PolifrogBlog

There is no free in liberty.


.

Friday, September 30, 2011

Dismantling American's Anglo-Saxon Success...




The left dismantling America.

It is the Left’s sacred cow that the Third World suffers from Western hegemony. Yet, the greatest happening to befall many peoples was seemingly being colonized by Britain or conquered by America.

...

Political correctness has so infected American thought that we recoil reflexively at the mere hint of Western brilliance. To the multiculturalists, the only culture that can’t be unequivocally praised is the very Anglo-protestant heritage which spurred America’s greatness. Ironically, it is often guilt laden WASPs, heirs of their wealth, leading the slanderous denunciations of their forbears.

“E Pluribus Unum” – from many, one – gives way to Balkanization where multiculturalists hitch grievance wagons to government’s gravy train. Attracting venturesome immigrants has long boosted America’s fortunes, but success no longer entails mimicking Anglo-American culture. Instead of assimilation, we now espouse bilingual education to abstain from “cultural imperialism.

A quasi-Marxism supplements class warfare with identity politics under the mantle of diversity. Obama’s reelection strategy advocates taxing the affluent to finance public favoritism for others he deems mistreated by what has historically been a libertarian American experiment. Identity politics transform elections into feudal patronage schemes sacrificing property and liberty on the altar of political correctness.






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Thursday, September 29, 2011

Battering Big Oil With 28 Birds While Subsidizing Big Wind With 400,000...

polifrog




Corporate battery via regulation.

Wildlifeextra:
September 2011: Seven oil companies have been charged under America's Migratory Bird Treaty Act, for the killing of 28 migratory birds.

...

While welcoming the prosecutions, American Bird Conservancy (ABC) - the nation's leading bird conservation organisation - reports that the wind industry has yet to face a single charge, despite being responsible for more than 400,000 bird deaths each year.





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Janeane Garofalo Swipes the Race Card and Makes the Liability Smile File...

polifrog



Janeane Garofalo:

Herman Cain is probably well liked by some of the Republicans because it hides the racist elements of the Republican party. Conservative movement and tea party movement, one in the same.

People like Karl Rove liked to keep the racism very covert. And so Herman Cain provides this great opportunity say you can say 'Look, this is not a racist, anti-immigrant, anti-female, anti-gay movement. Look we have a black man.'


Video at RCP.

Proving that playing the race card has become a liability.




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Wednesday, September 28, 2011

Is European "Secularism" Protecting Europe from Moslem Influence Through Government?

polifrog




... Or do we see the result of mixing an atheocracy with moral relativism in which the "secularists" back down in the face of moral relativism resulting in some religions bearing the brunt of marginalization more so than other "racial" religions?




It seems to me that when a nation decides to turn a deaf ear to religion or any particular group it not only becomes less democratic, but it empties the table of various religions from which consensus on issues may arise, the "table" being the citizenry's conduit through which it informs governance of religious matters. Unfortunately, it is through this broken"forum" that the pet causes of various individual religions are moderated by the others when attempting to inform governance.

As it now stands in Europe, and to a lesser degree here in the US, religion is no longer allowed to inform government, thus the state is less likely to recognize a new religion within its sphere of influence as a religion. Instead, in the case of the Muslim faith, the state sees a new race. How can it see this new force otherwise when no longer informed by religion? In fact, when religions do attempt to inform governance in this matter they are told that as racists they should simply shut up.

The end result is that the table of religion once occupied by all religions informing the state was emptied by the state. However, via moral relativism, the state has allowed the Muslim faith to have the only seat at the table of religion and, thus, the privilege of not just informing governance, but to do so without first having to reach a "consensus" with other religions.

This is the danger of what most call a "secularist" state and what I prefer to call an atheocratic state.

Remove all religion and open the door to one.





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I Really Hope That Someone Can Agree with Me That Democrat NC Gov. Bev Perdue Did not Tell A Joke:

polifrog




She sure sounds serious. And that makes her "It was a joke" excuse a lie...




Liar.

Stability via tyranny is not stability.




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Tuesday, September 27, 2011

Smile File Mid Week Toon...

polifrog






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I Really Hope That Someone Can Agree with Me That Democrat NC Gov. Bev Perdue Should Not Have Said This:

polifrog


“I think we ought to suspend, perhaps, elections for Congress for two years and just tell them we won’t hold it against them, whatever decisions they make, to just let them help this country recover,” Perdue said at a rotary club event in Cary, North Carolina, according to the Raleigh News & Observer. “I really hope that someone can agree with me on that.”



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Alessio Rastani - Feasting on Failure...

polifrog




Profits from market crashes today fertilize growth tomorrow.

Creative destruction.

Demonizing profits demonizes creation -- Demonizing profits demonizes market healing. And when governments mitigate the pain of market crashes via stimulus in all its forms they reduce the profits to be gained from market corrections thus robing future market creation and growth of the fertilizer that results from market crashes.

In short, when governments hinder the transfer of wealth from failure today, they hinder growth tomorrow.

Alessio Rastani understands that that transfer of wealth will eventually occur despite all actions otherwise.




