Sarkozy's Republicans.
Anti-National Front voters turn out to deny Le Pen
The Socialists think they have saved France from Nazis.
On Sunday, Ms Le Pen saluted the fact that her party had become the “largest opposition force in most regional councils” and that it had attracted more voters than when she ran for the presidential elections in 2012.
“At least the second round of voting has made clear the links [between the mainstream parties] which share power,” she added.
Ms Le Pen attracted 42 per cent of the vote, while her centre-right opponent, Xavier Bertrand, reached nearly 58 per cent.
Mr Bertrand, a former minister under former President Sarkozy, thanked Socialist voters for helping him beat Ms Le Pen in the north.
“History will remember that it was here that the FN’s ascension was stopped,” he said.
This is the second time the Socialists have thrown in with the French establishment right to keep out the FN.
And it will likely happen again, next time in the French presidentials.
The National Front had promised a historic breakthrough after coming out of the initial round ahead in six of France’s 13 regions, with strong chances of winning three of them: Provence-Alpes-Cote d’Azur in the south, Nord-Pas-de-Calais in the north, and Alsace-Lorraine in the east.
The Socialist party responded by withdrawing its candidates in those regions and calling on its supporters to vote for The Republicans, who went on to win all three.
That’s a foretaste of what may happen in the 2017 presidential vote.
“Marine Le Pen into the second round in 2017 is a bet worth making,” Jean-Yves Camus, a researcher at Iris, a French political research institute, said in an interview last week.
“Marine Le Pen winning the second round is very improbable.”
The National Front is “the party that is the most rejected by the French.”
. . . .
“When faced with the National Front, 60 to 70 percent of the French are ready to deny it victory,” Jean-Christophe Cambadelis, head of the Socialist Party, said on Europe 1 radio on Monday.
The FN, of course, poses no threat whatever to French republicanism or the constitution of the Fifth Republic.
Hitler and Allende were both pledged to and already guilty of illegal actions to sabotage and ultimately bring down the German and Chilean Republics, the former aiming at a fascist dictatorship and the latter at revolutionary Leninism.
Had committed republicans done to them what they did to the FN they would never have come to power and Germany, Chile, and the world would have been better off.
[The case of Mussolini in Italy was similar, but there the failure to stop Fascism was all Victor Emmanuel's.]
The Socialists in France are only protecting the EU (the FN is relatively Euroskeptic) and continued high Muslim immigration.
Sarko's Republicans did not participate in the anti-FN hysteria, and might not in the presidentials.
But his presumed candidacy might benefit from another panic among Socialists, if the Socialist candidate runs behind him in the first round.
The National Front had promised a historic breakthrough after coming out of the initial round ahead in six of France’s 13 regions, with strong chances of winning three of them: Provence-Alpes-Cote d’Azur in the south, Nord-Pas-de-Calais in the north, and Alsace-Lorraine in the east.
The Socialist party responded by withdrawing its candidates in those regions and calling on its supporters to vote for The Republicans, who went on to win all three.
That’s a foretaste of what may happen in the 2017 presidential vote.
“Marine Le Pen into the second round in 2017 is a bet worth making,” Jean-Yves Camus, a researcher at Iris, a French political research institute, said in an interview last week.
“Marine Le Pen winning the second round is very improbable.”
The National Front is “the party that is the most rejected by the French.”
. . . .
“When faced with the National Front, 60 to 70 percent of the French are ready to deny it victory,” Jean-Christophe Cambadelis, head of the Socialist Party, said on Europe 1 radio on Monday.
The FN, of course, poses no threat whatever to French republicanism or the constitution of the Fifth Republic.
Hitler and Allende were both pledged to and already guilty of illegal actions to sabotage and ultimately bring down the German and Chilean Republics, the former aiming at a fascist dictatorship and the latter at revolutionary Leninism.
Had committed republicans done to them what they did to the FN they would never have come to power and Germany, Chile, and the world would have been better off.
