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In which we give thanks

Whereas it is the duty of all Nations to acknowledge the providence of Almighty God, to obey his will, to be grateful for his benefits, and humbly to implore his protection and favor– and whereas both Houses of Congress have by their joint Committee requested me to recommend to the People of the United States a day of public thanksgiving and prayer to be observed by acknowledging with grateful hearts the many signal favors of Almighty God especially by affording them an opportunity peaceably to establish a form of government for their safety and happiness.

Now therefore I do recommend and assign Thursday the 26th day of November next to be devoted by the People of these States to the service of that great and glorious Being, who is the beneficent Author of all the good that was, that is, or that will be– That we may then all unite in rendering unto him our sincere and humble thanks–for his kind care and protection of the People of this Country previous to their becoming a Nation–for the signal and manifold mercies, and the favorable interpositions of his Providence which we experienced in the course and conclusion of the late war–for the great degree of tranquility, union, and plenty, which we have since enjoyed–for the peaceable and rational manner, in which we have been enabled to establish constitutions of government for our safety and happiness, and particularly the national One now lately instituted–for the civil and religious liberty with which we are blessed; and the means we have of acquiring and diffusing useful knowledge; and in general for all the great and various favors which he hath been pleased to confer upon us.

and also that we may then unite in most humbly offering our prayers and supplications to the great Lord and Ruler of Nations and beseech him to pardon our national and other transgressions– to enable us all, whether in public or private stations, to perform our several and relative duties properly and punctually–to render our national government a blessing to all the people, by constantly being a Government of wise, just, and constitutional laws, discreetly and faithfully executed and obeyed–to protect and guide all Sovereigns and Nations (especially such as have shewn kindness unto us) and to bless them with good government, peace, and concord–To promote the knowledge and practice of true religion and virtue, and the encrease of science among them and us–and generally to grant unto all Mankind such a degree of temporal prosperity as he alone knows to be best.

Given under my hand at the City of New York the third day of October in the year of our Lord 1789.
– George Washington

Even in the present difficulties, even given the way the American nation has moved away from God and abandoned its historical liberties, we still have much for which to be thankful today. It is better to thank God for the abundance of what we have than to bemoan that which has been lost.

Have a Happy Thanksgiving. And I encourage you to be grateful. It may be a long time before humanity again knows such a period of relative wealth and ease.

The progressive argument

The Left has never been known for its ability to think through the consequences of its actions:

Anytime anyone says anything libertarian, spit on them. Libertarians are by definition enemies of the state: they are against promoting American citizens’ general welfare and against policies that create a perfect union. Like Communists before them, they are actively subverting the Constitution and the American Dream, and replacing it with a Kleptocratic Nightmare.

The level of ignorance and general lack of intelligence here are rather remarkable. But Mark Ames’s vituperation is well placed inasmuch as he recognizes that libertarians are the implacable enemies of the totalitarian state he worships. To the progressive, the State is God. To the libertarian, the State is Satan, and the battle between the two ideologies is not so much a philosophical struggle as a religious war, given that philososophy requires an amount of thought that is well beyond the average progressive. One has to read Ames’s article in its entirety to fully appreciate its superficiality; he genuinely believes that because the preamble to the U.S. Constitution seeks to form “a more Perfect Union” and promote “the general Welfare”, this somehow translates to a political endorsement of labor unions and government welfare programs, two concepts that not only didn’t exist back then, but stand in the way of “Justice”, “domestic Tranquility” and “the Blessings of Liberty”.

Of course, spitting in response to the presentation of contradictory ideas is probably the highest logic one can reasonably expect from a progressive since they’re not capable of any response that an intelligent observer would find any more coherent or convincing.

You’re not imagining it

Some women really do think men find high maintenance behavior to be attractive:

Am I alone in thinking there’s something rather magnificent about a woman who can demand (and more importantly, receive) such extravagant devotion? In this egalitarian age of dual incomes, shared bank accounts and recrimination over whose turn it is to empty the dishwasher, there’s something quaintly old-fashioned about any woman who takes such slavish adoration – and the 10-course menu degustation – for granted, with a blithe lack of concern for cost or equality.

