And interesting suggestion cited by Joan McCarter.
No, I have no sympathy with her "war on women" stuff, just another jab in the sisterhood's war on men.
But still.
How Social Security is another front in the War on Women
Saturday, August 29, 2015
Maher, of all people, should know better
Bill Maher Smacks Media For Uncritical Coverage Of Trump's Racism
Maher has spent decades fending off accusations that his suspicions and criticisms of Islam are racist, but Karoli quotes him thus.
Note that Maher as quoted does not flatly accuse Trump of racism, despite Karoli's take.
Trump straight-up rants about how non-white foreigners are ruining the country.
From claiming unauthorized Mexican immigrants are drug dealers and "rapists," to saying he wants to deport 11 million people, to arguing that China is "killing us" on trade, Trump's political message is uncut xenophobia if not outright racism[.]
. . . .
With the exception of Bernie Sanders, Trump is now drawing bigger crowds than any other candidate.
That mass basis is a key foundation of fascism — without the delirious crowds, the fascist demagogue is little more than a deranged street preacher.
Many of those supporters are out-and-proud white nationalists, as documented in a fascinating "New Yorker" investigation.
Trump, far from a fascist by any stretch, while something of an economic nationalist (see his criticisms of the adverse impact on the US of free trade and too much low wage immigration, most of it illegal), has rejected the idea of American ethnic nationalism.
If Bernie's enthusiasts include radical socialists and even communists or communist sympathizers does that make Bernie personally either?
His enemies will say so.
What will Karoli (or Bill Maher) say to that?
Evan Osnos's story in The New Yorker is a silly hatchet-job, by the way.
Here's a snip.
In partisan terms, his ideas are riven by contradiction—he calls for mass deportations but opposes cuts to Medicare and Social Security; he vows to expand the military but criticizes free trade—and yet that is a reflection of voters’ often incoherent sets of convictions.
That was a contradiction?
Those are incoherent?
True, his agenda is not in line with the official view of either party, supposing Hollywood liberals speak for Democrats and Wall Street conservatives speak for Republicans.
But that just validates his supporters' - mostly white working and middle class, at a guess - political alienation, cited rather dismissively by Osnos.
Both Hollywood and Wall Street support big scale, low wage immigration and free trade, fair trade being just free trade, anyway, with riders to protect the foreign workers who get jobs producing for the American market.
Trump speaks to the concerns and insecurities of not just Republican but American Main Street by supporting both economic nationalism in defense of their jobs and those other key resources of ordinary Americans, Medicare, Social Security, and Medicaid.
Nowadays, many on the left have admitted - Bernie Sanders, for example - that decades of free trade have done billionaires and foreign workers good at the expense of the ordinary working people of America.
And some - Bernie Sanders again, for example - have dared to admit the obvious, that flooding the market with low wage workers, illegal or not, has done its part to hold down wages over that same period while the plutocracy has scooped up the gains of American economic expansion.
And while Osnos, Maher, and Karoli call Trump a racist for these views, open borders, Wall Street conservatives have done the same both to Trump and to Sanders.
Maher has spent decades fending off accusations that his suspicions and criticisms of Islam are racist, but Karoli quotes him thus.
Note that Maher as quoted does not flatly accuse Trump of racism, despite Karoli's take.
Trump straight-up rants about how non-white foreigners are ruining the country.
From claiming unauthorized Mexican immigrants are drug dealers and "rapists," to saying he wants to deport 11 million people, to arguing that China is "killing us" on trade, Trump's political message is uncut xenophobia if not outright racism[.]
. . . .
With the exception of Bernie Sanders, Trump is now drawing bigger crowds than any other candidate.
That mass basis is a key foundation of fascism — without the delirious crowds, the fascist demagogue is little more than a deranged street preacher.
Many of those supporters are out-and-proud white nationalists, as documented in a fascinating "New Yorker" investigation.
Trump, far from a fascist by any stretch, while something of an economic nationalist (see his criticisms of the adverse impact on the US of free trade and too much low wage immigration, most of it illegal), has rejected the idea of American ethnic nationalism.
If Bernie's enthusiasts include radical socialists and even communists or communist sympathizers does that make Bernie personally either?
His enemies will say so.
What will Karoli (or Bill Maher) say to that?
Evan Osnos's story in The New Yorker is a silly hatchet-job, by the way.
Here's a snip.
In partisan terms, his ideas are riven by contradiction—he calls for mass deportations but opposes cuts to Medicare and Social Security; he vows to expand the military but criticizes free trade—and yet that is a reflection of voters’ often incoherent sets of convictions.
That was a contradiction?
Those are incoherent?
True, his agenda is not in line with the official view of either party, supposing Hollywood liberals speak for Democrats and Wall Street conservatives speak for Republicans.
But that just validates his supporters' - mostly white working and middle class, at a guess - political alienation, cited rather dismissively by Osnos.
Both Hollywood and Wall Street support big scale, low wage immigration and free trade, fair trade being just free trade, anyway, with riders to protect the foreign workers who get jobs producing for the American market.
Trump speaks to the concerns and insecurities of not just Republican but American Main Street by supporting both economic nationalism in defense of their jobs and those other key resources of ordinary Americans, Medicare, Social Security, and Medicaid.
Nowadays, many on the left have admitted - Bernie Sanders, for example - that decades of free trade have done billionaires and foreign workers good at the expense of the ordinary working people of America.
And some - Bernie Sanders again, for example - have dared to admit the obvious, that flooding the market with low wage workers, illegal or not, has done its part to hold down wages over that same period while the plutocracy has scooped up the gains of American economic expansion.
And while Osnos, Maher, and Karoli call Trump a racist for these views, open borders, Wall Street conservatives have done the same both to Trump and to Sanders.
Friday, August 28, 2015
Pat Buchanan calls it a hate crime
America's Racial Wounds Reopen
The left is totally mum and the media are not making a big deal of it, as they do of hate crimes against blacks.
Some on the left have even denied it was a hate crime, insisting it was just one of those disgruntled employee things.
Liars.
Pat writes,
Black America is surely as sickened by this horror outside Roanoke as was White America by the Charleston massacre.
He here is just papering over the depth and ubiquity of racial animus among black Americans, I think.
His summary of the Ferguson situation and the rest of his article more or less cancel out that remark.
On the first anniversary of Michael Brown's death, protesters blocked public buildings in St. Louis and St. Louis County, shut down I-70 at rush hour. I
n Ferguson, hoodlums rioted and looted for days.
What justification was there for such lawlessness?
Explained some in the press, it was to protest the failure to prosecute a white cop who had killed an "unarmed black teenager."
Left out of most stories was that Brown, 18, had knocked over a convenience store, throttled a clerk half his size, and was unarmed only because he failed to wrest a gun away from Officer Darren Wilson, whom a grand jury declared had acted in self-defense when he shot the charging 290-pound Brown.
Despite the facts of the case, for bigoted blacks and the whites who encourage them, the Ferguson killing was a white racist murder of a more or less innocent young black male.
Hence not only the riots and looting, not only the rise of #BLM, but the torrents of racial anger in the press directed at whites and white officialdom by all the usual suspects.
The left is totally mum and the media are not making a big deal of it, as they do of hate crimes against blacks.
Some on the left have even denied it was a hate crime, insisting it was just one of those disgruntled employee things.
Liars.
Pat writes,
Black America is surely as sickened by this horror outside Roanoke as was White America by the Charleston massacre.
He here is just papering over the depth and ubiquity of racial animus among black Americans, I think.
His summary of the Ferguson situation and the rest of his article more or less cancel out that remark.
On the first anniversary of Michael Brown's death, protesters blocked public buildings in St. Louis and St. Louis County, shut down I-70 at rush hour. I
n Ferguson, hoodlums rioted and looted for days.
What justification was there for such lawlessness?
Explained some in the press, it was to protest the failure to prosecute a white cop who had killed an "unarmed black teenager."
Left out of most stories was that Brown, 18, had knocked over a convenience store, throttled a clerk half his size, and was unarmed only because he failed to wrest a gun away from Officer Darren Wilson, whom a grand jury declared had acted in self-defense when he shot the charging 290-pound Brown.
Despite the facts of the case, for bigoted blacks and the whites who encourage them, the Ferguson killing was a white racist murder of a more or less innocent young black male.
Hence not only the riots and looting, not only the rise of #BLM, but the torrents of racial anger in the press directed at whites and white officialdom by all the usual suspects.
Doesn't speak well for Bernie
Jesse Jackson Created the Modern Democratic Party
Jackson, who is now 73, has quietly become part of the political landscape again.
Early last week, Clinton's chief rival at the moment, Senator Bernie Sanders, who has been drawing the largest audiences in the Democratic presidential field, made a pilgrimage to Jackson's office.
Sanders has been reminding reporters that he stumped for Jackson during both his presidential campaigns in 1984 and 1988 -- the second time helping him win the Vermont primary.
Nomination of Jackson would have been idiotic.
The man had close to zero chance of winning the presidency.
The Republicans could have run a demented chicken against him and won.
On the whole, ST's analysis has some merit.
Some.
Jackson, who is now 73, has quietly become part of the political landscape again.
Early last week, Clinton's chief rival at the moment, Senator Bernie Sanders, who has been drawing the largest audiences in the Democratic presidential field, made a pilgrimage to Jackson's office.
Sanders has been reminding reporters that he stumped for Jackson during both his presidential campaigns in 1984 and 1988 -- the second time helping him win the Vermont primary.
Nomination of Jackson would have been idiotic.
The man had close to zero chance of winning the presidency.
The Republicans could have run a demented chicken against him and won.
On the whole, ST's analysis has some merit.
Some.
Brent Bozell is full of beans
The left joyfully picked up on Bozell's bigoted eyewash.
Cooke is too soft on religion, though, on the whole.
And a sucker for natural law, even without a lawgiver.
Thursday, August 27, 2015
Revolution for the hell of it?
Were or are the Canadians, the Aussies, or the New Zealanders worse off for not throwing out the Brits in a paroxysm of violence?
[Aside:
What was in Mel Gibson's head when he made The Patriot?
The same thing that was in his head when he made Braveheart?
The same anti-Brit streak that goes back to Gallipoli?
/Aside.]
The Brits ended slavery in all their colonies decades before our Civil War, without bloodshed, by the way.
They had a strong anti-slavery movement quite early.
Was it part of the motive of all those Virginians and other slaveholder US patriots who were so strong for independence that they feared the Brits would eventually free their slaves?
Hmm.
[Aside:
What was in Mel Gibson's head when he made The Patriot?
The same thing that was in his head when he made Braveheart?
The same anti-Brit streak that goes back to Gallipoli?
/Aside.]
The Brits ended slavery in all their colonies decades before our Civil War, without bloodshed, by the way.
They had a strong anti-slavery movement quite early.
Was it part of the motive of all those Virginians and other slaveholder US patriots who were so strong for independence that they feared the Brits would eventually free their slaves?
Hmm.
O, Dems, their sympathizers spin Katrina anniversary into race politics
Just a sample.
In Katrina commemoration, Obama to cite inequities 'brewing for decades'
White people are to blame for what's wrong with black people and their crappy lives, and white people owe it to black people to fix them.
In Katrina commemoration, Obama to cite inequities 'brewing for decades'
White people are to blame for what's wrong with black people and their crappy lives, and white people owe it to black people to fix them.
Hillary fires a blast in the war against men
This is a picture of Hillary the attack feminist and furious misandrist striking out in an Ohio speech at those men in the GOP, published in The Guardian today at the top of their story.
And this is their headline and the beginning of their account.
Hillary Clinton likens GOP candidates to terrorists for 'extreme' views on women
Hillary Clinton on Thursday compared her Republican opponents to terrorist organizations when it comes to their views on women, telling an audience her potential rivals were pushing outdated policies.
“Now extreme views about women? We expect that from some of the terrorist groups. We expect that from people who don’t want to live in the modern world,” the Democratic presidential frontrunner said.
