Author: VD

No, he really wasn’t

Paul Krugman is once again desperately trying to rewrite history, resurrect a rotting Keynesian economics, and cover his exposed posterior:

Unfortunately, in late 2010 and early 2011, politicians and policy makers in much of the Western world believed that they knew better, that we should focus on deficits, not jobs, even though our economies had barely begun to recover from the slump that followed the financial crisis. And by acting on that anti-Keynesian belief, they ended up proving Keynes right all over again.

In declaring Keynesian economics vindicated I am, of course, at odds with conventional wisdom. In Washington, in particular, the failure of the Obama stimulus package to produce an employment boom is generally seen as having proved that government spending can’t create jobs. But those of us who did the math realized, right from the beginning, that the Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (more than a third of which, by the way, took the relatively ineffective form of tax cuts) was much too small given the depth of the slump. And we also predicted the resulting political backlash.

He is not only at odds with conventional reality, but with history as well. Krugman is being shamelessly dishonest here. As I, and others, have chronicled, the stimulus package that he now claims was too small was actually $187 billion bigger than the $600 billion stimulus his “back-of-the-envelope calculations” recommended and described as “huge”.

Keynes was not right. He, and his General Theory, are still dead. Keynesian economists are not only still completely and entirely wrong, but are still in complete denial about the problem of debt, as I shall subsequently demonstrate in a forthcoming post.

They are getting desperate

Romney magically leaps 9 points in the polls versus Obama… in one week:

Mitt Romney has now jumped to his biggest lead ever over President Obama in a hypothetical Election 2012 matchup. It’s also the biggest lead a named Republican candidate has held over the incumbent in Rasmussen Reports surveying to date. The latest national telephone survey finds that 45% of Likely U.S. Voters favor the former Massachusetts governor, while 39% prefer the president…..

A week ago, Romney trailed Obama 44% to 41%.

I’m sure this massive 9-point swing has NOTHING to do with Bank Party fears that Ron Paul will win Iowa and therefore explode the “he can’t win the Republican nomination” argument. This marks the introduction of the “Romney will crush Obama” theme.

Bachman’s chairman endorses Paul

The Iowa chairman for Michele Bachmann’s campaign, Iowa State Senator Kent Sorenson (R-Indianola), leaves her campaign in order to endorse Ron Paul.

“The decision I am making today is one of the most difficult I have made in my life. But given what’s at stake for our country, I have decided I must take this action.

Today, I am switching my support from Michele Bachmann to Ron Paul for the 2012 Iowa Caucuses and the presidency of the United States.

I still maintain an immense amount of respect for Michele. The reasons are many. She’s never betrayed conservatives on issues like taxes, the Right to Life, and the Second Amendment. So over the past few months, I have been saddened at the dismissive way she’s been treated among some conservatives especially after winning the Iowa Straw Poll.

But the fact is, there is a clear top tier in the race for the Republican nomination for President, both here in Iowa and nationally. Ron Paul is easily the most conservative of this group.

The truth is, it was an excruciatingly difficult decision for me to decide between supporting Michele Bachmann and Ron Paul at the beginning of this campaign. Dr. Paul and his supporters were a major help in my successful campaigns for Iowa House and Senate even when I couldn’t count on the support of the Republican establishment here in Iowa.

Of course, battling the establishment is nothing new for Dr. Paul or for myself. During my time in the General Assembly, I’ve established myself as a leader in the fights for traditional marriage, the Right to Life, and the protection of the Second Amendment – sometimes even against the wishes of my own party.

Since my election, I’ve learned that doing the right thing isn’t always easy. It’s easy to see why so many legislators “sell out” once elected. The pressure to do so is immense.

But what America needs now is a President who will not just “go along to get along.” Instead, we must send someone who puts doing what is right above all else to the White House. That candidate is Ron Paul.

Ron Paul is the only candidate to predict the current mess we find ourselves in economically, and he’s the only candidate to offer a true plan to cut spending and balance our budget.

He’s also consistently spoken out against government spending, assaults on individual liberties, and unnecessary trillion-dollar military adventurism for over 30 years. Polls show he is the Republican candidate that can take on and defeat President Obama in November 2012.

Like all true conservatives, I wholeheartedly agree with Ron Paul that government is too big, and both parties share in the blame. We agree that it is immoral to print money and pass on mounds of debt to the next generation. We agree that life begins at conception and must be protected. We both believe that the Second Amendment must be defended unwaveringly, and that there are too many wars being fought with no end in sight and no obvious path to a defined victory.