This is an exhibit of what is all too common in women, although hardly limited to them: an inability to distinguish between cause and effect. Alpha males do not, as this woman assumes, desire women because they are high maintenance, rather, they desire the sort of women who can get away with being high maintenance because they are exceptionally attractive. And meekly accepting such behavior on the part of a woman is anything but alpha.

It’s similar to the way in which women mistakenly think that because they find social status and money to be a primary determinant in a man’s attractiveness, increasing their social status and income will make them more attractive to men. But it doesn’t work that way; most men will be much more interested in marrying a pretty demure woman who didn’t finish high school than they will to an attractive, successfu, female executive with a degree from Harvard Law and the requisite manjaw.

But give credit where credit is due as the writer gets one thing right. The one thing worse than the openly high maintenance woman is the high maintenance woman who thinks she’s low maintenance.

Don’t fly for the holidays

Ron Paul warns Americans of the consequences of submitting to the Federal molesters at the TSA:

“If we tolerate this,” Paul said, “there’s something wrong with us.” He added that the American people deserve to be humiliated and demeaned by the government if they refuse to stand up and resist. Paul predicted Americans will eventually boycott the airlines to put an end to the intrusive searches and the unconscionable use of dangerous backscatter radiation naked body scanners. “Maybe the Congress will get off their duffs and do something in January,” he said, “and insist we reign in the TSA.”

I certainly hope he’s right, but I have to confess, I tend to think there is something wrong with us and most people will adapt to gate rape as the new status quo sooner rather than later. I don’t see that taken as a whole, Americans value freedom very much anymore. The Tea Party talks a good game, but they appear to have swallowed the “security” argument as readily as the good little liberal fascists.

Regardless, I’m not flying and won’t fly until our 4th Amendment rights are respected at the airport again. Because if Americans accept the scanners, they’re soon going to see them everywhere from buses to shopping malls.

Napolitano said her agency is now looking into ways to make other popular means of travel safer for passengers and commuters. Napolitano isn’t the only one who’s suggested that advanced scanning machines could be used in places beyond airports. Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.), chairman of the Senate Homeland Security Committee, introduced legislation this past September that would authorize testing of body scanners at some federal buildings.

Mailvox: the currency circus

DMM queries my forex views:

You wrote on Oct 19th the following: “This should also mark a surge in USD strength contra nearly everyone’s expectations.” I am curious if you still feel that there will be a strengthening of the dollar? With the latest actions of the FED many are claiming we will see a 20% loss in value. You have also stated that the debt deflation is overwhelming the attempted inflation of the dollar but does the FED’s actions yesterday make you think differently or are you still of the same opinion?

Given that the Euro has fallen from 1.39 to 1.34 against the dollar in the last month despite the brief spike courtesy of the Fed’s quantitative easing announcement, I think my contrarian position has been generally supported by events so far. I see no reason to change my opinion. I find it remarkable that so few see that the way in which these massive money pumps are not driving the dollar down anywhere near the depths it was in 2008 indicate that the USA is in a deflationary environment, not the inflationary one that almost everyone presently believes is the situation.

At $80, oil is much less expensive than it was in 2007. Housing prices continue to fall. And while the Federal Reserve is frantically pumping as much money through the US Treasury as it can, it’s going to run up against the debt limit soon and it cannot hope to create enough debt to make up for the $2.8 trillion in nonexistent assets presently held by the four largest U.S. banks alone. They have run extend-and-pretend longer than I’d imagined they could, but they’ve had to run it longer than they’d thought they’d have to and they cannot run it indefinitely. Either the economy turns around or something gives, and I see little sign of the former.

The important thing to remember is that the massive amounts of money being created by the central banks to bail out loans made to Greek and Irish debtors are only meant to replace money (debt) that has already gone up in smoke with the defaulted loans.