[The case of Mussolini in Italy was similar, but there the failure to stop Fascism was all Victor Emmanuel's.]
The Socialists in France are only protecting the EU (the FN is relatively Euroskeptic) and continued high Muslim immigration.
Sarko's Republicans did not participate in the anti-FN hysteria, and might not in the presidentials.
But his presumed candidacy might benefit from another panic among Socialists, if the Socialist candidate runs behind him in the first round.
It was always about the gays
The great Catholic Church pedophilia scandal, I mean.
Once in a while, something burbles up.
Sure, some of the atrocity victims are girls.
But far less often.
Once in a while, something burbles up.
Sure, some of the atrocity victims are girls.
But far less often.
WSJ on the Paris baloney
Paris Climate of Conformity
In a nutshell, if there were a problem this would not solve it.
And it's a worse than damn silly thing, too.
But there isn't a problem.
Oh, and this.
China (the No. 1 CO2 emitter) and India (No. 3 after the U.S.) have made commitments that they may or may not honor, depending on whether they can meet them without interfering with economic growth.
If the choice is lifting millions out of poverty or reducing CO2, poverty reduction will prevail—as it should.
But what if there is no such choice since with or without reduction the lifting isn't actually happening?
The Guardian says there are parts of the deal that are "legally binding," but no part of it can be that unless an actual treaty is ratified in the senate or the parts in question are passed into law by the usual legislative process.
Not much chance of either.
In a nutshell, if there were a problem this would not solve it.
And it's a worse than damn silly thing, too.
But there isn't a problem.
Oh, and this.
China (the No. 1 CO2 emitter) and India (No. 3 after the U.S.) have made commitments that they may or may not honor, depending on whether they can meet them without interfering with economic growth.
If the choice is lifting millions out of poverty or reducing CO2, poverty reduction will prevail—as it should.
But what if there is no such choice since with or without reduction the lifting isn't actually happening?
The Guardian says there are parts of the deal that are "legally binding," but no part of it can be that unless an actual treaty is ratified in the senate or the parts in question are passed into law by the usual legislative process.
Not much chance of either.
BBC. Fair and balanced.
BBC censures itself
You can let people say A in your show only if you also have someone on to insist that all respectable authorities say not-A.
And not, of course, vice versa.
You can let people say A in your show only if you also have someone on to insist that all respectable authorities say not-A.
And not, of course, vice versa.
Saturday, December 12, 2015
TV weirdness in "Luther"
In the second season of Luther now on Netflix there is a story about a crackpot who wanders around London killing people at random.
During the attack for which he is finally arrested he uses a hammer to kill four people and injure many others at an office in which we see at least one security guard - unarmed, of course - doing nothing useful at all before the cops arrive, and in all that horror nobody so much as throws a waste-basket or chair at him, or takes any measure of self-defense at all.
A skinny little white guy comes at you with a hammer and you don't punch him in the face?
You make no attempt to grab him and throw him to the floor?
He charges men standing around in groups and they don't just tackle him and beat the shit out of him?
Really?
During the attack for which he is finally arrested he uses a hammer to kill four people and injure many others at an office in which we see at least one security guard - unarmed, of course - doing nothing useful at all before the cops arrive, and in all that horror nobody so much as throws a waste-basket or chair at him, or takes any measure of self-defense at all.
A skinny little white guy comes at you with a hammer and you don't punch him in the face?
You make no attempt to grab him and throw him to the floor?
He charges men standing around in groups and they don't just tackle him and beat the shit out of him?
Really?
Marine Le Pen's FN will be hurt by "lesser evil" voting
Tactical voting could see Socialists vote for Sarkozy's Republicans
For us Americans it's the norm.
And it's really the norm for the French, too, with their two round system, but the Socialists have been taking the decision out of voters hands by withdrawing from the second round where they ran behind both the FN and the establishment right, Sarkozy's LR, in the first, urging their own voters to vote for the LR candidate so as to defeat the FN.
