A non-nation of non-Americans

Better hope that trusty Magic Dirt continues to exert its amazing transformational power. The Pew Research Center releases a report on post-1965 immigration to the United States.

Fifty years after passage of the landmark law that rewrote U.S. immigration policy, nearly 59 million immigrants have arrived in the United States, pushing the country’s foreign-born share to a near record 14%. For the past half-century, these modern-era immigrants and their descendants have accounted for just over half the nation’s population growth and have reshaped its racial and ethnic composition.

Looking ahead, new Pew Research Center U.S. population projections show that if current demographic trends continue, future immigrants and their descendants will be an even bigger source of population growth. Between 2015 and 2065, they are projected to account for 88% of the U.S. population increase, or 103 million people, as the nation grows to 441 million.

In other words, the country – one can no longer credibly refer to the USA as a “nation” – will belong to their posterity. Not yours. And it will not be at all surprising if those new “Americans” harbor even less allegiance to the U.S. Constitution than we, our parents, and our grandparents have demonstrated by betraying the very purpose of that document.

That’s the problem with “a propositional nation”. Changing the population changes the proposition and pretty soon, the “nation” is no more.

I very much doubt those “current demographic trends” will continue. Remember, most of those homogeneous nations originally came out of heterogeneous nations. History has a harsh way of ensuring that the nations remain largely homogeneous, one way or another.

You had ONE job

If the central banks eliminate cash, people will no longer need banks:

It has long been believed that when it comes to interest rates, zero is as low as you can go. Who would choose to keep their money in the bank if they had to pay for the privilege?

But for the people who control the world’s money, this idea has recently been thrown out of the window. Many central banks have pushed their rates into negative territory and yet the financial system has still to come to an abrupt end.

It is a discovery that flips on its head the conventional idea of how authorities could respond to future economic crises; and for central bankers, this has come as a relief.

Central bank policymakers had believed they had run out of room to support their respective economies, with their interest rates held close to the floor.

Traditionally, it was thought that if you wanted to boost the economy, the central bank would reduce its interest rates. Normally, the rates offered on savings accounts would follow, and people would choose to spend more, and save less.

But there’s a limit, what economists called the “zero lower bound”. Cut rates too deeply, and savers would end up facing negative returns. In that case, this could encourage people to take their savings out of the bank and hoard them in cash. This could slow, rather than boost, the economy.

What is happening now should not – according to conventional thinking – be possible.

As central bank rates have turned negative, the rates offered on bank deposits have followed. Yet rather than stuffing cash under mattresses, people have left their money in the bank or spent it.

Nowhere is the experiment with negative rates more obvious than among Nordic central banks. Sweden – the first to dabble with negative rates – is perhaps the prime candidate for such experimentation.

The country already has high savings rates, the third highest in the developed world according to the OECD and, despite growing at healthy rates, there appears to be plenty of slack left in the economy to prevent an overheat.

Unemployment is unusually high for an advanced economy at more than 7pc, still well above its pre-crisis levels of sub-6pc. Crucially, the Riksbank’s mandate suggests that such a radical experiment is necessary. Policymakers have battled with deflation since late 2012, and with inflation at minus 0.2pc in August, it remains well below the central bank’s 2pc target.

To a great extent, the Riksbank’s hand has been forced by the plight of the eurozone. A tepid recovery in the currency union has required the European Central Bank (ECB) to bring in ever-looser policy.

As the ECB’s actions have weakened the euro against Sweden’s krona, the cost of importing goods into Sweden has fallen, and weighed down on inflation. The Riksbank has had to cut its own rates in response in an attempt to avoid deep deflation.

Sweden’s flexible approach to monetary policy has won it the plaudits of leading credit ratings agency. Standard and Poor’s recently reaffirmed the country’s triple AAA sovereign rating, remarking on the benefits it derives from “ample monetary policy flexibility”.

Noting that the Riksbank had introduced both negative interest rates and quantitative easing, S&P said that “should inflation rates stay low or the krona appreciate materially, the central bank could lower the repo rate further”.

Many City analysts believe that the Riksbank will continue cutting, reducing its key interest rate to minus 0.5pc by the end of the year. Switzerland’s is already deeper still, at minus 0.75pc, while Denmark and the eurozone have joined them as members of the negative zone.

It shouldn’t surprise anyone that people are willing to accept low negative interest rates. After all, banks began as institutions that charged people to hold their gold for them. It wasn’t until they began creating money by handing out multiple certificates of ownership that they needed to start paying “interest” rather than receiving “fees”.

However, banning cash will go too far; the reason people use “money” is that it is less of an annoyance than barter. In their desperate attempt to remain profitable in a deflationary environment, banks are taking the risk of rendering themselves irrelevant.

