Kurds, women, gays put faith in upstart Turkish party
Well, up to a point, anyway.
There are secularists in Muslim lands.
The real problem is that religious Muslims have not yet decided it's better not to let the state enforce religious law.
Sunday, May 31, 2015
Return of the status quo ante
US anti-terror spying laws to expire
No vote until midweek on the watered down version.
Saturday, May 30, 2015
O'Malley dashes to Hillary's left. Rhetorically.
How different is he?
Martin O'Malley announces run for 2016 Democratic presidential nomination
On character, of course, he can only be better.
But issues?
More rhetorically different than Bernie Sanders, perhaps, but maybe not more in substance.
The Guardian loves him for his stands on gay rights and immigration, not really substantially different from what any Democrat running this year will say.
So?
Martin O'Malley announces run for 2016 Democratic presidential nomination
On character, of course, he can only be better.
But issues?
More rhetorically different than Bernie Sanders, perhaps, but maybe not more in substance.
The Guardian loves him for his stands on gay rights and immigration, not really substantially different from what any Democrat running this year will say.
So?
In lieu of death panels
Palin was right.
Elderly face NHS discrimination under new UN death targets
Just the kind of thing liberals used to berate the Nazis for.
Elderly face NHS discrimination under new UN death targets
Just the kind of thing liberals used to berate the Nazis for.
Chickens roosting
The New Nationwide Crime Wave
Doing her best not to harp over much on race, she writes,
The most plausible explanation of the current surge in lawlessness is the intense agitation against American police departments over the past nine months.
Is this a reason the "white power structure" is here so willing to cave, rhetorically and in practice, to rioters, their enablers, their sponsors, their propagandists, and their political allies?
If these decriminalization and deincarceration policies backfire, the people most harmed will be their supposed beneficiaries: blacks, since they are disproportionately victimized by crime.
Liberals will pay absolutely no attention to articles like this, except to cry "racism!"
Doing her best not to harp over much on race, she writes,
The most plausible explanation of the current surge in lawlessness is the intense agitation against American police departments over the past nine months.
Is this a reason the "white power structure" is here so willing to cave, rhetorically and in practice, to rioters, their enablers, their sponsors, their propagandists, and their political allies?
If these decriminalization and deincarceration policies backfire, the people most harmed will be their supposed beneficiaries: blacks, since they are disproportionately victimized by crime.
Liberals will pay absolutely no attention to articles like this, except to cry "racism!"
Not likely to pass
Democratic civil libertarians don't want this watered down version with the Orwellian name to pass.
They just want the Patriot Act to expire.
So does the crackpot right and the civil libertarian right, and so does the "anything he's for I'm against" right.
Strange bedfellows who may win out.
Obama asks Senate to pass USA Freedom Act
They just want the Patriot Act to expire.
So does the crackpot right and the civil libertarian right, and so does the "anything he's for I'm against" right.
Strange bedfellows who may win out.
Obama asks Senate to pass USA Freedom Act
The same theme, continued
Democratic sosialists vs reds, is the theme.
Venezuela blocks ex-presidents' visit
Last month a group of former world leaders sent an open letter to the Venezuelan government urging the release of the opposition leaders.
In April a former Spanish prime minister, Felipe Gonzalez, who announced his intention to help in the legal defence of Leopoldo Lopez, was also denied access to him.
The Venezuelan attorney general said under the country's law Mr Gonzalez could not form part of Mr Lopez's legal team.
Mr Maduro has been scathing about international support for Venezuelan opposition leaders.
"In general, these former prime ministers are usually discredited. They don't even want them in their own countries and then they come over here to disturb us."
The American left hearts the Bolivarian Revolution and its hero, Fidel Castro, too.
Global demographic disaster
Germany 'hits global birth rate low'
Not just the white Occident but the entire global North - the economic North - faces demographic decline while the most wretched global South "breed like rabbits," to borrow the pope's phrase, and powers the continuing explosion of human over-population.
The problem is the same within the modern countries, where the poorest and least integrated into modern economic life are far more prolific than anyone else.
What are the Japanese, who reject immigration, doing about it?
Leave it to Pat Buchanan to see this as a eurowhite vs non-eurowhite problem, as does so much of the Occidental left and right.
What's in a name?
Sarkozy renames leading party of the French right
Former French president Nicolas Sarkozy has changed his party's name from Union for a Popular Movement (UMP) to The Republicans.
Members of France's main opposition party voted to support the rebranding on Friday, with 83% of members approving the move.
The move has sparked widespread debate in France, with critics arguing that all French people are Republicans.
Alert Jefferson, Madison, and Monroe.
And Lincoln, of course.
The FIFA scandal
"Nelson Mandela made jail. Gandhi made jail. Castro made jail. So who's Jack Warner?"
A collection of heroes to warm the heart of Joan Walsh.
He's an admirer of Bob Marley, too, just like our president.
He plays the race and anti-colonialist/anti-imperialist cards, as O probably would, in his place.
But O is not in his place.
A good account of the broader story, both the issues and the people, is here.
Will Sepp Blatter eventually join Snowden in Russia?
More.
James Holmes "legally sane"
In a nutshell, that means he knows, and knew at the time, "right from wrong."
Imagine that.
Could the law possibly be more archaic, delusional, or absurd?
The moral faith could not be more deeply embedded in the legal systems and traditions of the Occident.
US gunman deemed 'legally sane'
When asked whether Mr Holmes had "the capacity to know right from wrong", whether he had the capacity to form the intent to act and whether he met the legal definition of sanity at the time of the shooting, Dr Reid answered "yes" to all.
"Activists"?
Silk Road drug site founder jailed
Two life sentences for Ross Ulbricht, founder of Silk Road.
The Silk Road took its name from the historic trade routes spanning Europe, Asia and parts of Africa.
It achieved notoriety through media reports and online chatter.
But users could only access the site through Tor - a system that lets people use the web without revealing who they are or which country they are in.
Tor was created by the US government to help provide activists with anonymity but is now often used to mask illegal transactions.
Friday, May 29, 2015
Tofu
Tofu originated in Han dynasty China some 2,000 years ago.
Chinese legend ascribes its invention to prince Liu An (179–122 BC).
Tofu and its production technique were introduced into Korea and then Japan during the Nara period (710–794).
Some scholars believe tofu arrived in Vietnam during the 10th and 11th century.
It spread into other parts of East Asia as well.
This spread probably coincided with the spread of Buddhism because it is an important source of protein in the vegetarian diet of East Asian Buddhism.
But they could not have known that, having no idea of modern, scientific biochemistry.
Lucky hit, or what?
China developed in splendid cultural isolation until the arrival of Buddhism from India and then, centuries later, the explosion of modernity into the world that was the same event as the explosion of European imperialism-colonialism.
Harrington was wrong; he thinks there is a Japanese civilization distinct from the Chinese.
He makes the same mistake about Latin and Orthodox Christianity.
That explosion of modernity came late to the world of Chinese civilization, Japan included.
Thursday, May 28, 2015
Nationalist vs Wall Street conservatives
Btw, while reading today some of the first pages of his book on Nixon's victory in 1968 I wondered whether PB would ever write about the Watergate scandal and the destruction of Nixon's presidency.
While I don't share his views of most of what he and I would both take as the central issues of politics, the man remains a very perceptive political and cultural analyst, journalist, and historian.
There's no book, but there is this.
Not enough.
We already know the downside of RN's historic opening to China.
Wednesday, May 27, 2015
A plain stupid attack on Bernie Sanders
Really, how can conservative, Republican propaganda against so modest a social democrat be anything but loony, stupid, or both?
Like Goldwater and Reagan telling us with a straight face before 1965 that Medicare is communism and its adoption will mean the absolute destruction of America as we know it, and all our American liberties.
Bernie Sanders' Foul Socialist Odor
It is interesting to recall that the Social Democrats USA and nearly all of the non-Communist socialist movement were firmly anti-communist and anti-fellow-traveler, too, back in the day, and how far they were from the fellow-traveling New Left radicalism, racial and sexual as well as economic - though of course they favored and took part in the Civil Rights movement of that era - that today dominates the radical left and even much of the not so radical left, throughout the Occident.
Generally, though with much fringy controversy, they and the DSA and other anti-communist socialists before and later rejected the Soviet model of a command and almost completely socialized economy in favor of a "mixed economy" dominated by publicly regulated private enterprise, although with a degree of regulation and socialization notably greater than called for by or acceptable to progressives like me who take more seriously the importance of freedom not only in the free market but in the culture as a whole.
And of course they rejected with horror, and more unconditionally than liberals like John Rawls, dictatorship in the name of socialism or the working class.
To my annoyance, they supported the Cold War and even the war in Vietnam, Michael Harrington publicly bolting only in 1972 and ultimately forming the DSA, of which I was a member until I was alienated by how many genuine reds, pinkos, left-wing tools, fellow-travelers, and New Lefters were among its membership.
Reality is much too complicated and nuanced for it to be well suited to right wing propaganda, though.
Or anyone else's.
At a guess, this is what really scares the right.
The media’s sickening Sanders double standard: How the socialist brings out their true colors
Income inequality and the distribution of wealth are two topics Sanders hammers away at constantly, and during the interview with Harwood he brought up the fact that the top marginal tax rate for income during the 1950s was somewhere around 90 percent.
Sanders’ comment took Harwood aback.
“When you think about something like 90 percent, you don’t think that’s obviously too high?” he asked.
“No,” Bernie shot back.
Sanders’ endorsement of the Eisenhower-era tax structure also raised eyebrows at the New York Times, which observed that Sanders “doesn’t flinch over returning to the 90 percent personal income tax rates of the 1950s for top earners.”
In these reactions you can easily spy an undercurrent of incredulity that a politician would enthusiastically advocate for rich people to pay more – much, much more – in taxes.
Sanders is not the man to agree with the Clintons that "the era of big government is over."
And he is abundantly willing to require the rich to pay for it.
Like Goldwater and Reagan telling us with a straight face before 1965 that Medicare is communism and its adoption will mean the absolute destruction of America as we know it, and all our American liberties.
Bernie Sanders' Foul Socialist Odor
It is interesting to recall that the Social Democrats USA and nearly all of the non-Communist socialist movement were firmly anti-communist and anti-fellow-traveler, too, back in the day, and how far they were from the fellow-traveling New Left radicalism, racial and sexual as well as economic - though of course they favored and took part in the Civil Rights movement of that era - that today dominates the radical left and even much of the not so radical left, throughout the Occident.
Generally, though with much fringy controversy, they and the DSA and other anti-communist socialists before and later rejected the Soviet model of a command and almost completely socialized economy in favor of a "mixed economy" dominated by publicly regulated private enterprise, although with a degree of regulation and socialization notably greater than called for by or acceptable to progressives like me who take more seriously the importance of freedom not only in the free market but in the culture as a whole.
And of course they rejected with horror, and more unconditionally than liberals like John Rawls, dictatorship in the name of socialism or the working class.
To my annoyance, they supported the Cold War and even the war in Vietnam, Michael Harrington publicly bolting only in 1972 and ultimately forming the DSA, of which I was a member until I was alienated by how many genuine reds, pinkos, left-wing tools, fellow-travelers, and New Lefters were among its membership.
Reality is much too complicated and nuanced for it to be well suited to right wing propaganda, though.
Or anyone else's.
At a guess, this is what really scares the right.
The media’s sickening Sanders double standard: How the socialist brings out their true colors
Income inequality and the distribution of wealth are two topics Sanders hammers away at constantly, and during the interview with Harwood he brought up the fact that the top marginal tax rate for income during the 1950s was somewhere around 90 percent.
Sanders’ comment took Harwood aback.
“When you think about something like 90 percent, you don’t think that’s obviously too high?” he asked.
“No,” Bernie shot back.
Sanders’ endorsement of the Eisenhower-era tax structure also raised eyebrows at the New York Times, which observed that Sanders “doesn’t flinch over returning to the 90 percent personal income tax rates of the 1950s for top earners.”
In these reactions you can easily spy an undercurrent of incredulity that a politician would enthusiastically advocate for rich people to pay more – much, much more – in taxes.
