#Arkhaven INFOGALACTIC #Castalia House
Sean was joined by author and columnist Vox Day in the show’s final hour to talk about his book, “The Return to the Great Depression.” You would think a book that tackles such a complicated issue as global economics would be a tough read, but it’s actually quite the contrary. Vox Day – one of the few economics writers to predict the current worldwide financial crisis – explains why it is likely to continue.
The entire 15-minute segment has been made available at hannity.com.
I thought Paul Ryan’s comments were interesting, in that we finally have a politician who is, unlike all the mainstream economists, actually looking at debt levels instead of GDP and the money supply.
“We’re on a debt crisis path. We are on a path where the government goes from 20 percent of GDP, to 40 percent then 60 percent of GDP. We’re on a path where our debt goes from about 68 percent of GDP to 800 percent of GDP over the three-generation window,” Ryan said.
“I asked CBO to run the model going out and they told me that their computer simulation crashes in 2037 because CBO can’t conceive of any way in which the economy can continue past the year 2037 because of debt burdens,” said Ryan.
I also found the CBO simulation crash of 2037 to be fascinating, given that I have predicted 2033 to be the date by which the United States will have either disintegrated or lost its national sovereignty. What Ryan, like Sean Hannity yesterday, leaves out is that government debt is only part of the equation and a relatively small part at that. The combined Federal/State & Local debt has increased from 16% of the total to 22.5% since 2005. If private debt continues to decline, from 31.5% to 27% for financials and 28% to 24.3% for households, then government debt will have to increase in order to prevent the economy from shrinking.
This is why I said that there is no easy way out of it. The Ryan plan isn’t awful, but it isn’t sufficient either.
Kathleen Parker offers further evidence in support of the dire need to end women’s suffrage:
Women, and by extension children, suffer what too many have come to accept as “collateral damage” in theaters of war. We hate it, of course, but what can one do? It isn’t in our strategic interest to save the women and children of the world. Or, as an anonymous senior White House official recently told The Post:
“Gender issues are going to have to take a back seat to other priorities. There’s no way we can be successful if we maintain every special interest and pet project. All those pet rocks in our rucksack were taking us down.”
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, no stranger to the importance of advancing women’s rights, promptly repudiated the comment. Even so, the anonymous spokesman’s opinion, though inartfully expressed, is hardly isolated.
But what if this is a false premise? What if saving women from cultures that treat them as chattel was in our strategic and not just moral interest? What if helping women become equal members of a society was the most reliable route to our own security?
The problem, of course, is that it is not. Parker might as reasonably have asked what if buying women rainbow-striped unicorns was in our strategic interest or if buying vibrators for Libyan women was the most reliable route to American national security. I would very much like to know who actually pays this woman for her opinion, as I’m quite confident that one could find a Labrador puppy whose columns would be a) more intelligent, b) more interesting, and c) less expensive than the gynocentric drivel Parker has on offer.
Granted, every column would concern how it is a vital national interest to feed Labradors more raw meat, or alternatively, how it is a national disgrace that Labradors are only fed 60 percent of the amount of raw meat given to Rottweilers, but how is that substantially different from what most female op/ed writers produce anyhow?
Does this moronic female seriously wish to argue that women and children suffer more than men do in times of war? They may suffer more of the collateral damage, but only because the whole purpose of the intentional damage is to kill the enemy men. How many women and children died at Salamanca or Gettysburg? The last time I read something this stupidly myopic, it was an old joke about the New York Times: “Asteroid to end all life on Earth, women, blacks to suffer most.”
But even worse than the total ignorance of military history is the idea that equality, at home or abroad, is in the American national interest. America has been lethally weakened by the equalitarian dogma; there would be no need for the 30 million immigrants that are presently dismantling the social fabric if 30 million American children murdered by their mothers had lived. “Saving” women by enforcing Western equalitarian dogma is not only not in our strategic interest, it quite clearly isn’t in our moral interest either.
Women may not be pet rocks, but Kathleen Parker is clearly less intelligent than a box of them.
I’m down with Steyn on his condemnation of the would-be speech police:
When I wrote over the weekend about the trial of Australia’s most prominent columnist for expressing his opinions, I did not expect it to be quite so immediately relevant to the United States. But perhaps what’s most disturbing about Lindsey Graham’s dismal defense of his inclinations to censorship is the lack of even the slightest attempt to underpin his position with any kind of principle. He all but literally wraps himself in the flag, and, once you pry him out of the folds of Old Glory, what you’re left with is a member of the governing class far too comfortable with the idea that he and his colleagues should determine the bounds of public discourse.
I’m sick of that. I’m sick of it in Canada, sick of it in Britain, in Australia, in Europe, and I’m now sick of it in America – in part because, as Senator Graham has demonstrated in his fatuous defense, guys like him aren’t smart enough to set the rules for what the rest of us are allowed to think.
The irony, of course, is that Sen. Graham (R-SC), is talking about throwing out the First Amendment in order to defend non-Americans who wish to establish Sharia in the United States from criticism by Americans. That should be more than enough to deny him the Republican nomination in his next electoral campaign. It is time to restore the Constitutional rights of free speech and free association to Americans. I propose establishing the following principles:
a) Any private employer can hire or fire any employee for any reason.
b) No public employer may deny employment or fire any employee for any expressed opinion about anything.
