Workingclass Conservative

Looks Like It's NO DEAL in Copenhagen!

2009-12-15T19:58:00.000-08:00

According to the London Times, the Copenhagen climate change negotiations have stalled, and they’re poised to put off a decision for at least six years!

SEE: http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/environment/copenhagen/article6955237.ece

Amazingly enough, it wasn’t the pseudo-science and outright fakery proved by the released CTU emails, it was the ridiculous demands of some 50 sub-Saharan African nations that killed any hope of a global climate deal.

According to the London Times, “The key decision on preventing catastrophic climate change will be delayed for up to six years if the Copenhagen summit delivers a compromise deal which ignores advice from the UN’s science body.

“World leaders will not agree on the emissions cuts recommended by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and are likely instead to commit to reviewing them in 2015 or 2016.”

Cop 15, an environmental group from Copenhagen, has reported that leaders of fifty African nations came to Copenhagen asking $400 billion for the next three years to "offset" carbon credit "damages" which they claim to have suffered. Inexplicably, two days ago, that demand was increased to an astounding 5% of America’s GDP (gross domestic product), estimated at $722 billion....from the

United States

alone.

SEE: “Africa considering tough demands” at

http://en.cop15.dk/news/view+news?newsid=2955

Thankyou Africa!

Climategate PROVES That There’s NO Science Behind Anthropomorphic Climate Change....

2009-12-13T10:27:00.001-08:00

Perhaps the greatest public service ever done was delivered via WikiLeak by those who released over 61 megabytes of CRU e-mails from the UK’s Climate Research Unit (CRU).

Not only did they show that the people (I say “people” and NOT “scientists” because REAL scientists NEVER manipulate data to fit their preconceived views) working at those places “cooked the data” to fit the outcome they and those paying their billions in grant monies both wanted, but they proved conclusively that there’s absolutely NO real science behind the implausible theory of anthropomorphic climate change.

This exchange between two of the so-called “scientists” at the CRU show the collusion and outright fakery behind the current “climate models” substantiating anthropomorphic global warming (AGW);

"I can't see either of these papers being in the next IPCC report. Kevin and I will keep them out somehow - even if we have to redefine what the peer-review literature is!"

"Can you delete any e-mails you may have had with Keith re AR4?"

"I've just completed Mike's Nature trick of adding in the real temps to each series for the last 20 years (ie. from 1981 onwards) and from 1961 for Keith's to hide the decline."

"The fact is that we can't account for the lack of warming at the moment and it is a travesty we can't."

"I'm getting hassled by a couple of people to release the CRU temperature station data. Don't any of you three tell anybody that the UK has a Freedom of Information Act!"

The fact is that NONE of the proponents of anthropomorphic global warming can explain the cooling trend over the past decade or more. Remember, “One year’s merely WEATHER, a decade or more is CLIMATE.”

Australian geologist Ian Plimer has claimed, that the e-mails "show that data was massaged, numbers were fudged, diagrams were biased, there was destruction of data after freedom of information requests, and there was refusal to submit taxpayer-funded data for independent examination."

Remember the charge that proponents used to discredit opponents of AGW - claiming they were “bought off” by “Big Oil?” Well, it turns out that the money trail actually indicts the PROPONENTS of man-made global warming and NOT its debunkers. Phil Jones, the director of the CRU and the man at the heart of climategate was, according to one of the documents hacked from his center, between 2000 and 2006, the recipient of some $19 million worth of research grants, a six-fold increase over what he'd been awarded in the 1990s.

The European Commission's most recent appropriation for climate research comes to nearly $3 billion, and that's not counting funds from the EU's member governments. In the U.S., the House intends to spend $1.3 billion on NASA's climate efforts, $400 million on NOAA's, and another $300 million for the National Science Foundation. The states also have a piece of the action, with California—apparently not feeling bankrupt enough — devoting $600 million to their own climate initiative. In

Australia

, alarmists have their own Department of Climate Change at their funding disposal.

And all this is only a fraction of the nearly $100 billion that HSBC Bank estimates has been spent globally this year on what’s been called "green stimulus" — largely ethanol and other alternative energy schemes, the kind that Al Gore and his partners at Kleiner Perkins are hoping to profit from.

Many have noted that these “scientists” have long depended on an inherently corrupting premise, one that stipulates that the theories upon which their livelihoods depended had already been proved. Absent that proof, everything they represent, including the thousands of jobs they provide ceases to exist. That’s what is commonly referred to as a “vested interest,” and such “vested interests” are the enemy of empiricism, as they bias the eye of the examiner.

Britain's Hadley Centre for Climate Prediction and Research recently released figures that seemed to show that the world grew warmer by 0.07 degrees Celsius from 1999 to 2008 and not the 0.2 degrees Celsius assumed by the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change IGPCC), but since then the British experts, have noted that when their figures are adjusted for two naturally occurring climate phenomena, El Niño and La Niña, the resulting temperature trend is reduced to 0.0 degrees Celsius, or no warming at all.

None of the proponents of anthropomorphic global warming can explain that.

Nor can anyone seem to explain away the fact that higher carbon dioxide levels are actually GOOD for life on earth!

John K. Carlisle, director of The National Center for Public Policy Research's Environmental Policy Task Force has said, “Carbon dioxide is good for the environment.

“That simple fact must be restated to counter environmentalists' baseless allegations that the accumulation of man-made carbon dioxide, produced by cars, power plants and other human activities, is causing dangerous global warming.

“Indeed, far from being a poisonous gas that will wreak havoc on the planet's ecosystem, carbon dioxide is arguably the Earth's best friend in that trees, wheat, peanuts, flowers, cotton and numerous other plants significantly benefit from increased levels of atmospheric carbon dioxide.”

Dr. Craig Idso of the Center for the Study of Carbon Dioxide and Global Change, one of the nation's leading carbon dioxide research centers, has said, “Clearly, there is no way that these real-world observations can be construed to even hint at the possibility that a significant increase in atmospheric carbon dioxide will necessarily lead to any global warming.”

John Carlisle notes, “scientists have lots of evidence demonstrating that increased carbon dioxide levels leads to healthier plants.” He noted, “Increased atmospheric carbon dioxide doesn't just make a plant bigger. Carbon dioxide also makes plants more resistant to extreme weather conditions. In a study discussed in the journal Plant Ecology, a team of scientists subjected the Mojave Desert evergreen shrub to three different concentrations of carbon dioxide - the current level of 360 ppm and at 550 ppm and 700 ppm. The plants, which were being grown in simulated drought conditions, responded more favorably in the carbon dioxide-rich environments. Photosynthetic activity doubled in the 550 ppm environment and tripled at 700 ppm. Increased photosynthetic activity enables plants to withstand drought better.”

So, in the end, the global warming hysteria seems about as grounded in fact as America’s current healthcare debate has been, which is to say that neither has had much of an affinity for the facts.

Proponents of a “Single Payer” plan for America can’t explain why

America

’s existing PUBLIC OPTION (Medicare and Medicaid) are currently failing badly – both are running huge deficits any more than proponents of man-made global warming can explain why there has been no warming over the last decade or more.

What both are, it seems, are poorly constructed arguments for more government control over the economy and our lives, despite the fact that less government intervention and control has historically and empirically been shown to lead to far more prosperity.

The Fed LOVES Inflation...And We’re Gonna Get IT!...

2009-12-13T10:05:00.000-08:00

In the 1970s Fed Chairman Arthur F. Burns had lauded inflation as “priming the pump,” wrongly believing that inflation was a sign of a healthy economy.

As a result, there was significant inflation during Burns’ tenure at the Fed (1970 -1978), which Nixon tried to manage through wage and price controls while the Fed under Burns maintained an expansive monetary policy.

After the 1972 election, due in part to oil shocks from the 1973 oil crisis, price controls began to fail and by 1974, the inflation rate was 12.3 percent.

Burns believed that the American people weren’t willing to accept rates of unemployment in the range of six percent as a means of quelling inflation. From the Board of Governors meeting minutes of November 1970, Burns believed that:

“...prospects were dim for any easing of the cost-push inflation generated by union demands. However, the Federal Reserve could not do anything about those influences except to impose monetary restraint, and he did not believe the country was willing to accept for any long period an unemployment rate in the area of 6 percent. Therefore, he believed that the Federal Reserve should not take on the responsibility for attempting to accomplish by itself, under its existing powers, a reduction in the rate of inflation to, say, 2 percent... he did not believe that the Federal Reserve should be expected to cope with inflation single-handedly. The only effective answer, in his opinion, lay in some form of incomes policy (wage and price controls).”

What many then and today fail to realize is that for the government, inflation has some VERY positive effects, for one thing, it allows one to pay a fixed debt made years before in today’s cheaper dollars. In other words, one MILLION U.S. dollars borrowed at point A, at 5% APR (about $50,000/year in interest payments) is “cheap” when being paid back at point B (after a bout of inflation) when point B’s USD’s are worth, say, 50% of the value of the point A U.S. dollar.

In reality, inflation is VERY BAD, even lethal for people who are on “fixed incomes,” and it’s very damaging to the rest of us who earn incomes, as rises in incomes never keep pace with inflation.

In 2003, three years before he became Fed Chairman, Ben Bernanke visited Japan, which was going through a deflationary period and said, "One might argue that the legal objective of price stability should require not only a commitment to stabilize prices in the future but also a policy of actively reflating the economy, in order to restore the price level that prevailed prior to the prolonged period of deflation."

It’s apparent from that statement that Ben Bernanke doesn’t distinguish between prices that fall on account of a banking or credit crisis and those that fall due to advances in productive technology or improvements in economic organization. It’s all the same to him, and all bad.

That is, quite simply, an inflationary mindset, exactly what America DOES NOT need right now.

Why?

Because we’re drowning in debt and about to get socked with a very damaging and inflationary hit that we won’t be able to moneterize (tweak interest rates) out of.

America’s foreign debt-holders are seriously considering dropping America’s AAA rating, which will significantly INCREASE the cost of servicing our debt.

With the national debt now topping $12 trillion, the White House estimates that the government’s tab for servicing the debt will exceed $700 billion a year in 2019, up from $202 billion this year, even if annual budget deficits shrink drastically. Other forecasters say the figure could be much higher.

In concrete terms, an additional $500 billion a year in interest expense would total more than the combined federal budgets this year for education, energy, homeland security and the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

The potential for rapidly escalating interest payouts is just one of the wrenching challenges facing the United States after decades of living beyond its means.

The surge in borrowing over the last year or two is widely judged to have been a necessary response to the financial crisis and the deep recession, and there is still a raging debate over how aggressively to bring down deficits over the next few years. But there is little doubt that the United States’ long-term budget crisis is becoming too big to postpone.

Americans now have to climb out of two deep holes: as debt-loaded consumers, whose personal wealth sank along with housing and stock prices; and as taxpayers, whose government debt has almost doubled in the last two years alone, just as costs tied to benefits for retiring baby boomers are set to explode.

“The government is on teaser rates,” said Robert Bixby, executive director of the Concord Coalition, a nonpartisan group that advocates lower deficits. “We’re taking out a huge mortgage right now, but we won’t feel the pain until later.”

The competing demands could deepen political battles over the size and role of the government, the trade-offs between taxes and spending, the choices between helping older generations versus younger ones, and the bottom-line questions about who should ultimately shoulder the burden.