Sarko has refused to cooperate by withdrawing LR candidates from the second round in regions where they ran behind both the FN and the Socialists, and has angered even some of his own party by seeming to shrug, and saying "It is not immoral to vote for the FN."
The Socialists have been hysterical about the FN, as they have been in the past.
Marine is responding with the anger one would expect from the victim of a fierce campaign of slander and vilification.
She is the Trump of France, though she is a political pro and a good deal smarter, more savvy, and less clownish than The Donald and they don't agree in everything.
The FN is expected to do well in Marion Marechal-Le Pen's region.
But they are no longer expected to achieve the big advance that was talked of right after the first round.
Some stories even say the FN might lose ground, in net.
For us Americans it's the norm.
And it's really the norm for the French, too, with their two round system, but the Socialists have been taking the decision out of voters hands by withdrawing from the second round where they ran behind both the FN and the establishment right, Sarkozy's LR, in the first, urging their own voters to vote for the LR candidate so as to defeat the FN.
Sarko has refused to cooperate by withdrawing LR candidates from the second round in regions where they ran behind both the FN and the Socialists, and has angered even some of his own party by seeming to shrug, and saying "It is not immoral to vote for the FN."
The Socialists have been hysterical about the FN, as they have been in the past.
Marine is responding with the anger one would expect from the victim of a fierce campaign of slander and vilification.
She is the Trump of France, though she is a political pro and a good deal smarter, more savvy, and less clownish than The Donald and they don't agree in everything.
The FN is expected to do well in Marion Marechal-Le Pen's region.
But they are no longer expected to achieve the big advance that was talked of right after the first round.
Some stories even say the FN might lose ground, in net.
I figured Trump must have a good security detail
ACLU Board Member Resigns After Urging People To Kill Supporters Of Trump
Tip of the iceberg, I would guess.
Tip of the iceberg, I would guess.
Who will control the GOP?
This piece in NRO gets the significant difference right as between the Wall Street and Main Street wings of the Republican Party.
Ann Coulter and Pat Buchanan find the Trump candidacy ideologically congenial with their Main Street variety.
George Will, Matthew Continetti, and Jonah Goldberg (who fired Ann Coulter from NR years ago for her fury at Muslim killers and gave us the expression "cheese eating surrender monkeys" when damning the French for opposing GW's stupid destruction of Iraq) damn him for his opposition to their Wall Street variety.
Ann Coulter and Pat Buchanan find the Trump candidacy ideologically congenial with their Main Street variety.
George Will, Matthew Continetti, and Jonah Goldberg (who fired Ann Coulter from NR years ago for her fury at Muslim killers and gave us the expression "cheese eating surrender monkeys" when damning the French for opposing GW's stupid destruction of Iraq) damn him for his opposition to their Wall Street variety.
The Ring and the Book
The Count claimed she betrayed him and ran off with her priest paramour.
He found her and he killed her, her and her parents who abetted their crime.
The prosecutor insisted she was virtuous and fled a brutal husband.
He wad found guilty and the Pope rejected his appeal.
He was beheaded in Rome and his four accomplices, commoners, were hanged.
Had he convinced the Roman court of her infidelity, what would have happened?
Robert Browning.
Friday, December 11, 2015
Competing with himself to be an ever madder crackpot
Trump Calls For The Death Penalty For 'Anybody Killing A Policeman'
Actually, this is what he said.
Donald Trump on Thursday night said that if he is elected president, he will sign an executive order mandating that anybody who kills a police officer gets the death penalty.
"One of the first things I do, in terms of executive order if I win, will be to sign a strong, strong statement that will go out to the country -- out to the world -- that anybody killing a policeman, policewoman, a police officer -- anybody killing a police officer, the death penalty," Trump said at an event with the New England Police Benevolent Association, a police union, according to CNN.
"It's going to happen, OK?"
So he has no idea how the US government works?