Because BBC videos disappear below is a partial transcription of the above exchange:

Alessio Rastani: The market is gonna crash, and it's gonna fall pretty hard. Because markets are ruled right now by fear. Investors, the big money, the smart money, I'm talking about the big funds, the big hedgefunds, the institutions, they don't buy this rescue plan, they basically ... they know the market ist toast. They know the stock market is finished. The Euro, as far as they concern, they don't care. They're moving their money away to safer assets, like treasury bonds, 30-year bonds, and the US-dollar. So, it's not gonna work.

BBC: We keep hearing, that whatever the politicians are suggesting ... isn't right. Can you pin down what would keep investors happy, make them feel more confident?

BBC: If you could see the people around me, jaws have collectively dropped, because of what you just said. I mean we appreciate your kanda, however, it doesn't help the rest of us, doesn't it, or the rest of the Eurozone.

Alessio Rastani: Listen, everybody who's watching this. This economic crisis is like a cancer. If you just wait and wait thinking this is gonna go away ... just like a cancer it's gonna grow and it's gonna be too late. What I would say to anybody is: Get prepared! This is not the time right now for wishful thinking that the government is gonna sort things out. The governments don't rule the world, Goldman Sachs rules the world. Goldman Sachs does not care about this rescue package and neither does the big funds. So, actually, I would actually tell people: People can make money from this, it isn't just traders. What they need to do is learn how to make money from a downward market. The first thing people should do is to protect their assets. Protect what they have. Because in less than 12 months, my prediction is, the savings of millions of people is gonna vanish. Ah, and this is just the beginning. So, I would say, be prepared and act now. The biggest risk people can take right now is not acting.

I hope to find the full exchange later...




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Ford Discovers We no Longer Live in Henry Ford's America - GM Sends Their Government Heavys...

polifrog



That oh-so-appropriate Ford advert? Just memories...



As part of a campaign featuring "real people" explaining their decision to buy the Blue Oval, a guy named "Chris" says he "wasn't going to buy another car that was bailed out by our government," according the text of the ad, launched in early September.


"I was going to buy from a manufacturer that's standing on their own: win, lose, or draw. That's what America is about is taking the chance to succeed and understanding when you fail that you gotta' pick yourself up and go back to work."


That's what some of America is about, evidently. Because Ford pulled the ad after individuals inside the White House questioned whether the copy was publicly denigrating the controversial bailout policy CEO Alan Mulally repeatedly supported in the dark days of late 2008, in early '09 and again when the ad flap arose.

For Ford's success they receive, in part, the burden of GM's failure as well as the constraints of speech limited.

The liability incurred by the successful when forced to socialize the cost of the failure of others is more than just financial; it is a loss of liberty, for as our nation trades the benefits of success for the benefits of failure, it trades liberty for something less.

Make no mistake. This is one more step in Obama's diminished America.

.... And we have idiots who believe corporations run the nation

H/T HotAir

Update:
Advert here:






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Those Darned Bush Tax Cuts for the Rich...

polifrog



And Reaganite tax increases for the rich.


Two graphs via the CBO:
  • The first represents all Federal Taxes paid:

Link

  • The second only represents Income Taxes paid:

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Monday, September 26, 2011

Cracking Economic's Patina of Science or Another Hit on Krugman...

polifrog




Much of Keynesian economic theory relies on statistics, but statistical representations of reality are not empirical facts as they rely on the subjective inference of the confluence of two or more measured occurrences. Being that subjective inference is not measurable, thus not verifiable, it can not rise to the level of empirical fact, thus "theory" rooted in statistically based inference is highly subjective and, as such, does not rise to the level of theory or even hypothesis and should not be used to drive economic policy.

It is, however, in this nether world of inference that Krugman thrives.




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Net Neutrality: It Just Keeps Coming:

polifrog


Link


Our non congressionally policed bureaucratic branch:

The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) filed a final version of its net neutrality rules Thursday, one year after they voted to pass the framework defining the principles of an ‘open Internet.’ The vote on the framework was passed on partisan lines, 3-2.

The rules, published on the Federal Register’s website, will go into effect November 20th. Touted as a major victory for a free and open Internet by FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski, Republicans have begun building a last-ditch challenge to a principle they believe will kill markets.



From the comments (fourleafclover):
Water neutrality would be where everyone pays the same water bill no matter how much water you use. If you use very little but your neighbor uses a lot, you'll be subsidizing his water bill. Net neutrality is the same thing, it is the socialization of the internet. If you use the internet for e-mail and surfing the net you will pay the same as your neighbor who is downloading movies and music. The FCC is going to require each ISP guarantee each customer the full speed of his connection no matter that it will cost billions to upgrade ISPs all over the country. Internet costs are going to skyrocket with the implementation of net neutrality. Google and Netflix will be tickled with their billions of profit made on the backs of citizens who don't use their services.

Socialized bandwidth.



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Smile File Chart...

polifrog




None of the weekend toons got my attention but this chart, well...







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Sunday, September 25, 2011

Picasso Krugman and Economic Art Driving Public Policy...

polifrog




Charles Hugh Smith:
Only with the advent of a true understanding of the nature of infection, the immune system and disease did the "folk" pseudo-science of bleeding pass from accepted medical practice.

We are mired in a similar era of pseudo-science being accepted as actual science, i.e. as reflecting the underlying causal mechanisms of life and the universe, and that pseudo-science is called economics.

As I have noted here many times, we are experiencing not just a standard-issue financial crisis but the failure of the entire pseudo-science edifice of modern conventional economics.

Yes.

