Category: Uncategorized

When Texas child welfare authorities released statistics showing nearly 60 percent of the teen girls taken from a polygamist sect’s ranch were pregnant or had children, they seemed to prove what was alleged all along: The sect commonly pushed girls into marriage and sex. But in the past week, the state has twice been forced to admit “girls” who gave birth while in state custody are actually adults. One was 22 and said she showed state officials a Utah birth certificate shortly after she and more than 400 minors were seized from the West Texas ranch in an April raid….

Child Protective Services has complained that sect members refused to cooperate with their investigation, constantly changing answers or refusing answers to questions about age and parentage. Parker said the state ignored evidence the young mothers presented, including birth certificates and Social Security cards. He said that with their long braided hair, makeup-free faces and pioneer dresses, the women look very young.

Someone is lying… and it sure looks like whoever is lying is doing so in order to cover their posteriors. And note that the number of children kidnapped has now risen to 463… although that will likely fall as it becomes clear that many are not children at all.

Modern Pharisee points out that the age issue also reveals the CPS to have lied about what they observed during the kidnappings. He also notes that it has now cost Texas $10 million to fund the CPS crimes… no doubt that will increase significantly once the FLDS start suing the smack out of the state and its agents. Remember, there’s no protection against liability when an agent of the state can be shown to have committed a crime.

So far, Texas is batting 0.000 on finding pregnant underage girls. I still say it’s HUGELY important (a battle cry no one is picking up on) that it is now shown to have been IMPOSSIBLE that CPS or Sheriffs Department personnel even SAW a “pregnant underage girl” when they entered the ranch. They were down to three, I’ve mentioned this before. One was clearly not showing enough to be “evidence, ” so much so that her pregnancy is disputed and cannot be documented until she takes a pregnancy test, which she has refused. The other two which have to have been the “obviously pregnant” ones, have been shown to be of age.

Here is the quiz for the section covering 2.47 to 2.103, which marks the end of Book Two. If you wish to take the previous quizzes again, they are still available:

The History of the Peloponnesian War 1.1 to 1.115.

The History of the Peloponnesian War 1.116 to 2.46.

Go ahead and discuss the answers and so forth freely here. We’re getting a bit more into the nuts and bolts of the campaigning and some of the wider aspects of the war are perhaps a bit less interesting, but there are a number of events which are worthy of note in this section. I’m sorry I didn’t participate as much in last week’s discussion as I intended; I’ve been pretty busy of late. And by the way, is anyone else with the paperback version of the Landmark edition having problems with the binding coming undone? Or with the hardcover?

Next week’s reading is all of Book Three. It’s really quite a remarkable section, as it contains what must be one of the startlingly prescient passages in human history.

Let me begin by saying that I have absolutely no problem with ad hominem attacks. I indulge in them quite often; my particular idiom is usually to first make an ad hominem attack, shred the errant logic of the argument second, and finally close with a non-ad hominem attack made on the legitimate basis of step two. So, in this vein, let me first say that 1) Spherical Time is rather lacking in the wits department. Regarding 2), I quote ST’s recent post concerning Chad Orzel’s bizarre attack on John Scalzi that contained numerous ad hominem attacks on me as well:

Ad hominem attacks are what happens when someone reaches the end of their ability to argue coherently. Sometimes people go to it quickly because they are poor advocates for their position or their arguments suck. After a long, long time of valid arguments that are constantly ignored and dismissed out of hand because of deeply held irrational beliefs, sometimes even the best of us do it.

Orzel calls Day a lunatic. That’s his opinion, and from what I see Orzel isn’t the type of person to call someone that lightly…. I can’t say that I agree with Orzel yet, but if the faithful pack of Day supporters that shows up whenever his name is mentioned is any clue, then I suspect that Orzel’s not completely out of line for having dropped the logical arguments in favor of the ad hominem attacks. He’s just tired of saying things that are ignored.

