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The latest chapter in Police State America:

I saw about 7 people attacked (before being forced to leave). I saw two of them right in front of me. One was a guy who was walking around with a camcorder stunned at what was happening. A soldier told him to give him the camera now. The raver said no it is my camera. The soldier then proceeded to grab the camera, throw it to the ground and then began beating the kid. In the end they threw him to the ground violently an put their knee into his back while handcuffing him. All for wanting to keep his property. When I last saw him he was knocked out and unmoving.

Another girl next to me said to one of the soldiers that she didn’t know how to get home as they had just arrested her friend. The soldier told her to walk home. My friend tried to grab her to bring her with us, but the soldier began yelling that she had touched him (which she hadn’t). WIthin seconds, five soldiers had jumped on her and were literally beating the crap out of this innocent women. She was punched in the face, thrown to the ground, and kicked while down. All for worrying how to get home safely. She is now suing.

The soldiers proceeded to attack anyone with cameras or camcorders, obviously wanting to restrict the film that got out about it. This was not a legal attack, it was a blatant violation on our rights as American citizens. And the swat, police, politicians who authorized this, and the national guard knew this. That is why they were removing potential evidence.

As usual: “The Utah County Sheriff says he was there when the arrests occurred and that no excessive force was used by any officer.” Perish the thought.

Two laws are required to end this sort of jackboot paramilitary BS. One, police officers should not be permitted to cover their faces and should have named IDs visible at all times. Two, a police officer seizing video or audio recording equipment should be punished by immediate dismissal from the force and a few months in jail. There is no justifiable excuse for such police theft and most of the time, such actions are nothing more than attempting to hide the evidence of police crimes.

So, N.W.A. had it right. And spare me the usual “oh, there are lots of good police” defense. I’m sure there are, but until they lock up the bad ones, how is anyone supposed to know the difference? All we know is that some cretin with a badge and a gun is beating up a defenseless girl or lying about how our car swerved off the road so he can try to take a peek inside. I’ve been told that many police believe it’s an “us or them” world, but they might want to reconsider the wisdom of that approach. There’s a lot more of them, after all.

The veil begins to slip:

“A few years ago, I refinanced my house and got a lower mortgage, took a little money out for some landscaping and bills. Loan was $187K, house was appraised at $225K.

“This spring, I went to refinance again. Unfortunately, because times have been hard, employment has been on and off, and we were hoping to sell the house in a few years, so I refinanced to an interest-only loan, took some money to pay more bills, and kept a pretty low rate, 5.25% fixed, I think. At this time, just a few short months ago, the appraisal of my house was $260K, my new loan amount $204K.

“I was only willing to refinance and take out money because my home was now valued at $260K. $260K seemed high to me, I’ve also seen nonremodeled homes on my street selling for under $200K, but I thought I could probably sell for $240K.

“I live in an area that realtors say is ‘hot.’ It’s a neighborhood that used to be undesirable because it was near the airport, but now the airport has moved far away and the old airport is a very hip and trendy new home community. New shopping areas are springing up around this area; recently they built a brand-new arts magnet school one block away….

“So we decided we would try to sell the house this month. I called a realtor…. They did a very thorough comp evaluation and came back to me saying I would be lucky to get $200K for the house.

“In my mind, I thought I would like to list it for $250K and accept $240K. I was floored. I explained the $260K appraisal and the response, ‘Oh yeah. Appraisers do that for mortgage brokers to get the loans/refinances.’

Always remember that value is what someone is willing to give you for something, not what someone else says someone will give you. I’ve seen people get reversed on their mortgages before and it’s a grim scenario. Unfortunately, it’s one that all too many people are likely to be facing in the next few years.

As Mish points out in the linked article, rampant fraud is a hallmark of any boom – or fifth wave, in EW terms – and it should be no surprise to anyone who has been paying attention that sketchy activities are abounding in the real estate industry today.

