Classically Liberal

Believing Weird Things

2009-11-20T08:53:00.004+01:00

If you want about 10 minutes of good, informative, entertainment here is Michael Shermer of the Skeptics Society. It's a great presentation and far more amusing than I expected. I've only met Michael socially and this video was the first time I've seen him in action. Good stuff. If you want his book Why People Believe Weird Things you can order it from Laissez Faire.

NOTE: Some people seem to have problems watching this. My FireFox browser works fine with the video here. But Safari seems to have some odd problems. With Safari I can not watch the video at this url, but I can watch the video if I go to the Laissez Faire Books link provided. The video is on the page where the book is promoted and this is where I got the video. So, if your browser doesn't allow you to see the video here, try the LFB page that is linked or get FireFox.I suspect the problem is not the browser so much as blogspot since the same browser does play the video at the LFB link above.

America's most authoritarian sheriff

2009-11-19T05:38:00.005+01:00

Sheriff Joe Arpaio, of Maricopa County, Arizona, likes to promote himself as America's "toughest" sheriff. If by tough, one means authoritarian, then that would be accurate. There are few sheriffs in the modern world with a similar contempt for the law and the constitution. Actually it is the law that he disrespects. The constitution is just completely off his radar entirely.

Because of the numerous complaints that Arpaio engages in racial profiling the Immigration thugs told Arpaio he was no longer allowed to act on their behalf. And when Immigration thinks you are in contempt of the law and the constitution that says a lot. To get around the ban Arpaio now uses the slightest excuse to stop anyone who looks too brown for liking. Then the individual, if suspected of being an undocumented immigrant is arrest for human trafficking. The law exists to criminalize individuals smuggling in undocumented workers. Arpaio argues that any such person has smuggled himself and is thus susceptible to his authority. The same logic, I would note, would justify the arrest of all individuals under the age of 18 for child molestation if they masturbate.

Recently one of Arpaio's underlings was in court when a suspect was being sentenced. He walks over to a table for the defense attorney and swipes a privileged document. His theft was caught on video. Officer Adam Stoddard pretends he has the right to steal documents from an attorney's desk in court by claiming that it had "suspicious words" on it. Of course, even if true, the only way to know that was to pull the paper from the pile and look at it in violation of the attorney's rights. And that would invalidate any information he gathered by the act.

The judge says the officer is in contempt of court. More importantly he has shown a contempt for the law and shouldn't be a police officer. Not so, says Sheriff Joe, with his usual contempt for law and justice. The judge told the officer he must make a public apology to the attorney for violating her rights and the privacy of her documents. I would have preferred legal charges.

Sheriff Joe went ballistic—he is the law as are his deputies and they need not follow the law. Arpaio started his counterattack by claiming that attorney has links with other attorneys who allegedly smuggled contraband to prisoners (whatever that means in Arpaioland). But having "links" is not the same thing as having committed a crime. This was just Arpaio trying to tarnish the reputation of someone who embarrassed him by catching his arrogant staff acting with the same contempt for the law that Arpaio exhibits.

King Arpaio has ordered his sheriff to refuse to apologize for his actions. Arpaio says: "My officer was doing his job, and I will not stand by allow him to be thrown to the wolves by the courts because they feel pressure from the media on this situation. I decide who holds press conferences and when they are held regarding this Sheriff's Office." Doing his job? Theft is now part of the job of the sheriff's department? (This is the same department that took a tank to delivery to arrest someone on a minor charge. They left the tank parked on a hill when it rolled backwards smashing into a car almost killing a woman and her child.)

If the officer doesn't apologize he is in contempt of court and can face jail time for it. Personally I think Arpaio ought to be sharing the cell with him. Dissect Arpaio's comment and you will see several distortions of the truth—usually called lies in moral circles. An apology for acting illegally is hardly "being thrown to the wolves." And the officer was caught at the time and held in contempt. The media didn't have time to put pressure on the judge. But Arpaio has never been concerned about facts.

One local attorney, Jason Lamm, said: "Never before has this community seen such a blatant violation of the attorney-client privilege." Arpaio's claim is that the sheriff was attempting "to protect the people inside the courtroom." From what? A piece of paper? Words? It's just more Arpaio bullshit.

Scoundrel defenders line up here. Please!

2009-11-18T12:47:00.004+01:00

One reason that authoritarianism continues to prosper in this country is the dangerous notion that bad laws, which ostensibly target some undesired group, are not a threat to those who do not fall within that group.

This is how liberty is destroyed. Rarely do governments pass legislation that clearly assaults the liberty of everyone at the same time—to accomplish that they first have to terrify the public over some imagined monster. While that does happen, witness the odious Patriot Act as a prime example, most liberty is whittled away by slivers, not by large chunks.

To whittle liberty down, the politicians must target some group that the majority of people are loath to defend. Once the new legislation is in place, the net it casts grows wider and wider with each passing day. By the time the law is a threat to the majority of people, it is firmly in place and there is usually an organized special interest group that benefits from it, which will lobby strenuously to keep it, if not to expand it even further.

The drug laws are a good example of this. Most Americans do not consider themselves “drug users,” as in users of drugs who violate the law. Frances Thompson is clearly one such person. She’s a church-going granny who was startled to find armed men attacking her home one day. They were drug warriors who were in the wrong place. As they were preparing to break down Thompson’s door, a neighbor saw them and told them an elderly woman lived there who was quite law abiding, not the drug dealer they claimed they were looking for. Police told the neighbor to mind their own business and attacked Thompson’s home anyway. She was lucky—she lived.

Kathryn Johnston was not so lucky. This woman, in her 90s, was too frightened to leave her home. Police concocted false reports of drug dealing from her home to get a search warrant. They started smashing down her door. The terrified old woman pulled out a gun in self-defense and started shooting. The police killed her. There were no drugs. There was no drug dealer. And all the “evidence” the police had presented to prove there was, was a lie. As we have shown here, this sort of killing of people who have nothing to do with drugs is not uncommon. The police have the power the kill and they just aren’t very careful about they use it.

We have documented numerous cases where laws that are passed, because the politicians say it will protect “the children” from sexual exploitation, are used to actually arrest children for mutually consenting sex with their peers. Kids who take nude photos of themselves get arrested and charged with manufacturing child pornography. The law has gone haywire on the issue.

Easily somewhere around half of all American adolescents could be arrested and convicted as sex offenders, not because they are rapists, but because they are engaged in the sort of sexual experimentation common to teens for all of recorded history.

But a lot of people aren’t teens, and don’t have kids, so they don’t give a fuck what happens. They can’t be the target, can they?

Consider the terror that Harry Berlin, described as “ 71 years old, frail, and, frankly, petrified” has to endure. Berlin moved into an apartment and suddenly found himself the victim of constant harassment and vandalism. Apparently the state of Nevada listed his address as being the home of a “sex offender.” These sex offender registries list the address as belonging to a man who had been arrested for having some child porn. But it wasn’t Berlin. No matter to the vigilantes the registries encourage.

The Las Vegas Sun reports:

“Now whenever the Web site gets TV attention, Berlin says, people come looking for Risdon. Maybe to rough him up. Or at least give him a good scare. Instead, they terrorize Berlin.

Depending on whom you ask, this is either a disturbing example of why the Web site should be taken down or an inevitable and easily remedied occurrence when dealing with sex offenders.

Berlin tried to get his address removed from the web site since no sex offender lived there. The Sun says his “complaint was suffocating in a bureaucratic morass.” The state told him to talk to the city, the city told him to talk to the state. Neither wanted to talk to him. So this elderly, innocent man is constantly victimized by vigilantes encouraged to find his apartment because the police are quite happy to hand out the address on-line.