The problem, many analysts say, is that these record government deficits have arrived at the very same time as the long-feared explosion begins in spending on benefits under Medicare and Social Security. The nation’s oldest baby boomers are approaching 65, setting off what experts have warned for years will be a fiscal nightmare for the government.

William H. Gross, managing director of the Pimco Group, the giant bond-management firm has said, “What a good country or a good squirrel should be doing is stashing away nuts for the winter, the United States is not only not saving nuts, it’s eating the ones left over from the last winter.”

Making maters even worse, is that the United States will not be the only government competing to refinance huge debt.

Japan, Germany, Britain and other industrialized countries have even higher government debt loads, measured as a share of their gross domestic product, and they too borrowed heavily to combat the financial crisis and economic downturn. As the global economy recovers and businesses raise capital to finance their growth, all that new government debt is likely to put more upward pressure on interest rates.

Even a small increase in interest rates has a big impact. An increase of one percentage point in the Treasury’s average cost of borrowing would cost American taxpayers an extra $80 billion this year — about equal to the combined budgets of the Department of Energy and the Department of Education.

But that would seem like an overly optimistic outlook, as the cost of our debt servicing is expected to rise much higher. Alan Levenson, chief economist at T. Rowe Price, estimated that the Treasury’s tab for debt service this year would have been $221 billion higher if it had faced the same interest rates as it did last year.

And the White House estimates that the government will have to borrow about $3.5 trillion more over the next three years. On top of that, the Treasury has to refinance, or roll over, a huge amount of short-term debt that was issued during the financial crisis. Treasury officials estimate that about 36 percent of the government’s marketable debt — about $1.6 trillion — is coming due in the months ahead.

“Inflation, higher interest rate and rollover risk should be the primary concerns,” declared the Treasury Borrowing Advisory Committee, a group of market experts that provide guidance to the government, on Nov. 4.

But with a Fed Chairman focused on deflation and with a strong sense in government’s role in “reflating” the economy, those do not seem to be this group’s primary concerns at all.

I’ve said since late 2008 that “the worst is yet to come,” and “this time groups that aren’t traditionally hit by such economic downturns (ie. government workers) are going to be hit and hit hard,” and all that seems to be on our horizon.

We COULD easily see a return to STAGFLATION by mid to late 2010, depending on how quickly and how high the cost of our debt servicing rises. A higher debt servicing will push interest rates higher, as government borrows so much, there’s little left over for private sector borrowing, and that credit crunch, coupled with rising tax rates (especially if healthcare reform and Cap and Trade pass) will pressure inflation rates much higher very quickly.

Worse still, is with government’s interest payments higher, the Fed will not be able to tamp down inflation with lower interest rates.

That portends a tsunami of high interest, inflation and yes, even higher unemployment rates not far down the road.

The Third World Rejects "Western" Gayness....

2009-12-13T09:53:00.000-08:00

In America we’re constantly assailed from the loony left with the idiotic drumbeat of how “racist, sexist and homophobic” we are.

I guess that’s true, UNLESS you compare us to...well, just about EVERYBODY else.

For instance, in Uganda, recently proposed legislation would impose the death penalty for some gay Ugandans, and their family and friends could face up to seven years in jail if they fail to report them to authorities. Even landlords could be imprisoned for renting to homosexuals.

While the Bill is still being debated, the Ugandan legislation, in its current form, would mandate a death sentence for active homosexuals living with HIV or in cases of same-sex rape. "Serial offenders" also could face capital punishment, but the legislation does not define the term. Anyone convicted of a homosexual act faces life imprisonment.

It also stipulates that anyone who "aids, abets, counsels or procures another to engage of acts of homosexuality" faces seven years in prison if convicted. Landlords who rent rooms or homes to homosexuals also could get seven years and anyone with "religious, political, economic or social authority" who fails to report anyone violating the act faces three years.

Gay rights activists here in the U.S. believe the bill is part of a continent-wide backlash because Africa's gay community is becoming more vocal.

It seems that many in Uganda, however, blame Western influences. "The youths in secondary schools copy everything from the Western world and America," said high school teacher David Kisambira. "A good number of students have been converted into gays. We hear there are groups of people given money by some gay organizations in developed countries to recruit youth into gay activities."

Uganda

's ethics minister, James Nsaba Buturo, said the death sentence clause would probably be reviewed but maintained that the law itself was necessary to counter foreign influence. He said homosexuality "is not natural in Uganda," a view echoed by many Ugandans.

Bottom-line, homosexuality IS an aberration, a sexual deviancy in that it deviates from the accepted sexual norm.

Is it a “hanging offense?”

No, but it’s certainly not something worthy of celebration, any more than bestiality, necrophilia or group sex are things that should be celebrated and encouraged.

Far from being “racist, sexist and homophobic,” America has been the most tolerant nation on earth in regards to all three of those derivations and that’s despite its very vocal and intolerant political Left.

How Disparate Impact...AND “Affirmative Action in Lending” Caused the Housing Crash and the Global Credit Crisis

2009-12-10T19:04:00.001-08:00

Throughout the 1970s Housing activists like Dale Rathke (co-founder of ACORN and the SEIU) and Gale Cincotta were able to shake down banks with bank lobby sit-ins, forcing them to offer millions of dollars in loans to “low income Americans,” another term for high-risk borrowers. Those early successes only emboldened these advocates for “marginal America.”

They found eager friends in the likes of naïve and die-hard liberals such as Ted Kennedy (D-MA) and William Proxmire (D-WI). Gale Cincotta was a devout opponent of the very necessary practice of redlining, where banks charged higher rates and higher fees for mortgages in areas where the default rate was higher.

Activists like Cincotta and Rathke and others claimed that such practices not only made it difficult for people to own homes in such areas, they kept businesses from opening in such areas due to the higher costs and lower profitability.

Business is the ONLY real force for GOOD in a free society. That’s right BUSINESS is the ONLY force for good in a FREE SOCIETY.

By solely focusing on making money for their shareholders (owners), businesses seek to help those who CAN and WILL pay to have their problems solved.

Those who CANNOT and WILL NOT pay need not darken their doorsteps. Such chronically poor people DON’T need access to wealth and capital, they NEED to get their lives in order by developing the skills they need to compete and earn a living!

Banks, like any other business are in business SOLELY to make money. They exist for NO other purpose. They do the most social good by delivering the highest profits to their shareholders/owners.

That’s why banks assiduously held to conventional or “traditional” mortgage lending guidelines or parameters, UNTIL forced to abandon them by a series of government law suits.

What were those traditional parameters? Why the same ones being applied to most loan applicants today; 20% down, no more than 2½X your income in mortgage debt and your monthly mortgage payment could NOT be more than 28% of the monthly net of the person/persons (limited to TWO for a residential mortgage) on the mortgage documents is the traditional lending criteria.

And yes, while it’s true that under those criteria, there were wide disparities in the rates at which various ethnic groups were able to meet the lending criteria, there was NOTHING at all “UNFAIR” about those traditional lending criteria, DESPITE whatever disparate or disproportionate impact they may have had. The SAME standards were indeed applied to all.

Anti-Capitalists/anti-Americans like Cincotta and Rathke, with the aid of allies like William Proxmire, they were able to turn what should've been harmless studies, that showed, for instance that banks in Brooklyn, NY invested only 11% of their capital in Brooklyn and that “blacks with similar incomes were far more often turned down for mortgages than whites.”

William Proxmire had no background and less understanding about how the financial services sector worked, which means he didn’t know that banks investing nearly 90% of their assets away from their local areas, was done SOLELY to generate higher profits for their shareholders/owners, which made those banks not only more profitable, but more viable.

And as Steven Malanga of the Manhattan Institute adroitly noted, “the banks protested that such studies did not take into account the creditworthiness of these applicants (ie, credit histories, existing debt to income ratio, the loan to value (of the property) ratio of the desired loan, etc.) which was far more important than income.”

By 1979 this anti-capitalist Axis was able to pass the Community Reinvestment Act, which even the NY Times assailed noting, “Our institutions are not social service organizations...” and added, “measures that would weaken (lending) standards are dangerous...New York’s savings banks already hold large numbers of defaulted mortgages, including many inner city properties...we raise a strong word of caution against the expectation that bank credit is a substitute for wages, salaries, and other income that is necessary to keep a community alive economically,” concluding, “It is hard to believe that anyone would argue that bad loans are good social investments.”

None-the-less, the CRA, which was only debated in one chamber of Congress (the Senate), and with very few legislators present, was passed. Senator Proxmire limited the visibility of the Bill by attaching it to the Housing and Community Development Act, which included the always popular block grants, which meant money to the Senator’s home states.

The CRA not only “gave the housing activists a seat at the table,” it enabled them to monitor every bank’s lending practices and block any mergers and acquisitions by reporting any complaints to specially set up departments within HUD and the DOJ.

By the mid-1980s Housing activists had developed their assaults on banks to an art form. Seattle’s rainier Bank was hit by a campaign organized by a bus driver named Keith Dublanica, who claimed that Rainier Banks lending policies “discriminated against minorities,” and the protesters demanded more “flexible terms” for specific groups of borrowers.

The Seattle Times reported that what Dublanica wanted was “a kind of affirmative action proposal in the making of loans.” And indeed that’s exactly what Keith Dublanica wanted, demanding that the banks offer a 2% discount on rates and waive fees for certain (predominantly minority) neighborhoods. As Dublanica put it, “If the racial mix is different from the rest of the city, perhaps the (lending) criteria should be somewhat relaxed.”

In fact, it’s the REVERSE. Poor credit risks SHOULD ALWAYS pay HIGHER RATES and HIGHER FEES to get loans, that’s the only way to limit default rates among that largely reckless and irresponsible group. In fact, EVERY high risk loan made to the poor directly HARMS working people who CAN afford conventional mortgages under traditional lending parameters. It harms them because the costs of those failures are placed on their backs when they apply for loans and they pay for the subsequent and necessary bailouts with higher taxes.

Ironically enough, the 1990s saw the Clinton administration borrow from the Conservative’s “Ownership Society” endorsed by the likes of Jack Kemp, G W Bush and Bob Dole, to replace public housing as the liberal Democrats’ top priority with an ownership agenda of their own.

As economist John H. Makin noted, "No longer would public housing be at the top of the liberal Democratic agenda...instead, borrowing from conservative ideas about the inestimable benefit of home ownership to the striving poor, the Clinton administration and members of his Party in the House and Senate decided to use government power to achieve that aim.”

Janet Reno (the AG) and Henry Cisneros (HUD Secretary) began suing banks which didn’t make enough loans to low-income Americans and the legal concept behind that screwball policy was yet another screwball concept called “disparate impact.”

Disparate Impact is a deliberate LIE and a SHAM. It seeks to label ANY standard that has a different/disproportionate impact on one group than another to be deliberately discriminatory against the negatively impacted group.

According to this fatally flawed concept, a bank might have policies that were fair and equally applied to all, but if the outcomes were different, the policy was deemed deliberately or objectively discriminatory. For instance, if a bank had a longstanding policy of not issuing mortgages on homes valued at less than $80,000, it could be considered guilty of discrimination because that policy would be determined to adversely and disproportionately impact the poor. 

When Henry Cisneros left the Clinton administration in 1997 to accept a very lucrative appointment to the board of Countrywide Mortgage, his successor, Andrew Cuomo actually used the term “affirmative action” when defending the use of disparate impact to force banks to loosen their lending criteria.