LibreOffice turns 5

I’m a big fan of LibreOffice. I’ve used it to write everything from A THRONE OF BONES to SJWs ALWAYS LIE and it’s been a big help in preparing the works of others for formatting into ebooks. If you’re not using it yet, you really should take a serious look at it, because whether you need to replace all the italics or kick out a PDF, it just works.

While I’ve been experimenting with Scrivener for A SEA OF SKULLS, I still find myself returning to LibreOffice for short stories like “Amazon Gambit” and pretty much everything else. And, let’s face it, it’s impossible to beat the price.

Merkel knew about VW cheating

From Zerohedge:

 German Greens Claim Merkel Government Knew Emissions Tests Were Rigged

    The German Green party has claimed that the German Government, led by Chancellor Angela Merkel, knew about the software car manufacturers used to rig emissions tests in the US. The Green party has said it asked the German Transport Ministry in July about the devices used to deceive regulators and received a written response as follows, the FT reports: “The federal government is aware of [defeat devices], which have the goal of [test] cycle detection.”

    The Transport Ministry denied knowing that the software was being used in new vehicles, however. The timing of the questions has raised concerns over whether the German government knew about the activities at Volkswagen stretching back to 2009. “The federal government admitted in July, to an inquiry from the Greens, that the [emissions] measurement practice had shortcomings. Nothing happened,” said Oliver Krischer, a German Green party lawmaker.

That written response the Financial Times reports on either exists or it does not. Let’s see it. Simple. If it does exist, Merkel’s in trouble. Then again, the EU knew about the defeat device at least two years ago. It’s starting to look as if everyone was involved. And you can’t fire everyone.

EU Warned On Devices At Centre Of VW Scandal Two Years Ago

    EU officials had warned of the dangers of defeat devices two years before the Volkswagen emissions scandal broke, highlighting Europe’s failure to police the car industry. A 2013 report by the European Commission’s Joint Research Centre drew attention to the challenges posed by the devices, which are able to skew the results of exhaust readings. But regulators then failed to pursue the issue — despite the fact the technology had been illegal in Europe since 2007. EU officials said they had never specifically looked for such a device themselves and were not aware of any national authority that located one.

At this rate, Angela Merkel is going to be on trial for treason by this time next year.

Brainstorm September

The closed Brainstorm September event will be Wednesday, September 30th at 7:00 PM EDT. Monthly member signups are welcome again or you can sign up as an annual member. The topics of discussion will be my forthcoming new book expected to launch in November, the immigration crises in Europe and the USA, and what we’ve learned about the current state of the publishing industry and Worldcon’s recent decision to keep its data to itself.

We’ll also discuss the planned relaunch of my game development class, which I’ve delayed for 4-6 weeks in order to allow some time to let people know about it.

Europe burns

Mosques and refugee centers are being set alight everywhere from the UK:

Two teenagers have been arrested on suspicion of arson after a large fire engulfed part of a south London mosque, believed to be the largest in western Europe.

Shocked onlookers watched as seventy firefighters tackled the blaze at the Baitul Futuh mosque in Morden which started at around midday on Saturday. Two boys aged 14 and 16 have been arrested on suspicion of arson, and both remain in custody at a south London police station, Scotland Yard said.

The enormous building sits on a 5.2acre site and can hold 10,500 people. At the time of the fire, however, only a handful of worshippers were inside, and were quickly evacuated. Nobody was at prayer when the fire broke out.The huge effort to control the fire involved the police, ambulance services and the large fire brigade presence. The firefighting operation shut down the A24 and traffic was tailed back for miles as a result.

As I’ve mentioned, in Europe it is the young who are considerably more nationalistic than their elders. To Germany:

A fire in a gym, destined to be a shelter for hundreds of migrants and refugees, means a southwestern German town is now unable to accommodate any more asylum seekers. Police suspect arson.

An overnight arson attack on a sports hall, prepared to become a migration center with capacity for 400 people, has put the building in danger of collapse, the dpa news agency reported on Sunday.

“No more refugees will come to [the town of] Wertheim, as there is no additional emergency accommodation,” Hermann Schroeder from the Baden-Wuerttemberg state government said.

As I’ve said before, it’s remarkable to hear Americans babbling about how Europeans are lying down and dying when they are actively resisting the invasion of their lands by fair means and foul. Meanwhile, most Americans consider it beyond the pale when Donald Trump talks about sending illegal aliens home.
 

Week Three

This is your weekly NFL open thread. I have to confess that I’m a little disappointed that Philip Rivers broke Dan Fouts’s San Diego record last week; I know the game has changed, but when I think Chargers, I still think first of Air Coryell and Fouts.

Nero eviscerates PopeHat

The Popehat project–endless, tedious, insufferably smug posts about
minutiae–only really works if you read your own goddamn sources.

Top tip for bloggers whose raison d’etre is smugly correcting others: actually read reports before posting about them.