The police are pretty ho-hum about it. They don’t care that innocent people get harassed—hell, they enjoy doing that when on duty, so why deny the public the same sort of entertainment. Sgt. Steve Rossi, who runs the Vegas program, says the police aren’t responsible. He claims that the sex offenders are supposed to report their current address or when they move. If they don’t do it, you can’t expect the police to worry about it. And he points out that site has a disclaimer telling people not to harass people at the addresses in question. You have got to be fucking kidding me! Any moron knows that a disclaimer like that will have no impact whatsoever on the people reading the registry.

Because the number of “crimes” that qualify one for the sex registry have grown like Topsy, the police say they can’t go out and actually check the data that they publish on-line. The city registry has a statement saying they can “not verify, warrant, vouch or confirm the accuracy of the data posted and makes no warranties whatsoever that the data is accurate or timely when posted by the related agency.” So, of what use is it? These disgusting registries were created because the politicians said the public “had a right” to accurate information on “dangerous sex offenders” (which now includes large numbers of non-dangerous individuals who got caught in badly written laws). But the registries are wrong. They contain bad information. They have even been known to list people as convicted sex offenders who were not.

Only when the press started sniffing around this one case did Harry Berlin get the police to actual remove his address from the list. But that’s just one error fixed. As the laws expand through the invention of new “sex crimes,” thousands and thousands of additional people are placed on the list. Tens of thousands move. Address changes get lost, neglected or typed in wrongly. And the numbers of innocent people living at addresses supposedly marked with the Scarlet O (for offender) grows.

Harry Berlin is lucky. He got out alive and he eventually got the police to correct the error. But people on those sex offender lists have been executed by vigilantes using the on-line information to find their victims. As errors accumulate on the lists it is only a matter of time before vigilantes kill the “wrong person.”

In the cases I know about, an older man was killed by a neighbor who saw the man’s name on the sex offender list. The killer said he had to do it to protect his children from a potential child rapist. The man’s offense had nothing to do with children. The neighbor didn’t realize that. A young man in Maine was executed at his front door, in front of his mother. His crime was that his girlfriend was slightly underage when they, both in their teens and of similar ages, had sex. The killer assumed this meant the young man was a child rapist.

Just because you aren’t a sex offender (which may just mean you were lucky, since the laws are so broad that I suspect half the country is guilty of one sex crime or another), doesn’t mean the sex offender laws won’t harm you. Harry Berlin was no offender yet he suffered for years. Kathryn Johnston is dead because of the drug laws, laws I suspect she would have approved of, and which she did not violate. No matter how “innocent” she was she is dead because of them.

H.L. Mencken warned us. He said: “The trouble with fighting for human freedom is that one spends most of one’s time defending scoundrels. For it is against scoundrels that oppressive laws are first aimed, and oppression must be stopped at the beginning if it is to be stopped at all.”

There are a lot of libertarians who, to placate the conservatives, don’t want to spend much time “defending scoundrels.” For P.R. purposes they think it best to avoid those issues. “After all, most Americans aren’t scoundrels, so why should we bother? Let’s stick with issues that bother everyone, like taxes, and avoid the contentious issues that get people upset.” So they avoid them. And the webs that the government spiders weaves just grows bigger and more numerous every day. Sure, some real cockroaches get stuck in the web, but a growing number of butterflies and Ladybugs get trapped as well. But the “moderate” libertarians keep quiet since they don’t want to be seen as defending cockroaches. And so it goes. Liberty is undermined more each day, and cowardly libertarians are often the accomplices of that process.

The big media finally notices.

2009-11-16T21:02:00.003+01:00

Almost a full month after this blog covered this story, CNN has finally noticed it and does an interview with Will Phillips, the 10-year-old who refused to stand for the pledge of allegiance because he said that there wasn't real "liberty and justice" for all. CNN does an interview with the boy, who is accompanied by his father, even though Will pretty much does all the talking. He's clearly a smart kid.

The unutterable secret torment of fundamentalism.

2009-11-16T02:26:00.005+01:00

There are flaws, in fanatical religion, which have been well known for centuries. Jesus referred to it in the religious leaders of his day when he said: “Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For ye are like unto whited sepulchers, which indeed appear beautiful outward, but are within full of dead men’s bones, and of all uncleanness.”

This moral hypocrisy was something that Jesus noted and condemned. Sinclair Lewis (1885-1951) wrote about fundamentalisms “whited sepulchers” in his novel Elmer Gantry (1927). Gantry, an unethical, womanizing alcoholic of a preacher, acts as the road manager for the faith-healing evangelist Sharon Falconer, a thinly disguised literary examination of Aimee Semple McPherson (1890-1944), the founder of the Foursquare Gospel Church, and Angelus Temple in Los Angeles.

McPherson, married several times, in violation of her own moral teaching, vanished one day while swimming at the beach. It was presumed she had drowned but at the same time of her disappearance a married employee of hers, Kenneth Ormiston, also vanished. Various witnesses claimed to have seen McPherson and Ormiston shacking up together at a resort. One month later McPherson showed up in Mexico, claimed she had been kidnapped. When she vanished she was wearing her bathing costume but when she was found in the desert she was wearing a dress from her ensemble along with a watch her mother had given her—items she didn’t have with her when she was allegedly kidnapped.

Long before Sinclair Lewis, the quintessential American writer, Nathaniel Hawthorne (1804-1864), tackled the whited sepulchers of fundamentalism in his novel, The Scarlet Letter (1850). Hester Prim is shunned and attacked by her fellow villagers because she has given birth out of wedlock. She is forced to wear the scarlet letter “A” on her clothing, for adultery. The villagers, including the local pastor, Arthur Dimmesdale, demand that Prim reveal the identity of her lover, which she refuses to do. The lover was Dimmesdale himself.

Hawthorne warned of the dangers of the conflict between the public image and the private self. He wrote of the conflict between a man’s religion and his personal inclinations. He said such men and women, “to their own unutterable torment, …go about among their fellow-creatures, looking pure as new-fallen snow, while their hearts are all speckled and spotted with iniquity of which they cannot rid themselves.”

Fundamentalists are taught that they must “claim their healing” from God. Whatever is wrong in their life they must claim, by faith, that God will “heal” them of their deficiency. To deny the “healing” is to deny God. And they must claim this healing constantly, to admit that no such “cure” is taking place is to doubt God and doubt will destroy one’s chances of healing. Self-deception, and by necessity the deception of others, is encouraged.

Then when one of them, especially a prominent member of their faith, is suddenly thrust reluctantly into full disclosure the church goes into collective mourning, lamenting the fact that they were being deceived. But it was a deceit that they actively solicited. Their outpouring of grief, anger and depression during such incidents is not really about the fact that a “lie” was detected, but that a truth was revealed.

This is precisely what we are seeing now among Religious conservatives. In the case of Carrie Prejean she voiced anti-gay sentiments and joined politically campaigns against marriage equality for gays. She presented herself to the world as a moral, Christian fundamentalist standing up for “traditional morality.” She was embraced entirely for her anti-gay views. But behind the mask that she wore was the truth. She did not live by the “traditional morality” that she publicly espoused. She was a “whited sepulcher.” She was quite willing to bed men on the first date with them. She was happy to film herself masturbating and send these sex videos out. She made at least 8 such tapes and one recipient says he got somewhere between 15 and 20 such tapes from her.

The Right immediately announced that Prejean was the “victim” of a conspiracy of liberals (which variety is left unsaid, but I assume progressive liberals, not classical liberals). But Prejean was only a victim of her own hypocrisy. The “liberal media” didn’t drug her and then force her into performing sexual activity on film. They weren’t operating the camera—Prejean was. Prejean was outed in the media for the same reason that Hawthorne wrote The Scarlet Letter and Lewis wrote Elmer Gantry.

The public is interested in the “whited sepulchers,” those religiously inclined folk who are one thing to the world and another thing in private. There is something dramatic about full disclosure. This was the sort of drama exemplified in the 1996 British film Secrets & Lies where Brenda Blethyn plays a white, working-class woman, Cynthia Purley, who is forced to face the black daughter she gave up for adoption. The entire drama of the film is about the illusions that people create to prevent others from discovering the truth. The drama itself compels interest.