Economics is not so much a science as an art donned in the patina of science which makes Krugman something of an artist. Much of economic argument today is based on a neural net of interconnected statistical data from which any "reality" may be inferred and from which may be drawn any desired result. Are Krugman's arguments shaped by "the data" or is "the data" shaped by his imagination and desire?


How are we to know? -- when, unfortunately, much of economic debate has devolved into statistical pissing contests with economists demanding to see one another's "data" as though anything concrete can spring fourth from a neural net of statistical inference?

Just as sculptors use clay to mold a representation of their reality so too do economists mold the reality they perceive from statistics. Watching any two sculptors argue that their creations are proof of anything beyond their imagination is as meaningless as economists doing the same via statistics.

Krugamn's gift of artistically constructing from a grab bag of stats a desired reality is no more useful than Picasso's use of paint to do the same. The only difference between the two is that one attempts to drive public policy.

Yes, I compare Krugman to Picasso; he is both that good and that distorted.





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Saturday, September 24, 2011

A Judiciary for the State...

polifrog


FoodRenegade:
According to Wisconsin Judge Patrick J. Fiedler, you do not have a fundamental right to consume the food you grow or own or raise.

And in a clarification he states:
“no, Plaintiffs do not have a fundamental right to own and use a dairy cow or a dairy herd;”

...

“no, Plaintiffs do not have a fundamental right to consume the milk from their own cow;”

...

“no, Plaintiffs do not have a fundamental right to produce and consume the foods of their choice…”

And in the mistaken belief that the court bestows rights upon the citizenry Judge Patrick Fielder states:

This court is unwilling to declare that there is a fundamental right to consume the food of one's choice without first being presented with significantly more developed arguments on both sides of the issue.
"Unwilling to declare that there is a fundamental right"? The presumption of rights reside within the citizenry, not the judiciary to bestow.

A judiciary that believes otherwise serves the state rather than the citizenry.


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Friday, September 23, 2011

No, Krugman Was Wrong...

polifrog


Krugman claims to have been correct in calling for the failure of stimulus due to insufficient funds.

However, it is well known that no matter the amount of stimulus under consideration, Krugman will call for an ambiguous more. It is a wise gambit on his part, as stimulus generally results in extending contractions and when it fails he can fall back on "it wasn't enough" or "we never really tried a true stimulus". And if stimulus were to work, Krugman would still be correct because the Keynesian basis for his calculus would be verified.

Essentially, Krugman has set himself up as unverifiable. But what if his wild calls for massive stimulus spending were overtaken by even greater actual spending by government and economic growth still lagged?

Let's compare what Krugman seems to have called for via NPR:

Krugman is of the opinion that the proposed $800 billion-plus stimulus package is not large enough to have a meaningful impact. He says the administration should spend $1 trillion or more over two years.

... to the $13 trillion in stimulus spending PBS references which, of course, does not include the baseline of immeasurable "Brodian Stimulus" more commonly known as general government spending.

The myth is that the US never met the amounts of stimulus spending Krugman said we needed to work our way back toward prosperity. The reality is the we exceeded the Krugman call by a factor of between 10 to 15 and found even greater misery.

Despite Krugman's obvious desire to avoid set data points by which to measure the success or failure of his proscriptions, government spending outpaced even Krugman's wildest Keynesian desires and was found lacking.

Demand side solutions have failed.
Keynes was wrong.
Krugman was wrong.




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Thursday, September 22, 2011

If You Question Our Increasingly Unpatriotic, Amoral and Atheocratic State...

polifrog




...you question the American left:


H/T BigFurHat




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Did the Federal Reserve Admit a Demand Side Fail With "Operation Twist"? ?

polifrog


Link

Bernanke said: "there are significant downside risks to the economic outlook.", while offering to do little... "Operation Twist". The calculus? The Fed has shot its wad...

Our Keynesian bulwark against depression has been over run. There is a wave of demand side fail coming our way. Do you plan to ride, duck under or be caught in the froth?

Reuters:

Britain's leading shares were sharply lower across the board on Thursday, tracking hefty falls on Wall Street and in Asia after the U.S. Federal Reserve gave a downbeat assessment of the economy, saying it faced "significant downside risks".

The Fed's cautious comments came as it, as expected, unveiled fresh economic stimulus measures, dubbed "Operation Twist" by the financial markets, which will see it buy more long-term Treasury securities in an effort to lower borrowing rates.

"Investors are sceptical that forcing down long term rates will spur activity in the stagnant housing sector as the problem seems to lie in prospective home buyers not being able to obtain the necessary borrowing. This is exacerbated by the banks' cautiousness to lend due to the dire unemployment situation," said Jordan Lambert, a trader at Spreadex.








Graham Summers:

We’re just getting started here. Today we got a confirmed SELL on my proprietary Crash indicator. This is the SAME indicator that registered before the 1987 Crash, the Tech Crash, and the 2008 collapse.

It's just triggered again... which means that today's sell off is JUST the beginning of what's coming. Indeed, I fully believe that the Great Collapse, the time when the Fed completely loses control of the markets, has arrived.

Karl Denninger:
I'll go ahead and make the prediction now: This time will be worse than 2008 and we'll measure from SPX 1370, which makes the minimum downside target under 600. And no, this time it won't recover with more "hopium" and fraud - that card has already been played which means the pension funds and annuities across this nation are going to get, exactly as I warned about four years ago.








