The pseudonym "Philo Vaihinger" has been abandoned. All posts have been and are written by me, Joseph Auclair.

Thursday, June 30, 2016

Vote for Trump? Me?

An online test put up by Republicans that relied only on issue positions but left out a lot of issues and anyway assumed all issues could be assigned weights of 1 through 5 for purposes of evaluating candidate compatibility said I should vote for Trump, by a considerable margin.

Even if it is true that there are no such things as litmus tests or absolute deal breakers, this radically underestimates the difference in importance between something utterly trivial and something literally life or death.

There were no questions about protectionism, abandoning NATO, abandoning non-proliferation, or Social Security, and not enough questions about Medicare.

There were no questions about dealing with debt by defaulting or inflating the currency.

There were no questions about the EU.

There were no questions about the candidates' commitment to separation of powers, republicanism, faithful execution of the laws, or protection of and loyalty to American political institutions.

There were far too few questions about torture and there was nothing about "going after their families."

And nothing about credibility, trustworthiness, character, depth of understanding of the issues, or suitability for the office.

There were a lot of questions but it was all the same a shallow and poorly designed test.

I will be voting for the Democratic nominee, and I hope that will be Hillary.

Hillary leads, again

But not by much.

Clinton extends lead over Trump

Hillary Clinton leads Donald Trump by six points, 44% to 38%, in a Fox News poll of registered voters released Wednesday, marking an uptick from similar polls released in May and June.

The Fox News results follow a rough patch for the Trump campaign: 

In May, the presumptive Republican nominee enjoyed a three-point lead in the same survey. 

But by early June, those numbers had flipped, with Clinton jumping out to a 42% to 39% advantage.

CNN's Poll of Polls -- an average of results for the five most recent publicly released national polls that meet CNN's standards for publication -- has Clinton leading Trump 46% to 40%.

Get out of that car!

Feds: Stop driving these Honda models right now

Federal safety regulators warned owners of more than 300,000 Hondas and Acuras that they should not drive their cars until their Takata airbags are replaced. 

The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration said new tests show these airbags have a much higher risk of exploding and killing a driver or passenger. 

The risk for these particular cars is now greater than 50%, according to the agency. Other Takata airbags have less than a 1% chance of exploding.

"The risk posed by the airbag inflators in these vehicles is grave, and it is critical they be repaired now to avoid more deaths and serious injuries," said the agency's statement.

The Dow is up nearly 200 points, right now. 1:19 pm EDT

Frexit, next?

As the EU speeds up the process of admitting Turkey, just think how that would affect Frexit.

Next up for the EU: a Frexit referendum?

Nexit, Frexit or Italeave? British vote fires up EU's 'Outers'

Fact checking on the Orlando killer

Nope, not gay.

Not even bi.

Just a home grown Muslim Jihader who would never have existed without Muslim immigration.

This Hidden Fact Predicts Terrorism

This is wrong.

Republicans who are furious with Trump for proposing that we hit the pause button on this one category of Third World mass immigration have nothing at all to say about the census report this week showing Teddy Kennedy’s 1965 immigration act has so transformed the country that a majority of babies born in the United States today are not white.

Immigration didn't do that.

White women deciding not to conceive, and to kill their little buns in the oven when they do, did that.

I believe Ms. Coulter is in fact pro-life, on the whole.

But does she oppose contraception?

Does she favor tax policies and employment laws making parenting more attractive for working women and less attractive for the chronically unemployed?

To make marriage a better option for parents than singleness, and lasting marriage better yet?

And America becoming less white is not intrinsically a bad thing, anyway, and would be a lot less problematic if our classe politique would lay off intentionally pouring gasoline on fires for partisan advantage.

Yes, that comment does aim directly at Ms. Coulter - though of course not only at her and by no means only, or even mostly, at Republicans.

Anyway, she makes a good point about the EU, Turkey, and Brexit.

The Guardian fact checks Trump

Fact-check: Donald Trump on trade, globalization and the Clintons

The topic is Il Duce's comments in Monessen the other day.

They admit he was mostly right, in particular concerning the adverse effect freer trade has had on the American working class.

Democrats including Hillary really don't plan to do much about it.

And the fair trade rules Bernie calls for would protect foreign workers who make what we import, not the jobs of American workers.

They mean the foreigners who get jobs in the factories that replace American factories are protected against the worst forms of exploitation.

They do nothing to seriously slow the exportation of jobs free trade has entailed, let alone stop it, and the notion fair trade rules can reverse job exportation is an utter fantasy.

Nobody but Trump is proposing use of the only tools that could stop or reverse the flow of manufacturing jobs out of the US, tariffs and even selective import quotas and prohibitions.

Nobody.

This is one of those issues both major parties have simply refused to address for decades, watching with folded arms as the American working class got hammered.

And that is one of the reasons Trump has been able to so successfully challenge everyone else.

Just as the refusal of the European classe politique to give an inch on concerns about Islam and immigration has empowered the opposition to the very existence of the EU, so the refusal of the American classe politique to lift a finger to protect American labor from globalization has empowered Trump's rebellion.

And the irony is it is far from clear he would really even try to use such tools.

It is highly unlikely the congress would go along with him, anyway.

Opponents of his plan to raise tariffs point to the dangers of trade war and the harm done by raising tariffs in 1930.

Defenders point out we have for decades been running huge trade deficits anyway with the very countries from which our markets need protection, so our economy would suffer less harm from lost exports to them than it would gain by protection from imports from them.

Economists more and more seem to be admitting the protectionists have the better case.

So it seems, anyway.

Brexit didn't even slow it down

EU opens new phase in Turkey membership bid talks

Hard to imagine anything the EU could do that would more incense the anti-EU movement.

In a week when it has been urged the EU must back off on the hot button issues that have driven anti-EU populism all over Europe this is a step in exactly the opposite direction, a provocation, a whack at the hornet's nest.

Wednesday, June 29, 2016

Into the historic shit

Voters and political leaders together can ruin perfectly decent states.

Mussolini and Italy, Hitler and Germany, Allende and Chile.

And many have been the lesser disasters.

Trump and the voters who favor him are really making me nervous.

There's too much George Wallace in him, and too much of his supporters in them.

Market up, again, today

In two days the Dow has recovered a good bit of what it lost last Friday and Monday.

But by no means all that it lost.

How Merkel made Brexit

OK, Cameron's gamble was not smart but stupid and irresponsible if he really didn't want Britain out of the EU.

All the same, Merkel's arrogant impositions of her policies on refugees and the admission of Turkey to the EU on everybody else strengthened the Leave forces just enough.

Things for which The Guardian, by the way, and others of that ilk, though strongly pro-Remain, cheered her for her "moral leadership."

The Road to Brexit: How Merkel Thwarted Cameron’s Smart Gamble

A Brexit bump, after all?

Poll: Clinton and Trump run neck-and-neck

A new Quinnipiac University poll shows Hillary Clinton leading Trump by just two points, 42% to 40%, a much closer race than other recent surveys have shown.