The reason that the Carrie Prejean porn story has the legs that it does is simple: it’s good drama. It is a drama that was created because Prejean, in line with her fundamentalism, preached hard-core Biblical morality at others, but hid her own inability to follow that morality. A conflict existed between the public and private self. One pulled in one direction, the other in the opposite direction. And like any tectonic plate pushing in different directions, an earthquake is bound to happen. But it is an earthquake caused by the individual involved, not by the media or any “left-wing” conspiracy.

We have seen it all before. Be it the faked kidnapping and affair of Aimee Semple McPherson; or in the stories of Lewis and Hawthorne. But there have been other such cases as well. Evangelist Billy James Hargis, founder of American Christian College, who had seduced the young women, and men!, who came to his school. A fact I learned about from a girl I knew who attended his school. She told me about the situation before it went public.

There was Jim Bakker and his affair with Jessica Hahn; Jimmy Swaggart exposed Baker and the sordid affairs of Rev. Marvin Gorman, only to be caught up in two prostitution scandals afterward. Trinity Broadcasting Network founder, Paul Crouch paid off an employee who said he was forced into sex with the minister. Ted Haggard, the president of the National Association of Evangelicals was in a scandal with a gay prostitute. Just a few miles away another megachurch pastor, Paul Barnes, was in a similar scandal. Southern Baptist star Lonnie Latham was ousted when sexual propositions to a male police office led to his arrest.

Bishop Earl Paulk ran the megachurch, Chapel Hill Harvester Church, in Decatur, Georgia. Numerous women in the church eventually admitted that Paulk had affairs with them. Paulk’s nephew, Earl Paulk, took control of the church and then discovered through DNA tests that he was the son, not the nephew of Earl Paulk. Paulk had an affair with his own sister-in-law. Coy Privette, a Baptist preacher and Right-wing activist was felled by his dealings with prostitutes. Megachurch pastor Joe Barron was arrested for soliciting sex from underage girls. Rev Tony Alamo was arrested for sexual abuse and sexual abuse of children. Rev. Bob Gray ran one of the largest fundamentalist churches in America until he resigned and left the country amidst numerous sex abuse charges. He was spared conviction by dying. Rev. Jack Hyles once pastured the largest Baptist Church in the world. He was a man who a life-long relationship, outside his marriage, with his secretary. His son, and heir apparent, David Hyles, was dismissed from a church when it was revealed he was having simultaneous affairs with several women in the congregation. Around Hyles and his church were dozens of ministers all engaging in sexual abuse.

It is no coincidence that from Hawthorne’s novel to the scandals of today the hypocrisy of fundamentalists tends to revolve around sexual matters. For it is in the sexual realm that fundamentalism encourages dysfunctionality. The conflict between dogma and reality are so great that fundamentalism encourages the creation of sexual cripples. Just as Catholicism’s insistence on celibacy for priests has turned the priesthood into an unending source of scandal, fundamentalist theology on sex creates guilt-ridden, secretive hypocrites. Fundamentalism creates the whited sepulchers that Jesus condemned.

Photos: 1) Aimee Semple McPherson, 2) Carrie Prejean, 3) Jim Bakker after his arrest, 4) Jimmy Swaggart repenting of frequenting a prostitute, before his second scandal for the same thing.

The sad case of Prejean and American consrvatism.

2009-11-13T18:33:00.004+01:00

The Sentencing Law and Policy Blog has confirmed what this blog has said regarding Carrie Prejean being a self-admitted sex offender, guilty of violating child porn laws. They says "it appears that a high-profile public figure is now admitting that she has engaged in behavior that makes her technically guilty of a federal crime... which is punished through a five-year mandatory minimum federal prison term."

The law blog says, "I am confident that she could be technically subject to the five-year minimum... for distributing material involving the sexual exploitation of minors." That blog also makes a similar comment to what I've argued here: "I am not—repeat, I am not—urging that Carrie Prejean be subject to federal (or state) child porn prosecution or be facing any criminal charges at all. Rather I am just hoping to use this high-profile incident as a teaching moment to help make everyone aware of how broad federal child porn laws technically sweep."

Now, it does appear that Prejean is simply lying and that video(s) that she made were done when she was legally based the magic age of 18. By the way a taped interview with the ex "boyfriend" is actually quite revealing as to precisely how hypocritical Prejean is in regards to sex. As I've pointed out, she seems to hold the view that Biblical law regarding sexual morality is binding, but only on gay people. The man, to whom she sent her explicit sex tapes, was hardly a "boyfriend," not that that would justify her behavior biblically (which matters to her not to me).

He says that a friend of his knew Prejean and told her about him. She checked his picture out on Facebook and started emailing him. They talked some on the phone. Asked if he ever actually meet Prejean he said he meet her once, for four days, when flew to San Diego in Feb. 2007 to be with her. So apparently Prejean spent four days at a hotel with a man she only meet in person for the first time that day.

As to the videos the man says he is unsure which video the lawyers had at the settlement meeting with Prejean. He is unsure because she "sent me numerous tapes." To be more accurate he says "there were probably 15 to 20 videos that she sent." Asked if they were all "explicit videos" he said, "Yes, very much." There are porn studios that don't turn out 15 to 20 videos in a year. He says Prejean was 19 when he spent the four days with her and that she continued to send him porn tapes of herself for another two years, so this went on until rather recently.

The man was asked again if Prejean was over 18 when he met her in San Diego for their tryst. He said: "Oh year, I'm not crazy. I'm not going to do something stupid. I'm not going to hook-up with a girl that's underage." His use of the term "hook-up" implies that Prejean, in accordance with Christian morality (read sarcasm), was having sex with a man she meet only one time. The photos we posted showed her being very friendly with the man in question and allowing him to photograph her in a top and panties as well.

The man clarifies how he knows when the tapes were made. He said that Prejean used her cellphone to record her porn shots. She would call him and talk to him and then hang up and make the video and then send it to him. She would then call him again wanting him to tell her what he thought. As he put it: "She was basically wanting to get a reaction out of me. That's what she's all about, the ultimate reaction and attention. She wanted to hear about how great she looks."

He says that in the last few days he got a "call from Carrie basically screaming at me asking me what I had done this. At that point she asked me, 'Will you tell them I was 17." His response to her: "Hell no, I won't." Good for him, if he had lied on her behalf that could have opened himup to child porn charges as well.

Her ex "four night stand" says: "She's not the girl she portrays herself to be. I've actually never met someone that lied so much, to tell you the truth." Asked about Prejean's "stand on religion" he said: "She's using it to get to where she's at right now. ... She's just trying to sell to a different crowd right now. And I'm not buying it. A lot of people that know her don't buy it either."

Interesting and sad. If what this ex-fling of Prejean's says is accurate, and so far his story has checked out while Prejeans hasn't, then Carrie is really a rather pathetic and screwed-up individual. She craves attention and wants to engender reactions from others. If she's all about the reaction one has to ask if she hasn't staged everything from the start to get the maximum attention possible.

It would appear from the multiple videos of herself—that she made and distributed—that she was never into biblical morality at any point in time. She was using it.

This then calls into question the way the Religious Right and social conservatives have rallied to her. The Right immediately rallied behind Prejean as some virtuous, Christian merely because she expressed views against equality for gay people. Based on a few words that confirmed their own anti-gay attitudes they assumed she was worthy of embracing for their cause. Without any other information on her they made her a spokeswoman for their cause. She was put in commercials by the anti gay National Organization for Marriage (Inequality). Now their entire affiliation with her is turning into a humiliating experience for them.