Sanders is not the man to agree with the Clintons that "the era of big government is over."
And he is abundantly willing to require the rich to pay for it.
You mean you didn't already know?
Well, Now We Know: Netanyahu Will Never Support A Two-State Solution
Nor, really, do the Zionists of the Republican Party, the Christian Zionists among Americans, or even some Zionist Democrats.
Personally, I agree with Bibi's and Gold's strategic estimates of what's safest for Israel and have no wish to see the US force them to accept a Palestinian state in return for formal guarantees, whether in a treaty or not, that the US will always come to their rescue and treat them as fully covered by a US nuclear umbrella.
The survival of Israel is not really our problem, and Bibi understands that, push come to shove, the US cannot be expected to be quite so irrational as to defend Israel as it would Long Island.
Nor is the national independence of Latvia our problem, by the way, or any of the states that became independent with the breakup of the Soviet Union.
Nor is the defense of anybody outside the US, really, though in practice I suppose we need to be concerned with all of North America above the equator.
Anybody else?
No, and commitments to the contrary are stupid reflections of persistent and carefully cultivated American delusions of grandeur, mixed with utter dishonesty about where exactly the vital interests of the US really lie.
Nor, really, do the Zionists of the Republican Party, the Christian Zionists among Americans, or even some Zionist Democrats.
Personally, I agree with Bibi's and Gold's strategic estimates of what's safest for Israel and have no wish to see the US force them to accept a Palestinian state in return for formal guarantees, whether in a treaty or not, that the US will always come to their rescue and treat them as fully covered by a US nuclear umbrella.
The survival of Israel is not really our problem, and Bibi understands that, push come to shove, the US cannot be expected to be quite so irrational as to defend Israel as it would Long Island.
Nor is the national independence of Latvia our problem, by the way, or any of the states that became independent with the breakup of the Soviet Union.
Nor is the defense of anybody outside the US, really, though in practice I suppose we need to be concerned with all of North America above the equator.
Anybody else?
No, and commitments to the contrary are stupid reflections of persistent and carefully cultivated American delusions of grandeur, mixed with utter dishonesty about where exactly the vital interests of the US really lie.
News? No. Agitprop? You bet
Today's top story in the All News section at TPM.
You know, national news, world news, sporting news, environment news, political news, the whole bloody shebang.
The absolutely tippity-top top story in THAT section.
No kidding.
Photo Shows White Chicago Cops Posing With Black Man Dressed In Antlers
You know, national news, world news, sporting news, environment news, political news, the whole bloody shebang.
The absolutely tippity-top top story in THAT section.
No kidding.
Photo Shows White Chicago Cops Posing With Black Man Dressed In Antlers
Juan Cole against a new wave of imperialism
He sounds like a bright, bright pink fellow.
I, too, oppose actual US imperialism and pretty much any degree of foreign meddling by the US short of that, but not at all for his sort of reasons.
His kind of lefty almost makes me puke.
His line on "capitalist economic imperialism" is not just pink but a vivid, fire-engine red.
The Nation was a fellow-traveling rag when it mattered and never dropped its propaganda style or lines when the Soviet empire collapsed.
At the time, it was a free lance - or worse - Soviet agent of anti-American influence on American public opinion.
All that has changed is that the Soviets are gone.
America betrayed
For decades America's leaders have pursued policies to make China richer at America's expense with the foreseen consequence of growing Chinese power inimical to America.
Quite successfully.
Murder in the cathedral
never quite works out as hoped.
Crowds greet Romero beatification
He was a moral heretic or maybe just a fellow traveling fraud - Catholicism does not construe the Commandment as prohibiting lethal force to the state - on the wrong side and a lefty hero.
And a Hollywood hero.
The praganda movie with Raoul Julia is quite good.
Says BBC,
Several conservative Latin American cardinals in the Vatican had blocked his beatification for years because they were concerned his death was prompted more by his politics than by his preaching.
Make what you can of that odd explanation.
Everything about this is about politics.
Pope Benedict XVI finally reversed this in 2012.
Open season on Baltimore
The city pays for its choice to side with criminals and the canaille against the police.
Tuesday, May 26, 2015
Joke's on The Guardian and its true believer readers
How to turn a liberal hipster into a capitalist tyrant in one evening
It is, of course, a true believer who explains it all for us.
It is, of course, a true believer who explains it all for us.
Some courts are honest, it appears
O's action amounted to a presidential re-write of the law, or a refusal to enforce it.
Liberal attempts to justify it by appeal to the common practice of prosecutorial discretion ignore the difference in scale and the questionability of that practice.
The states suing to block the plan, led by Texas, argue that Obama acted outside his authority and that the changes would force them to invest more in law enforcement, health care and education.
They are correct in every particular.
But the White House has said the president acted within his powers to fix a "broken immigration system."
He has no such powers.
A liberal paper engaged in moralistic finger wagging quotes a pedophile enabler
Gates’ warning: The Boy Scouts must treat leaders equally, too
The Boy Scouts of America should allow gays to be troop leaders before a judge orders it to, the group’s president said last week in a bold speech.
Former defense secretary Robert M. Gates is right: The minority of Americans who still oppose equal treatment for gays “must deal with the world as it is,” not as they wish it to be.
If they were not the ridiculous hypocrites they are, how could the people who gave us sexually integrated military units and college dorms and then complained about "an epidemic of rape," blaming it all on young men, insist they are the ones who want to "'deal with the world as it is,' not as they wish it to be"?
The Boy Scouts of America should allow gays to be troop leaders before a judge orders it to, the group’s president said last week in a bold speech.
Former defense secretary Robert M. Gates is right: The minority of Americans who still oppose equal treatment for gays “must deal with the world as it is,” not as they wish it to be.
If they were not the ridiculous hypocrites they are, how could the people who gave us sexually integrated military units and college dorms and then complained about "an epidemic of rape," blaming it all on young men, insist they are the ones who want to "'deal with the world as it is,' not as they wish it to be"?
Ignorant liberals have no idea what Catholic doctrine is. The informed simply lie about it.
Case in point.
Consider the astonishing ignorance or breathtaking dishonesty about papal infallibility in these remarks by Barbara Morrill.
Republican dilemma: Is the Pope infallible or just a nice guy with an opinion
Consider the astonishing ignorance or breathtaking dishonesty about papal infallibility in these remarks by Barbara Morrill.
Republican dilemma: Is the Pope infallible or just a nice guy with an opinion
The liberal state against the church?
Marco Rubio on gay marriage.
Laura Clawson quotes him thus.
“We are at the water’s edge of the argument that mainstream Christian teaching is hate speech because today we’ve reached the point in our society where if you do not support same-sex marriage, you are labeled a homophobe and a hater,” Rubio said.
“So what’s the next step after that?
"After they’re done going after individuals, the next step is to argue that the teachings of mainstream Christianity, the catechism of the Catholic Church, is hate speech.
"That’s a real and present danger.”
Her reply is a concession of the point, embedded in liberal spin.
Well, yeah, if you don't think LGBT people deserve the same rights as you, that's homophobia.
It's not real complicated.
She follows up with non-denial denials and boilerplate evasions.
Laura Clawson quotes him thus.
“We are at the water’s edge of the argument that mainstream Christian teaching is hate speech because today we’ve reached the point in our society where if you do not support same-sex marriage, you are labeled a homophobe and a hater,” Rubio said.
“So what’s the next step after that?
"After they’re done going after individuals, the next step is to argue that the teachings of mainstream Christianity, the catechism of the Catholic Church, is hate speech.
"That’s a real and present danger.”
Her reply is a concession of the point, embedded in liberal spin.
Well, yeah, if you don't think LGBT people deserve the same rights as you, that's homophobia.
It's not real complicated.
She follows up with non-denial denials and boilerplate evasions.
Catholicism and evolution
Booman writes,
Governor Bobby Jindal of Louisiana is having trouble explaining why he’s promoting Creationism when the pope says that the Big Bang Theory and the Theory of Evolution are consistent with the Catholic faith.
It is evident to even a casual reader that St Paul is a literal-minded creationist, as were the authors of the NT overall, and as were the orthodox Christians of his and every other generation before Darwin.
A supposed valid principle of Biblical interpretation for Catholics is that no reading can be right that is contrary to the views of the Church Fathers, and honest adherence to that rule would rule out acceptance of evolution.
The lack of an authoritative Catholic condemnation of evolution is more a reflection of politics than the view of the Church on the matter.
Clerical defenses of the acceptability of evolution are full of lies, evasions, and weaseling, such as this piece in which a poisonous clerical toad tells us that the Catholic dogma of divine creation is satisfied by the modern view since evolution may be the manner of the thing, and insists that true Catholicism and true natural science are wholly compatible.
EWTN
As is well known, dogma still insists on the Virgin Birth, the Resurrection, the bodily assumption of Mary into Heaven, all the OT and NT miracles, and miracles attributed to each and every saint without which none could be accepted as saints.
While the current pope’s attitude pleases liberals, acceptance of evolution in defiance of both tradition and the Bible may well weaken Catholicism rather than strengthen it, since it undermines honesty and licenses opportune theological cowardice in the face of science.
And that may well be why liberals are pleased.
They do not wish Christianity well and they have the morals typical of those who write about politics on the web, those of snakes.
Booman, again, writes,
Former senator Rick Santorum of Pennsylvania is uncomfortable with the pope’s recent statement that there is no need for Catholics to “breed like rabbits.”
And that is because the Catholic view remains that only sex directed toward procreation is compatible with God's will, and includes morals compatible with that notion: that we have a divine and moral duty to marry and procreate, the larger the family the better.
To the extent his words depart from that this pope is a bit of a crank or a fraud.
Governor Bobby Jindal of Louisiana is having trouble explaining why he’s promoting Creationism when the pope says that the Big Bang Theory and the Theory of Evolution are consistent with the Catholic faith.
It is evident to even a casual reader that St Paul is a literal-minded creationist, as were the authors of the NT overall, and as were the orthodox Christians of his and every other generation before Darwin.
A supposed valid principle of Biblical interpretation for Catholics is that no reading can be right that is contrary to the views of the Church Fathers, and honest adherence to that rule would rule out acceptance of evolution.
The lack of an authoritative Catholic condemnation of evolution is more a reflection of politics than the view of the Church on the matter.
Clerical defenses of the acceptability of evolution are full of lies, evasions, and weaseling, such as this piece in which a poisonous clerical toad tells us that the Catholic dogma of divine creation is satisfied by the modern view since evolution may be the manner of the thing, and insists that true Catholicism and true natural science are wholly compatible.
EWTN
As is well known, dogma still insists on the Virgin Birth, the Resurrection, the bodily assumption of Mary into Heaven, all the OT and NT miracles, and miracles attributed to each and every saint without which none could be accepted as saints.
While the current pope’s attitude pleases liberals, acceptance of evolution in defiance of both tradition and the Bible may well weaken Catholicism rather than strengthen it, since it undermines honesty and licenses opportune theological cowardice in the face of science.
And that may well be why liberals are pleased.
They do not wish Christianity well and they have the morals typical of those who write about politics on the web, those of snakes.
Booman, again, writes,
Former senator Rick Santorum of Pennsylvania is uncomfortable with the pope’s recent statement that there is no need for Catholics to “breed like rabbits.”
And that is because the Catholic view remains that only sex directed toward procreation is compatible with God's will, and includes morals compatible with that notion: that we have a divine and moral duty to marry and procreate, the larger the family the better.
To the extent his words depart from that this pope is a bit of a crank or a fraud.
War Party Bullshit in a boring news lull
Steve M
There are two strands in the piece quoted from the LA Times that are regularly brought forward as excuses for a military draft, a strand of unshared sacrifice and a strand of multigenerationalism.
If multigenerationalism is a problem in the military why is it not also a problem among office holders (Clintons, Bushes, Kennedys, Tafts, Rockefellers, and so on), among the police and other forces of order, in the fire departments, in the medical and legal professions, among high iron workers, coal miners, the cod fishermen of New England, auto workers, and so on?
And in any case wherever it really is a problem the obvious solution is simply to prohibit it, refusing to accept service from those with too many ancestors or family members who were or are in service.