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Wednesday, September 21, 2011

Rep. Brad Miller (NC-13) Seems to Have Given Up on the Thirteenth...

polifrog




After enjoying a decade in the 13th district, Brad Miller was drawn out of his home district in a revised redistricting map and into David Price's 4th district. This opened Miller up to a choice between running in his more conservative home district or a more liberal district currently occupied by fellow Democrat David Price.

Well, it appears Miller prefers a fifty/fifty chance at keeping a seat in congress to a zero percent chance. As for whether I prefer Miller to win or Price to win, I'd have to pick Price, although I believe one candidate is as wide as the other is long.


FayObserver:
Democratic Congressmen Brad Miller of Raleigh and David Price of Chapel Hill have already started campaigning in Fayetteville for the 4th District Congressional seat, even though both said recently that they don't want to run in a Democratic primary against each other.




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The Left's Medieval Approach to The Constitution...

polifrog



I question the left's approach to constitutional discussion that relies entirely on the interpretations of others when The Constitution is there before us to read.

Just as placing the ordained between the masses and the Bible empowered the Medieval Catholic Church, so too does placing Judges ond Justices between the masses and the Constitution empower the judiciary and, hence, governance. I understand the statist lust for Medieval Catholic power, but do we need to repeat the climate that resulted in the reformation?



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Tuesday, September 20, 2011

The Undefined Candidate Obama Has as President Defined Himself and is Being Rejected...

polifrog




These are not winning numbers:

By a margin of 49 percent to 36 percent, voters said they definitely plan to vote against Obama, according to the poll. Independents by 53 percent to 28 percent said they definitely plan to vote against him.

...

By 52 percent to 38 percent, voters think he'll lose to the Republican nominee, whoever that is. Even among Democrats, 31 percent think the Republican nominee will win.

And despite not being in the race Palin finds herself opening the article:

Look out President Barack Obama. Even Sarah Palin's gaining on you.

...

The biggest gain came for Palin, the former Alaska governor who hasn't yet announced whether she'll jump into the fast-changing race for the 2012 Republican presidential nomination.

After trailing Obama by more than 20 percentage points in polls all year, the new national survey, taken Sept. 13-14, found Palin trailing the president by just 5 points, 49-44 percent. The key reason: She now leads Obama among independents, a sharp turnaround.


An candidate can run and win as undefined only once.




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How Does the Right Defend Greed?

polifrog





The short answer is that the right defends property rights.

It is to the right land owners turn when their property values are threatened by government any number of often interdependent EPA regulations. It is to the right that the productive turn to protect their earnings (selling one's time on Earth) from the rapaciousness of the left. It is to the right that those who wish to protect their most basic of possessions -- life -- turn.

Offering to lead the defense from the left's avarice and desire to plunder, appropriate and thieve is not greed.

However, if one desires that which is not theirs they may turn left and find not only the means and the rational to do so, but a false nobility to comfort them.





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Geologic Time Scale and the CO2 / Global Temperature Non Relationship...

polifrog





H/T Maggie's Farm



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Geologic Time Scale and the CO2/Global Temperature Non Relationship...

polifrog






Monday, September 19, 2011

Limousine Liberals - Thieving the Nobility of Another's Generosity...

polifrog



There is a term for wealthy people who claim to act with a sense of responsibility toward those who are less fortunate. Readers might be familiar with the concept of noblesse oblige.

Yes, it can be noble to help those in need. It is not so noble, however, to do so with Other People's Money. It is not so noble to bow politically before a sanctioned victim group.

An alternative term is "limousine liberal". What does it mean?



[bold added]


Americans are a generous people and unfortunately deriving false nobility from that generosity is the progressive/liberal way.




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More Economic Hair Splitting From the Kitchen Table Class...

polifrog


...taking water out of one end of the pool and, after taking your cut, pouring the rest back into another side of the pool. How does tax-and-spend benefit anything except the government industry?

Yeah, Keynes is fundamentally flawed, but it will remain the heart or western governance as long as government profits from abusive Keynesian economic policy.




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Gearhead Post -- 29 Duesenberg Oil Pan Removal ...

polifrog



This is the car that results when confronted with no compromise:


Yes, you sense lust.




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Victor Davis Hanson on America's Progressive Spin Down...

polifrog



Victor Davis Hanson:
So it is that in 1935 poor people scraped and saved to cast a bronze plaque for their Depression-era new city hall, and in 2011 rather more affluent people ripped it off to melt it down for a layaway payment on some chrome rims or another round of meth.

Civilization ends when the pampered beneficiaries of the hard work of the now dead have the luxury of ignoring how hard it was — and is — to build shelter from the elements, to erect public buildings from scrub, to grow food and sprout farms from sage. Our contemporary criminals are protected from the elemental struggle and so have the indulgence to gnaw away at civilization’s veneer — and we, in our conspiratorial silence about them, likewise forgot that to keep still about the destruction of the work of others is to be complicit in it.

...

In 2008 the housing market collapsed due to Wall Street speculation in sub-prime paper, dishonest banks, and real estate agents pushing mortgages and houses, and to be fair, either stupid or greedy unqualified house buyers who, late to a doomed game of musical chairs, thought even they, as the music ended, could find cheap loans, buy a home, earn thousands in instant “equity,” borrow against it, and get “free” cash.