At an April 6th, 1998 press conference, Andrew Cuomo said, “but for the affirmative action on the part of the banks, most of these recipients would not have qualified for conventional mortgages." Cuomo went on to acknowledge that the loans were at a “higher risk of default,” and the banks HAD TO “lower their standards on loan applications” to make those loans.

With that admission, Andrew Cuomo had chronicled the perverse and disastrous consequences of what was then two decades and would become three decades of government-coerced lending, via the concept of "disparate impact," to millions of non-creditworthy borrowers.

By 2008 over $4 TRILLION in high-risk, subprime loans were made, almost all of them bought by Fannie Mae and packaged by Freddie Mac into “mortgage backed securities” which were then sold to Wall Street and the rest of the world as highly safe and secure “AAA-rated bonds!”

In short, the entire housing collapse, the mortgage meltdown and the subsequent global credit crisis was caused by government’s adherence to the flawed and pernicious concept of “disparate impact” and its subsequent meddling in the mortgage market (almost solely by politicians with little or no understanding or experience in the financial services sector) in order to effect what Andrew Cuomo accurately called “affirmative action in lending,” or what numerous economists have called “credit socialism.”

Worse yet, subprime loans have not been outlawed, the CRA that’s been used to coerce banks to make TRILLIONS in high-risk, subprime debt has not been abolished, Credit Default Swaps and other murky forms of derivative trading have not been stopped. In short, the SAME policies that caused the current crisis, including many in Washington’s adherence TO and affection FOR the very flawed and pernicious concept of “disparate impact” have yet to be eliminated!

SEE Andrew Cuomo's April, 1996 Pres Conference lauding "affirmative action in lending"; http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lr1M1T2Y314&feature=PlayList&p=529CA6593D352484&playnext=1&playnext_from=PL&index=97

Misplaced Priorities...

2009-12-02T19:30:00.000-08:00

Holder’s Incompetence Seeks Leniency For KSM but Seeks to “Throw the Book” at Three Heroic Navy Seals

In keeping with the Left-leaning, media, best exampled by the likes of Chris (“He went to maybe an enemy camp” - in referring to President Obama’s visit to West Point) Matthews and similar scum that have infected both American politics and its media, Eric Holder, a man completely in simpatico with the pathology (often erroneously euphemized as “political correctness”) that focused the bulk of the Military’s concern and sympathy for jihadist Major Malik Hasan and worried itself sick over unfounded fears of an “anti-Islamic backlash,” rather than the 13 AMERICAN soldiers killed and the 33 others wounded soldiers at Fort Hood, has now made more than clear his desire to push those same intentions legally.

He’s made those intentions clear as he prepares to try Khalid Sheik Mohammed (KSM) in a New York City criminal Court, despite the fact that KSM was never mirandized or accorded ANY of the rights that ANY criminal defendant warrants in an American court of law, while he seeks to “throw the book” at three Navy Seals who brought in Ahmed Hashim Abed, the jihadist behind the murder and mutilation of four Blackwater civilian contractors, working to improve the infrastructure of Iraq, back in 2004.

The prosecution of the three Seals (Matthew McCabe, a Special Operations Petty Officer Second Class (SO-2), Petty Officer Jonathan Keefe, SO-2 and Petty Officer Julio Huertas, SO-1) amounts to, no less than siding with Ahmed Hashim Abed and his jihadist in arms AGAINST the U.S. Military.

And trying jihadists detained on battlefields as the “enemy combatants” they are, amounts to virtually assuring their acquittal since none of the required legal requirements for arrest, for search warrants and evidence collection were followed...but NONE of that matters to Eric Holder, who really wants to put the Bush administration and the FBI and CIA on trial.

DUMB!

A HUGE majority of the American people support the way the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan were waged.

Add this to the Obama administration’s non-stimulating “stimulus program,” the ill=conceived (pay more for less care) healthcare overhaul and the now UNSCIENTIFIC, punitively anti-business and anti-job creation “Cap and Trade” fiasco and the coming tax increase tsunami and you have a mosaic of misfortune.

The end result here is almost certainly going be even worse than the debacle that the star-crossed Jimmy Carter presided over.

N.B. The video showing Chris (Hoof and Mouth) Matthews referring to West Point as an "enemy camp": http://sayanythingblog.com/entry/chris_matthews_refers_to_obamas_west_point_audience_as_enemy_camp/

Huckabee and the Clemmons Issue...

2009-12-02T19:21:00.000-08:00

First, the horror – a homicidal thug ambushed four Washington State Police officers, after being paroled on charges of raping a thirteen year-old!

Yes, another example of the Criminal Justice system letting down the people who pay for it.

And stranger still yet ANOTHER example of Mike Huckabee’s alleged “Christian values” coming back to haunt all of us.

Apparently the former Presidential candidate and former Governor of Arkansas, Mike Huckabee, still believes that pablum about “inside every bad person is a good one trying to get out,” when Bill Bratton’s “Inside every turnstile jumper is a child-rapist trying to get out,” is far more likely and backed by the bulk of the existing empirical evidence.

Maurice Clemmons’s saga begins back in May of 1989, when Clemmons, then only 17, was caught with a gun at a Little Rock school. That appears to have been his first run in with the law.

Almost immediately after his expulsion from school over the aforementioned gun incident, Clemmons took part in a series of burglaries that landed him in prison. In one late-night incident, a middle-aged woman was hit in the face and Clemmons and another teen snatched her purse. He made the news again when he hid a 10-inch metal bar in his sock before a pretrial hearing, and once again when a padlock he threw at a bailiff hit Clemmons' own mother.

In 1989, for these and other crimes, the young Clemmons received a combined sentence adding up to 108 years, by the Arkansas Times' count. Some argued that that was excessive given his age and apparently the fact that no one was actually killed in those incidents.

By the time then-governor Huckabee was mulling a plea for clemency in 2000, Clemmons had spent roughly a decade (11 years) behind bars, and Maurice Clemmons pledged that he’d turned his life around. As governor, Huckabee granted pardons and commutations much more than most. According to ABC, many believed it was a religious issue for Huckabee, a Baptist minister.

Thus it made strategic sense that Clemmons stressed his faith in a letter to Governor Huckabee, obtained by the Seattle Times:

Clemmons said he came from "a very good Christian family" and "was raised much better than my actions speak (I'm still ashamed to this day for the shame my stupid involvement in these crimes brought to my family name.)," he wrote. (OR more aptly, some slick lawyer wrote FOR HIM:)

"Where once stood a young (16) year old misguided fool, who's (sic) own life he was unable to rule. Now stands a 27 year old man, who has learned through 'the school of hard knocks' to appreciate and respect the rights of others. And who has in the midst of the harsh reality of prison life developed the necessary skills to stand along (sic) and not follow a multitude of do evil, as I did as a 16 year old child."

In May 2000, citing Clemmons' youth at the time of his crimes, Huckabee commuted the sentence to 47 years, making Clemmons eligible for parole. The board granted parole in July and Clemmons was released in August, but a year later he was back in prison for another Arkansas robbery. He got a 10-year sentence but in 2004 Clemmons was paroled again. He soon moved to Washington State.

For several years after the move, he apparently avoided run-ins with the police. He next landed in jail earlier this year on a second-degree child rape charge - sex with a minor – a 13 year-old.

Just a week before the alleged shooting Sunday, Clemmons got out on $150,000 bail, by posting just 10% or $15,000 secured through a bail bondsman.

It costs the average American charged with DUI some $20,000 to defend against the charges and get back on the road again...this guy walks out from a kiddie-raper beef on a measly FIFTEEN Grand?!

And as many others have pointed out, this isn't the first time we've seen Huckabee blame the parole board when a parolee reoffends.

When the case of Wayne DuMond became an issue during Huckabee's run for the 2008 Republican presidential nomination, the former Governor offered a different set of facts, but almost the same response.

Wayne Dumond was convicted of rape in the 1980s and was paroled in 1997 after Huckabee, who’d declined to commute the sentence, lobbied the parole board to free DuMond. Huckabee has persistently denied a role in the board's decision, despite a ton of evidence to the contrary.

After he was paroled, DuMond went on to kill at least one woman in Missouri.

I didn’t support Mike Huckabee in the GOP Primaries and this was NOT the reason...among other things, I just didn’t like his “we are our brother’s keeper” outlook on things...but then, I never cared much for that kind of sappy stuff.

The other day, Mike Huckabee released a statement that said in part;

“He was recommended for and received a commutation of his original sentence from 1990, this commutation made him parole eligible and he was then paroled by the parole board once they determined he met the conditions at that time.

“He was arrested later for parole violation and taken back to prison to serve his full term, but prosecutors dropped the charges that would have held him.

“It appears that he has continued to have a string of criminal and psychotic behavior but was not kept incarcerated by either state.” (Mike Huckabee)
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He also apologized personally to the families of the slain police officers. I commend him on that, BUT I have a HUGE problem with a lot of the above statement.

First, it seems to seek to whitewash his own role in the commutation of Clemmons' sentence, when at the time, he’d said that Clemmons sentence (108 years) for a five state violent crime spree, was too severe for a teenager.

Nonsense, they stone violent teens to death in some of the countries America’s Left openly admire. In my view, that’s ONE of the very few things such hell-holes do fairly well.

Huckabee’s last sentence, consciously or not, seems to vindicate this savage by alleging some psychiatric illness on his part...again, NONSENSE; (1) mental illness does NOT result in a ruling of “mentally incompetent” in over 90% of the cases (nor SHOULD IT) in U.S. courts and (2) there’s no evidence whatsoever that this goon was at all mentally ill.

That last sentence seems to indicate that Huckabee hasn't learned ANYTHING even from this failure of our overly lenient criminal justice system.

Maurice Clemmons deserved to have gone down in a hail of gun fire a few decades earlier. It's only too bad that he didn't.

I think more and more Americans are getting the right idea – “Let’s just vote the bastards OUT, no matter what Party, no matter what they claim, professional politicians are about as trustworthy as used cars salesman...on their best days.

58% of Swiss Vote to Ban Minarets (the towers above Mosques) in Switzerland...

2009-11-29T18:40:00.000-08:00

This is very welcome news!

The Swiss people voted to ban minarets (those towers, or spires above Mosques) in Switzerland, by a whopping 58% of Swiss voters!

The Wall Street Journal reported it this way, “Swiss voters Sunday approved a ban on the construction of new minarets on mosques, defying appeals from the government to reject the proposal and raising the specter of a new round of tensions in Europe concerning the role of Islam on the Continent.

“The vote highlights the persistent conflict over the integration of Europe's growing Muslim population into civil society...”

“...The Swiss voted strongly for the ban, with 58% of votes in favor of the initiative and 42% against. Until about a month ago, polls had predicted voters would solidly reject the ban...”

SEE: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB125947451116668259.html#

I’m liking the Swiss more and MORE!

An Awesome Speech by Congressional Candidate Lieutenant Colonel Allen West

2009-11-29T15:34:00.001-08:00

This is an absolutely AWESOME video of a GREAT speech by Congressional Candidate Lieutenant Colonel Allen West - who is running for Congress for Florida's 22nd Congressional District. SEE: http://allenwestforcongress.com/

H/T to FDNY Deputy Chief Paul Mannix, President of Merit Matters

Revisiting an Ironic, Earlier Comment on Another Blog;...

