Now this is unexpected: the Wall Street Journal praises Sarah Palin’s economic acumen:
It would be hard to find two more unlikely intellectual comrades than Robert Zoellick, the World Bank technocrat, and Sarah Palin, the populist conservative politician. But in separate interventions yesterday, the pair roiled the global monetary debate in complementary and timely fashion.
The former Alaskan Governor showed sound political and economic instincts by inveighing forcefully against the Federal Reserve’s latest round of quantitative easing. According to the prepared text of remarks that she released to National Review online, Mrs. Palin also exhibited a more sophisticated knowledge of monetary policy than any major Republican this side of Wisconsin Representative Paul Ryan.
Stressing the risks of Fed “pump priming,” Mrs. Palin zeroed in on the connection between a “weak dollar—a direct result of the Fed’s decision to dump more dollars onto the market”—and rising oil and food prices. She also noted the rising world alarm about the Fed’s actions, which by now includes blunt comments by Germany, Brazil, China and most of Asia, among many others.
“We don’t want temporary, artificial economic growth brought at the expense of permanently higher inflation which will erode the value of our incomes and our savings,” the former GOP Vice Presidential nominee said. “We want a stable dollar combined with real economic reform. It’s the only way we can get our economy back on the right track.”
Of course, the Wall Street Journal doesn’t consider Ron Paul a “major Republican”, but he’s the only national politician in either party, with the possible exception of his son, who fully groks what is at stake here. Still, it’s interesting to see that Palin clearly has some reasonably astute advisors on her staff. And it is downright astonishing to see a major player in global banking come right out and endorse “the barbarous relic”.
Bernanke must be sweating bullets these days. What people tend to forget to take into account when they imagine there are no limits to quantatitive easing is that in order for the Federal Reserve to monetize the debt, the Treasury has to issue it. So, it increasingly looks as if there may be an epic clash between the Fed and the Republican House majority in the works and it’s a little surprising to see Sarah Palin stake out a position against the bank.
More vibrancy in Minneapolis
Isn’t immigration wonderful! And think of all the wonderful Somali restaurants!
Twenty-nine people have been indicted in a sex trafficking ring spanning three states and allegedly run by Minneapolis-based Somali gangs. An indictment unsealed Monday in U.S. District Court in Nashville says one of the goals of the gangs was to recruit females under age 18, including some under age 14, and force them into prostitution in exchange for cash, drugs or other items. The indictment says the sex ring operated in Minneapolis, Nashville, and Columbus, Ohio.
If you are still clinging to the notion that a mere change of geographic location is sufficient to erase thousands of years of genetic and cultural influence, you are being willfully stupid. Immigration is a disaster for every country; it’s no better for the modern inhabitants of the USA than it was for the Indian tribes. It’s ridiculous to assert that the Irish, Swedish, or Italian immigrants “made America great”, as one has only to look at the historical homelands from whence they came as well as their voting records to realize that they destroyed the English concept of human liberty upon which the USA was originally founded.
The first great wave of 19th century immigration weakened America but wasn’t strong enough to kill it. The second great wave of the late 20th century finished what the first wave started, most people just haven’t realized it yet. It is ludicrous to talk of “taking America back”; the most anyone can reasonably hope for is some sort of heavily armed rump state set in Middle America that is surrounded by bankrupt, progressive, hellholes run on the Greco-Mexican model to the east, south, and west, and a progressive welfare state to the north.
The wisdom of Tucker Max
You wouldn’t imagine one could write that without irony, and yet there it is. I’ve always rather liked Tucker Max despite knowing that there is an element of, shall we say, inventive color to be found in all the satyrical shenanigans. As with Roissy, if you only pay attention to the sordid details of his controversial subject matter, you will completely miss the intelligent insights he has to offer:
Why do you think my writing is so popular? It’s honest. That’s what all the idiots who try to imitate me don’t get. It’s not about the drinking or the fucking or the crazy stories. It’s not even about the funny, as much as it’s about the honesty. No one is ever honest, but when you are, when you say the things everyone knows but won’t admit, it’s so shocking and amazing that the world can’t help but stop and look.
But here’s the thing about being honest: All the liars HATE you for it, and most of the people in the world are liars. They lie to their bosses, they lie to their families, they lie to themselves, they lie so much they don’t even know they’re lying anymore. If you have the courage to be honest–even a little bit–all those people will hate you, because your honesty reflects their lie back on them.
Oscar Wilde wasn’t kidding when he said, “If you want to tell people the truth, make them laugh, otherwise they’ll kill you.”
I think the reason I like writers like Tucker, Roissy, and Jonah Goldberg, and why I tend to view them as something more or less akin to peers despite our varying levels of public visibility, is that we are all essentially doing the same thing in different areas. Of course, far fewer people are interested in economics and history than politics, much less sex and dating, but my approach to mainstream economics isn’t really all that different than Tucker’s approach to American sexual mores, Roissy’s approach to male mating rituals, or Goldberg’s approach to left-wing political ideology.
