Shut up, she pleaded

Peggy Noonan is more concerned about fraternizing politely with the internal enemy than she is with the fate of the country:

I was once in a small joust with Roger Ailes about violence on television. I was worried about it. He responded, I paraphrase: But there’s comedy all over TV, and I don’t see people breaking out in jokes and laughter on the streets. True, I said, but depictions of violence are different. Violent images excite the unstable. Violent words do, too. This is why, I think, so many people—I include, literally, every person I know, from all walks of life, and all ages—are worried that our elected leaders are not safe, that this overheated era will end in some violent act or acts. Stop reading this and ask whoever’s nearby, “Do you find yourself worrying about President Obama’s safety?” I do not think you are going to get, “No.”

Some conservatives feel umbrage when this is said. “The left equates criticism with violence in order to squelch dissent.” In some cases that of course will be true. But this isn’t debate, it’s more like incitement. And it comes from both right and left. Democracy cannot healthily endure without free and unfettered debate. It’s our job to watch, critique and question, and, being us, to do it in colorful terms. But knowing where the line is, matters. Seeing clearly the lay of the land, knowing the facts of the country and your countrymen, matters.

Which gets us back to Safire and Cronkite and Novak and the rest. They knew where the line was. They were tough guys who got in big fights, but they had a sense of responsibility towards the country, and towards its culture. They, actually, were protective toward it. They made mistakes, but they were solid.

This is an astounding glimpse into the mind of a Washington conservative, which is to say someone who is nothing more than a left-wing accomodationist. The Washington elite actually thinks that the average American gives a damn about the lives of their elected officials, when I’ll bet that not more than a third would even bother to piss on them if they were on fire. And another third would spray gasoline instead. Like many Americans, I regret that AGW/CC is a sham, as I think the nation would be much better off with Washington and New York City deep underwater.

And citing Cronkite as some sort of defender of the country is monstrously false, considering that the man was a strong advocate of ending American sovereignty in favor of global dictatorship. I don’t know if Noonan is poorly informed or a sell-out, but either way, her call for national unity and etiquette merits nothing but a pair of silent, but eloquent fingers.

VPFL Week 5

83 Mounds View Meerkats (4-1)
31 Valders Valkyries (4-1)

74 Judean Front (4-1)
53 Alamo City Spartans (3-2)

73 Masonville Marauders (1-4)
64 Black Mouth Curs (3-2)

54 Burns Redbeards (1-4)
49 Bane Silvers (2-3)

75 Winston Reverends (2-3)
71 Greenfield Grizzlies (1-4)

The defending champs finally gets a win! Nate is customarily a slow starter, but this is bordering on ridiculous. And with the Redbeards showing life, can it be long before the Titans follow?

VP-AFL

79.60 Lesbian Dorito Night (5-0)
78.00 Cranberry Bogs (1-4)

109.95 The Thunder (3-2)
98.25 Village Valkyries (3-2)

142.65 South Plains Storm (2-3)
87.25 Az Hammeroids (3-2)

90.05 COS McRays (1-4)
67.00 Oakies (2-3)

96.20 Supernaut’s Jihad (1-4)
58.50 Masonville Marauders (4-1)

Letter to Vox Day III

Luke has posted his third letter:

Vox,

Again, I’ll break this into sections.

Evolution

I agree evolution is a tangent, but once again I can’t let you get away with what you’ve said. In your first letter, you made many unsupported (and false) assertions about evolution, for example that evolution is “of little material value to science” and that “the predictive models evolutionary theory produces are reliably incorrect.” I responded by quoting your assertions verbatim and then directly rebutting them with relevant evidence, argument, and examples. In your second letter, you again refused to support any of your claims about evolution, and instead resorted to empty hand-waving:

If you do happen to investigate [my points] in the future you will discover… that it isn’t even possible to credibly dispute them.

Your repeated refusal to support your own claims is a direct violation of your own rules for your own blog, specifically Rule #2:

You are expected to back up your assertions… The dishonest and evasive tactics that are so common in Internet argumentation are not permitted here…

Tactics

Instead of backing up your claims with argument and evidence, your tactics rely mostly on obscurantism and dismissal.

Read the rest of his response to my second letter at Common Sense Atheism.

RGD: the Amazon launch

As some of you have already noticed, Amazon is listing The Return of the Great Depression, albeit with an incorrect release date of October 1st. For those intrepid readers who are interested in participating in the Amazon launch, it is scheduled for Sunday, October 25th, from 12 noon to 12 midnight Central. And, in order to provide some encouragement to those who remain undecided about picking up a copy, here’s John Derbyshire of National Review’s impression:

“Vox Day gives us a splendidly pessimistic look at the current economic mess based on a deep background in finance and global economic history. Written with style and wit – not to mention a good imitation of Dante. Read it, weep, then get on the phone to your investment advisor.”