Regnery published a book with Prejean's name on the cover, promoting her as a great advocate of traditional family values. Why? How was she a great advocate of family values? All she did was express an opinion against the equal rights for gay people—nothing more. But that was apparently enough for the Right. They claimed her as one of their own and as a great advocate of Christian morality. So we discover the great Christian moralists had a need to produce 15 to 20 porno tapes of herself and send them to a man she meet only once in her life. She hooked up with that man for four days in a hotel. Apparently no investigation was done as to whether Prejean was actually as "pro-family" and "moral" as she claimed. Her public attacks on gay people was all the Right needed to establish Prejean's credentials.

The Prejean story is not merely the story of a sad woman who has a need for being in the limelight, even if she has to destroy herself to do it. This is also a story about what is so seriously wrong with the contemporary conservative movement in America. Conservatives once again have egg on their face because they were so quick to claim Prejean as a great spokeswoman for their cause. Clearly Prejean is no intellectual. But the Right is no longer an intellectual movement. Prejean never showed herself to be a good advocate for any genuine conservative values of substance. She was not embraced because she espoused conservative values in any coherent way. Her credentials are based on one thing, and one thing only, that she went public attacking gays. That would seem to indicate that the contemporary Right has a very low threshold for membership. It apparently puts anti gay views ahead of everything else because those views, and those views alone, were sufficient for them to make Prejean a cause and give her a book contract.

Now that the whole sordid and sad truth about Prejean is coming out, it is the Right which has egg on its face. Regnery Publishing looks silly. They are still trying to recoup their investment by claiming that Prejean "Was Silenced By the Left For Her Beliefs." Silenced? If anyone wants to shut Prejean up today it has to be the Right. The more that Prejean appears in public the more the Left benefits. Regnery may call her "a strong, conservative woman" but considering how they publish anti-porn tirades, claiming porn is a Left-wing plot, how do they justify calling Prejean a conservative? If porn is left-wing, and Prejean made 15 to 20 porn videos, then how is Prejean conservative? Unfortunately the answer is clear. The modern Right is not inspired by the values of Goldwater or Reagan, but by the moral vision of backwater fundamentalists in some broken down revival tent. The Right is no longer interested in promoting a vision of a free society. What they are promoting is merely hatred for those they don't like.

The conservative movement today is motivated by what it hates, what it opposes and what it wants abolished. It stands for nothing, only against things. It is entirely negative in its viewpoint. And while there is no shortage of things to oppose, there is also no shortage of things to support. Yet there is hardly any mention of those things. Even when it claims to support things, such as family, it only does so as a new way of bashing others. While Prejean is a sad case, the state of contemporary conservatism is even sadder. They actually deserve each other.

Oh, what a tangled web we weave.

2009-11-12T22:52:00.005+01:00

Carrie Prejean doesn't have the brains that God gave bimbos. Her repeated lies to the media, the public, her publisher and just about everyone else, has painted her into a corner.

We now know that Prejean made an explicit porno tape which she sent to her boyfriend. She has publicly claimed she was underage when she made the tape and just a stupid teen. As this blog has pointed out, and so far no one else has, that means Prejean is guilty of the production and distribution of child pornography. By her own confessions she is a child pornographer and subject to conviction, imprisonment and being forced onto the odious sex offender registry.

Of course, since Prejean is a serial liar her claim may be entirely false. The ex boyfriend who received the tape said she is lying again. He says he was dating Prejean in 2007 and that Carrie made, and sent him very explicit porn tapes, during that period, when she was 20, not 17. He also says that Prejean called him and asked him to lie about the tape and tell people she was 17 when it was made. So, apparently Prejean was also encouraging others to lie as well.

Carrie doesn't want the tapes to see the light of day, and had previously denied they existed. Now she is trying to pretend she was 17 but, that puts her at risk of being prosecuted as a child pornographer. But, if she admits she was not underage, and a legal adult who liked to make porn then the tape can be distributed and it would ruin her ability to bamboozle naive fundamentalists to pay to tell them how awful the "liberals" and "gays" can be. Poor Carrie, has clearly painted herself into a corner.

Photos: The photos are from a weekend she spent in San Diego with a boyfriend (so much the Bible commandment on fornication). Apparently the only part of biblical sexual morality that Prejean wants enforced has to do with gays. Otherwise she appears pretty wild sexually.

A glimpse of the real Carrie Prejean

2009-11-12T22:19:00.003+01:00

Here is Prejean's odd behavior from the Larry King Show. She is trying to pimp the book she had someone write for her and when Kings asks her the reason she settled her suit, and made it clear it wasn't asking about the terms of her settlement, she accused him of being "inappropriate." King tried to clarify that he wasn't speaking about terms only her motivations, which normally would not be covered in a settlement. She refused to answer, mainly because it would mean discussing the porno tape she made. King them went on to a caller to ask a question and while the caller is talking we see Prejean trying to figure out how to remove her microphone as she appears to be taking instructions from someone off the set.

The executive director of the Miss California USA pageant, Keith Lewis, remarked that Prejeans antics there give the public "a glimpse of the real Carrie Prejean who lives in her own delusional world." He said:

"The childish behavior, her negative attitude, the sarcasm and condescending tone, the disrespect and continual lying she is demonstrating now is only a fraction of what we endured during her reign and after."

Carrie Prejean is a child pornographer.

2009-11-12T04:13:00.005+01:00

I am shocked. I just realized that Carrie Prejean, the pin-up girl (literally) of the Religious Righ,t is a self-confessed child pornographer!

By now it is well known that this moralistic, preachy busybody not only did raunchy pin-up photos but she also made a pornographic video tape of herself, all while she was a born-again Christian who wants to deny gay people rights because of "God's morality." Anyone know how to spell hypocrite? I doubt Carrie does.

I didn't follow the Prejean porn tape matter that closely. But, in one of the sites I read daily, there was a video of her being interviewed. She gave her typical weepy, "I'm a victim" speech and then she tried to justify her porn tape by "taking full responsibility for it" and mentioning she was 17-years-old when she made the tape for her boyfriend.

Let's ignore the fact that God's law, according to her, wouldn't allow her to be naked with a boyfriend at any age (only a husband) but what about the government's law? Under U.S. law any erotic video. of the nature that Prejean admits she made. is considered child pornography unless the performer is over the age of 18. By her own admission Prejean was under 18 years of age when she made the video.

This blog has covered the cases of numerous teens who have been arrested and convicted for child pornography for doing precisely what Prejean did. Those teens are forced to become registered sex offenders and face punishment for the rest of their lives. So, exactly why is Prejean exempt from the law that is imposed on all these other teens?

Common sense says she was not a child and the tape is not child porn. But the law doesn't rely on common sense, it relies on what politicians think they need to get reelected, not on rationality. Is Carrie Prejean exempt from the law? She admits she made the video. She admits she was under age when she did so. She admits it is pornographic. Legally she is an admitted child pornographer and, by law, ought to be on the sex offender registry as well.

But there are double standards. If she were just some oversexed high school boy taking a 3 second video of his girlfriend's breast, the prosecutors would be all over the case. She's a darling of the Religious Right. But, if the prosecutor did take her confession of being a child pornographer seriously, and did prosecute her according to the law would the Religious Right defend her? I would. But would they?

So far it appears no one, except this blogger, has noticed the fact that Prejean violated laws on child pornography. The women at The View, who were speaking to her when she made her confession, didn't seem shocked or horrifed and didn't think she was a child pornographer. The reason that no is noticing is because people are using common sense to consider the matter, not the legislation. Yet, others are selectively prosecuted under this law for doing things far less graphic than what Prejean admits doing. That Prejean's status as a sex offender is being ignored so far is an indication of exactly how out of sync our sex laws are with what the average person thinks. And it is the laws which need changing.

Photo: Carrie Prejean with her Bible, looking for a loophole.

He must be Prejean's brother.

