Category: Uncategorized

Republican frauds

Karl Denninger notes that it took all of six hours for Republicans to abandon their self-proclaimed and much-ballyhooed goals:

The very so-called “Tea Party” and “Conservative” members of Congress could not even agree to cite a specific clause in The Constitution that enabled legislation to be brought to the floor.

Oh, it gets better. The actual proposed rule would not have prevented passing something that nobody could manage to find a clause in The Constitution that enabled the bill. It in fact only required that a point of order be raised if the language was not present, allowing a gigantic and overwhelming 20 minutes of debate (10 each side) before a simple majority could vote to table the objection and move forward anyway – Constitution be damned.

The Committee rejected that watered-down milquetoast rule!

That would be enough to call the Tea Party and so-called “Conservatives” we sent to Washington a failure on the day they took their oaths of office all by itself.

But no, that wasn’t enough for them. They had to make damn sure that I could get out the megaphone and holler from the rafters that every single thing we were sold by these clowns during the campaign – the entire Palin thing, the entire “we’re gonna take back Washington!” screed was an out-and-out fraud from the very first breath that passed their lips.

Remember, the claim by the Republicans (including but not limited to The Tea Party) was that they would cut the budget by $100 billion? Which, I might remind you, would have been less than five percent of the deficit this year. Well, it turns out that was a lie too.

I think it’s a little too soon to condemn the Tea Party for these failures, however. They are a mere subset of the Republican legislators and there aren’t enough of them to force these sorts of things through over the objections of their fellow Republicans. But, it certainly does underline the complete lack of commitment to either the Constitution or reducing government spending on the part of the newly elected Republicans.

And unfortunately, it looks like Rand Paul has already sold out too. He’s willing to raise the debt ceiling… just this one time. Again. How quickly they grow once they get into office.

Camtastic!

I have to say that Camtasia Studio has gone well beyond my expectations and even some of my hopes. I’m still learning my way around it, but this test of the picture-in-picture feature shows how versatile it is. The video embedded below is just a test of that feature, which I thought might be a useful way to show what the mouse is doing when the onscreen action is taking place. The result, crude as it is, turns out to be a remarkable and ironic testimony to the ergonomic advantage of the decidedly unergonomically-shaped device; even after having used it for months, I was surprised to see how it virtually eliminated wrist movement as well as the keyboard commands.

Anyhow, now that I know Camtasia works so well, I’m going to set about producing a series of higher-quality videos that will show how the mouse works with a wide range of various games and applications. But first, of course, I’ll wrap up that third inflation video for which Nate is so patiently waiting. I should be able to finish and upload it this weekend.

In search of the missing certificate

Joseph Farah takes a pre-victory lap:

Have you noticed how much better informed the major news media have become about the missing birth certificate since Hawaii Gov. Neil Abercrombie entered the picture? It wasn’t that long ago that most of the TV talking heads and alleged news reporters were telling the American people that Barack Obama had released his birth certificate. They seemed incapable of comprehending the difference between the digital short-form certification of live birth offered up by the Obama campaign in 2008 and a standard, long-form birth certificate we’re all familiar with.

How many of you recall Bill O’Reilly and Chris Matthews waiving copies of the certification of live birth in front of the camera, telling the American people they had the actual birth certificate?

How many times do you recall them viciously attacking those who persisted in demanding the absolute minimal documentation needed to ensure Obama was indeed constitutionally eligible to serve as president – without ever giving any of those conscientious, principled, rational advocates of the rule of law and openness in government the opportunity to answer their ad hominem insults?

How many times have you heard them characterize “birthers” as a fringe group of crackpots and conspiracy nuts?

Now, all of a sudden, as polls continue to show Americans increasingly skeptical about Obama’s birth narrative despite the media’s stonewalling and obfuscating, along comes the new socialist governor of Hawaii who admits the possibility that the release of some actual evidence might indeed quell what is turning into widespread public distrust of both the government and what Rush Limbaugh astutely calls “the state-sponsored media.”

He says he would like to release the birth certificate – though I doubt he ever will. But that leaves O’Reilly, Matthews and the rest of the Big Media in a dilemma. After all, they have been pretending for years that the birth certificate has already been released.

I have to admit, the silence of all the Obamorons who insisted that Mr. Soetero/Soebarkah had already released his birth certificate – willfully failing to grasp the difference between the certification and the certificate – is amusing now that it has been proven that a) no certificates were actually destroyed, and b) the Hawaiian authorities are openly admitting that the relevant information has not been released to anyone.