“But it’s a little hard to take coming from Republicans who want to be the president of the United States, yet they espouse out of date and out of touch policies,” she added at a rally in Cleveland.
“They are dead wrong for 21st-century America.”
Clinton did not mention any specific terrorist or militant groups, such as the Islamic State, which has held women as sex slaves in Iraq and Syria.
Republicans swiftly accused her of directly equating the Republican presidential field with terrorists.
As did The Guardian, come to that.
The story continues,
“For Hillary Clinton to equate her political opponents to terrorists is a new low for her flailing campaign,” said Republican National Committee spokeswoman Allison Moore.
“She should apologize immediately for her inflammatory rhetoric.”
Clinton, seeking to become the first woman to win the White House, said she took it “a little personal when they go after women”, pointing to Republican efforts to cut access to women’s health centers and opposition to abortion rights.
She specifically cited Senator Marco Rubio, saying he “brags about wanting to deny victims of rape and incest access to healthcare and abortion”, and former Florida governor Jeb Bush’s opposition to funding for Planned Parenthood, a nonprofit abortion provider.
Clinton also turned her attention to home state governor John Kasich of Ohio, telling supporters he had banned state funding for some rape crisis centers because they sometimes referred women to other health facilities that provide abortion services.
Here is CNN.
On women's health, Clinton compares Republicans to 'terrorist groups'
In a gross distortion of their positions she tore into them in Ohio.
"I would like these Republican candidates to look the mom in the eye who caught her breast cancer early because she was able to get a screening for cancer or the teenager who didn't get pregnant because she has access to contraception," Clinton said.
"Or anyone who has ever been protected by an HIV test."
Clinton told the audience of around 2,000 according to Case Western University that she takes "it a little personal when they (Republicans) go after women."
"This is happening all over the country, even here in Ohio," she said.
"Programs and services women use to take care of themselves are being cut down."
What moves the market?
Democrat Paul Krugman says buyers buy because others are buying, and sellers sell because others are selling.
The lemming theory.
Republican Ben Stein says both buyers and sellers are victims of manipulation by traders who get rich by causing people to trade.
And they do that by generating stampedes wholly unconnected to underlying economic reality, cited only in passing when used as flimsy and entirely fictitious justifications.
The markets in question, of course, are absolutely fundamental institutions of capitalism, which is not even imaginable without them.
Remember these accounts of how markets really work the next time some conservative blowhard starts sounding off about the rationality and competence and precision and skill that government and socialism lack but capitalism and private institutions possess in superabundance.
The lemming theory.
Republican Ben Stein says both buyers and sellers are victims of manipulation by traders who get rich by causing people to trade.
And they do that by generating stampedes wholly unconnected to underlying economic reality, cited only in passing when used as flimsy and entirely fictitious justifications.
The markets in question, of course, are absolutely fundamental institutions of capitalism, which is not even imaginable without them.
Remember these accounts of how markets really work the next time some conservative blowhard starts sounding off about the rationality and competence and precision and skill that government and socialism lack but capitalism and private institutions possess in superabundance.
Conservatives vs Libertarians vs Liberals
A priority for social conservatives is using law and government policy to encourage if not actually require marriage and strengthen the family, with reproduction and parental child-rearing understood as the latter's chief though not only tasks.
Historically, that concern has always been fundamental to any recognizable conservatism sans phrase, anywhere in the civilized world.
Libertarians gladly sacrifice individual liberty to property and the market while liberals sacrifice it to claims of racial, social, and sexual justice.
But neither is willing to sacrifice it in any serious degree to this conservative aim.
Historically, that concern has always been fundamental to any recognizable conservatism sans phrase, anywhere in the civilized world.
Libertarians gladly sacrifice individual liberty to property and the market while liberals sacrifice it to claims of racial, social, and sexual justice.
But neither is willing to sacrifice it in any serious degree to this conservative aim.
Why ask "Why not Trump"?
Why not Trump?
Not a very conservative conservative.
Donald Trump's Top 10 Liberal Heresies
Only 3 have to do with the core progressive agenda, but they make him much less a class enemy than the real conservatives.
One makes him less a partisan of Cold War II than Joe Biden and maybe Obama, and that's to the good.
This makes him the least bad Republican and possibly a force that will help undo the stranglehold the Wall Street conservatives have had on that party for decades.
Still, any Democrat would be better, on the whole, for us in the lower orders.
Not a very conservative conservative.
Donald Trump's Top 10 Liberal Heresies
Only 3 have to do with the core progressive agenda, but they make him much less a class enemy than the real conservatives.
One makes him less a partisan of Cold War II than Joe Biden and maybe Obama, and that's to the good.
This makes him the least bad Republican and possibly a force that will help undo the stranglehold the Wall Street conservatives have had on that party for decades.
Still, any Democrat would be better, on the whole, for us in the lower orders.
Is Biden the front runner?
Biden More Competitive Than Clinton Against Leading Republicans: Poll
Viewed favorably by more Democrats than Hillary, who in turn is thus viewed by more Democrats than Bernie.
And the three stand in the same order of ranking by favorability among all registered voters.
The good news for Clinton is that she's still leading the race to become the Democratic nominee—45 percent of Democrats polled would choose Clinton as the party nominee, 22 percent would choose Sanders and 18 percent would choose Biden.
No other Democrat polls above 1 percent.
Recall that Joe B has not even said he wants the job.
If and when he does, would he instantly become the choice of more Democrats than any other?
Roughly speaking, ideologically speaking, Joe is Hillary without the high negatives.
Bernie, not Joe, is notably different.
Viewed favorably by more Democrats than Hillary, who in turn is thus viewed by more Democrats than Bernie.
And the three stand in the same order of ranking by favorability among all registered voters.
The good news for Clinton is that she's still leading the race to become the Democratic nominee—45 percent of Democrats polled would choose Clinton as the party nominee, 22 percent would choose Sanders and 18 percent would choose Biden.
No other Democrat polls above 1 percent.
Recall that Joe B has not even said he wants the job.
If and when he does, would he instantly become the choice of more Democrats than any other?
Roughly speaking, ideologically speaking, Joe is Hillary without the high negatives.
Bernie, not Joe, is notably different.
Only a psychopath would want to live there
Only psychos and thugs can find anything to admire in this "music" and these "musicians."
Gangsta Rap’s Grim Legacy for Comptons Everywhere
The mainstreaming of this stuff has been part of the liberal onslaught for decades.
Gangsta Rap’s Grim Legacy for Comptons Everywhere
The mainstreaming of this stuff has been part of the liberal onslaught for decades.
Wednesday, August 26, 2015
It was a hate crime, a crime of racism
Revenge race murder
Vester Flanagan Threatened Colleagues, Played the Race Card for Years
Totally silent on that point, liberals are exploiting the killing to make propaganda for civilian disarmament.
Vester Flanagan Threatened Colleagues, Played the Race Card for Years
Totally silent on that point, liberals are exploiting the killing to make propaganda for civilian disarmament.
Horace
The John Conington translation, Delphi classics, in Kindle.
I had not recalled the gentle satirist was so plainly didactic, if moderate, an Epicurean and critic of the Stoics.
Pleasant translation, too.
I regret not learning Latin well enough to read classical authors in the original.
Spinning Trump, the GOP, and the whole anti-immigration movement as racist, still
Jorge Ramos, a Univision reporter and talking head, has several books out on the topic and is famous as an advocate of Latin immigration and the alleged rights of illegals.
Ramos looks white as the average Vermonter, though being Mexican I suppose he could be in some degree a mestizo.
Doesn't matter.
Islam is a religion and its followers are of many races, those in the Middle East being most of them white, but that doesn't stop the left smearing critics of Islamoviolence as racists.
Donald Trump Says Anchor Jorge Ramos Was 'Totally, Absolutely Out of Line'
Trump had him ejected from a press conference for disorderliness and "ranting and raving like a madman."
The persistent journo was allowed back in and asked two questions, which were answered.
Both Democrats and Republicans who are opposed to him have seized the opportunity to again damn Trump as a racist, a Nativist, and so on.
Ramos looks white as the average Vermonter, though being Mexican I suppose he could be in some degree a mestizo.
Doesn't matter.
Islam is a religion and its followers are of many races, those in the Middle East being most of them white, but that doesn't stop the left smearing critics of Islamoviolence as racists.
Donald Trump Says Anchor Jorge Ramos Was 'Totally, Absolutely Out of Line'
Trump had him ejected from a press conference for disorderliness and "ranting and raving like a madman."
The persistent journo was allowed back in and asked two questions, which were answered.
Both Democrats and Republicans who are opposed to him have seized the opportunity to again damn Trump as a racist, a Nativist, and so on.
Tuesday, August 25, 2015
The Man from UNCLE
The TV show was a Hollywood effort to keep the Cold War cool.
Perhaps the movie has a similar purpose.
Biden vs Clinton
It would be messy.
Hillary vs. Biden Would Get Ugly Fast
Essentially because they appeal to the same voters and are both about equally establishment liberals, if he became a serious threat to her.
Nobody yet speculating on just how ugly it would be if Bernie became a serious threat.
Probably even more ugly.
Hillary vs. Biden Would Get Ugly Fast
Essentially because they appeal to the same voters and are both about equally establishment liberals, if he became a serious threat to her.
Nobody yet speculating on just how ugly it would be if Bernie became a serious threat.
Probably even more ugly.
As good as it gets for him?
Is this about where he maxes out?
Bernie-Mentum: 2nd Poll Shows Sanders Leading Clinton In New Hampshire
If Biden comes in what will happen to Hillary?
Bernie-Mentum: 2nd Poll Shows Sanders Leading Clinton In New Hampshire
If Biden comes in what will happen to Hillary?
Josh Marshall is way into this "Trump is a racist" thing
Xenophobia and Political Correctness Make Strange Bedfellows
And he is far from alone.
Class war has always scared the shit out of the American left, so their politics is all about race and little bit about sex.
Theirs politics is almost entirely a war on whites, secondly a war on men, and to a lesser degree a war on non-deviant sexuality.
Pretty much full time it is a war on traditional Christian morality as it pertains to anything to do with sex, from gay rights and marriage law to porn and prostitution, with campaigns on the side to support quotas and forms of legislation that put ceilings on men, whites, and straights but not on women, non-whites, and LGBTs.
And he is far from alone.
Class war has always scared the shit out of the American left, so their politics is all about race and little bit about sex.
Theirs politics is almost entirely a war on whites, secondly a war on men, and to a lesser degree a war on non-deviant sexuality.
Pretty much full time it is a war on traditional Christian morality as it pertains to anything to do with sex, from gay rights and marriage law to porn and prostitution, with campaigns on the side to support quotas and forms of legislation that put ceilings on men, whites, and straights but not on women, non-whites, and LGBTs.
Bullshit conviction for a racist fantasy
That's what happens when you profoundly offend the morality and political interests of the judicial establishment, especially its white liberal wing.
The guy wanted to build, believe it or not, a ray gun with which to unobtrusively murder Muslims through radiation poisoning, for which his motive was indeed hatred.
But of course he did not build it and had no idea how to built such a thing or use it if built and, if he had, it would have counted as a "weapon of mass destruction" only because any chemical, biological, or radiological weapon is so classified by the government, not because it was in any literal sense a "weapon of mass destruction."
A pressure cooker stuffed with dynamite would be much more worthy of that description.
NY White Supremacist Convicted In Attempt To Build Radiation Device
The guy wanted to build, believe it or not, a ray gun with which to unobtrusively murder Muslims through radiation poisoning, for which his motive was indeed hatred.
But of course he did not build it and had no idea how to built such a thing or use it if built and, if he had, it would have counted as a "weapon of mass destruction" only because any chemical, biological, or radiological weapon is so classified by the government, not because it was in any literal sense a "weapon of mass destruction."
A pressure cooker stuffed with dynamite would be much more worthy of that description.
NY White Supremacist Convicted In Attempt To Build Radiation Device
Monday, August 24, 2015
That's a word? By gosh, it is.