Now, consider what this Orzel fellow wrote. He had not been making valid arguments that were ignored or dismissed for a long time, in fact, to the best of my knowledge he had never once attempted to refute anything I have written over the last five years. Moreover, he STILL hasn’t made a single logical argument against anything I wrote in TIA; as we’ve seen, there simply don’t appear to be any atheists that are capable of doing so, the occasional false claims that have been asserted in this regard notwithstanding. The end of his ability to argue coherently was demonstrated at the very beginning of his argument!

This is strange, because if I am, as Orzel says, “a fucking lunatic”, he should be able to easily refute any of my arguments. But he can’t. And he knows he can’t, which is why he immediately resorted to the ad hominem attacks that Spherical Time is attempting to defend. Most likely, Spherical Time can’t either, 3) because his decision to base his defense of Ad Hominem on such an unsuitable foundation provides substantive evidence of his own logical incompetence.

There is, of course, a very solid basis for Orzel’s belief in my lunacy. For as it is stated in Vox’s First Law: any sufficiently advanced intelligence is indistinguishable from insanity.

And so California skips down the lavender brick road, at least until the people of California get their chance to speak their piece via referendum:

The California Supreme Court struck down the state’s ban on same-sex marriage Thursday in a broadly worded decision that would invalidate virtually any law that discriminates on the basis of sexual orientation.

Being a libertarian, I see no reason why the government should be involved in any way with the private social contracts written between individuals. Marriage is no more subject to legal definition than friendship; what passes for government-defined “marriage” is no more marriage than a fish is a frog. A marriage license is simply a binding legal contract between three parties that happens to share a name with the ancient institution. The state governments didn’t even control the licensing until 1853, so either no one was legally married in America before then or there is a complete distinction between marriage and the tripartite legal institution that was redefined yesterday in California.

Now, what is tremendously amusing to me is the way that many who look favorably on homogamy appear to be reluctant to recognize how this creates the de facto legalization of polygyny. For if it is bigotry or an arbitrary denial of a basic human right to define marriage as “one man and one woman”, the same reasoning that applies to changing the nouns must also apply to the numbers. Now, I don’t have a personal problem with this, in fact, I just had lunch yesterday with a good friend who has two de facto wives. I’m having dinner with another friend tonight who has three children by three different women. Not my life, not my problem.

The California decision is only interesting for what it says about where the USA is on the historical decadence scale. It may even be a positive thing, highlighting the distinction between real marriage and government marriage as well as laying the groundwork for the final destruction of Western feminism. I’m mostly pointing out the obvious here; one cannot logically accept a legal redefinition of “marriage” that includes homogamy that does not implicitly accept polygyny.

By the way, I note that this was a Republican-dominated court, thus exploding the last remaining argument for McCain in 2008.

Italy cracks down, officially and unofficially:

Underscoring the new Italian government’s determination to crack down on illegal immigration and what the government contends is associated crime, Italy’s police arrested hundreds of people this week in a sweep of migrant shantytowns in major urban areas across the country, the police announced Thursday…. On Saturday, several hundred Italians attacked a camp of Roma, or Gypsies, on the eastern outskirts of Naples brandishing sticks and throwing homemade incendiary devices, after a 16-year-old Roma girl was accused of trying to steal a baby.

Apparently Bossi wasn’t just talking smack when he said that his supporters were ready to clean house if the government didn’t do it. I won’t be surprised if Italy leaves the European Union within 10 years. They hate the Germans, they hate Brussels, they hate the Roma, and they really hate the Euro and the rising prices that came with it.

Peggy Noonan’s piece is an almost flawless example of why I have such scorn for the mainstream media and the readers who follow their every predictive blunder and turn-on-a-dime change of tune:

“Members and pundits . . . fail to understand the deep seated antipathy toward the president, the war, gas prices, the economy, foreclosures,” said Rep. Tom Davis of Virginia in a 20-page memo to House GOP leaders. The party, Mr. Davis told me, is “an airplane flying right into a mountain.”