That's within the margin of error.

With third-party candidates included, Clinton leads 39% to 37%, with Libertarian Party nominee Gary Johnson at 8% and Green Party candidate Jill Stein at 4%.

. . . .

Quinnipiac found an alarming statistic: 

61% of those surveyed say the 2016 election has increased the level of hatred and prejudice in the United States -- compared to just 34% who say it has had no impact.

Of that 61%, 67% blame Trump and 16% blame Clinton.

The survey also found a majority of voters -- 58% for Trump, and 53% for Clinton -- said each would not be a good president.

There is no remedy for a runaway presidency but impeachment.

Just another deplorable feature of our deplorable constitution.

Thanks a lot, Framers.

And there is not a chance in hell a Republican congress will impeach their own guy, no matter what he does.

‘For heaven’s sake man, go!’

David Cameron says Jeremy Corbyn should resign

Cameron began by dismissing Corbyn’s apparent argument that austerity or poverty could have played a role in contributing to the loss by the remain side in the EU referendum.

“We all have to reflect on our role in the referendum campaign,” Cameron told the opposition leader, taking aim at Corbyn for his perceived lacklustre support for staying in the EU. 

“I know the honourable gentleman says he put his back into it. All I’d say, I’d hate to see him when he’s not trying.”

Pressed again on child poverty, Cameron became visibly angry. 

He told Corbyn: “If he’s looking for excuses about why the side he and I were on [lost] the referendum, frankly he should look somewhere else. 

"And I have to say to the honourable gentleman, he talks about job insecurity with my two months to go. 

"It might be in my party’s interest for him to sit there. It’s not in the national interest. I would say – for heaven’s sake, man, go.”

Tory MPs cheered riotously, to continued silence from the Labour benches, who had barely acknowledged any of their leader’s prior answers. 

On Tuesday, more than three-quarters of Labour MPs, 172 in all, voted to say they had no confidence in Corbyn’s leadership, while 40 voted for him.

Ed Miliband calls for Jeremy Corbyn to resign as Labour leader over Brexit

Labor office holders have always overwhelmingly opposed him, but the membership chose him and apparently would again in another leadership contest.

Ed Miliband, the former Labour leader, has called for Jeremy Corbyn to resign, saying he has lost the confidence of the party’s MPs in parliament and his position has become untenable.

Miliband, who introduced the leadership election process that helped Corbyn sweep to power last September, and whom some MPs blamed for dragging the party to the left, had previously supported Corbyn.

But after rolling mass resignations from the shadow cabinet, which have continued into Tuesday with Pat Glass resigning as shadow education secretary just two days after being appointed, Milband said it was time for Labour to unite around an alternative candidate.

. . . .

All of Labour’s 20 MEPs published a statement withdrawing their support from the leader. 

One senior party source said: “It’s not a coup, it’s a riot.”

. . . .

Corbyn’s allies have made clear that he has no intention of stepping aside, and members of his team are readying themselves for a contest.

. . . .

A defiant Corbyn has vowed to fight on despite an overwhelming vote of no confidence by his own MPs, who declared their wish to see him gone by a margin of more than four to one.

But while his Westminster colleagues are lined up against him, the leader appears confident he still commands sufficient support among the wider membership to emerge victorious once again. 

Crucially, he also appears to enjoy the support of trade union chiefs.

McDonnell, Corbyn’s closest ally, told reporters as he left his home on Wednesday morning that he accepted there would be a leadership challenge, but urged Labour MPs to calm down.

He said: “It looks as though we will have a leadership election now … All we are saying to Labour MPs is play by the rules, play by the rules of our party, and if there is to be a democratic election, respect the wishes of our members.”

Just another "Stop Trump" movement?

This is a big year for people who specialize in denial, people who flat refuse to see the handwriting on the wall.

Think of the Sanders supporters who still want the Democratic convention to give the nomination to him.

Think of the Republicans who still want their convention to give the nomination to somebody, anybody else than Donald Trump.

And now for the people who imagine Brexit can be stopped.

UK voted for Brexit – but is there a way back?

John Kerry: Brexit could be 'walked back'

The official story and the general feeling among the British classe politique is still that democracy must have its way as promised, the decision is final, and Brexit is inevitable.

But people are still not actually planning to do it, to pull it off, and are instead wandering in a daze, indulging in fantasies of denial.

Is Hillary just a techno-clod?

Some people just don't get it well enough to use one email account for work and another for personal stuff.

Jesus, don't tens of millions of us do exactly that every day, though, just in the US alone?

Damned hard to believe she could never figure that out.

Clinton's email use bugged her aide

Bernie shifts to global economic revolution

Bernie Sanders: Democrats Need to Wake Up

This is not Bernie using his hard won high profile to shift from seeking the Democratic nomination to supporting Hillary and the Democratic Party against Trump and the Republican Party.

This is Bernie the Seattle rioter, the global anti-capitalist revolutionary jumping up and down and angrily shouting in rage.

Rage at a human race born in naked poverty, a humanity that spent most of history as poor as the most desperate Chinese peasant of the 19th Century, a human world in which wealth remains exceptional and the erratic race between progress and poverty sees now one and now the other dash ahead.

Rage at the global poverty against which progress still races, and at the inequality that is in any case intrinsic to capitalism.

Rage at the global capitalism, itself, that Obama and Hillary support, endorse, and seek to ameliorate.

We so are not all socialists, now.

And then he pivots to briefly damning those who supported Brexit and those who support Trump while espousing the left wing fake version of economic nationalism, before with his usual hypocrisy pretending to take their side and share their rage, as he has done throughout his campaign.

We need to fundamentally reject our “free trade” policies and move to fair trade. 

"Fair trade" is what cosmopolitans urge to steal votes from economic nationalists who urge tariffs or even bans on importing specified products.

It does not and cannot keep jobs in America and is not intended to, but only ensures that the foreigners who get our jobs are not too awfully exploited.

It is what Denis Kucinich and David Sirota used to talk about while pretending they wanted to stop factories moving to Mexico or China when what they really wanted to do was make those lost American jobs even more beneficial to the Mexican and Chinese workers who took them.

Americans should not have to compete against workers in low-wage countries who earn pennies an hour. 

Absolutely not.

We need to insure those workers in low wage countries at least earn dimes and quarters.

That is what "fair trade" is all about.

We must defeat the Trans-Pacific Partnership. 

And then he ends pretending, as he has all along, that he wants to prioritize Americans while demanding policies that would harm Americans for the purpose of benefiting others around the world, as well as future owners of beach-front and shore level property.

We must help poor countries develop sustainable economic models.

. . . .

We need to create tens of millions of jobs worldwide by combating global climate change and by transforming the world’s energy system away from fossil fuels.

We need international efforts to cut military spending around the globe and address the causes of war: poverty, hatred, hopelessness and ignorance.

Those are the causes of war, huh?

My God, what awful left-wing twaddle.

The notion that Donald Trump could benefit from the same forces that gave the Leave proponents a majority in Britain should sound an alarm for the Democratic Party in the United States. 