2009-11-26T20:14:00.000-08:00

On a piece over at Cynical Nation titled, Obama and the pirates

(Posted by BNJ)

http://www.cynicalnation.com/2009/04/obama_and_the_pirates.html#comments

Barry said, “I don't have time to say much about this other than that I'm disappointed (though not surprised) that so many on the right can't bring themselves to celebrate this because their guy didn't get elected in November. And yes, much of the Left did the same thing for the past eight years, but that doesn't make it okay. So even if I never have occasion to do it again, I'm drinking a toast to Obama and dead pirates.”

In response, and remember, this was back in mid-April of 2009, I replied, “I feared we were getting another Jimmy Carter, but it seems we have another G W Bush - a dedicated, albeit cautious Keynesian, determined to keep us engaged in a military WoT.”  (JMK)

Turns out that this certainly appears to have been merely “wishful thinking,” on my part.

Yes, getting the UAW to agree to major concessions was a PLUS, but putting them ahead of GM’s investors and first-line creditors, as was done with the government-overhaul was a HUGE NEGATIVE.

Moreover, the current administration is not only “Carteresque,” but “the Carter administration on steroids.”

Jimmy Carter’s foreign policies were an unmitigated disaster, especially in regards to Iran, where the ousting of the Shah led to the return of the Ayatollah Khomeini and the legitimizing of the scourge of today’s world “radicalized Islam,” by giving it the legitimacy of a home state.

His economic policies were a continuation of the Johnson-Nixon-Ford Keynesianism, only with an emphasis on even MORE reckless and irresponsible social spending.

Housing activists like Gail Cincotta and Wade Rathke (ACORN’s founder) found political allies in the Liberal Congress of that era, especially William Proxmire (D-WI) and Ted Kennedy (D-MA), who helped guide the horrific Community Reinvestment Act through Congress.

Among the worst abuses of the intentionally abusive CRA was that it had housing activists like Ms. Cincotta and Mr. Rathke overseeing how the banks doled out their loans!

The CRA was the first of many steps, and perhaps the BIGGEST, in transforming America’s banking system from one centered on making profits for their shareholders (a bank’s ONLY rightful purpose) to one of assisting in delivering a perceived “public good.”

Ironically enough, Barack Obama was a huge part of that movement. His first job out of law school was working as a lawyer for ACORN and taking on Citibank in 1996 for “not making enough loans to low-income people” (that is “people unable to pay them back).

Today, the banking industry is heavily government-controlled and risk-averse bureaucrats have foisted policies on banks that are crimping the number of loans such institutions make to Venture Capital investments (entities that might turn into the nest Intel or Microsoft) and into Federal Treasury Securities...right now U.S. banks are net BUYERS of such Treasury securities to the tune of some $185  BILLION annually! That’s BAD because is means A LOT LESS credit available for business loans and home mortgages.

Ultimately it means a much LOWER living standard for ALL Americans.

And THAT is the goal of the Liberals in this country...especially those in government.

What we’re looking at now is an economic tsunami whose winds haven’t even hit us YET.

Early next year the rest of the world’s buyers of U.S. debt are set to increase the costs of borrowing for Uncle Sam and that means the cost of servicing that debt will ultimately more than double over the next few years! What that’ll mean is higher interest rates and high inflation rates, along with prolonged high unemployment for as far as the eye can see.

We could, if we’re very unfortunate, see a return of STAGFLATION by 2010...which would almost certainly signal the end of Democratic dominance in Congress.

“But what if they’ve already locked us into Cap and Trade based treaties and a huge healthcare entitlement, by then,” many ask.

Well, it’ll be up to the next crew in D.C. to clean up that mess. Eradicating such treaties, or otherwise signaling our unilateral unwillingness to live up to them AND pulling, not only any new entitlements out by the roots, but perhaps dismantling most, if not ALL of the Great Society, by transforming them the way workfare transformed welfare.

The healthcare overhaul COULD be fine-tuned and tweaked in exactly that way.

Any newly expanded “public option” made restricted (say no more than 4 visits to a physician a year) and rationed (perhaps no more than $10,000 in care, or less, per year)...while encouraging private insurers to allow those able and willing to circumvent that rationing and restrictions via various forms of “gap insurance.”

That way, businesses and Municipalities would be freed from the burdens of providing all the free healthcare they do now AND, more importantly, the rationing and restrictions of the public option would be targeted to the poor and non-productive.  

We’re heading for some very dark days economically because the media has assisted in exonerating government in a government-caused economic calamity.

Since the 1970s Liberals like Senators Proxmire and Kennedy helped housing activists force banks to make more loans to low income Americans. That’s BAD BUSINESS and it’s bad for America.

Traditional lending criteria (20% down, along with a reliance on one’s credit history, debt to income ration, etc) resulted in the SAME default rate among both black and white borrowers, proving that “credit-worthy blacks were NOT turned down by banks.”

But Moderate Republicans played a big part in this as well. Jack Kemp fought for “the ownership society” and G W Bush and most of those in his administration also bought into this, baling out banks after they were legislated into making more and more high-risk loans.

Keynesianism, specifically government meddling in the mortgage market is what caused the subprime mortgage mess and triggered the global credit crisis, and STILL the U.S. government has done NOTHING to correct the problems that created that mess. Subprime loans are still legal to make, Glass-Spiegel has not be re-instituted, the CRA hasn’t been reformed, credit default swaps and both Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac are still very much involved in the mortgage market.

Worse yet, Cap and Trade promises to create a bubble similar to the housing and the tech bubble with energy!

Keynesian economic policy amounts to economic malfeasance.

And yet Keynesianism hasn’t been blamed for the mess it created, instead, it’s been anointed the cure!

As a result, we’ve followed up a Keynesian (big government) created problem with, not only MORE, but indeed hyper-Keynesianism.

That does not bode well for our future.

Michael Moore’s Officially a Bomb Factory...

2009-11-26T19:49:00.000-08:00

Michael Moore’s latest offering (Capitalism: A Love Story) has bombed after languishing in theaters for nearly two months.

In its painfully short run of two months, the flick has grossed just $14.2 million, leaving eight million to cover production and advertising costs.

In short, the film has finished in the Red.

Moore scored big with Fahrenheit 9/11, with its $120 million domestic gross.

Since F-9/11 his film’s box office receipts have been dropping off precipitously.

A Very Welcome Challenge to What I Posted About Wealth and Poverty....

2009-11-22T19:01:00.000-08:00

I recently received an email and the permission to reprint that message (anonymously).

The email comes from a former professor (the one who defended a Kos Kid in a comments section a few posts back)...what follows is his message in response to my previous post on What Poverty IS...and What it is NOT, and my response to him;

His email;

JC,

Why do you continue to constantly do this?

Demagogue to the gullible like this?

I sometimes wonder if you just like being provocative. What you’re doing here is potentially very dangerous.

To start with, I find much of your argument disingenuous, especially the portion about our “dynamic economy” – the old “expanding pie” versus the “fixed pie” model.

While it’s true that the economy is somewhat dynamic and the money supply is somewhat elastic, your argument here is very much overblown. Even you’d acknowledge that there really is only a fixed amount of “hard assets” available at any given time, right?

And since there is only a fixed amount of currency available at any given time, it's then very true that “the more person A takes in, the less available for persons B, C, D, E, F, etc.”

So, in that sense, we really ARE dealing with a “zero sum game,” aren’t we? At least in terms of the currency available at any given time that can be used for income, we are.

With that in mind, I think you’d have to agree that we do need a referee (and only government can fit this bill) to step in from time to time to make sure that there is a fair distribution of that currency, so that a few avaricious people don’t glom all the “hard assets” (especially INCOME) for themselves.

And to claim, as you seem to, that “the poor CHOOSE free time over more productive pursuits” is not merely naïvely simplistic, but grossly insensitive and offensive, as well and borders upon demonizing the less fortunate as parasites and pariahs.

(anonymous)

My Response:

Well, first of all, currency or the money supply DOES indeed fluctuate both significantly and quite often (many times within the same year, actually)...so, there’s THAT to indicate my position is not really “overblown, as you state.” (Here’s a chart of the fluctuations in the U.S. money supply between 1960 and 2007: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Changes_in_US_money_supply_1960-2007.gif)

Moreover, currency and especially INCOME is NOT the sole, or even primary parameter of wealth. The truly wealthy or “super-rich” DO NOT rely upon income for the bulk of their wealth.

Investments grow the economy and in the process, create the vast majority of the new jobs and new opportunities for others. So, NO, we are NOT dealing with a “zero sum game” at all.

When the costs/risks get too high, investors simply stop investing and producers cut back on production and everyone suffers as the economy shrinks in response.

And yes, whether you find it “offensive” or not, specific behaviors and yes, CHOICES are what create BOTH wealth and poverty....and there are indeed myriad forms of wealth, one of which is free/“leisure time,” which producers sacrifice in order to produce, and non-producers maximize at their own peril.

How is telling the truth “dangerous”?

I do believe your argument in this case is inherently flawed by your apparent view that the market process (a/k/a “Capitalism”) is hopelessly and inherently unfair...I believe that the argument I’ve offered here shows that when the full scope and purview of what is called “wealth” is taken into consideration, the market process is NOT really “unfair” at all.

JMK

What Poverty IS...And What it IS NOT....

2009-11-21T10:46:00.000-08:00

Poverty is not merely a lack of money or other “hard assets, that is a symptom of the malady called poverty.

What poverty is, in essence, is the lack of marketable skills and the entrepreneurial drive to develop such skills and to “sell yourself” to help others in order to enrich yourself.

Poverty is most often the result of poor planning, poor impulse control and a lack of focus, discipline and imagination...it, like wealth creation, is NEVER the result of “bad luck.”

To understand poverty, one must first understand wealth and what wealth is.

Wealth is NOT currency, or real property, assets, like stocks and bonds or even the sum total of those possessions, again, those are symptoms or “the trappings” of wealth, not wealth itself.

Wealth is, in essence, IMAGINATION – the creative expression that turns ideas into solutions to other people’s problems and in the process enriches the imaginer.

So, in turn, poverty is, in essence, a lack of imagination, perhaps even more primordially, a lack of the will to help others, even when that help might well enrich yourself.

Just as specific behaviors (self-discipline, time management, attention to detail focus and thrift) produce wealth, poverty is also created or caused by specific behaviors, most notably, poor impulse control, recklessness and irresponsibility and the general inability to delay gratification and plan for a better, easier tomorrow.

That old saying, “If you’re failing to plan, you’re planning to fail,” is very much true.

Measuring Wealth and Poverty

We can all see that poverty costs those afflicted in a myriad ways, what we often overlook is that wealth creation also costs the producer.

It costs that person in terms of time. Time with family and friends, time for leisure and enjoyment and often, it’s the most valuable time of all – that time when we are most vital and able to enjoy life to the fullest.

Income and personal assets (ie. stocks, bonds, pension funds, real property, etc.) are just two measures of wealth. Others, like free time, good health, a close and loving family are often overlooked as “intangible assets,” and yet they are often as valuable, or even more so than “hard assets, like cash and real property, to those who lack them, or sacrifice them in order to produce.

For instance, a “beach bum” or alcoholic/drug addict is generally far “richer” in terms of leisure time than the man who runs a business, or a physician or investment banker, although the latter are generally far “richer” in terms of “hard assets.”

Choices and Trade-Offs

In a very real sense, all of this, all of what we are and what we become, comes down to a series of choices and trade-offs.

The producer (the physician, investment banker and the businessman) trade giving up more of their leisure time for more hard assets, while the “beach bum” and the alcoholic/drug addict partier trade giving up developing their other skills in favor of more leisure time.