But the glue that held the entire amorphous mess together were federally-guaranteed loans backed by Freddie and Fannie, agencies that were guided by congressional politics and not market worries — and themselves skimmed by incompetent bureaucrats who ended up millionaires. Take away those multibillion-dollar guarantors, and the market would have precluded the unqualified, the Wall Street roguery would have been neutered, and the inevitable housing bust would have been serious rather than catastrophic.

...

Now we are supposed to be saved by Stimulus III. At nearly $500 billion in a single year, it may prove the largest single year payout in history. And we are assured it will not go to Wall Street, big banks, green companies, broke city and state governments, and “shovel ready” projects, but instead be “invested” in “work” programs fixing “infrastructure.”

But does anyone dare imagine that what got us into this mess in 2008 and kept us stuck through 2011 are these huge federal programs that distort market forces while piling up trillions of dollars in debt, destroying rather than enhancing personal initiative? Both employers and workers are losing incentives, the former better off are ossified in fear of losing something, the latter worse off calcified in assurances of getting something.

...

Maybe it is a fine and noble thing that the Obama administration vastly extended unemployment insurance. And, bravo, that nearly 50 million are now on food stamps. But a tragic voice from the past warns us that the more we diminish human incentives and guarantee a sort of cushioned permanent poverty, two things result: one, fewer people scramble to find productive work; and, two, envy sharpens as they begin to turn on their benefactors as being cheap, or mean-spirited in never giving quite enough to ensure parity with “them.” A cherry-red new truck or silver Toyota is never quite what others might have.

This is our progressive/liberal nation in decline.




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Sunday, September 18, 2011

Our Costly Affirmative Action President...

polifrog



Datechguy below in response to Rex Murphy :

We on the right saw not a black man, but an unqualified inexperienced Chicago pol who just happened to be black. The press meanwhile saw not an individual but a symbol, it didn’t actually matter who he was, it mattered that he was. Or to put it bluntly, they couldn’t tell Jackie Robinson from Pumpsie Green because “they all looked alike to them.

Racism takes many forms and comes with many costs.




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Sunday Smile File...

polifrog

















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Chasing Religion From the Private Home in California...

polifrog




WorldNetDaily:
Chuck and Stephanie Fromm already have been fined $300 for holding Bible studies for their friends at their home, and they face the potential for additional fines of $500 for each study held, according to a legal team taking their case to court.

The newest conflict over Bible studies in homes in America arose in San Juan Capistrano, Calif., where city officials say city code section 9-3.301 prohibits religious organizations in residential neighborhoods without a conditional-use permit, a sometimes very expensive procedure.

The code cites "churches, temples, synagogues, monasteries, religious retreats, and other places of religious worship and other fraternal and community service organizations."

What has been a decades long struggle to remove religion from the public square has left us with the de facto government establishment of atheism. With the establishment of atheism in America we can no longer count ourselves a secularist democratic nation for we are no longer a nation of tolerance for all religions, but rather a nation of increasing intolerance toward religion. We are transitioning from a secularist nation of religious inclusion to a nation of religious exclusion, an atheocracy.

There has never been and never will be an atheocratic democracy, for democratic ideals demand that all individuals and all groups be allowed to inform governance while atheocratic states demand silence from religious groups. In America's case that silencing of the religiously assembled is based on "separation of church and state". But there is no "separation of church and state", there is only this:

  • "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof..."
but amid the progressive bureaucratic desire for atheocratic governance the religion clauses have not been so much forgotten as distorted into a tool to silence the voice of some who choose to assemble leaving only atheists at the table.

America is loosing its democratic soul.




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Gordon Brown Said the Euro is Boned?

polifrog




Yep.

“In 2008, governments could intervene to sort out the problems of banks,” Brown said at the World Economic Forum in the Chinese port city of Dalian today. “In 2011, banks have problems, but so too do governments."
...
“The euro area problem is now moving to the center,” Brown said. “The euro cannot survive in its present form, it’s going to have to be reformed dramatically. We are I think at an hour to midnight in the way that we look at this issue.”
...
“European banks as a whole are grossly under- capitalized,” Brown said. “We’ve now got the interplay between banks that are not properly capitalized and sovereign debt problems that have arisen partly because we’ve socialized or accepted responsibility for the banks’ liabilities.”
Socialized and failure, terms that seem fused. Europeans have been socializing themselves toward failure for nearly a century now.

It is not just the Euro that is boned.





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Black Keys -- I Got Mine....

polifrog




Nothing to add..


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Friday, September 16, 2011

Celestial...

polifrog


divine elections
send electorate shivers
back to the "divine"



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Is this Really the Meaning of Secular?

polifrog



Just as it easier for politicians to rely on debt to fund all manner of wants and needs to avoid the difficult messiness of weighing those needs against available funds, it is easier for governance to increasingly push religion to the periphery of society rather than do the difficult task of managing the disparate demands of various religions, to exclude religion rather than to include religion in our ideal of a democracy.

Neither our politician's lazy dependence on debt nor our politician's exclusion of religion result in positive outcomes for our nation.