Millions of American voters, like the Leave supporters, are understandably angry and frustrated by the economic forces that are destroying the middle class.

In this pivotal moment, the Democratic Party and a new Democratic president need to make clear that we stand with those who are struggling and who have been left behind. 

We must create national and global economies that work for all, not just a handful of billionaires.

So writes the global radical who has all along worn the sheep's clothing of faux economic nationalism, his crude redistributionism amiably attired as Scandinavian social democracy.

There is a lot more Chavez/Madero/Pope Francis in this fellow than he has clearly let on.

Had he been chosen as the Democrats' nominee Trump and the Republicans would have eaten him alive.

PS.

Yes, all this means that the establishment left and the establishment right actually agree that Americans are overpaid.

Raising the minimum wage in a context of free trade will not actually help American workers that much as it will mostly just drive factories out of America even faster, possibly at the cost of a rise in inflation putting a nasty ding in people's - and especially retirees - nesteggs.

But that will help make the globalizing plutes even richer (conservatives: Yay!) while pleasing cosmopolitan liberals and libertarians who think giving poor foreigners our jobs benefits the globally worst off, does the greatest good for the greatest number, and helps equalize the global playing field.

Ditto open borders and high-volume low-wage immigration.

In contrast to all of which Donald Trump, alone, stands for positions on trade and immigration that put America First.

Like voting for who?

Sometime during the campaign of 2008 George Will said voting for Barack Obama was like voting for Fred Astaire, the man is so elegant and has so much class.

Voting for Donald Trump would be like voting for Benito Mussolini, the man is such a bombastic, blowhard thug.

As I have said before, though I approve the amendment and think two terms for a president are enough, I often regret I can't vote for Barack Obama again.

And, now that I think of it, if Hillary wants a woman for the VP slot, why not a black woman?

I do like Pocahontas, but still, two white women?

Or a white woman and a white man?

Find a black politician in the vein of Barack Obama, please, and offer him or her the VP job.

Damn Obama Derangement Syndrome, anyhow.

Barack Obama has been a fine president and it has been and still is good for the country to see a black person up at the top of the ticket, or next in line.

Let's put another nail in the coffin of the Republican Party.

This is the attack that provided the occasion for Trump's renewed disgrace.

Tuesday, June 28, 2016

Stolichnaya

Goes down almost like water, with remarkably little aftertaste.

Reading The Dain Curse, Dashiell Hammet, 1928.

Marine Le Pen in NYT tells a fantastic lie

After Brexit, the People’s Spring Is Inevitable

It's about democracy and freedom, she says, comparing the EU to the USSR.

To the extent that the democracy deficit she complains of has any foundation in reality it is because so many of the major decisions on how Europe is governed are actually embodied in treaties negotiated among and adopted by the national governments and then enforced by the EU bureaucracy.

Yet that is really not very different a method of controlling and changing arrangements than our method of adopting constitutional amendments, and it has in some cases been in a sense more democratic in that some of the treaties have been subjected to popular consultation in some of the nations.

And, anyway, that's really neither here nor there since, in the name of ethno-nationalism, Marine Le Pen denies democratic legitimacy to the very idea of a European law made by a European parliament.

And what about the European Parliament? 

It’s democratic in appearance only, because it’s based on a lie: the pretense that there is a homogeneous European people, and that a Polish member of the European Parliament has the legitimacy to make law for the Spanish. 

We have tried to deny the existence of sovereign nations. 

It’s only natural that they would not allow being denied.

In that one sentence she insists on the brazen lie that democratic legitimacy can only occur in a mono-ethnic polity, whether or not ethnicity is understood as a matter of culture, blood, or in some dosage of both.

And the list of "nation states" in Europe that are not, in fact, mono-ethnic is quite long, if it doesn't quite include all the states of Europe.

Not to mention pretty nearly every country in the Americas and nearly all of them anywhere else in the world.

Even Japan, often cited by Buchananites as an example of a state determinedly homogeneous is not, in fact, mono-ethnic.

It is an extremely rare condition, if it really exists anywhere, and mono-ethnicity is a damned silly political goal.

Like Pat Buchanan, she takes tribalism pretty far into fine-grained absurdity.

And I'm pretty sure for both of them the blood part of ethnic identity is pretty important.

Liberals wring their hands

E J Dionne says center left and right parties need to learn a lesson and do something for those left behind in the era of globalization.

Fair enough, and even true.

Even true and important.

But like what?

Not a hint.

What could or should the democratic parties of Germany and Italy have done to diminish the appeal of Hitler and Mussolini?

There is some truth to the idea that people in Europe were frightened into fascism by communism, though in Spain it was both revolutionary Marxism and anarchism.

That's not the whole story, but it's certainly part of it.

So what's frightening Europeans, today?

Islam.

Trump vs free trade in Pittsburgh


Preaching to the choir in this town.

If he takes Pennsylvania and Ohio the Democrats could be in a lot of trouble.

It looks right now like Republican control of the Congress - the House and the Senate - is safe, no matter who takes the White House.

And so?

So Hillary's agenda is DOA and her preferred nominees for the Supremes may not even get a hearing, assuming she wins.

Republicans now waiting for 2017 may well prefer to wait for 2021, reminding everyone the constitution does not require there be any particular number of Supremes.

And if Trump wins?

He and the Congressional Republicans will add a few Supremes, putting not just Obamacare but a whole lot of the legacy of The Great Society and The New Deal in danger - and so putting me and my wife personally in danger.

God knows what else the Republican Congress might do with this "master of the art of the deal."

But it is highly questionable the same folks who have given us generations of free trade treaties would implement his protectionist agenda.

So that would also be DOA, most likely, if this is not one of the things he changes his mind about and just drops, anyway.

Some of what Trump purports to stand for and his supporters want deserves a much better champion than Il Duce.

Nor would he get his Wall, and neither would he get much help from the Congress in trying to deport 11 million people, no matter how much he yelps about it.

He might get changes to legislation significantly cutting low-wage legal immigration, though.

What if Bernie won, the Bernie of that NYT manifesto, and faced that Republican Congress?

Just the thing to exacerbate polarization.

Medicare for All?

Free tuition at all public colleges and universities?

What, are you high?

An invitation to paralysis and exacerbated polarization.

Sharpening the contradictions, one might say.

Just another way to seriously damage the republic.

The new age of extremes

In America and in Europe, that's what this era of populist revolt, so often compared to the 1930s, is all about.

Leftist voters want to be more radical in their means and in their ends, and either push their parties left or support new and more leftist parties.

Rightist voters want to be more radical in means and ends and either push their parties to the right or support new and more rightist parties.

In the 30's, sour and rebellious nationalism wrecked the then liberal order in Europe with fascism.

And maybe now it will wreck the new liberal order in Europe with Buchananism.

I would rather not live in interesting times.

On the other hand, if death is the alternative . . . .