It can be argued that each individual in the above case made a conscious and deliberate choice to value one form of wealth over another – the producers valuing “hard assets” more, while the non-productive, more epicurean partiers appear to value leisure time far more and in a free society individuals are free to make such choices and deal with their individual consequences on their own terms.

Therefore the focus on “redistributing the wealth” fails precisely because it fails to look at the full and complete scope of what wealth is. With its narrow focus on redistributing hard assets, it unfairly does that WITHOUT concomitantly redistributing leisure time and the other “intangible” aspects of wealth.

A fair “redistribution” requires that the producers be given back something for their sacrifices in hard assets and the recipient non-producers be required to surrender some of their intangibles (ie. leisure time) in return.

Yes, it can be argued that what the producers produce cannot be replaced by those without their high level of advanced skills.

So what?

That merely dictates that a “fair redistribution” require that the non-productive be forced/coerced into developing their skills to the fullest to produce more, thus allowing the other producers to have more free time and the other “intangibles” included in the full panoply of “wealth.”

The “Zero Sum Game” Canard

Some will argue that “intangibles” can’t be measured and thus can’t realistically be “redistributed” either, but that is untrue.

If people don’t own their own labors, their own property, then they don’t own themselves or their time either and yes, it CAN be “redistributed” by the same activist that would “redistribute” property.

Much of the justification for “redistributing” hard assets is based on the canard of the “zero sum game.” In other words, “There is only so much wealth, in terms of stocks, bonds, cash and real property available at any given time and therefore, one man “earning/producing too much” assures that ten others will do without or have to accept a minimum of such hard assets as their reward.

In fact, that is NOT TRUE.

Wealth is created by ideas, by human imagination, and as such is unlimited. When one individual produces a tremendous amount of wealth, that production increases opportunities for other like-minded and entrepreneurial individuals. In short wealth creation generates MORE wealth creation, NOT a “shortage of wealth” for others.

What happens when “redistributive” efforts are put into effect is that producers produce less, in effect, reclaiming, on their own, more of the free/leisure time they gave up to produce more in the first place.

That has two disastrous unintended consequences; (1) it reduces the overall productivity of that economy, given that there’s nothing in place to force the non-productive and less productive to produce more and (2) that lessening in wealth creation results in significantly lowered tax revenues for government, in effect, hampering government’s ability to engage in more social assistance, in the form of various anti-poverty programs, etc.

But, given the fact that we don’t exist in a “zero sum game” economy, there’s no reason to redistribute wealth in the form of hard assets, given that such wealth creation generates higher government revenues, while also creating ever MORE opportunities for ever more wealth creation!

This, in essence, is the primary fatal flaw in contemporary American Liberalism.

The problem “we the people” face is that government and the “political class” generally refuses to acknowledge this basic truth, as they are more motivated by seeking power and control over others than in actually “doing good.”

What Global Homicide Rates Are Telling Us...

2009-11-18T06:00:00.000-08:00

A quick look at the countries with the top 15 murder rates in the world today tells an interesting tale.

The world’s top 15 violent places are;

Colombia 61.1 per 100,000 people
El Salvador 56.4 per 100,000
Cote d'Ivoire 45.7 per 100,000
South Africa 39.5
Lesotho 37.3
Angola 36
Burundi 35.4
Congo, the Dem Rep of the 35.2
Sierra Leone 34
Jamaica 33.7
Venezuela 32.5
Brazil 30.8
Belize 30.1
Russian Federation 29.7
Central African Rep 29.1

OK, right off the bat, you can see that 7 of the top 10 and 8 of the 15 nations with the world’s highest murder rates are located in sub-Saharan Africa, a region beset by racial and tribal/ethnic violence.

The top two (Colombia and El Salvador), like numbers 11, 12 and 13 (Venezuela, Brazil and Belize) are all suffering through waves of violent Leftist guerilla terrorism and massive drug cartel wars!

In most of the rest of the cases, certainly in almost all those outside South America, the widespread violence is due to primarily to ethnic/racial strife.

In the Russian Federation, at least according to Amnesty International, “Racist attacks and killings of foreigners and ethnic minorities are reported with shocking regularity in Russia and disturbingly, their frequency seems to be increasing.(1) Victims whose cases have come to the attention of Amnesty International include students, asylum-seekers and refugees from Africa and Asia, as well as people from the south Caucasus, from South, Southeast and Central Asia, from the Middle East and from Latin America. However, citizens of the Russian Federation are no less at risk of physical attack. Anyone who does not look typically ethnic Russian, for example, individuals from ethnic groups of the North Caucasus, in particular Chechens, as well as members of the Jewish community, Roma and children of mixed parentage are at risk. Even ethnic Russians who are seen as sympathizing with foreigners or ethnic minority groups, for example, fans of rap or reggae music, members of other youth sub-cultures, and campaigners against racism, have also been targeted as they are perceived as "unpatriotic" or "traitors". Attacks have been reported in towns and cities across the Russian Federation.”

The countries with the lowest violent homocide rates also tell an interesting story.

Of the countries with the lowest 10 murder rates;

Qatar

0.8
Austria 0.7

Egypt

0.7
Fiji 0.7

United Arab Emirates

0.7
Hong Kong 0.6
Japan 0.5
Morocco 0.5

Singapore

0.5

Luxembourg

0.4

Well, clearly 4, or 40% of them are Middle Eastern, Muslim states.

I guess draconian punishments really ARE viable deterrents to violent crime after all!

In fact I could only find three Muslim nations with murder rates higher than the United States’ 5.6 per 100,000. They were Indonesia (with the highest murder rate for a Muslim country at 8.9/100,000, Iraq with 6.7/100,000 and Albania with 6.6/100,000.

Another among those nations with the lowest murder rates in existence is also one that consistently ranks among the freest economies in the world – Hong Kong!

Another thing that the lowest 10 also have in common is a set of nearly homogeneous populations, which, of course, serves to limit that pesky “ethnic/racial violence.”

In other words, it would seem that a homogeneous population is generally a less violent one, as are nations that mete out draconian punishments for violent crimes...and economic Liberty and the prosperity it delivers also seems to reduce violence, as witnessed by Hong Kong’s infinitesimal 0.6/100,000 violent crime rate and its corresponding 6.0 Misery Index!

Sometimes You Just HAVE to Ask – WTF?!....

2009-11-14T19:53:00.000-08:00

Are you kidding me, or WHAT?!

Early Thursday morning, three University of Tennessee football players, all of them freshmen, two of them very highly recruited players wound up arrested in Knoxville Tennessee for...ARMED ROBBERY!

Apparently they thought it would be a good idea to walk over to another car, wave a gun in the faces of those folks and look to ROB THEM!

They were caught a very short time later, ID’d by the other vehicle’s passengers, fellow students at U of T and a pellet gun was found in their possession...along with some drugs, which a female passenger conveniently claimed were hers.

ARMED ROBBERY!

These are three guys getting a completely FREE RIDE through college...guys who want for NOTHING and at least two of whom probably WOULD HAVE been nearly guaranteed to have become instant millionaires, upon leaving that College for the pros!

These guys decide an ARMED ROBBERY is a good idea!

This is exactly the sought of incident that proves what I’ve said for over 25 years, “Poverty doesn’t CAUSE violence, in fact, violence, and the traits that lead to violence are what CAUSE poverty!”

The three Nu'Keese Richardson (above), Janzen Jackson, the two highly sought after recruits, and Mike Edwards, all 18 y/o, were each charged with three counts of attempted armed robbery in connection with the incident, which occurred at a gas station in an area known as "The Strip" at the edge of Tennessee's campus.

As of Friday, Richardson was being held Thursday afternoon on a $19,500 bond. Edwards was released on a $19,500 bond and Jackson was released on his own recognizance.

According to Don Bosch, Janzen Jackson’s attorney, "Mr. Jackson vehemently asserts his innocence, and we hope that this will become apparent in the next 24 to 48 hours." It was not immediately known if the other two players had contacted attorneys.

The incongruity of this....of three extremely privileged young men acting as though they have a reason for rage, is more than outrageous and beyond pathetic.
.
.

UPDATE (11-16-2009):

According to Associated Pres reports, two of the players (Richardson and Edwards) have been permanently dismissed from the University of Tennessee. The third is barred from all team actioviti8es pending the outcome of an investigation into his role in the incident.

“KNOXVILLE, Tenn. (AP)—Two of three Tennessee freshmen football players charged last week in an attempted armed robbery have been dismissed from the team.

“Clearly, their actions have no place in our program,” coach Lane Kiffin said Monday.

“Kiffin said wide receiver Nu’Keese Richardson, 18, and defensive back Mike Edwards, 18, were permanently dismissed from the team, while former starting safety Janzen Jackson, 18, will continue to be barred from team activities while Kiffin awaits more information in his case.”

http://rivals.yahoo.com/ncaa/football/news?slug=ap-tennessee-playersdismissed&prov=ap&type=lgns

Rolling the Dice With Terrorism......

2009-11-14T19:10:00.000-08:00

By sending the case against Khalid Sheik Mohammed (pictured above) to trial in a U.S. District Court, in lower Manhattan no less, Eric Holder and Barack Obama have (1) made an outright acquittal of the "terrorist mastermind," far more likely, because the American criminal justice system's "rules of evidence" were not followed in the capture, interrogation and evidence gathering process, as they were carried out by Military NOT law enforcement authorities, thus none of the suspects were ever Mirandized and no warrants were ever procured...AND (2) it gives the jihadists the grand stage they've wanted all along. It's also likely that the government will forgo using classified evidence rather than risk exposing both the evidence itself and how that evidence may have been attained.

The 1993 trial over the first World Trade Center bombing was an unmitigated disaster, so much so, in fact, that James Fox, then Director of the FBI's NYC Office said, "America's criminal justice system is inadequate to the task of dealing with state sponsored terrorism."

Director Fox was, without question, right and that was the beginning of the shift away from viewing terrorism as a "law enforcement issue," and refocusing it as a military one.

Undoing that approach at this juncture is not only unwise and naive, it's recklessly and irresponsibly dangerous as well.

'Dangerous and Irresponsible'

2009-11-14T17:57:00.000-08:00

Rudy Guiliani lays out the legal and security reasons why trying the architects of 9/11 in Manhattan is a "reckless an irresponsible decision."

SEE the Video:

'Dangerous and Irresponsible'

Rethinking Kelo?...

2009-11-14T06:08:00.000-08:00

Ginsburg, Kennedy, Souter, Breyer and Stevens...have got to rank among the Worst SC Justices EVER...OK, throw Brennan, Marshall, Burger and Warren in there too...

The June 23, 2005 Liberal abomination called the Kelo Decision DID spark a nationwide wave of reining in the use of Eminent Domain, but at such a cost.

Private property rights ARE sacrosanct in America...at least in America’s Constitution and for better or worse, we’re all bound by that document to “go down with the private property rights ship” should it ever prove non-seaworthy.

On that dark day back in 2005 five hooded, black robed “jurists” declared it OK for the town of New London Connecticut to steal the homes of dozens of its citizens to make way for a planned office park built by Phizer Pharmaceutical.

Ironically enough, the allegedly “Corporate-hating Left” wildly supported Kelo the way they mindlessly support virtually all government action no matter how destructive. But karma has appeared to have belatedly reared its head, as a scant four years after that decision that gave Susette Kelo's (pictured above) land away to "private developers" (yeah, private developers with deep government ties) for a project that was set to include a hotel and offices intended to enhance Pfizer Inc.’s nearby corporate facility, the pharmaceutical giant has announced it will close its research and development headquarters in New London, Connecticut.