Salon.
Andrea Tantaros sees misandry everywhere
Well, a word is needed and the obvious choice, "misanthropy," is already taken and means something else.
A fact that has been noticed, though not for all that long.
Note the history of the word in the entries at Dictionary dot com.
Misandry
They don't list "feminism" as a synonym, but they probably should.
Andrea Tantaros sees misandry everywhere
Well, a word is needed and the obvious choice, "misanthropy," is already taken and means something else.
A fact that has been noticed, though not for all that long.
Note the history of the word in the entries at Dictionary dot com.
Misandry
They don't list "feminism" as a synonym, but they probably should.
Sunday, August 23, 2015
Hillary, the woman of power.
"I don't believe you change hearts, I believe you change laws," she said.
But without some sort of change of heart it's just naked coercion and has no real future.
Recall Prohibition.
The Iran deal is hollow
Of course, the US needs to get out of the globo-domination business.
Let the Euroweenies handle this, if they want.
Better hands off than hands stupidly misplaced.
An unkind but realistic assessment from David French.
The Iran Deal and Obama’s Fatally Misguided View of the World
Let the Euroweenies handle this, if they want.
Better hands off than hands stupidly misplaced.
An unkind but realistic assessment from David French.
The Iran Deal and Obama’s Fatally Misguided View of the World
Easier said than done
The number of people living with diabetes has soared by nearly 60% in the past decade, Diabetes UK warns.
. . . .
"We've said it before and we'll say it again, it's time to get serious about lifestyle change."
Saturday, August 22, 2015
The liberal global culture war
Gay and Marked for Death
Frank Bruni, LGBT, the UN, and Islam.
Guess what.
We are at war with Islam.
We are and we ought to be.
Ask Frank.
Frank Bruni, LGBT, the UN, and Islam.
Guess what.
We are at war with Islam.
We are and we ought to be.
Ask Frank.
Trump and immigration
Trump on immigration is closer to Main Street than to Wall Street, and Wall Street conservatives don't much like him, anyway.
So the open-immigration and pro-illegal Republicans have joined the open-immigration and pro-illegal Democrats in labeling him a racist.
What would they say if Scandinavia was south of our border?
So the open-immigration and pro-illegal Republicans have joined the open-immigration and pro-illegal Democrats in labeling him a racist.
What would they say if Scandinavia was south of our border?
Friday, August 21, 2015
End the US embassy to the Vatican
Pope Francis and the illegals
Creating the embassy was just Reagan sucking up to conservative Catholics and nothing else.
Here is a chance to get conservatives to accept shutting down that affront to the spirit if not the letter of the First Amendment.
Creating the embassy was just Reagan sucking up to conservative Catholics and nothing else.
Here is a chance to get conservatives to accept shutting down that affront to the spirit if not the letter of the First Amendment.
How now, Dow Jones?
Down more than 500 points, today.
Still want to replace your government guaranteed retirement fund with private investment in IRAs?
Still want to replace your government guaranteed retirement fund with private investment in IRAs?
Donald Trump has a six page immigration policy plan
Apparently.
NR doesn't like it, oh, surprise.
I note, contra NR, that the fact that a constitutional amendment ending birthright citizenship is very unlikely to be ratified is not a reason to fault Trump for supporting it.
The same is true of a limited human life amendment that would guarantee the states and the federal government an unqualified right to criminalize or in any other manner regulate late term abortions - essentially, abortions of any fetus that looks like a baby.
As to Ann Coulter, she and others, including many lawyers and judges, mistake the purpose of a law for the law itself.
AC
What the 14th Amendment actually says about who is a citizen is exactly one sentence.
All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside.
Diplomats, their progeny, Indians, and some others are not "subject to the jurisdiction thereof."
On the other hand, it is doubtful that immigrants, legal or not, or their children enjoy either diplomatic immunity or sovereign immunity on tribal reservations of their own.
Interestingly, the 14th does not say that only persons born or naturalized in the US and subject to the jurisdiction thereof are citizens.
But neither it nor any other part of the constitution grants to Congress or anyone else the authority to decide who else is a citizen, though it grants the federal government the power to set the conditions of naturalization in Article I, Section 8, clause 4.
Nor the does constitution itself anywhere say who else is a citizen.
Was deciding who is a citizen supposed, in the pre-Civil War and pre-liberal baloney understanding of the constitution, to be among the powers reserved to the states?
And how is the 1924 federal law granting citizenship to Indians constitutional?
Not that I mind Indians being citizens.
NR doesn't like it, oh, surprise.
I note, contra NR, that the fact that a constitutional amendment ending birthright citizenship is very unlikely to be ratified is not a reason to fault Trump for supporting it.
The same is true of a limited human life amendment that would guarantee the states and the federal government an unqualified right to criminalize or in any other manner regulate late term abortions - essentially, abortions of any fetus that looks like a baby.
As to Ann Coulter, she and others, including many lawyers and judges, mistake the purpose of a law for the law itself.
AC
What the 14th Amendment actually says about who is a citizen is exactly one sentence.
All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside.
Diplomats, their progeny, Indians, and some others are not "subject to the jurisdiction thereof."
On the other hand, it is doubtful that immigrants, legal or not, or their children enjoy either diplomatic immunity or sovereign immunity on tribal reservations of their own.
Interestingly, the 14th does not say that only persons born or naturalized in the US and subject to the jurisdiction thereof are citizens.
But neither it nor any other part of the constitution grants to Congress or anyone else the authority to decide who else is a citizen, though it grants the federal government the power to set the conditions of naturalization in Article I, Section 8, clause 4.
Nor the does constitution itself anywhere say who else is a citizen.
Was deciding who is a citizen supposed, in the pre-Civil War and pre-liberal baloney understanding of the constitution, to be among the powers reserved to the states?
And how is the 1924 federal law granting citizenship to Indians constitutional?
Not that I mind Indians being citizens.
Stalinist revisionism
Who knew there even was such a thing?
There is
Of course, Stalinist revisionism is to the history of Stalin and Stalinism what Holocaust revisionism is to the history of the Holocaust.
That is, obfuscation, disguise, and denial.
There is
Of course, Stalinist revisionism is to the history of Stalin and Stalinism what Holocaust revisionism is to the history of the Holocaust.
That is, obfuscation, disguise, and denial.
Planned Parenthood are in their own words admitted baby-killers and infanticides
And this savagery does not outdo Mengele.
The Media Stays Shamefully Silent about the Most Shocking Planned Parenthood Video Yet
As reported in NR.
Debate, if you like, the moral status of the in utero “product of conception.”
Wonder, if you want to, about the precise point of “viability” or “quickening.”
No such arguments apply here.
This was allegedly a living baby, exposed on a counter and murdered.
This was not a “conceptus” or a “specimen.”
This was a person, vested with a constitutional right to life and guaranteed the full protection of the United States government.
. . . .
What O’Donnell says took place at the Alameda Clinic was not an abortion; by law, it was an execution.
Government has a duty to investigate alleged crimes and to prosecute lawbreakers.
A conscientious press has a duty to ferret out the facts of a story, and to hold wrongdoers accountable in the public eye.
Their refusal to do so in this case is a national disgrace almost as shameful as the one they’re ignoring.
This is the triumph of feminism and liberalism, their greatest achievement to date and one they consider as important as anything they have done in civil rights: the right to murder an infant.
Infanticide at Planned Parenthood
Questions Every Planned Parenthood Supporter Should Have To Answer
The Media Stays Shamefully Silent about the Most Shocking Planned Parenthood Video Yet
As reported in NR.
Debate, if you like, the moral status of the in utero “product of conception.”
Wonder, if you want to, about the precise point of “viability” or “quickening.”
No such arguments apply here.
This was allegedly a living baby, exposed on a counter and murdered.
This was not a “conceptus” or a “specimen.”
This was a person, vested with a constitutional right to life and guaranteed the full protection of the United States government.
. . . .
What O’Donnell says took place at the Alameda Clinic was not an abortion; by law, it was an execution.
Government has a duty to investigate alleged crimes and to prosecute lawbreakers.
A conscientious press has a duty to ferret out the facts of a story, and to hold wrongdoers accountable in the public eye.
Their refusal to do so in this case is a national disgrace almost as shameful as the one they’re ignoring.
This is the triumph of feminism and liberalism, their greatest achievement to date and one they consider as important as anything they have done in civil rights: the right to murder an infant.
Infanticide at Planned Parenthood
Questions Every Planned Parenthood Supporter Should Have To Answer
In case you thought the Spaniards were lying about the Aztecs
Or maybe it's Mel Gibson you thought was lying, about the Aztecs, the Spaniards, or both.
Archaeologists Find Skull Rack at Aztec Temple
500 years of Inquisition in Spain were a lot less bloody than 500 days in Mexico City under Aztec rule.
Archaeologists Find Skull Rack at Aztec Temple
500 years of Inquisition in Spain were a lot less bloody than 500 days in Mexico City under Aztec rule.
Muslims on the wrong end of the stick
It can happen, and does.
Burma.
Myanmar Passes Extreme Religion Bills Targeting Marginalized Muslim Population
Recall the left has their own peculiar linguistic rules which they pretend are universal and objective.
For example, they insist on calling Burma "Myanmar" and, though the Indian English language press generally calls the city "Bombay," they insist on calling it "Mumbai."
But then they also insist on calling Bradley Manning "Chelsea" and Bruce Jenner "Caitlyn," not only a cutsey girl name but one with a cutesy made up girl spelling.
Burma.
Myanmar Passes Extreme Religion Bills Targeting Marginalized Muslim Population
Recall the left has their own peculiar linguistic rules which they pretend are universal and objective.
For example, they insist on calling Burma "Myanmar" and, though the Indian English language press generally calls the city "Bombay," they insist on calling it "Mumbai."
But then they also insist on calling Bradley Manning "Chelsea" and Bruce Jenner "Caitlyn," not only a cutsey girl name but one with a cutesy made up girl spelling.
Gomer, rape, and abortion
No real surprise, but Huckabee here joins Rubio and Scott in refusing to accept abortion for no reason but that the pregnancy resulted from rape.
Huckabee on the case in Paraguay
Huckabee on the case in Paraguay
Still Bernie's agenda, say supporters on the left
Bernie at Huffpo
Of his 12 points I accept only some.
I don't accept 2, 3, 6, or 10.
2. The United States must lead the world in reversing climate change and make certain that this planet is habitable for our children and grandchildren.
This is a completely unnecessary cost to everyone alive today.
3. . . . [W]e need to provide assistance to workers who want to purchase their own businesses by establishing worker-owned cooperatives.
This is economic stupidity.
6. Women workers today earn 78 percent of what their male counterparts make. We need pay equity in our country -- equal pay for equal work.
Women in fact make what they should, given the jobs they pick, their level of reliability, their costs and benefits to employers, and the like.
10. . . . We need to establish a Medicare-for-all, single-payer system.
It is stupid to create a government monopoly in health insurance with a complete stranglehold on the entire health care industry.
Nor do I accept his plan to establish more federal government control of American education and to undermine the independence and economic viability of private colleges and universities as part and parcel of his plan to make education affordable.
But nobody is as good as he is on support for Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid and improving their benefits and coverage.
And nobody is a good as he is on properly placing the burden of taxation to pay for government in America at all levels.
And though it appears he has little to say about foreign affairs what he does say seems to indicate a much less interventionist outlook than is almost uniformly present among national political leaders of both our major parties, and that is also all to the good.
Of his 12 points I accept only some.
I don't accept 2, 3, 6, or 10.
2. The United States must lead the world in reversing climate change and make certain that this planet is habitable for our children and grandchildren.
This is a completely unnecessary cost to everyone alive today.
3. . . . [W]e need to provide assistance to workers who want to purchase their own businesses by establishing worker-owned cooperatives.
This is economic stupidity.
6. Women workers today earn 78 percent of what their male counterparts make. We need pay equity in our country -- equal pay for equal work.