But that is a solution no one has ever suggested, or ever will suggest.
If unshared sacrifice is a problem at all why is it not so among policemen and the forces of order, fire department workers, park rangers and others who cope with massive forest and brush fires, high iron workers, coal miners, and many others in dangerous occupations?
But in any case is it a problem we must solve by rejecting willing volunteers who want the job and aspire to do it well, staffing these vocations instead with resentful forced labor not much interested in the work and perhaps little more than minimally capable of it?
And how, exactly, is military servitude less constitutionally, morally, politically, or otherwise objectionable than forced labor of any other sort, even including chattel slavery?
And in any case the claim that a massive military, notably bigger than the current forces and easily expanded quite quickly, would bring about a less bellicose and interventionist foreign policy than reliance on volunteer forces as small as we can make them is a laughable, cynical, barefaced imposture.
This is all just part of the glut of regularly scheduled propaganda to which the nation is subjected to keep us all suitably softened up for outrages by government, like the claim that earned benefits programs are an increasingly insupportable and unfair burden on the backs of the ordinary young working people of America.
Ballocks.
Yeh’s shocking, parade-ground horseshit, obviously modeled on Hitler’s decades of yelling to the German people that they had been stabbed in the back by civilians in 1918, is so outrageous he must have been kidding, unless he was on drugs or is literally insane.
Blah.
Streiff’s remarks are just stupid and mean.
Some liberals sometimes quote such garbage as Streiff’s and Yeh’s as part of another argument for the draft that reliance on volunteer forces, and then actually making those volunteers do what they volunteered for, turns the volunteer military into a cesspool of lunacy prohibitively dangerous to democracy.
Just more bullshit.
There are two strands in the piece quoted from the LA Times that are regularly brought forward as excuses for a military draft, a strand of unshared sacrifice and a strand of multigenerationalism.
If multigenerationalism is a problem in the military why is it not also a problem among office holders (Clintons, Bushes, Kennedys, Tafts, Rockefellers, and so on), among the police and other forces of order, in the fire departments, in the medical and legal professions, among high iron workers, coal miners, the cod fishermen of New England, auto workers, and so on?
And in any case wherever it really is a problem the obvious solution is simply to prohibit it, refusing to accept service from those with too many ancestors or family members who were or are in service.
But that is a solution no one has ever suggested, or ever will suggest.
If unshared sacrifice is a problem at all why is it not so among policemen and the forces of order, fire department workers, park rangers and others who cope with massive forest and brush fires, high iron workers, coal miners, and many others in dangerous occupations?
But in any case is it a problem we must solve by rejecting willing volunteers who want the job and aspire to do it well, staffing these vocations instead with resentful forced labor not much interested in the work and perhaps little more than minimally capable of it?
And how, exactly, is military servitude less constitutionally, morally, politically, or otherwise objectionable than forced labor of any other sort, even including chattel slavery?
And in any case the claim that a massive military, notably bigger than the current forces and easily expanded quite quickly, would bring about a less bellicose and interventionist foreign policy than reliance on volunteer forces as small as we can make them is a laughable, cynical, barefaced imposture.
This is all just part of the glut of regularly scheduled propaganda to which the nation is subjected to keep us all suitably softened up for outrages by government, like the claim that earned benefits programs are an increasingly insupportable and unfair burden on the backs of the ordinary young working people of America.
Ballocks.
Yeh’s shocking, parade-ground horseshit, obviously modeled on Hitler’s decades of yelling to the German people that they had been stabbed in the back by civilians in 1918, is so outrageous he must have been kidding, unless he was on drugs or is literally insane.
Blah.
Streiff’s remarks are just stupid and mean.
Some liberals sometimes quote such garbage as Streiff’s and Yeh’s as part of another argument for the draft that reliance on volunteer forces, and then actually making those volunteers do what they volunteered for, turns the volunteer military into a cesspool of lunacy prohibitively dangerous to democracy.
Just more bullshit.
Sunday, May 24, 2015
Greece to skip June payments to IMF?
Greece 'cannot afford IMF repayment'
BBC is now referring to Syriza as a "hard left" party and the minister who made these remarks as on that party's "far left."
The Greek interior minister Nikos Voutsis is "of the far left" in a hard left-wing Syriza party but should not be disregarded as on the fringe, or irrelevant, within the government.
Wednesday, May 20, 2015
A bad plan to undermine the viability of private higher education and further a federal takeover of public higher education, disguised as help for students
You want to help students?
Give them a fixed amount of credits per student per year to spend on tuition at any school of their choice for any degree or certificate of their choice, as the GI Bill used to give GIs.
They could spend the money at public or private schools, at community colleges or voc-ed schools, on bachelor's degrees or advanced or professional degrees.
No strings, no Trojan horse carrying a further regulatory assault on the independence of these institutions from, if not government altogether, then anyway the federal government.
And no blatant effort to undermine private colleges and universities by offering help only to students at public ones.
Bernie Sanders proposes free tuition for four year degrees at public colleges
Give them a fixed amount of credits per student per year to spend on tuition at any school of their choice for any degree or certificate of their choice, as the GI Bill used to give GIs.
They could spend the money at public or private schools, at community colleges or voc-ed schools, on bachelor's degrees or advanced or professional degrees.
No strings, no Trojan horse carrying a further regulatory assault on the independence of these institutions from, if not government altogether, then anyway the federal government.
And no blatant effort to undermine private colleges and universities by offering help only to students at public ones.
Bernie Sanders proposes free tuition for four year degrees at public colleges
Tuesday, May 19, 2015
The social value of religion, revisited
Christianity is Dying
The prisons have always been full of believers and the hangmen have always been plentifully supplied with religious material on which to exercise their craft.
That has been enough to satisfy some religious skeptics among the learned that Locke, Voltaire, and Gibbon were mistaken in supposing religion has a useful, taming and socializing effect on the human beast.
All the same, the claim has been and still is made that religion is good and even necessary for society because it is a bulwark of morality, itself crucial to the social order.
The popularity of the sexual revolution has thrown a different light on the morals taught by the churches, making religion appear a machine of cruelly intolerant repression, as Hemant Mehta points out.
But, on the other hand, in the modern world children are a burden and an economic liability, with the result that in the presence of lawful contraception and abortion (and, soon, infanticide?) and the absence of socially upheld idealizations of and aspirations for parenthood in a context of morally and legally durable heterosexual nuclear families defined as the only acceptable setting for either sex or parenthood, fertility rates in advanced societies have fallen chronically below replacement level.
Thus it is shown that religious morals are indeed crucial to the survival of social life, though not because they keep us from killing and robbing each other in the war of all against all but because they keep us making families in which to have and raise children.
In brief, the denigration of homosexuality and indeed all sex outside marriage along with the shotgun wedding and many other moral and legal policies totally inimical to the sexual revolution and the personal, sexual freedom it privileges have historically been and continue to be, in the end, crucial to the self-perpetuation of most societies.
The primal horde is the exception, and the matriarchal societies not far removed from it, only because contraception is absent, safe abortion unavailable, infanticide forbidden, economic life simple, and there is so little to culture that it can be reliably passed on even when children are raised, so to speak, in the street, by anybody and nobody.
Hence the increasing reliance of the modern, antinatalist global North on the all-too-natalist global South to keep up population levels.
The prisons have always been full of believers and the hangmen have always been plentifully supplied with religious material on which to exercise their craft.
That has been enough to satisfy some religious skeptics among the learned that Locke, Voltaire, and Gibbon were mistaken in supposing religion has a useful, taming and socializing effect on the human beast.
All the same, the claim has been and still is made that religion is good and even necessary for society because it is a bulwark of morality, itself crucial to the social order.
The popularity of the sexual revolution has thrown a different light on the morals taught by the churches, making religion appear a machine of cruelly intolerant repression, as Hemant Mehta points out.
But, on the other hand, in the modern world children are a burden and an economic liability, with the result that in the presence of lawful contraception and abortion (and, soon, infanticide?) and the absence of socially upheld idealizations of and aspirations for parenthood in a context of morally and legally durable heterosexual nuclear families defined as the only acceptable setting for either sex or parenthood, fertility rates in advanced societies have fallen chronically below replacement level.
Thus it is shown that religious morals are indeed crucial to the survival of social life, though not because they keep us from killing and robbing each other in the war of all against all but because they keep us making families in which to have and raise children.
In brief, the denigration of homosexuality and indeed all sex outside marriage along with the shotgun wedding and many other moral and legal policies totally inimical to the sexual revolution and the personal, sexual freedom it privileges have historically been and continue to be, in the end, crucial to the self-perpetuation of most societies.
The primal horde is the exception, and the matriarchal societies not far removed from it, only because contraception is absent, safe abortion unavailable, infanticide forbidden, economic life simple, and there is so little to culture that it can be reliably passed on even when children are raised, so to speak, in the street, by anybody and nobody.
Hence the increasing reliance of the modern, antinatalist global North on the all-too-natalist global South to keep up population levels.
In praise of free speech.
Pretty free, anyway.
Limited where, and only where, he thinks it should be.
Ian McEwan speech to Dickinson College grads
A very modern liberal arts school with an interesting history.
Private, not church affiliated.
Dickinson College
Limited where, and only where, he thinks it should be.
Ian McEwan speech to Dickinson College grads
A very modern liberal arts school with an interesting history.
Private, not church affiliated.
Dickinson College
What if ISIS takes over Iraq?
After fall of Ramadi to ISIL, does Iraq have a future?
Much more dangerous to the world and to us than the Taliban.
Meanwhile, the US classe politique obsesses about the wrong Iraq war, the one that began when GW invaded the country, and headlines the biker shootout in Waco.
Crazy, fat white guys, middle-aged and older, with guns, living by crime.
Gypsies with bikes, or mechanized Irish Travelers.
Waco
CNN alone has half a dozen stories, and the biker shootout is tops on the front page and the US page.
Much more dangerous to the world and to us than the Taliban.
Meanwhile, the US classe politique obsesses about the wrong Iraq war, the one that began when GW invaded the country, and headlines the biker shootout in Waco.
Crazy, fat white guys, middle-aged and older, with guns, living by crime.
Gypsies with bikes, or mechanized Irish Travelers.
Waco
CNN alone has half a dozen stories, and the biker shootout is tops on the front page and the US page.
Monday, May 18, 2015
Sunday, May 17, 2015
Those other religious hypocrites
Closeted atheist clergy and our new age of radical transparency
A naturalistic explanation of religion?
Kids believe what their parents tell them.
Santa Claus, the Tooth Fairy, God.
Parents tell them a lot of rot, themselves believing or pretending to believe what their parents told them, or what power insists on.
Not very different from a correct naturalistic explanation of morals, though you might not realize it from the various quite different explanations for these social phenomena offered by persons of scientific expertise.
Explain gullibility.
Explain lying.
Explain coercion.
A naturalistic explanation of religion?
Kids believe what their parents tell them.
Santa Claus, the Tooth Fairy, God.
Parents tell them a lot of rot, themselves believing or pretending to believe what their parents told them, or what power insists on.
Not very different from a correct naturalistic explanation of morals, though you might not realize it from the various quite different explanations for these social phenomena offered by persons of scientific expertise.
Explain gullibility.
Explain lying.
Explain coercion.
American pols and their fake piety
Our faith-addled, God-fearing leaders
When was the last time an American president or candidate for the job dared to tell the truth about his religious beliefs?
If ever, really.
Perhaps some of those who admitted to deism or Unitarianism were really atheists!
As for JT, the more I read of him the more I suspect his model is the equally poorly self-educated Baltimore iconoclast, H. L. Mencken.
Still, it's good that somebody at Salon, of all places, represents this point of view.
When was the last time an American president or candidate for the job dared to tell the truth about his religious beliefs?
If ever, really.
Perhaps some of those who admitted to deism or Unitarianism were really atheists!
As for JT, the more I read of him the more I suspect his model is the equally poorly self-educated Baltimore iconoclast, H. L. Mencken.
Still, it's good that somebody at Salon, of all places, represents this point of view.
Probably, the spread of atheism among these people would be a good thing for the world
Losing their religion: the hidden crisis of faith among Britain’s young Muslims
Though it's risky for us, too, coming out as an atheist is more dangerous for a Muslim than for a Christian or Jew, even in the Occident.