The Telegraph:
Praying in the streets of Paris is against the law starting Friday, after the interior minister warned that police will use force if Muslims, and those of any other faith, disobey the new rule to keep the French capital's public spaces secular.
Is this really the proper use of the term "secular"?The above use of "secular" is based on deliberate exclusion and is therefore more akin to atheism. It would be more correct to say "...to keep the French capital's public spaces atheistic."

We in America are guilty of this use of "secular" as well.

If there are theocratic governments in which a single religion holds sway over governance and there are atheocratic governments in which religion is persecuted and deliberately erased from the population, then what falls between? What is a government that adopts no particular religion yet includes all religious opinion in the governance of the citizenry? Historically this is the form of government American governance has taken and historically this was called secularism.

However, America has followed France in drifting from this melting pot approach toward religion and governance toward something less democratic. Each nation has shifted away from the democratic notion of the electorate fully informing governance and embraced the undemocratic notion of selectively choosing those groups that are no longer allowed to inform governance and each have done so via an evolving definition of "secularism".

It is not secularist to actively eschew all religion; that is the realm of atheism. And that is where we find ourselves today; with atheists in control of our public spaces and with atheism at levers of governance the religious will one day find themselves in an America much like the France of today, unable to pray on public street corners and increasingly forced from public view, eventually themselves isolated in their homes like the Soviets of thirty years ago or the Koreans today. Persecution is the way of atheocratic states.

It is sad that we do not deny atheists their bastardization of the the term "secular".



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Apple's Campus II Mothership - A Study in Feasible Inefficiency ...


polifrog



Cool is cool and damn if Apple hasn't been kicking ass during difficult times:


But I'd really hate to have to get to the other side of this "ship". It just seems inefficient.

However, if telecommunications can make the world smaller perhaps it can make buildings larger by rendering design inefficiencies irrelevant.


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Who Needs to Wait for an Ice Bridge When There is a Russian Tunnel to the US?

polifrog





“The rumors about a Russian effort to construct what would be the world’s longest tunnel connecting Alaska and Siberia escalated to a fever pitch…” begins an article in Forbes. Anuncertain headline read: “Bering Strait Tunnel to Connect U.S. and Russia?” Even expectant Alaskans have been kept in the dark. “More Rumors About Elusive Bering Strait Tunnel: Will It Ever Happen?” read the Alaska Dispatch. Disconcerting for a community so close to Russia that one resident claims she can see the country from her backyard.


Russian billionaire Roman Abramovich footed the $160 million for the drill that will be used to tunnel underneath the Bering Strait.


Peter Schiff on the Current and Long Term American Economic Spin Down...

polifrog




Polifrog <---> Peter Shiff -- I'm not sure there is a difference.

Peter Schiff:
We are in a depression in the United States but the depression was interrupted by some economic stimulus that actually made the problems worse. Now as the stimulus is wearing off the depression is resuming with a vengeance because government is interfering with the correction.
...
The source of our misery is government and the solution is free markets, capitalism. That when we did have that a long time ago our economy thrived and we created a lot of wealth which we have since dissipated with redistributionist socialist programs that have been layered onto the economy.
We need to go back to what made us great; not what is bankrupting us.







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Bailing out Europe's Social Democracy Junkies...

polifrog




Thursday's announcement that the U.S. Federal Reserve and other central banks would be providing "dollar liquidity" to European banks represents more smoke and mirrors.
...
However, the notion that they might be considering some kind of new "Marshall Plan" is delusional. Under the Marshall Plan, the United States helped a Europe ravaged by war and willing, indeed desperate, to work. Today's Europe is ravaged by the delusions of social democracy, economic security and an ill-conceived single-currency area. Its economy has been undermined by its banks' feeding its constituent countries' debt habit.

That so many central banks work in unison to stem European insolvency is an indication of just how weak Europe is. That they do so without addressing the cause of that insolvency, Social Democracy, is a predictor of Europe's looming failure.


Neil Young called it first, though.





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Ford, An American Company That is Still American...

polifrog



I've been meaning to post this advert.




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So, How Does the SEC Define a Ponzi Scheme?

polifrog




What is a Ponzi scheme?

A Ponzi scheme is an investment fraud that involves the payment of purported returns to existing investors from funds contributed by new investors. Ponzi scheme organizers often solicit new investors by promising to invest funds in opportunities claimed to generate high returns with little or no risk. In many Ponzi schemes, the fraudsters focus on attracting new money to make promised payments to earlier-stage investors and to use for personal expenses, instead of engaging in any legitimate investment activity.

...

With little or no legitimate earnings, the schemes require a consistent flow of money from new investors to continue. Ponzi schemes tend to collapse when it becomes difficult to recruit new investors or when a large number of investors ask to cash out.

I wonder if the SEC is on to this?





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John Stewart / Solyndra

polifrog



Aggregation with a smile:

Wednesday, September 14, 2011

Greece is Broke Again, Germany is Tired and Europe is Boned...

polifrog



Simon Black:
Why should a German hairdresser who retires at age 65 stick his neck out so that a Greek hairdresser can retire at age 50? This, from a continent that was perpetually at war with itself for over a thousand years.
With a weary Germany, Europe turns with empty pockets to China:

It’s a testament to the absurdity of our failed financial system when the highly indebted rich countries of the world have to go to China, a nation of peasants, for a bailout.

Don't think that China is all into Keynesian pump priming the world so they can sell their goods. No. China is buying political influence in the western world at the expense of western citizens who made the mistake of trading individual responsibility for shared responsibility.