Women in fact make what they should, given the jobs they pick, their level of reliability, their costs and benefits to employers, and the like.
10. . . . We need to establish a Medicare-for-all, single-payer system.
It is stupid to create a government monopoly in health insurance with a complete stranglehold on the entire health care industry.
Nor do I accept his plan to establish more federal government control of American education and to undermine the independence and economic viability of private colleges and universities as part and parcel of his plan to make education affordable.
But nobody is as good as he is on support for Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid and improving their benefits and coverage.
And nobody is a good as he is on properly placing the burden of taxation to pay for government in America at all levels.
And though it appears he has little to say about foreign affairs what he does say seems to indicate a much less interventionist outlook than is almost uniformly present among national political leaders of both our major parties, and that is also all to the good.
Thursday, August 20, 2015
Actually, the Iranians did it
The CIA just held their coats.
Iranians must take responsibility for their role in the 1953 coup
2,000 calories. A diet for a 200 pound geezer at 6' 1"
That and 8 to 10 thousand steps a day will get you there and keep you there, I think.
Obesity is preventable like tobacco abuse is preventable.
Well, the extreme kind, anyway.
When they tell you medical problems are avoidable or preventable, they're getting ready to deny coverage or require participation in some nasty and generally ineffective course of treatment.
This is right, mostly.
But the only way that the tide will be turned is in a massive change in the way we lead our lives.
Sport has to come back into schools, playing fields reclaimed and repurchased, cycling made safe and walking to school become the norm.
And we’re going to have to stop eating all the time.
It’s not just what we eat (although clearly sugary drinks and calorie laden muffins are not helpful).
It’s the way we have become a nation of constant grazers.
Schools need to teach pupils what 2,000 calories a day looks and feels like.
It means a breakfast of toast or cereal, a sandwich and zero calorie drink (like water) at lunch and a supper of protein, veg and a portion of carbohydrate like some boiled potatoes.
Some fruit and a yoghurt, and you’re basically done for the day.
Who eats like that nowadays?
Remember the 18 minutes missing from the Nixon tapes?
Hillary Clinton's emails, data erased from server before handed to FBI
Ballocks.
She should withdraw.
But then Bill Clinton should have resigned.
Vain, arrogant, self important thugs, they are.
Politicians.
I’m a Hillary Clinton fan. But I hope she bows out with grace
PKK vs ISIS
Can you guess why this hard left guerrilla outfit is popular with leading establishment media in the West?
In pictures: PKK fighters prepare for battle with IS
Women are neither the same as nor equal to men in all things, nor of course are men to women.
Differing sex roles and costumes allow natural differences their place, though of course anything can be carried too far.
Feminism is just another crackpot ideology.
Reagan should not have supported crackpot Islamists against reds in Afghanistan, but few thought so at the time.
But reds are just the cat's meow if they're far gone feminists.
Return of the vagabond's wage
It was called that when Russell wrote about it.
Nixon supported it.
And it's popping up again in Europe.
A lone wolf feminazi killer
Another deadly ideology to add to the list.
Sure, they'll say she's just a nut.
But it's a hate crime, an episode in their war against men.
Monday, August 17, 2015
Good idea, but no details
Trump: End birthright US citizenship
By no means the first to suggest this.
Sunday, August 16, 2015
Oh, the stress of it all!
It's a brutal job, but it does have its perks.
Playing golf with Larry David and Cyrus Walker in Martha's Vineyard.
Playing golf with Larry David and Cyrus Walker in Martha's Vineyard.
A little too draconian for my taste
Trump says he would deport all undocumented immigrants
“We’re going to keep the families together, but they have to go.”
No exceptions, eh?
Phooey.
“We’re going to keep the families together, but they have to go.”
No exceptions, eh?
Phooey.
Saturday, August 15, 2015
Because those are the central items
The Bernie Debate: Would Sanders Advance Feminism and Racial Justice Better Than Clinton?
Right on schedule, as advertised, he's criticized for being too white and too male.
Though not by any means wholly without support among feminists or politically active blacks.
Right on schedule, as advertised, he's criticized for being too white and too male.
Though not by any means wholly without support among feminists or politically active blacks.
The left likes Jeremy Corbyn. So do I, on the whole.
Jeremy Corbyn, the socialist
The man who wants to re-nationalize railways and energy companies and reopen long-failed coal mines.
Also free tuition at all Britain's universities.
Anti-austerity moves to boost the economy; looks like his support is a sort of Brit Syriza moment, in at least that respect.
And more.
Corbyn's positions on foreign policy are more extreme.
He wants to withdraw from NATO, abolish the UK's nuclear arsenal, and has suggested that Blair could face a war crimes trial for his role in the Iraq War.
His position on Ukraine echoes the Kremlin's: He's written that Russian expansionism "is not unprovoked" and that "the obsession with cold war politics that exercises the Nato and EU leaderships is fueling the crisis."
Well, I would have thought it made more sense for the US to leave NATO and for the UK to stay in, but to each his own.
I like his take on Ukraine, though.
And I suppose so long as NATO is committed to pushing its collective thumb deep into Russia's eye wanting out is understandable.
Jeremy Corbyn, Britain's Bernie moment
Like Sanders, Corbyn has long advocated for a rejection of austerity politics and a return to seemingly outmoded policies of ambitious social spending, government activism and higher taxes on big business and the rich.
He has proposed universal childcare and free higher education for all, wants to renationalize Britain’s railroads and utilities, and believes the country should withdraw from NATO, scrap its nuclear missiles and invest most of its military budget in job programs.
Hilarious, right?
Political suicide!
Talk about being out of touch with reality!
Well, nobody’s laughing at the old-time lefty crackpot now.
What few saw coming – and this happened with Sanders too – is that those old-school social-democratic ideas only sound outmoded to those who have been around long enough to be relentlessly indoctrinated with the Reagan-Thatcher ideology that the era of Big Government was a dreadful failure and that the true path to prosperity involves endless rounds of tax-cutting and “belt-tightening.”
To younger generations raised amid the depressing, pseudo-Calvinist piety of permanent austerity and downward mobility, the revolutionary notion that the government might actually help you get an education, find a job, afford a decent place to live and raise your family — instead of just standing there and scolding — doesn’t sound old or tired in the slightest.
Evidently, that both Bernie and Jeremy are geezers hasn't caused a little bulb to light up for Brit journalists any more than for Americans.
Nor the multitudes of gray heads in those big audiences Bernie gathers.
Per the piece in Salon, he scares The Guardian, who seem to think he's a sure loser, much as the Democratic Party establishment in the US still seems to insist about Bernie.
The Salon writer seems more sympathetic to JC and his wave of support.
Is Salon generally to the left of The Guardian?
Maybe.
Andrew O'Hehir concludes,
It’s quite possible that Tony Blair and the other mainstream critics are correct that old-school socialists like Jeremy Corbyn and Bernie Sanders are too easily demonized by the right, and are not “electable” in conventional political terms.
(Opinion polling suggests that Corbyn may now be the most popular politician in Britain, but such things are transitory.)
But their emergence testifies to the failures of conventional politics, and whether they can win elections is less important than the worldwide hunger for change they have momentarily captured.
Neither of them offers anything close to a political panacea, in my view, but they represent a rising tide of resistance against the global cult of fiscal austerity and corporate capitalism, as do Syriza in Greece and Podemos in Spain and other emerging left-populist movements.
(Donald Trump does not belong in that group, but he represents a bizarro-world inversion of the same phenomenon.)
Even if the Labour Party establishment can find a way to stop the Corbyn surge – and it’s definitely trying to, by fair means or foul – it runs the risk of burning down Britain’s venerable working-class party in order to save it, or making it look hopelessly out of touch with its own core supporters.
Win or lose, the Corbyn rebellion has launched a political chain reaction whose destabilizing effects will extend well beyond Britain.
From this side of the Atlantic, Hillary Clinton’s inner circle of advisers and strategists are watching with increasingly green expressions, telling themselves over and over: It can’t happen here.
Well, to be honest, I increasingly hope it does.
The capitalist pigs of global neoliberalism and their fellow-traveling "third way" creeps of the Democratic and liberal establishments have been having things their own way for far too long.
They need a good thrashing, and who could we expect to deliver it but people who are far from being star-struck admirers of the emerging global plutocracy?
Doing better than Bernie?
Jeremy Corbyn is most popular among voters from all parties, poll suggests
The man who wants to re-nationalize railways and energy companies and reopen long-failed coal mines.
Also free tuition at all Britain's universities.
Anti-austerity moves to boost the economy; looks like his support is a sort of Brit Syriza moment, in at least that respect.
And more.
Corbyn's positions on foreign policy are more extreme.
He wants to withdraw from NATO, abolish the UK's nuclear arsenal, and has suggested that Blair could face a war crimes trial for his role in the Iraq War.
His position on Ukraine echoes the Kremlin's: He's written that Russian expansionism "is not unprovoked" and that "the obsession with cold war politics that exercises the Nato and EU leaderships is fueling the crisis."
Well, I would have thought it made more sense for the US to leave NATO and for the UK to stay in, but to each his own.
I like his take on Ukraine, though.
And I suppose so long as NATO is committed to pushing its collective thumb deep into Russia's eye wanting out is understandable.
Jeremy Corbyn, Britain's Bernie moment
Like Sanders, Corbyn has long advocated for a rejection of austerity politics and a return to seemingly outmoded policies of ambitious social spending, government activism and higher taxes on big business and the rich.
He has proposed universal childcare and free higher education for all, wants to renationalize Britain’s railroads and utilities, and believes the country should withdraw from NATO, scrap its nuclear missiles and invest most of its military budget in job programs.
Hilarious, right?
Political suicide!
Talk about being out of touch with reality!
Well, nobody’s laughing at the old-time lefty crackpot now.
What few saw coming – and this happened with Sanders too – is that those old-school social-democratic ideas only sound outmoded to those who have been around long enough to be relentlessly indoctrinated with the Reagan-Thatcher ideology that the era of Big Government was a dreadful failure and that the true path to prosperity involves endless rounds of tax-cutting and “belt-tightening.”
To younger generations raised amid the depressing, pseudo-Calvinist piety of permanent austerity and downward mobility, the revolutionary notion that the government might actually help you get an education, find a job, afford a decent place to live and raise your family — instead of just standing there and scolding — doesn’t sound old or tired in the slightest.
Evidently, that both Bernie and Jeremy are geezers hasn't caused a little bulb to light up for Brit journalists any more than for Americans.
Nor the multitudes of gray heads in those big audiences Bernie gathers.
Per the piece in Salon, he scares The Guardian, who seem to think he's a sure loser, much as the Democratic Party establishment in the US still seems to insist about Bernie.
The Salon writer seems more sympathetic to JC and his wave of support.
Is Salon generally to the left of The Guardian?
Maybe.
Andrew O'Hehir concludes,
It’s quite possible that Tony Blair and the other mainstream critics are correct that old-school socialists like Jeremy Corbyn and Bernie Sanders are too easily demonized by the right, and are not “electable” in conventional political terms.
(Opinion polling suggests that Corbyn may now be the most popular politician in Britain, but such things are transitory.)
But their emergence testifies to the failures of conventional politics, and whether they can win elections is less important than the worldwide hunger for change they have momentarily captured.
Neither of them offers anything close to a political panacea, in my view, but they represent a rising tide of resistance against the global cult of fiscal austerity and corporate capitalism, as do Syriza in Greece and Podemos in Spain and other emerging left-populist movements.
(Donald Trump does not belong in that group, but he represents a bizarro-world inversion of the same phenomenon.)
Even if the Labour Party establishment can find a way to stop the Corbyn surge – and it’s definitely trying to, by fair means or foul – it runs the risk of burning down Britain’s venerable working-class party in order to save it, or making it look hopelessly out of touch with its own core supporters.
Win or lose, the Corbyn rebellion has launched a political chain reaction whose destabilizing effects will extend well beyond Britain.
