Author: VD

One way or another

Be it financial or physical, the IMF is determined to rape you:

The leader of the International Monetary Fund was pulled from an airplane moments before he was to fly to Paris and was being questioned Saturday by police in connection with a sexual assault of a maid at a hotel, police said.

Dominique Strauss-Kahn, a candidate for president of France, was taken off the Air France flight at John F. Kennedy International Airport by officers from the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey and was turned over to police Saturday afternoon, said Paul J. Browne, New York Police Department spokesman.

He was being questioned by the NYPD special victims office. No charges have yet been filed.

The 32-year-old woman told authorities that she entered Strauss-Kahn’s room at the Sofitel near Manhattan’s Times Square at about 1 p.m. Saturday and he emerged from the bedroom naked, threw her down and tried to sexually assault her, Browne said. She escaped and told hotel staff what had happened, authorities said. They called police.

When New York City police detectives arrived moments later, Strauss-Kahn had already left the hotel, leaving behind his cellphone and other personal items, Browne said. “It looked like he got out of there in a hurry,” Browne said.

It is with the cynicism borne of experience and observation that I await the news DSK will not be charged because tanks will patrol the streets and cats and dogs will start living together if any elite bank or banker is held accountable for their crimes. A little talk with the immigration authorities – the woman is a maid, after all – and a discreet payment in the low six digits should make this unfortunate little contretemps vanish in due course. How unsurprising that the Wall Street Journal headline describes the arrest as being for “alleged sexual assault” rather than “attempted rape”.

But it is worth noting that these are the sort of bastards who are supposedly going to save the global financial system. Out of the goodness of their hearts, of course.

UPDATE: DSK will almost certainly walk uncharged. He has diplomatic immunity. He could have murdered her after raping her and he still wouldn’t face charges.

United Nations Convention on the Privileges and Immunities of the Specialized Agencies and Annex V1

Whereas the General Assembly of the United Nations adopted on 13 February 1946 a resolution contemplating the unification as far as possible of the privileges and immunities enjoyed by the United Nations and by the various specialized agencies; and

Whereas consultations concerning the implementation of the aforesaid resolution have taken place between the United Nations and the specialized agencies;

Consequently, by resolution 179(II) adopted on 21 November 1947, the General Assembly has approved the following Convention, which is submitted to the specialized agencies for acceptance and to every Member of the United Nations and to every other State member of one or more of the specialized agencies for accession.

ARTICLE I

Definition and Scope

SECTION 1

In this Convention:

(i) The words “standard clauses” refer to the provisions of Articles II to IX.

(ii) The words “specialized agencies” mean:

(a) The International Labour Organisation;

(b) The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations;

(c) The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization;

(d) The International Civil Aviation Organization;

(e) The International Monetary Fund;

UPDATE 2: The Guardian says DSK does not have immunity: “Strauss-Kahn, who does not have diplomatic immunity as head of the IMF, is expected to be brought before a state court on Sunday.”

Here is hoping they nail the rat bankster. Pity he’s only being charged with the rape-rape instead of the financial variety.

New ebook prices

After some lobbying of my publishers, I was able to convince them to lower the price of the Kindle versions of The Irrational Atheist and Summa Elvetica. In order to close the deal, I offered to remove the free and complete PDF versions from the blog, which is why they are no longer listed here. Note, however, that an abridged, 8-chapter version of TIA is still available for free download in PDF format; it contains all the chapters dedicated to the specific rebuttals of the various atheist arguments for those who are looking for them.

The Irrational Atheist is now $1.99 and Summa Elvetica is $0.99. So, if you haven’t picked up an ebook version yet, I would encourage you to do so. I also expect to have some further announcements in this vein in the near future. If nothing else, it would be amusing to see TIA claim the top spot in the Atheism category, which is eminently doable considering RGD’s performance in the Economic History category.

UPDTE: Well, that was certainly quick. TIA is already up to #3 in Atheism.

The Brave Sir Robins of atheism

The Telegraph reports that Richard Dawkins is exhibiting some well-founded cowardice:

A war of words has broken out between the best selling author of The God Delusion, and his critics, who see his refusal to take on the American academic, William Lane Craig, as a “glaring” failure and a sign that he may be losing his nerve.