We are the ones China has been waiting for.




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Poor Governance ... Roosting Chickens...

polifrog




Washington Post:

... President Obama suffered a sharp rebuke Tuesday when voters in New York elected a conservative Republican to represent a Democratic district that has not been in GOP hands since the 1920s.

...

Turner, 70, a retired cable TV executive who has never served in elective office, defeated Democratic State Assemblyman David Weprin, 55, who has two decades of experience in public service, to fill the seat left vacant when Anthony Weiner (D) resigned in disgrace in June after more than 12 years in the House.

The defeat came as Republicans trounced Democrats in another special House election Tuesday, in northern Nevada, where Republican Mark Amodei led Democrat Kate Marshall, 56 percent to 39 percent almost from the start.

...

In both contests, the GOP pulled ahead by linking the Democratic candidate to Obama and his handling of the economy. Both Republican contenders urged voters to “send a message” to the president.




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Tuesday, September 13, 2011

Karl Denninger With Max Keiser...

polifrog



The Keynesian face of government has become unpopular, Obama's current "jobs bill" notwithstanding, but the soul of Western government remains Keynesian.

Denninger and Keiser discuss that Keynesian soul via its corporal circulatory system based on the abuse of capital formation:

No government knows better how to invest savings than does the individual who initially gathered that capital and it is for that reason government attempts at shifting capital from savers via currency devaluation to spend $450 billion on a fresh jobs bill or on capital cronyism deals like that with Solyndra will always fail. With capital formation the fertilizer of private economies, it should come as no surprise that when government diminishes capital and punish the efforts of savers that economies suffer and find themselves mired in a Keynesian Depression.



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Obama TRAPPED in Keynesian Twilight Zone

polifrog




What may be politically surreal has resulted in the reality of what is our shared full bore Keynesian Depression.




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Monday, September 12, 2011

More Selfishness From the No-Sacrifice Generation...

polifrog




Bill Quick's SS breakdown...
... a Ponzi scheme in which money from the most recent participants goes to fund the payoffs of the first participants, a scam that can continue only as long as a sufficient number of new suckers signs on. We’re running out of suckers, and the Ponzi scheme is collapsing. That is not, nor should it be, a question. The question is what to do about replacing the unsustainable scheme with something workable. Assuming, of course, that the whole structure doesn’t simply collapse before we can get anything done.

He's right.

But if we are to put off the collapse of Social Security, what politically is referred to as "save Social Security", then either

  • the productive will be asked to pay more to support the retired,
  • the retired will asked to do with diminished benefits,
  • or both groups will be asked to sacrifice.

Enter this tidbit from the LA Times...
Upending the conventional notion of parents carefully tending their financial estates to be passed down at the reading of their wills, many baby boomers say they instead plan to spend the money on themselves while they're alive.
In a survey of millionaire boomers by investment firm U.S. Trust, only 49% said it was important to leave money to their children when they die. The low rate was a big surprise for a company that for decades has advised wealthy people how to leave money to their heirs.
As I have noted previously this is the last chance the Boomer Generation will have to do what every generation is required to do for a nation to be successful ... sacrifice. Theirs is a generation that has not only not known sacrifice, but has refused sacrifice and if the above statistic is any indication, theirs is a generation of Americans that will never know sacrifice.

Theirs is a generation that eats its young.




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Living Beyond Our Moment...

polifrog


There are times when we live a few beats before the current moment. When it's good, an athlete has an innate sense of where to be at at just the right time to increase the odds for the right move. Unfortunately, like most of us, for me the only future I am treated to are the moments before events collide and possible tragedy too often unfolds as predicted.

The souls of United Flight 93 saw the confluence of events that could lead to tragedy and were the first to enter what would become the future of American engagement and sacrifice: (Frank Cagle)

At 8:48 a.m. Mohammed Atta took a jet headlong into the north tower of the World Trade Center. Eighteen minutes later and accomplice did the same to the south tower.

When Jeremy Glick called his wife, his first question was an attempt to confirm something another passenger had heard on his spousal call: was the World Trade Center story true?

Lizzy Glick paused, thought for a minute, swallowed hard, and told him the truth. Yes, they had. Moments later, still on the line with her husband, Lizzy Glick saw that another plane had run into the Pentagon. She passed that information on as well to her husband, who relayed it to the other passengers.

Jeremy Glick then told her that the passengers were about to take a vote and decide if they should rush the hijackers and attempt to foul up whatever evil plans they had.

He put down the phone and a commotion was heard by those on the other end of the line. Then nothing. A dead line. An aborted missile launch against the town where I live.

That was 10:37 a.m. on Tuesday, September 11... just 109 minutes after Mohammed Atta rammed the first plane into the north tower of the World Trade Center.

Just 109 minutes after a new form of terrorism -- the most deadly yet invented -- came into use, it was rendered, if not obsolete, at least decidedly less effective.

Deconstructed, unengineered, thwarted, and put into the dust bin of history. By Americans. In 109 minutes.

And in retrospect, they did it in the most American of ways. They used a credit card to rent a fancy cell phone to get information just minutes old, courtesy of the ubiquitous 24-hour news phenomenon. Then they took a vote. When the vote called for sacrifice to protect country and others, there apparently wasn't a shortage of volunteers. Their action was swift. It was decisive. And it was effective.