The moment when the party could have broken, on principle, with the administration – over the thinking behind and the carrying out of the war, over immigration, spending and the size of government – has passed…. Mr. Bush has squandered the hard-built paternity of 40 years. But so has the party, and so have its leaders. If they had pushed away for serious reasons, they could have separated the party’s fortunes from the president’s. This would have left a painfully broken party, but they wouldn’t be left with a ruined “brand,” as they all say, speaking the language of marketing. And they speak that language because they are marketers, not thinkers. Not serious about policy. Not serious about ideas. And not serious about leadership, only followership.

And certainly not serious about principles. The problem with Miss Peggy is that the moment at which pundits could predict disaster for Republicans and remain relevant has long passed. Now, I don’t know about you, but I certainly remember all the Bush defenders at National Review, at WorldNetDaily, and on Fox, some of whom are STILL rabidly defending the ongoing occupations, urging new imperial invasions and asserting the economy is in double-secret good health. There’s a long, long list of “conservative” blogs and radio shows, from Medved and Hewitt to Malkin and Powerline, that have resolutely insisted that the Bush administration and the Republican Party were on the right track. Now, of course, many of them are delicately attempting to extricate themselves from their past opinions. It won’t be long before they all are. But I encourage you to remember their astute analytical abilities as we approach the summer stretch run of the 2008 election. Unless and until you understand that most pundits are nothing more than party cheerleaders bent on sucking you into their wishful thinking, you will be susceptible to buying into their attempted manipulations. Strange, isn’t it, that Miss Peggy didn’t see fit to talk about how much Reagan she sees in Bush these days….

Meanwhile, John McCain is characteristically engaged in betraying his backers: “Mr. McCain said in a speech that if elected, he will end the war in Iraq by the close of his first term….” I quite look forward to hearing all the outraged comments from the war-cheerleaders and chickenhawks about how McCain is a cut-and-run liberal.

This WND reader, on the other hand, completely comprehends the root of the problem and who is responsible. “You “conservatives” had your chance – and now you’re stuck. Your beloved AM talk hosts scurrying about, tied up in knots, not knowing what to say or where to go. So you turn to things like trying to pit the Democrat candidates against each other (Operation Chaos), or picking on every little word/phrase a Democrat candidate utters, in hopes of somehow turning it into an issue of importance. Pitiful. And what of your beloved (now fractured) Republican Party? It’s in shambles. Why? Because none of you believe in the tenets of liberty – liberty in the vein of self-governance, self-regulation and limited government overall.”

“Some seem to believe we should negotiate with terrorists and radicals, as if some ingenious argument will persuade them they have been wrong all along,” the President said to the country’s legislative body, “We have heard this foolish delusion before. As Nazi tanks crossed into Poland in 1939, an American senator declared: ‘Lord, if only I could have talked to Hitler, all of this might have been avoided.’ We have an obligation to call this what it is –- the false comfort of appeasement, which has been repeatedly discredited by history.”

So, to George W. Bush, negotiation is appeasement and war is a matter of who is right and who is wrong. That sort of leaves the possibility of surrender out of the equation, doesn’t it. Better prepare for a really long war, then, if you’re going to declare no quarter in advance. I suggest that the belief that your side is inevitably going to win has been far more often discredited by history than appeasement. Especially when you’ve got no definition of winning, let alone a credible plan to do so.

It’s only now that Republicans begin to realize that they just might be a facing a problem?

For the past 18 months, ever since the 2006 elections, congressional Republicans have been like a hospital patient trying to convince visitors that he is not really all that sick: a bit under the weather; actually feel better than I sound; should be up and about any day; thanks for asking.

Suddenly — belatedly — all pretense is gone….

Combined with the 30 seats that the GOP lost in 2006, that would leave the party facing a 70-vote deficit against Democrats in the House — a state of powerlessness reminiscent of Republicans’ long wilderness years in the 1960s and ’70s.