Prof Dawkins maintains that Prof Craig is not a figure worthy of his attention and has reportedly said that such a contest would “look good” on his opponent’s CV but not on his own. An emeritus fellow of New College, Oxford, Prof Dawkins last year supported a plan to charge Pope Benedict XVI with crimes against humanity for his alleged involvement in the cover-up of sex abuse by Catholic priests. Prof Craig is a research Professor of Philosophy at Talbot School of Theology, in California, and the author of 30 books and hundreds of scholarly articles on Christianity. He has debated with leading thinkers including Daniel Dennett, A.C.Grayling, Christopher Hitchens, Lewis Wolpert and Sam Harris.

Prof Craig is due to visit Britain in October this year. Four invitations to take part in public debates were sent to Prof Dawkins from The British Humanist Association, The Cambridge Debating Union, the Oxford Christian Union and Premier Radio.

Prof Dawkins declined them all. He told The Daily Telegraph that he had recently debated Prof Craig, in a boxing ring, in Mexico, and claimed he was not impressed by his opponent. His critics say this event was a six-person discussion, not a rigorous debate, but Prof Dawkins disagrees.

“I have no intention of assisting Craig in his relentless drive for self-promotion,” he said.

Some of Prof Dawkins’s contemporaries are not impressed. Dr Daniel Came, a philosophy lecturer and fellow atheist, from Worcester College, Oxford, wrote to him urging him to reconsider his refusal to debate the existence of God with Prof Craig. In a letter to Prof Dawkins, Dr Came said: “The absence of a debate with the foremost apologist for Christian theism is a glaring omission on your CV and is of course apt to be interpreted as cowardice on your part. I notice that, by contrast, you are happy to discuss theological matters with television and radio presenters and other intellectual heavyweights like Pastor Ted Haggard of the National Association of Evangelicals and Pastor Keenan Roberts of the Colorado Hell House.”

First, the idea that Dawkins would accuse anyone else of a “relentless drive for self-promotion” is amusing. Dawkins is one of the most self-promoting individuals on the planet. Even The God Delusion was little more than a belated attempt to jump on the atheist book bandwagon that Sam Harris and Michel Onfray got rolling. Second, it is encouraging that some atheists are intellectually honest enough to refuse to defend Dawkins’s clear cowardice. Third, note that the invitations Dawkins is rejecting are not coming from Craig, but from various organizations, including one with which Dawkins is affiliated as a vice-president.

Still, Dawkins is likely correct in asserting that the contest would look good on Craig’s CV and bad on his own, because the chances are good that Craig would destroy Dawkins in much the same way that he destroyed Harris. Of course, at his age, Dawkkins isn’t concerned about his CV so much as his legacy. Dawkins’s concerns don’t stem from Craig being a particularly formidable debater, although he is quite clearly a competent and successful one, but because he has presented as case against the existence of God that is absolutely full of factual and logical flaws that are easily exposed. Anyone who has read TIA and is quick enough to recognize Dawkins’s deceptive little bait-and-switches and call them out would be able to beat the man in a debate without too much trouble. This is because Dawkins is not only a coward, but as Melanie Philips has pointed out, “is sloppy and cavalier with both facts and reasoning to a disturbing degree.” The man is simply no longer a credible intellectual figure.

I have no doubt that Dawkins’s cheerleaders will attempt to justify his cowardice, just as PZ Myers’s fans attempted to justify everyone’s favorite community college professor’s repeated retreats from my debate challenges. And while the cheerleaders will loudly proclaim the deathless courage of their godless heroes, they know perfectly well that the reluctance to debate demonstrated by the likes of Dawkins and Myers whenever a formidable opponent presents himself is not founded on confidence in their intellectual prowess or positions, but rather the awarenesss that they cannot successfully defend their positions against competent opponents. Dawkins is avoiding a debate with Craig for precisely the same reasons Myers has been avoiding a debate with me. They are the Brave Sir Robins of atheism.

The Fowl Atheist recently confessed: “I’ll also cop to the obvious fact that, knowing that reason will not get through their skills, I’m happy to use emotional arguments as well. Passion is persuasive. Look at all those assertive Gnu/New Atheists — they are not making Spock-like dispassionate arguments only, although there is a strong rational core — we are hitting people in the gut and telling them to open their eyes. It gives us that unseemly aggressive reputation, but at the same time it’s a very effective way to let people know we think they are dead wrong.”

Note that PZ is readily admitting to “the obvious fact” of his use of logically invalid appeals to emotion. It is obvious, it always was obvious, and he is not the only New Atheist to rely upon them. But I must correct him: Myers provides emotional arguments in the place of reason due to the way in which his attempts at reason-based arguments tend to be inept and incorrect. See The Courier’s Reply for both proof and amusement. That’s why PZ is terrified to debate anyone who is his rational and intellectual superior and instead seeks out debates with half-educated creationists who couldn’t argue their way out of a paper bag and don’t know how to deal with his naked appeals to emotion. What passes for PZ’s “reason” can’t get through our skills because his arguments are irrational and unfounded in correct fact and logic.