And the danger is notably greater still in Muslim countries.
More dangerous yet is to publicly advocate secularism in specific and clear opposition to Islamism, the violence that supports it and the violence it sanctions, or to engage as an activist in support of apostasy per se.
Raif Badawi
And there is this.
As real as the potential for violence might be, it’s not what keeps many doubting British Muslims from leaving their religion.
As Simon Cottee, author of a new book The Apostates: When Muslims Leave Islam, says: “In the western context, the biggest risk ex-Muslims face is not the baying mob, but the loneliness and isolation of ostracism from loved ones.
"It is stigma and rejection that causes so many ex-Muslims to conceal their apostasy.”
Like the gay liberation movement of a previous generation, Muslim apostates have to fight for the right to be recognised while knowing that recognition brings shame, rejection, intimidation and, very often, family expulsion.
The author of the Observer article, Andrew Anthony, is perhaps too young, too British, or too post-Christian to know that American Christians and Jews often feel just the same, and keep their apostasy secret from their own families.
But at the end of the piece comes reference to something new in the experience of atheists since I first became one in my teens, back in the 1960s.
It certainly seems perverse that while there is no taboo on the discussion of Islamic radicalisation, the mention of Islamic apostates still occasions widespread discomfort.
We can publicly accept that there are Muslims that are so estranged from western society that they prefer to live as fundamentalists, but have far more trouble recognising that there are Muslims who are so estranged from their religion that they prefer to live as freethinkers.
Nasreen, Vali and Shams all agreed that it will only be by bringing greater attention to Muslim apostates in British society that their predicament will improve.
It would also help, they say, if they could rely on the progressive support that was once the right of freethinkers in this country.
“Attitudes need to change,” says Cottee.
“There has to be a greater openness around the whole issue.
"And the demonisation of apostates as ‘sell outs’ and ‘native informants’, which can be heard among both liberal-leftists and reactionary Muslims, needs to stop.
"People leave Islam.
"They have reasons for this, good, bad or whatever.
"It is a human right to change your mind.
"Deal with it.”
At various places in AA's piece, you can see that young Muslim apostates who actually do come out for secularism or in defense of apostasy face the same hostility and demonization that has faced the New Atheists since the earliest, post-9/11 days of Hitchens, Maher, and Harris.
We all face the new fact that while atheist criticisms of Christianity are shielded and even endorsed by a liberal culture that for centuries has supported free thought and expression in opposition to the myths, the doctrines, and the worldly power of that religion, atheist criticisms of Islam are brutally and cruelly damned by liberals as racist, xenophobic, and bigoted.
And that is true whether the atheist who makes the case is, so to speak, a Christian atheist, a Jewish atheist, or a Muslim atheist.
Not likely to change for a long, long time to come, either.
Though it's risky for us, too, coming out as an atheist is more dangerous for a Muslim than for a Christian or Jew, even in the Occident.
And the danger is notably greater still in Muslim countries.
More dangerous yet is to publicly advocate secularism in specific and clear opposition to Islamism, the violence that supports it and the violence it sanctions, or to engage as an activist in support of apostasy per se.
Raif Badawi
And there is this.
As real as the potential for violence might be, it’s not what keeps many doubting British Muslims from leaving their religion.
As Simon Cottee, author of a new book The Apostates: When Muslims Leave Islam, says: “In the western context, the biggest risk ex-Muslims face is not the baying mob, but the loneliness and isolation of ostracism from loved ones.
"It is stigma and rejection that causes so many ex-Muslims to conceal their apostasy.”
Like the gay liberation movement of a previous generation, Muslim apostates have to fight for the right to be recognised while knowing that recognition brings shame, rejection, intimidation and, very often, family expulsion.
The author of the Observer article, Andrew Anthony, is perhaps too young, too British, or too post-Christian to know that American Christians and Jews often feel just the same, and keep their apostasy secret from their own families.
But at the end of the piece comes reference to something new in the experience of atheists since I first became one in my teens, back in the 1960s.
It certainly seems perverse that while there is no taboo on the discussion of Islamic radicalisation, the mention of Islamic apostates still occasions widespread discomfort.
We can publicly accept that there are Muslims that are so estranged from western society that they prefer to live as fundamentalists, but have far more trouble recognising that there are Muslims who are so estranged from their religion that they prefer to live as freethinkers.
Nasreen, Vali and Shams all agreed that it will only be by bringing greater attention to Muslim apostates in British society that their predicament will improve.
It would also help, they say, if they could rely on the progressive support that was once the right of freethinkers in this country.
“Attitudes need to change,” says Cottee.
“There has to be a greater openness around the whole issue.
"And the demonisation of apostates as ‘sell outs’ and ‘native informants’, which can be heard among both liberal-leftists and reactionary Muslims, needs to stop.
"People leave Islam.
"They have reasons for this, good, bad or whatever.
"It is a human right to change your mind.
"Deal with it.”
At various places in AA's piece, you can see that young Muslim apostates who actually do come out for secularism or in defense of apostasy face the same hostility and demonization that has faced the New Atheists since the earliest, post-9/11 days of Hitchens, Maher, and Harris.
We all face the new fact that while atheist criticisms of Christianity are shielded and even endorsed by a liberal culture that for centuries has supported free thought and expression in opposition to the myths, the doctrines, and the worldly power of that religion, atheist criticisms of Islam are brutally and cruelly damned by liberals as racist, xenophobic, and bigoted.
And that is true whether the atheist who makes the case is, so to speak, a Christian atheist, a Jewish atheist, or a Muslim atheist.
Not likely to change for a long, long time to come, either.
The argument for a very small, defensive military
So Why Did It Happen?
Let's whack the hive and hope for the best, is why they did it, says JM.
If you give them the means to go places and do things they will go places and do things.
They will always push the envelope.
So make it a very small envelope.
Let's whack the hive and hope for the best, is why they did it, says JM.
If you give them the means to go places and do things they will go places and do things.
So make it a very small envelope.
Idiots and communists
If you write about the Cold War period and choose the US as your villain you're most likely an idiot or a communist.
Field Gray, Philip Kerr.
Saturday, May 16, 2015
A triple conjunction false in every part
You're born alone and you die alone, and the rest of the time you're on your own.
Field Gray, Philip Kerr.
The melodramatic vacuity of noir.
Fun stuff, though.
A Kantian meditation
The phenomenal world is a world only because what comprises it is already posited as trans-phenomenal.
The bedroom I leave when I go to the kitchen for another beer is part of a phenomenal world only because I regard it as still there during my absence.
Its posited trans-phenomenal existence is essential to its character as part of a world of phenomena.
But this is different from the trans-phenomenal being posited behind the phenomena.
The former is integral to the world of our naive realism, even if only "in brackets," even if only "as if."
The latter is a ghostly remainder of the Lockean, empirical idealism, originally of primary and secondary qualities, that figures intrinsically in the story we tell ourselves about ourselves as inhabitants of this same phenomenal world, projected into invisibility as things in themselves, once we see through naive realism - but not very far.
Wow. Great shape for a man of his years. And a good sport, too.
Romney 'stings like a butterfly' in fight with Evander Holyfield
Naturally, The Guardian can't resist the opportunity to mock him.
For this, he deserves credit.
Naturally, The Guardian can't resist the opportunity to mock him.
For this, he deserves credit.
A regime of liberty for private education?
Asian American groups file racial quotas complaint against Harvard University
Here's a thought.
Get government's hands off private education.
Cut all the strings attached to government aid or even abolish direct aid altogether, leaving only tuition assistance with parents and students free to use it as they please.
The Department of Education should not control education, either its content or who has access to what schools.
Maybe it has no reason to exist at all, unless it's to be the banker for cheap school loans and for other tuition/school expense assistance programs.
If Harvard wants to admit only left-handed, soccer-playing pygmies from Bechuanaland (Botswana) for a few years that's Harvard's call.
And if Liberty University wants to admit only white kids - even if only white boys - who promise not to kiss before the 5th date and to never, never, go "all the way," teaching only Young Earth Creationism in their biology department, that's their call, too.
If not, why not?
President Obama has said education in schools with distinct and more than nominal religious commitments is divisive, I know.
That just shows how little liberals value actual diversity, actual freedom of speech, religion, and thought, and actual cultural pluralism.
They value cultural diversity only in cuisine, folk-dancing, and costume specialties like yarmulkes and the burka.
They have a racial agenda to advance behind a smokescreen of talk about diversity.
Many of the most important advantages of capitalism over socialism are as important in the areas of culture and education as they are in the development and implementation of innovative technologies.
In the former areas these show up as real cultural, educational, artistic, and intellectual creativity, pluralism, diversity, and unhindered innovation.
And these can be stifled or lost altogether through over-regulation just as well as creativity and dynamism can be lost in the economy as a whole.
Here as elsewhere there is not the least chance in Hell that what I would prefer to see happen will happen.
And don't be too sure only the left would oppose so libertarian-sounding a regime.
Remember how the Christians of America dealt with Joseph Smith and his followers.
Update, 05202015, 1431 hrs EDT.
Thinking they would surely have more to say in such a Hayek-like vein about the threat posed by government control of education and culture, I sought libertarian discussions of the question and found only obtuse Duckspeak, the mindless citation of libertarian dogma, like this wholly uninspired driveling that shows no sign the author has any real appreciation for Hayek and his sort of analysis and argument, at all.
The Libertarian Case Against Public Schools
Libertarians oppose public schools because they are government schools.
It doesn’t matter if none of the evils of public schools mentioned above even exist.
It is simply not the proper role of government to educate children.
Neither is it the proper role of government to force Americans to pay for the education of their children in a public school or to pay for the education of the children of other Americans.
It is an illegitimate purpose of government to have anything to do with the education of anyone’s children.
It is the responsibility of parents to educate their children.
How they choose to do that is entirely up to them, but public schooling shouldn’t even be an option.
Blah, blah, blah.
What a maroon.
Here's a thought.
Get government's hands off private education.
Cut all the strings attached to government aid or even abolish direct aid altogether, leaving only tuition assistance with parents and students free to use it as they please.
The Department of Education should not control education, either its content or who has access to what schools.
Maybe it has no reason to exist at all, unless it's to be the banker for cheap school loans and for other tuition/school expense assistance programs.
If Harvard wants to admit only left-handed, soccer-playing pygmies from Bechuanaland (Botswana) for a few years that's Harvard's call.
And if Liberty University wants to admit only white kids - even if only white boys - who promise not to kiss before the 5th date and to never, never, go "all the way," teaching only Young Earth Creationism in their biology department, that's their call, too.
If not, why not?
President Obama has said education in schools with distinct and more than nominal religious commitments is divisive, I know.
That just shows how little liberals value actual diversity, actual freedom of speech, religion, and thought, and actual cultural pluralism.
They value cultural diversity only in cuisine, folk-dancing, and costume specialties like yarmulkes and the burka.
They have a racial agenda to advance behind a smokescreen of talk about diversity.
Many of the most important advantages of capitalism over socialism are as important in the areas of culture and education as they are in the development and implementation of innovative technologies.
In the former areas these show up as real cultural, educational, artistic, and intellectual creativity, pluralism, diversity, and unhindered innovation.
And these can be stifled or lost altogether through over-regulation just as well as creativity and dynamism can be lost in the economy as a whole.
Here as elsewhere there is not the least chance in Hell that what I would prefer to see happen will happen.
And don't be too sure only the left would oppose so libertarian-sounding a regime.
Remember how the Christians of America dealt with Joseph Smith and his followers.
Update, 05202015, 1431 hrs EDT.
Thinking they would surely have more to say in such a Hayek-like vein about the threat posed by government control of education and culture, I sought libertarian discussions of the question and found only obtuse Duckspeak, the mindless citation of libertarian dogma, like this wholly uninspired driveling that shows no sign the author has any real appreciation for Hayek and his sort of analysis and argument, at all.
The Libertarian Case Against Public Schools
Libertarians oppose public schools because they are government schools.
It doesn’t matter if none of the evils of public schools mentioned above even exist.