So, while Susette Kelo and her neighbors lost their homes, the city of New London and the state of Connecticut spent almost $80 million to bulldoze private property for high-end condos and other "desirable" elements, it has all come to naught. Instead of a brand new gleaming office park, the wrecked and condemned neighborhood still stands vacant, without any of the touted tax benefits or job creation.

In FACT, New London has LOST the property tax revenues they already had in hand!

Perhaps the BEST commentary on this was posted by Ace at Ace of Spades HQ (http://ace.mu.nu/archives/294618.php#294618); “This cannot be emphasized enough.

“The people who run your city, the politicians who are full of bright ideas for improving your life by infringing on others' rights, and the black-robed genius who is tasked with interpreting our founding documents; NONE of these people are smarter than you.

“NONE of these people are gifted with superior insight on how better to run your life or use our native resources. But they believe that they are. So without the brake of morality or explicit law, these geniuses and pols and town busybodies will extend professional courtesy to each other as they go about dismantling your life for some dubious utopian idea.”

That’s 100% CORRECT!

If any of those folks were at all savvy about anything at all, they’d have realized there was absolutely no downside to letting those "private developers" negotiate buyouts with the owners of the homes they wanted.

Yeah, they MIGHT have had to pay through the nose to get those folks to move...and they would’ve simply charged more for their office space...and Phizer would’ve had to buck up a little more...and property values and perhaps property tax revenues would’ve gone up.

Instead, the whole affair is a net loss.

Think “the political class” will learn anything form this failure?

If you do...guess again.

Perhaps NOW Would Be a GOOD Time to Revisit THIS...

2009-11-13T10:19:00.000-08:00

With all the fast and furious appointments of the early Obama administration, many have been overlooked and thus a lot of mischief is set to be unloosed on the American people without their understanding where any of it is coming from.

Earlier this year, Barack Obama tabbed Harold Koh (the Dean of Yale’s Law School) as his top lawyer - legal adviser for the State Department.

Sounds very much like a reasonable enough choice, right?

But Harold Koh had a bounty of incredible statements in his file that would almost certainly raise the eyebrows of the vast majority of Americans.

Perhaps the most incredible of all is Professor Koh’s stated belief that Muslim Sharia Law is not at all incompatible with the U.S. Constitution!

In a 2007 speech, Harold Koh stated, “In an appropriate case, he didn’t see any reason why sharia law would not be applied to govern a case in the United States.”

An administration that appoints, as it top lawyer, it’s top legal analyst, a man who sees no innate incompatibility between Sharia Law and the U.S. Constitution is not one that is concerned about either the safety of Americans or protecting America’s far-flung global interests.

Celebrating Incompetence!......

2009-11-13T09:04:00.000-08:00

MSNBC may do a very poor job of delivering much in the way of news and coherent commentary (as I believe they do), but it cannot be denied that they do a splendid job of hiring the handicapped, so long as incompetence counts as a legitimate handicap.

In a recent example the always reliably, slow-witted Chris “Hardball” Matthews made a fool of both himself and the network he represents by musing on-air, whether it’s a crime for an American citizen to contact al Qaeda.

(A brief note on this thorny issue; Turns out that it IS a crime. That’s why the FISA Laws allowed the NSA to monitor American contacts TO “suspect foreign portals,” since way back in 1979. Although, I suspect that to Mr. Matthews, contacting, say Nazi Germany or Imperial Japan during WW II would’ve been “No big deal” either...or maybe it’s just those ideologies he approves of that are “OK” - perhaps then, collaborating the Soviets during the Cold War would’ve been fine with Chris Matthews.)

On the November 9^th broadcast of "Hardball," Chris Mattheww was conducting one of his typically sweet-toned, pandering interviews with Zuhdi Jasser, president of the American Islamic Forum for Democracy, in which he compared Nidal Hasan to Sirhan Sirhan (killer of Robert F. Kennedy) and, in the process, actually evinced some sympathy for Sirhan’s cause, saying, “Bobby Kennedy had made political statements saying we're going to sell arms, fighter planes directly to Israel, not under the table. We're going to recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel. Those are the things that triggered his killing spree. He killed one person - Bobby Kennedy, horrifically. But did he become a different religious person because he committed the crime? And when did this happen?”

Yes, when indeed?

More importantly, when did Chris Matthews become SUCH an embarrassment to anyone associated with him?

And if you thought his bending over backwards to “understand” Sirhan Sirhan’s motivations was acrobatic, his contortions over Nidal Hasan’s possible motivations (other than that he was a jihadist terrorist, that is) were even more breathtaking; “See - we have a problem," Matthews began. "How do we know when someone like Hasan is going to make his move and do we know he's an Islamist until he's made his move? He makes a phone call or whatever, according to Reuters right now. Apparently he tried to contact al Qaeda. Is that the point at which you say, ‘This guy is dangerous?' That's not a crime to call up al Qaeda, is it? Is it? I mean, where do you stop the guy?"

That's a GREAT question, isn't it?! When you think about it, how could it be "a crime" to simply "dial up al Qaeda?" I mean what have THEY done to US?....OK, bad question, but IS IT an "actual crime?"

Wow! That's some deep philsophical stuff oozing out of Chris "hardballs" Matthews, isn't it?

Maybe I'm being unfair. Maybe he didn't mean "al Qaeda," as in the jihadist Islamic group we're AT WAR WITH, perhaps he really mean Al Kaida, that full-time plumber and part-time U.S. wiffle-ball champ from Sandusky, Illinois...I mean it really is "no crime" to call him!

OK, I’m not getting this at all.

MSNBC puts up a weekday evening commentary line-up that goes, Schultz, Matthews, Olberman, Maddow...and the result is not only “NO ratings,” BUT major, even massive humiliation for MSNBC and anyone even remotely associated with the ponderously idiotic ramblings of the likes of Matthews and Olberman – the current reining champs of gross stupidity.

I mean, seriously, guys, are you TRYING to lose?!

If you are, you’re doing a helluva job!

Continuing the Mythos....and the Pathology.....

2009-11-13T08:46:00.000-08:00

The pathology misnamed “Political Correctness” wasn’t only evident in the reluctance of some authorities and even co-workers to confront a radical Muslim extremist (Malik Nidal Hasan), but in the way his being brought down was subsequently reported. And THAT has some very serious repercussions for all of us, going forward.

In the immediate aftermath of Major Hasan’s jihadist killing spree at Fort Hood, two civilian police officers immediately responded to the shooting, Sergeant Mark Todd (pictured above) and Kimberley Munley.

The very SAME pathology (that goes under the umbrella term “political correctness”) responsible for stifling the authorities dealing with Major Hasan ("If we'd acted on those emails (emails to a radical Imam) we'd have been crucified") was reflexively employed in the reporting of how Nidal Hasan was brought down, without, apparently even a second’s thought.

Lawrence Auster (A View From the Right http://www.amnation.com/vfr/) has been all over this.

The second officer’s account, according to the NY Times goes, “Sergeant Todd said he was slightly in front of Sergeant Munley on the hill. "Once we took fire, she broke right and I broke left," he said.

Sergeant Todd said he did not see Sergeant Munley get shot. He said he started to circle around the building, but then backtracked as panicked bystanders told him of the gunman's movements.

"As it unfolded, I went a different direction and he went a different direction, and we met up in the front of the building," he said.

Sergeant Todd said he then saw Sergeant Munley on the ground, wounded. He shouted again at the gunman to drop his weapon.

"Once I came around the front of the building, I caught his attention again, started shouting commands, and then he opened up a second time," Sergeant Todd said. "And that's when I returned fire, neutralized him and secured him."

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/13/us/13hood.html?_r=1&pagewanted=all

Lawrence Auster’s analysis is unquestionably correct; “In any case, this is the first time that Sergeant Todd has spoken about what happened, and he settles the question of who stopped Hasan and the massacre, which in yesterday's account was still somewhat in doubt. Munley did not fire the shots that stopped Hasan. In fact, the Times now says that instead of firing at least six shots at Hasan, both before and after he wounded her, she fired at most one shot and perhaps none at all.

“It thus becomes clear that even in the midst of a mass murder brought about by the Army's politically correct cover-up of a Muslim jihadist, the Army, with Kimberly Munley's passive or active cooperation, was inventing out of thin air a politically correct feminist hero story. Once people commit themselves to diversity, every word out of their mouth becomes a lie.

“By the same token, as I indicated in yesterday's entry, it is to be doubted that the Times would have been so forthcoming about Todd's central role in the gun battle if he had been white.” Mark Todd is indeed black. And Lawrence Auster is almost certainly right about that.

“Even if the Times had let the truth out, it would not have been stated so clearly and emphatically as it is in this article.”

http://www.amnation.com/vfr/archives/014761.html

So, if you really want to know why we’re still DOOMED...this is it.

The same people charged with protecting Fort Hood, in fact, most of those charged with protecting this country remain infected with a deep-seated pathology, all too often euphemistically referred to as “political correctness.” They are so infected with this pathology that even in light of its massive failure (the jihadist attack on Fort Hood) they cannot help themselves but reflexively embrace a “diversity mythos” that says, in effect, “a 5’2” female police officer was able to neutralize the terrorist,” ("a petite, female is just as effective a law enforcer or 1st Responder as an imposing and physically fit male - such "qualifications" are over-rated") when nothing at all like that appears to have been the case.

It should be impossible that the denizens of this pathology still control the media and hold sway in most governmental institutions, and yet, they do.

It would be as though the same people who meddled in the mortgage markets, scheming to get banks to make loans to “subprime borrowers” (a/k/a “people who couldn’t pay them back”) by, among other things, getting Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to buy/guarantee those loans and in the process sparking the global credit crisis and tanking the global economy would still be running our economy, or worse yet, charged to “fix it.”

Whooops!

Right, funny story about all that...."they" (that's Greenspan's protege's, Summers, Geithner and Rubin) are the ones currently charged with "fixing the economy," as well!

Enjoy the ride!

The Problem ISN'T Violent Jihadist Islam, it’s Rogue Inanimate Objects....

2009-11-12T05:19:00.000-08:00

Brilliant analysis by profoundly, even mind-numbingly stupid Chicago Mayor;

“Unfortunately, America loves Guns. We love guns to a point where that uh we see devastation on a daily basis. You don’t blame a group.”

(Chicago Mayor Richard Daley)

Ironically enough, IT is EXACTLY the reverse!

Weapons are inanimate objects and they DON'T kill people, but ideologies DO!

The serial killer's "becoming" and the jihadist's "spiritual transformation" via "violent jihad" are the IDEAS that trigger the use/abuse of inanimate objects a/k/a "weapons."

But this viewpoint isn't merely "wrong," no, the use of this canard is entirely premeditated and calculated for a specific effect.

Consider the fact that you DID NOT hear such tripe after Timothy McVeigh bombed the Murrah Building? Think that was an accident?

Of course it wasn't!

In fact, did you notice the record time in which McVeigh's execution was carried out?

He was literally air-mailed to the death chamber.

Perhaps because of The Third Terrorist connection researched and written about by Jayna Davis (http://www.amazon.com/Third-Terrorist-Connection-Oklahoma-Bombing/dp/0785261036/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1258029677&sr=8-1)

In THIS case, Richard Daley’s comments are not only naïve, they’re deliberately offensive and designed to obstruct our looking at the REAL causes of this violence, and any other "non-PC violence." THAT, and of course, no one wants to consider the potential political impact of such a terrorist on Barack Obama's watch.