As for Spock-like dispassionate arguments and the claimed “rational core”, there isn’t a single New Atheist who reliably produces substantive logic-based arguments. Christopher Hitchens relies upon telling personal and historical anecdotes, Sam Harris usually asks leading questions before leaping to unsupported and incorrect conclusions, Richard Dawkins offers constant bait-and-switches in lieu of argument, and Daniel Dennett doesn’t even construct many direct arguments on the subject at all. None of them have managed to produce much of philosophical relevance that Jean Meslier hadn’t already articulated in 1729.

So much for the Revolution

I know the American courts are as insane as they are totalitarian, but this disrespect for both the law and historical precedent is truly astonishing:

Overturning a common law dating back to the English Magna Carta of 1215, the Indiana Supreme Court ruled Thursday that Hoosiers have no right to resist unlawful police entry into their homes.

In a 3-2 decision, Justice Steven David writing for the court said if a police officer wants to enter a home for any reason or no reason at all, a homeowner cannot do anything to block the officer’s entry.

“We believe … a right to resist an unlawful police entry into a home is against public policy and is incompatible with modern Fourth Amendment jurisprudence,” David said. “We also find that allowing resistance unnecessarily escalates the level of violence and therefore the risk of injuries to all parties involved without preventing the arrest.”

Translation: America is demonstrably less free than medieval England. I tend to doubt that this was what the Founding Fathers had in mind when they revolted against the King’s rule.

No worries

It appears Blogger is having serious technical difficulties. One can only presume Facebook is behind it. Normal posting will resume at the earliest opportunity.

The WSJ buries Captain Underoos

It would appear Mitt Romney is no longer favored by the Republican elders:

As everyone knows, the health reform Mr. Romney passed in 2006 as Massachusetts Governor was the prototype for President Obama’s version and gave national health care a huge political boost. Mr. Romney now claims ObamaCare should be repealed, but his failure to explain his own role or admit any errors suggests serious flaws both in his candidacy and as a potential President.

There’s a lot to learn from the failure of the ObamaCare model that began in Massachusetts, which is now moving to impose price controls on all hospitals, doctors and other providers. Not that anyone would know listening to Mr. Romney. In the paperback edition of his campaign book “No Apology,” he calls the plan a “success,” and he has defended it in numerous media appearances as he plans his White House run.

It seems Daniels is the flavor du jour, seasoned with some light amusement to be provided by retreads Gingrich and Giuliani. Romney couldn’t have won the nomination anyhow, as his Mormonism trumps his height and executive hair, but the Massachusetts Romneycare debacle renders him a complete non-starter.

Police murder a Marine

As usual, the police story is mutating in real-time as they attempt to concoct a rationale to defend firing 71 shots at a Marine who didn’t know they were police and didn’t fire a shot at them in the midst of a “shootout” at his home.

Deputies serving a search warrant on Tucson’s south side shot and killed a 26-year-old man Tuesday morning after he fired a rifle at them, officials said. At about 9:30 a.m. the Pima County Sheriff’s Department SWAT team arrived at the residence in the 7100 block of South Redwater Drive, said Deputy Jason Ogan, a Pima County Sheriff’s Department spokesman.

Jose Guerena was inside with his wife and their 4-year-old son when he fired at deputies, who had entered the home, Ogan said. It was unknown if the woman and child were in the same room as Guerena. Guerena fired his AR-15 rifle at the deputies who were holding up shields, Ogan said. Deputies fired back, killing Guerena, Ogan said.

Wait a minute… it turns out there wasn’t actually a shootout.

“What they (SWAT members) did see clearly is this guy went into a crouching position, almost on his knees, brought up an AR-15 assault rifle, pointed at the officers and said, ‘I’ve got something for you,’ O’Connor said, referencing Guerena’s alleged remarks to the SWAT members.

“At that point, officers immediately began firing on him.”

O’Connor said 72 rounds were fired by officers in just a matter of seconds. Guerena was killed almost instantly, even though he never fired a single shot. We’re told he did have a round in the chamber, but his gun was still in the safety position.”