2009-11-12T01:28:00.007+01:00

By now you must have heard the story of the idiotic Marine, Jasen Bruce, who attacked a Greek Orthodox priest who had stopped to ask him for directions. Bruce claimed, among other things, that the priest was an Arab terrorists who shouted "Allah Akbar," which he said, is "what they say before they blow you up."

The more I find out about this character the more I suspect he is Carrie Prejean's long-lost brother—who should have stayed lost. Bruce like Carrie, seems to be a bigot though he's not sure which bigotry he wants to indulge. He seems to be a liar and he appears to have as questionable a past as Prejean.

You may remember Prejean was the moralistic fundamentalist Christian who has repeatedly lied in public. While preaching antigay morality she herself was found to have posed for nude photos, photos which she had previously lied about. After she was caught lying she said those photos were her entire dive into the world of erotica. That too was lie. A video of Prejean masturbating has also turned up. That came out when she was doing a publicity law suit for her silly book published by Regnery (who I suspect is sorry they published this bott0m-feeder.) When shown the video Prejean first loudly denied that it was her. When the camera panned up to her face she immediately demanded they turn the video off and dropped her law suit. After some further denials she now admits it was her in the video and it was a mistake. Duh! But then Prejean is a master at mistakes. Her life seems to be one huge screw up after another, which she always tries to blame on others so she can paint herself as a victim.

It appears is the case of Jasen Bruce is similar. Let's start with the story of the priest. Alexios Marakis says he was visiting the US to perform a blessing and got lost. He drove into an apartment complex and saw Bruce. So he got out his car and walked over to Bruce to ask for directions. He says the hulking Marine had the trunk of his car open and grabbed a tire iron and started hitting the priest. The priest fled in terror and Bruce pursued him for several blocks beating the man along the way. When Bruce captured the priest he then called police to report he had a Muslim terrorist in custody.

But Bruce, like Prejean, can't keep his stories straight. He also has claimed that priest was trying to rob him. Considering the priest is a little guy, and the marine is a very big, muscular man, that doesn't make sense at all. And Bruce has claimed he was defending himself because during the mugging/terrorist attack, the priest was also coming on to him. The old "gay panic" defense is trotted out to justify beating up a priest.

Really, this doesn't make sense. Each of the claims seems to contradict the others. No wonder that Bruce's attorney had him stay silent at a press conference—advice that Prejean's attorneys failed to give her but should have.

According to the police, Bruce justified his attack on the priest by first claiming the man was trying to rob him, then claiming the man was a terrorist and then claiming the man "grabbed his genitals." Right! My suspicion is that Brue is a moron who just jumped to an unwarranted conclusion that all Islamic terrorists are bearded. He then assumed the Greek Orthodox priest was a terrorist. Then, because he is mentally challenged, he assumed he had to attack the priest and did so. However, as he realized that he fucked up he decided he needed a back-up story or two to justify his attack. So he started spewing those out with little regard to how they fit with each other. Thus we got the "priest as a robber" theory and the "priest wanted to molest me" theory along with the Islamic terrorist claim.

The only problem is that Mr. Bruce is trying all three stories at the same time. Maraksi says that he didn't even get a chance to speak to Bruce before the attack began. He says the marine attacked him the moment he saw him.

I suspect the story of the priest is closer to what happened. However you might think Bruce is no Carrie Prejean. Well, he did resort to stereotyping and antigay prejudice to justify his attack on the priest. And he does appear to be lying and concocting stories up along the way. But surely Bruce doesn't have the more titillating aspects of Prejean floating around in his background. Or does he?

It appears Jansen Bruce has spent some time disrobing before the cameras. He has that same, look-at-how-pretty-I-am look but really -I'm-dumb-as-a-house-plant expression that Prejean had as well. Since we know the Bruce has done disrobing. for a web site that caters to men who want to see other men showing off, we might wonder if there are any videos of Mr. Bruce that will make an appearance along the way as well—which could cause a problem for his military career.

Like Prejean it appears Mr. Bruce has shot himself in the foot. All he has to do is find Jesus along the way and he'll be a folk hero to the Religious Right. Anyone want to guess on how long it would take for a video to appear on the scene (assuming it hasn't already)?

Prejean, of course, artificially expanded her horizons with implants, apparently unhappy with the tits that Jesus gave her. Surely Mr. Bruce wouldn't use artificial methods to enhance his physical appearance. Or would he? According to his police booking, which I have looked at, Mr. Bruce is a sales manager at APS Pharmacy in Palm Harbor, Fl. He also wrote something he called "The Safe Way to Increase Testosterone" which he gave out to people. Since the Jasen Bruce who wrote that also claims to work in a pharmacy as a sales manager it seems to be the same guy. He was urging guys who wanted to boost their testosterone levels to contact the pharmacy which would help them do so.

Note that the drug he is promoting is considered a steroid, which might well explain Mr. Bruce's body, or might not. As a steroid one of the side effects would be mood swings—for instance, you might want to attack a priest with a tire iron, or you might be protecting yourself from a terroristic, gay mugger. But surely, Mr. Bruce doesn't have problems with rage, other than with Islamic Greek Orthodox, gay muggers, so just ignore the 2007 incident when he was accused of getting into a physical altercation with a tow truck operator. This one is going to be fun to watch.

Clarification: Nothing I say here should be construed to mean that I want steroid use illegal or that individuals don't have the right to pose for erotic photos. My point is that in Prejean's case she is a hypocrite and liar who selectively uses "biblical" morality for her own purposes. In the Bruce case the possible use of steroids would help explain his attack on the poor priest and his posing for erotic photos for male customers implies his claim that he was outraged because he claims the priest propositioned him is hard to accept. I don't think the priest propositioned him, he apparently doesn't speak enough English to proposition anyone. Mr. Bruce and Ms. Prejean are just very similar peas in a pod.

Is Catholicism a Force for Good: A debate

2009-11-11T10:55:00.003+01:00

This is an interesting debate and I will leave comments to a minimum. First, Catholic Archbishop john Onaiyekan pretty much ignores the topic under discussion. Next Christopher Hitchens rips into Catholicism and rips into it well and good. Next a Right-wing, exMP, Ann Widdecombe, comes on to try to defend Catholicism. I must confess she has the most grating, irritating voice I've heard in a long time. This woman could torture kittens merely by speaking. She pretty much ignores what Hitchens noted and points to minor incidents contrary to what Hitchens said. So while Hitchens speaks of centuries of church approved anti-Semitism, which helped create the Holocaust, Widdecombe ignores the millions killed and mentions a few thousand who Catholics helped saved. Fine, but add up the numbers. Widdecombe pretends that the attacks on children, by priests of her faith, were ignored by everyone. Not so. In fact when these cases were being investigated the Catholic church actually tried to hide the rapists and protect them from those attempting to stop the rapes. Finally, Stephen Fry makes his case in defense of the Enlightenment and in opposition to theology and he doesn't leave the Catholics much weasel room either. I'm biased but the quality of the debate was clearly on just one side. Enjoy it. The Catholic church deserves the debate. This is about one hour, five videos.

The audience was polled in advance and 678 people said the church was a force for good, prior to the debate while 1102 said it was not a force for good and 346 were undecided. Apparently I wasn't the only one who thought Hitchens and Fry mopped up the floor with the Catholic apologists. The vote afterwards was 1862 against the motion and 268 in favor. About two-thirds of those defending Catholicism abandoned that defense. For the record my grandmother, to whom I was very close, was a devout Catholic. So I'm not against Catholics per se, but very much opposed to Catholicism and the Church.

How deep is their hate.

2009-11-11T02:02:00.004+01:00

My experience, as a former Christian, is that no one can hate another person so thoroughly and nastily as a committed Christian. I am not saying that every Christian is that way, just that I'd be hard pressed to find anyone as hateful in the United States, who doesn't considered himself or herself to be a strong Christian. I am fairly confident that any survey asking people to rate their level of religiousity would show that as they became more fervent in their faith they also became more intolerant and bigoted.