No idea of the authority of the several states?
The union went ahead and endorsed him.
Trump Unhinges the Establishment
Actually, this is what he said.
Donald Trump on Thursday night said that if he is elected president, he will sign an executive order mandating that anybody who kills a police officer gets the death penalty.
"One of the first things I do, in terms of executive order if I win, will be to sign a strong, strong statement that will go out to the country -- out to the world -- that anybody killing a policeman, policewoman, a police officer -- anybody killing a police officer, the death penalty," Trump said at an event with the New England Police Benevolent Association, a police union, according to CNN.
"It's going to happen, OK?"
So he has no idea how the US government works?
No idea of the authority of the several states?
The union went ahead and endorsed him.
Trump Unhinges the Establishment
Thursday, December 10, 2015
Organs of elite opinion decide what is within bounds and what is not
The media unload on Trump
Dylan Byers approves, and describes the most brutal attacks on The Donald as the media abandoning their strained neutrality to "report objective truths," apparently like the "objective truths" that Trump is a fascist, a racist, a bigot, an un-American betrayer of everything America stands for, etc., etc..
This is the nearly unanimous judgement of the American classe politique, the people who actually run America.
They are far more angry, and more unanimously angry, at Trump than at the PC idiots trashing Princeton and Yale, say.
Remember the expression, "La pensée unique"?
Stopping Muslim immigration would physically harm no one.
More war against Muslim countries and continuing the wars we already have will kill tens and perhaps hundreds of thousands.
Half the class politique wants more war, absolutely.
But suggesting a stop to Muslim immigration is just too, too outré.
Even Ann Coulter can see it.
Oh, and about national security profiling.
Dylan Byers approves, and describes the most brutal attacks on The Donald as the media abandoning their strained neutrality to "report objective truths," apparently like the "objective truths" that Trump is a fascist, a racist, a bigot, an un-American betrayer of everything America stands for, etc., etc..
This is the nearly unanimous judgement of the American classe politique, the people who actually run America.
They are far more angry, and more unanimously angry, at Trump than at the PC idiots trashing Princeton and Yale, say.
Remember the expression, "La pensée unique"?
Stopping Muslim immigration would physically harm no one.
More war against Muslim countries and continuing the wars we already have will kill tens and perhaps hundreds of thousands.
Half the class politique wants more war, absolutely.
But suggesting a stop to Muslim immigration is just too, too outré.
Even Ann Coulter can see it.
Oh, and about national security profiling.
Lots of Americans like the Muslim ban
Voters Like Trump’s Proposed Muslim Ban
Despite an international uproar and condemnation by President Obama and nearly all of those running for the presidency, Donald Trump’s proposed ban on Muslims coming to the United States has the support of a sizable majority of Republicans – and a plurality of all voters.
A new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey finds that 66% of Likely Republican Voters favor a temporary ban on all Muslims entering the United States until the federal government improves its ability to screen out potential terrorists from coming here.
Just 24% oppose the plan, with 10% undecided.
Among all voters, 46% favor a temporary ban on Muslims entering the United States, while 40% are opposed.
Fourteen percent (14%) are undecided.
Despite an international uproar and condemnation by President Obama and nearly all of those running for the presidency, Donald Trump’s proposed ban on Muslims coming to the United States has the support of a sizable majority of Republicans – and a plurality of all voters.
A new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey finds that 66% of Likely Republican Voters favor a temporary ban on all Muslims entering the United States until the federal government improves its ability to screen out potential terrorists from coming here.
Just 24% oppose the plan, with 10% undecided.
Among all voters, 46% favor a temporary ban on Muslims entering the United States, while 40% are opposed.
Fourteen percent (14%) are undecided.
GR gets it right
Seldom do I say such a thing, and it's only up to a point, anyway.
Liberals have chosen The Donald as their 'Destructor'
He is right that the French and American peoples feel their leaders are not doing much or doing enough to keep them safe.