From this side of the Atlantic, Hillary Clinton’s inner circle of advisers and strategists are watching with increasingly green expressions, telling themselves over and over: It can’t happen here.
Well, to be honest, I increasingly hope it does.
The capitalist pigs of global neoliberalism and their fellow-traveling "third way" creeps of the Democratic and liberal establishments have been having things their own way for far too long.
They need a good thrashing, and who could we expect to deliver it but people who are far from being star-struck admirers of the emerging global plutocracy?
Doing better than Bernie?
Jeremy Corbyn is most popular among voters from all parties, poll suggests
Buchanan for Trump, against the GOP
Donald Trump vs. the Washington Post
For the same reasons that made him run for president, back in the day, inside and outside the GOP.
Heavy low-wage immigration, legal and not, along with free trade are killing the American economy and the wages of the American people, and he has opposed both for decades, as Trump does now.
Here, he hopes Trump brings the GOP crashing down if it remains wed to the Wall Street, open immigration, free trade conservatives.
The exact opposite of the view of George Will.
Donald Trump is a counterfeit Republican
For the same reasons that made him run for president, back in the day, inside and outside the GOP.
Heavy low-wage immigration, legal and not, along with free trade are killing the American economy and the wages of the American people, and he has opposed both for decades, as Trump does now.
Here, he hopes Trump brings the GOP crashing down if it remains wed to the Wall Street, open immigration, free trade conservatives.
The exact opposite of the view of George Will.
Donald Trump is a counterfeit Republican
This is in the NY Times?
How to deal with the Boomers retiring: keep them working
Everybody in the industrialized world works less and retires earlier than we do, with better retirement plans and better health insurance and medical care.
Everybody.
But we're number one and we can't afford it.
Uh huh.
Go Bernie.
Everybody in the industrialized world works less and retires earlier than we do, with better retirement plans and better health insurance and medical care.
Everybody.
But we're number one and we can't afford it.
Uh huh.
Go Bernie.
Liberals give too much space to this racist baloney
Does The N.W.A. Biopic Mark The End Of The White Savior Movie?
From white saviors like Lincoln, all the white men who died for the Union, and all the white political leaders of the Radical Reconstruction and their white voters, to Hubert Humphrey, LBJ, RFK, all the white Supremes and other federal judges who took down Jim Crow during the civil rights era, they are just sick of hearing about it.
Does jibe at all with the us vs. them of the black racist/white liberal rhetoric of weaponized history and guilt-tripping.
Bernie Rising
I missed this about polls pitting Bernie against key GOP competitors, as well as Dems and Hillary.
Almost Every Major Poll Shows Bernie Sanders Challenging or Defeating Clinton and Republicans
Though in some ways he's too far left for me both in the old-fashioned sense and in the sociolib, identity politics sense, globally and on the biggest things I prefer him strongly to Hillary and, really, everybody else on the D side of the contest.
But he's not running for dictator and he can only go as far left as the Congress is willing to go with him.
And such are our politics that he could actually win both the nomination and the general and still be stuck with a Republican Senate and a Republican House.
The oppo research is going to get wild.
BERNIE SANDERS, WEIRDO IN CHIEF
Almost Every Major Poll Shows Bernie Sanders Challenging or Defeating Clinton and Republicans
Though in some ways he's too far left for me both in the old-fashioned sense and in the sociolib, identity politics sense, globally and on the biggest things I prefer him strongly to Hillary and, really, everybody else on the D side of the contest.
But he's not running for dictator and he can only go as far left as the Congress is willing to go with him.
And such are our politics that he could actually win both the nomination and the general and still be stuck with a Republican Senate and a Republican House.
The oppo research is going to get wild.
BERNIE SANDERS, WEIRDO IN CHIEF
The natural wage of labor
Subsistence, understood as enough to keep the laborers alive and enable the working class to just keep up its numbers, is the natural and generally the actual wage of labor.
A trace more when the labor is scarce, relative to demand, enabling larger families among laborers which then remove the scarcity of labor.
A trace less when labor is too abundant, forcing workers to have families so small the number of workers contracts.
In the face of this, of course, productivity gains in the economy as a whole go to increasing the opulence of the upper classes.
The controlling factor on family size is understood to be shockingly high infant mortality, often largely attributable to starvation.
He well understands the relevance of immigration policy as well as protective trade policy.
Apart from relative scarcity of labor, the only thing pushing wages higher than subsistence is legal interference or unionization.
Smith is well aware of the horrendous inequality of the bargaining position between individual employers and individual laborers, and claims there is anyway nearly always tacit or express collusion among employers to hold down wages.
He observes that the law generally forbids or undermines or makes as ineffective as possible any collective action among workers to push up wages, but not collusion among employers to hold them down.
Reading Adam Smith, The Wealth of Nations.
A trace more when the labor is scarce, relative to demand, enabling larger families among laborers which then remove the scarcity of labor.
A trace less when labor is too abundant, forcing workers to have families so small the number of workers contracts.
In the face of this, of course, productivity gains in the economy as a whole go to increasing the opulence of the upper classes.
The controlling factor on family size is understood to be shockingly high infant mortality, often largely attributable to starvation.
He well understands the relevance of immigration policy as well as protective trade policy.
Apart from relative scarcity of labor, the only thing pushing wages higher than subsistence is legal interference or unionization.
Smith is well aware of the horrendous inequality of the bargaining position between individual employers and individual laborers, and claims there is anyway nearly always tacit or express collusion among employers to hold down wages.
He observes that the law generally forbids or undermines or makes as ineffective as possible any collective action among workers to push up wages, but not collusion among employers to hold them down.
Reading Adam Smith, The Wealth of Nations.
Friday, August 14, 2015
Gratuitous ontology
Things believed without reason, proof, or warrant.
By no means an exhaustive list.
Of contingent things
I am a continuing being and the unique subject of all (my) experience.
There is a given in my present experience with respect to which my present beliefs are always all but certainly right.
(My) Memories are generally true, and the more likely so the more recent what is remembered.
There are others beings that are subjects of experience; some of them are people, but others are animals that are not people.
Nothing is (part of) the experience of more than one subject.
Of necessary things
There is one unique way things are; they are thus and not otherwise.
There are many ways things could be or could have been; these ways are parsed into properties, states of affairs, and possible worlds.
There are things that could have been but are not, never have been, and never will be.
There are things that are but needn’t have been, or were not, or will not be.
Necessary things are timeless [or are they just everlasting? 7/27/17]; otherwise [or not? 7/27/17], all the things that are are now.
The ways things are or could be or could have been are necessary.
Some things were but are not; some things will be but are not.
Time is the form of contingency [or of being? 7/27/17].
There is a unique actual world; there is a unique now.
Logical determinism is true; i.e., all contingent propositions are true or else false, whether about the past, the present, or the future.
There are propositions; they are timeless [or eternal? 7/27/17] whether or not tenseless; they are necessary whether or not necessarily true or necessarily false.
By no means an exhaustive list.
Of contingent things
I am a continuing being and the unique subject of all (my) experience.
There is a given in my present experience with respect to which my present beliefs are always all but certainly right.
(My) Memories are generally true, and the more likely so the more recent what is remembered.
There are others beings that are subjects of experience; some of them are people, but others are animals that are not people.
Nothing is (part of) the experience of more than one subject.
Of necessary things
There is one unique way things are; they are thus and not otherwise.
There are many ways things could be or could have been; these ways are parsed into properties, states of affairs, and possible worlds.
There are things that could have been but are not, never have been, and never will be.
There are things that are but needn’t have been, or were not, or will not be.
Necessary things are timeless [or are they just everlasting? 7/27/17]; otherwise [or not? 7/27/17], all the things that are are now.
The ways things are or could be or could have been are necessary.
Some things were but are not; some things will be but are not.
Time is the form of contingency [or of being? 7/27/17].
There is a unique actual world; there is a unique now.
Logical determinism is true; i.e., all contingent propositions are true or else false, whether about the past, the present, or the future.
There are propositions; they are timeless [or eternal? 7/27/17] whether or not tenseless; they are necessary whether or not necessarily true or necessarily false.
Thursday, August 13, 2015
Ah. Reparations.
A contingent of the left will promptly endorse his claim.
Fidel Castro to US: you owe us millions
Fans of the current governments of Bolivia and Venezuela, perhaps.
Bernie, maybe?
Just thinking of his history.
Fidel Castro to US: you owe us millions
Fans of the current governments of Bolivia and Venezuela, perhaps.
Bernie, maybe?
Just thinking of his history.
Happy Birthday.
OK, I'm a day early.
Social Security, 80 years old and as beloved as ever
FDR signed the Social Security Act on August 14, 1935.
Social Security, 80 years old and as beloved as ever
FDR signed the Social Security Act on August 14, 1935.
#BLM moves on
Some people are too stupid to live.
They are helping ensure blacks will not vote for people they were not going to vote for, anyway.
And whether they harass Democrats or Republicans, all they do is drive more white voters into the booth to pull the R lever.
Idiots.
Black Lives Matter Protesters Disrupt Jeb Bush Rally
The fans, on the left to a man, are all of them complete fools.
#BLM is every bit as full of shit and obnoxious and poisonous to Democrats as Occupy got to be.
The Insiders: The Black Lives Matter movement is bad for Democrats
They are helping ensure blacks will not vote for people they were not going to vote for, anyway.
And whether they harass Democrats or Republicans, all they do is drive more white voters into the booth to pull the R lever.
Idiots.
Black Lives Matter Protesters Disrupt Jeb Bush Rally
The fans, on the left to a man, are all of them complete fools.
#BLM is every bit as full of shit and obnoxious and poisonous to Democrats as Occupy got to be.
The Insiders: The Black Lives Matter movement is bad for Democrats
Tommy Christopher thinks babies are "spawn."
He also uses the only just less offensive expression, "rape-babies."
Who the hell is Tommy Christopher?
Andrea Mitchell Really Wants Hillary Clinton to Talk About Megyn Kelly’s Menstrual Cycle
Two days ago.
At a New Hampshire press conference Monday, Hillary immediately brushed aside reporters’ grilling about Trump, and instead threw hot coals at Marco Rubio for wanting to force women to carry and deliver rape and incest spawn.
Those comments are getting a lot of attention, but very little attention is paid to the jaw-dropping questions that sparked them.
From the outset of the press conference, Clinton drew a contrast between Trump’s “offensive” comments and the anti-woman policies being promoted by the rest of the Republican candidates, particularly Rubio’s opposition to rape and incest exceptions to anti-abortion laws, and repeatedly reinforced the notion that the latter are far more harmful than the former.
But even after this was covered in Hillary’s opening remarks, and several previous questions, NBC News’ Andrea Mitchell still couldn’t believe her ears.
Mitchell pressed Clinton to reconsider the premise that forcing women to deliver rape babies is worse than being mean to Megyn Kelly.
No, Hillary did not once use the expression "rape-spawn."
Rubio's is the Catholic position that abortion simply is not to be allowed at all, I think.
Hillary's view, like Tommy's, is that it's especially misogynist to hold that even the lives of babies originating in rape or incest ought to be protected from their murderous Moms and the Doctor Mengeles only too ready to do their bidding.
Christopher?
Oh, he's a foul-mouthed, male bitch uber-liberal, from the look of it.
Bernie and #BLM
Who the hell is Tommy Christopher?
Andrea Mitchell Really Wants Hillary Clinton to Talk About Megyn Kelly’s Menstrual Cycle
Two days ago.
At a New Hampshire press conference Monday, Hillary immediately brushed aside reporters’ grilling about Trump, and instead threw hot coals at Marco Rubio for wanting to force women to carry and deliver rape and incest spawn.
Those comments are getting a lot of attention, but very little attention is paid to the jaw-dropping questions that sparked them.
From the outset of the press conference, Clinton drew a contrast between Trump’s “offensive” comments and the anti-woman policies being promoted by the rest of the Republican candidates, particularly Rubio’s opposition to rape and incest exceptions to anti-abortion laws, and repeatedly reinforced the notion that the latter are far more harmful than the former.