Consider the actions of Catholics of late, by which I mean committed Catholics. Most American Catholics are not "committed" and are pretty decent people. The more in-tune with the church they are the less pleasant they are. We saw the Catholic sect pouring millions into Maine to take away marriage rights for gay couples there. Almost all the funds, to destroy marriage equality in Maine, came from outside the state and much of it was clearly handed over by the Catholic Church. I don't mean members of the church, but the church itself. Personally I think they should lose their tax exemption if they are going to pour millions into political campaigns. Other political bodies don't have the tax exemption that they have and they consume vast amounts of government resources.

Two recent incidents show the depth of hatred that strong Catholics are capable of feeling toward gay people.

Let us start with the Republican Governor of Rhode Island, Don Carcieri, a rather rabid Catholic. The state legislature passed a law to allow the surviving partner of a gay person the right to plan their partner's funeral. That is the entire piece of legislation—letting a gay person plan the funeral for the person he/she loved, who has died. Carcieri vetoed that legislation. His view is that gay people in relationships should NOT have the right to plan their partner's funeral.

Carcieri said that allowing this is part of a "disturbing trend" and that the voters of the state should have the right to make the decision. Understand what he is saying: if a same-sex couple have been together for decades, and one partner dies, the other partner is to be excluded by law from being able to plan the funeral simply because Catholic Carcieri thinks God hates homosexuals.

The law was passed when a gay man was unable to legally claim the body of his deceased partner. The body remained in state custody for weeks instead. These people hate gays so much that they won't let a gay man or woman plan their partner's funeral. The governor's veto will probably be overridden by the state legislature, thankfully. Exactly why should the right to plan a funeral for one's partner be determined by majority vote?

And for those conservatives pretending to be libertarians, who say this matter can be "privately" decided by contract, that simply was not the case. When Mark Goldberg tried to claim the body of his partner of 17 years so he could be cremated, according to his wishes, he was denied that right. "Gold said he tried to show the police and state medical examiner's office 'our wills, living wills, power of attorney and marriage certificate' from Connecticut, but 'no one was willing to see these documents." He was only allowed to handle the arrangements after several weeks and then after the state placed an ad in the paper seeking "next of kin" of the deceased, It took over a month's worth of bureaucratic fighting before he allowed to have the funeral for his partner. Imagine being forced to fight for a month just to have a funeral for your partner.

It is a fraud when these people say that they only want to "reserve" marriage to straight couples and do not wish to deny gay couples other rights. They wish to deny all rights to gays for the same reason the Nazis wanted to deny all rights to Jews. (Hating Jews was another thing the Catholic Church did so extremely well for centuries.)

Historically the Catholic Church has no right to preach about morality, having justified repressive regimes like Franco and Hitler, and having engaged in such monstrous practices as the Inquisition and the execution of heretics, "witches," and dissenters. Denied the power to actually kill people in recent decades the church instead has worked hard to help cover up for the bevy of child rapists that fill their priesthood. Of course, to divert attention from their own utterly corrupt and immoral view of the world they have focused on such "moral" issues as forbidden condoms to stop the spread of AIDS, and legislatively bashing gays.

Another example comes from Catholic Bishop Janusz Kaleta who has something to do with tourism for a city in Kazakhstan. The Bishop was asked about groups of gay tourists and their visits to the city and to the local churches. After saying it was important to encourage people from "all" walks of life to visit he explicitly indicated that gay people should not be included in any tours. He said, "such demonstrations are just not ethical." The person who was speaking to the Bishop, Juergen Steinmetz, assumed the Bishop misunderstood. He claified that these tourists were not conducting "demostrations" they were simple visitors to the city who wanted to see the sights. The Bishop replied that just being gay itself is a "provocation" to the church and an insult to the Vatican.

The Bishop said: "I consider if someone is homosexual, it is a provocation and an abuse of this place. Try to go to a mosque if you are not Muslim. It is an abuse of our building and an abuse of this place." Strange he is worried about "abuse" that exists merely from the presence of a gay person after the church has done so much to cover up real abuse of children by their own clergy.

This is how deeply the antigay hatred of the religionists goes. One Bishop of the church says that even gay people as tourists is offensive while an antigay Catholic, Republican Governor says that gay people shouldn't be allowed to plan their partner's burial without a public vote approving it.

No person's right should be subjected to majority approval. If Catholicism needed the approval of the majority to open a church, in the American South, it would never have opened a church. The rights of black people should be subjected to the votes of white majorities. The rights of Mormons should not be subjected to the vote of a Christian majority. Majorities simply ought not have the power to approve whether minorities are allowed equal rights before the law. The very idea that it should be this way is inherently authoritarian.

I find it particularly odd, or perhaps telling, that the two sects most vitriolic in their hatred of gays, the Mormons and the Catholics, have their own sexual secrets that they want so much to hide. The first was founded by anti-monogamy activists who had dozens of wives and the second group has actively worked to hide child rapists from the consequence of their actions. I suggest they are so vitriolic because they have such pasts, not in spite of them.

I don't think people ought to send their sons here.

2009-11-09T09:26:00.003+01:00

The Palisades Recreation Center has put out a flyer promoting an "After School Club" they are sponsoring for children. I am not sure that parents would want to send their sons to this club, which promises "to encourage your child to complete their after school studies in a neutering fun and safe environment." Sorry, but a neutering environment just doesn't sound very fun to me. And while a lot of woman might not wish to send their sons to such an "environment" quite a few wouldn't mind sending their husbands. Right, Hillary? To enlarge the flyer click on it.

Bailout promises, Mao's famine and bad incentives.

2009-11-08T06:14:00.007+01:00

I suspect a lot of people are shocked by the blatant falsification of statistics by various government bureaucrats, at different levels, which gives a pretense to the Obama administration to claim their stimulus package created, or saved, jobs. I'm not sure why people are surprised at all.

One of the problems with the bureaucratic system of management is that such self-reporting is often the criteria used to measure "success." The problem is that the incentives for the bureaucrats are such that they pushed to fudge the numbers, in whichever direction necessary, to please their superiors. In the bureaucratic system pleasing the overlords, is necessary for advancement. So it's best to tell them what they want to hear.

Equally important is that government agencies, which report successes for their programs, often get showered with additional funding. Additional funding means more conferences for the top bureaucrats, often at resorts with very nice beaches. It also means more funding for pay increases and benefits.

There are numerous reasons why it is "helpful" to distort the facts in a way pleasing to those who have power over you. Often the distortions are small, just an attempt to show something "positive," but as the distortions move up the bureaucratic ladder they accumulate and the distortions grow.

A prime example of this, and the disastrous consequences that can follow, is found in Jasper Becker's book Hungry Ghosts. Becker's book is about the great famine in China from 1958 to 1962, where it is now estimated that 30 million people starved to death. And bureaucratic incentives to distort information had a lot to do with it.

Mao was a moron, plain and simple. He believed that various Marxist principles could be used to produce bumper crops. Since the Maoists said that solidarity of the people made the people stronger, then the same applied to grains. Thus growing grains tightly packed together would make them stronger, not destroy crops. This was just one area where the Maoists tried to apply "scientific Marxism" to the physical laws of agriculture—applications that failed over and over.

So these experiments were dismal failures. But such failures are not enough to lead to a famine. Other factors come into play. One such factor was the fear of the dictator. Mao's ideas failed but no one wanted to tell him. Tyrants could easily confuse the message with the messenger. So the incentive was to lie.

Local bureaucrats, instead of admitting that crops had been reduced, decided to write reports claiming that crops had increased. Those reports went to the superiors. The superiors, not aware of how much of the report was bluster, combined these exaggerated reports together. And they, thinking the reports were accurate, saw no harm in making them look even better by increasing the crop yields. And so it went. As the "data" accumulated it appeared that scientific Marxism was a success in agriculture. The top echelon of Mao's China got reports that made them very happy.