Markets bouncing back a little, today

Denying an opportunity for a second thought

No Brexit general election if Boris Johnson wins Tory leadership

A pro-Brexit Tory, Johnson is not about to risk the legitimacy of his favorite project by calling for a general election in which, presumably, he and the Tories would run for Leave while Labor would run for Remain.

Corbyn won't leave

Jeremy Corbyn suffers heavy loss in Labour MPs confidence vote

No confidence by 172 to 40.

He was chosen as party leader by Labor voters, not Labor MPs, who were for the most part horrified at his victory.

Another case of party establishment vs party membership.

So he won't resign.

There is talk of trying to force a new leadership election to get rid of him.

Cheerleaders for chaos, vulnerability, weakness, insecurity

Buchananism

What he calls "ethno-nationalism" and "tribalism" the left routinely calls "xenophobia" and "racism".

Cheered and emboldened, Pat Buchanan celebrates Brexit and looks forward to the breakup into mini-nation states of Spain, the UK, Italy, Belgium, Ukraine, Romania, Georgia, and again Russia, just for starters.

Odd he hasn't suggested Germany and Austria rethink Anschluss.

As I have written elsewhere, secession should be a lot more deliberate, and more deliberated, than the British plebiscite.

PB's optimistic description of Trumpism at home.

What might a Trumpian policy of Americanism over globalism entail?

A 10 to 20 percent tariff on manufactured goods to wipe out the trade deficit in goods, with the hundreds of billions in revenue used to slash or eliminate corporate taxes in the USA.

Every U.S. business would benefit. Every global company would have an incentive not only to move production here, but its headquarters here.

An “America first” immigration policy would secure the border, cut legal immigration to tighten U.S. labor markets, strictly enforce U.S. laws against those breaking into our country, and get tough with businesses that make a practice of hiring people here illegally.

When they tried that under Hoover in 1930 it significantly deepened and prolonged the Great Depression.

But circumstances then were quite different and the trade affected was among advanced nations and not, as now, between America and nations whose goods are cheaper than we can make them only because their workers live like ours did around 1900.

Nations to which we export precious little, anyway, as our decades of huge trade deficits testify.

Richard Wolffe has a different notion of Trumpism in the White House.

The currency and bond markets will get spooked by the dawning reality of a new president who, over the next decade, will likely add $11.5tn to the already huge national debt of $14tn.

As the traders and analysts consider that ballooning debt, they will recall Trump’s plan to default on that debt by renegotiating with creditors in some giant national bankruptcy proceeding. 

“I would borrow knowing that if the economy crashed, you could make a deal,” he told CNBC.

If all that weren’t enough to dump the dollar and Treasury bonds, the markets could always justify their panic by considering Trump’s next step. 

When economists challenged his debt default idea, Trump had another brainwave that is well known to the rulers of banana republics: 

“First of all, you never have to default because you print the money,” he explained on CNN.

As that financial crisis unfolds, President-elect Trump will ready his plan to declare China a currency manipulator in January 2017 and impose a 45% tariff on Chinese imports. 

The result will be a trade war with the single largest holder of US debt, as well as a swift referral to the World Trade Organization.

This scenario does not faze the property developer, who helpfully explained last month: “Who the hell cares if there’s a trade war?”

. . . .

It’s not clear, seven months away from his inauguration, whether Trump will cave first on his madcap Mexican wall or his half-baked ban on Muslim visitors. 

If the wall is unreal, the Muslim ban is unfathomable, just like the anti-immigration plans of the Brexit mob.

But he has already caved on the Muslim ban, in a limited way and a manner of speaking, in his latest major flip-flop.

And anyway says he can do it all on his own.

Which brings us back to the real source of the chaos. 

In the aftermath of the Brexit vote, the most striking development has been the rapid collapse of political leadership on both sides of the House of Commons. 

The Conservative prime minister resigned and much of the Labour shadow cabinet followed suit. 

That rapid collapse could only happen because their leadership was so weak in the first place: weak enough to allow the populists to rise up.

The same is true in Washington, where Republican leaders say they will vote for Trump, but not endorse him; where they condemn his Muslim ban, but praise his performance on a golf course.

On the left, the story is the depressingly similar. 

Bernie Sanders says he will vote for Hillary Clinton, but stops short of conceding the nomination. 

And Clinton’s polling strength is partly built on the fact that she is not disliked quite as much as Trump.

The rapid collapse of Britain’s old world order should serve as a clear warning across the Atlantic. 

The certainties of political debate, market valuations and community relations can all burn up in a few short days.

Define "gaudy"

India.

Monday, June 27, 2016

Are humans to be trusted with nuclear power?

Coverup Of Fukushima Meltdown by Japanese Government in Concert with TEPCO

Radioactive "Glassy Soot" Fell Over Tokyo After the Fukushima Meltdown

What will happen to the use of English in the EU, now?

Brexit: l'Union européenne pourra-t-elle encore parler anglais?

Malta and Ireland are both anglophone members but the former lists its official language as Maltese and the latter lists Gaelic.

Only the UK listed English, and it's now headed for the exit.

And yet English is the most frequently used language of EU officialdom and is recognized as the language of the world.

Still, the day after the vote Junker used only French and German in speaking of the British vote.

L'anglais est la langue la plus pratiquée dans les institutions européennes. 

Le retrait du Royaume-Uni remet-il en cause son statut?

Labor rebels against Corbyn

Grande débandade chez les travaillistes après le Brexit

Supposedly this is because of his far too lazy support of the Remain position in the runup to the Brexit vote, which he has admitted, but the truth is the office holders and officials of the Labor Party loathe him, anyway, viewing him as too left-wing to lead Labor to anything but electoral ruin.

25 members of his shadow cabinet have quit

Him MPs are demanding he resign but he won't do it.

A defiant Jeremy Corbyn has said he will not step down as Leader of the Labour Party despite pressures from within the parliamentary wing of his party and protest resignations from his shadow cabinet. 

He said that he is willing to stand in a leadership contest again, and will only step down if he loses the confidence of the party members who elected him.

Mr. Corbyn faces a crucial meeting of Labour’s parliamentary party members on Monday where a no confidence motion will be debated. 

Twenty-five members of his shadow cabinet have resigned in protest against his leadership, and even his deputy leader, Tom Watson, appears to be sympathetic to their case. 

He reportedly told Mr. Corbyn that he had lost the confidence of the Parliamentary Labour Party.

The unions have announced their support for Mr. Corbyn, as have a large section of ordinary party members. 

Momentum, the grassroots campaign network have been active on Facebook and social media gathering support for him, and is organizing a public meeting in his support even as the crucial parliamentary party meeting gets underway.

His supporters argue that Mr. Corbyn took an honest and nuanced campaign position, arguing for the U.K. to stay in the European Union, but to also seek to reform EU in the direction of greater democracy, transparency and accountability.

In a recent BBC interview, Mr. Corbyn’s ally Diane Abbott accused his critics of using the referendum result to trigger a coup that was long in the making, right from when Mr. Corbyn was elected with an overwhelming popular mandate in September last year. 

At that time their opposition to the newly-elected leader could not find focus or support, and indeed subsequently many of his critics joined the shadow cabinet on his explicit invitation.