UPDATE: Prediction time – Vox vs 43 expert economists:

The group asked 43 top economists last month if they believe the battered U.S. economy has pulled out of the worst U.S. downturn since World War II. Those surveyed include economists from leading Wall Street firms and major corporations, as well as from highly respected universities and research firms. Thirty-five respondents, or 81%, believe the recovery has begun. Only four, or 9%, believe the economy is still in a recession. The other four say they’re uncertain.

Thus spake Vox: the economy is in a depression, not a recession. It is occurring at a scale which the experts, with their myopic focus on irrelevant bottom-line quarterly GDP, have failed to recognize. The separation between the much-manipulated economic statistics and the real economy has become too great to credibly paper over, which will lead to either a complete junking of the very concept of GDP as a credible measure of economic activity, or more likely, a significant redefinition of GDP to enable it to more accurately reflect the real economy.

Positive GDP in the third and potentially fourth quarters does not mean the economy is growing, only that the government attempts to expand credit had limited success in pulling future consumption forward; such success will only last as long as the government-expanded credit programs continue to expand.

As per request, I am in the process of putting together some objective metrics that can be tracked in lieu of relying upon GDP and used to falsify my contentions, but note that positive quarterly GDP reports are not sufficient to formally indicate that a recession is over. Nor is there anything such as a “W-shaped recovery and recession”, that’s nothing more than economic posterior-covering and ignores the larger scale view.

So much for the fossil record

Big dinosaur, little dinosaur, what didn’t begin with E?

Many dinosaurs may be facing a new kind of extinction—a controversial theory suggests as many as a third of all known dinosaur species never existed in the first place. That’s because young dinosaurs didn’t look like Mini-Me versions of their parents, according to new analyses by paleontologists Mark Goodwin, University of California, Berkeley, and Jack Horner, of Montana State University. Instead, like birds and some other living animals, the juveniles went through dramatic physical changes during adulthood.

This means many fossils of young dinosaurs, including T. rex relatives, have been misidentified as unique species, the researchers argue.

Obviously, the jury is still out on this one. But, if it’s demonstrated to be correct, it will be a tremendous blow to TENS. If paleontologists can’t even be relied upon to correctly distinguish between mature and immature examples of the exact same species, this will obviously cast serious doubts on the credibility of the fossil transition sequences between species that they have constructed.

I await with amused interest for the true believers to explain how a complete misreading of a significant portion of the fossil record should not be taken as a reason to doubt any conclusions that were made based on the incorrectly interpreted fossil record.

WND column

A Prize-winning Presidency

Unlike many right-wing commentators, I had very high hopes for the Obama administration. Whereas most conservatives were wringing their hands about how Obama was likely to destroy the economy, I was confident that Ben Bernanke already had the task well in hand. Sure enough, Obama was content to continue where George W. Bush had left off, expanding the bank bailouts and quadrupling down on the $168 billion Bush stimulus package with his own $787 billion gambit.

UPDATE: I have to admit, Tom Bemis at Marketwatch did it better:

Obama fails to win Nobel prize in economics

In a decision as shocking as Friday’s surprise peace prize win, President Obama failed to win the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences Monday.

You know that’s the inevitable joke every time any prize is awarded anywhere over the next six months.

NFL Week 5

I have to say, I quite like the Vikes chances this week. Mostly due to this comment by a Rams fan on the possibility of Rush Limbaugh as a future owner:

If the new owner can produce a single win this season I’m willing to consider the following for ownership:

– Hitler reincarnated
– Bill Ayers
– Satan
– Mordo, destroyer of galaxies
– My ex-wife
– Santa Claus

Some people are looking for a letdown after the big win over the Pack, but I don’t know if it’s possible to let down far enough considering that even the Lions, sans their starting QB, would probably give points to the Rams these days.

In which Orac makes a belated discovery

Richard Dawkins doesn’t actually give a damn about either science or reason. He just hates religion:

Let me repeat that again: I know nothing of any stance he [Bill Maher] may have taken on medical questions. No followup of “what are your complaints?” or “please tell me what you mean.” No “so, what are Maher’s medical views that upset you all so?” It’s as if Dawkins just didn’t care. La-de-da. So what if Maher supports quackery? No problem. As long as he bashes religion, it’s all good.

