Author: VD

The Wall Street Journal indicates that the “stress tests” aren’t intended as anything but pure government propaganda:

It isn’t clear precisely what information the government might disclose. It remains possible the data won’t be specific to individual banks. But some within the administration believe a certain amount of information needs to be released in order to provide assurance about the validity and rigor of the assessments. In addition, these people also are concerned that the tests won’t be able to fulfill their basic function of shoring up confidence unless investors are able to see data for themselves.

The entire exercise is nothing more than a bizarre neo-Keynesian spin on “restoring animal spirits”. A serious test of banking stability would simply report the data gathered – which should be made public given the massive taxpayer investment in the banks – which would then allow anyone to decide if the state of the banks merited confidence or not.

But all this hand-wringing over precisely what information can be selectively released without causing more damage than it avoids indicates that the point is simply to convince the gullible that everything is fine and the financial authorities have it all under control. Given how many times people on both sides of the political spectrum have fallen for this line, it’s no wonder they’re giving it another go.

Just in case you’re not convinced that it’s all smoke-and-mirrors, both Calculated Risk and Roubini have been contemplating whether it’s only the “baseline case” for the tests that is invalid or whether the “adverse case” has already been exceeded:

Roubini concludes: “Actual macro data for 2009 are already worse than the more adverse scenario in the stress tests. These are not stress tests but rather fudge tests.”

I agree there is no real stress test, and the more adverse scenario is the real baseline. But I think it is premature to say that the more adverse scenario is meaningless.

I loved this contribution from a commenter: “The containment is spreading at an accelerating rate….”

View 2009 Tea Parties in a larger map

Yes, I’m skeptical that anything of note will come of it. But it’s nice to see the scope of American discontent even so. And anything that the mainstream media doesn’t want to cover can’t be all bad. If you happen to attend one today, let us know how it went. Glenn Reynolds has a summary in the Wall Street Journal:

The good news for Republicans is that, while the Republican Party flounders in its response to the Obama presidency and its programs, millions of Americans are getting organized on their own. The bad news is that those Americans, despite their opposition to President Obama’s policies, aren’t especially friendly to the GOP.

And, for once, I find myself in complete agreement with Michelle Malkin: “Practice what you preach when it matters. Not after the fact.”

I’d quite like to see a few Republican politicians punched in the face at these events. The damned whores did NOTHING when they were in power, so to see them attempt to coopt a popular movement in order to retrieve what they threw away is particularly disgusting.

By choice, believe it or not:

A Federal judge has dismissed a lawsuit by a man who was barred from the New London police force because he scored too high on an intelligence test. In a ruling made public on Tuesday, Judge Peter C. Dorsey of the United States District Court in New Haven agreed that the plaintiff, Robert Jordan, was denied an opportunity to interview for a police job because of his high test scores. But he said that that did not mean Mr. Jordan was a victim of discrimination.

Judge Dorsey ruled that Mr. Jordan was not denied equal protection because the city of New London applied the same standard to everyone: anyone who scored too high was rejected.

This old link came up in relation to a recent Slashdot article about an arrest based, in part, upon a college student’s suspicious possession of a dual-boot Linux system. If that’s not enough to convict, I don’t know what is; it’s surprising they didn’t shoot him on the spot. It would be amusing to determine who is less intelligent, on average, police or schoolteachers. My money is on the schoolteachers, as we already know that their average IQ is in the vicinity of 91.

John Hood belatedly recommends principle over pragmatism at NRO:

The lesson for conservatives is never to be tempted in the midst of panic or entreaties by purportedly “conservative” politicians to abandon our basic principles of constitutional government and human action. These principles are tools and guardrails, not handcuffs or roadblocks.

It’s great advice, but more than a bit late. Because it’s shameful that so many “conservatives” at National Review supported the first round of bailouts. And the second round. And, in some cases, the subsequent rounds. Because, you know, if it’s a REPUBLICAN president signing a massive emergency spending bill, well, then it really must be an emergency!

I’m not sure the newspaper industry is the best place to seek business advice during these difficult times, but then, they certainly have an amount of experience that is relevant to what NB is seeking to do with his Virtual Canine Protective Service:

Studies show that burglars avoid homes with large dogs such as Doberman, Rottweiler or German Shepard. But large dogs are expensive to buy, to maintain (food and veterinary care), and are time-consuming (walking, grooming). This hardest hits working families with lower incomes, who often live in crime-ridden areas.

It occurs to me that a homeowner doesn’t actually need a dog to deter burglars. All that matters is that the burglar believes the homeowner has a large dog….

If John McCain was president, Republicans would be defending the continued expansion of TARP and supporting the current increase in federal power:

TEXAS GOV. BACK RESOLUTION AFFIRMING SOVEREIGNTY

AUSTIN – Gov. Rick Perry joined state Rep. Brandon Creighton and sponsors of House Concurrent Resolution (HCR) 50 in support of states’ rights under the 10th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.