If you are a private employer, then it is your business and only your business if you want to employ nothing but black lesbian Marxists or Holocaust-denying Scottish neo-Nazis. But if you are a public employer, then you have absolutely no right to favor one socio-political perspective over another. Free association and free speech. It doesn’t get anymore fundamentally American than that.
It appears I’ll be on Sean Hannity’s radio show at around 5 PM today, in case you’re interested. The discussion is supposed to be about RGD, but as we have seen, you never actually know until you’re on air.
UPDATE: Some of you asked what effect this interview had on RGD’s Amazon rating. It definitely gave it a boost, although the Kindle edition was already ranked fairly high due to its low price relative to most economics books. It would also appear that Hannity listeners prefer real books to ebooks:
Kindle rank: 551 from 3,980
#1 in Economic History, #6 in Economics
Hardcover rank: 861 from 122,000
#11 in Popular Economics, #14 in Economics
It’s interesting that the Kindle store categories do not exactly match the book categories. For example, there is no Economic History category for hardcovers. Another observation worth noting is that #551 in Kindle falls between #178 and #302 in Books. This tends to confirm that Amazon is selling more ebooks than actual books. So, the Kindle version of RGD is likely in Amazon’s top 250 overall.
The Responsible Puppet puts forth eleven reasons:
Top Eleven Possible Reasons Why Vox Day Likes Talking About Game
1. Maybe after the rigor and math and Statistics and consistency and evidence required with his posts about the economy, debt, football and atheism – it’s nice to kick back* and not worry about that stuff.
2. It’s fun to be a role model. Every Game post makes him a hero for every guy who’s ever been hurt or turned down by a woman . . or made to look like an idiot by one.
3. Let’s face it. It’s a great way to stick it to the Woman, if that’s your thing.
4. Game comes in with a built-in instant defense. Does someone disagree with you? Call them a white knight, a snowflake or a Gamma***. Argument over!
5. Everyone wants to think they’ve chosen wisely when they got married. Perhaps Game helps him believe he’s got pretty much the only decent lady** out there. Or as he describes it, “A diamond among lumps of coal”.
I think he omitted a few obvious possibilities.
12. Vox and Spacebunny have embraced polygamy and he is working on obtaining his second and third wives.
13. Vox and Spacebunny have an open marriage and Vox is simply polishing his moves.
14. Vox hates Gammas and this is his way of torturing them.
15. Vox hates women and this is his way of torturing them.
16. Spacebunny doesn’t exist and Vox is a hapless Gamma attempting to learn enough Game to actually get a date.
One of the old school Ilk has moved on to the next level. Longtime readers will recall Alex, the sharp-witted mother, outspoken Christian, and strong homeschooling advocate who seldom hesitated to share her opinions here. She wasn’t around as much the last two years, as she was increasingly occupied with battling the cancer that ultimately got the better of her last week. She was a fighter by nature, and it came as no surprise to learn that she lived longer than the doctors had anticipated. She and Spacebunny set up the original homeschooling group here together, so if you’re involved in the current one, spare a thought or two for her today.
She was fiercely proud of her son Jake, who by all accounts has grown into a fine young man worthy of his mother. She suffered no fools, gladly or otherwise, and I always admired her spirit. May she rest in peace and in the glory of her Heavenly Father.
It’s always informative to watch an atheist attempt to stumble his way to a conclusion that justifies his incoherent beliefs about religion and humanity, most of which are formed in near-complete ignorance of the former.
So Terry Jones, the Florida pastor who organized a Koran burning on March 20, wanted “to stir the pot.” Mission accomplished. Perhaps he’d care to explain himself to the family of Joakim Dungel, a 33-year-old Swede slaughtered at the U.N. mission in Mazar-i-Sharif by Afghans whipped into frenzy through Jones’s folly.
On reflection, no, there’s nothing Jones can explain to Dungel’s family, or the other U.N. staffers murdered. Jones is not in the explanation business. He’s a zealot. How else to describe a Christian who interprets his faith not as grounded in love and compassion but as a mission to incite hatred toward Islam?
There’s no discussion with a bigot like this: You can’t be argued out of something you haven’t been argued into in the first place.
There are so many things wrong with Roger Cohen’s column that it’s hard to know where to start. So, let’s begin with the aphorism, one that is popular among atheists, and like most popular atheist aphorisms, is easily shown to be both factually and logically incorrect. Cohen presents a modified form of the usual saying, which is that one cannot be reasoned out of a position one has not reasoned oneself into. But this is clearly false. Most of us possess opinions that are based on assertions that were made to us as children by parents, teachers, and other children, in fact, that is how we obtain most of our opinions.
Therefore, when one changes one’s long-held opinion based on a consideration of the relevant facts and logic, either internal or external, one is usually reasoning one’s way/being reasoned out of something one has not reasoned oneself into. As a child, I thought the crust was the healthiest part of the bread because my mother told me that when I was very young and I had never once stopped to think about the matter. Years later, when Spacebunny asked me to consider it, I quickly reasoned myself out of the instilled belief.
