Author: VD

Adieu, Northern Alliance

Alas, the noble radio show has gone the way of the Afghan warlords’ union:

As John Hinderaker reported earlier on Power Line, the six year run of our volunteer participation at The Patriot has come to an end. I won’t go into all of the details behind the move, John does a good job of that in his summary. I will say that it did come as a surprise when we were informed earlier this week that our time slot was going to be immediately turned over to more, shall we say, revenue generating friendly programming.

It’s too bad sufficient revenue couldn’t have been raised from our program alone. From my perspective as a radio listener, it was at least the equal of what the competing talk stations were putting up during that time. In terms of the quality of national guests and commentary featured, no shows on other local stations came close to providing it.

I enjoyed my phoned-in visits to the show, although I think the Fraters guys tended to view my libertarian extremism with far more delight than the Powerline guys did. (I’m not sure the latter ever got over my brutal depantsing of Michelle Malkin in their own house.) But I appreciated their willingness to host my non-debate with PZ Myers and I always considered it to be a very entertaining and intelligent show that routinely operated at a much higher level than most of the superficial chatter that passes for talk radio these days. Of course, it was the way in which they took politics seriously that ultimately deprived them of a sufficiently large audience since most Minnesotans want to hear about sports and celebrities, not politics and world events. But it was a solid six-year run, and I congratulate Brian, Chad, JB, King, Mitch, Ed, John, and Scott for their impressive accomplishment.

And let’s face it, NARN without Chad the Elder was like the United Front without Massoud.

There is no law in America anymore

Karl Denninger notes what is fast becoming apparent to everyone:

“The 50 state attorneys general probing U.S. foreclosure practices will first settle with the five largest loan servicers, including Bank of America Corp. and JPMorgan Chase & Co., Iowa Attorney General Tom Miller said.”

Oh, so 150,000+ bogus affidavits – each an alleged count of perjury (and perhaps forgery) will lead to a felony criminal charge, right?

“The group isn’t pursuing a criminal investigation, Miller said. “Our focus is to reform the servicing process and that’s inherently civil, not criminal,” he said.”

I see. So the standard is that if you’re a bank, you can break the law…. This is sorta like how it wasn’t criminal to launder drug money – if you’re a bank, or wire money to a prohibited nation (for alleged terrorist uses) – if you’re a bank, or to be involved in a massive bribery and other associated events scheme over a sewer system – if you’re a bank, or to rig bids in the municipal debt markets – again, if you’re a bank.

Well, it seems to me that if this is the standard for a bank, then the people are well within their rights to decide that the precise same standard shall apply to conduct directed at a bank.

So Crowley was right and do what thou wilt is now the whole of the law. And you wonder why I am so convinced that America is on the verge of collapse. The present US combines the worst of the aristocratic system with the worst of the democratic one. All that it really lacks is the worst of monarchical system. I have little doubt that will come along soon enough. It didn’t take long for the American financial aristocrats to exempt themselves from the law, after all.

A dearth of progress

Be patient, please. CoComment has gone down again and I’ve been looking at going with another solution. Unfortunately, most comment systems don’t support Classic Blogger templates of the sort I’ve been using, so this will require some experimentation. Hence the dynamic mutations. Think of it as evolution in action… if it’s too much of a pain, I’ll just go back to the old template and use Blogger comments. I’m also not sure that the added functionality is worth giving up the extra width that the old template permitted. This is already cranked up to the maximum width and still wastes a lot of screen real estate at 1920.

UPDATE: I guess not. IntenseDebate completely sucked; I correctly installed it three times in two different ways and the comments never showed up despite the fact that it said it was installed successfully. So, I suppose we’ll go with Blogger comments for now as I’m not inclined to waste more time on this. It’s a little amazing how horrific these comment systems are; it’s not rocket science, they’re dealing with known standards, and they still can’t do something as simple as get text from one place to another in a reliable manner.

Dynamic government, mutating law

It’s ultimately a fool’s game to put any trust in a government program because the law, especially when created and enforced by an interventionist government, is necessarily dynamic. That means that you can’t count on the rules which presently influence your decisions remaining static since the rulemakers will change them any time they believe it will benefit them to do so:

People’s retirement savings are a convenient source of revenue for governments that don’t want to reduce spending or make privatizations. As most pension schemes in Europe are organised by the state, European ministers of finance have a facilitated access to the savings accumulated there, and it is only logical that they try to get a hold of this money for their own ends. In recent weeks I have noted five such attempts: Three situations concern private personal savings; two others refer to national funds.

The most striking example is Hungary, where last month the government made the citizens an offer they could not refuse. They could either remit their individual retirement savings to the state, or lose the right to the basic state pension (but still have an obligation to pay contributions for it). In this extortionate way, the government wants to gain control over $14bn of individual retirement savings.

The Bulgarian government has come up with a similar idea. $300m of private early retirement savings was supposed to be transferred to the state pension scheme. The government gave way after trade unions protested and finally only about 20% of the original plans were implemented.