Greece down, Ireland down, Spain is next

The Irish government caved to the EU and IMF “rescue” team and is attempting to put Irish taxpayers for the next three generations on the hook for around $100 billion Euros in order to bail out the American and European banks that made bad loans into the Emerald Isle. This is more than a little ironic; after shedding great quantities of Irish blood in an effort to free themselves from centuries of British rule, the Irish government has placed the Irish people on the verge of serfdom to a much crueler taskmaster.

The EU-IMF rescue deal for Ireland hinges on the publication of the four-year plan and the passing of the budget, the Government has insisted. Minister for Transport Noel Dempsey said this morning the rescue package was contingent on the budget being approved by the Dáil on December 7th…. Minister for Finance Brian Lehihan said passing the budget is vital.

“We need to pass this budget, we need to publish this plan tomorrow, which we will doing,” he said. The plan has been finalised, the budget will be introduced and the necessary funding will be obtained. They’re the priorities for this country at present.”

It is interesting how the people of Iceland’s decision to spurn being “saved” has not been covered by the media. Instead of pledging their future income to bail out their bankers, they are prosecuting them. If the Irish people do not wish to return to serfdom, they will have to follow the Icelandic example and choose to default on the massive bank debts that their government elected to accept last year.

And in the meantime, Spanish bond yields have increased to 224 points over U.S. treasuries, 67 more than one year ago.

Mailvox: a tale of two atheists

JM writes:

I was born of two avowed atheists, along with two sisters, one older, one younger, and we were raised with the highest of social values and principles, and this was done by taking us to church from our earliest days, and learning morality from Christian religion, even though my parents both deny the correctness of the theology. They considered their options, concluded they could find no fixed means of inculcating moral behavior in us any other way, and chose to use what worked on them and for so many others, while making no personal claims at all about religion, what they believed in, but let their examples show, and let us assume they were connected to the moral lessons we were learning in Church, fully supporting those lessons, but with no means of connecting the dichotomy. I was certain I was an atheist at eleven, but could not come up with any possible way to put together a rational morality without presuming for the sake of argument, a superior being who would ultimately judge our behavior according to an established set of standards….

Of my parents and two sisters, and myself, I alone am a believer, and while I am assailed every time we are together, and challenged at every turn, I can do no more than Galileo did, as he accepted his rebuke, and turned away saying to himself, yet we still move around the sun.

I know science does not give moral answers, I’ve lived through enough of this world to know this for a certainty, yet I know that science does give accurate answers to so many reasonable questions, I don’t deny its validity. I also know that morality is an absolute, and it is fixed, and accept that it is made law, just as a part of Creation, and is a part of God himself. I know much about the history and lineage of man, and accept my place in society, and in God’s will, knowing it is of the greatest consequence of all, and I simply accept it is not subject to dissection by science, or if it is, the beginnings of that work are not within our grasp yet.

It is hard to deal with quantum mechanics, entanglement, dark energy and matter, and also deal with faith and God, good and evil, all as truths, and all directly impacting us, but just because it is hard does not take away the self evident truths which we base our moral standards on, nor does it remove the necessity of pursuing good, because failing to do so inevitably provides the opening for evil to enter into one’s choices and one becomes evil by do it.

I think perhaps it is easier to recognize the limited scope of scientific utility if one’s training is in fields where the state of science is not so much inexact as hopelessly inaccurate. Economists such as Paul Krugman are every bit as convinced of the mathematical verity of their pseudoscientific dogma as Richard Dawkins, but it is much, much easier for the skeptical economist who rejects the various forms of Keynesianism to demonstrate the falsity of mainstream economic science than it is for the skeptical biologist due to the much shorter time frame in which the economists operate. Having witnessed the repeated construction of economic epicycles in order to explain away the theory’s extensive panoply of failures, it is not at all difficult to see exactly the same process at work in biology and even physics.

The choice is simple, Sam Harris’s envisioning of a utilitarian moral landscape notwithstanding. Either there are rules of the game as well as an original provider of those rules or there is no game. Consider the following definition: “GAME – a competitive activity involving skill, chance, or endurance on the part of two or more persons who play according to a set of rules.” No rules, no game. The same applies to life; either there is a purpose to life and a set of rules related to that purpose or there is no purpose and no rules. This is not an original thought, as numerous philosophers of various creeds have pointed out, the choice has always been between God and the Void. Attempting to disguise that choice by appealing to science, self-interest, or collective humanity is doomed to failure by logic as well as historical observation.