But even after this was covered in Hillary’s opening remarks, and several previous questions, NBC News’ Andrea Mitchell still couldn’t believe her ears.
Mitchell pressed Clinton to reconsider the premise that forcing women to deliver rape babies is worse than being mean to Megyn Kelly.
No, Hillary did not once use the expression "rape-spawn."
Rubio's is the Catholic position that abortion simply is not to be allowed at all, I think.
Hillary's view, like Tommy's, is that it's especially misogynist to hold that even the lives of babies originating in rape or incest ought to be protected from their murderous Moms and the Doctor Mengeles only too ready to do their bidding.
Christopher?
Oh, he's a foul-mouthed, male bitch uber-liberal, from the look of it.
Bernie and #BLM
It's always two stories, with this guy.
Bradley Manning.
Story one is about who is using female pronouns to refer to him, and going along with calling him "Chelsea."
That one is a weird story about how the PC Red Guards took over the style police in all the newsrooms of America.
Story two is about the continuing cruelty of the military's treatment of him as a prisoner.
That story began when he was first arrested, long before he was actually tried and convicted of anything.
That one is a horror story.
Where the hell is the president with his executive clemency bullshit?
Is he saving it for black street thugs?
Chelsea Manning Faces Solitary Confinement For Having Magazine, Expired Toothpaste
Mall walks
The upside is you can really put on the steps and miles in any weather or season.
The downside, for a guy, is that they practically spray the air with estrogen in those places.
The downside, for a guy, is that they practically spray the air with estrogen in those places.
Bernie and Hillary, compared
Inside gov
Equally liberal on domestic matters, Hillary is much more a hawk in foreign affairs.
They say.
Doesn't jibe with the going narratives, but maybe that's because they look at this campaign and the items they are campaigning on.
Equally liberal on domestic matters, Hillary is much more a hawk in foreign affairs.
They say.
Doesn't jibe with the going narratives, but maybe that's because they look at this campaign and the items they are campaigning on.
Wednesday, August 12, 2015
The right loves to hate Bernie
The American right and the further left love to exaggerate Bernie's importance in this campaign and in the Democratic Party, to which he does not belong.
The Democrats’ Socialist Surge
That though the right exaggerates how far left he is, reminding us of his Cold War radicalism while the left soft-pedals his views, emphasizing his sympathy with European social democracy and his actual agenda, itself to the right of the Europeans but to the left of all the other Democrats.
He's too left for me, but maybe that's better than too right.
And as a person he's way more acceptable than Hillary.
The Democrats’ Socialist Surge
That though the right exaggerates how far left he is, reminding us of his Cold War radicalism while the left soft-pedals his views, emphasizing his sympathy with European social democracy and his actual agenda, itself to the right of the Europeans but to the left of all the other Democrats.
He's too left for me, but maybe that's better than too right.
And as a person he's way more acceptable than Hillary.
Tuesday, August 11, 2015
Marissa Jane has a serious race problem
BLM Activist Marissa Janae Johnson Speaks About Sanders Rally
Sounds like she's getting a lot of well-deserved shit from Bernie supporters, though you would never suspect it from reading or heeding the ass-kissing coverage by the white liberal commentariat.
Bernie, like the other Democrats, has responded in much the same way.
Sounds like she's getting a lot of well-deserved shit from Bernie supporters, though you would never suspect it from reading or heeding the ass-kissing coverage by the white liberal commentariat.
Bernie, like the other Democrats, has responded in much the same way.
The energy dilemma
Nuclear power is too dangerous for human beings to be trusted with it.
But nuclear power is the only economically reasonable alternative to fossil fuels, and even that's at a stretch.
Hence.
Japan Restarts Nuclear Reactor 4 Years After Fukushima.
But nuclear power is the only economically reasonable alternative to fossil fuels, and even that's at a stretch.
Hence.
Japan Restarts Nuclear Reactor 4 Years After Fukushima.
Monday, August 10, 2015
Bernie joins the chorus of race-baiters
More proof, if any were needed, that American politics never really did get past the 1960s.
Begin with the cosmetic.
Bernie Sanders Hires Black Organizer As Press Secretary
And then there's this, which adds a little maybe to his previous agenda but mostly re-frames a lot that was already there to look blacker, you might say.
Begin with the cosmetic.
Bernie Sanders Hires Black Organizer As Press Secretary
And then there's this, which adds a little maybe to his previous agenda but mostly re-frames a lot that was already there to look blacker, you might say.
As to what is ostensibly about race in this publication, a few bits here and there are good and make sense.
But it contains as well a lot of really bad ideas, in my own view.
And most of it is angry fist-waving and race-bellyaching race-bating, though admittedly the rhetoric is worse in that regard than either the wrongs adverted to or the suggested fixes.
As for what is about economic inequality, after reading this the question really does have to be asked whether Bernie is prepared ultimately to accept any degree of economic inequality, for any reason.
He makes many attacks on inequality and often quotes others, here especially MLK, doing the same.
I have never seen a word by him (or by MKL) defending economic inequality in any measure, arising from any source, or satisfying any condition.
Indeed, the ferocity and anger of Bernie's attacks on inequality go far to explaining why people question claims he is not at heart a pretty radical socialist but rather just another tweedy Scandinavian social democrat.
What can we learn from Denmark? Bernie Sanders.
Many Democrats miss the point about Bernie Sanders' brand of democratic socialism
Though there is a long tradition of wolves wearing sheep's clothing in this country, what with even Leninists, anarchists, and socialists calling themselves "progressives" and "liberals," Chris Matthews makes an entirely accurate and valid point about the difference between Democrats, liberals, and progressives on the one side and actual socialists on the other.
The former favor a system that is fundamentally capitalist and market driven, overwhelmingly dominated by privately owned and controlled property up to and including the means of production, while the latter oppose exactly that.
Still, Matthews does ignore that while socialists favor public ownership of the means of production, to the right of that beginning with social democrats and extending all the way to but not including the most rigid and doctrinaire libertarians, everyone favors some measure not only of public control of the economy but public ownership of enterprises like schools, hospitals, and universities, though that need not exclude private ownership of enterprises of the same sort.
And in this way he may be exaggerating the difference between Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton, as well as between Bernie and other leading Democrats.
Much depends on whether we are talking about the Bernie of old or the current Bernie, the agenda of the pragmatic Bernie who practices the art of the possible or the maximum agenda in his heart of hearts.
As for Willies' equation of democratic socialism with a kind of LBJ/FDR outlook, he is either horrifically ignorant or simply a liar doing his best not to scare the horses with the truth.
Of course, Bernie got there before him, what with own his chronic fuzziness, over the years and to this day, about the real and large difference between socialism, democratic or not, and social democracy.
And about his own personal views and agenda.
Chuck Todd fails at attempt to ambush DNC Chair on Bernie Sanders Democratic Socialism
Todd was pretty clearly obfuscating the historic and large difference between a social democrat and an outright socialist, capitalizing on Bernie's own fudging of the difference in his personal positions, over the years, and in his self-descriptions.
Still, Bernie's own version of social democracy, which we might characterize as American progressivism with a mild dose of steroids, has considerable appeal.
What Can We Learn From Denmark?
Though there is a long tradition of wolves wearing sheep's clothing in this country, what with even Leninists, anarchists, and socialists calling themselves "progressives" and "liberals," Chris Matthews makes an entirely accurate and valid point about the difference between Democrats, liberals, and progressives on the one side and actual socialists on the other.
The former favor a system that is fundamentally capitalist and market driven, overwhelmingly dominated by privately owned and controlled property up to and including the means of production, while the latter oppose exactly that.
Still, Matthews does ignore that while socialists favor public ownership of the means of production, to the right of that beginning with social democrats and extending all the way to but not including the most rigid and doctrinaire libertarians, everyone favors some measure not only of public control of the economy but public ownership of enterprises like schools, hospitals, and universities, though that need not exclude private ownership of enterprises of the same sort.
And in this way he may be exaggerating the difference between Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton, as well as between Bernie and other leading Democrats.
Much depends on whether we are talking about the Bernie of old or the current Bernie, the agenda of the pragmatic Bernie who practices the art of the possible or the maximum agenda in his heart of hearts.
As for Willies' equation of democratic socialism with a kind of LBJ/FDR outlook, he is either horrifically ignorant or simply a liar doing his best not to scare the horses with the truth.
Of course, Bernie got there before him, what with own his chronic fuzziness, over the years and to this day, about the real and large difference between socialism, democratic or not, and social democracy.
And about his own personal views and agenda.
Chuck Todd fails at attempt to ambush DNC Chair on Bernie Sanders Democratic Socialism
Todd was pretty clearly obfuscating the historic and large difference between a social democrat and an outright socialist, capitalizing on Bernie's own fudging of the difference in his personal positions, over the years, and in his self-descriptions.
Still, Bernie's own version of social democracy, which we might characterize as American progressivism with a mild dose of steroids, has considerable appeal.
What Can We Learn From Denmark?
Same old black bullshit
Should we expect another wave of 70s race riots to follow the current wave of 60s radical, race-baiting bullshit?
Maybe.
Here's a big black shit sandwich in the New York Times.
Charles Blow
Even the story about raising money on fines rather than taxes is a canard.
Imagine how busy a cop would have to be writing traffic tickets just to cover the cost of putting him out there on the street.
The municipality would do better to just lay off that cop and eliminate his job.
Maybe.
Here's a big black shit sandwich in the New York Times.
Charles Blow
Even the story about raising money on fines rather than taxes is a canard.
Imagine how busy a cop would have to be writing traffic tickets just to cover the cost of putting him out there on the street.
The municipality would do better to just lay off that cop and eliminate his job.
Sunday, August 9, 2015
Acceptable religion
Hollywood and the cultural PC police despise Christianity and indeed any genuine historic religion.
But they are happy to indulge popular credulity regarding certain fragments of historic religion.
For instance, belief in providence, that "everything happens for a reason."
Complications
So the atheist doc and his wife tell their dying daughter, though it makes no sense unless the ancient Greek was right who famously said "Mind rules all things."
And whose mind would that be?
Or belief in human immortality.
Proof
But they are happy to indulge popular credulity regarding certain fragments of historic religion.
For instance, belief in providence, that "everything happens for a reason."
Complications
So the atheist doc and his wife tell their dying daughter, though it makes no sense unless the ancient Greek was right who famously said "Mind rules all things."
And whose mind would that be?
Or belief in human immortality.
Proof
Blacks bash Bernie and his supporters
Is Bernie the only white Democrat getting a shitbath from these self-important, racist, and race-obsessed clods?
They seem to be targeting him, his campaign, and his supporters.
Bernie is not going to be nominated, but if he is then to have a prayer of getting enough white votes to win the general he will need to do a "Sister Souljah moment" to put these guys down.
Or will he need to kiss their sweet little behinds to get the minority cred without which he also can't win?
Black activists attack Bernie, again
White liberals are giving a mixed reaction to this crap.
A lot of them are assholes with attitude, like Al Giordano.
Bernie and the Blacks
Even lesser assholes, or people with less attitude, are still assholes with attitude.
Can you image a leading white liberal like this guy, at this late date genuflecting to the Black Panthers?
BooMan
Others are annoyed by these self-appointed adjudicators of white guilt, these "people of color," though perhaps not so much as I am.
But even they are racial suckups and ass-kissers for "niggers with attitude."
David Atkins
They seem to be targeting him, his campaign, and his supporters.
Bernie is not going to be nominated, but if he is then to have a prayer of getting enough white votes to win the general he will need to do a "Sister Souljah moment" to put these guys down.
Or will he need to kiss their sweet little behinds to get the minority cred without which he also can't win?
Black activists attack Bernie, again
White liberals are giving a mixed reaction to this crap.
A lot of them are assholes with attitude, like Al Giordano.
Bernie and the Blacks
Even lesser assholes, or people with less attitude, are still assholes with attitude.