View From the Right unearths an interesting article:

Iraq is moving steadily forward towards the modern conception of the State, with a single judicial and administrative system, unaffected by considerations of religion or nationality…. The Government is endeavoring to carry out faithfully the undertakings it has given, even when these run directly counter to the long-cherished provisions of the Sharia Law. But it is not easy; it cannot be easy in the very nature of the case, for the common people quickly to adjust their minds to the new legal situation, and to eradicate from their outlook the results covering many centuries of a system which implies the superiority of Islam over the non-Moslem minority groups. The legal guarantees of liberty and equality represent the goal towards which the country is moving, rather than the expression of the present thoughts and wishes of the population. The movement, however, is in the right direction, and it may yet prove possible for Islam to disentangle religious faith from political status and privilege.
– S.A. Morrison, Religious Liberty in Iraq, Moslem World, 1935

Yeah, this new constitution is going to solve everything, isn’t it. And, as VFTR points out, this previous liberal, secular Iraqi constitution was established after a 14-year Western occupation.

I can’t imagine that the Iraqis are going to give in on either sharia or women’s rights. Our argument about the necessity for women’s rights might have been persuasive before the West’s demographics collapsed, no doubt they are considerably less appealing to even the most Westernized Iraqi leader now that every Western country is importing massive quantities of laborers from less feminized cultures in order to keep their societies from collapsing.

If Iraq is capable of learning from American mistakes, you’d think America would be capable of learning from Britain’s.

Anonymous writes:

OF course if the calculation of GDP is a bull crap meaningless equation there are a lot of implications to that, and a lot of economic terms that then also become meaningless.

Exactly. When I was taking Macroeconomics – a required course – the professor called me into his office and asked why I was only getting a C in the course. He said that he had realized that I must not have been reading the textbook lately because of the way I answered some questions on the last test.

He was more than a little shocked when I told him that I not only hadn’t read the book, I didn’t even own it and had no intention of buying it. After I explained Mises refutation of Keynes, criticized both the Keynesian GDP calculation and the IS=LM model – yes, Investment=Savings might be a valid equation in a world where no one can borrow money, the USA saves no money and yet we still have a boatload of investment somehow – my professor kindly suggested that perhaps I might prefer doing an independent study under his oversight instead of taking Keynesian 301 nonsense in the next term.

Most economic terms are meaningless. The models are laughably inaccurate and predict nothing. The CPI is fiction. GDP is fiction. Productivity measures are howlingly ludicrous. Mainstream economics, i.e. Keynesian economic measures, consist of illusion stacked upon illusion all piled on top of a foundation of lies. If you actually bother to count material goods or track prices on your own, you’ll quickly see that things just don’t add up.

Bane reconsiders big government:

One of my Marines works in Supply, and he orders literally millions of dollars of stuff daily from vendors. Government vendors? No! Private vendors. Civilians. Civilians who are so damn glad to be getting these orders they could just shit.

This is how they feed their families, and are able to hire people so they can feed theirs own families. The vendors go out and buy things from other vendors so they can make the stuff for the Marines, and the circle of life continues. That money Uncle Sam ‘stole’, is pumped back into every community in this country in one way or another. Stop that flow for one week, and try to imagine the state this country would be in…..

Money, sent to the central fountain of Washington DC, and then sprayed up in the air to come back down and water the whole country. We are a Super Power for several reasons, and I am beginning to believe that this system is one of them. And it supports at least two of the other Reasons: Our Military, and our highway and transportation infrastructure.

Wanna see a town die? Pull all of the government contracts and funding and subsidies from it and let it try to fend for itself. Some make it. Most won’t.

Frederic Bastiat demolished this fallacy back in 1850. It goes thusly:

Suppose it cost six francs to repair the damage, and you say that the accident brings six francs to the glazier’s trade—that it encourages that trade to the amount of six francs—I grant it; I have not a word to say against it; you reason justly. The glazier comes, performs his task, receives his six francs, rubs his hands, and, in his heart, blesses the careless child. All this is that which is seen.