Worse yet, Mayor Daley's assertion is a raound-about assault on the Bill of Rights America

’s “gun rights” are actually the Constitution’s acquiescence to NATURAL RIGHTS. The 2nd Amendment enshrines EVERY free individual’s NATURAL Right to violent self-defense. Yes, EVERY free individual has an innate and “God-given” Right to defend his person AND property against seizure by either his neighbors and yes, even his own government.

The U.S. Constitution is very clear on that.

The idiocy of folks like Richard Daley who blame “guns,” “SUVs” and other inanimate objects for “killing people,” is purposeful. It serves the dual purposes of both undermining by vilifying our NATURAL RIGHT to self defense, while deflecting the blame for the current wave of jihadist violence from where it belongs (pernicious MOTIVATING ideologies - in this case “jihadist Islam”) to inanimate objects.

In this instance it was used to whitewash a horrific event (the terror attack on Fort Hood), BUT it goes even further, to “blame the victims!’

After all, who loves their guns more than those in the U.S. military?

Right Mayor Daley?

Or perhaps I SHOULD say, “Right DICK?!”

I know I Probably SHOULDN’T...

2009-11-11T05:46:00.000-08:00

...BUT, I Actually Live for Moments like THIS!

First, I would humbly ask all who like me (yes, BOTH of you) to please indulge me this particular vice of mine. Secondly, this post was delayed a couple of days, due to a good friend and former professor requesting that I re-consider “humiliating” another blogger “merely for disagreeing with me.”

I did that (carefully considered this action) and I’ve decided to go forward with it because (1) I am not doing this to “humiliate” or embarrass anyone, and I’m not taking this extraordinary step merely because another person “merely disagreed with me,” (2) I DO NOT believe, as my friend offered, that this other person may be a juvenile or perhaps even “someone with some clinical emotional issues,” the blogger in question has been online since at least 2000, so I surmise they are at least in their late 20s and even IF he did suffer from some emotional issues, I don’t believe that requires that such views not be confronted and finally (3) during the time I was re-considering this action, that blogger chose, instead of deleting my comments to edit them instead...that seemed to invite and even necessitate this response.

I love to exchanging views and opinions and so I routinely do so both here, also in a vigorous email exchange with various people and in numerous other venues around the worldwide web.

One of my favorite things is going around to various sites and challenging views that I see as naïve, wrong-headed, misguided...or even evil. I do that fairly often and I'm always very open to hearing why certain people believe the things they claim to, whether I agree or not.

As background to all this, on the day after the worst jihadist terror on American soil since 9-11-01, a “Kos Kid” (my less than affectionate nickname for the army of misfits that Markos Moulitsas Zúñiga has gathered over at the D-Kos) who goes by the name of BlueWind (BlueWind at Blue and White Blog:

http://blueandwhite96.blogspot.com/) blogged about a BBC report about a Muslim couple sentenced to death by stoning in Somalia...not a single word, let alone entry about the Fort  Hood terror attack.

That wasn’t a mere oversight or affront, in my view, that was pure and unadulterated America-hatred demonstrated by a reflexive disdain for the U.S. Military.

BlueWind’s (BW) entry went like this;

From the BBC link above:

"Islamists in southern Somalia have stoned a man to death for adultery but spared his pregnant girlfriend until she gives birth" 

and then the article continues:

"Abas Hussein Abdirahman, 33, was killed in front of a crowd of some 300 people in the port town of Merka.

"He was screaming and blood was pouring from his head during the stoning. After seven minutes he stopped moving," an eyewitness told the BBC.

That is an example of how horrendous and criminal theocratic beliefs can be. The criminals who killed this man probably believe they were acting in "gods will".

But where it gets even more scary and chilling, is this part:

"An official from the al-Shabab group said the woman would be killed after she has had her baby."

This is pure horror. An innocent woman is waiting to be killed after she delivers her baby, in the hands of a bizarre group of criminal theocrats. What is the civilized world doing to stop this? I hope that the United Nations and groups for civil liberties will do something to save this woman.

I also hope that the Obama administration and governments of other civilized parts of the world will try to interfere to stop the completion of that horrendous crime.

http://blueandwhite96.blogspot.com/2009/11/pure-horror.html

His previous blog entry was two days earlier on Wednesday when he commented about Tuesday, November 3rd’s Election Day results...nothing on Thursday or Friday about the terror attack at Fort Hood.

So, I responded like THIS;

“There’s an irony in your naïve ignorance BW.

“You deride these people for following their own moral dictates, their own strictly codified “morality,” such as it is, while you do the VERY SAME thing they do - “you assert that YOUR OWN “morality” (such as IT is) as “the only right one” ”.

“The fact is, ALL conventional moralities are arbitrary, capricious and ultimately, fictitious. The very concepts of “right and wrong” are religious concepts. With the West’s view rooted in the Judeo-Christian tradition, and the Muslim world’s rooted in Islam’s Sharia (moral) laws.

“In ALL cases, however, as the great Robert Anton Wilson (RAW) so presciently said, “Reality is what you can get away with.”

“Since I’m not possessed of the lyrical gifts of RAW, I put it simply, “All morality is optional, as all morality is based on an arbitrary and capricious set of standards that serve those on top most of all.” And THAT works....for ALL of us!

“The Muslim world defends its moral strictures and its strict proscriptions against sexual indiscretions as serving to protect WOMEN.

“Their view is that an adulterer (male or female) puts their spouse/partner at risk for a myriad of STDs and other illnesses. Winking and nodding at such behaviors can be said to “weaken the familial bonds.”

“Whether we in the West accept that, or not, they ultimately, they have a right to interpret their morality as THEY see fit, just as you and I do ours.

“But you are really not all that different, at least not any less dogmatic and wrong-headed than they are, as you seem to believe inane things like, “violence never solves anything.”

“Worse yet, you naively seem to think most in the West share that view.

“I can assure you, they most certainly do NOT.

“As you probably already suspect, I don’t share that view at all.

“I KNOW that violence solves a myriad of problems.

“Our own moral conflict and Fort  Hood; “winning hearts and minds” (convincing those who hate us – jihadist Muslims) that we’re nice people...vs. “crushing an enemy ideology” as we did with Nazism, communism and Japanese Imperialism.

“I favor the latter, folks like yourself the former.

“The former (YOUR way... trying to “win hearts and minds” ALWAYS results ion failures like the one at Fort  Hood and 9/11), the path I favor, tends to lead to what happened to our enemies in WW II.

“See the difference?

“Much as I disdain your pseudo-morality, I accept your right to choose that (for YOURself)...not to foist it on others, of course, and NOT to even proselytize it to others. I accept that in the same vain that accept these Somali’s right to their own morality and moral dictates, as well as the Saudis, who recently sentenced a man to 50 lashes for merely “boasting about his sexual exploits in public,” and even more recently sentenced a pedophile to beheading, followed by his remains being crucified and put on display thereafter.

“That harsh, swift and merciless morality is simply, “their way,” just as your soft-jelly centered “let’s all just get along” morality is “your way.” Neither of you can be anything different than what you are.”    (JMK)

<

<

“I would not expect any less idiotic comments from you JMK. You are doing fine in your classic tradition of total idiocy.”   (BW)

<

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I didn't just give you an opinion BW, I gave you a set of fundamental truths; the first is that morality ALL morality is rooted in religion....our Western concepts of "right" and "wrong" are rooted in the Biblical principles n which they are found.

There is NOTHING that anchors those concepts other than......religious traditions.

The second is that such traditions differ widely across cultures and yes, between INDIVIDUALS, as well.

No one should hold an opinion on human affairs, politics, economics, etc. without first understanding such a basic truth. Which is why I've said, nearly since I've known you, YOU should not be putting forth your views, they are too naive, too thoughtless, too devoid of reason and divorced from how the world operates to have any value.

That's not a criticism, it's an objective assessment. The fact that you have never been able to defend any of your views, indicates you haven't even really thought about them, let alone thought them through.

Suffice to say, the Muslim world's "morality," codified in its Sharia Laws IS the established "morality" for about 20% of this planet.

Just as we would not want Sharia Law foisted on the West, we have NO RIGHT to foist our own (and especially YOUR OWN...you hold to a pacifist morality that is a tiny minority within the Western tradition) moral dictates upon them.

Your "control freak" tendencies (your desire to control others who "have too much," don't act as you like," etc.)  SHOULD BE incompatible with your professed affinity for freedom, but then again, you don't really understand that "freedom" is only SELF-OWNERSHIP, nothing more....so maybe that's part of the problem.   (JMK)

"Self-ownership" is freedom? Do you really think you just made an intelligent point? You think you just had a unique idea? How does it feel being an idiot? Just curious.”   (BW)

Again the main point isn't what you don't understand (that's virtually everything), but that you're sense of "We should STOP them from following their moral code," is the SAME view that THEY hold! You see, they want to "kill the infidel" precisely because we don't subscribe to their moral code.

That, in a nutshell, is what makes YOU and THEM the same.

In your case, your own "morality," such as it is, seems to be dependent on your whim at the moment.

After all, you didn't cry out that we should've stopped Saddam Hussein's regime when he was routinely putting people through plastic shredders, or filling mass graves with upwards of half a million bodies. No, then it was, "Iraq's a sovereign country and we have no right to...."

And I agree that we had no right to stop practices we feel are barbaric, merely because we feel they are.

We DO have a right to protect our own interests, geo-political and economic, wherever those interests are, which is what we did later on, of course.

Almost typically, in the wake of the worst act of Islamic terrorism on U.S. soil since 9/11/01 (Fort Hood) your sympathies go half a world away to two people who knowingly and willingly violated the moral precepts and laws (Sharia Law is the law of that country) in Somalia....NOT to the American service-people and their families impacted by this latest bout of Islamic terror. Perfectly "liberal," of you.   (JMK)

JMK,

Keep up the idiotic comments. You may eventually brake the world record of idiocy (currently shared by your idol George W. Bush and by the woman of your dreams, Sarah Palin).   (BW)

Yikes!

I guess you don't realize that it's always "the idiots" who can't defend what they believe in (hint: in this case, that would be YOU).

I've shown that morality is (1) fluid and continually open to change, (2) ALWAYS rooted in religious traditions and (3) relative, that is to say, differing widely across cultures and often between individuals as well.

Moreover, and this is the MOST ironic thing of all, YOUR assertion that We should go in there and stop these people from following their own moral dictates and their own moral code (Sharia law) is really functionally NO DIFFERENT than that which makes radicalized Islam so dangerous - their refusal to accept others following their own moral dictates.

In the end, BOTH YOU and the radical Islamists want to force your own morality on a group of unwilling others.

That's undeniable, given your initial statement "I also hope that the Obama administration and governments of other civilized parts of the world will try to interfere to stop the completion of that horrendous crime."

YOU want to enforce your own morality on these Sharia adherents, just as THEY want to enforce theirs on YOU and everyone else in the West.

I understand why you haven't made a single argument to defend your viewpoint....it's because you CAN'T.  (JMK)

JMK,

I have been tolerating your incoherent rants, but I am getting tired of them. Next time I may ban you altogether.   (BW)

Look, THIS is all I’ve wanted from the start, that you simply cede this argument and acknowledge that I’m right on this. Yes, you’d pretty much done that from the beginning by not defending what you claim to believe, but this is a much more clearer surrender.