A slightly less drastic situation is developing in Poland. The government wants to transfer of 1/3 of future contributions from individual retirement accounts to the state-run social security system. Since this system does not back its liabilities with stocks or even bonds, the money taken away from the savers will go directly to the state treasury and savers will lose about $2.3bn a year. The Polish government is more generous than the Hungarian one, but only because it wants to seize just 1/3 of the future savings and also allows the citizens to keep the money accumulated so far.

The fourth example is Ireland. In 2001, the National Pension Reserve Fund was brought into existence for the purpose of supporting pensions of the Irish people in the years 2025-2050. The scheme was also supposed to provide for the pensions of some public sector employees (mainly university staff). However, in March 2009, the Irish government earmarked €4bn from this fund for rescuing banks. In November 2010, the remaining savings of €2.5bn was seized to support the bailout of the rest of the country.

The final example is France. In November, the French parliament decided to earmark €33bn from the national reserve pension fund FRR to reduce the short-term pension scheme deficit. In this way, the retirement savings intended for the years 2020-2040 will be used earlier, that is in the years 2011-2024, and the government will spend the saved up resources on other purposes.

How many more places does this have to happen before Americans begin to realize that the same thing is absolutely going to happen with their local, state, and federal pensions, as well as their entitlement programs. The fact that government officials often refer to pensions and entitlements as “sacred obligations” doesn’t mean that they won’t eliminate the payouts or grab the funds, in fact, the need to place a legally meaningless adjective in front of the noun underlines the fact that they do not consider the legal obligations to bind them in any way.

Make that 5 of 8

Or, if you prefer to leave the non-economic prediction out of the equation, 4 of 7. In my review of my 2010 predictions, I noted that there were still two weeks left, the trend was down, and adjusted TOTLL was only $13 billion above my prediction of $6.3 trillion. In the December 22nd report, published today, TOTLL fell another $19.9 billion, ($22.1 billion from the revised 12/15 report).

That brings adjusted TOTLL down to $6.293 trillion, just enough to render the prediction correct if you are willing to remove the one-time $452 billion anomaly for which I have yet to see an explanation.

Book review: The Fuller Memorandum

The Fuller Memorandum, by Charles Stross
Ace (320 pages, $24.95, July 2010)

Charles Stross is the technocratic heir to H.P. Lovecraft. While he is probably best-known for his Singularity-inspired science fiction and has been known to dabble in committing the occasional fantastic indiscretion with his Merchant Princes series, Stross is unequivocally at his best when he combines his techno-savvy competence with unadulterated occultic horror. The Fuller Memorandum is the third of his Laundry series, which centers around the deeds of a British agent named, significantly enough, Bob Howard, who works for a branch of the English Secret Service in confronting evils that are much more dark and dangerous than anything James Bond ever had to face.

Having triumphed over die-hard trans-dimensional Nazis and grandiose villains with master plans, Bob and his wife Mo are forced to confront an evil, world-threatening plan to awake and unleash the demonic Eater of Souls in The Fuller Memorandum. The plot is convoluted and the squamous horror is amped up to eleven, as the strain of being forced to deal with the implacable darkness beyond the borders of our universe as well as the soul-crushing bureaucracy of the agency are beginning to wear heavily on both of them.

Read the rest at Black Gate.

WND column

The Fourth Government

In his dialogue “De re publica,” Marcus Tullius Cicero explained, though the fictionalized voice of Scipio Africanus, that there are three basic types of government. The first is the monarchy, in which the king rules. The second is the aristocracy, in which a select class of privileged delegates rules. The third is the democracy, in which the people rule themselves. Each type of government has its strengths and weaknesses, and through those weaknesses, a cyclical process occurs in which one type of government devolves into the next.

VPFL Champions 2010

60 MS Swamp Spartans
47 Bane Sidhe

Congratulations to Clay and the Swamp Spartans, who continued in the time-honored VPFL tradition of knocking off the regular-season leader in the championship game in a surprisingly low-scoring finale. As a prize for winning the league, they will be back to play again next year. Third place was claimed by Greenfield with an 89-60 defeat of the Quixotes.

On the NFL side, if Frazier starts Favre after last week’s performance against the Eagles by Webb, I wouldn’t even think about converting his interim label.

Don’t be impressed by credentials

Even very good grades to go with the requisite university degree don’t indicate anything more than the possession of a pulse and a large student loan. And the problem isn’t limited to the United States:

The universities awarding the highest proportion of firsts or 2:1s last year were Exeter, where 82 per cent of graduates received the top degrees compared with just 29 per cent in 1970, and St Andrews – Scotland’s oldest university, where Prince William met fiancée Kate Middleton – where the figure was also 82 per cent compared with just 25 per cent in 1970. Imperial College London and Warwick both granted 80 per cent firsts or 2:1s last year, compared with 49 per cent and 39 per cent respectively in 1970. At Bath University the figure was 76 per cent last year compared with just 35 per cent in 1970.

I’m not saying that credentials aren’t important in practice if you’re concerned with getting past the HR gatekeepers. But the important thing is to understand that you’re not purchasing an education any longer, you’re just buying an employment ticket. So, your object should be to figure out the fastest, least expensive way to buy the ticket that will get you where you want to go. That may mean a conventional 4-year degree at a private university, but it may not now that more and more quality schools are offering degrees online. The important thing is to approach the process with open eyes and an open mind.