They are quite wrong.
Their leaders are doing plenty, and in some respects too much, though in others too little.
The American invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq are examples of what is "too much," as is our ridiculous PC frisking policy at airports.
The refusal of our and Europe's classe politique to stop or even limit Muslim immigration and sojourning are examples of "too little."
But nothing in the world can "keep them safe," and despite O's foolish denial terrorism is indeed integral to "the new normal," a cancer in Islam, just as he says, that will be with us until it goes into remission as spontaneously as it appeared and grew.
Still, this bit is good.
Likewise, it’s a bit hard to take people seriously about Trump’s threat to civil liberties when President Obama was just endorsing an unconstitutional gun ban, when his attorney general was threatening to prosecute people for anti-Muslim speech (a threat later walked back, thankfully) and when universities and political leaders around the country are making clear their belief that free speech is obsolete.
Hearing that Yale professor Erika Christakis won't be teaching at Yale because of the abuse she received over a respectful but non-PC email, former DNC chair Howard Dean tweeted: “Free speech is good. Respecting others is better.”
To his credit, CNN’s Jake Tapper responded: “Of course only one of them is enshrined in the Constitution.”
But Twitter humorist IowaHawk had the last word: ”With the exception of POTUS, the Atty General, both leading presidential candidates, the media, and universities, Americans love free speech.”
We Americans should at least stop actual immigration of Muslims to keep the population in which, as O says, terrorism grows like a cancer from getting larger.
And a diminished flow of visitors and sojourners would be a good thing, too.
And we can and should do those things even if we don't shut the door to anybody else.
I am not aware that, in Europe or anywhere else, immigrant populations of other faiths have shown themselves especially dangerous.
As for Europe, things have already gone so far it may be politically impossible to prevent the continued growth of Muslim populations, much less to diminish them.
Their goose may already be cooked.
Which is not to say there won't be an effort.
Le Pen's FN vote skyrockets
Wilders tells Turks: 'You will never join EU'
I had to laugh at this one.
Geert Wilders hopes Trump will become next US president
Wilders' party is right wing in things connected to economics and he is an avid supporter of Western defense of Israel.
Marine Le Pen's FN is economically more centrist.
Her party is perhaps more anti-EU and pro-national sovereignty than Wilders'.
Liberals have chosen The Donald as their 'Destructor'
He is right that the French and American peoples feel their leaders are not doing much or doing enough to keep them safe.
They are quite wrong.
Their leaders are doing plenty, and in some respects too much, though in others too little.
The American invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq are examples of what is "too much," as is our ridiculous PC frisking policy at airports.
The refusal of our and Europe's classe politique to stop or even limit Muslim immigration and sojourning are examples of "too little."
But nothing in the world can "keep them safe," and despite O's foolish denial terrorism is indeed integral to "the new normal," a cancer in Islam, just as he says, that will be with us until it goes into remission as spontaneously as it appeared and grew.
Still, this bit is good.
Likewise, it’s a bit hard to take people seriously about Trump’s threat to civil liberties when President Obama was just endorsing an unconstitutional gun ban, when his attorney general was threatening to prosecute people for anti-Muslim speech (a threat later walked back, thankfully) and when universities and political leaders around the country are making clear their belief that free speech is obsolete.
Hearing that Yale professor Erika Christakis won't be teaching at Yale because of the abuse she received over a respectful but non-PC email, former DNC chair Howard Dean tweeted: “Free speech is good. Respecting others is better.”
To his credit, CNN’s Jake Tapper responded: “Of course only one of them is enshrined in the Constitution.”
But Twitter humorist IowaHawk had the last word: ”With the exception of POTUS, the Atty General, both leading presidential candidates, the media, and universities, Americans love free speech.”
We Americans should at least stop actual immigration of Muslims to keep the population in which, as O says, terrorism grows like a cancer from getting larger.
And a diminished flow of visitors and sojourners would be a good thing, too.