This was all completely predictable. it was, in fact, predicted. Consider what I wrote about the turn to Arnold Schwarzenegger as a pragmatic Republican savior back in 2003: “Pragmatism in politics is self-defeating in the long run. It is a euphemism for the slow sacrifice of one’s principles. The constant substitution of “electable” moderates for principled conservatives is what repeatedly kills the Republican Party and prevents it from ever realizing even a small part of its platform when it is in power.”

I reminded everyone of this again in 2005, in a column entitled “The Coming Conservative Collapse”, which pointed out the inevitable result of the political pragmatism then championed by the likes of Hugh Hewitt and Powerline. I hope you will keep this track record in mind as the popular pundits of the so-called right encourage you to help them bury conservatives in even deeper beneath the weight of the electoral corpse that is the Republican Party this November.

It doesn’t surprise me that pundits are wrong from time to time. Everyone is, including me. What does surprise me, however, is when people continue to place their trust in those who are reliably and dependably wrong. Then, of course, I remind myself that most people are idiots and it all makes sense again.

UPDATE – Even the moderate Republicans are unhappy:

Every time I hear Senator McCain speak it pushes me a bit closer to the point that I think that I simply cannot vote for him. This coming from a person who voted for Ford and Dole. I listened to Rush at lunch today and it made me so disgusted with the Republicans that I had to turn it off before I had a stroke.

It will be interesting to see if Republican disgust survives the convention and the so-called conservative media’s shrieking about this being the “MOSTEST IMPORTANTEST ELECTION EVER!”

CoComment’s Lec drops a line: “We just released fixes for the 0 comment issue and the truncated comment. Please tell me if you see any problem coming again on those issues. We are now developing the Preview and Citations. Both should be available next week.”

As you’ve probably noticed, I increased the size of the comment box, which appears to be sufficient for everyone but the would-be novelists. The comment frame option should also be coming soon, it’s already being tested and I’ve seen it in operation. But please be aware that we’ll probably go through an iterative process again on the precise form it takes.

When it’s a government statistic:

Consumer prices slowed in April despite the biggest jump in food costs in nearly two decades. But with oil near record levels, Americans should brace for more pain at the pump in coming months….

For April, energy prices were unchanged and gasoline prices even fell by 2 percent, a decline that would strike motorists as strange, given that they have been watching the price of gasoline rise relentlessly in recent weeks. However, since gasoline prices normally rise in April, the 5.6 percent increase in gasoline prices for the month was turned into a 2 percent drop after the government adjusted for normal seasonal variations — little comfort to people now paying pump prices that hit a new national record of $3.758 per gallon on Thursday, up nearly 40 cents in the past month.

Yes, you read it correctly, an observable 10.6 percent increase – the 5.6 percent figure is month-on-month and avoids the peaks and troughs – is reported as a 2 percent DECREASE. This is the reverse side of the “cut” in government spending that is not a decrease, but merely a reduction in the rate of increase. If you really believe that inflation is anywhere nearly as low as reported, you’re either blind, economically illiterate or stubbornly and willfully stupid. These “core inflation” games are part of the inflation-hiding techniques I discussed in an earlier podcast. And before anyone tries to argue that housing prices are falling, do keep in mind that they aren’t included in the CPI statistics. If they had been, we would have seen annual double-digit increases in the CPI until recently.

Now that we’ve established their willingness to blatantly lie, what else do you think they’re trying to deceive you about?

UPDATE – It’s not just here that wages are stagnant even with the significantly understated CPI:

Statistics Canada reported that, after adjustment for inflation, Canadian wage-earners are earning less than in 1980. For example, in British Columbia the median wage-earner earns 11.3% less than a quarter-century ago.

Ain’t working women and immigrants grand! Mark Steyn points out that the latter come with the additional feature of making the War on Poverty indefinite.