Rick Perry is no libertarian and he isn’t much of a conservative either. Like all politicians, he’s an ambitious narcissist who wouldn’t dare to cross a Republican White House or a Republican Congress. But, with Republicans on the outs across the board, there’s no motivation nor is there even much ability for the state elite to rein in the party base’s fury with Washington. The best they can to is hop on the bandwagon and hope to wrest control away from leaders less enamored with the status quo.

Remember, economic downturns tend to be devolutionary, so the worse things get, the more likely it is that more US states will assert their sovereignty and reject federal mandates. And since Obama is utterly inexperienced, it’s not impossible that he’d make a massive mistake that would provoke a state government into open revolt. That could be particularly inflammatory if it happens after a substantial commitment of US forces to Pakistan. With one of the oldest governments in the world and a debt that is 350 percent of GDP, I suspect Washington is closer to collapse than anyone currently imagines. The states aren’t exerting their rightful sovereignty for the fun of it, they’re doing it because they know the federal government can’t afford to do anything about it.

Since Obama is dumb enough to launch a push for immigration amnesty during a period of high unemployment, it’s remotely possible that he might be dumb enough to try seizing guns during a period of mass protest.

Dr. Stanley Fish fails to grasp why to Thomas Hobbes’s understanding of Conscience should not be applied to the current debate over the “conscience clause”:

Hobbes is aware that others take conscience to be the name of the private arbiter of right and wrong, but he regards this as a corrupted usage invented by those who wished to elevate “their own . . .opinions” to the status of reliable knowledge and try to do so by giving “their opinions . . . that reverenced name of Conscience.”

Hobbes’s larger point — the point he is always making — is that if one gets to prefer one’s own internal judgments to the judgments of authorized external bodies (legislatures, courts, professional associations), the result will be the undermining of public order and the substitution of personal whim for general decorums: “. . . because the Law is the public Conscience . . . in such diversity as there is of private Consciences, which are but private opinions, the Commonwealth must needs be distracted, and no man dare to obey the Sovereign Power farther than it shall seem good in his own eyes.”

If the Law is the public Conscience, it must be a remarkably dynamic and malleable thing indeed. Given the Law’s observably transient nature, Hobbes’s argument is based on a flawed foundation, leading one to conclude that the argument is best left to languish in historical obscurity rather than cited in the debate over the conscience clause.

Furthermore, appealing to public order as a basis for forcing the majority of doctors and nurses to violate their religious beliefs is self-defeating. The lack of observable damage to public order caused by the conscience clause – which, after all, is already in effect – will stand in contrast to the very real damage to public order if large quantities of religious individuals exit and/or avoid the medical field in order to avoid committing what they believe to be murder.

As Jeffrey Collier has already pointed out, the “public Conscience” argument could be just as easily used to justify euthanasia or even genocide.

Rogue nukes! Perhaps Obama will get his wish and have a shot at his own invasion. But will he choose Pakistan, Somalia, or Thailand?

PAKISTAN could collapse within months, one of the more influential counter-insurgency voices in Washington says. The warning comes as the US scrambles to redeploy its military forces and diplomats in an attempt to stem rising violence and anarchy in Afghanistan and Pakistan….

As the US implements a new strategy in Central Asia so comprehensive that some analysts now dub the cross-border conflict “Obama’s war”, Dr Kilcullen said time was running out for international efforts to pull both countries back from the brink.

Given that Thailand is engulfed in chaos, I won’t be surprised to see several national governments collapse before the end of the year. And the more Washington insists on involving itself in these situations, the more likely additional forms of blowback will become.

It’s Clinton redux. Federal agencies appear to be gunning for the right-wing militias again:

“The DHS/Office of Intelligence and Analysis (I&A) has no specific information that domestic right wing terrorists are currently planning acts of violence.” Nonetheless, it states that “right wing extremists may be gaining new recruits by playing on their fears about … the economic downturn and the election of the first African-American President …”

I don’t think anyone has fears about election of the first African-American president. I think, on the other hand, they wish they could be certain that Obama actually was African-American. The fear is more centered around the possibility that the man is the first Kenyan-Muslim socialist to hold the office. It’s not so much that Obama’s middle name is Hussein as the fact that he has “mistakenly” referred to “his Muslim faith” and bowed in public to the King of Saudi Arabia.

What’s he going to do next for an encore, get caught on film praying to Mecca? No doubt the mainstream media would attempt to explain it away as a misunderstood yoga session. Anyhow, what happened to all those green shoots we were hearing about last week? If the recovery is just around the corner, then one would assume that any concerns driven by the economic downturn have already been rendered moot.