I think I would have found the police story more credible if they claimed Guerena had said “say hello to my little friend” or “take this, ya dirty rats”. It’s never hard to tell when police are inventing details, because they inevitably concoct dialogue that sounds like an outdated B movie. What trained military man is going to a) not remove the safety, and b) announce his presence prior to firing, if he is outnumbered and intending to engage in combat?

Since the justice system is totally unwilling to hold these out-of-control SWAT teams accountable for their crimes or force them to stop these para-military armed home invasions, it’s time for the armed civilians of America to make one thing very clear to the police of America: if the police will not show due respect for the lives, homes, and families of American citizens, Americans will no longer respect theirs. I suspect the police will suddenly find the ability to avoid “accidentally” killing people by the first time an entire cop family is wiped out by a vengeful relative of a police victim.

The lesson of history is that violence usually provokes reactive violence. The police should be as concerned as anyone about the direction that their relations with the citizenry have been headed for the last 25 years.

Mailvox: two varying perspectives

PL has noticed the same sort of things that I have in his own encounters with omniderigistes:

Your post “Piper and the Schizo God” was of particular interest to me. I live in the Twin Cities and attend Greg Boyd church of Woodland Hills and have several friends who attend John Piper’s church of Bethlehem Baptist. There are three attacks Piper and his disciples routinely offer against open theism and they are:

1. It undermines the unity of the church
2. It goes against a 2,000 year old tradition
3. How are we supposed to trust a God who doesn’t know the future?

All of them silly and quite easily dismissed. 1. Unity is not the ultimate goal of the church, of course, unity is a good thing, but not if we must compromise scripture to get it. It is self-evidently not something we want to believe. 2. Really? It amazes me whenever protestants of any sort say this and fail to see the irony. I am a protestant also, so I can’t throw it in their faces like a roman catholic could. But I still politely ask them what their opinion was of a recalcitrant monk who nailed 95 theses to a church door, demanding reform from 1500 years of tradition, and suddenly, hey, they wish to change the topic. 3. It isn’t enough for there to be an omniscient, omnipotent, all-loving being who deeply cares about you and died on the cross to save your sins. You need an omniderigent God who determines your future, robs you of your personhood, and your rights as a human being made in God’s image.

The evasiveness of the omniderigiste is typified in your analysis of John Piper’s changing the definition of the 1 Sam 15 text, from “regret” to “sorrow”. Just like a poker player who starts nervously darting his eyes back and forth, playing semantic games is a tell that you are on the losing side of the argument and must literally rewrite the dictionary in order to win. The exegetical gymnastics required to shift all of the relevant verses in the Bible to an omniderigent view would require you to bend your body to the breaking point many times over. That is why red herrings, ad hominem attacks, and appeals to emotion are often the attacking points of omniderigistes against open theists and not scripture. They know they can not answer the myriad of scriptural verses that open theists offer and must resort to other methods.

If you ever find a Calvinist who honestly engages others in honest dialogue and deals with the facts and issues at hand, I would very much like to know who it is and talk to him or at least read his stuff. Because so far, my hope to find an honest omniderigiste has been as about as well-placed as my hope that I will ever see a Super Bowl ring on the finger of a Minnesota Viking.

PL obviously has more personal contact with omniderigistes than I do, so I will defer to his statements about what the most commonly presented arguments are. I would also encourage him to read Markku’s PUOSU on the subject. My response to the three points he mentioned are:

1. Good. When half the nominal Christian denominations in the West are embracing female pastors and gay marriages, unity and ecumenicism should be avoided at all costs.
2. Irrelevant. Wrong is wrong. It doesn’t matter when the error is recognized.
3. Presumably the same way we trust people who don’t know the future. Is a Creator who doesn’t know the future any less worthy of worship than one who does? It’s still His Game, His Rules, regardless of whether He knows the outcome and/or every last twist and turn of the game or not.

Coming at it from the other side, Mudineri demonstrates that even those sympathetic to omniderigent theology can’t manage to keep track of all the twists, turns, and contortions required in defending it:

All that your posturing and bragging about you super duper intellect makes you, is well: a poser and a braggart. It would be interesting to see you call God a liar to His face. Don’t worry though, you will get a chance at some point to do just that. Being a potter myself, Romans 9:20 immediately springs to my mind when I read the all too familiar Arminian/Open Theist objections to God’s sovereignty.

“You will say to me then, “Why does He still find fault? For who resists His will?” On the contrary, who are you, O man, who answers back to God? The thing molded will not say to the molder, “Why did you make me like this,” will it? Or does not the potter have a right over the clay, to make from the same lump one vessel for honorable use and another for common use? “

Their logic is impeccable, and yet…. Do you not recognize yourself in the mirror?