If, at this point, you still genuinely believe that Obama is eligible for the office he is presently occupying, you simply haven’t been paying attention. He isn’t merely hiding something, he’s hiding practically everything, including a relatively low IQ. He isn’t doing this in order to “embarrass his critics” either since the only people who have been embarrassed throughout this process are his hapless defenders in the media. Now, I don’t know about you, but I wasn’t the least bit surprised when the swearing-in ceremony went awry.

Free speech for me and not for thee

Apparently only colored people, blacks, Afro-Americans, African-Americans, people of color are permitted to use the word “nigger”. Because everyone is equal, you know?

Burlington, who is white, was fired after using the “n” word during a June 2007 staff meeting at which reporters and producers were discussing reporter Robin Taylor’s story about the symbolic burial of the word by the Philadelphia Youth Council of the NAACP.

Burlington, who began work at the station in 2004 and is now working as a real estate agent, was suspended within days and fired after an account of the incident was published in the Philadelphia Daily News. He alleges that he “was discriminated against because of his race,” according to court documents. He claims in his lawsuit that at least two African American employees at Fox29 had used the word in the workplace and were not disciplined.

The dispute began after Taylor, who is white, used the phrase the “n” word during the 2007 staff meeting. She said participants at the burial had said the full word “at least a hundred times or more,” according to court records.

“Does this mean we can finally say the word n-?” Burlington asked colleagues, according to depositions. Nicole Wolfe, a producer and one of the three African American employees among the nine people at the meeting, exclaimed: “I can’t believe you just said that!”

The speech police are in judicial favor, so it will be interesting what emanations and penumbras will be required in order to justify certain words being legal for some people and illegal for others. But I particularly enjoyed the way in which this “news” article wraps itself into contortions in order to avoid reporting the actual news. Panicked avoidance of the word nigger is particularly amusing when seen from a European perspective, where white people use the word without thinking about it because they see and hear black Americans in the entertainment world using it on a regular basis.

Burlington’s big mistake was not appealing to the one-drop rule, thus granting him permission to use the noun of his choice in reference to his people. The funny thing is that so few people realize that this sort of speech-controlling behavior is an indication of weakness, not strength. Anytime someone tries to pull the “I can’t believe you just said that” card for whatever reason, the optimal response is to immediately crush them. It’s just a test; clearly Burlington failed his.

I always find it amusing when people get upset over a clearly understood label, whether it is flattering or not. If you’re getting upset because someone calls you by a label that describes what you are, then you quite clearly regard yourself as inferior. And if you think someone else regards you as an inferior, you should probably be at least open to the possibility they are doing so because you are.

No one is all bad

Say what you will about violent Mexican drug gangs, but you really can’t dispute their very sensible position on clowns.

Two street clowns were found dead in southeastern Mexico…. The clowns were found in bright costumes and makeup on a roadside Sunday in the city of Villahermosa, bearing signs of torture….

Speaking of clowns, both David Frum and Thomas Sowell have concluded that massive illegal drug-related violence with a body count in the tens of thousands in Mexico alone is not an argument for legalizing drugs, but rather intensifying anti-drug efforts and making use of the U.S. military. Masters of logic, they are.

Genocide is for blacks

I would say African-Americans, of course, only as one of my Nigerian sprinter friends had to point out more than once to one of our relentlessly PC acquaintances, they’re not Americans. Anyhow, Brendan O’Neill notices that African nations apparently do not engage in wars any more than the United States does. Except, instead of engaging in “police actions” and “global struggles against violent extremism”, they apparently just wage “genocide”.

When does war become genocide? When the protagonists are black people. That is the only conclusion one can draw from the unhinged claims that the Ivory Coast is on “the brink of genocide” following the disputed presidential elections and the stand-off between the incumbent president Laurent Gbagbo and president-elect Alassane Ouattara….

These discussions reveal rather more about the warped Western imagination than they do about realities on the ground. Seemingly incapable of making sense of contemporary political conflict, observers reach for sensationalist, one-size-fits-all explanations instead. These conflicts are like pornography for Western misanthropes who see in every African stand-off the potential for Holocaust-style horrors. It’s a PC rehabilitation of the idea that there is a divide between the civilised West and uncivilised Africa – only today we use the more acceptable-sounding terminology of “genocide preventers” (us) and “genocidaires” (them) to establish our superiority over the dark-skinned barbarians.

A pertinent observation on how even the most fervent equalitarians cannot successfully hide their own fundamental lack of belief in human equality. On a tangential note, I can’t help but note that many of the same people who are so concerned about overpopulation and global warming are also deeply concerned about preventing genocide and starvation. How, one wonders, do they think that what they believe to be the excessive human population is going to be reduced? Relying on material wealth, feminism and irreligious ennui to sap the reproductive instinct strikes me as having no effect on at least three-quarters of the human population, which leaves genocide, famine, and mass forced sterilization as the available options.

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.