Out is out

We do not control this process

This is really going to hurt Britain.

The US wants a strong EU, says John Kerry in Brussels.

"Les Etats-Unis veulent une UE forte", a-t-il lancé, rappelant sans ambages : "le vote n'a pas donné le résultat que nous souhaitions".

"Depuis la Seconde Guerre mondiale, nous avons tous travaillé à développer ensemble une structure pour rendre nos pays plus forts et offrir une bonne vie à nos concitoyens", a insisté M. Kerry.

"Il n'y a pas un seul sujet aujourd'hui, que ce soit le changement climatique, la lutte contre le terrorisme, l'immigration, et tant d'autres, où nous ne travaillons pas ensemble", a-t-il rappelé.

And in London he had more to say.

"Oui, la relation entre l'UE et le Royaume va changer", a-t-il déclaré à Londres lors d'une conférence de presse conjointe avec M. Hammond. 

"Mais ce qui ne changera jamais, c'est que nous sommes plus forts lorsque nous sommes ensemble en tant que communauté transatlantique et trouvons un terrain commun ancré dans nos valeurs communes de liberté, libre marché, égalité et tolérance", a-t-il ajouté.

L'administration américaine, le président Barack Obama en tête, s'était nettement engagée au cours des derniers mois en faveur du maintien du Royaume-Uni dans l'UE, craignant notamment des retombées négatives d'un "Brexit".

"Je regrette personnellement le fait que le Royaume-Uni ne sera plus à la table des discussions quand il y aura un dialogue Etat-Unis/UE", a dit M. Kerry, aux côtés de [Brit Foreign Minister] M. Hammond.

As noted, they will not be in the room.

The Dow closed another 260 points down, today.

Merkel: Keep the EU together

Stop others following Britain out the door

Mrs Merkel said the EU needs to stop other countries following Britain out of the door amid market fears that the bloc is 'no longer governable' after Brexit.

The German Chancellor told her conservative party board in a conference call that it was necessary to prevent other European Union members going down the same path as Britain.

Merkel is also said to have revealed that international financial markets are concerned the EU is 'no longer governable' in the wake of Britain's exit vote.

She added that it was not the right time to pursue a quick deepening of cooperation between euro zone member states. 

The EU should instead act on popular concerns such as securing the bloc's borders, creating jobs and improve internal security, she said. 

Better late than never, but is it too late?

Anyway, assume that the EU does not break up.

Then what of UK-US-EU relations?

If you aren't in the room you won't be heard.

America will dump Britain for the EU if it has to

Market madness and political madness

The Dow lost more than 600 points Friday and has lost another 220 so far today, and markets worldwide are in shock.

All because Brexit means, of course, the end of life on Earth as we know it and have known it for more than half a century.

And apparently it might.

Blithely ignoring the panic on global markets and the extraordinary wreckage so far, the American and European rights continue to exult, and anti-EU parties in various countries continue to call for their own referenda and the collapse of the EU.

Already there is talk of Scotland seceding and Northern Ireland leaving the UK to join the Irish Republic.

Imagine the states and provinces of Germany, Mexico, the US, Australia, and Canada and the regions of Spain and Italy, the two halves of Belgium, and the Cantons of Switzerland defederating, each assuming complete sovereignty in a fit of particularistic pique.

Really, what lunacy.

Ask yourself why the rightists who so favor the smashup of Europe that cannot help undermining European security are also well disposed toward Putin, the leftover KGB thug and Russian neo-imperialist who is ripping up the Ukraine, threatens the Poles, and might well at some point invade and occupy the Baltic states.

They are all for particularism and tribalism when it shreds Europe and the West, but are happy to find excuses for the new Gobbler of Nations in the East.

What hypocrites these Buchananites are.

What a feckless political nitwit Cameron was for allowing so momentous a decision to be so frivolously made.

Donald Trump predicts breakup of EU

Donald Trump has predicted the breakup of the European Union and warned Scotland against the risks of a second independence referendum.

During a visit to Scotland hours after Britain opted to leave the EU in a historic referendum, the presumptive Republican presidential nominee said that without strict migration controls Europe would be unrecognisable within a decade.

In an interview with the Times, Trump said: “The people have spoken. I think the EU is going to break up. I think the EU might break up before anybody thinks in terms of Scotland. 

"I really think that without the immigration issue [the EU] wouldn’t have had a chance of breaking up ... the people are fed up, whether it’s here or in other countries. You watch: other countries will follow.”

Islam is only part of the immigration issue.

Many Brits and others in Western Europe have been annoyed at mass immigration of cheap labor from ex-communist countries now part of the EU like Poland.

Sunday, June 26, 2016

Clinton takes the lead

Clinton Opens 12-Point Lead on Trump as Two-Thirds See Him as Biased

Hillary Clinton surged to a broad advantage against Donald Trump in the latest ABC News/Washington Post poll, capitalizing on Trump’s recent campaign missteps. 

Two-thirds of Americans see him as biased against groups such as women, minorities or Muslims, and a new high, 64 percent, call Trump unqualified to serve as president.

These and other doubts about Trump have produced a sharp 14-point swing in preferences among registered voters, from +2 points for Trump in mid-May, after he clinched the GOP nomination, to +12 points for Clinton now, 51-39 percent. 

That snaps the race essentially back to where it was in March.

What, no Brexit bump?

And look at this.

The national poll, produced for ABC by Langer Research Associates, finds another apparent impact of Trump’s problems: 

Perhaps benefitting from comparison, Barack Obama’s job approval rating has gained 5 points, to 56 percent, matching its high since the early days of his presidency. 

That includes 55 percent approval specifically on handling the economy.


In his face-off with the president, Il Duce is getting hammered.

Pray that Hillary is not indicted.

Some details.

There are notable shifts among groups in the latest vote preference results. 

Largest is a 16-point loss for Trump, and 17-point advance for Clinton, among white Catholics, a potentially key group that accounts for one in seven registered voters.

Clinton, further, is now leading among young adults, a group in which Trump was surprisingly competitive last month. 

Trump is -11, and Clinton +11, among registered voters who don’t have a college degree, as well as among liberals and conservatives alike. 

And Trump is -10, Clinton +11, among white men.

Clinton continues to prevail mightily among nonwhites – by 77-15 percent now, vs. 69-21 percent last month; that includes 90-8 percent among blacks and 69-20 percent among Hispanics. 

(For an adequate sample size, this combines results among blacks, and separately among Hispanics, from May and June.) 

Trump leads Clinton by 50-40 percent among whites, down from 57-33 percent last month.

Maybe I shouldn't be, but I am surprised his lead among whites is that big, though I am glad to see it has dropped and I hope that trend continues.

Do that many whites really think free trade and immigration have harmed them in net, and that he can change both without political and economic turmoil?

Are that many whites that concerned about Muslim visitors or immigrants, and willing to see 11 million people actually uprooted from their lives and deported?

Progress in the sciences. Or philosophy.

It's a matter of connecting the dots.

