Tag: politics

Corruption in New York

The other New York assemblymen were shocked, shocked, to learn that the Speaker of the Assembly, Sheldon Silver, was arrested on corruption charges:

The speaker of the New York State Assembly, Sheldon Silver, was arrested on federal corruption charges on Thursday and accused of using the power of his office for more than a decade to secure millions of dollars in bribes and kickbacks and then covering up his schemes, according to court documents.

Mr. Silver, a Democrat from the Lower East Side of Manhattan who has served as speaker for more than two decades, is accused of a range of corrupt dealings that capitalized on his official position. They include using his position to obtain corrupt payments misrepresented as referral fees from a law firm; funneling state research funds and other benefits to a doctor who in return referred asbestos claims to the law firm where the speaker worked; and secretly helping real estate developers win tax breaks.

In recent years, a steady parade of lawmakers in Albany has been charged with corruption, and the complaint against Mr. Silver outlines a capital culture rife with back-room dealing, where money and influence shape public policy for the benefit of private agendas.

I’m sure the Senators and Congressmen in Washington D.C. are much, much cleaner.

CS Lewis on Liberty and Statism

An interesting 90-minute talk concerning CS Lewis’s views on the evils of statism, by the president of the CS Lewis Society of California. It’s often forgotten that the third volume of Lewis’s Space Trilogy, That Hideous Strength, was deeply and intimately concerned with the intrinsic evils of statism and bureaucracy, as was his Abolition of Man.

Explaining the mental gymnasts

Anonymous Conservative explains the bizarre affection the Left habitually displays for Islam, despite the way in which it goes against nearly everything they say they believe:

One religion is held in utter contempt, while the other receives freely groveling praise and welcoming admiration. Which is which?

Again, rabbits don’t grovel before Muslims because they think it through, and decide to appease the people who could kill them. Rather, their mind touches violent Islam tentatively and experiences an almost imperceptible shot of fear – in rabbit-speak, a triggering. Their brain then looks at the facts of the matter, and subconsciously realizes that embracing Islam as superior, is the least amygdala stimulating of the various thoughts running through their head. Far less stimulating than insulting or opposing Islam and being killed, and far less than consciously groveling at the feet of people they intellectually acknowledge reviling, to save their own lives. If they embrace Islam and believe their own embrace is true, they can even claim to be intellectual, moral, and tolerant, all best described as anti-triggering concepts in the rabbit’s mind.

Here, once this feat of mental gymnastics occurs, you enter a strange realm. Their initial jump to the counter-intuitive position has already been established in their mind as not due to some deficit of intellect, but rather due to the immensity of their intellect. At that point, the more counter to logic the position embraced by the rabbit, the more they see it as a mark of their tolerance, evolved-ness, advancement, and superiority over the more base, primitive, stupid, caveman-like tendencies of their opposition.

You have to view leftism and rabbitism as simple logical programs, run as if on computer, by a mind that cannot tolerate triggering, and which will believe anything to avoid experiencing it.

I’m pleased to be able to say that Anonymous Conservative is now an Associate of Castalia House, so if you wish to purchase his books in either EPUB or Kindle format, you can now do so through our online store. I highly recommend both of them, as they offer genuine insight into the Left from a perspective that is as unique as it is informative.

Both books provide a useful, hands-on theoretical explanation for behavior that we have all witnessed and found inexplicable. While AC would be the first to agree that considerably more scientific evidence would be required before one could assert either of his primary hypotheses as unassailable fact, even in the absence of published peer review they are very useful heuristics in attempting to better understand, and deal with, the literal lunatics of the political Left.

It’s a joke, right?

The Republican elite is desperate to figure out a way to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory despite the electorate being weary after eight years of Obama’s misrule:

Jeb Bush is the clear Republican presidential frontrunner, surging to the front of the potential GOP pack following his announcement that he’s “actively exploring” a bid, a new CNN/ORC poll found.

He takes nearly one-quarter — 23% — of Republicans surveyed in the new nationwide poll, putting him 10 points ahead of his closest competitor, New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, who tallied 13%.

Physician Ben Carson comes in third, with 7% support, and Sen. Rand Paul and former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee are both tied for fourth with 6%.

So, the Republicans have Bush III, Fatboy, and another token Negro on offer. 2016 looks like yet another election that I won’t be voting Republican even if the Democrats run a ticket featuring Asmoedeus and Belial.

I find the nominal Carson support to be particularly amusing. “Look, we got one too” has never been a winning strategy. And that’s especially true when everyone hates the previous one. It also makes it clear that no one got the “White Party” memo from the 2012 election.

It’s nothing of the sort, of course. Expressing support for an absurd black “candidate” is merely the Republican way of begging “see, I’m not a racist… please don’t hit me!”