Desperate for hard currency the Chinese officials decided to take advantage of their bumper crops and sell them outside China. So they confiscated a large section of what crops did exist for export. This meant that food was scarcer at the local level as the farms were depleted of their stock to fill the quotas for export. A year goes by and the next set of reports have to be prepared. Again no one wanted to be the first to prick the Maoist bubble. Nor did anyone want to report they had failed, not when everyone else was apparently so successful, as the reports clearly indicated. So once again they took the figures from the year before and added a bit to them. And the process repeated itself.

At the top levels of the government Communist officials received more data, carefully collected from across the country, indicating an even larger crop than the year before. So the quotas for export were increased.

More food was confiscated. But a problem arose. You can't confiscate food that doesn't exist. Authorities scoured the countryside and couldn't find the crops that supposedly existed. The conclusion they drew was a simple one: the farmers were greedy, counter-revolutionaries who had obviously hidden the bumper crops. They were attempting to sabotage the revolution. So the officials, convinced the farmers had hidden food somewhere confiscated all the food they could find—which was actually all the food there was. The farmers had no hidden stocks, the data was wrong. The cumulative effect of lots of small distortions produced a massive error which resulted in the deaths of millions.

We saw a similar sort of bureaucratic distortion when the Bush administration looked at the "reports" on weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. Intelligence agents, dealing with lots of unknowns or information that could be interpreted in various ways, tended to interpret the data with the wants of their superiors in mind. This tended to bias everything in one direction with no one wanting to be the odd man out. This was especially true with Bush officials who tended to be disciplined if they contradicted what the President wanted. (A humorous example of this process can be found in the film The Tailor of Panama.)

Can't the same thing be found in private industry as well? Yes, but to a much more limited degree. For instance I know a publication which faked its circulation figures, claiming numbers double the actual figures. Advertisers paid on the assumption that the number of responses would be higher than they actually were. The advertisers who could accurately measure the results tended to drop their ads. But some businesses had no method of determining results from their ads and they tended to stick around as advertisers where the others didn't.

The difference is in how results are measured. The private sector has a "bottom-line" which tells the superiors everything they need to know. If something is working it shows up in increased profits. If it isn't working it shows up in reduced profits or losses. (For a good exposition on the differences between profit management and bureaucratic management see Bureaucracy by von Mises.) The more a business is able to use the "bottom-line" the harder it is to fudge the reports according to the benefits that accrue to those making the reports.

Government tends to shun profit management and has no bottom-line. Attempts to quantify the data are distorted by the incentives of the system. The net result is that even well-meaning superiors find it difficult to make rational decisions because the information they use has been distorted by the system.

While Mao could be a tyrant I don't think the evidence indicates the starvation was intentional—as opposed to Stalin's planned starving of the kulaks in the Ukraine. Eventually the situation got so bad that someone told Mao the truth and the situation changed. However, Mao's moronic Marxism was sufficient to create the crisis and the bureaucratic system made the situation worse by distorting the facts. And Mao was clearly a willful killer who ran a system that murdered millions intentionally as well as unintentionally.

The key point is that such distortions are systemic in nature. They are built into the structure of the bureaucratic model of management. They are not determined by the motives of the bureaucrats per se. Good people, facing bad incentives, are still likely to screw up. Bad people, facing good incentives, are likely to do good things. The progressive Left errs by thinking intentions are critically important while incentives are a minor issue. Many of the errors of the socialist Left are derived from this one fallacy.

By the way, this exposes the errors conservatives make about the Left as well. They assume the bad results, inherent in the system, are the result of immoral or evil motives by the Left. Typically that is not the case. A second, similar error of the conservatives, is that they buy into the Left-wing assumption that motives matter. So the Right will claim that putting "moral" people, "Christians" or "conservatives" into the system will change things. It won't. In the past, before they were taken over by theocrats, the Republicans claimed that putting "businessmen" into office would give us business-like management. That wasn't possible. The problem is not personnel but incentives built into the system.

Obama's loaves and fishes: fraud or miracles?

2009-11-06T19:03:00.004+01:00

The Obama Adminstration is perpetrating an intentional fraud on the public. They are lying. Obama is pretending that his stimulus package is creating jobs—it can't create jobs. At best it can only redistribute them from productive sectors of the economy to unproductive sectors. At worst, it redistributes fewer jobs than it destroys.

It is hard to measure all the jobs destroyed by the stimulus package but it is easy to show that the administration has created a system that makes up figures to support a bad policy. Associated Press reported that, according to official statistic, stimulus saved 935 jobs at the Southwest Georgia Action Coucil "an impressive success story for the stimulus plan. Trouble is, only 508 people work there."

Associate Press reports that when they looked at "saved" jobs they found that the Feds were counting pay increases for bureaucrats as "saving" a job. So, a worthless, destructive, economic parasite is giving a pay rise and Obama pretends that "saved" a job. Actually the economy would benefit if those people were given pay cuts—or better yet, fired.

The Bergen County Community action Program got $213,000, almost all of which went to increase the pay of their employees. This was added into the Obama figures as 85 jobs saved.

Or take the pathetic math used by Myrtis Mulkey-Ndawula from another collection of bureaucrats at the Southwest Georgia Action Council. She says that she followed "the instruction we were given" by the Feds on how to calculate jobs saved. "She said she multiplied th3e 508 employees by 1.84—the percentage pay raise they received—and came up with 935 jobs saved." Actually that is pathetic math. The pay rise that was given was 1.84% per employee. Even if a pay rise should be counted as a job saved—which it isn't—the math she used was not 1.84% but 184%
Her conclusion is so far off that it illustrates bureuacratic innumeracy. No one this mathmatically inept should be running any agency, at any level.

The Council in question says that this was simply bad math and that "there was no effort made to deceive anyone." The correct figure should have been 9.35. Their math was only off 100 fold. Even, the correct math is deceptive as no jobs were saved, exisiting bureaucrats just got a pay increase and that is not hte same thing.

The New York Times reports that the Fayetteville National Cemetery, in Arkansas, spent $1047 in stimulus money to buy a lawn mower to cut grass. That one lawn mower is credited by the Feds with saving or creating 50 jobs. In comparison they report that Chyrsler, which received $52.9 million in stimulus bailout funds "claimed the money did not save a single job." Which is probably the case.

Even the Obama officials claim that half of all the jobs "created" or "saved" by the stimulus money was in the field of public education. "But some school districts said that they might not have actually laid off teachers without stimulus money." The Times reports that while Obama pretended that 90% of the "jobs" that stimulus was said to create, would be in the private sector, that the officials statistics shows that "well over half of the jobs claimed so far have been in the public sector."

And even the private jobs attributed to the stimulus boondoggle are clearly fake. "In one, a Kentucky shoe store reported that it had created nine jobs with an $890 order for work boots. In another, a $7960 contract for a 'Basketball System Replacement" in Ohio claimed three jobs."

Head Start in Wisconsin used the money they were given to increase the salary of their staff by 1.8%. This pay increase was listed as saving 113 jobs. The total they spent per "job created" was supposedly $160. A spokesman for the agency said: "We think the 113 jobs were preserved, but more importantly, the quality of teachers and Head Start child development staff was maintained." So pay rises given to the same people maintains their quality? Even if that is granted it there is no evidence it preserved a single job. The other thing is that this section of Head Start only deals with migrant workers.

I know the Obamatrons think he's the new messiah. So is this the Obama version of the alleged loaves and fishes miracle of Jesus? Obama takes $160 and gives it to a bureaucrate and magically creates an entire new job from it.

Exactly how many employees are there dealing with this relatively small number of workers? My research indicates there are about 6000 migrant workers in Wisconsin during any one year. So apparently, just this one division of one relatively small federal agency claims that it needs at least one employee per 53 people that it "helps." Even that is generous. According to this report there are about 5000 migrant workers in Wisconsin with about 1000 dependents.