But if, on the other hand, you come to the conclusion, as is too often the case, that it is a good thing to break windows, that it causes money to circulate, and that the encouragement of industry in general will be the result of it, you will oblige me to call out, “Stop there! your theory is confined to that which is seen; it takes no account of that which is not seen.”

It is not seen that as our shopkeeper has spent six francs upon one thing, he cannot spend them upon another. It is not seen that if he had not had a window to replace, he would, perhaps, have replaced his old shoes, or added another book to his library. In short, he would have employed his six francs in some way, which this accident has prevented.

Bane also neglects to consider that the government not only imposes these hidden opportunity costs by redirecting income that would have been spent in other ways, but that a good portion of the money it is spending is borrowed. The federal debt, as of August 19, is $7,926,125,407,102.74. At 4.239 percent on the 10-year bond, that’s 335,988,456,007.09 in annual interest payments or $2,799.90 for every worker in the country. Since the average worker makes $29,280.68 and the current savings rate is zero, those interest payments rob the economy of almost 10 percent of consumer spending.

As for the highway system’s role in making America a superpower, the country had already won two world wars before the Federal Aid Highway Act of 1956 was enacted. It is the combination of America’s size, wealth and technological advancement that makes the USA a superpower; any reduction of one of those three elements will reduce America’s preeminent status in the world.

In my country there is problem,
And that problem is transport.
It take very very long,
Because Kazakhstan is big.

There’s a video of the whole song. Borak is hilarious, as usual – so when do we make the sex? – although I think the reaction of the crowd to the cameras makes it apparent that they understand what’s going on from the start. Contrary to the common urbanite belief that their disdain for all things country goes undetected, rural people are perfectly aware of what their big city counterparts think of them and they often play up their hickitude as a passive-agressive means of mocking their mockers.

I don’t particularly enjoy being around country folk, for the most part. But divergent interests and grammar aside, I’ve never found them to be any less intelligent than city and suburban people, and they are often a good deal less asinine. I may not be inclined to listen to a farmer pontificate on the merits of crop rotation, but at least he serves a honest purpose in life, which is more than I can say for the average stockbroker or real estate agent.

Attempting to derive an idea of massive anti-semitism lurking beneath the surface of the heartland from this is, I think, a significant reach on par with those alarmist predictions of Kristalnacht II being brought about by the release of The Passion. The East Coast media that constantly wrings its hands about this sort of thing always forgets that most people in the Midwest and Southwest have not only never met a Jew, but they think no more about Jews than they do about Eskimos or Vanuatuans.

It is particularly bizarre that American Jewish leaders will get upset about movies and Merry Christmas greetings and then publicly cheer a mass Jewish expulsion and the destruction of Jewish-owned property. As I mentioned in my column today, I rather doubt a similar action in New York City would meet with similar approbation.

Rabbi F writes from Israel:

Amen, Vox, right on, anytime you’re in the area come up and see us. Now write on the plight of the refugees, who are being treated with incredible cruelty in order to destroy their faith and communal support and cut their birthrate along with the rest of the God-fearing Israelis. The ruling clique is afraid that we will outnumber them in a few years and take over..

Democracy can sure be a bitch when those nasty demographics start to come into play. This is one element of the anti-settler action that I had not really considered before, but it makes sense that the secular Jews, who are as reproductively challenged as secular Americans, would have reason to be very worried about the birthrate of religious Jews as well as Israeli Arabs.

In any event, it makes it clear that to see this as merely Jew-on-Jew is not correct, that there are serious divisions in the Jewish world just as there are in Blue-Grey or Red-Blue America.