It’s taken him a while, but it’s good to see that Orac has finally achieved a more accurate understanding of a few of his fellow atheists. On a related note, this attempted defense of the New Atheists is based on a false foundation:

While some critics of the “new atheists” have made valid arguments, primarily that their optimistic humanism is far from realistic, they are missing out on a simple point: adhering to a scientific worldview requires discipline; it requires giving up on the certainties of childhood and the belief in ultimate protection. I don’t know whether doing so turns us into better human beings, but it certainly makes us intellectually more responsible.

This is why TIA was particularly devastating to the New Atheists’ arguments and why they were forced to retreat from making many of those they had been making prior to its release. For all that they pretended to ignore the book, you’ll note that you seldom see the Red State argument or “religion causes war” anymore. Most have even abandoned the “No True Atheist” attempt to absolve atheism for the crimes of historical atheists, although many still cling foolishly to the ludicrous “In the name of” variant. I’m probably most pleased that no one has even attempted to defend Daniel Dennett’s incompetent attempt to justify the division of doxastic labor on the part of “scientific” belief, although I suspect this has far more to do with the inability of most atheists to read or understand Dennett than it does with the conclusive nature of my criticism of his logic.

The New Atheists are precisely the opposite of intellectually responsible. That’s part of what distinguishes them from more honest atheists such as Meslier and Russell, who did not seek to cloak their disbelief under a fraudulent veil of science. As I have repeatedly pointed out, their coherent arguments are reliably anti-scientific, as they repeatedly reject objective observation in favor of logic – and bad logic at that. To give one example, it is an incontrovertible and undeniable fact that no amount of “magical thinking” prevents an individual from being a superlative scientist thanks to the fact that the scientific method is not an ideology or even a belief, it is merely a process. And yet, this hasn’t prevented Sam Harris and others from not only claiming that it does, but that it must. (Dawkins, surprisingly, appears to have realized the demonstrable absurdity of this position and rejected both it and its application to Harris’s primary target, Frances Collins.) One may also note that the religious USA appears to have done rather well in collecting science-related Nobel prizes this year contra the New Atheist position on the incompatibility of religion and science.

As for their vast catalog of incoherent arguments, the piece by Strenger serves as a reasonable example. There is nothing comforting or certain about Christianity taken in sum, even if there is comfort and hope to be found in Jesus Christ. The assurance of “ultimate protection” for those who elect to follow the hard and narrow way in Christianity is distinctly qualified and there is no similar assurance of any kind to be found in any religion except possibly for Islam.

Where, I wonder, is intellectual responsibility to be found in repeatedly attacking the nonexistent figments of one’s imagination?

Banking 2009 update

Bank failures: 98
Total Deposits: $7,566 billion
Failed Deposits: $90.1 billion
Failed Assets: $108.2 billion
Estimated Losses: $26.4 billion
Actual Losses est: $51.2 billion

Failed Deposits/Total Deposits: 1.19 percent
Estimated Losses/Failed Deposits: 29.3 percent
Actual Losses/Failed Deposits: 56.8 percent
Total loans & leases: -6.3 percent

DIF balance Q3 reported: negative
DIF balance FDIC est: -4.8 billion
DIF balance actual est: -15.3 billion
FD/TD 1930: 1.65 percent
FD/TD 1931: 3.60 percent
FD/TD 1932: 1.99 percent
FD/TD 1933: 8.55 percent
AL/FD 1930-1933: 28.88 percent

FD/TD 2008: 3.21 percent
AL/FD 2008: 14.99 percent

September’s figures

Too freaking funny

What on Earth can the Nobel committee possibly be thinking? The man hasn’t even closed Guantanamo Bay or ended either of the two military occupations he promised to end!

OSLO/WASHINGTON (Reuters) – U.S. President Barack Obama won the Nobel Peace Prize on Friday for offering the world hope and striving for nuclear disarmament in a surprise award that drew both warm praise and sharp criticism. The bestowal of one of the world’s top accolades on a president less than nine months in office, who has yet to score a major foreign policy success, was greeted with gasps of astonishment from journalists at the announcement in Oslo.

As I said, this administration is seriously outperforming its comedic potential. I wonder what their rationale for it will be… for excellence in presidenting while black? First Arafat, then Krugman, now Obama. At this rate, it won’t be long before they’ll be giving out Nobel Prizes en masse to minority kids who manage to graduate from public high school.

But at least this teaches us one thing. As Parrothead Al suggested, JaMarcus Russell has got to be a shoe-in for NFL MVP now. And it may even lay the foundation for a unique opportunity in political governance! If the Eurofascists manage to finish ramming the European ConstitutionLisbon Treaty down the throats of the Europeans who didn’t vote for it sometime in the next three years, the European Commission could then select Obama to be the President of the European Union as well as the United States.