If the dots aren't there, how can you connect them?

A thank you to Mackie.

Saturday, June 25, 2016

How to deal with voters when they want what you don't

Steal the Whigs clothes to stave off a Whig victory, as Disraeli did?

Partially adopt the Social Democrats' agenda to deny them power, as Bismarck did?

A moratorium on Muslim immigration to the EU might have been enough.

Maybe even just slowing it down.

Or maybe just cutting back on submission to PC so disgraceful it often seems more angered by alleged Islamophobic speech than actual Muslim Jihad.

In countries beset by Jihader violence and Muslims openly bent on demanding submission to Shariah how stupid is it to criminalize frank expression of anger at or fear and rejection of Islam and Muslim immigration?

In countries where every day in so many ways people frankly reject Christianity why is it illegal to frankly reject Islam?

But Hell, no.

Never give an inch.

Instead, you can always . . .

Delegitimate democracy

Blame it on motives you've already spent decades delegitimating

All the same, why is so momentous a decision, at least as important as a constitutional change, to be made by so shallow and even flippant a thing as a razor thin simple majority in a one-shot plebiscite?

This really is the sort of thing that should not be that easy.

The process of amending the US constitution is far too difficult, sure, which has partially justified the increasingly bold judicial dictatorship of the US Supremes, never very effectively masked by ever more boldly egregious lying on behalf of a minority agenda by them and their epigones among the lesser fry of the federal judiciary.

But this process was way, way too easy.

As has occurred to some people, almost certainly too late.

There is an online petition asking for a second referendum if results are close.

The petition, which has attracted more than 3,234,000 signatures in the wake of Britain's shock vote to leave the European Union last Thursday, calls for a second referendum on the issue if the result is less than decisive.

Another referendum should be held, it says, "if the remain or leave vote is less than 60 percent based [on] a turnout less than 75 percent." 

In a startling result, the Leave campaign won Thursday's referendum with 52% of the vote, with 72% of voters turning out.

Disappointed voters have flocked to sign the petition in the wake of the vote, crashing the official UK government website on at least one occasion and generating more signatures than on any other petition on the site.

However . . .

British Prime Minister David Cameron, who announced his intention to resign following the defeat of his Remain campaign, has previously said there would be no second referendum if the results were close, and enacting the petition would entail enacting laws retrospectively.

Why on Earth did Cameron make such a silly decision?

Anyway, here is Milo, whose joy is boundless.

Geert Wilders a month ago was writing about the same rebellion, really.

His congratulations to Britain.

A criticism not entirely unfair

Democrats: We Will Overcome the Constitution

Nothing stirs the passions of Democrats these days quite like the prospect of gutting the Constitution. 

In an unprecedented act of pretend political bravery, House members held a catered sit-in, demanding that Republicans allow a vote to strip away protections of Second, Fifth and Sixth Amendments of the Constitution. 

It was quite the scene.

There were the selfie-happy Democrats singing "We Shall Overcome" while demanding passage of a bill that those right-wing nutjobs over at the American Civil Liberties Union have "strongly" argued would undermine civil liberties.

. . . .

The message was clear, though. 

If we recklessly cling to the presumption of innocence, the terrorists have already won. 

If we fail to let bureaucrats create extrajudicial secret government lists that deny Americans their right to due process, we are, in essence, selling ISIS weapons of mass destruction.

. . . .

Civil rights-era heroes like Rep. John Lewis, who lent his considerable legacy to this vacuous grandstanding, was once on the terror watch list himself. 

He didn't know how he got on it. 

He didn't know how to get off of it. 

Yet, today he believes this Kafkaesque system is a sound way to deny his fellow citizens their rights.

This is the Democratic Party of 2016. 

Engaging in emotional blackmail and demagoguery, and waving pictures of the victims of Islamic terrorism to push an unrelated bill that would not have saved a single one of those lives and will never pass, all the while lying about guns. 

Lying about the laws that govern guns and refusing to vote for, or even discuss, a compromise measure Republicans forwarded in the Senate. 

It's been far more important to gin up anger and moral outrage for political gain.

George Will leaves the GOP

"This is not my party."

Will, who has arguably been the most biting and prolific member of the conservative anti-Trump club, reportedly cited House Speaker Paul Ryan's endorsement of Trump as one of the last straws, and was noncommittal about whether he would support Libertarian presidential nominee Gary Johnson. 

Asked by Ballasy to recommend what conservative anti-Trumpers should do now, Will said: "Make sure he loses."

A very quick double-cross

Carswell and Hannan Freeze Out Farage, Say They WON’T Lower Immigration

The single most important issue to the Leave campaign and, once again, the politicians are planning to stiff the voters.

Amazing.

So why aren't they still Democrats?

Uprising in the rust belt

Subtitle: They used to be Democrats. Now they really could hand Donald Trump the White House.

The story focuses on working class, industrial Pennsylvania, devastated by decades of free trade in steel and again by the Democrats' wars on coal and shale oil, both of which promise to get much worse.

Of course they worry about Social Security and Medicare, but they have to privilege jobs for today over retirement security for tomorrow.

And they think Trump is better for jobs.

Their jobs, anyway.

Friday, June 24, 2016

Hillary puts the Democrats in jeopardy

Will she be indicted, after all?

Unless Hillary is indicted before the convention, the Democrats can no more give their nomination to Bernie without chaos and disaster than the Republicans can give their nomination to anyone but Trump.

If she is indicted before the convention it just might work out, nominating Bernie, though those of her supporters who have been denouncing Bernie and his people for being too white and too male for their taste could, in that case, turn out to be the bitter-enders who ruin the Democrats this year.

Thing is, just as her husband should have resigned when disgraced and let Big Al finish his term, but did not, she probably, if indicted before the convention, would not drop out of the race voluntarily - or submit with grace to being urged, much less forced, out by the party.

And of course any effort by the party to give the nomination to someone who did not even run - Joe Biden has been often mentioned - would be disastrous.

But if she is indicted after she is nominated that will put Il Duce in the White House.

EU falling?



Like the Euroskeptics of Britain, the populists across Europe have three defining features.

They are against mass immigration, disenamored of Islam, and for exit from the EU.

The former issue is the biggest thing driving the movement, everywhere, though the EU's infamous "democracy deficit" and its remote bureaucracy have not helped.

On the whole, they tend also to be pro-Israeli and, in varying degrees and with exceptions, anti-Welfare State.

Globonewsies are flipping out.

Should I turn on the TV, I wonder, to watch the train-wreck coverage?

On the web, several stories indicate that the white working class - people who continue to rely on and support British Social Democracy and were before the vote led to believe Brexit would free over 350 million additional pounds a week to be spent on the cash-strapped NHS - contributed much to the victory of Leave over Remain, despite the nearly unanimous support in the Labor Party and the support of its leader for Remain.

And many others have noted how the voters who supported Brexit are similar to the American voters who support Donald Trump.