Not in the slightest. First, as an advocate, and possibly even the coiner of the phrase “God’s Game, God’s Rules”, I am hardly one to deny the right of the potter to shape the clay however he pleases. And as one who is not shy about calling the intellectual dishonesty of others to account, I am not about to start engaging in false modesty of any kind. My intellectual superiority is neither a pose nor something worth bragging about, it is simply a statistical fact that should be taken into account in much the same way that it is wise to take Kevin Garnett’s height into account when deciding upon a drive to the basket. As soon as people stop attempting to make ridiculous claims that I do not understand perfectly obvious things that anyone with an IQ of 100 or more can understand, I will be delighted to stop reminding them that I am significantly more intelligent than they are.

(A brief tangent by way of example. The annoying thing about my appearance on Peter Schiff’s radio show was the way he kept repeating his basic Econ 101 argument. “They’re printing money, therefore inflation”. Yes, I understand the concept of supply and demand and how it should apply here. However there are some complicating factors as well as some observed anomalies that need to be taken into account-” “But they’re printing money, therefore inflation! Don’t you get it?”)

Now, why would I call God a liar to His face? I’m not the one claiming that God did not say in the Bible what is quite clearly written in the Bible. I’m not the one who holds to absolutely strict Biblical non-errancy or believes that any contradiction found within it therefore means that God is untrustworthy. It is apparent that Mudineri hasn’t been able to follow all the twists, turns, and contortions on offer from the resident “Calvinists”.

Anyhow, in keeping with PL’s observations, here is my completely unfair perspective how I see the way conversations with omniderigents tend to go:

Omniderigent: God knows everything, plans everything, controls everything, and does everything. You have no free will and evil as such does not exist.

Open Theist: I can see evil all around us in the world. You seriously believe it is God’s Will every time 10,000 civilians are massacred, a woman is gang-raped, or a pastor is axe-murdered in the pulpit?

Omniderigiste: Yes, it’s all good because it is in accordance with God’s Will, which is sovereign, and by sovereign, I mean micromanaging down to the atomic level. No matter how awful things might appear to be, from original sin to the Holocaust, it is all a part of God’s Perfect Plan.

Open Theist: How can you possibly say that when there are numerous incidents described in the Bible that were not planned by God, that were not desired by God, and that never even entered His mind?

Omniderigiste: Well, here’s a few verses about potters and clay and stuff that say otherwise.

Open Theist: All right, so one verse says X and this other one says Not-X. They can’t both be true, (or so we are informed by Logic Midget), so perhaps one of them is not being interpreted properly. And, if we look more closely at both of them, we can see that your interpretation is only one of several possible ones, in fact, it’s not even the most reasonable one.

Omniderigiste: Well, what if we do that to your verse instead?

Open Theist: There are a lot more of them. And they don’t lend themselves as readily to alternative interpretations. The verse you cited is the obvious outlier.

Omniderigiste: You’re calling God a liar and dishonoring Christ!

Open Theist: No, “outlier”, not liar. I’m merely pointing out that the Bible quite clearly says two contradictory things if we insist on interpreting the outlying verse your way.

Omniderigiste: You’re still calling Him a liar, because the Bible is His Word and it is completely without error. So, it can’t possibly contradict itself.

Open Theist: But, that’s not the relevant… okay, fine, let’s try it this way. Which of the many Bibles out there would you say is totally without error?

Omniderigiste: The only Bible. And by “Bible”, I mean “a complete figment of my imagination”.

Open Theist: Okay, so you’re quite clearly crazy. Is there anyone else on your side who might happen to have an answer that is within shouting distance of sanity?

Omniderigiste 2: There’s no contradiction at all. We simply read Not-X as X.

Open Theist: You read it that way?

Omniderigiste 2: Yes, of course, otherwise we couldn’t believe anything in the Bible at all.

Open Theist: Wait, what? One trivial mistake means you have to throw the whole thing out?

Omniderigiste 2: Naturally. God doesn’t make typos. How could He, when He dictated it all to Himself?

Open Theist: He dictated it to Himself? Why would you say that?

Omniderigiste 2: Because God has 37 different Wills. The Executive Will dictated everything to the Secretarial Will, which then transmitted it through the mechanism of the prophet-puppets. Every jot and tittle!

Open Theist: So… God is schizophrenic?

Omniderigiste 2: You’re anthropomorphizing. We prefer to say “multi=willed”. Or 37-willed, to be precise.

Omniderigiste 3: Also, God is a penguin.