Professor Bainbridge catches on, only five years late:

It’s time for us conservatives to face facts. George W. Bush has pissed away the conservative moment by pursuing a war of choice via policies that border on the criminally incompetent. We control the White House, the Senate, the House of Representatives, and (more-or-less) the judiciary for one of the few times in my nearly 5 decades, but what have we really accomplished? Is government smaller? Have we hacked away at the nanny state? Are the unborn any more protected? Have we really set the stage for a durable conservative majority?

I wasn’t writing political columns when George Wilson Delano was elected for the first time, but I think my track record has been solid on predicting that W. not only was no conservative, but that he would stab conservatives in the back at every turn.

He has not disappointed me, although he has certainly disappointed millions of conservatives who innocently voted for him in 2000 and foolishly voted for him again in 2004. George Delano has done more than repeatedly insult our intelligence, he has betrayed the nation by selling out our national security with CAFTA and LOST.

But I commend the good professor for daring to come out and say what all too many conservatives are whispering behind closed doors. It will be interesting to see how Three Monkey Republicans in the national media will attack those they will surely see as turncoats enabling a second Clinton presidency.

Nevertheless, if Hillary comes to power, Republicans will have no one to blame except themselves for electing such a deceitful man to the presidency. Bill Clinton was a terrible liar because everyone knew he was lying, or at the very least being openly disingenuous. George Delano, on the other hand, is an excellent dissembler because he cultivated a simple and honest image that conservatives were all too willing to swallow.

Even when the president tells an obvious untruth – religion of peace, they hate us for their freedom, etc – his supporters defend him and blame his words on others because they are so sure that he cannot possibly be responsible for the lie. That is the sign of a truly impressive liar.

The acorn never falls far from the tree.

I was wondering how many books had titles similar to that of my next novel – the one I finished last year – so I typed it into Amazon and was surprised to discover this.

So, if you are inclined to place a really, really, really early preorder, it would seem that you can do so before the cover has even been produced. I don’t know why you’d want to, but there you go.

As it turns out, the answer is three, although they are all sufficiently obscure and happen to leave out the “The”, so there’s no problem. I’d been thinking I was good, since I still had some nice W words with which to work, such as Wind and wings, but clearly I need to get a little more obscure. The Weft of Darkness, perhaps, or The Whinge of Devils.

Of course, if I actually want to sell more than ten thousand copies, I should probably call the next one something on the order of The Picasso Puzzle or Tara Cotta and the Philosophising Stoner.

Washington caves on Iraqi sharia:

The Bush administration has insisted Iraqis have the right to form their own government but has, at the same time, explicitly said it would not countenance the kind of clerical rule that took root in Iran.

Now, despite its long-held position – and in the face of insurgent threats – Washington has signaled its willingness to make “Islamic principles” the standard for legislation….

Kurdish negotiators, who oppose making Islam the ultimate source of law or subjecting legislation to religious tests, are outraged at Washington’s apparent flip-flop.

“We understand the Americans have sided with the Shi’ites,” one secular Kurdish politician said. “It’s shocking. It doesn’t fit American values. They have spent so much blood and money here, only to back the creation of an Islamist state. I can’t believe that’s what the Americans really want or what the American people want.”

Translated, this means that the Iraqi people don’t have the right to form their own government if it isn’t to our liking, unless they really want to be stubborn about it. I know I’m shocked….

There are two choices in Iraq. Genuine democracy and the resultant Islamic state, or military rule, however disguised by legal contortions and democratic trappings. It is important to remember that three of the four Islamic countries where elections have been permitted, secular governments rule only by virtue of army support. The Algerian civil war still continues as a result of the one election that was held there and the Turkish army has instigated three military coups in order to prevent elected politicians from establishing an Islamic state. The Pakistani government has been precarious for years and can’t even trust its own security agencies; only Indonesian democracy does not rely completely on a foundation of military rule and many do not consider it a genuine representative democracy.

If it weren’t for the fact that US soldiers still are at risk in Iraq, I’d quite enjoy watching the administration’s ridiculous plans play out so predictably.