United Flight 93 did not hit a building. It did not kill anyone on the ground. It did not terrorize a city, despite the best drawn plans of the world's most innovative madmen. Why? Because it had informed Americans on board who'd had 109 minutes to come up with a counteraction.

And the next time a hijacker full of hate pulls the same stunt with a single knife, he'll get the same treatment and meet the same result as those on United Flight 93. Dead, yes. Murderous, yes. But successful? No.


H/T Instapundit





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Wednesday, September 7, 2011

The Evil of a Public Square Reserved for One...

polifrog



It appears to me that there is a conceptual framework based on the excesses of medieval Christianity that still defines current Christianity for some. I do not see any evidence of "deceit and murder, abuse of human rights and usurpation of Constitutional norms" in modern Christianity.

In fact, Christianity has suffered from the usurpation of Constitutional norms, as it has been chased from the public square it once shared with atheists. Sure, atheists were out numbered in that earlier shared public square, but the various interested parties had on the whole a voice commensurate with their numbers.

Today, as Christianity is physically chased from the lawns of town halls, as court rooms are cleared of the 10 commandments in towns unable to defend their right to such expression, and students fight to lead prayer at school, we increasingly see an atheistic minority in our public square with a voice far in excess of the minority position they hold. This silencing in the public square of the religious majority, I would argue, is the genesis of an atheocratic state within the US.

When we leave a single religion in the public square after having silenced all other religions, atheism included, we create a theocracy. But when we silence all religions leaving only atheism in the public square we create a greater evil, an atheocracy.

During the 20th century we have seen atheocratic states from the Soviet Union, to China, to North Korea, to WWII Germany and we have witnessed the extreme horrors soulless men are capable of levying against humanity. There is no example of the atheocratic state's counterpart, the theocratic state, exceeding the atrocities of man unleashed through atheism.

To be clear, I do not argue for a theocratic state, only to scale it against the athocratic state in terms of abuse toward humanity. What I do argue for, is the inclusion of religion in all its forms (as well as non religion, athesim) in the public square.

There is a strength in such diversity. It was evident among the various beliefs of the founders of our nation and reflected when crafting the Constitution (even today atheists and the religious each point to aspects of the Constitution that reflect their thinking) and it was a strength the US was able draw upon until the mid 20th century when it began to fade due growth in government and the growth of government's natural lust for an atheocratic state. In fact, it was this diversity in which no single religion or non religion (atheism) had the public square to itself that added to what we think of as American exceptionalism today, for in what other nation can we find such respect and tolerance for our fellow man that men allow each their voice regardless of the group with which they identify.

One can argue for the atheocratic state if they wish, but the morality of such an argument is sorely lacking considering modern evidence.




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Remembering Kelo...

polifrog



Big Government:

In 2005, Kelo v. City of New London made eminent domain infamous. The widely reviled Supreme Court ruling gave the go ahead for the city of New London to use eminent domain for taking private property in order that it be given to a private company for “economic development.”

The public response was one of outrage. Facing the potential wrath of voters, politicians across the country moved to add new protections against such abusive seizures. But that wasn’t enough to save the homes of the folks in New London, whose property never would be developed. Pfizer, the intended beneficiary of the land theft, walked away years ago from their development plans.


Now at the end of this experiment in economic development via central planning there is a dump instead of a tax paying neighborhood.

Watch New Haven dump on the grave of one of their own neighborhoods, and in so doing their own private property rights, rather than steps of the New Haven City Hall:




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Tuesday, September 6, 2011

The Swiss Go Bernanke on Europe... I got a fevah and the only prescription is more Keynesian Depression ...

polifrog




The title comes in part from from polipundit whose synopsis of the Swiss dance is the most succinct yet:


For decades, the Swiss Franc has had a reputation of quality and stability, as the Swiss could be counted on for sane fiscal and monetary policy (not to mention a refreshing lack of entanglement in foreign military quagmires).

The SNB indicated it would buy an
unlimited amount of euros regardless of the risk to maintain that
value.

The idea is that as the U.S. and Europe debase their currencies to try to prop up their bad banks, other countries will devalue as well in order to keep their export and labor markets competitive. No country can afford to have the only sound currency in a Zimbabwe Ben world. Not even Switzerland....

Simon Black at Whiskey and Gunpowder had this to add:

...

Markets are not functioning properly. Competitive devaluation means that governments are all striving to out-print each other… Europe is printing as much as they can to bail out the PIIGS, Switzerland just signed up to join then, Japan and China are not far behind, and QE3 is set to launch soon in America.

With so much money sloshing around the financial system, there is absolutely no sense of value anymore; people cannot invest with confidence given all the massive bureaucratic intervention.

...

In the Swiss National Bank’s brief statement, they said “With immediate effect, [the SNB] will no longer tolerate a EUR/CHF exchange rate below the minimum rate of CHF 1.20. The SNB will enforce this minimum rate with the utmost determination and is prepared to buy foreign currency in unlimited quantities.”

The three key words here are ‘WITH IMMEDIATE EFFECT’. This is just another example of a government making instant changes that pose dramatic risk over people’s lives and livelihoods.

Make no mistake, we can all wake up tomorrow to a new reality.


How is accurate pricing communicated through our markets when there is no sense of value? It isn't.

Our Keynesian Depression has just been lengthened.




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