Can you image a leading white liberal like this guy, at this late date genuflecting to the Black Panthers?
Others are annoyed by these self-appointed adjudicators of white guilt, these "people of color," though perhaps not so much as I am.
But even they are racial suckups and ass-kissers for "niggers with attitude."
David Atkins
Utopia
Some people think Utopia is any society without coercion.
But not all violence is coercive.
Secret killing - for revenge, say - is not and is not intended to be coercive.
Others think Utopia is any society without violence.
But date rape drugs make it possible to rape someone without violence and, for that matter, without coercion.
Is date rape OK in Utopia?
But not all violence is coercive.
Secret killing - for revenge, say - is not and is not intended to be coercive.
Others think Utopia is any society without violence.
But date rape drugs make it possible to rape someone without violence and, for that matter, without coercion.
Is date rape OK in Utopia?
Saturday, August 8, 2015
Capitalism and Freedom
The most free society is the least coercive or coerced.
The anarchists are right.
But people form coercive associations spontaneously, from street gangs to pressure groups to security firms to armies and states.
And Libertarians are right there with everyone else insisting on government power to defend property, private ownership, and the market economy.
Their claim that, for them, liberty is the unique political/social value that outweighs all conflicting considerations, is absurd.
For them, the overarching value is capitalism, an economy resting on private property rights and the market, both restricted as little as possible and strengthened to the maximum, with conflicts of interest between property and labor, and consumers, and the public at large resolved in favor of property.
Reading Milton Friedman, Capitalism and Freedom.
Not what he said. Doesn't matter. What he said allowed that to be imputed to him by his enemies, people who want him out of the contest.
Trump fires back
He neither said nor suggested Megan was on the rag.
But that's what they are saying he did, and it's possible he meant to suggest that.
Erikson, for example, who damns him as "no conservative" and wants him gone for plenty of plain old political reasons, seems to have started it all.
And this is hatchet job reporting, anyway.
Donald Trump is firing back on the Megyn Kelly episode in what for him is a familiar fashion — with a string of television appearances, and a long and scathing statement attacking his critics.
The New York businessman plans to hit Sunday morning talk shows on CNN, CBS, NBC and ABC in the wake of criticism over his suggestion that Kelly asked him harsh questions in the Thursday debate because of menstruation.
A day after Kelly asked Trump about past insults to women, the billionaire told CNN late Friday about the Fox News anchor: “You could see there was blood coming out of her eyes. Blood coming out of her wherever.”
Erick Erickson, organizer of the Red State Gathering of conservative activists, disinvited the billionaire from addressing the group Saturday, saying the “wherever” comment suggests that Trump believes Kelly asked him tough questions because she was having her period.
“I don’t want my daughter in the same room with Donald Trump,” Erickson said.
He neither said nor suggested Megan was on the rag.
But that's what they are saying he did, and it's possible he meant to suggest that.
Erikson, for example, who damns him as "no conservative" and wants him gone for plenty of plain old political reasons, seems to have started it all.
And this is hatchet job reporting, anyway.
Donald Trump is firing back on the Megyn Kelly episode in what for him is a familiar fashion — with a string of television appearances, and a long and scathing statement attacking his critics.
The New York businessman plans to hit Sunday morning talk shows on CNN, CBS, NBC and ABC in the wake of criticism over his suggestion that Kelly asked him harsh questions in the Thursday debate because of menstruation.
A day after Kelly asked Trump about past insults to women, the billionaire told CNN late Friday about the Fox News anchor: “You could see there was blood coming out of her eyes. Blood coming out of her wherever.”
Erick Erickson, organizer of the Red State Gathering of conservative activists, disinvited the billionaire from addressing the group Saturday, saying the “wherever” comment suggests that Trump believes Kelly asked him tough questions because she was having her period.
“I don’t want my daughter in the same room with Donald Trump,” Erickson said.
Israel and the Iran deal
Booman says both left and right in Israel oppose the deal.
One supposes with different ideas what would be better.
Meanwhile, he reduces Schumer's position, as he always does any position he doesn't like, to a calculation of interest.
Booman
Liberals are in an uproar against him.
The Hill
Bernie, on the other hand, says he supports the deal and will vote for it.
Bernie Sanders
Will the Jews in Congress split?
More for or more against?
Gateway pundit
O vs AIPAC
Fears of Lasting Rift as Obama Battles Pro-Israel Group on Iran
Pat Buchanan tells O to man up in his fight against Bibi and the Uber-Zionists.
How to Seal the Iran Deal
One supposes with different ideas what would be better.
Meanwhile, he reduces Schumer's position, as he always does any position he doesn't like, to a calculation of interest.
Booman
Liberals are in an uproar against him.
The Hill
Bernie, on the other hand, says he supports the deal and will vote for it.
Bernie Sanders
Will the Jews in Congress split?
More for or more against?
Gateway pundit
O vs AIPAC
Fears of Lasting Rift as Obama Battles Pro-Israel Group on Iran
Pat Buchanan tells O to man up in his fight against Bibi and the Uber-Zionists.
How to Seal the Iran Deal
Friday, August 7, 2015
Ask the Jews, the Poles, or the Russians
Hitler, the Nazis, and Mein Kampf advocated white supremacy, said an old episode of Fringe I was watching last night on Netflix.
Really?
And never mind bothering me with the cutesy redefinitions of who or what is a white person, so popular among some of the left who claim the Irish (for example) were not counted as white, at some point in the American or British past.
Really?
And never mind bothering me with the cutesy redefinitions of who or what is a white person, so popular among some of the left who claim the Irish (for example) were not counted as white, at some point in the American or British past.
As the rules change
During my lifetime various notable fashion rules went away.
When I was young, real men didn't wear shorts.
Real men didn't carry or use umbrellas.
Real men wore hats.
Men wore suits or at least jackets and ties not only to church but to nearly any social occasion, even if only to dinner at Grandma's house, and to work as well if the work wasn't manual labor.
The rule that men don't carry handbags might be going away, too, what with the increased popularity of small manbags for carrying laptops, books, notebooks, and other stuff when it gets to be too much for men's pockets.
But this?
Nah.
Bloomberg
When I was young, real men didn't wear shorts.
Real men didn't carry or use umbrellas.
Real men wore hats.
Men wore suits or at least jackets and ties not only to church but to nearly any social occasion, even if only to dinner at Grandma's house, and to work as well if the work wasn't manual labor.
The rule that men don't carry handbags might be going away, too, what with the increased popularity of small manbags for carrying laptops, books, notebooks, and other stuff when it gets to be too much for men's pockets.
But this?
Nah.
Bloomberg
Democrats are socialists? Phooey. Larry Elder is just lying.
Larry Elder
In his raw youth, Bernie was a fellow traveler who favored, for America, public ownership of some, but not all, of the means of production.
He seems to have been supportive of the more full-throated socialism of various Latin American regimes and movements, despite their being allied with the Soviet Union.
And of course he opposed the Vietnam War out of apparent sympathy with Ho's North Vietnamese communists, as did a good many people nowadays accounted leading liberal or left wing opinionists.
But the overwhelming majority of Democratic office seekers and holders are and have been pro-capitalist, rejecting anything beyond the customary level of public enterprise - schools, fire departments, highways, and the like - though convinced of the need for extensive public intervention in the economy for the public good and for some forms of public insurance like Medicare and Medicaid, as well as the public pension scheme, Social Security.
And they have been anti-communist.
As for O and BS both pushing for "universal health care," Bernie admires the British National Health Service (actual socialized medicine) but favors Medicare for all for America (socialized health insurance), while O went for subsidization and extension of private insurance along with expansion of eligibility for Medicaid, excluding even a "public option" from his plan.
Elders' article is pretty much just crap.
In his raw youth, Bernie was a fellow traveler who favored, for America, public ownership of some, but not all, of the means of production.
He seems to have been supportive of the more full-throated socialism of various Latin American regimes and movements, despite their being allied with the Soviet Union.
And of course he opposed the Vietnam War out of apparent sympathy with Ho's North Vietnamese communists, as did a good many people nowadays accounted leading liberal or left wing opinionists.
But the overwhelming majority of Democratic office seekers and holders are and have been pro-capitalist, rejecting anything beyond the customary level of public enterprise - schools, fire departments, highways, and the like - though convinced of the need for extensive public intervention in the economy for the public good and for some forms of public insurance like Medicare and Medicaid, as well as the public pension scheme, Social Security.
And they have been anti-communist.
As for O and BS both pushing for "universal health care," Bernie admires the British National Health Service (actual socialized medicine) but favors Medicare for all for America (socialized health insurance), while O went for subsidization and extension of private insurance along with expansion of eligibility for Medicaid, excluding even a "public option" from his plan.
Elders' article is pretty much just crap.
Schumer says No to the Iran deal
Will enough other Democrats join him to kill it, KOS wonders.
Others suggest this may hurt his chances for a leadership position in the senate in 2016.
Those who dislike his position of course give him no credit for sincerity, though they give no reason to doubt it.
Clearly, he's not buying O's foolish claim that a vote against his deal is a vote for war, and anyway he seems to reject the extreme view that America should go to war to stop Iran getting nukes, if nothing else will do the trick.
The way they are handling this treaty in disguise is wholly unconstitutional, anyway.
Thursday, August 6, 2015
Life of Pi
Pi's families are atypical for the modern world, though perhaps not for India.
He has a father, mother, and brother comprising with him an intact nuclear family until they are lost in the sinking that begins his terrible and remarkable adventure.
And then, years later, he has a wife and daughter in a happy family of his own.
Perhaps television is more honest about our living arrangements, these days.
Divorce overcomes marriage and never-married single moms are far more common than newlyweds.
Left damns immigration limits as racist
Anti-nationalism and cosmopolitanism are bolder, more dominant, more peremptory, and more vicious all the time, everywhere non-whites or anyway non-eurowhites want to gate-crash predominantly eurowhite territory.
Why "right wing"?
New Polish president Duda sworn in
Look at the agenda.
Because the contemporary left is strongly cosmopolitan in outlook.
They oppose ethnic and economic nationalism as racist and sovereign nations as a menace subversive of global justice, peace, and both political and economic order.
This piece of the contemporary left agenda is shared by the supra-nationalist, neoliberal right.
China apes in decline
Loss of world's rarest ape charted
Historical Chinese documents have helped scientists to track the decline of the world's rarest primates.
Today, China has between 26 and 28 Hainan gibbons left, but government records that date back to the 17th Century show that gibbons were once widespread across half of the country.
The apes began to disappear from the documents about 150 years ago, corresponding with population growth.
Fitbit
Lousy at measuring sleep, my Charge HR says 0 after you climb one flight but says 2 after two, and seems correct thereafter.
I wear it instead of a watch and hope the next upgrade provides a 12 hour day/date time display option.
Right now I use the 12 hour time and date option.
I use it primarily to track steps and miles walked.
Hatchets don't kill people, people do
Suspect dead after US cinema attack
Will anyone question this police killing?
Looks unnecessary, to me.
Bullshit
No vote on Iran deal is vote for war - Obama
Yes vote on Iran deal is vote for war - Netanyahu.
Anti-Trump propaganda
The GOP Is About to Become the Party of Trump
Among all segments of GOP voters he is the most popular of the declared candidates.
Wall Street, however, is not happy with him.
He opposes free trade, high volume low-wage immigration, and non-enforcement of the law against illegals.
He opposes meddling with Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid.
The story among those who oppose him on the left and the right is that his vigorous and frank views on immigration, especially, will hurt GOP efforts to "reach out" to Hispanics and blacks and thus hurt the party in 2016.
That is exactly the line taken by this hatchet job in Bloomberg Politics.
The left enjoys attacking him as a racist, though his actual positions on immigration and free trade are not terribly different from those of Bernie Sanders, who has himself already been race-baited on the matter by both left and right.
Needless to say, that "reaching out" thing is not the view of the Main Street conservatives who, like Pat Buchanan, Ann Coulter, and many others, have opposed high immigration and free trade for decades.