As is customary in the American press, where the right interprets support for Trump as support for the conservative project to abolish social democracy and the left interprets it as racism and bigotry, support for Brexit is described by the left as basically racist bigotry and by the right as rejection of bureaucracy and the Welfare State.

The pro-EU left says the EU is crucial for the stability and security of Europe, while the anti-EU right points to NATO as the force that provides those things and has done so since just after WW2.

Panic by some who see the EU as an engine for coercing implementation of social liberalism, and fear loss of that engine.

Liberals and other pro-EU types along with the major media are screaming bloody murder, the sky is falling, evil is triumphant, the world will burst into warfare, the economy will collapse, and so on.

And if the EU does a complete crackup the security and economic costs will really be considerable.

American conservatives cheerfully emphasize the persistent significance of democracy in nation states.

Haters gotta hate

Freddie Gray case: Officer Caesar Goodson Jr. not guilty on all charges

This is what happened.

A black judge acquitted a black cop charged with depraved heart murder of a black criminal at the behest of a black official who instinctively sided with rioters, criminals, and black racist opinionators during the riots over the accidental death of criminal Freddie Gray in the back of a police van.

The black official brought charges against several police involved in Gray's arrest and transport to jail, and all of those police were cleared of all charges.

Lemmings run for the cliff

Dow futures down 500 points after shock U.K. referendum

People you would expect to be cheered are triumphant.

People you would expect to be depressed, angry, and full of foreboding are depressed, angry, and full of foreboding.

Blah, blah.

Look at that thin margin in favor of Brexit.

I say there's an excellent chance it just won't happen.

(Not everybody thinks so.)

And in all candor how can anyone believe something this huge should be decided by a paper thin majority in a one-time vote?

If to be done by plebiscite at all, shouldn't this require multiple votes spread out maybe over a year, each favoring exit by substantial majorities?

Divorce in haste, repent at leisure.

Brexit

A thin majority of Brit voters has voted to leave.

I'll believe it when I see it.

I expect the rulers of the UK will simply not do it.

Lucy will find a way to yank away the football.

Thursday, June 23, 2016

Why imprison?

Fitzstephan asks the Continental Op what good does it do, putting people in prison.

He replies it relieves congestion.

Driving in traffic would be much worse without it.

Reading Dashiell Hammett, The Dain Curse, 1928.

A propos of Defoe's view of the same subject in his Moll Flanders, 1722.

Paddy

About ten dollars cheaper a fifth than Jameson, it's quite good.

And yet, and this is very odd for a whiskey, it's pale yellow.

It looks in the glass like Pabst or Miller Lite, for gosh sake.

Strange.

Wednesday, June 22, 2016

So just skip it?

According to the editor of the current B&N edition of Moll Flanders, Defoe personally holds that Newgate Prison and English law enforcement of the time actually caused more crime than they deterred.

If that is so, simply refusing to do anything at all to enforce the law, utter anarchy, would have resulted in less crime than actually beset the English society of the time.

Could he have really believed so foolish a thing?

A plague on both their houses

Both the agendas and the methods of the politically committed of both major parties have moved toward extremes over the years.

Each of us defines what is objectionable, here as elsewhere, in his own way.

This is my way.

The dominant conservatism.

Actual conservatives, for some decades in control of the Republican Party, have long seriously meant to repeal The Great Society, The New Deal, and every progressive construction since McKinley.

They oppose direct election of the president and favor repeal of popular election of senators.

They oppose institutions, laws, and regulatory controls and measures aimed at protecting workers, consumers, and the public from employers, producers, and economic powers.

They oppose the dismantling, over the decades and beginning in the mid-20th Century, of clerical power over American law as it concerns marriage as well as private and public conduct related to sex.

They would, if they could, restore the status quo ante, including re-criminalization of sexual immorality and pornography as they were defined and prohibited in American law through the 1950s and again making divorce very difficult if not totally impossible.

They favor measures to cripple the federal government by starving it through debt ceilings, elimination of the IRS, massive tax cuts, and opposition to deficit spending.

Some of them would, if they could, deport some 11 million illegal immigrants in a vast exercise in ethnic cleansing.

The dominant liberalism.

Liberals are responsible for a continuing malignant growth, originating in the mid-20th Century, of federal control over American economic and educational institutions, private and public, and increasingly over state and local machinery of law enforcement, in service to the PC agendas of radical environmentalists, feminists, sexual minorities, and so-called racial and social justice warriors.

Liberals indulge, support, and participate in the propaganda, policy, legislative, and demographic wars against whites, males, and white males, including the project to end the majority status of eurowhites in America.

Liberals support a radical environmentalism extremely harmful to the American economy and beneficial to our economic and military competitors, globally.

In particular, in connection with global warming they support a congeries of measures that, while useless to prevent it, would impose great costs on American businesses, consumers, and taxpayers to the advantage of foreigners and especially the world's leading greenhouse gas producers, the Chinese, who openly intend to actually increase their own pollution.

Liberals support empowerment of governmental, supra-national, and global institutions without democratic legitimacy and aimed at achieving liberal/radical goals or enforcing liberal/radical agendas.

Liberals support censorship and indoctrination by PC bureaucracies and the actions and agendas of PC thugs and mobs in our streets and our schools.

Liberals support groups and individuals who support weaponized history and guilt-trip politics targeting eurowhites, Western Civilization, and their friends and defenders.

Liberals support, ally with, and are supported by anti-capitalists including socialists, anarchists, and communists, as well as others openly committed to anti-Americanism.

Liberals support unrestricted abortion at will throughout pregnancy, and some openly support infanticide.

Children of Zinn, steeped in the weaponized history of the left wing grievance industry, liberals are anti-American and unpatriotic, wholly unable to happily celebrate the birth of our country or any of its several patriotic holidays.

What O wanted from his wise Latina Justice

Sotomayor’s fierce dissent slams high court’s ruling on evidence from illegal stops

Text of the Fourth Amendment, one of those comprising the famous Bill of Rights, a set of amendments limiting the powers of the federal government in ways imposed on the states, mostly since the mid-20th Century, through judicial fictions about various clauses of the 14th Amendment.

The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.

What is reasonable?

A piece of the text of the Fifth Amendment.

No person shall . . . be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself, nor be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law . . . .

Note there is not a word here or anywhere in the constitution making evidence obtained in defiance of these amendments inadmissible.

All the same, the exclusionary rule has been held by courts to be "grounded in" the constitution, particularly in the Fourth and Fifth Amendments.

The scope of the rule has meandered much, over the years.

What the court did in the present case was a minor tick in favor of permissiveness after many decades of liberal decisions pushing the rule far in the opposite direction.

A minor conservative tick, if you will.

The wise Latina flipped out and wrote with hatred, siding with the criminals and rioters of America who hate the police and are taught to do so by their parents.

The Supreme Court ruled Monday that courts need not throw out evidence of a crime even if the arresting police officer used unlawful tactics to obtain it.

But the low-profile case more likely will be remembered for a fierce and personal dissent from Justice Sonia Sotomayor, who said the decision would exacerbate illegal stops of minorities. 