It is simply not the proper role of government to educate children.
Neither is it the proper role of government to force Americans to pay for the education of their children in a public school or to pay for the education of the children of other Americans.
It is an illegitimate purpose of government to have anything to do with the education of anyone’s children.
It is the responsibility of parents to educate their children.
How they choose to do that is entirely up to them, but public schooling shouldn’t even be an option.
Blah, blah, blah.
What a maroon.
The Orgasmatron is coming
The world's mullahs, including our secular mullahs and especially our feminist secular mullahs, will oppose it.
Doesn't matter.
The Internet is dominated by porn and simulations will be, too.
Simulated Worlds Will Soon Be Indistinguishable From Reality
[E]ngineer Andy Fawkes, who works for global simulation software company Bohemia Interactive Simulations (BIS) and is director of tech and training company Thinke, . . . looks forward to strapping on an Oculus Rift in old age and “escaping” his weary body.
Who needs Viagra, eh?
Doesn't matter.
The Internet is dominated by porn and simulations will be, too.
Simulated Worlds Will Soon Be Indistinguishable From Reality
[E]ngineer Andy Fawkes, who works for global simulation software company Bohemia Interactive Simulations (BIS) and is director of tech and training company Thinke, . . . looks forward to strapping on an Oculus Rift in old age and “escaping” his weary body.
Who needs Viagra, eh?
The new porn capital of the world?
With Caligula and a few other films, Hollywood flirted with big money porn and backed away, nowadays adrift in a kind of R rated, soft porn zone allowing films to be non-orgy, non-masturbatory entertainment.
Will Bollywood do the same?
Or will it frankly go all in to dominate the growing global sex market?
A turn of the wheel
Amin's abrupt and clumsy seizures of the property of whites and other non-blacks for transfer to blacks had disastrous, entirely predictable consequences in Uganda.
The last king of Scotland was an ignorant, racist, superstitious criminal who made Mugabe look like an aristocrat.
In SA, the racial plundering fits in nicely with recent xenophobic violence and attacks on white institutions and public monuments, legacies of colonialism and white rule.
In SA, all the same, the racial plundering is more orderly and slower than in even Kenya, let alone Uganda.
Bankers dislike nationalization and blatantly kleptocratic seizures, as when estates or enterprises are taken from their owners to become the personal property of thieving officials or their relatives.
But when, as here, it's dressed up as "racial justice"?
Currently a political football, could this have been a crime?
Amtrak train 'may have been struck'
The driver, who was speeding, has been attempting to shed blame by pointing to what the left insists has been budgetary neglect and lack of technical modernization.
Recall that Amtrack exists only because the left loves public ownership.
The driver now points to something else, with corroboration.
Some vandalous, malicious attack?
The jury made the call
Death sentence for Boston bomber
Not a responsibility ordinary people are used to.
Thursday, May 14, 2015
Looking for an ally? The Telegraph thinks not.
Syriza looking for help from the Brits in its struggle with the German bankers?
And what about those marbles, anyway?
Says BBC, the marbles were removed in 1801 by agents of the British diplomat Lord Elgin and in 1816 they were sold to the British Museum.
Did Elgin's agents buy them from someone?
Did anyone own them?
What happened?
The BBC account certainly makes it sound suspicious.
Did Elgin just steal them?
The Telegraph on the question.
Looks to me like Elgin owned them fair and square.
He and the British Museum did the world a favor, despite the malicious claims of the anti-colonialist, anti-imperialist left.
And that's why the Greeks backed down.
A general observation.
The world knows well that art, antiquities, and indeed anything rare that needs preservation is safe in the hands of the rich.
Safer than at the mercy of some governments, subject as they are to agendas.
Another reason to be grateful the Egyptian army pushed out the Muslim Brotherhood, perhaps.
And to worry about Libya, Turkey, and even Syria?
An ethical question for cosmopolitan liberals, utilitarians, and other global leveling moralizers.
Isn't every penny spent creating and preserving cultural treasures that could be spent alleviating global poverty, diminishing global inequality, a penny misspent?
Did not Aquinas write and is it not Catholic teaching that everything a man has beyond what he needs belongs rightfully to the poor?
Is not the very existence of cultural treasures, including perhaps most poignantly religious cultural treasures, an affront to global social justice?
For those who are fans of such things.
An indigenous folk remedy the left doesn't like
The country that blends endangered frogs
They admire Chinese folk medicine, too.
Except for the part about rhino horn.
Part of their war on men.
It's a men's health issue.
:-)
Wednesday, May 13, 2015
Senate Dems stop TTP
All but one Democrat voted against it in the Senate, producing a successful filibuster.
The Senate voted 52 to 45, eight votes short of the 60 votes needed to pass.
Nobody supported Obama but Republicans and one Democrat.
No one would ever have guessed
The biggest ever global school rankings have been published, with Asian countries in the top five places and African countries at the bottom.
Ranking based on math and science at age 15.
Philistine, but still.
Tuesday, May 12, 2015
Jeffrey Tayler, Salon renegade, on the failed Jihader attentat in Texas
Despite the shallow myth to which JT fully subscribes, European and Mediterranean polytheism were not so much more religiously tolerant than the three monotheist, Abrahamic religions as some nowadays insist, and intolerance is anyway neither the only nor the worst sin a religion may commit.
Too see this, consider the ways in which Central American polytheism was spectacularly more savage than any of the Abrahamic religions.
And the plain silliness of JT's talk of the "pluralism" of polytheism is apparent as soon as we think of the Catholic cults of the saints, and realize he is commending polytheism for tolerating itself.
And another thing to bear in mind: the ancient world - indeed, the whole world - built its pagan civilization on the backs of millions of slaves, while the Christian civilization of the late 18th and 19th Centuries abolished slavery.
It is notorious even in the deepest darkness of modern pop culture that the cruelties of Roman slavery extended to forcing captives to kill each other in the ring in large numbers for the entertainment of the mob, and revolts put down with enormous violence and savagery.
On the whole, JT's history lesson on the rise of Abrahamic monotheisms is ignorant, silly, bigoted, and unjust to all three, as is his blindness to important differences among them.
Come to that, JT is in every respect a writer whose very style betrays exceptional ignorance and a poor education.
Advance of the quota system
You can't have too many women, non-Christians, or non-whites.
But you can have too many men and you can have too many whites
The former is proof of sexist discrimination and the latter of racism.
Got it?
Hollywood accused of gender bias in hiring women directors
But you can have too many men and you can have too many whites
The former is proof of sexist discrimination and the latter of racism.
Got it?
Hollywood accused of gender bias in hiring women directors
Oh, quelle surprise! Turkey and Saudi support Jihadists against Assad, who is aligned with Iran.
Syria crisis
Turkey and Saudi Arabia are actively supporting a hardline coalition of Islamist rebels against Bashar al-Assad’s regime that includes al-Qaeda’s affiliate in Syria, in a move that has alarmed Western governments.
The two countries are focusing their backing for the Syrian rebels on the combined Jaish al-Fatah, or the Army of Conquest, a command structure for jihadist groups in Syria that includes Jabhat al-Nusra, an extremist rival to Isis which shares many of its aspirations for a fundamentalist caliphate.
Turkey and Saudi Arabia are actively supporting a hardline coalition of Islamist rebels against Bashar al-Assad’s regime that includes al-Qaeda’s affiliate in Syria, in a move that has alarmed Western governments.
The two countries are focusing their backing for the Syrian rebels on the combined Jaish al-Fatah, or the Army of Conquest, a command structure for jihadist groups in Syria that includes Jabhat al-Nusra, an extremist rival to Isis which shares many of its aspirations for a fundamentalist caliphate.
The religion of peace attacks again
Blogger hacked to death in Bangladesh, third this year
Brief, to the point account of the situation in Bangla Desh.
Brief, to the point account of the situation in Bangla Desh.
O and the GOP for TPP, Dems opposed
Liberal senators imperil Obama trade bill
The White House and Senate Republicans are scrambling to win enough support for a key procedural vote Tuesday to move forward with President Obama’s trade agenda.
The vote is shaping up to be one of the most dramatic roll calls of this Congress and could be a stinging rebuke of the president by members of his own party.
It may also doom a sweeping Pacific trade agreement that is a top priority for the Obama administration.
Still, the changes demanded by the liberals are little more than lipstick on a pig.
TPP should be voted down, altogether, in all its parts.
The White House and Senate Republicans are scrambling to win enough support for a key procedural vote Tuesday to move forward with President Obama’s trade agenda.
The vote is shaping up to be one of the most dramatic roll calls of this Congress and could be a stinging rebuke of the president by members of his own party.
It may also doom a sweeping Pacific trade agreement that is a top priority for the Obama administration.
Still, the changes demanded by the liberals are little more than lipstick on a pig.
TPP should be voted down, altogether, in all its parts.
The only whites black people are not allowed to cross are the Jews
We have known that for decades.
Philip Weiss is papering over the deep chasm that has always separated Jews from non-whites, who often think Jews are the worst of the whites.
Front-page attack in New York Times says BDS movement is driven by minorities’ ‘hostility toward Jews’
NYT
"You guys are racists!"
"Oh, yeah? Well you guys are anti-Semites!"
The article quotes a supporter of the BDS movement saying, "Zionism is a political identity, Judaism is a religious identity, and it does a disservice to both to blur the line.”
That is how pro-BDS Jews see it and how pro-BDS non-Jews say they see it.
The full passage in the Times goes like this.
Jannine Salman, the member of Columbia Students for Justice in Palestine who made the banner, said that anti-Zionism, not anti-Semitism, was the motive — and that the recent formation of a campus chapter of Jewish Voice for Peace, which favors divestment, should drive home the point.
“There is a bifurcation: Zionism is a political identity, Judaism is a religious identity, and it does a disservice to both to blur the line,” Ms. Salman said. “When there was the anti-apartheid boycott in South Africa, was that anti-white? Absolutely not. This is like that.”
Two points.
The situation in South Africa is fluid, constantly threatening, and not so simple as she claims.
And the Arabs in Palestine have always been very up front about wanting to drive the Jews out or exterminate them on the ground.
The Times continues with this.
Supporters of Israel say the most dangerous possibility is that the current campus atmosphere is delegitimizing the country, making it acceptable to question whether Jews are entitled to a nation.
And that, of course, is exactly the point.
The BDS movement is anti-colonialist, and the anti-colonialists oppose the colonization of terrain outside Europe by eurowhites, regardless of whether or how thickly the terrain was previously populated by non-whites and regardless of how the indigenous non-whites came to be where they were when the whites showed up.
Add to that that the BDS movement opposes ethnic nationalism on principle and you can see the strands of thought coming together to oppose the very idea of a Jewish homeland, a Jewish settler state not just in Palestine but anywhere at all.
Personally, I think the Times is not wrong to see anti-Zionism as intimately related to minority anti-Semitism.
An apt and revealing quote.
At Northwestern University this year, for example, the student government debated a divestment resolution for more than five hours, as students with clashing views sat on opposite sides of the room. Some of the talk was openly hostile, with charges of racism and colonialism.
“Discomfort is felt by every person of color on this campus,” said an Egyptian-American senior, Hagar Gomaa. “To those who say this divestment bill makes you uncomfortable, I say: Check your privilege.”
Wow, "Check your privilege"?
As Maureen Down has sagely written, though in quite another context, "Bitch is the new black."
And you don't have to be a girl to be a bitch.
Why, that Egyptian sounds just like an American minority telling off some Christian white guy, eh?
Jews do not want to be on the receiving end of that kind of talk.
American gentiles, sure, have at 'em.
But talk to Jews like that?
Wow.
Reminds you of Jesse Jackson complaining about Hymie-town while Louis Farrakhan applauded, years ago.
Philip Weiss is papering over the deep chasm that has always separated Jews from non-whites, who often think Jews are the worst of the whites.
Front-page attack in New York Times says BDS movement is driven by minorities’ ‘hostility toward Jews’
NYT
"You guys are racists!"
"Oh, yeah? Well you guys are anti-Semites!"
The article quotes a supporter of the BDS movement saying, "Zionism is a political identity, Judaism is a religious identity, and it does a disservice to both to blur the line.”