Of course, as a state legislator, I recognize that Dr. Paul’s strong views on the 10th Amendment will enable me to fight for what I believe in right in my own backyard instead of having to constantly wait on one-size-fits-all “solutions” from Washington, D.C.

With the entire Republican establishment intent on smearing Ron Paul and his dedicated supporters, I understand this decision could impact the way people see me and my entire political career. But this is the right decision, and one in which I proudly stand behind.

To the truly wonderful people I met on the Bachmann campaign, I look forward to working with them in the future as we further the fights for the Right to Life, traditional marriage, and the restoration of our Second Amendment rights here in Iowa. I personally wish her all the best as she continues to battle in Congress.

As for conservatives who are rightly concerned with defeating establishment Republicans Mitt Romney, Newt Gingrich and – even more importantly – Barack Obama in 2012, Ron Paul has established himself as the clear choice.

If you are as frustrated as I am with what’s been done by the ruling class, I urge you to join me in supporting Dr. Paul. We can send the national big government political establishment a message they will never forget by voting for Ron Paul for President in the January 3 Iowa Caucuses.”

It turns out that Michele Bachman is a liar, as her own political director has come out and stated that Iowa campaign manager did not quit due to financial incentives: “I won’t say much about the situation or the conflicting statements beyond this; I can say unequivocally that Kent Sorenson’s decision was, in no way financially motivated. His decision had more to do with the fact that the Ron Paul supporters have been something of a family to him since he was first elected in 2008 and here in the end, as it becomes more and more apparent that the caucus cycle is coming to an end, Kent believed that he needed to be with them as they stand on the cusp of a potential caucus upset. While I personally disagree with Kent’s decision, and plan to stay with Michele Bachmann because I truly believe in her, I cannot, in good conscious watch a good man like Kent Sorenson be attacked as a ‘sell-out’ ….That is simply not the case, and it was not the basis of his decision,” said Mr. Enos.”

It surprised some that I was so contemptuous of Bachmann. But you see, she’s from Minnesota and I am very well acquainted with a few people who know her. And it doesn’t surprise me at all that she has shown herself to be untrustworthy, because I had already heard that about her.

Mailvox: true or false

Puacon has four questions:

1) True/False: Ron Paul is a political Leninist, i.e. an admirer of Lenin’s “salami tactics” via Rockwell/Rothbard (see Rothbard’s Ethics of Liberty for more…)

2) True/False: You (Vox) support this political Leninism, based on your support of Dr. Paul

3) True/False: Leninism is based on deception and dishonesty…lying about being a racist to infiltrate and control racist groups, etc. This is considered pragmatic, benefits outweighing costs (more liberty vs. associating with racists).

4) True/False: Dr. Paul isn’t a racist. He just lied about being a racist in order to get money, support, etc. as per point 3.

These are not trick questions. I’m not judging you either way, just trying to get a handle on your positions on above.

1. False. A Leninist is not someone who admires, embraces, or uses any tactic that Vladimir Lenin happened to historically utilize. Also, the addition of the adjective “political” is redundant, as Leninism is an intrinsically political ideology. Since a Leninist is someone who subscribes to “the body of political theory for the democratic organisation of a revolutionary vanguard party, and the achievement of a direct-democracy dictatorship of the proletariat, as political prelude to the establishment of socialism”, it is patently obvious that Ron Paul is not a Leninist of any kind.

2. False. I do not support the establishment of socialism. Nor does Ron Paul, Lew Rockwell, or Murray Rothbard.

3. False. Puacon is confusing a tactic which was historically used by Leninists and other groups with Leninism itself. You might as reasonably claim that Ron Paul is a “political Muslim”, as the tactic you are describing is known in Islamic theology as taqiyya. Moreover, Puacon is committing a second error in assuming that because Rothbard believe the tactic was useful, Ron Paul is therefore utilizing it.

4. I can’t answer this question due to the erroneous assumptions implicit in it. I believe that all human beings who are science-literate or conscious of race could be considered racist, myself included, and there is no shortage of empirical evidence and scientific studies demonstrating that this is the case. If Ron Paul, like most people, has said that he is not racist, he is mistaken in that sense. But that does not mean he is lying about it.

I note with some amusement that Puacon’s mischaracterization and misidentification of his target on the political spectrum could, by his own erroneous metric, be accurately described as “Stalinist”.

Republican fiscal frauds

Remember how the House Republicans voted to increase the debt limit “just one more time” a few months ago? Well, I’m sure you’re as surprised as I am that Congress managed to burn through the additional debt and needs more already:

The White House plans to ask Congress by the end of the week for an increase in the government’s debt ceiling to allow the United States to pay its bills on time, according to a senior Treasury Department official on Tuesday. The approval is expected to go through without a challenge, given that Congress is in recess until later in January and the request is in line with an agreement to keep the U.S. government funded into 2013.

