Mailvox: oh noes!

Sarah Palin isn’t invited to speak at the Republican convention? This outrage must not stand! We must do something! John Hawkins sends an email:

As you may have heard, Sarah Palin isn’t being given a speaking slot at the Republican National convention. Not only is Sarah Palin the single most prominent woman in the Republican party, a strong advocate of the Tea Party, and an electrifying speaker, she was the also VP candidate in 2008 and was one of the biggest impact players for the Republican Party during the 2010 elections. Not only does Sarah Palin deserve an opportunity to speak, she would be a tremendous asset at the convention.

Towards that end, I’m going to try to collect 10,000 signatures from conservatives who think Sarah Palin should be given a speaking slot. If you’re one of those conservatives, your signature, your link, and any help you can give on Facebook and Twitter would be much appreciated.

Won’t you please help? Think of the children!

Blitheringly stupid

Rush Limbaugh needs to untie the other half of his brain. The half he’s using now is clearly dysfunctional:

Radio giant Rush Limbaugh says he’s “jazzed” about Mitt Romney’s choice of Paul Ryan to be his running mate, and he expects an instant economic recovery if the Republican ticket wins in November.

“I guarantee you, if Ryan and Romney win this election, you’re gonna see the stock market go through the roof,” Limbaugh said this afternoon. “You’re gonna see small businesses start to hire. It’s gonna happen so fast, you’re not gonna believe it, the moment it’s known that Obama’s out of office.”

Limbaugh, the top-rated voice of the political right in America, says a true conservative is finally on the presidential ticket.

So, if Romney and Ryan are elected, the machines that make up the bulk of the stock market trading are going to kick it up another notch? And who is this “true conservative”? It certainly isn’t the guy with the voting record that belongs to Ryan (WI). Limbaugh is putting the Stupid in Stupid Party with this inane commentary. I’d be very interested to know precisely how Limbaugh thinks Romney and Ryan are going to make a 350 percent debt/GDP ratio disappear overnight.

Atheists abandon “religion causes war” argument

Scott Atran is the first atheist to publicly come out and admit the historical nonexistence of the oft-claimed connection between religion and war in Foreign Policy:

Moreover, the chief complaint against religion — that it is history’s prime instigator of intergroup conflict — does not withstand scrutiny. Religious issues motivate only a small minority of recorded wars. The Encyclopedia of Wars surveyed 1,763 violent conflicts across history; only 123 (7 percent) were religious. A BBC-sponsored “God and War” audit, which evaluated major conflicts over 3,500 years and rated them on a 0-to-5 scale for religious motivation (Punic Wars = 0, Crusades = 5), found that more than 60 percent had no religious motivation. Less than 7 percent earned a rating greater than 3. There was little religious motivation for the internecine Russian and Chinese conflicts or the world wars responsible for history’s most lethal century of international bloodshed.

Not only does Atran accept the argument I originally presented in a WND article before refining it in The Irrational Atheist, but his article is actually much less of a Fighting Withdrawal than the misleading subtitle – What we don’t understand about religion just might kill us – would lead the casual reader to believe.

Atran doesn’t mention either me or TIA, but TIA is clearly the source as not only is the argument the same as the one I first presented in 2004, but the war count of 123 also happens to be uniquely mine. The actual count from The Encylopedia of Wars index is not 123, but 121 – they made some errors, in my opinion, counting some non-religious wars such as the Fourth Crusade as religious and vice-versa – but the authors of the encylopedia actually failed to fully recognize the implications of their historical catalog concerning the historical irrelevance of religion to war. This can be seen in their Introduction:

“Wars have always arisen, and arise today, from territorial disputes, military rivalries, conflicts of ethnicity, and strivings for commercial and economic advantage, and they have always depended on, and depend on today, pride, prejudice, coercion, envy, cupidity, competitiveness, and a sense of injustice. But for much of the world before the 17 century, these “reasons” for war were explained and justified, at least for the participants, by religion. Then around the middle of the 17th century, Europeans began to conceive of war as a legitimate means of furthering the interests of individual sovereigns….

The [French] revolution increased the size of the armed forces for European states from small professional outfits to huge conscript armies, whose citizen-soldiers needed more than reasons of state to risk their lives and fortunes for their rulers. The objectives of warfare were broadened from the conquest of this or that sliver of a kingdom to the spread of revolutionary ideals, and through this ideological backdoor something like the fervor of religion slipped back into war along with the mass of conscripts. Once again wars needed to be in some sense “holy” or, in the more secular lexicon of the times, “just”.”

Now, it doesn’t bother me terribly when people actively seek to avoid giving me credit for my more original ideas. I’ve learned to expect it, which is why you’ll never find this argument on Wikipedia even when everyone eventually comes to accept it as the historical fact that it truly is. I only find it genuinely irksome when others subsequently try to take credit for them or to claim they were always part of the status quo. The important thing is that the ideas are getting out there and the memes are spreading, and removing that specific arrow from the atheist’s rhetorical arsenal was always my main polemical object in presenting the argument.