The intellectual poverty of Harris’s case can be seen in the arguments of his followers. I don’t know what it is about atheists, but they do seem remarkably prone to thinking that they can argue in ignorance. Consider the following exchange with KH:

KH: Sam Harris made a point in one of his books that God doesn’t heal amputees. I don’t find that to be an “intellectual failure.” He’s right. Just a straight-shooting, blue-collar observation. Christians don’t pray for a worker’s severed arm to regrow. What would you say to counter such a statement?

VD: That’s amusing. You do realize that one solitary point, correct or incorrect, is insufficient to make a book an intellectual success or failure, right? You clearly haven’t read TIA or you would be aware that both The End of Faith and Letter to a Christian Nation are full of logical and factual errors. As for how would I respond, I would ask him what his evidence is for such a statement. Has he done any scientific surveys of amputees and the Christians who know them? There is no reason to believe his statement about amputees to be any better evidenced than his statement that all the research shows corporal punishment to have a negative effect on children’s behavior.

KH: I was simply using one example from Sam’s works to illustrate how I thought he was correct. Another question you cannot answer, Vox, but he can (because he’s right) is: Why don’t we find rabbits in the layers of Cambrian rocks, next to trilobites, if they were all created together? This gradual increase in complexity as you go upward from older to younger rocks is empirically evident. I seriously would need you to convince me on this simple point to believe that his works are an intellectual failure.

VD: One or two correct examples do not suffice to prevent an entire book from being an intellectual failure. The intellectual failure or success of a book is determined by the success or failure of its central thesis; all three of Sam’s books are failures by this reckoning. And, contra your incorrect assertion, of course I can easily answer what is not actually Sam’s point, but one that he cribs from J.S. Haldane: circular reasoning is used in the geological dating of rocks and fossils. Furthermore, there is no “gradual increase in complexity”; you clearly know very little about either the fossil record or geology if you genuinely believe “you go upward from older to younger rocks”. Do you even know what “punctuated equilibrium” means, much less why the concept was developed in the first place?

You must realize that it is as ludicrous to attempt to criticize my critique of Sam Harris as it would have been for me to attempt to criticize Sam Harris without first reading his books.

Neither amputees nor trilobites have much, if anything, to do with the central theses of The End of Faith, Letter to a Christian Nation, or The Moral Landscape. But this doesn’t prevent dogmatic atheists desperate to find spiritual leadership from leaping blindly to defend Mr. Harris from substantive criticisms of his works.

And, as we all know, when rabbit fossils are eventually discovered in Cambrian rocks, (actually “Precambrian”, KH didn’t even get the Haldane quote right), scientists will trample each other in the stampede to claim that a) the fossils are not rabbits, b) the rocks are not Precambrian, and c) evolution is “a large package of ideas, including: that life on Earth has evolved over billions of years; that this evolution is driven by certain mechanisms; and that these mechanisms have produced a specific “family tree” that defines the relationships among species and the order in which they appeared” and therefore a single impossible anachronism should not be sufficient to destroy such an important and glorious edifice constructed over so many years by so many famous scientists.

UPDATE: KH emailed again to complain that I did not directly answer the question about why we don’t find rabbit fossils next to trilobite fossils. (He also complained I didn’t answer the first one, which is simply not true.) The reason I answered the implied question rather than the direct one is because the direct question is very stupid. But, at the risk of belaboring the obvious, the reason we don’t find rabbit fossils next to trilobite fossils is not because they lived in different eras, (even assuming that they did, in fact, live in different eras), it is the same reason we do not find giraffe fossils next to sperm whale fossils. Barring the discovery of the hitherto unknown Sylvilagus oceanus maximus, the present state of scientage indicates that rabbits are land animals and trilobites are marine animals.

Finally!