The serfs revolt

The British Labour Party is learning the same lesson as Hillary Clinton and the DFL representatives in Minneapolis. Those useful, politically subservient minorities imported to undermine the opposition cease to be useful or subservient once they start outnumbering the former majority in the party that depended upon them:

Labour have seen a collapse in their crucial ethnic minority vote since 2010
in a blow for Ed Miliband with three quarters of Indian voters abandoning
the party. Influential pollsters say that Labour are mistaken in their belief they are “sitting
pretty” with the ethnic minority vote and Indian, Pakistani and African
voters are turning away from the party in huge numbers.

The number of Indian voters identifying with the Labour party has fallen from
77 per cent in 1997 to just 18 per cent in 2014 – a fall of over three
quarters, according to the figures from the British Election Study.

Pakistani support has fallen from 77 to 57 per cent, a fall of 27 per cent.
Meanwhile Carribean support has dropped 14 per cent from 78 to 67 per cent. Support from the African community has dropped by 20 per cent, from 79 to 63
per cent, the research shows.

The survey will be difficult reading for Mr Miliband as his party sees loyal
support among ethnic minority voters disappear just as the numbers of ethnic
minority voters in Britain increase. 

Ethnic politics are a two-edged sword for the white politicians of the Left. The Republican Party is merely a generation away from becoming the White Party. Already, both the Labour Party and the Democratic Party are headed by non-white nationals; it will be interesting to see how long both parties tolerate white leaders, if in fact they accept them at all.

Ocean-front diplomacy

Never let it be said that Obama doesn’t think ahead:

President Obama announced sweeping changes to U.S. policy with Cuba on Wednesday, moving to normalize relations with the island nation and tear down the last remaining pillar of the Cold War.

Under the new measures, the United States plans to reopen its embassy in Havana and significantly ease restrictions on travel and commerce within the next several weeks and months, Obama said. Speaking from the White House, he declared that a half-century of isolation of the Communist country “has not worked.”

“It’s time for a new approach,” he said.

The history-shaping overtures come after more than 18 months of secret negotiations with the Cuban government of President Raul Castro. The final touches appeared to be arrangements for a series of simultaneous prisoner releases.

It’s probably one of the smartest moves of his presidency, if not the smartest. Cubans don’t vote for Democrats anyhow, and no one gives a damn about them anymore since they’re massively outnumbered by Mexicans now. It’s all upside for Obama; no doubt there are plenty of big-money interests just slavering to snap up Cuban real estate.

I’d be astonished if he doesn’t come out of it with a sweet post-presidential villa.

Another Republican cave-in

At this point, can anyone even pretend to be surprised?

IMMIGRATION:
The bill only funds the Department of Homeland Security, which oversees most immigration policy, until February. But negotiators gave new money for immigration programs at other federal agencies. There’s $948 million for the Department of Health and Human Service’s unaccompanied children program — an $80 million increase. The program provides health and education services to the young migrants. The department also gets $14 million to help school districts absorbing new immigrant students. And the State Department would get $260 million to assist Central American countries from where of the immigrant children are coming.

AFFORDABLE CARE ACT:

The law is still
funded, but there’s no new money for it. There’s also no new ACA-related
funding for the Internal Revenue Service and the Centers for Medicare
and Medicaid Services, the two agencies most responsible for
implementing the law. The bill also would cut the budget of the
Independent Payment Advisory Board — what Republicans have called “the
death panel” — by $10 million.

OVERSEAS MILITARY OPERATIONS:

There’s $1.3
billion for a new Counterterrorism Partnership Fund; $5 billion for
military operations to combat the Islamic State, including $1.6 billion
to train Iraqi and Kurdish forces; $500 million for a Pentagon-led
program to train and equip vetted Syrian opposition fighters; $810
million for ongoing military operations in Europe, including
requirements that at least $175 million is spent in support of Ukraine
and Baltic nation

SEXUAL ASSAULT IN THE MILITARY:

There’s
$257 million for the Pentagon’s Sexual Assault Prevention and Response
programs, including $25 million more to expand the Sexual Assault
Victims’ Counsel program. But Democrats, led by Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand
(D-N.Y.), are expected to make a final push to expand the program this
week.

As Drudge puts it: “REPUBLICAN BETRAYAL: OBAMACARE FULLY FUNDED AMNESTY TOO!”

But no doubt Republican lawmakers will hasten to point out that there is no ADDITIONAL money for Obamacare. By Washington standards, that counts as a severe budget cut.

The customer is not always right

Or desired. This is an interesting technological development in customer relations:

Travelers are often asked to review their hotel, restaurant and car service. But increasingly, it goes both ways.

Drivers for Uber and Lyft, for example, rate their passengers from one to five stars at the end of each ride. If a rider receives three stars or fewer, the driver and passenger will not be paired up again. And at OpenTable, the restaurant booking system, customers are banned if they do not show for a reservation too many times.