That being said, I do find it amusing that The Irrational Atheist appears to be one of the more influential books that no one of substance will publicly admit to reading. In addition to the Atran admission – to say nothing of the informatively abrupt silence of Dawkins and Harris on the subject of religion and war – let’s not forget the Boston University study that offers initial confirmation of my hypothesis of a link between atheism and Asperger’s Syndrome.

WND column

Ryan is a RINO

Many Republicans are understandably pleased by Mitt Romney’s selection of Wisconsin Rep. Paul Ryan as a running mate. Unlike Marco Rubio, Ryan is a natural-born American citizen and actually eligible for the office. Unlike Tim Pawlenty, he is not a spineless coward with all the charisma of fat-free vanilla yogurt. And unlike Robert Portman, he is not a member of the extended Bush family. He is intelligent. And unlike the current presidential administration, he’s capable of actually putting a budget together, which is a talent that should not go unremarked considering that the country has been operating without one for more than three years now.

Thanks to Slurtebrautfust for the list of Ryan votes. And there was one more well worth noting: YES to Budget Control Act of 2011 that raised the debt ceiling.

Not that it matters

First, let me point out that I reserve the right to give away or sell my books at any price, reasonable or unreasonable, and to change my policy at any time.

Second, because one or two people have been whining about how I only provide a few millions of words for free here but no longer give away the eight PDF and PDB files I previously made available for free download, I will point out that due to Amazon’s policy, it is not possible to give away a free ebook and also sell it through Amazon. Nor can one give away free ebooks on Amazon, except for a five-day free program that they run for paid books. As I pointed out when I first took down the free links, because Amazon is now the center of the book world, one will find more readers if one sells books on Amazon than if one gives them away on one’s own site, even a site as well-trafficked as this one.

Third, as it happens, because those books were available on Amazon first, I should never have made them available for free download here, with the sole exception of the collection of short stories called The Altar of Hate. Fortunately, Amazon did not hold that against me, as they understood it was done in ignorance due to the fact that the Amazon contracts were originally with the publishers and I had no reason to ever review them.

Amazon is doing a great job of bringing down ebook prices and most people recognize this. However, fewer realize that in doing so, they have also essentially eliminated the free ebook, Project Gutenberg notwithstanding.

The end of the US banking system

Ann Barnhardt explains why it is time to not only get one’s assets out of the US financial markets, but the US banks as well.

What this [Sentinel ruling] means is that even if Jon Corzine is somehow dragged into court by private citizens, because you know damn good and well that the Justice Department will never, ever touch him, Corzine now has a legal precedent, likely from a bribed or otherwise coerced Federal Appeals Court, explicitly stating that an FCM can use customer deposits to pay its debts, and that the customers themselves are subjugated and have basically no legal right to their own monies, no matter what the law says, or what legal assurances, claims or guarantees are made to that customer about their funds held with an FCM or any other brokerage or depository institution. The “secured” party at the front of the line will always be the mega-bank who made the fraudulent loan using the stolen customer funds as collateral.

In other words, all customer funds in the United States are now the legal property of JP Morgan, Goldman Sachs, BNYM, or whichever megabank is the counterparty on the loans the FCM or depository institution takes out in order to fund its mega-levered proprietary in-house trading desks.

For the love of God, I don’t know what more there could possibly be to say to snap you people out of your normalcy bias trance. You have GOT to get ALL MONIES out of the financial system NOW. This ruling sets precedence for every depository institution, not just futures brokerages. It is now legal in the United States for any financial institution to steal customer funds, borrow money against those funds for the uber-levered proprietary trading use of the financial institution, and the customers have ZERO CLAIM TO THEIR OWN FUNDS once they are in the custody of the financial institution.

The court has ruled that once your money passes out of your PHYSICAL POSSESSION, and I mean PHYSICAL possession, it is no longer yours, and you have no legal claim or legal recourse to it when it is stolen. This includes BANK ACCOUNTS. Money in a bank is in the possession of the BANK, not you. Do you comprehend this? The entire system is utterly devoid of any integrity or genuine security and is breaking down catastophically before our very eyes. You HAVE to comprehend that your money sitting in an account is no longer legally yours. You have to force your brain to process and comprehend this, no matter how incomprehensible it may seem. IT IS OVER. This is Marxist hell. We have arrived.

This ruling and precedent will be used by every brokerage, every bank, every insurance company and every pension fund to deny you your money when the financial system finally collapses, be it on Monday, or be it two years from now.

This is the Reuters article to which she is referring. The reason the ruling is so disastrous is that it grants all depository institutions ownership of the funds on deposit with it. While this is a logical continuation of the Bankers First and Foremost policy we’ve been seeing from the federal government since 2008, it is burning down the village and salting the earth upon which it stood in order to save it, because there is now absolutely no sound reason to keep your money in a US bank.