Now, why would the Rev. Jones have any need to explain himself to the family of Joakim Dungel? He didn’t put Dungel in harm’s way in Afghanistan. The government of the United States, the government of Sweden, and the United Nations bureaucracy all bear some responsibility for Dungel’s presence in the war zone that is Afghanistan, as did Dungel himself. Those who attacked the UN workers were not forced to attack them, they made a conscious choice to do so. And Korans are incinerated literally every day around the world, so the decision of Afghani Muslims to react with violence to a symbolic gesture is actually nothing more than scientific evidence in support of Jones’s hypothesis regarding Islam. If Rev. Jones is to be held “responsible” for burning a Koran, then the likes of P.Z. Myers must be held equally responsible for desecrating a Communion wafer.
It is ironic that Cohen, whose name indicates Jewish heritage despite his professed status as a non-believer, should attempt to utilize the term “zealot” as being somehow incompatible with genuine religious principles. To be zealous in one’s Christian faith is an excellent thing, as to whether that is true of Jones or not, neither I nor Cohen can possibly say with any degree of accuracy. Where Cohen goes wrong, as do so many ignorant non-believers, is to state that Christianity is grounded in love and compassion or that it has no place for hatred.
It all depends what the object is. Christians are told to love their neighbors and enemies alike, but also to hate evil and to shun the wicked. Compassion and forgiveness for the repentant is required, but wickedness is not to be tolerated. Jones did no harm to any individual man, woman, or child, he simply attacked what every Christian believes to be false.
Cohen goes on to write that believing Islam and the Koran serve violence, death, and terrorism is as dumb as equating Christianity with Psalm 137 that says the “little ones” of the enemy should be dashed against stones. But it is Cohen’s comparison that is almost epically stupid, as Psalms predates Christianity and isn’t even part of the Mosaic Law anyhow, whereas the Koran is the core of Islam. And it is a historical fact that Islam accounts for 50 percent of all the religious wars in history, which should come as no surprise given that it has always been a religion of the sword which has grown through military conquest rather than personal transformation. It takes an atheist to conclude that the core tenets of Christianity should be represented by pre-Christian poems from a different religious tradition.
Cohen claims that religion has much to answer for, in Gainesville and Mazar and Omagh. But atheism has even more for which to answer, in Pyongyang, Beijing, Colombo, Yangon, Hanoi, and Brussels. In any event, Terry Jones does not represent the worst that religion can do, in fact, he is one of the brave few calling attention to the worst that religion actually does, considering the bloody centuries of rule by the mighty caliphates of the past that the modern jihad is actively seeking to restore. Unlike Bush, Obama, Gen. Petraeus, and media figures like Cohen, Jones clearly recognizes for what the so-called Religion of Peace is and what it is not.
In conclusion, I note that like most non-believers, Cohen does not realize that it is not hatred and murder that are the antithesis of mercy and forgiveness, but rather self-assurance and pride.
That’s all you’ve got:
The average female spends 180 seconds sizing up a man’s looks and fashion sense as well as appraising his scent, accent and eloquence, the Daily Mail reports. Women are also quick to judge how a man interacts with her friends and whether or not he is appropriately successful or ambitious. The study found women are reluctant to change their minds about a man and are likely to believe ‘they are always right’ in their judgements.
If you’ve only got three minutes before you are judged, you had better be sure to make the most of the time allotted. And in Alpha Mail, PC asks how to educate his young daughters in a Game-informed manner.
Frankly, I don’t see much downside to the equation that many in the media are suggesting. If each religious book burned results in 20 dead United Nations bureaucrats, where exactly is the net loss to American interests? And I’m not sure which is more amusing, the Democrats who are attempting to claim that it is a totally legal book burning that has a direct causal relationship to lethal Islamic riots a world away while the bombing of a Muslim country cannot possibly be to blame, or the Republicans who are loathe to actually come out directly against a man’s right to burn his own book while trying to make sure that everyone understands they think the book-burning is “ill-judged” and “unhelpful”.
Unhelpful to what? Maintaining a pair of long, expensive, unconstitutional, and strategically stupid military occupations? Continuing mass migration from third world hellholes? And as for General Petraeus, his comments make it clear that he is a politically correct coward and a certain war loser.
Following Sunday’s meeting with Gen. Petraeus and the ambassadors, Mr. Karzai requested in a new statement that “the U.S. government, Senate and Congress clearly condemn [Rev. Jones’] dire action and avoid such incidents in the future.” Mr. Karzai issued this demand even though President Barack Obama has already described the Quran burning as “an act of extreme intolerance and bigotry”—adding that “to attack and kill innocent people in response is outrageous, and an affront to human decency and dignity.”
I’d have more confidence in the U.S. military effort if Rev. Jones was leading it. Any statement that falls short of the following by any American leader is an indication that the speaker is completely unfit for office.
“Rev. Jones, like any American, is free to dispose of his own property in any manner that happens to please him. This is not a matter of any concern whatsoever to the United States government.”