Open Theist: A penguin?

Omniderigiste 3: Yes.

Open Theist: God is a schizophrenic micromanaging penguin with 37 personalities? That’s certifiable.

Omniderigiste 3: Ha! I’d like to see you deny God’s penguinhood when you face him beak-to-beak!

Okay, I admit I may have made up the bit about the penguin. But it’s about as rational and relevant as the other “arguments” presented.

Another denomination bites the dust

And the Presbyterian Church joins the growing collection of denominations dead by theological suicide:

With a vote in Minneapolis, the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) is expected to pass a measure on Tuesday afternoon allowing openly gay people in same-sex relationships to be ordained as ministers, elders and deacons.

Although Presbyterians have been debating the issue since 1978, the news will most likely come as a surprise to many church members. Only two years ago, a majority of the church’s regions, known as presbyterys, voted against ordaining openly gay candidates.

This time, 19 of the church’s 173 presbyterys so far have switched their votes from no to yes. The Twin Cities presbytery, which covers the Minneapolis and St. Paul region, is expected to cast the deciding vote at its meeting on Tuesday.

The Rev. Heidi Vardeman, senior minister of Macalester Plymouth United Church, in St. Paul, said in an interview, “Finally, the denomination has seen the error of its ways and it will repent, which means, literally, to turn around.”

The “Reverend” Heidi clearly has her directions confused. What the Presbyterian Church has to repent from, and from which it must literally turn around, is its present course, which is headed for extinction. The report mentions that 100 congregations have already left, and more will likely leave soon. It is a dying denomination that is already down to only 2 million members; this action means that they’ll likely fall below one million within a decade.

As I have often stated, female pastors are the first sign of a church dancing with the theological death spiral. It is safe to conclude that gay pastors are the final one, an indication that the spiral will soon be complete. And yes, I am aware of my old church’s position on the matter: “We affirm that ministerial authority is based upon a person’s character, calling and giftedness, not his or her gender.”

The Wall Street Journal scrubs the True Finns

Karl Denninger catches the WSJ doing a little ex post facto editing of the letter written by True Finn leader Timo Soini on the corrupt nature of the European banking bailouts:

Why I Won’t Support More Bailouts

When I had the honor of leading the True Finn Party to electoral victory in April, we made a solemn promise to oppose the so-called bailouts of euro-zone member states. These bailouts are patently bad for Europe, bad for Finland and bad for the countries that have been forced to accept them. Europe is suffering from the economic gangrene of insolvency—both public and private. And unless we amputate that which cannot be saved, we risk poisoning the whole body.

The official wisdom is that Greece, Ireland and Portugal have been hit by a liquidity crisis, so they needed a momentary infusion of capital, after which everything would return to normal. But this official version is a lie, one that takes the ordinary people of Europe for idiots. They deserve better from politics and their leaders.

To understand the real nature and purpose of the bailouts, we first have to understand who really benefits from them. Let’s follow the money.

At the risk of being accused of populism, we’ll begin with the obvious: It is not the little guy that benefits. He is being milked and lied to in order to keep the insolvent system running. He is paid less and taxed more to provide the money needed to keep this Ponzi scheme going. Meanwhile, a kind of deadly symbiosis has developed between politicians and banks: Our political leaders borrow ever more money to pay off the banks, which return the favor by lending ever-more money back to our governments, keeping the scheme afloat.

In a true market economy, bad choices get penalized. Not here. When the inevitable failure of overindebted euro-zone countries came to light, a secret pact was made. Instead of accepting losses on unsound investments—which would have led to the probable collapse and national bailout of some banks—it was decided to transfer the losses to taxpayers via loans, guarantees and opaque constructs such as the European Financial Stability Fund, Ireland’s NAMA and a lineup of special-purpose vehicles that make Enron look simple. Some politicians understood this; others just panicked and did as they were told.

The money did not go to help indebted economies. It flowed through the European Central Bank and recipient states to the coffers of big banks and investment funds.

The text that the Journal removed is marked in bold. Read the whole thing at the Market Ticker. And a thought occurs to me. Since the election of Mr. Soetoro has demonstrated that absolutely no documentation is required of an American presidential candidate, why not nominate Mr. Soini for the presidency? He’s a damn sight better than anyone else the Republicans are likely to choose, he isn’t too old, and as the leader of a popular, electorally successful party, he can’t possibly be called unelectable.

Anyhow, it’s a good example of how the Whore Street Journal should not be trusted any more than the New York Times or the National Enquirer.