I note that this request for additional debt was obvious simply by observing the federal sector’s return to 4+ percent quarterly growth in the third quarter Z1 outstanding credit report.

I have been beating this drum for more than 10 years now, so if you still can’t figure out that the Republican Party is a significant part of the fiscal problem, not the potential solution they present themselves as being, you really have a severe problem with accepting reality. This isn’t to say that Obama and the Senate Democrats are any better, as they are not. But then, they don’t pretend to be the financially responsible party either.

Either Newt Gingrich or Mitt Romney would be an unmitigated disaster as president. Both of them signed a pledge not to increase the debt limit, and yet it’s clear they will do so using the “just one more time” gambit; Newt didn’t even oppose raising the debt last time so long as the deal didn’t include tax increases.

No Tax Increase in the Debt-Ceiling Deal by Newt Gingrich

“Mitt Romney, a former governor of Massachusetts, has said he would agree to increasing the debt limit only if a deal was “accompanied by a major effort to restructure and reduce the size of government.”

A major effort such as, for example, the one that supposedly cut $100 billion ten years from now… that was in the last deal.

The “discredited” campaign

The New York Times unintentionally recognizes the legitimacy of Ron Paul’s presidential campaign:

Ron Paul long ago disqualified himself for the presidency by peddling claptrap proposals like abolishing the Federal Reserve, returning to the gold standard, cutting a third of the federal budget and all foreign aid and opposing the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Now, making things worse, he has failed to convincingly repudiate racist remarks that were published under his name for years — or the enthusiastic support he is getting from racist groups.

I find it extremely encouraging that both the Democratic and Republican establishments are training their biggest guns on Ron Paul while simultaneously attempting to play down the results of the Iowa caucuses. They never would have bothered to do so if Paul’s message was not resonating with Americans across the political and ideological divides. We are learning a lot here as a result of the various reactions to the Paul campaign, whether it is the willingness of Republicans to play the race card about which they so often complain, the remarkable extent to which Newt Gingrich is big government moderate rather than the conservative flamethrower he feigned to be in 1994, and the way in which many Republicans who pretend to revere the Constitution do not, in fact, harbor any real respect for it at all.

In short, Ron Paul has successfully opened the eyes of millions of Americans to the corruption and anti-conservate, anti-constitutional ideology of the Republican Party. This is the first step in helping them understand that the Republicans and Democrats are merely two barely distinguishable factions in the one party that has ruled America for over a century.

It is also interesting to note the Communist-style ideological lockstep demanded by Republicans. In the same way that some readers here cannot understand that I permit commenters here to post comments they find offensive without that permission indicating my position on the matter – even though they know I disgree with, but permit, their own comments – the demands that Paul denounce any of his supporters reveals a fundamentally totalitarian mindset of the sort that has pervaded the conservative media since William F. Buckley was seduced by the Wilsonian neocons.

One thing I found particularly informative in this regard was John Hinderaker’s endorsement of Mitt Romney. I’ve known that the former Hindrocket of the Northern Alliance Radio Show was an ideologically squishy political creature since appearing on that show, and his endorsement of Mitt Romney is the full flowering of what has historically been known as “growth”.

The “anybody but Romney” mentality that grips many Republicans is, in my view, illogical. It led them to embrace Rick Perry, who turned out to be unable to articulate a conservative thought; Newt Gingrich, whose record is far more checkered than Romney’s; Ron Paul, whose foreign policy views–indistinguishable from those of the far left–and forays into racial intolerance make him unfit to be president; and Michele Bachmann, whom I like very much, but who is more qualified to be a rabble-rouser than a chief executive.

It is deeply amusing indeed to see Hindrocket assert that Paul’s foreign policy views are “indistinguishable from those of the far left” on the very day that the New York Times is publishing an editorial that could easily bear his byline, given the remarkably similar language; for example, Hinderaker says Paul is “unfit” versus the NTY’s “discredited”. And Hinderaker’s statement about Paul’s foreign policy is astonishingly deceitful, as far left foreign policy is not the least bit isolationist, but is the exact same world revolution approach that is presently favored by Hinderaker and the Republican establishment, only its focus is world socialist revolution rather than world democratic revolution.

And Hinderaker is as wrong about Romney’s ability to beat Obama as all the usual suspects in the conservative media were wrong about McCain’s ability to win in 2008. John Hawkins list seven reasons why Romney’s supposed electability is a myth. I’ll add another reason: after the way he is being treated by the Republican Party establishment and the way the Tea Party-elected House Republicans have proven themselves to be the same fiscally irresponsible rollover Republicans their historical predecessors were, Ron Paul has absolutely no reason not to run in the general election as a third party candidate, ideally as the endorsed candidate of the Constitution and Libertarian Parties.