Milo is referring to this amusingly clueless post by Ken White, in which the inveterate champion of free speech flirts with abandoning his principles because a) he doesn’t like #GamerGate, b) he doesn’t like certain GamerGaters, including me, and c) girls had feelbadz! It’s a pity, because the guy has done some genuinely good work defending free speech in the past, but has somehow failed to recognize that SJWs represent one of the most serious enemies that his chosen cause has ever known.

Ken tried to belatedly explain his failure to bother reading the entire UN report before responding to it in an update.

Further information suggests I was far too benefit-of-the doubt here, which is what happens when you write fast and when you generally despise some of the people involved. Some of this is still right, but regard the conclusions and characterizations with skepticism. Taking a second look. See, e.g., the fact that they cited this [footnote 118] for the video game discussion I cite below. When I’m wrong I’m wrong. Will revisit.

Hey, I think we all understand that there is no time for actually “reading” things or ensuring one is accurately “informed” before leaping to the defense of a woman experiencing feelbads; it is a white knight’s pleasure to destroy his own reputation if by doing so he can save a fair maiden from even a single incident of cyberviolence.

I haven’t read the report myself nor do I have any intention of doing so. I have not hitherto found either the United Nations or Literally Who to be interesting or even remotely credible. But I do find Ken’s excuse-making to be fairly typical of the moderates who are always happy to bend over backward to rationalize the most blatantly dishonest SJW behavior while repeatedly casting aspersions at those who actually stand up to them. And I expect there will be further backtracking on the subject, as I would be very surprised if the SJWs responsible for the report got anything right at all.

“Cyberviolence” is a false and deceptive issue. I have been the recipient of far more “cyberviolence” and death threats than all of the Literally Whos combined, and for much longer; if it is such a serious issue then why hasn’t the UN or Ken White rushed to my defense at any time in the last 14 years?

When I reviewed and critiqued the economics study on immigration and jobs here yesterday and the day before, I gave the benefit of the doubt to the economists whose views on immigration creating jobs opposed my own. I interpreted every statistic and every assumption in a manner that favored their perspective, not mine. That is exactly what you must do if you wish to provide a serious analysis that will withstand objective review. But by his own admission, Ken White gives the benefit of the doubt to those who oppose people he generally despises. And that is why, despite his legal work on behalf of free speech, he cannot be considered an intellectually credible individual.

Case in point:

So there’s a solution to, that you know. Don’t read the blog any more. Unfollow the Twitter feed. Look for someone whose viewpoint is more acceptable to you. Maybe even write it up yourself.

But that’s not the GamerGate way.

Also, note how angry you are, and then look at the original again. I warned that UN speech restrictions are suspicious, I pointed to multiple things to be concerned about, and I even questioned the content at issue — I just didn’t see how crazy the sourcing was, yet. And I suggested that any actual codes that come out of it should be examined carefully.

But none of that is enough for you. You want hate. It’s not enough for you unless I excoriate the people you hate.

That’s why normal people don’t take you seriously.

This is deeply amusing coming from an individual who is literally mentally unstable. How would he know what normal people take seriously? Ken, you’re not normal. You’re not honest. You’re not intellectually rigorous. And you’re not credible. People like me would be delighted to continue to ignore you, but you go out of your way to attack us online, both on PopeHat and on Twitter.

Neither of the two commenters was demanding that Ken hate or excoriate anyone, they were simply expecting him to show at least a modicum of discernment concerning various individuals and institutions widely known to be less than entirely truthful. He failed to do so, and when rightly taken to task for it, he completely mischaracterized their responses.

Of course, it does make a certain amount of sense that he would side with the SJW whack jobs. Birds of a feather and all that. And as we all know, SJWs always lie.

How is this woman still a candidate?

I’m sure you will be just as shocked as I am to learn that Hillary Clinton has been caught lying about her emails again:

The U.S. Defense Department has found an email chain that Hillary Clinton did not give to the State Department, the State Department said on Friday, despite her saying she had provided all work emails from her time as secretary of state.

The correspondence with General David Petraeus, who was commander of U.S. Central Command at the time, started shortly before she entered office and continued during her first days as the top U.S. diplomat in January and February of 2009.

The Defense Department provided the emails to the State Department in “the last several days,” State Department spokesman John Kirby said in a statement.

The exchange of 10 or so emails, the existence of which were first reported by the Associated Press on Friday, largely dealt with personnel issues, according to the State Department.

Clinton’s use of a private email account connected to a server in her home instead of a government-issued email address came to light in March.

News of the previously undisclosed email thread only adds to a steady stream of revelations about the emails in the past six months, which have forced Clinton to revise her account of the setup which she first gave in March.

Nearly a third of all Democrats and 58 percent of all voters think Clinton is lying about her handling of her emails, according to a Fox News poll released this week.

At this point, it is beginning to look as if the only reason the Lizard Queen is still in the race is in the hopes of being able to get elected and pardon herself. She’s not only jumping the shark, she’s doing backflips over it.