Childress is gone:

Jay Glazer of FOX Sports is first reported, and the Vikings have confirmed, that Childress has been fired…. Defensive coordinator Leslie Frazier has been named the interim head coach for the rest of the 2010 season.

I never thought I’d say this, but thank you Green Bay! I have no confidence in Frazier, but I actively disliked Childress from the moment his hiring was announced. I don’t even think Andy Reid is a good head coach – he’s a great quarterbacks coach, to be sure – so hiring someone who worked under Reid and didn’t even call the plays as his offensive coordinator seemed totally inexplicable. The success the Vikings have had was the result of Rick Spielman’s work in bringing in good players; literally anyone could have achieved decent results with the talent he brought in.

One wonders how Wilf made his money, since handing Childress an extension last year when absolutely no one was offering him a job was one of the dumbest business decisions I’ve ever seen. Now he’ll be paying for it. I doubt any of the marquis coaches will have a lot of interest in the job, but I’d take a serious look at Brian Billick. Anyone who can win a Super Bowl with Trent Dilfer at quarterback has something going on and I always liked his pre-game speech before the AFC Championship game against the favored Titans.

“When you go in the lion’s den, you don’t tippy toe in — you carry a spear, you go in screaming like a banshee, you kick whatever doors in, and say, ‘Where’s the son of a bitch?'”

The first bankster hit?

The Market Ticker contemplates a murder in Atlanta:

Americans were put into supposedly-safe “auction rate securities” and lost millions of dollars when they could not sell them. Americans were sold various MBS that were allegedly “AAA”, lost money, and have no recourse. Americans were sold homes based on inflated appraisals and knowingly-bogus loans given to them where the banksters involved knew they couldn’t pay, and lost everything.

None of the people responsible for the collapse in 2007-2009 have been indicted.

NOT ONE INDICTMENT.

This, despite the fact that Citibank’s former Chief Underwriter has testified under oath that the Bank knew it was writing crap paper in 2006 and 2007. 60% of the loans were bogus in 2006, and 80% in 2007. Yet they kept doing it, and nobody, including Rubin, who received a memo on the matter, has been indicted and the bank was bailed out rather than being shut down.

Likewise there are myriad complaints about foreclosure fraud – the filing of false affidavits which are in fact crimes – over 170,000 of them in aggregate that have been admitted to.

Again: Not one indictment has issued and not one firm has been shut down.

Gunfire is prevalent among gang members because they do not have any other means of settling disputes. That is, having had their right to recourse under the law removed due to the nature of the activity in question, these gang members instead turn to violence to settle complaints with one another.

Are we seeing the beginning of the same thing in the financial realm?

Denninger is correct and I suspect that the banksters have not thought through the probable ramifications of their actions in attempting to shield themselves from being held legally accountable for their criminal behavior. As with the illegal drug economy, in which disputes are settled with violence because legal recourse is simply not an option, banksters who utilize their political influence to insulate themselves from the victims of their financial rapine are likely to become targets of those whose only hope of justice is to take it into their own hands.

Not every foreign investor or American who has lost their home is going to seek justice; the majority of the latter won’t even show up to court. But some will do so, which is why it is utterly foolish for banksters to attempt to place themselves above the law, because above the law is, by definition, also outside the law.

This is why it is so important that the insolvent banks are shut down rather than bailed out and why the criminal banksters must be arrested and prosecuted rather than granted ex post facto legal immunity. If government abdicates its lawful role, others will eventually fill the void.

Correction: this appears to be number two. I note that two years into the Great Depression 2.0, more banksters have been murdered than indicted.

This is “equality”

UK family court law is making sharia look better and better by comparison:

A £56million lottery winner has been ordered to pay £2million to his ex-wife who walked out on him ten years ago. Nigel Page, 44, was sued by his former wife Wendy shortly after his massive Euromillions windfall earlier this year even though she left him for another man.

It is truly astonishing how the Western legal system has rapidly devolved into little more than a vehicle for funneling money from men with resources to women without them. Of course, it’s hard to feel much sympathy for the lottery winner who promptly turned around and married his girlfriend. I wonder what the over/under is on her departure?