I very much hope he will do so. As the Bush family has taught us, better an openly declared enemy in power than a false and fraudulent “friend”.

Christmas and decline

Sometimes, I wonder if perhaps I am being too negative about the way in which the historical and economic patterns I see appear to be playing out. It’s not as if I spend all my time preparing for disaster, in fact, most of my professional activity is still predicated on the idea that some form of recessionary muddle-through will take place.

And then one encounters these responses of various young adults to their Christmas presents and realize that societal collapse may not be as probable as it is desirable.

One could hardly damn America in a more devastating and conclusive manner than to point out that this is what we have done with our historical freedom

On the gaming front

Spacebunny gave me Battlefield 3 and a PS/3 for Christmas, which was awesome. And speaking as a Level 70 COD:MW2 PC player, I have to say that B3 on the PS/3 really rocks. The giant maps are so much more interesting and the teamplay design is much better than in COD, although I’m disappointed that the Commander mode was omitted. There also appear to be fewer cheats and so forth in evidence; certainly the kill stats are far less lopsided.

I was tracking an enemy tank about 250 meters away and tagged the driver when he exited, then managed to suppress a pair of snipers in a building 300 meters off long enough to permit a teammate they were pinning down to make his escape. I picked off one sniper, then thought I was finished when someone rushed into the building I was in. But it was just a support guy on my team who’d noticed my position and was dropping off extra ammo. So, I reloaded, waited a little longer, then nailed the second sniper. I’m only level three and my twitch reflexes are long gone, but I try to pull my own weight.

Now I have to figure out how to drive and pilot vehicles without crashing them….

Mailvox: undermining atheism

These emails tend to illustrate the effectiveness of refusing to permit atheists to make their evangelical claims unchallenged. I particularly appreciated the first email, as it highlights the importance of shattering the false intellectual pride that holds so many young and psychologically immature atheists entrapped. One man writes some encouraging words about the breaking of a spell:

I wanted to personally thank you for the impact you’ve had on my life. This was the first time in several years that I celebrated the holiday by worshipping Christ. Your debate with Luke broke the pseudo-intellectual spell that atheism/agnosticism held over me, introduced me to a sophisticated Christian theology, and helped to reconnect me with my faith. The unwelcome eviscerations of an AWCA found their way to a young man whose ego desperately needed a disemboweling. In a delicious twist of irony that Tolkien himself would have appreciated, your indifference towards my salvation has made all the difference towards achieving it. With the amount of hate mail that you must receive, sometimes it’s nice to know that your words do inspire. I’m truly grateful.

A lawyer reading TIA writes with a related question:

After coming across atheist trolls in the comments section of a CNN article, I was disturbed by militant atheism and its assertions after reading more about it. Writings from individuals such as Gregory Paul caused me trouble with my faith, so I bought your book, The Irrational Atheist, as a Christmas present to myself. I am enjoying your book – it’s entertaining and useful for strengthening my faith since I don’t have a lot of time to both read the claims of New Atheists and methodically consider them. I thank you very much for your work for packaging an analysis of their works into one book.

If you would indulge a question, I would appreciate it. While at Barnes and Noble, I decided to look for New Atheist works to quickly peruse and get a feel for them. While there, I encountered a book from Sam Harris called The Moral Landscape where Harris claims that science can determine morality.

My question is this: I am on page 66 of The Irrational Atheist, and, given Harris’ new book, I am curious as to what you would add to or subtract from the following statement: “The second possibility is that they genuinely believe science leads ineluctably toward certain moral conclusions. Although the careless reader could be convinced of this by a judicious selection of quotes, both Dawkins and Dennett specifically deny this to be possible and even Harris only dares to base his moral appeals on reason, not science.”

I would simply add what I have already written about The Moral Landscape, which is to say that Harris is correctly attempting to provide atheism with a science-based case for rational materialist morality. Without any form of universal warrant, rational materialism remains a barren and psychologically vacant philosophy that lacks emotional appeal as well as even the smallest modicum of moral authority. Harris understands this, which is why he wrote the book in a futile effort to provide a basis for both. I would also note that this attempt does not change the quoted sentence from TIA in the slightest, as Harris not only fails to begin making his case, and as anyone who has actually read the book will know, does not even claim to have done so but merely argues that such a case might one day be made.