That is how pro-BDS Jews see it and how pro-BDS non-Jews say they see it.
The full passage in the Times goes like this.
Jannine Salman, the member of Columbia Students for Justice in Palestine who made the banner, said that anti-Zionism, not anti-Semitism, was the motive — and that the recent formation of a campus chapter of Jewish Voice for Peace, which favors divestment, should drive home the point.
“There is a bifurcation: Zionism is a political identity, Judaism is a religious identity, and it does a disservice to both to blur the line,” Ms. Salman said. “When there was the anti-apartheid boycott in South Africa, was that anti-white? Absolutely not. This is like that.”
Two points.
The situation in South Africa is fluid, constantly threatening, and not so simple as she claims.
And the Arabs in Palestine have always been very up front about wanting to drive the Jews out or exterminate them on the ground.
The Times continues with this.
Supporters of Israel say the most dangerous possibility is that the current campus atmosphere is delegitimizing the country, making it acceptable to question whether Jews are entitled to a nation.
And that, of course, is exactly the point.
The BDS movement is anti-colonialist, and the anti-colonialists oppose the colonization of terrain outside Europe by eurowhites, regardless of whether or how thickly the terrain was previously populated by non-whites and regardless of how the indigenous non-whites came to be where they were when the whites showed up.
Add to that that the BDS movement opposes ethnic nationalism on principle and you can see the strands of thought coming together to oppose the very idea of a Jewish homeland, a Jewish settler state not just in Palestine but anywhere at all.
Personally, I think the Times is not wrong to see anti-Zionism as intimately related to minority anti-Semitism.
An apt and revealing quote.
At Northwestern University this year, for example, the student government debated a divestment resolution for more than five hours, as students with clashing views sat on opposite sides of the room. Some of the talk was openly hostile, with charges of racism and colonialism.
“Discomfort is felt by every person of color on this campus,” said an Egyptian-American senior, Hagar Gomaa. “To those who say this divestment bill makes you uncomfortable, I say: Check your privilege.”
Wow, "Check your privilege"?
As Maureen Down has sagely written, though in quite another context, "Bitch is the new black."
And you don't have to be a girl to be a bitch.
Why, that Egyptian sounds just like an American minority telling off some Christian white guy, eh?
Jews do not want to be on the receiving end of that kind of talk.
American gentiles, sure, have at 'em.
But talk to Jews like that?
Wow.
Reminds you of Jesse Jackson complaining about Hymie-town while Louis Farrakhan applauded, years ago.
Monday, May 11, 2015
Seymour Hersh. He was always a dick. Is he an insane dick?
White House rejects Seymour Hersh 'baseless assertions' on bin Laden raid
The WH is by no means alone in this.
The WH is by no means alone in this.
Saturday, May 9, 2015
He's a racist liar and nobody called him on it
Chris Rock on Baltimore: ‘Weird’ That Cops Never Shoot White Kids
Instead, they gave him a megaphone.
He is rewarded for this sort of hate speech.
Instead, they gave him a megaphone.
He is rewarded for this sort of hate speech.
And angry and stupid NYT editorial on the Texas attack
Even the title is wrong.
Free Speech vs. Hate Speech
And so is the punch line.
Whether fighting against a planned mosque near ground zero, posting to her venomous blog Atlas Shrugs or organizing the event in Garland, Ms. Geller revels in assailing Islam in terms reminiscent of virulent racism or anti-Semitism.
She achieved her provocative goal in Garland — the event was attacked by two Muslims who were shot to death by a traffic officer before they killed anyone.
Those two men were would-be murderers.
But their thwarted attack, or the murderous rampage of the Charlie Hebdo killers, or even the greater threat posed by the barbaric killers of the Islamic State or Al Qaeda, cannot justify blatantly Islamophobic provocations like the Garland event.
These can serve only to exacerbate tensions and to give extremists more fuel.
Their sincere fury at the victims when Islamists are the perpetrators of violence is an absolute disgrace.
As is their fury at the targets of failed attempts.
It's identical to the White House view of the matter, except that the White House actually bullied that silly pastor who wanted to burn Korans out of doing it while talking up America's dedication to freedom of speech.
It's the view of all orthodox liberals.
Pamela Geller’s abuse of free speech
What these people really want is European hate speech laws so they can really do the terrorists' dirty work for them.
Breitbart does not resist the entirely justified easy shot.
What the Times is really saying is that Geller was asking for it.
If the topic were rape, domestic violence, or even the intentionally provocative “slutwalks” that were popular a few years ago, no one at the Times would countenance this logic.
Anyone suggesting slutwalk attendees had achieved their goal when a pair of men tried to rape them would, at best, be seen as intentionally obtuse.
The concept of slutwalking was premised on the idea that victims were being blamed for their own sexual abuse.
Incredibly, the Times says there is nothing — not 9/11 and not even ISIS’ violence — that can justify Geller making her point.
. . . . .
The Times editorial board should be deeply ashamed of embracing the twisted logic of Geller’s would be killers.
She was not asking to be murdered any more than women dressing provocatively to march in a “slutwalk” are asking to be raped.
In fact, they are pointedly demanding the very opposite by saying the one can never justify the other.
The NY Times doesn’t have to help convey that message it if it doesn’t want to do so, but it should stop blaming the people who are conveying it of provoking their own would-be assassins.
The personal attacks are all over the web.
She's a hater, she's a bigot, she's doing it all for the money, blah, blah, blah.
Pamela Geller’s Critics Are Proving Her Point
Why Won’t Pamela Geller Shut Up?
Free Speech vs. Hate Speech
And so is the punch line.
Whether fighting against a planned mosque near ground zero, posting to her venomous blog Atlas Shrugs or organizing the event in Garland, Ms. Geller revels in assailing Islam in terms reminiscent of virulent racism or anti-Semitism.
She achieved her provocative goal in Garland — the event was attacked by two Muslims who were shot to death by a traffic officer before they killed anyone.
Those two men were would-be murderers.
But their thwarted attack, or the murderous rampage of the Charlie Hebdo killers, or even the greater threat posed by the barbaric killers of the Islamic State or Al Qaeda, cannot justify blatantly Islamophobic provocations like the Garland event.
These can serve only to exacerbate tensions and to give extremists more fuel.
Their sincere fury at the victims when Islamists are the perpetrators of violence is an absolute disgrace.
As is their fury at the targets of failed attempts.
It's identical to the White House view of the matter, except that the White House actually bullied that silly pastor who wanted to burn Korans out of doing it while talking up America's dedication to freedom of speech.
It's the view of all orthodox liberals.
Pamela Geller’s abuse of free speech
What these people really want is European hate speech laws so they can really do the terrorists' dirty work for them.
Breitbart does not resist the entirely justified easy shot.
What the Times is really saying is that Geller was asking for it.
If the topic were rape, domestic violence, or even the intentionally provocative “slutwalks” that were popular a few years ago, no one at the Times would countenance this logic.
Anyone suggesting slutwalk attendees had achieved their goal when a pair of men tried to rape them would, at best, be seen as intentionally obtuse.
The concept of slutwalking was premised on the idea that victims were being blamed for their own sexual abuse.
Incredibly, the Times says there is nothing — not 9/11 and not even ISIS’ violence — that can justify Geller making her point.
. . . . .
The Times editorial board should be deeply ashamed of embracing the twisted logic of Geller’s would be killers.
She was not asking to be murdered any more than women dressing provocatively to march in a “slutwalk” are asking to be raped.
In fact, they are pointedly demanding the very opposite by saying the one can never justify the other.
The NY Times doesn’t have to help convey that message it if it doesn’t want to do so, but it should stop blaming the people who are conveying it of provoking their own would-be assassins.
The personal attacks are all over the web.
She's a hater, she's a bigot, she's doing it all for the money, blah, blah, blah.
Pamela Geller’s Critics Are Proving Her Point
Why Won’t Pamela Geller Shut Up?
Is that light at the end of the tunnel just an hallucination?
Pat Buchanan on TPP
For a variety of reasons he opposes the deal.
His analysis of how we made China rich, powerful, and dangerous is right on the nose.
And he says this.
And yes, an era is ending, a post-Cold War era where the United States threw open her markets to nations all over the world, as they sheltered their own.
The end of an era where America volunteered to defend nations and fight wars having nothing to do with her own vital interests or national security.
The bankruptcy of a U.S. trade and foreign policy, which has led to the transparent decline of the United States and the astonishing rise of China, is apparent now virtually everywhere.
Well, let's consider the fate of TPP a test.
Oops!
For a variety of reasons he opposes the deal.
His analysis of how we made China rich, powerful, and dangerous is right on the nose.
And he says this.
And yes, an era is ending, a post-Cold War era where the United States threw open her markets to nations all over the world, as they sheltered their own.
The end of an era where America volunteered to defend nations and fight wars having nothing to do with her own vital interests or national security.
The bankruptcy of a U.S. trade and foreign policy, which has led to the transparent decline of the United States and the astonishing rise of China, is apparent now virtually everywhere.
Well, let's consider the fate of TPP a test.
Oops!
Friday, May 8, 2015
77 degrees F at 2242 hrs EDT
Bit warm, this evening.
Another night to be glad of the A/C we put in a few years ago.
Thursday, May 7, 2015
Pam Geller on the Texas attack
This Is a War
Some are saying I provoked this attack.
But to kowtow to violent intimidation will only encourage more of it.
A non-denial, that was.
Put aside her hyper-Zionism and warmongering.
She is not asserting them here, and anyway those two guys did not go to Garland about those things.
They went about the cartoon images of Mohammed.
They went to punish people drawing or making public or viewing such cartoons with murder.
Many Muslim regimes have joined with the Muslim masses and Muslim terrorists in telling all of the peoples and nations of the whole world, "You are forbidden to make cartoons of Mohammed."
"And if you do that," the terrorists say, with the support of the masses and to the satisfaction of many of those regimes, "we will kill you."
Anyone who complies is surrendering to terrorism.
Anyone who does not comply risks a terrorist attack.
If you are going to do what the terrorists forbid, why not do it as an act of defiance?
If you are going to do it as an act of defiance, why not do it as a provocation, for educational effect?
It is an illusion that we can permit disobedience while forbidding provocation.
Either we submit to the demands of these Muslims or we don't.
She says we don't.
I personally am pleased with that.
If you cannot exercise your freedom in safety, how free are you?
How free are we, who cannot afford a full time squad of bodyguards for the rest of our lives?
Some are saying I provoked this attack.
But to kowtow to violent intimidation will only encourage more of it.
A non-denial, that was.
Put aside her hyper-Zionism and warmongering.
She is not asserting them here, and anyway those two guys did not go to Garland about those things.
They went about the cartoon images of Mohammed.
They went to punish people drawing or making public or viewing such cartoons with murder.
Many Muslim regimes have joined with the Muslim masses and Muslim terrorists in telling all of the peoples and nations of the whole world, "You are forbidden to make cartoons of Mohammed."
"And if you do that," the terrorists say, with the support of the masses and to the satisfaction of many of those regimes, "we will kill you."
Anyone who complies is surrendering to terrorism.
Anyone who does not comply risks a terrorist attack.
If you are going to do what the terrorists forbid, why not do it as an act of defiance?
If you are going to do it as an act of defiance, why not do it as a provocation, for educational effect?
It is an illusion that we can permit disobedience while forbidding provocation.
Either we submit to the demands of these Muslims or we don't.
She says we don't.
I personally am pleased with that.
If you cannot exercise your freedom in safety, how free are you?
How free are we, who cannot afford a full time squad of bodyguards for the rest of our lives?
What works for Amanda?
To me, it seemed they were laughing because it’s silly, in 2015, to call anyone a “slut."
I Was Spectacularly Wrong About Jeremy Renner Slut-Shaming Black Widow
Not the mindset you'd expect from someone writing for the Catholic Reporter, is it?
Come to that, is she a lesbian?
Not one word about personal relationships in her Wikipedia bio.
Lord knows she doesn't like men.
Amanda Marcotte
Why is the women's movement led by cheerleaders for promiscuity?
How and why did it commit to mainstreaming sluts, bitches, and butches?