Her 12-page opinion explained “the talk” that black and brown parents have with their children about police interactions, invoked Ferguson, Mo., and, without direct acknowledgment, referenced the sentiments of the Black Lives Matter movement.

"The talk" is a symptom of black resentment, suspicion, and racial hatred of the majority white society and American police of any race who are, in effect, viewed as race traitors if not white, working for The Man.

And in large measure it is a manifestation of the wholly unsurprising resentment of police by the criminal classes comprising the criminals themselves and their families and friends.

The African-American Justice Clarence Thomas wrote the opinion for the 5 to 3 majority.

Monday’s U.S. Supreme Court majority agreed that South Salt Lake police officer Douglas Fackrell did not have reasonable suspicion to stop Strieff as he exited a house being watched for drug activity. 

But once Fackrell radioed in and found that there was an outstanding warrant on Strieff for a traffic violation, he was able to arrest and search him, and the discovery of the drugs was legitimate, the justices ruled.

“While Officer Fackrell’s decision to initiate the stop was mistaken, his conduct thereafter was lawful,” Justice Clarence Thomas wrote for the majority. 

He said the intervening discovery of the warrant meant the search that discovered the drugs was allowed.

The ruling was unusual in one way because it was the first time since the death of Justice Antonin Scalia that one of the court’s consistent liberals — Justice Stephen G. Breyer — joined colleagues on the right to create a conservative majority.

But more memorable will be the blistering dissents written by Breyer’s fellow liberal justices Sotomayor and Elena Kagan, joined at least in part by Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg.

. . . .

But Sotomayor — “writing only for myself, and drawing on my professional experiences” — produced the kind of personal essay that has made the court’s only Hispanic member a hero to liberals and caused conservatives to label her an activist.

“The white defendant in this case shows that anyone’s dignity can be violated in this manner,” Sotomayor wrote. 

“But it is no secret that people of color are disproportionate victims of this scrutiny.”

She referenced writers Michelle Alexander, W.E.B Du Bois and Ta-Nehisi Coates, and wrote of the conversations that minority parents “for generations” have had with their children, “out of fear of how an officer with a gun will react to them.”

Ta-Nehisi Coates is an infamous exponent of the riot ideology who was all over the Freddie Gray Baltimore case.

In repeated writings he poured out his loathing of police and white America, urging on rioters and championing criminals, cheering the lynch and kangaroo mentality of the Baltimore officials who charged the police involved with criminal behavior and even depraved heart murder.

The Baltimore government, police leadership, and police force are all mostly black and black controlled.

The police charged were mostly black.

Judges and juries have refused to play along in the ensuing trials, so far.

“By legitimizing the conduct that produces this double consciousness, this case tells everyone, white and black, guilty and innocent, that an officer can verify your legal status at any time,” Sotomayor wrote. 

“It says that your body is subject to invasion while courts excuse the violation of your rights. It implies that you are not a citizen of a democracy but the subject of a carceral state, just waiting to be cataloged.”

The wise Latina who so specializes in empathy has precious little for police, and even less apparent regard for their work.

Is this the sort of thing O wanted from her?

Is this the sort of judge liberals want to dominate the court?

Really?

Trump hammers Hillary

Transcript

CNN report

Appealing at the outset for Bernie Sanders' supporters to dump Hillary and support him, Trump's speech was every attack Bernie ever made on the Clintons, Hillary's and Obama's foreign policy disasters, the corrupt Democratic Party, free trade, open low-wage immigration, contributions to the Clinton Fund from Wall Street and individual big time plutes for whom good things were done in return, all delivered in the style of Benito Mussolini.

Add in truths, half-truths, and lies about Benghazi and post-Orlando charges that Hillary is taking huge amounts of Fund money from the most fanatical, anti-gay, anti-woman Muslim regimes and wants to admit hundreds of thousands of effectively unvetted Muslims from the most dangerous parts of the world, thus making LGBTs in particular and Americans in general less safe from terrorism.

Add in standard Republican bromides about Iran and nukes, withdrawal from Iraq enabling the birth and spread of ISIS, and Hillary's refusal to speak of the threat as radical Islam, a charge he inoculated against Islamophobia immediately by coupling it with assurances of sympathy for the hundreds of millions of Muslims around the world who are the victims of terrorism and Jihad, and who just want to live in peace.

And then he pivoted to his positive program, mostly economic, and mostly promises of unicorns.

He drew blood.

Moll Flanders

Of course, nearly all of the time, hers is a struggle to live without working.

Of which more anon.

Reading Defoe.

The story takes place during the English Civil War, sayeth the notes, but you would never know it reading this book.

Not a word about it so far, and I am 100 pages into a 308 page edition.

For all we have seen, the whole country could have been at peace, all along.

Moll and everyone around her are oblivious.

Tuesday, June 21, 2016

But it was O who was humbled

Why did the White House just humiliate Loretta Lynch?

Idiotic: That’s the only word for the Obama administration’s move to scrub references to Islam or ISIS from the transcripts of Orlando terrorist Omar Mateen’s calls.

Under an avalanche of ridicule, the Justice Department on Monday relented and released the full transcripts. 

But what was the point? 

Everyone already knew that he’d pledged allegiance to ISIS and its “caliph.”

Fine: President Obama wants to make this about gun control, not terrorism — but ham-handed editing only calls attention to what you’re deleting, and to Obama’s peevish rules against uttering terms like “radical Islam.”

The condition of the female class in England

Moll Flanders

Remarkable novel.

If indeed Defoe did write it, what possessed him to do so?

I suppose it counts as a picaresque novel and a novel of manners, but it's also a feminist tract before its time.

I think.

The narrative is continuous except for a division into two parts, which makes it inconvenient to put the book down to go do something else once you have started reading.

Interesting reading.

So this is what happened to ecumenical Jihad

It became the ecumenical Benedict Option.

Islam & The Benedict Option

American Muslims feel, as does Rod Dreher the Christian, that the majority culture in America is outright hostile to religious teaching concerning the morality of sex and concerning sex roles.

Perfectly true.

A further difference is that Muslims slaughter people about all that.

But there will be no turning back the clock on this stuff.

American clericalism is gone for good.

The long, slow death of God in Western culture continues.

Islam is not going to stop it.

Nor anything else.

Most likely.

Big, big lie

Hungry For Socialism

The right is unanimous, the ever worsening disaster in Venezuela is proof that socialism is really, really bad.

Well, socialism is really, really bad.

But Venezuela doesn't prove it.

What they have in The Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela is not socialism but capitalism, managed very, very badly by admirers of Castro who hate capitalism on principle and are even more irresponsible, short-sighted, and stupid in their economic interventions in the market than Bernie Sanders or his fans would be, given the chance.

Or maybe not.

Anyway, progressives appreciate the value of capitalism and manage it for the public good.

Radical nitwits who call themselves "socialists" but would never dream of actually adopting socialism in their own countries loathe capitalism and treat it like a pinata.

You know what happens to a pinata after you whack it a few times?

All the goodies fall out . . . and then it's empty.