I didn’t offer you an opinion here, BW, I explained some very basic facts, (1) that all morality is rooted in religious traditions, (2) that morality is fluid and differs widely across cultures, as well as between individuals within the same culture and (3) that people have a right to follow the moral precepts of their own innate culture.

On the day after the 2nd worst jihadist terror attack on U.S. soil, your heart goes out, not to America’s service-people gunned down by a jihadist in Fort Hood, but half a world away to two Muslims, who THEMSELVES adhere to the Muslim moral code, ensconced in Sharia Law, who are being punished, albeit in a most draconian way, to Western eyes, for violating their own culture’s moral precepts.

The irony in all this is that YOU then assert the SAME thing the jihadists do – that “All others should live by YOUR moral code.” The Islamists want the entire world ruled by Sharia and folks like you demand that the entire world live by your own version of Western morality.

You "think" of yourself as a caring person," but you're really a self-centered, mean-spirited control freak at heart. You don’t care about these victims of Sharia Law any more than you do the 13 dead soldiers at Fort Hood, you’re primary concern here is what it is in EVERY issue, you rationalizing your control over others...and that’s disgusting.

The only odd thing about all this is that you don’t even get that irony.  (JMK)

A day later, BW deleted all of my comments from his blog.

I took that as his surrender, at least his willingness to accept that he couldn’t defend what he claimed to believe (same thing).

In an email to my former teacher, I mentioned this and talked about blogging about this relatively minor “triumph” – getting a Leftist to openly admit, openly DEMONSTRATE that they don’t believe in dialogue or the free exchange of ideas and opinions, that they actually believe in stifling dissent and silencing all who disagree with them.

That friend suggested for a whole host of reasons (mostly concern for the other party) that I not do that and I DID very seriously consider that...UNTIL....BW subsequently edited my comments, which, in my view, as I said, both invited and necessitated some response.

Here are the edits BW left up;

Edited By Siteowner
JMK

Edited By Siteowner
JMK

Edited By Siteowner
JMK

Edited By Siteowner
JMK

I understand why you haven't made a single argument to defend your viewpoint....it's because you CAN'T.  (JMK)

Edited By Siteowner
JMK | 

You "think" of yourself as a caring person," but you're really a self-centered, mean-spirited control freak at heart.    (JMK)


Edited By Siteowner
JMK

JMK,
I have been tolerating your incoherent rants, but I am getting tired of them. Next time I may ban you altogether.   (BW)

All I've wanted from the start was for you to throw in the towel and cede the discussion, which amounts to tacitly accepting that you acknowledge I'm right. You'd pretty much done that by failing to defend what you claim to believe, but I wanted more than    

Edited By Siteowner
JMK 

So, there it is!

I was able to get a far-Left “Kos Kid” to DEMONSTRATE his outright revulsion for the free exchange of ideas and opinions.

One of my friend’s rationales for not posting this was that BW’s views were “not Liberal ones at all,” but that’s untrue!

Sure, they aren’t traditional Liberal views, but they ARE very much in step with the bulk of those you'll find at the Daily Kos and the membership of organizations like MoveOn and MediaMatters. BW’s views are indeed VERY TYPICAL of today’s “far-Left.”

Bottom-line, I didn’t go out of my way to use BW as a weapon against illiberal Liberalism, he made HIMSELF one. I don't believe I've been at all unfair about this at all, though I'm open to any and all arguments to the contrary.

Moreover, I have no concerns about being challenged by BW or others of his ilk. I DO believe in the free and open exchange of ideas and opinions and of course, I CAN and WILL always defend what I believe in and confront that which I do not.

Come on! If BW didn’t confront me and defend his views on HIS site, he’s going to come here and find a voice to confront me on mine?

Hardly likely.

The FAILURE of Government is Becoming More Apparent...

2009-11-10T19:27:00.001-08:00

Liberals are misguided for a whole host of reasons, from their penchant for emotion over logic, to their being driven primarily by envy – fearing some “other guy” out there “has too much.” All of that leads Liberals to revile the private sector and its “vile profit motive,” and to embrace government as the “best possible solution to most problems."

Liberalism’s favorite mantra, “People before profits,” in effect turns Reaganism on its head. While Ronald Reagan famously said, “Government isn’t the solution, government IS the problem,” contemporary Liberalism says in effect, “Profit is the problem and government is the cure.”

Unfortunately for Liberals, Reagan’s legacy pretty much proves that wrong. In January, 1981 Ronald Reagan inherited the real "worst U.S. economy since the Great Depression," with rising unemployment and high inflation rates wreaking havoc. When he took office, the Misery Index (the combined inflation and unemployment rates) stood at 21 (20.8) with an inflation rate of 13.6% and an unemployment rate of 7.2%, at the end of Reagan's first year the Misery Index was dropped to 18 (17.97) with an inflation rate of 10.3% and an unemployment rate of 7.6 AND the Supply Side policies that administration brought in continued to drop the Misery Index and improve the economy over the next five years until the Misery Index reached single digits for the first time in 14 years! By 1986, the Misery Index hadn't seen single digits since 1972.

Compare that to the current administration which inherited a Misery Index of 9.61, the highest since 1993 (9.87). The unemployment rate when Barack Obama took office was 7.6%, the highest it had been since September of 1992.

Of course it now stands at 10.2%, the highest its been since April of 1983!

We’re moving in the WRONG direction!

While Reagan’s Supply Side policies improved the economy that first year, the Keynesian policies of the Obama administration have only worsened this one.

Worse yet, the failure of government is looking more and more systemic!

California just ran out of money and added a 10% income tax surcharge to its already punishing tax burden.

Now New York’s Governor David Paterson say that New York State will be bankrupt before Christmas!

If government is “the cure,” it’s certainly looking like a lethal one!

"We're going to run out of cash in four and a half weeks. We are going to run out of money. Unless we do something about it, (it will) threaten generations," Paterson said.

And that statement has triggered a showdown between the Governor and the NY State Legislature.

The governor says $3.2 billion in cuts must be enacted immediately. The cuts he’s proposed range from $500 million in agency spending to over $1 billion in already committed in aid to school districts and hospitals.

"I will mortgage my political career, but I will not mortgage the fate of the State of New York," Paterson said.

The governor has ordered lawmakers into special session Tuesday to close the budget gap. Right now there’s no agreement and he could twist some legislative arms by keeping them here until an agreement is reached. Of course, New York’s ultra-Liberal legislature’s immediate agenda includes bills to legalize gay marriage, toughen drunk-driving laws and reform the state's public authorities.

Hello?!

Anybody HOME???

Terrorism and Liberalism...Yet Another Connection....

2009-11-09T18:54:00.000-08:00

In the wake of the disclosure that the Fort Hood jihadist, Nidal Malik Hasan, attended a Virginia mosque at the same time as two of the 9/11 hijackers, emails have been confirmed of Major Nidal Hasan reaching out to al Qaida operatives overseas in the days preceding his Fort Hood terror attack.

Again, two things about this highlight the gross incompetence of this administration, the first is the way this administration clearly made sure that political correctness hampered the way the feds dealt with Major Hasan, compared to say, ho, Dave Koresh or randy Weaver, for instance.

The second is the way its mandated that the Military focus primarily on an imagined “anti-Muslim backlash.” In fact, that has been the focus so much so, that many Military members have reported being fearful of coming forward to report legitimately suspicious behavior BECAUSE of the suspicious acting person being Muslim!

How insane is THAT?!

But none of that should be all that surprising, considering how linked jihadist terrorism and American Liberalism really are.

As an example, I’ll call Exhibit A, a Seattle man, named Christopher John Monfort (pictured above), believed to be the man who pulled up next to a Seattle Police cruiser last Saturday (10-31-2009) and opened fire, killing one officer, Timothy Brenton and wounding another, Britt Sweeney.

Since that shooting, Seattle Police had been looking for the Datsun 210 coupe, which had driven by Officer Brenton’s and Officer Sweeney's patrol car at 9:46 p.m. Saturday while they were on a traffic stop. An image of the vehicle was captured by the cruiser's dash camera.

Twenty minutes later, while the officers were parked at 29th Avenue and East Yesler Way, a car drove alongside and unleashed a fusillade of rifle fire into the patrol car.

Brenton was killed instantly and Sweeney, who sensed danger and ducked, was grazed.

What makes Mr. Monfort a little more interesting is his left-wing lunacy and his penchant for misanthropic, anti-American violence a la Bill Ayers.

According to a Seattle Times report, early “Friday (11-06-09), Seattle and Tukwila police went to an apartment complex in the 13700 block of 56th Avenue South after receiving a tip about a car matching the description of the early 1980s Datsun 210 coupe seen near the site where Brenton was slain, said a source close to the investigation.

“Police found a Datsun, draped with a car cover. They waited until a man approached the vehicle, said Tukwila police spokesman Mike Murphy.

“King County sheriff's Sgt. John Urquhart said three detectives confronted the man in the complex's parking lot and asked to speak with him. The man ran away, bolting up an exterior staircase where he turned, pulled out a handgun and pointed it at the officers.

"For some reason, it didn't go off," said Urquhart.

“The man then turned and ran again, with the detectives in close pursuit.

"They caught up to him after a relatively short distance, whereupon this individual turned again, presented the gun and was shot by the detectives," Urquhart said.

“Police have since detained two other men, one at a bus stop near the apartment complex and another in Federal Way. The men may have ties to the wounded man and the apartment, a source said.”

It was also noted that Monfort had recently been laid off from his job as a security guard.

Yeah!...THAT’S the reason, not his sociopathic hatred for America and America’s criminal justice system...

But WAIT! Again, as they say, there’s even MORE! That same Seattle Times report notes that “Law-enforcement sources said Monfort also is suspected of the Oct. 22 bombing and arson of a Seattle maintenance yard, where three police cars and an RV used as a mobile precinct were damaged.

“Before Monfort was identified, police found distinct evidence that leads them to believe the same person was involved in that crime and the Brenton shooting, sources said.

“A note threatening to kill police officers was left at the bombing site, according to sources. One source described the note as containing a general threat against police officers.”

Last year, Monfort belonged to the McNair Scholars Program, part of the university's office of Minority Affairs and Diversity. The program aims to steep undergraduate students in sophisticated research, preparing them for graduate work.

Monfort provided this title for his project with the McNair program: “The Power of Citizenship Your Government Doesn't Want You to Know About: How to Change the Inequity of the Criminal Justice System Immediately, Through Active Citizen Nullification of Laws, As a Juror.”

"In an abstract of his project, Monfort said he planned to “illuminate and further” the scholarship of Paul Butler, a law professor at George Washington University. Butler is a proponent of jury nullification, a controversial principle whereby jurors feel free to disregard a judge's instructions and acquit a defendant no matter the strength of the evidence.

"Paul Butler has said, “It is the moral responsibility of black jurors to emancipate some guilty black outlaws,” Butler wrote in a 1995 Yale Law Journal article, adding: “My goal is the subversion of American criminal justice, at least as it now exists.”

So, there it is, this cop killer, Christopher John Monfort, was a hate-filled, left-wing radical out on a personal jihad against American law enforcement.

Terrorism and Liberalism – yet ANOTHER connection.

I’m going to chronicle as many such instances I can over the coming months, because this connection is all too real and all too threatening to the heart and soul of this nation.