Obama, the black rock star, is not running in 2016.
The GOP already has both houses of the federal Congress and most state governments.
It can win the presidency against Hillary or against Bernie if too many minorities and the young lack enthusiasm or too many white people go for the Republican, or both.
Hillary is already losing share among white voters and especially white women.
What happened in the primaries of 2008 tells you all you need to know about how blacks really feel about her.
If Bernie picks up strength he will be attacked more vigorously than he has already been by both the sisterhood and professional black lefties, along with the white allies of the latter.
The eventual Democratic nominee is not going be able to rely on the Obama coalition.
The GOP might well win the White House, not by me-tooing the Democrats on everything liberals say is a litmus test about race, but by sticking with Main Street.
PS.
The story that the GOP has betrayed its own voters for decades is lefty propaganda aimed at undermining the GOP, too, by setting Main Street and Wall Street even more at each other's throats.
Just like the stuff about the need for "outreach."
Among all segments of GOP voters he is the most popular of the declared candidates.
Wall Street, however, is not happy with him.
He opposes free trade, high volume low-wage immigration, and non-enforcement of the law against illegals.
He opposes meddling with Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid.
The story among those who oppose him on the left and the right is that his vigorous and frank views on immigration, especially, will hurt GOP efforts to "reach out" to Hispanics and blacks and thus hurt the party in 2016.
That is exactly the line taken by this hatchet job in Bloomberg Politics.
The left enjoys attacking him as a racist, though his actual positions on immigration and free trade are not terribly different from those of Bernie Sanders, who has himself already been race-baited on the matter by both left and right.
Needless to say, that "reaching out" thing is not the view of the Main Street conservatives who, like Pat Buchanan, Ann Coulter, and many others, have opposed high immigration and free trade for decades.
Obama, the black rock star, is not running in 2016.
The GOP already has both houses of the federal Congress and most state governments.
It can win the presidency against Hillary or against Bernie if too many minorities and the young lack enthusiasm or too many white people go for the Republican, or both.
Hillary is already losing share among white voters and especially white women.
What happened in the primaries of 2008 tells you all you need to know about how blacks really feel about her.
If Bernie picks up strength he will be attacked more vigorously than he has already been by both the sisterhood and professional black lefties, along with the white allies of the latter.
The eventual Democratic nominee is not going be able to rely on the Obama coalition.
The GOP might well win the White House, not by me-tooing the Democrats on everything liberals say is a litmus test about race, but by sticking with Main Street.
PS.
The story that the GOP has betrayed its own voters for decades is lefty propaganda aimed at undermining the GOP, too, by setting Main Street and Wall Street even more at each other's throats.
Just like the stuff about the need for "outreach."
Wednesday, August 5, 2015
Life of Pi
No wonder this is a hit.
Liberal religion; girl religion.
50 pages in it seems very much a chick book.
100 pages in the ship sinks and we have an exciting and suspenseful story going.
Buchanan stands up for his boss
The Plot to Destroy Nixon
I hope we hear more about this.
So far it's just tu quoque.
Important, but not a real defense.
I hope we hear more about this.
So far it's just tu quoque.
Important, but not a real defense.
Labor and socialism in Britain
Re-nationalize the railroads?
There are many stupid ways to waste public money, but surely none is more stupid than the idea of renationalising the railways. Labour leadership contender Andy Burnham has announced that he is committed to this ridiculous, wasteful and unnecessary policy.
There are many stupid ways to waste public money, but surely none is more stupid than the idea of renationalising the railways. Labour leadership contender Andy Burnham has announced that he is committed to this ridiculous, wasteful and unnecessary policy.
British liberty, British freedom
Katie Hopkins questioned by police for 'inciting racial hatred' with migrants column
They never did quite get freedom of the press, anyway.
They actually hauled her in.
Do you get the impression numerous American web sites, web magazines, and even paper publications would not be legal, at all?
No wonder Muslim radicals think Brits are hypocrites for protesting their attempts to quash what, by Muslim law, is blasphemy.
They never did quite get freedom of the press, anyway.
They actually hauled her in.
Do you get the impression numerous American web sites, web magazines, and even paper publications would not be legal, at all?
No wonder Muslim radicals think Brits are hypocrites for protesting their attempts to quash what, by Muslim law, is blasphemy.
How the left takes sides on immigration
French police convinced direct action taken by migrants trying to storm Channel Tunnel is coordinated by British anarchists or far-Left activists
British far-left activists are “manipulating migrants” to stage mass intrusions into the Channel Tunnel and provoke violent clashes with security forces they depict as “savages”, French police have claimed.
The accusations came two days after a French officer was treated for face wounds after being struck by a rock apparently thrown by a Sudanese migrant in the first such incident inside the Eurotunnel site to date.
Migrants made around 1,700 attempts on Sunday night to penetrate the Eurotunnel premises in a bid to get to England.
The previous night, an “organised” group of around 200 migrants tried to “walk” to the UK via the Channel Tunnel, tearing down outer fences and charging past police with tear gas, chanting: “Open the borders!”
When they were rebuffed, they staged a sit-in that lasted into the early hours of before finally being dispersed.
British far-left activists are “manipulating migrants” to stage mass intrusions into the Channel Tunnel and provoke violent clashes with security forces they depict as “savages”, French police have claimed.
The accusations came two days after a French officer was treated for face wounds after being struck by a rock apparently thrown by a Sudanese migrant in the first such incident inside the Eurotunnel site to date.
Migrants made around 1,700 attempts on Sunday night to penetrate the Eurotunnel premises in a bid to get to England.
The previous night, an “organised” group of around 200 migrants tried to “walk” to the UK via the Channel Tunnel, tearing down outer fences and charging past police with tear gas, chanting: “Open the borders!”
When they were rebuffed, they staged a sit-in that lasted into the early hours of before finally being dispersed.
Tuesday, August 4, 2015
My party is dead wrong on the whole climate change, fossil fuels issue
2016 candidates weigh in on Clean Power Plan
At least since Clinton's and Gore's Kyoto fiasco, the Democrats have been all wet on this.
Sure, they were right cleaning up the smog.
But so were the Republicans.
Richard Nixon created the EPA.
But this just isn't about that.
At least since Clinton's and Gore's Kyoto fiasco, the Democrats have been all wet on this.
Sure, they were right cleaning up the smog.
But so were the Republicans.
Richard Nixon created the EPA.
But this just isn't about that.
Damn that filibuster thingee, gizmo.
Senate vote to defund Planned Parenthood fails
The fight over funding for Planned Parenthood shifts to a must-pass government funding measure this fall after a procedural vote in the Senate on legislation that would have barred all federal funds for the group failed on Monday.
The vote was 53-46, meaning the measure failed the get the 60 votes needed to overcome a Democratic filibuster on bringing the bill up for debate.
So the Democrats wouldn't even let then bring it to the floor for open debate.
Much, much too embarrassing, I suppose.
The fight over funding for Planned Parenthood shifts to a must-pass government funding measure this fall after a procedural vote in the Senate on legislation that would have barred all federal funds for the group failed on Monday.
The vote was 53-46, meaning the measure failed the get the 60 votes needed to overcome a Democratic filibuster on bringing the bill up for debate.
So the Democrats wouldn't even let then bring it to the floor for open debate.
Much, much too embarrassing, I suppose.
What does Bernie actually think?
How Hillary Clinton will go after Bernie Sanders on race
Does Bernie think most of the hoopla about race these days is bullshit, which it is?
Maybe; maybe not.
Does he think the biggest race problem in America is endless black rancor, which it is?
No evidence for that.
All the same, he clearly does not want to be part of the race-baiting faction of the left.
Is Hillary really all that different from him, though, in any of these or any other relevant respect?
In the campaign of 2008 it was accounted racism by some and a gaffe by most when she endorsed the view that white judges and liberal pols, foremost among them the Warren court and LBJ, played an indispensable role in the civil rights revolution of the 60s.
For a while, back then, it was touch and go, you may recall, whether it would be accounted racist among Democrats to observe that black people did not end slavery all by themselves, white voters, Lincoln, and the Union Army having done their part.
Does her campaign really want to get into a competition about which white Democratic politicians are the most racially "sensitive," "aware," and PC?
And if she does is it all just going to be about talk or will it have some substance?
Does Hillary plan to follow Obama and advocate money-spending programs aimed specifically and exclusively, or at any rate mostly, at benefiting black people in some way, with that object frankly in mind?
Programs that make it abundantly clear the infamous liberal disparate impact test only forbids what advantages whites or disadvantages blacks, intentionally or inadvertently, but not vice versa?
Will she follow O's and Holder's example and condemn the entire American law enforcement system, proposing some good things but also some reforms that do little but require black crime and black criminals be given special, soft treatment?
We have seen Republicans driven so far to the right on race and other issues in their primaries that they can't undo the damage in the generals.
Are we going to see Democrats driven so far left on race - and maybe elsewhere - in the primaries they will not be able to undo the damage in the generals?
Does Bernie think most of the hoopla about race these days is bullshit, which it is?
Maybe; maybe not.
Does he think the biggest race problem in America is endless black rancor, which it is?
No evidence for that.
All the same, he clearly does not want to be part of the race-baiting faction of the left.
Is Hillary really all that different from him, though, in any of these or any other relevant respect?
In the campaign of 2008 it was accounted racism by some and a gaffe by most when she endorsed the view that white judges and liberal pols, foremost among them the Warren court and LBJ, played an indispensable role in the civil rights revolution of the 60s.
For a while, back then, it was touch and go, you may recall, whether it would be accounted racist among Democrats to observe that black people did not end slavery all by themselves, white voters, Lincoln, and the Union Army having done their part.
Does her campaign really want to get into a competition about which white Democratic politicians are the most racially "sensitive," "aware," and PC?
And if she does is it all just going to be about talk or will it have some substance?
Does Hillary plan to follow Obama and advocate money-spending programs aimed specifically and exclusively, or at any rate mostly, at benefiting black people in some way, with that object frankly in mind?
Programs that make it abundantly clear the infamous liberal disparate impact test only forbids what advantages whites or disadvantages blacks, intentionally or inadvertently, but not vice versa?
Will she follow O's and Holder's example and condemn the entire American law enforcement system, proposing some good things but also some reforms that do little but require black crime and black criminals be given special, soft treatment?
We have seen Republicans driven so far to the right on race and other issues in their primaries that they can't undo the damage in the generals.
Are we going to see Democrats driven so far left on race - and maybe elsewhere - in the primaries they will not be able to undo the damage in the generals?
Will this work?
Weight-loss clothing tricks your body into burning 1,000 extra calories a day
The Thin Ice insole and vest 'hacks' your body's metabolism to make it burn more calories, according to its creator.
When the temperature drops, your body compensates to warm you up by shivering.
It is this process that is being hijacked to burn extra calories.
Thin Ice clothing line was created by Toronto-based personal trainer and former athlete Adam Paulin.
'Based on estimates derived from our prototypes, competitors and scientific literature we estimate that you'll be able to burn between 500 and 1,000 calories a day, just by wearing our clothing for the recommended duration,' said Paulin.
The Thin Ice insole and vest 'hacks' your body's metabolism to make it burn more calories, according to its creator.
When the temperature drops, your body compensates to warm you up by shivering.
It is this process that is being hijacked to burn extra calories.
Thin Ice clothing line was created by Toronto-based personal trainer and former athlete Adam Paulin.
'Based on estimates derived from our prototypes, competitors and scientific literature we estimate that you'll be able to burn between 500 and 1,000 calories a day, just by wearing our clothing for the recommended duration,' said Paulin.
It's never really about the truth
Think of that movie about Nanking.
You would think there would be too many witnesses and perhaps even too much physical evidence for flat denial to be more plausible than Holocaust denial.
Japan revisionists deny WW2 sex slave atrocities
Tamogami's blatantly racist revisionism goes well beyond denial of sex slavery and ranks with Holocaust denial for brass and hatefulness.
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