Author: VD

The UK recently had a failed gilt offering without too much fallout. But the ramifications of a failed Treasury auction are unlikely to be of similarly small magnitude:

One of the evil side effects of the BHC structure that has been illustrated by the failures of WaMu and Lehman Brothers is the reality that the customers and counterparties of the bank subsidiary are actually senior to the debt holders of the parent BHC. This tension has caused a great deal of delay and confusion in moving forward with a solution to the solvency problems facing the large zombie banks. Foreign bond holders, like the government of China, have reportedly told the Obama Administration that further losses to debt holders of US banks will result in a boycott of US Treasury auctions.

If “zombie banks” are part of your economic plan, it’s probably not a very good one. Ask Japan how well that strategy has worked out for them.

Another bankster bites the dust:

David Kellermann, acting chief financial officer of Freddie Mac, committed suicide in his Hunter Mill Estates home Wednesday morning.

And the nation rather conspicuously failed to shed any tears.

Mark Steyn defends himself against a false impression I may have created:

Just for the record, I have opposed laws against Holocaust denial my entire adult life. I even have a book out there explaining why. Up north I’ve spent the last year-and-a-half attacking the ludicrous position of the buffoon who runs the Canadian Jewish Congress and his friends in B’nai Brith Canada and similar organizations that restrictions on free speech are necessary because, if you let some loser in his parents’ basement in Saskatoon post an anti-Semitic remark on the Internet, next thing you know the prairies will be in the express lane to Auschwitz.

Steyn is entirely correct to point this out. He has long been an outspoken defender of free speech and was forced to endure a long legal battle after being attacked by the Canadian Jewish Congress and various Canadian kangaroo courts. It would not be going too far to say that he is one of the recognizable champions of free speech in the conservative media today, and I believe he is quite possibly the very last individual in the Western Hemisphere who would support the prosecution of a Holocaust denier. I apologize if anyone was left with the mistaken impression that Mark Steyn would ever support any criminalization of Holocaust denial on the basis of yesterday’s blog post.

That being said, Steyn’s correct defense of himself was somewhat beside the point of both my email to him as well as the aforementioned blog post. My primary intent in emailing him was to deplore the attack on the neutral Swiss inherent in the claim: “The mainstreaming of Mahmoud by Merz & Co is worse than what Neville Chamberlain and Lord Halifax did.” In fact, my email to him began thusly:

“What part of the concept of “neutrality” do you not understand? It is well understood by everyone that Switzerland is not in the business of taking sides. To maintain neutrality in such circumstances, when taking sides for PR’s sake is the normal and easy thing to do, is entirely admirable. Someone has to make it possible to negotiate between warring parties and Switzerland has historically served this purpose very well.”

Steyn also left out the first part of the sentence that he quoted in his Corner post. The omitted phrase is in bold text:

“I am pro-Israel myself, but as a side note, please know that the constant references to the Holocaust by pro-Israeli writers is one reason why no one in Europe outside of Germany pays any attention to it anymore. Holocaust references are now seen as little more than emotional propaganda, as the event has been trivialized by over-reference to it.”

There is admittedly a real difference between criminalizing Holocaust denial and criticizing those who permit free speech. But it is a difference of degree, not of kind, and in both cases the guiding motivation is an attempt to exert control over the dialogue. In my opinion, a declaration that Swiss neutrality is worse than the historical appeasement of Nazi Germany and the breakup of the Stresa Front is not only incorrect, but borders on the outrageous.

As to my other point, I remain mystified as to why the news that a famously neutral country continues to act in a consistently neutral manner is deemed more important than a major scandal that now involves Rep. Jane Harman, former Attorney General Alberto Gonzalez, a suspected Israeli agent, and two AIPAC officials charged with spying on the United States? As of this moment, there are 17 posts by various NROniks about Iran and the Geneva Conference on the Corner, compared to just two about the Harman scandal.

Finally, let me point out that I do not think Germans are hung up on Holocaust guilt. Young Germans in particular don’t understand what the events of more than six decades ago are supposed to have to do with their lives. Still, for a variety of reasons, they are not as completely indifferent to the historical events as most of their fellow Europeans are. Since I speak German and live in Europe, I suspect I may possess a more accurate understanding of current European attitudes than a Canadian living in New Hampshire.

If a state does not have a right to secede, then the U.S.A. is nothing but another empire based on nothing but military force. And, like all empires based on military force, it will collapse as soon as it can’t pay its forces to maintain the occupation.

To cast your vote on the fate of the Strib and it’s not looking good for the old Star and Sickle. Popular sentiment would appear to be running strongly against it. One wonders if the publisher has considered changing the logo. I’m sure it will work wonders for Detroit.

I don’t know about you, but now I am TERRIFIED of the ferocious 0-16 Lions. Especially if they pick a wide receiver with the first pick of the 2009 draft.

What a shocking surprise. No doubt all of the true blue, patriotic pro-American columnists in the conservative media will be writing about AIPAC’s latest attempt to covertly influence the US government via a corrupt Democrat rather than express shock and horror that Switzerland is still neutral:

Rep. Jane Harman , the California Democrat with a longtime involvement in intelligence issues, was overheard on an NSA wiretap telling a suspected Israeli agent that she would lobby the Justice Department reduce espionage-related charges against two officials of the American Israeli Public Affairs Committee, the most powerful pro-Israel organization in Washington.

I am generally pro-Israel myself. I’m certainly not in the least bit sympathetic to the so-called Palestinians, much less the modern remnants of the Persian empire. But it is utterly absurd for the dual citizens in both the conservative and mainstream medias to declare that anyone who might happen to cast a skeptical eye on traitorous espionage is anti-semitic. In fact, the only logical conclusion is that anyone who attempts to shut down the discussion of AIPAC’s misdeeds must be at least somewhat opposed to American interests.