WND column
It was just over one year ago that WND Books published “The Return of the Great Depression.” In that book, I articulated six possible scenarios and explained which scenario I considered to be most likely. I also made a number of predictions, some of which can now be profitably analyzed to see how accurate they were. Keep in mind that at the time the book was published, the end of October 2009, the scenario which most of the mainstream economists were declaring to be in effect was the Green Shoots scenario.
Explaining Gamma
Do you know the story of Snow White? Then surely you remember how the seven dwarves took her in when she was homeless, provided her with food and shelter, and cared so much about her that they shed tears for her and built her a spectacular crystal pedestalbier.
And of course, you will recall that she ran off with Prince Charming at the very first opportunity.
Dwarves are Gammas. Alphas are Prince Charmings. Most men, being Betas and Deltas, fall somewhere in between and therefore face a choice about how to comport themselves in their interactions with the opposite sex. But we can draw two important conclusions from the fairy tale. One, behaving like a dwarf won’t get you the girl. Two, Prince Charming doesn’t stick around to ask twice; if Snow White doesn’t want to get on the horse right away, he rides on without her. It’s a big forest and there are plenty of girls on the girl tree.
VPFL Week 8
83 Blackmouth Banksters (6-2-0)
49 Winston Reverends (4-4-0)
54 Valders Quixotes (6-2-0)
43 Judean Rhyneauxs (4-4-0)
82 Meigs Marauders (4-4-0)
61 Bane Sidhe (5-3-0)
63 MS Swamp Spartans (3-4-1)
63 Moundsview Meerkats (1-6-1)
51 RR Redbeards (3-4-1)
51 Greenfield Grizzlies (2-5-1)
It was kiss your sister week in the VPFL. I’m frankly shocked that I managed to avoid losing with Aaron Rogers only contributing 3 points, although as it turns out I could have even won if I hadn’t neglected to start Jacob Tamme for the injured Zach Miller at TE; I picked Tamme up with precisely that intention but somehow managed to forget to actually plug him into the lineup. And it’s good to be a Bankster, as Blackmouth is starting to show signs of separating itself from the pack.
The economics of polygamy
The Economicon explains why we can expect to see polygamy embraced by the state before too long:
Legalizing polygamy, economist David Friedman wrote in his book Hidden Order: The Economics of Everyday Life, “allows some men who before wanted one wife to try to marry two instead — provided that they are willing to offer terms at which potential wives are willing to accept half a husband apiece. So the demand curve for wives shifts out. The supply curve stays the same, the demand curve shifts out, so the price must go up. Women are better off.”
It’s very hard to argue with the economic law of supply and demand. And the flipside of that is the recognition that most men will be worse off, with the obvious exception of those sufficiently rich and powerful enough to both support and attract multiple wives. Given that the general trend of American society is already in motion towards the economic benefit of women in general and elite men in particular, the fact that legalized polygamy fits squarely upon this progressive trend line would appear to make it all but a done deal, especially if one takes into account the decline of traditionally monogamous Christian culture and its replacement by various pagan cultures that range from openly polygamous African and Arabic immigrant cultures to the practical polygamy of the secular divorce culture in which men financially support multiple wives and families while limiting their sexual involvement to the latest wife.
Keep in mind that from both practical and sociological perspectives, the legal status of a woman as an “ex-wife” rather than a “wife” is largely beside the point so long as the man is still responsible for being the primary provider for the familial unit. And please note that I’m not at all interested in the various arguments that can reasonably be made for Christian polygamy on a theological basis as they are an irrelevant tangent in this societal context.
Being eminently practical beneath their superficially romantic exteriors, women can usually be relied upon to politically press for that which leads to the material advantage of their sex. Notice how the historical commitment to “sexual equality” on the part of feminist activists was thrown entirely out the window once it was perceived that the pendulum had swung in the opposite direction. This isn’t to say that millions of American women won’t be continue to be content in a monogamous state-licensed relationship, only that enough of them will be convinced of the material benefits and potential security of not being limited to one that they will be willing to provide the political horses required to ride through the cracks in the traditionalist wall made by the judidical homogamy advocates.
Moreover, invoking supply and demand again indicates that this is an obvious way to counteract the so-called male marriage strike. As the supply of marriageable men dries up due to male inclination and/or male unemployment, the institution of legalized polygamy can not only make up for this shortage, but essentially render future supply deficiencies nonexistent. If Roissy is correct about female hypergamy and “five minutes of Alpha are better than a lifetime of Beta [Gamma]”, then it can only be a matter of time before lower-status women begin to actively demand legal polygamy in order to expand their access to relationships with higher-status men capable of supporting them and their progeny.