Now, obviously, no banks are going to be dumb enough to take this ruling and run with it… unless it is a matter of their own survival. But the fact remains that a bank deposit is now legally considered no different than a gift from you to the bank, and depositors are now entirely dependent upon the bank’s good will to spend its money on their behalf.

I tend to suspect this ruling will be reversed upon appeal once the Powers That Be realize that saving the personal fortunes of Corzine and other failed bankers isn’t worth the price of destroying the US banking system. But if not, it should cause the largest banking run the world has ever known. I say “should” rather than “will”, because as we know, most people are idiots and will probably continue blithely assuming that it doesn’t matter what the fine print and the court rulings say, they’ve got a receipt showing they put their money in the bank, and money in the bank is safe, by definition.

On the other hand, I find this ruling particularly intriguing because I have observed that one can anticipate events, to a certain degree, by seeing through which hoops the elite institutions force the federal government to jump. While they wouldn’t have any reason to take such risks for Corzine and company, it would make a great deal of sense to do so if they are anticipating a U.S. financial collapse in the near-to-middle term.

For example, we can safely assume Romney will win the election November on the basis of the Goldman Sachs contributions. “Four years ago, employees of New York-based Goldman gave three-fourths of their campaign donations to Democratic candidates and committees, including presidential nominee Barack Obama. This time, they’re showering 70 percent of their contributions on Republicans.”

Two Ninety Freaking Five!

That would be words. As in thousands of them. As I previously mentioned, I didn’t quite make my goal of writing the first draft of a George RR Martin-size novel in 365 days, but I did succeed in doing it in 383 of them. The fact that I got the final cover from the artist and it is, in a word, seriously awesome – okay, that’s two words, but it totally requires two words – helped me kick it up a gear on the home stretch. I even finished 12 days ahead of my revised schedule.

Now, I don’t mean to obsess about the cover or anything, but let’s just say that a) the artist says it is his favorite to date, and, b) as much as I love the Summa cover and was both flabbergasted and appalled when he wanted to go in another direction, it was ABSOLUTELY, DEFINITELY, and WITHOUT QUESTION the right decision to go with the new style. It’s beautiful and ghastly and epic all at the same time and I very much look forward to letting you all see it in a few months. I’ll also have a surprise to go along with that announcement, about which I will only say that JartStar has been doing some superlative work.

No, it’s not a cartoon involving elves and Thomas Aquinas, although that would no doubt be amusing for the seven people who would read it.

I’m not anywhere nearly done with the book yet, of course. Now that the base is there, I’ve got to go through it all and make sure that it is at least somewhat readable and coherent. But that’s the fun part, as far as I am concerned.

Ryan, not Rubio

This time around, I was wrong:

Mitt Romney today announced Wisconsin Representative Paul Ryan as his Vice Presidential running mate.

Ryan is actually a very good choice and indicates that Romney is not playing the role of a Dole/McCain sacrificial lamb. This doesn’t change who Captain Underoos is or make any difference concerning what a disaster an even more bank-friendly president will be, but it should solidify conservative support and generate genuine enthusiasm amidst a Republican grassroots that had hitherto had serious and well-founded doubts about Romney.

Integration, Olympic style

A distance runner lets the cat out of the bag:

Leo Manzano, a Mexican immigrant who became the first American man to win a medal in the metric mile since 1968, draped himself in the flags of both his countries after his race at Olympic Stadium. That decision earned some cheers, but mostly jeers from Mexican-Americans…. A poll on the CBS Atlanta website showed that 83 percent of respondents think Manzano shouldn’t have carried the Mexican flag.

Only 83 percent… I would have expected that the Mexican-American community would be more upset that he carried an American flag.. It seems to me that there have been numerous events, from the May Day parades to the US home soccer games and the various California public school policies, where many “Mexican-Americans” have made it perfectly clear where their true loyalties lie.

Bring it on, by all means

UFC women’s champion Ronda Rousey thinks women can enter the male octagon:

Fuel TV’s Ariel Helwani asked Ronda if she thinks we will ever see women fighting in the UFC:

“I think it’s a distinct possibility,” she said. … “Women are tough, women are clever. We’re going to find a way to get everywhere. So, you can’t stop us. We’ll be here at some point.”

I’m over 40. I haven’t done any martial arts training in more than a decade. And I would not only agree to meet Ms Rousey in the Octagon, I would be willing to bet $10,000 that I would either knock her out or force her to quit in the first two minutes.

I very much hope that UFC president Dana White will give into the feminist pressure and permit Anderson Silva to fight Ronda Rousey. That would instantly silence all the ridiculous girl power talk that has been going on ever since the charade of the Riggs-King tennis match.