As I wrote to Mark Steyn earlier today, with the exception of Germany, Europeans are completely Holocausted-out. Crying Holocaust or anointing a Hitler of the week just isn’t taken seriously by anyone anymore. In fact, the laws against Holocaust denial have only led people to call the Holocaust into question. After all, there’s no need for a law against denying World War II, because everyone knows it happened.

UPDATE – Steve Sailer brings in a guest commentator to comment on the Harman situation:

Excessive partiality for one foreign nation and excessive dislike of another cause those whom they actuate to see danger only on one side, and serve to veil and even second the arts of influence on the other. Real patriots who may resist the intrigues of the favorite are liable to become suspected and odious, while its tools and dupes usurp the applause and confidence of the people to surrender their interests.”

Meghan McCain demonstrates that the McCain genetics are deeply flawed:

“Karl Rove follows me on Twitter. That’s creepy,” wrote McCain, 24, on the DailyBeast website. McCain wrote she joined Twitter a few months ago because it allowed her to share the “less serious” and “humorously uncensored moments” of her life. Twitter, the wildly popular microblogging platform, constrains messaging to 140 characters or less.

“But there’s also been a downside: I am now being followed by Karl Rove, and my local sheriff, and God knows how many other political pundits,” McCain wrote. “We need to take Twitter back from the creepy people.”

McCain said she’s intrigued by Rove’s Twitter feeds because at the White House Rove was viewed as this “inaccessible man-behind-the-curtain figure,” and, now, he’s sending out these public messages numerous times a day.

Does the Chunky Chipmunk not realize that she is following him? Or that if she is correct and Rove has a “ghost twitterer”, he’s not the one following her anyhow! Republicans, please note that this wannabe possesses fully one-half the gene pool that you wanted to elect president. As bad as Obama has been, as stupendously horrendous as he is going to be, you should still be down on your knees every day thanking your Creator that John McCain was not elected president.

Full disclosure: I do not follow Miss McCain. Nor do I see why anyone would bother, as I am confident it would be more profitable to seek wisdom and useful information in the pigeon droppings that litter the statues in the piazza.

FD isn’t optimistic:

As a naturalized citizen of Spanish origin , I welcome your analysis. The problem with the immigration issue in the United States is that much of it comes from one country, Mexico. The term “Hispanic” or “Latin” has been corrupted here in order to hide politically incorrect truths . First of all, Mexico does not call itself a “Latin” or “Hispanic” country, it is always shouting through its semi-controlled media that they are una nacion azteca. Translation: “We are an Aztec nation”.

You can imagine what horrors and screams that would happen in the U.S. if the media and the government here proclaimed: “We are an Anglo-Saxon nation”. I say this to correct the impression regarding the ethnicity of most of the illegal aliens that cross the u.s. mexico border. The truth is that most of the “illegals” are not really “Hispanic” or “Latin” either in ethnicity or outlook , their true cultural roots are actually “Mezo-American ” or “Indian”.

Mexico and Central America is actually a majority “Indian” or “Mestizo” societies , except for the higher Spanish classes, the majority of the poor populations are pre-Columbian descendants. As long as these populations were checked by natural causes and infant mortalities the balance with
the neighbor U.S. was not much of a problem . In the post-World War II era, UN and private charitable programs of vaccinations and clean water have permitted these countries with large family traditions to explode its populations, with no hope that their economies would expand to service all these extra people .

Non-christian or “pre-christian” imperial societies would know how to act under these outside pressures the United States is under, a program like Japan or China to kick out anybody who is not “like them”, or like ancient Rome establish a no-man’s land frontier of forts and army posts across the border in order to hold back the tide. these measures are going to take a tremedous amount of courage and fortitude to implement, unfortunately the “west” has apparently been softened by Marxism and other pseudo-christian and cosmopolitan ideologies and frankly I do not think it can recover.

This almost forces one to contemplate the obvious question. If the Aztec population of California decides to erect the Great Pyramid of Los Angeles and dedicate it to the Sun God, would carving the hearts out of captured Anglos be a Constitutionally-protected practice under the First Amendment? I mean, it would be hard to argue that it wasn’t a genuine exercise of religion with verifiable historical antecedents.

America is Not Geography

Now nearly two-thirds Latino and foreign-born, [Langley Park, Md.] has the aesthetics of suburban sprawl and the aura of Central America. Laundromats double as money-transfer stores. Jobless men drink and sleep in the sun. There is no city government, few community leaders, and little community.
– New York Times, April 18, 2009

To describe the discourse concerning the mass inflow of foreigners that has taken place over the last 29 years “the immigration debate” is to use a misnomer. What has taken place since the 1980 U.S. census is nothing less than a mass migration of the sort that irretrievably transformed historical civilizations everywhere from Hellenic Greece to Moorish Spain. In 1980, the number of Hispanics living in the United States was 14.6 million. In 2008, it was 45.5 million. Hispanics now account for 15 percent of the total population, and because they are the fastest-growing population segment, the census bureau expects their numbers to increase by a further 67 million by 2050….

Never forget, science fetishists such as Richard Dawkins and PZ Myers have staked the credibility of science on anthropogenic global warmingclimate change:

ICE is expanding in much of Antarctica, contrary to the widespread public belief that global warming is melting the continental ice cap…. A paper to be published soon by the British Antarctic Survey in the journal Geophysical Research Letters is expected to confirm that over the past 30 years, the area of sea ice around the continent has expanded.

And, if we apply the atheist logic of Daniel Dennett here, we can only conclude: You cannot trust biologists. Because climatologists have amazingly inaccurate models.