And we can and should do those things even if we don't shut the door to anybody else.
I am not aware that, in Europe or anywhere else, immigrant populations of other faiths have shown themselves especially dangerous.
As for Europe, things have already gone so far it may be politically impossible to prevent the continued growth of Muslim populations, much less to diminish them.
Their goose may already be cooked.
Which is not to say there won't be an effort.
Le Pen's FN vote skyrockets
Wilders tells Turks: 'You will never join EU'
I had to laugh at this one.
Geert Wilders hopes Trump will become next US president
Wilders' party is right wing in things connected to economics and he is an avid supporter of Western defense of Israel.
Marine Le Pen's FN is economically more centrist.
Her party is perhaps more anti-EU and pro-national sovereignty than Wilders'.
How we got here
When the talk is of the bitter polarization of our national politics liberals point to the ideological purism of the movement conservatism that has controlled the Republican Party for several decades and the power and relentlessness of conservative media.
But there is a beam just as big in their own eye.
What Are We Going To Do About DINOs?
But there is a beam just as big in their own eye.
What Are We Going To Do About DINOs?
Why is this a political issue at all?
BooMan and I guess the entire left want public policy to control who gets into what schools, as well as the moral and political content of what is taught, said, or even thought there.
Elite Universities Shouldn't Be Just for Elites
Galloping rather than creeping, their totalitarianism is.
Steve M. makes a valid point and I would like to add that academic survival, let alone anything like success, in college is especially hard for anyone with the misfortune to actually live on campus, and hardest for those living in a freshman dorm.
Animal House was tame, industrious, and quiet as a library by comparison.
Still, Scalia also makes a valid point generally recognized by all but the "reality based," who are known to inhabit their own PC fantasy land.
If you intentionally recruit people who are not up to the minimal standards of ability everybody else meets those people will have a much harder time and a lower success rate.
Elite Universities Shouldn't Be Just for Elites
Galloping rather than creeping, their totalitarianism is.
Steve M. makes a valid point and I would like to add that academic survival, let alone anything like success, in college is especially hard for anyone with the misfortune to actually live on campus, and hardest for those living in a freshman dorm.
Animal House was tame, industrious, and quiet as a library by comparison.
Still, Scalia also makes a valid point generally recognized by all but the "reality based," who are known to inhabit their own PC fantasy land.
If you intentionally recruit people who are not up to the minimal standards of ability everybody else meets those people will have a much harder time and a lower success rate.
Wednesday, December 9, 2015
Sad
Man accused in Planned Parenthood shooting: 'I’m a warrior for the babies'
Allah's warriors appear to be sane and capable, by comparison.
Pretty far from John Brown, even, this fellow is.
And Brown was a homicidal, psychopathic cult leader, it appears.
And a moral hero, of course.
Yes.
Did he want to go there?
Donald Trump will not be barred from Britain despite Muslims outburst
No, better not.
He might turn out to be the next "leader of the free world."
And what would that do for the "special relationship"?
A reminder
Islamism and Jihader violence are a much bigger problem for Muslims than for us.
Have been all along.
Jihaders have killed far more Muslims than non-Muslims, and ripped several Muslim countries to bloody shreds.
Trump unbowed
Mr Trump told the Washington Post he would not step aside, no matter what.
The White House had said Mr Trump was "disqualified" from running after he said the US should ban Muslims from entering the country.
In a poll someplace, 48% of Republicans said they think O is a Muslim.
I suppose he is an atheist or at most given to some vague liberal theology.
His Christianity, we know, is of the "God damn America" type, or not far from it.
He might have rather complex sympathies for Islam, but I can't see him as a fundamentalist of any kind and he is clearly a true enemy of Jihaders.
His comments, in the wake of a deadly terror attack in California, drew global condemnation.
The latest world leader to reject his remarks was Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who said Israel "respects all religions", hours after Mr Trump announced he will be visiting the country this month.
Hilarious.
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