These are among the ways that sophisticated rating systems can turn on the customer, identifying the best and worst among them.

I wonder how long it will take for this to go ideological. After all, if we know one thing about SJWs, they politicize absolutely everything and they aren’t shy about cutting off their nose to spite their face. It won’t surprise me if we see customers being banned from various establishments and services because their patronage is unwanted due to politics. Which is, of course, an unprotected right, or at least it is until Christians start using it as an effective proxy to deny services to those whose behavior they believe to be abomination.

I’ve lost one job and three book contracts due to corporate correctness to date. Which I always enjoy pointing out to those who claim bakers have to bake cakes they do not wish to bake and permit bed-and-breakfast guests they do not wish to have. As always, the SJWs seek to establish laws that only bite in one direction.

Of course, the costs of corporate correctness can be blessings in disguise. I’d much rather be publishing books through Castalia House than have published Media Whores and The Red Hand of Government with Thomas Nelson and A Throne of Bones with Lion Hudson.

Temperatures rising in the East

Taiwan hasn’t declared independence yet. But they are clearly moving in that direction, apparently in response to the Chinese crackdowns in Hong Kong. From Generational Dynamics:

Taiwan’s ruling nationalist party KMT (Kuomintang) suffered disastrous losses in local elections across Taiwan on Saturday, giving victories to the opposing DPP (Democratic Progressive Party), and forcing the resignation of the prime minister. Thousands of municipalities, including the capital city Taipei, that had been ruled for years by KMT mayors and politicians will not be ruled by DPP mayors and politicians.

The Kuomintang (KMT) is the modern day incarnation of Chiang Kai-shek’s original nationalist party of soldiers that fought against Mao Zedong’s Communist Revolution and lost, and fled to Hong Kong, then a British colony, and from there to Formosa (Taiwan) in 1949, at the conclusion of the civil war. The KMT position has always been that Taiwan would reunite with China.

KMT held an iron grip on power in Taiwan after the war, and that only began to fade in the 1980s with the founding of the DPP. However, the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre in Beijing, which people in Taiwan viewed with horror, proved to be a catalyst in turning Taiwanese people against Beijing, and by 2000 the DPP won a national election. A DPP corruption scandal in 2006 put KMT back into power, and KMT officials have been working closely with Beijing officials to woo Taiwan’s public to voluntarily want reunite with China.

The policy hasn’t really been effective. There are two groups of people who don’t want to reunite. One group is the indigenous Taiwanese people who lived there before 1949, and who have suffered at the hands of the KMT. Young people generally form the second group, and they distrust China and they distrust the KMT for selling out to China.

The problem isn’t that the Red Navy is capable of defeating the US Navy. It isn’t. But it increasingly looks capable of giving the US Navy a seriously bloody nose if it intervenes in cross-strait hostilities between China and Taiwan, and never forget, the Chinese always play a long game. And there is no way, none, that the American people have any stomach whatsoever for war with China after thirteen years of pointless and desultory war in Afghanistan.

I suspect the Chinese may be aware of that, which may explain why so many of their wealthy are stashing their children and buying up properties in the USA. I doubt there will be any open war, but there will likely be growing pressure being exerted on Taiwan with the threat of force behind it.

Why the Left hates Thanksgiving

Mr. John C. Wright explains:

There is an old Chinese legend of a golden scroll on which the secret of human happiness was written; and sages and warlords, merchant-princes and emperors sought the scroll with fervor. When found, they saw the secret of the scroll consisted of one ideogram printed over and over, an ideogram they could not read. However, there was a beggar girl who could read the mysterious word.

If you know that word, then you know the secret of human happiness.

Thanksgiving is one of my favorite holidays for three reasons: first, it drives the Leftists crazy because it is a clearly and openly Christian holiday in the midst of a society they are fervidly attempting to dechristianize; second, it drives Leftists crazy because it is a holiday based on a historical fact, namely, Indian and Pilgrim cooperation, which flips the middle finger at the Leftist preferred narrative about non-civilized White men committing malign genocide on the non-savage Red men; and finally and most of all, it drives the Leftists crazy because the concept of being thankful, of feeling gratitude, of thanks for benefits never to be repaid, is utterly alien to their way of thinking and their way of life.

One benefit that accrues to the Christian, even if all of history, logic, and revelation should turn out to be false, and God a myth no more real than Global Warming, nonetheless, is that we Christian men feel gratitude toward our Creator for the infinite gift of creation. A noble pagan can indeed receive a gift in his stockings at Christmas, and be grateful to the giver, but a Christian can feel grateful for the legs he puts into his stockings each morning, and the world on which he walks.

The Left does not give thanks, not to anyone, human or divine, past or present, not for any reason.

Why not?

This would explain, among other things, why they prefer to call it Turkey Day.