And, of course, to pursue an actual education on your own because you’re certainly not going to get it at a university. Given what we’ve learned in looking at the undergraduate and graduate science curriculums, even those with the sort of hard science educations that require university schooling have to admit that pretty much everything they’ve learned outside their core scientific discipline has been learned outside the academic system.

Mailvox: one less god and the banana

Lithp wishes to respond to my critique of Stephen Roberts’s One Less God argument:

All right. I’m interested in addressing your critique:

“1. No, we are not both atheists.
2. No, you are confusing God with gods. If you simply take the First Commandment into account, you will know that this is incorrect. Few atheists understand that monotheism concerns the worship of one supreme Creator God, not belief in the existence of only one supernatural being that demands worship.
3. Unless an atheist dismisses the Christian God because they believe Him to be an evil supernatural being falsely posing as a deity worthy of worship, he is not doing so for the same reason that Christians dismiss the pagan gods.”

On Point 1, the first part is not meant to be taken literally. Of course a monotheist is not an atheist. The point is that disbelieving in deities is not such a novel concept. I can proceed no further unless you clear up a point for me: Are you saying that you DO believe in pagan gods, you just don’t think they are what they claim?

“It is so eminently fitting that atheists should rely upon fake quotes to argue in support of their supposed dedication to reality.”

I should think the point matters more than who said it.

“Dawkins, Harris, Hitchens, and Myers are no more philosophically sophisticated than the teenagers and make pretty much the same arguments.”

Okay. You really aren’t going to get a more in-depth rebuttal from anyone other than “no they aren’t,” because you didn’t actually demonstrate how this is so. This is especially problematic for someone such as myself, who doesn’t really follow any of these people. Additionally, I don’t see why you keep using the phrase “teenager” to describe an ignorant person. I’m 19 and I can tell you why Ray Comfort’s banana argument is a load of nonsense.

1. I am aware that Roberts’s first statement can be viewed as mere rhetorical exaggeration, even though most atheists who quote it do take it literally. That doesn’t make it any less false. The fact that he begins with a demonstrable falsehood doesn’t bode well for his argument, since it indicates he is more interested in the superficial sound of his argument than its substance. If you’re going to pose as a philosophical champion of material fact and reason, shouldn’t you really stick to strict factual accuracy?

2. That’s a reasonable question. Yes, I do believe in the literal existence of intelligent and supernatural beings that are not the Creator God and may or may not seek human worship. Some of the pagan gods in the written historical record are these creatures whereas others are mere human invention. The Bible describes both kinds. I would put Zeus and Amaterasu in the fictional category and Baal, Wotan, and Damballah Wedo in the non-fiction one based on the behavior of their human worshippers. As I have repeatedly written, atheists like Roberts and even some Christians fail to make the vital distinction between “God” and “gods”. There are many gods but only one Creator God who merits our worship and who sent His Son to die on our behalf.

Please note that one needn’t believe in the existence of either the Christian God or the pagan gods to understand that the distinction renders Roberts’s argument invalid.

3. Again, if you are claiming to be devoted to fact and reason, basing your self-proclaimed most effective argument on a fictitious statement at the very least renders your devotion to fact more than a little suspect. That being said, if the point stands, it stands, though obviously without the benefit of the presumed authority of the erroneously quoted individual who didn’t actually supply the quote. It also calls either the knowledge or the intellectual honesty of the individual providing the false quote into question.

4. First, the overlap between the arguments presented by the Reddit “teenagers” and the New Atheists is easily confirmed by comparing them. Second, I have actually demonstrated how the arguments of Dawkins, Harris, Hitchens, Myers, and others are philosophically unsophisticated and have gone into considerable detail explaining precisely how those arguments are incorrect. Since I have published an entire book on the subject, I don’t believe it is either necessary or possible for me to rehash several hundred pages of material every time the subject comes up again. Of course, until someone reads the book, their opinion on the matter is entirely irrelevant.

Moreover, numerous atheists have reached precisely the same conclusion about the lack of philosophical and theological sophistication on the part of the New Atheists as I have. Dawkins and Myers have both openly admitted their own ignorance of philosophy and/or theology; you should note that the Courtier’s Reply is a feeble attempt to justify that ignorance. You may also wish to note that only Harris, Dennett, and Onfray even pretend to have any knowledge of philosophy.

5. Teenagers are, for the most part, almost completely ignorant without realizing it. They have very little experience of the world and the vast majority are badly educated and poorly read. Even the most intelligent seldom have enough information at their intellectual disposal to use that intelligence to any significant effect. However, in this particular case, it was asserted by someone else that the people who were posting quotes in the Reddit thread were mostly teenagers. Not being familiar with that site, I simply accepted his assertion, even though I consider it to be questionable.

As for Ray Comfort’s banana, I have no idea to what you are referring. But what little I have read of Comfort does not lead me to conclude that it would take much in the way of either intelligence or experience to successfully address one of his arguments.