Is AM a slut, bitch, or butch?
She's in any event a living reminder that the sexual revolution was in very large part a movement to make life better for hard core pornographers, their employees, their customers, and the role models for their efforts in "art."
A revealing incident for people unconvinced of that was the Larry Flint/Jerry Falwell affair.
I couldn't believe it when John Edward's insisted he was keeping her on the campaign.
On the other hand, he turned out to be a slut, didn't he?
I Was Spectacularly Wrong About Jeremy Renner Slut-Shaming Black Widow
Not the mindset you'd expect from someone writing for the Catholic Reporter, is it?
Come to that, is she a lesbian?
Not one word about personal relationships in her Wikipedia bio.
Lord knows she doesn't like men.
Amanda Marcotte
Why is the women's movement led by cheerleaders for promiscuity?
How and why did it commit to mainstreaming sluts, bitches, and butches?
Is AM a slut, bitch, or butch?
She's in any event a living reminder that the sexual revolution was in very large part a movement to make life better for hard core pornographers, their employees, their customers, and the role models for their efforts in "art."
A revealing incident for people unconvinced of that was the Larry Flint/Jerry Falwell affair.
I couldn't believe it when John Edward's insisted he was keeping her on the campaign.
On the other hand, he turned out to be a slut, didn't he?
Bernie the Bank Buster!
‘Too Big to Exist': Sanders Introduces Bill to Break Up Big Banks
This is a very useful test.
In the period before the crash of 2008, under the leadership of economists devoted to the ideas of Ayn Rand, it became the dominant right wing view and the view of the Fed that a business could never be too big.
In the immediate aftermath of 2008 that idea was in turn discredited in the public discourse, but not a lot was done about the problem.
If we have now come so far from 2008 that the Big Media can actually greet Bernie's move with ridicule, as is likely, that will make it crystal clear to any doubters who owns these "free presses."
And the Democrats?
This is an easy call for any progressive.
So I'm not entirely sure of the reactions of Obama, Hillary, and a lot of the others.
This is a very useful test.
In the period before the crash of 2008, under the leadership of economists devoted to the ideas of Ayn Rand, it became the dominant right wing view and the view of the Fed that a business could never be too big.
In the immediate aftermath of 2008 that idea was in turn discredited in the public discourse, but not a lot was done about the problem.
If we have now come so far from 2008 that the Big Media can actually greet Bernie's move with ridicule, as is likely, that will make it crystal clear to any doubters who owns these "free presses."
And the Democrats?
This is an easy call for any progressive.
So I'm not entirely sure of the reactions of Obama, Hillary, and a lot of the others.
A little more GW in him than you might have though
Jeb Bush goes for the 'compassionate conservative' label with a lecture on poverty
His brother's campaign invented the label fifteen years ago, while simultaneously committing the US to a new, "more humble" foreign policy.
Once in office after a hotly disputed election he invaded both Afghanistan and Iraq, starting wars that would last over a decade, costing trillions, and whose military sequelae continue even today, and attempted to defund Social Security behind a smokescreen of bogus privatization.
Bogus?
When you privatize a school or a highway the school or the highway is still there.
If they ever fully "privatize" Social Security it will be gone.
His brother's campaign invented the label fifteen years ago, while simultaneously committing the US to a new, "more humble" foreign policy.
Once in office after a hotly disputed election he invaded both Afghanistan and Iraq, starting wars that would last over a decade, costing trillions, and whose military sequelae continue even today, and attempted to defund Social Security behind a smokescreen of bogus privatization.
Bogus?
When you privatize a school or a highway the school or the highway is still there.
If they ever fully "privatize" Social Security it will be gone.
Liars or crackpots?
One hopes the former, in this connection.
How Republican presidential candidates are getting away with denying evolution
But do we really think Democrats are much better?
Who but an idiot actually believed, or anyway was not revolted by, Jimmy Carter's notorious promise, "I will never lie to you"?
We have already been told that O lied about gay marriage.
What do we think of his real religious opinions?
Good grief, people lie not just to their children but to their spouses, or anyway are less than candid with them, about such things.
What if moderators and interviewers kept asking candidates whether they believed in some or all of the Holy Trinity, the Incarnation, the Virgin Birth, the Resurrection, Jesus's miracles, Predestination and Hell, the Bodily Assumption of Mary into Heaven, transubstantiation, the Last Judgment, and the End of the World?
Or even just a personal God, the one and only god, who created all things from nothing?
This could become downright comic.
How many of them have any idea of the full extent of the dogmatic commitments of whichever religion they call their own?
Phooey.
How Republican presidential candidates are getting away with denying evolution
But do we really think Democrats are much better?
Who but an idiot actually believed, or anyway was not revolted by, Jimmy Carter's notorious promise, "I will never lie to you"?
We have already been told that O lied about gay marriage.
What do we think of his real religious opinions?
Good grief, people lie not just to their children but to their spouses, or anyway are less than candid with them, about such things.
What if moderators and interviewers kept asking candidates whether they believed in some or all of the Holy Trinity, the Incarnation, the Virgin Birth, the Resurrection, Jesus's miracles, Predestination and Hell, the Bodily Assumption of Mary into Heaven, transubstantiation, the Last Judgment, and the End of the World?
Or even just a personal God, the one and only god, who created all things from nothing?
This could become downright comic.
How many of them have any idea of the full extent of the dogmatic commitments of whichever religion they call their own?
Phooey.
Wednesday, May 6, 2015
Tuesday, May 5, 2015
Well, there is that
For the world, as seen in materialist view from the Right, scarcely differs from the same world seen in materialist view from the Left.
The question becomes chiefly: who is to run that world in whose interests, or perhaps, at best, who can run it more efficiently?
And so?
On the whole, bilge.
A moment of reality
Everyone is descended from slaves and from slave owners.
Slavery, prior to the efforts at abolition begun by the eurowhites of Christendom in the 19th Century, had been a nearly universal feature of human societies.
It is still surprisingly common in societies least affected by or most resistant to eurowhite power.
In the wrong hands, this could be dangerous
The government says it wants to bring modern surveillance techniques within the law rather than outside any system of control.
A new watchdog will oversee the intelligence services, which will have broader powers to look at classified material and handle complaints from the public.
But none of this has satisfied the critics, who range from civil liberties groups to major internet providers.
Their main worry is the way French intelligence agencies will be able to collect massive amounts of metadata from the internet - the detail of communications such as times and places rather than content.
Critics say this amounts to a mass intrusion of privacy, which in the hands of an unscrupulous government could have worrying consequences.
That's it?
In the hands of an unscrupulous government this could have worrying consequences?
You could say the same for Kool-Aid.
Handguns.
The wheel.
Plenty of ink to write about Geller and her associates. Rather notably less about the gunmen.
Told you they would do this.
Liberal websites, I mean.
Like TPM.
Change the focus, redirect attention, point over there, away from Islam, the ideology of terrorists and guerrillas.
Nothing to see here.
What You Need To Know About The Anti-Muslim Extremists Attacked In Texas
No, not every Muslim is a terrorist.
Nor was every Marxist in the Red Brigades, Shining Path, or Khmer Rouge.
For whatever that's worth.
Oh, and none of this is to say they are wrong about Geller et. al.
But at worst the latter are all the same far from being skinheads, neonazis, or the like, even hyperbolically.
Indeed, Geller and Spencer are Jewish and both of them and Geert Wilders are passionate Zionists.
Come to that, many of the figures most often branded Islamophobes are fiercely Zionist Jews, though Bill Maher (half Jewish) is less so than most.
Pretty much everything they say against Islam is true, apart from its danger to the US.
Pretty much everything they say about that and in favor of us supporting Israel, unconditionally and against all comers, is drivel.
All the same, ask yourself why liberals claim you need to know about the victims, not the perps.
O on Letterman
[Updated 5/5/15, 1648 hrs EDT]
He's not the kind of guy term limits are needed to protect us from, but he's term-limited nonetheless.
Maybe he's glad it spares him a hard choice.
I'd vote for him, again, though, come to that, over any Republican.
He's struggling with the whole race thing right now, and he mostly didn't look happy, tonight.
But the Republicans inspire zero confidence on this issue, like so many others.
Updated 05142015, 1020 hrs EDT.
O will talk more, and more bitterly, about race once out of office, I think.
It will not be pretty.
Monday, May 4, 2015
The British Royals rejoice
You have to admit, they often make monarchy fun.
Lots of style, and what's not to celebrate with a beautiful baby girl?
And "Charlotte" is a very nice name.
Royal princess named Charlotte
Thank God they didn't name her "Moonbeam," or something.
Or some sensible name with a ridiculous, made up spelling.
They were looking for food and tools to steal
It's all part of their tribal mores, you know.
Sort of like indigenous whaling, or something.
So they get a pass on the murder?
Those people who really don't like police
Policeman Brian Moore dies of head wounds
Assistant District Attorney Peter McCormack said Moore and patrol partner Erik Jansen -- both in plainclothes in an unmarked police car -- approached Blackwell on a Queens street after seeing him tugging at his waistband around 6:15 p.m. Saturday and asked him "What are you carrying?"
The officers ordered Blackwell to stop and exchanged words with him.
That's when Blackwell turned, the prosecutor said, and "in a vicious manner started to fire" -- at least two shots.
Jansen was not hit and radioed for help.
Wasn't that stopping somebody for "walking while black," as Chris Rock has so aptly put it?
How many Americans who complain of such things are thinking this white cop got what he deserved?
Blackwell has a record and was indeed carrying illegally.
Ask yourself to what extent the movement to modify police conduct, particularly in black neighborhoods or toward blacks, is an effort to get cops off the backs of criminals?
Criminals whose victims are mostly blacks, by the way?
For example, those cops in Baltimore are being rightly charged for negligence in the death of Freddie Gray, but they are also being foolishly charged with false imprisonment for arresting him for fleeing police, though that is legal in a high crime neighborhood such as the one where it happened and good policing in any case.
Why is Chris Rock fronting for gang-bangers and thugs?
OK, now I think I know.
Wikipedia, Chris Rock
Rock was bused to schools in predominately white neighborhoods of Brooklyn, where he endured bullying and beatings from white students.
As he got older, the bullying became worse and Rock’s parents pulled him out of James Madison High School.
He decided to drop out of high school altogether.
He later earned a GED.
Rock worked menial jobs at various fast-food restaurants.
Assistant District Attorney Peter McCormack said Moore and patrol partner Erik Jansen -- both in plainclothes in an unmarked police car -- approached Blackwell on a Queens street after seeing him tugging at his waistband around 6:15 p.m. Saturday and asked him "What are you carrying?"
The officers ordered Blackwell to stop and exchanged words with him.
That's when Blackwell turned, the prosecutor said, and "in a vicious manner started to fire" -- at least two shots.
Jansen was not hit and radioed for help.
Wasn't that stopping somebody for "walking while black," as Chris Rock has so aptly put it?
How many Americans who complain of such things are thinking this white cop got what he deserved?
Blackwell has a record and was indeed carrying illegally.
Ask yourself to what extent the movement to modify police conduct, particularly in black neighborhoods or toward blacks, is an effort to get cops off the backs of criminals?
Criminals whose victims are mostly blacks, by the way?
For example, those cops in Baltimore are being rightly charged for negligence in the death of Freddie Gray, but they are also being foolishly charged with false imprisonment for arresting him for fleeing police, though that is legal in a high crime neighborhood such as the one where it happened and good policing in any case.
Why is Chris Rock fronting for gang-bangers and thugs?
OK, now I think I know.
Wikipedia, Chris Rock
Rock was bused to schools in predominately white neighborhoods of Brooklyn, where he endured bullying and beatings from white students.
As he got older, the bullying became worse and Rock’s parents pulled him out of James Madison High School.
He decided to drop out of high school altogether.
He later earned a GED.
Rock worked menial jobs at various fast-food restaurants.
How many dead if that traffic cop had been unarmed?
Not exactly what a traffic cop on the way to work expects from his day, but you never know.
This is Texas, so maybe if the cop had not been carrying some armed civilian would have stepped up and saved the day.
Police say they think the two went to the event to shoot as many people as possible.
There were some 200 people there at the time, reportedly.