But I’m not the only one undermining atheism; I have considerable help from within the godless citadel itself. In this very interesting review from danieljc, we can observe that Mount Chapter Four appears to have struck again!

I decided to give this book a chance seeing as how passionately anti-atheist the author is, I wanted to see if the author could muster up any reasonable arguments for his position. With an open-mind, I proceeded reading the first few chapters….and then I closed the book. The quality of the writing is abhorrent and haughty, not to mention unjustifiably egotistic since the author does not offer any reasonable argument for his position. The author goes on in hopeless drivel with repeated digressions attacking Dawkins, Harris, and Hitchens that are almost all ad hominem. There was not an instance of reading this pathetic book where I felt my mind changing for the better, even worse I felt as if I was reading Christian right-wing propaganda. I tried to be as unbiased as I possibly could reading this, but the sheer amount of deceit and misrepresentations of facts forced me to close it for fear of vomiting my lunch if I read just another sentence. This is vile, contemptible nonsense ladies and gentlemen, this book adequately personifies everything that is wrong with the United States of America. This anti-intellectual, anti-science, anti-reason, movement that marches under the banner of the Christian right. I tried to stay neutral, tried to stay balanced, but this book as forced me to take a side, the opposite side of whatever loathsome position this author seeks to uphold.

It is easy to see the deceit that is so habitual for many evangelical atheists, which ironically enough, is the very weakness that makes them so easy for the informed theist to defeat them in debate. This is precisely why I have repeatedly pointed out that one MUST assume they are lying snakes until it is demonstrated otherwise; that review is a beautiful attempt of the utterly shameless manner in which so many atheists attempt to deceive.

The amusing thing is that the book doesn’t pretend to be more than a critique of the fallacious arguments presented by the five atheists mentioned, and even if one wants to argue, however unconvincingly, that the critiques are flawed and the arguments are correct, one cannot possibly claim that any of the critiques rely upon ad hominem attacks. These “reviews” are not actual reviews, they are merely thinly disguised efforts to prevent people from actually reading the book and discovering how feeble the atheist arguments presented by the various New Atheists happen to be.

As the more intelligent atheists will recognize, this tactic is very counterproductive from an evangelical perspective, because if the effort is unsuccessful, the subsequent discovery that the book is not as it is described only underlines the popular sentiment that atheists are immoral, dishonest, and completely untrustworthy. This is not fair to the individual atheist who is intellectually honest and personally reliable, but is the inevitable consequence of the tendency of many atheists to rely upon attempted emotional manipulation rather than reasonable intellectual disputation.

Failing to note the obvious

In which Jennifer Rubin somehow manages to realize that the decline of California is her fault, and the fault of millions of others like her:

When my parents announced they were uprooting the Glazer family from a cozy suburb of Philadelphia, as 5 million people did from eastern and midwestern towns between 1950 and 1980, the news was met with a mixture of awe (“California…” they would breathlessly whisper) and bewilderment (“But what is there?”). The very act of migrating by plane was itself somewhat grand. In the years before airline deregulation, one dressed up to fly, as if sailing on an ocean liner, and at prices not all that much lower than an ocean voyage’s. And yet those we were leaving behind acted as though we were traveling by caravan, leaving civilization and going into the wilderness.

In a real sense, even in 1968, California was the wilderness. If the cost of air travel was prohibitive for a family of modest means, they usually drove, and from the flatness of the Midwest they found themselves left speechless by the vision of the Rocky Mountains​, rugged coastlines, wide beaches, and empty space they knew only from the movies. Like emigrants leaving the old country in the 19th century, they often arrived friendless and unaccustomed to the habits of their new environment. Public transportation was in scarce supply; instead there were gleaming freeways with five lanes on each side. Tie and jacket? More and more restaurants didn’t care. Informality pervaded dress and speech at a time when, back east, adults still commonly addressed acquaintances as Mister and Missus….

Forty-two years after I arrived in California, the very notion of an affordable, happy-go-lucky, optimistic, and “golden” state seems otherworldly. Its financial condition resembles Greece’s. Self-dealing and political scandals involving public-sector unions have become commonplace not only in Sacramento but also in cities from Mexico to Oregon.

The lack of self-awareness here borders on the astounding. Phrased in less sentimental terms, Rubin is simply decribing how millions of newcomers to California moved there, were unaccustomed to the habits of their new environment, and therefore changed them. They supported more immigration from even further afar because, after all, they were immigrants too and obviously it couldn’t possibly be the case that they could be a problem. And now they don’t like the changes that they caused. How very surprising.

It’s all a bit ironic from my perspective, given that my grandparents were native Californians. They left right around the time that the current set of “Californians” who are now lamenting the decline of California arrived.