The question ultimately boils down to whether women of the politically active sort would prefer half of Prince Charming’s castle to the entirety of a woodcutter’s cottage. The acquisition of male assets through divorce was never going to work for long, as it only took forty years – a little less than two generations – for growing male awareness to break the traditional marital model and reduce marriage rates among the 25-34 age group from 80% to 45% and the overall rate to 52%. In less than three generations from Ronald Reagan’s signing of the California no-fault divorce law in 1969, conventional monogamous marriage will no longer be the statistical norm.
So, women will either have to become the primary familial providers or they will turn to a different wealth distribution model. Both history and economics strongly suggest the latter.
Joel Rosenberg gets protected and served
As I have written on numerous occasions, the police are both lawless and unaccountable. One wonders how they can be considered to be “law enforcement officers” when they demonstrate so reliably that they have no idea what the relevant law is:
Sergeant William Palmer, the Minneapolis Police Department Spokesman, is under investigation for assaulting Joel Rosenberg, a local self-defense activist, in the waiting room of the office of Timothy Dolan, Minneapolis Police Chief. this afternoon, at approximately 130PM.
Rosenberg and his wife, Felicia Herman, had arrived at the office by previous arrangement with the suspect, Palmer, to examine the first of several Minnesota Government Data Practices Act responses that Rosenberg has submitted to the MPD and the City of Minneapolis. In addition to his responsibilities as police spokesman, Palmer is also the MPD’s Data Practices Officer.
When Rosenberg removed his jacket, revealing one of the two lawfully-carried handguns on his person, Palmer leaped at him, laid hands on him without lawful authority or Rosenberg’s consent, and removed one of Rosenberg’s pistols, “sweeping”, or momentarily pointing it, at Rosenberg as he moved to unload it.
“Palmer did not commit a further assault by patting me down,” Rosenberg said. “If he did, he probably would have found the snubnose revolver in my right pocket, and threatened me with that, too.” Rosenberg smiled. “He took one of my knives, too, but missed two others.”
Palmer admitted, in front of Rosenberg, two witnesses, and a video camera, that he had done so out of a belief that it was somehow unlawful for Rosenberg, a permit holder, firearms instructor and the author of Everything You Need to Know About (Legally) Carrying a Handgun in Minnesota to carry in Minneapolis City Hall, and threatened Rosenberg with the loss of his carry permit — something that Palmer has neither the authority to threaten nor to do — and with arrest.
Rosenberg responded, “I will not resist arrest, sir,” and attempted to advise Palmer that Minnesota Statute 624.714 not only permits Rosenberg to carry his firearm there, but that Subd. 23 of that statute says (emphasis added):
No sheriff, police chief, governmental unit, government official, government employee, or other person or body acting under color of law or governmental authority may change, modify, or supplement these criteria or procedures, or limit the exercise of a permit to carry.
“It’s really very simple,” Rosenberg explained. “Bill had no right to touch me at all, much less grab my gun, much less point it at me, even momentarily. I expect that the HennCo Sheriff’s Office will investigate, and act according to both the facts and the law. And that’s not the only crime Bill committed today, in that act. He really needs to obey the law that he is sworn to enforce and uphold. Whatever that was today, it was not ‘To Protect’ nor ‘To Serve.’ It’s not for him to make up the law as he goes along.”
Rosenberg immediately proceeded to the office of the Hennepin County Sheriff, where he filed a criminal complaint with Detective Bill Gottwaldt, who has promised Rosenberg a fair and impartial investigation.
And yes, it’s THAT Joel Rosenberg, the science fiction author and straight shooter. I’m sure we all expect Officer Palmer to be prosecuted to the full extent of the law and punished accordingly.
Yeah, that’s convincing
It will take a lot more than suspending Keith Olbermann to convince anyone with more than one-quarter of a brain that MSNBC is an impartial media observer:
MSNBC TV host Keith Olbermann was suspended indefinitely on Friday for making campaign donations to three Democratic congressional candidates, apparently in violation of NBC News ethics policy. The announcement came in a one-sentence statement from msnbc TV President Phil Griffin: “I became aware of Keith’s political contributions late last night. Mindful of NBC News policy and standards, I have suspended him indefinitely without pay.”
So, Olbermann’s evening contributions in kind to the Democratic Party worth millions of dollars are fine, but contributing a few actual dollars to a few Congressional candidates are not. Olbermann is an ass, and a much less intelligent ass than he thinks he is, but this attempt by MSNBC to pretend it is anything but a propaganda arm of the Democratic Party isn’t likely to fool anyone.
Verse of the Day
“As dead flies give perfume a bad smell, so a little folly outweighs wisdom and honor. The heart of the wise inclines to the right, but the heart of the fool to the left. Even as fools walk along the road, they lack sense and show everyone how stupid they are.”
– Ecclesiastes 10:1-3
Keep that in mind the next time you speak with one of your Christian friends who inclines to the left. And it is, of course, intriguing that the Bible should not only correctly anticipate post-18th century political ideologies, but correctly identify the sort of individual who belongs to them as well….