Texas attack
A spokesman for the Garland police department, officer Joe Harn, said that the two gunmen wearing body armor drove a dark sedan to the west entrance of the Culwell center, exited with assault rifles, walked around the back of a police car parked there and attempted to shoot an unarmed off-duty security officer and a Garland traffic officer.
The traffic officer killed both men using his service pistol, probably saving lives, Harn said.
In the wake of the death in Baltimore of Freddie Gray that did not involve firearms, Michael Moore has demanded American police be disarmed.
Michael Moore: Disarm the police and free nonviolent black prisoners
Of course he wants civilian disarmament, too.
If he had had his way, nobody would have been armed but the two Jihaders.
Many, many white people are doing time for non-violent offenses, too, including big money, big time white collar offenders.
No amnesty for them?
I'm waiting for someone to notice the traffic cop was white and at least one of the Jihaders was mulatto.
Several articles and all liberal blog posts on the topic have already said that Pam Geller and Geert Wilders are racists, as well as the organization sponsoring the event.
This is Texas, so maybe if the cop had not been carrying some armed civilian would have stepped up and saved the day.
Police say they think the two went to the event to shoot as many people as possible.
There were some 200 people there at the time, reportedly.
Texas attack
A spokesman for the Garland police department, officer Joe Harn, said that the two gunmen wearing body armor drove a dark sedan to the west entrance of the Culwell center, exited with assault rifles, walked around the back of a police car parked there and attempted to shoot an unarmed off-duty security officer and a Garland traffic officer.
The traffic officer killed both men using his service pistol, probably saving lives, Harn said.
In the wake of the death in Baltimore of Freddie Gray that did not involve firearms, Michael Moore has demanded American police be disarmed.
Michael Moore: Disarm the police and free nonviolent black prisoners
Of course he wants civilian disarmament, too.
If he had had his way, nobody would have been armed but the two Jihaders.
Many, many white people are doing time for non-violent offenses, too, including big money, big time white collar offenders.
No amnesty for them?
I'm waiting for someone to notice the traffic cop was white and at least one of the Jihaders was mulatto.
Several articles and all liberal blog posts on the topic have already said that Pam Geller and Geert Wilders are racists, as well as the organization sponsoring the event.
The Jihad in America. The terrorists are winning.
Cartoon shooting in U.S. was inevitable
Good update by Peter Bergen.
I expect the White House to maintain silence or to attack Pamela Geller.
O, after all, publicly insisted early on that America was determined "the future must not belong to those who mock the Prophet."
Good update by Peter Bergen.
I expect the White House to maintain silence or to attack Pamela Geller.
O, after all, publicly insisted early on that America was determined "the future must not belong to those who mock the Prophet."
If they can make it about her it won't be about Islam
WAPO on Pam Geller
They write a lot more about her than about the problem she intended, successfully, to highlight.
Was that an American Charlie Hebdo moment?
Sure.
We've been having them for decades, at least since the bookstores pulled their copies of The Satanic Verses when that vicious Ayatollah bastard put out a Fatwa on Salman Rushdie.
Any time Muslims target people for exercising free speech you have a Charlie Hebdo moment.
Is she in so many ways an over the top crackpot?
Oh, yes.
So what?
A rare liberal who agrees, at least up to a point.
BooMan
They write a lot more about her than about the problem she intended, successfully, to highlight.
Was that an American Charlie Hebdo moment?
Sure.
We've been having them for decades, at least since the bookstores pulled their copies of The Satanic Verses when that vicious Ayatollah bastard put out a Fatwa on Salman Rushdie.
Any time Muslims target people for exercising free speech you have a Charlie Hebdo moment.
Is she in so many ways an over the top crackpot?
Oh, yes.
So what?
A rare liberal who agrees, at least up to a point.
BooMan
Sunday, May 3, 2015
The heat factor
Successive ice ages and the warm periods that separate them (we are in one) both eliminate lots of existing species and create opportunities for waves of new ones that take advantage of the new circumstances.
Why would this be different?
A much greater problem is that the vast increase in humans is crowding nature out.
It's overpopulation, over use of resources, and over grazing that will leave us chewing Soylent Green.
Well, future humans, I mean.
It's a ways off, yet.
Saturday, May 2, 2015
What's in your closet?
He's just so the wrong guy for this message.
Santorum. “If he says he’s a woman, then he’s a woman."
Santorum. “If he says he’s a woman, then he’s a woman."
The news my wife wanted to hear
Very sensible, too.
Royal baby: Princess presented to world
Gone home from the hospital, already.
Everybody well.
Update, 050515, 2054 hrs, EDT.
Her name is Charlotte Elizabeth Diana, Princess of Cambridge.
The Maryland "bill of rights" for police
That culture of impunity is profoundly ingrained, and will take more than one case to overcome.
In Baltimore, a step toward justice
The job requires the use of force and so special rules for police and other law enforcement people are required to protect both them and the public.
This "bill of rights" is an outrage.
In Baltimore, a step toward justice
The job requires the use of force and so special rules for police and other law enforcement people are required to protect both them and the public.
This "bill of rights" is an outrage.
Jennifer Teege: My grandfather would have shot me
Shoa is not fiction and no kind of dramatization.
It is not even a documentary; it's a monument.
Schindler's List is, I think, the best and most horrific film drama about the Final Solution ever made.
And I can still barely believe that the camp commandant, Amon Goeth, really was as he was portrayed.
As coldly terrifying as the maddest organized serial killer, but bloodier than the most deranged hands-on mass murderers we know anything of, perhaps excepting only some among the men who did Pol Pot's dirty work, it seemed almost, though not quite, impossible even one of the camp commanders could have been, though a sane human, such a horror.
[Aside:
And yet we know sane men under arms have personally slaughtered even greater numbers of ordinary civilians not in death camps, some of them among US forces, and got medals for it.
Think of the fire bombings of Dresden and Tokyo.
Think of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
And we know it is quite ordinary for soldiers to use much more horrific weapons and impose individually much more horrific deaths, one at a time.
A flame thrower is much more horrible than a rifle.
/Aside.]
Amon Goeth was Jennifer Teege's grandfather.
This has to be one hell of a book.
When You Can’t Avoid Knowing Grandpa Was a Nazi
BBC
sixth&i
Peoplemag
Too bad I found no more on her connection with Israel.
This might be the best short account in the press.
NY Post
As is well-known, being a Nazi became de rigueur for anyone who wanted to hold down a decent job in Hitler's Germany.
For many there was a lot less to it than for, say, Günter Grass, who actually served with the SS in the East.
Think of Martin Heidegger, who moved into the university position left vacant by the forced out Lutheran of Jewish ancestry, Edmund Husserl, who was probably lucky to die in 1938, at nearly 80, before the camps got going.
But for others there was a whole lot more to it than that, as in the present case.
Interesting how far JT seems to personally identify with her German side.
See the story at the NY Post, link above.
Obama, raised by his white mother and her family, seems to identify as white less than she does not only as German but as a granddaughter of this monster.
It is not even a documentary; it's a monument.
Schindler's List is, I think, the best and most horrific film drama about the Final Solution ever made.
And I can still barely believe that the camp commandant, Amon Goeth, really was as he was portrayed.
As coldly terrifying as the maddest organized serial killer, but bloodier than the most deranged hands-on mass murderers we know anything of, perhaps excepting only some among the men who did Pol Pot's dirty work, it seemed almost, though not quite, impossible even one of the camp commanders could have been, though a sane human, such a horror.
[Aside:
And yet we know sane men under arms have personally slaughtered even greater numbers of ordinary civilians not in death camps, some of them among US forces, and got medals for it.
Think of the fire bombings of Dresden and Tokyo.
Think of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
And we know it is quite ordinary for soldiers to use much more horrific weapons and impose individually much more horrific deaths, one at a time.
A flame thrower is much more horrible than a rifle.
/Aside.]
Amon Goeth was Jennifer Teege's grandfather.
This has to be one hell of a book.
When You Can’t Avoid Knowing Grandpa Was a Nazi
BBC
sixth&i
Peoplemag
Too bad I found no more on her connection with Israel.
This might be the best short account in the press.
NY Post
As is well-known, being a Nazi became de rigueur for anyone who wanted to hold down a decent job in Hitler's Germany.
For many there was a lot less to it than for, say, Günter Grass, who actually served with the SS in the East.
Think of Martin Heidegger, who moved into the university position left vacant by the forced out Lutheran of Jewish ancestry, Edmund Husserl, who was probably lucky to die in 1938, at nearly 80, before the camps got going.
But for others there was a whole lot more to it than that, as in the present case.
Interesting how far JT seems to personally identify with her German side.
See the story at the NY Post, link above.
Obama, raised by his white mother and her family, seems to identify as white less than she does not only as German but as a granddaughter of this monster.
The point of incitement to riot
It's not just about getting blacks to show up and vote for the Democrats.
It's about making the government fix the criminal justice system.
But it's about doing that by making the government accept the racist story of what's wrong with the cops and the whole criminal justice system, subjecting the system to violent body blows of black criminality fueled by black hatred of whites.
That's why, though history shows the method works when officialdom is white, we can expect it to work more readily when officialdom is black.
And it's why we can expect the repairs to the system to be skewed and corrupted by that story.
We will see that corruption in remedies proposed by liberals and Democratic office holders and seekers between now and the general elections of 2016.
Still, there is much that needs fixing, anyway, like the police recklessness with the lives and safety of prisoners targeted by the charges in the Baltimore Gray affair.
So we shall see.
Do I Have to Start a Riot Around Here?
It's about making the government fix the criminal justice system.
But it's about doing that by making the government accept the racist story of what's wrong with the cops and the whole criminal justice system, subjecting the system to violent body blows of black criminality fueled by black hatred of whites.
That's why, though history shows the method works when officialdom is white, we can expect it to work more readily when officialdom is black.
And it's why we can expect the repairs to the system to be skewed and corrupted by that story.
We will see that corruption in remedies proposed by liberals and Democratic office holders and seekers between now and the general elections of 2016.
Still, there is much that needs fixing, anyway, like the police recklessness with the lives and safety of prisoners targeted by the charges in the Baltimore Gray affair.
So we shall see.
Do I Have to Start a Riot Around Here?
Is police impunity ending?
Current indications are the driver did not provide a rough ride.
As reported elsewhere, the procedural requirement to strap in prisoners was no more than two weeks old and officers had not been apprised at station meetings it was officially in force.
Were all six officers in any case really responsible for strapping Gray in?
Did Gray really bash his own head against the wall, attempting to injure himself inside the van and, if so, how far might that diminish the officers' culpability?
If this had happened a month ago to a white prisoner, would anyone have been charged?
I doubt it.
That such harsh charges were brought is being taken by the Baltimore mob as their victory, spun by friendly media as a victory in the continuing black struggle for justice in America.
But to the extent it was a true mob victory, it was a victory for criminals, their families, and their allies over the forces of order who are their natural, devoted enemies.
And yet police violence, brutality, criminality, and irresponsibility is a genuine national problem with victims of all races, ages, and sexes.
And yet, regarding this case, quite apart from the new department directive, the police practice of not using seat belts in vans for prisoner transport has been at best casually reckless and should have been regarded as culpably negligent, all along.
Police should have been subject to punishment even if nothing went wrong, and all the more so in case of prisoner injury or death, whether or not injuries were self inflicted that could not have been if seat belts had been used.
The country and its police forces need to be weaned away from a system that allows "we were trained to do it that way" to function as a cloak of invulnerability.
That has been an effective guarantee they will never be trained differently.
The country and its police forces need to be weaned away from a system that allows "we were trained to do it that way" to function as a cloak of invulnerability.
That has been an effective guarantee they will never be trained differently.
Police owe better behavior to all with whom they deal.
Maybe this will help.
PS.
If the Justice Department feels the need to participate maybe they should be looking out to be sure these 6 cops aren't railroaded, made scapegoats for the wrongs of the entire system.
Is it a coincidence that is what the Germans are doing to a ninety year old who carried a spear in Auschwitz?
Is it a coincidence that is what the Germans are doing to a ninety year old who carried a spear in Auschwitz?
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)