Head Start is " a national program that promotes school readiness by enhancing the social and cognitive development of children through the provision of educational, health, nutritional, social and other services to enrolled children and families." This one section of Head Start has 113 employees allegedly helping the children of migrant workers. All the migrant workers in Wisconsin bring a total of 1000 dependents with them. And not all these dependents would be children in the age group that Head Start supposedly helps. At best this is one buureaucrat at Head Start per 10 individuals being helped.

The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reports that $7.3 million for a sanitary district projet is listed as creating or saving 100 jobs "even though the work won't start until this spring.... But that number is inflated by 95 jobs, Parkland Sanitary District treasurer Eric Shaffer admitted." Actually a series of errors took place there. The report was supposed to say 5. It got typed in as 50. And then the 50 jobs were counted twice. Even the 5 jobs are dubious.

If government takes a million dollars from the private sector jobs are contracted there as a result. To then redistribute that money to the state sector doesn't create "new" jobs. It just moves private, productive employment to unproductive, government employment. However, the Feds never count the jobs they destroy in their calculations. They pretend that the stimulus money didn't cost any jobs anywhere.

My view on this is not new. I've been saying for years that federal redistribution doesn't create new jobs. Instead, I have argued that at its best it redistributes them. But rarely do such projects work at their best. So the net result, I've argued, is to destroy jobs, not create jobs. And while Obama pretends his wasteful spending has saved or created some 600,000 jobs the most recent unemployment figures show that in October alone construction fire 62,000 workers, another 61,000 disappeared in manufacturing, retail lost 40,000 jobs and another 37,000 were destroyed in the leisure industry.

Unemployment was at 6.6% when Obama took office. After one year of his stimulus, job-creating programs, unemployment now stands at 10.2%. Of course, we also had a year worth of stimulation from George Bush prior to that. And, coincidentally perhaps, we have had 22 months of consecutive job losses in the United States.

If you want to understand the fraud of government "job creation" projects read Frederick Bastiat expose of the policy in his 160-year-old essay, "What is Seen and What is Not Seen."

Wishful thinking at its best.

2009-11-06T07:39:00.003+01:00

The recent off-year elections seemed to favor the Republicans. Of course, the Republicans immediately chimed in that this was approval by the American public for their policies.

Nope. Once again that is wishful thinking.

When Obama won fairly handily it was claimed that this was because Americans wanted a dose of of Big Government policies, as a cure for the Big Government polices of Georgie Boy. Wrong again.

Very few Americans are voting for anyone, or for anything. They are voting against the status quo.

Americans couldn't stomach Georgie, and with good reason, he was repulsive and dangerous. Because they were disgusted with him they fled the party that he represented. The Democrats want to believe it was because everyone is clamoring for socialized medicine, higher taxes, bigger deficits, and lots more regulations. But this was nothing more than scared boys whistling in the graveyard to pretend they aren't afraid. The whistle stops them from thinking about how scared they are and helps cover up any sounds that might send them off in terror. The Democrats whistled their tune to convince themselves that the public really, really, really does love them and wants more of their policies.

But Americans tend not to be masochists. They don't yearn the Democratic leash anymore than they want the Republican one.

The American electoral system is rigged from start to finish to make sure that a duopoly will continue to control the country. Each party stays in, screwing over the public in particular areas until the public, disgusted by them, tosses them out. Then the other party comes in and starts the process all over again.

The Democrats come in and screw people over with economic regulations galore. They make a lot of noise about civil liberties and war but they never really do anything to turn back Republican regulations they find repulsive. After the voters have stomached as much of this as they can, the Republicans get elected.

They come in and ignore the economic regulations of the Democrats and try to strip away as many civil liberties as possible. Remember when the Democrats started the federalizing of education by creating a Department of Education, during the reign of Jimmy Carter. The Republicans get elected on a platform of repealing the department. That was 30 years ago. It's still there. Even when the Republicans controlled the Presidency and both house of Congress they did nothing to repeal the measure.

The damn department was barely weeks old when Reagan got elected but nothing happened to repeal it. If anything the Republicans ended up using it to further their goals of trying to control the private lives of Americans by pushing "abstinence education."

At best the parties engage in token repeals of legislation passed by their opponents. But most the time they merely use the legislation for their own benefit. But the public gets screwed over.

Walking with Ghosts.

2009-11-06T00:17:00.003+01:00

I've been walking with ghosts today and my feet are sore.

Today I'm in the Loop, that section of downtown Chicago ringed by the elevated train that everyone here calls the L.

My paternal grandmother was born and died in Chicago. Every Christmas I would spend some visiting her. And she would take to me to the big Christmas party at Marshall Fields & Co. Fields was THE department store in Chicago and my grandmother worked there her entire life.

Sadly, like my grandmother, Fields is no longer alive. It was taken over by Macy's. But the grand Fields building still stands. So this afternoon I spent several hours trekking about the Loop, including a stop at Fields.

The grand Tiffany glass ceiling is still there. And much of the spectacular nature of Fields still survives. I rode the elevate up to the 7th floor, to the famous Walnut Room. As I exited the elevator I knew immediately that this was the place where my childhood Christmas parties were held. What particularly pleased me was that the massive Christmas tree was already up and decorated. I fear I was too early for it.

Standing there and looking across the room at the tree I remembered being in that room with my grandmother, standing under a similar tree. A wisp of my childhood came back to me. My eyes slightly misted up again thinking about those good times.

My grandmother also had another Fields tradition that she kept up her entire life—Frango mints. Every so often, while she was alive, this wrapped parcel would arrive wherever I happened to be. I immediately knew it contained Frango mints, even without unwrapping it. Just outside the Walnut Room is the place the Frango section. I now sit here with four pounds of chocolates, but several boxes are gifts that I will be mailing out shortly. One of the boxes is open and I'm letting one of the mints melt in my mouth as I type. I dread what this will do to my weight this week. A part of my life has come back to me, at least for today.

Time, I think, is our enemy. It robs us of our youth, our lusts, our loves, and eventually our lives. It even robs us of one the one thing it gives us—our memories. Memories fade. Standing inside Fields today I also realized how much of the past is gone forever. The people are gone. Even many of the people are gone. And what memories there are, are but faint impressios. They are not memories as much as silhouettes of memories.

For but a split second I saw myself, as a boy, with my grandmother standing across the room. There was the tree, there was a Santa Claus dispensing gifts, there was egg nog and food. But there are only faint impressions of all of them. The rest has faded into oblivion. All that is left of my grandmother is the memories that I, and my brothers, hold of her. But those diminish at a steady rate. Her death will be complete with our deaths, as the last memories of her will be gone as well.

Photo: the 2008 Christmas tree from the Walnut Room.

How conservatives undermine economic freedom.

2009-11-03T20:07:00.003+01:00

Previously I argued that advocates of social conservative views, by supporting liberty and depoliticized markets, are supporting a system that undermines the values they say they support. I have argued that what is called “liberal capitalism” is an engine for change and social experimentation as the profit system rewards entrepreneurs who ignore the status quo and find unmet needs or wants from consumers. Bluntly put, there is so much porn on the Internet because people have figured out how to make money from it.

The ties between economic freedom and social freedom are intricate and complex. Economic freedom encourages social freedom and when you try to destroy social freedom the only way you may do so is to destroy economic freedom. Conservatives fail to understand that—not that this is the only thing they fail to understand.

Consider their pathetic attempts to ban “sinful” substances or items, like drugs or porn. First, what is being banned is the manufacture, production, distribution and sale of a product between a willing seller and a willing buyer. They wish to control the marketplace because it produces goods they don’t care for. Second, they banning the ownership of a piece of property. So they are undermining a property right at the same time they are destroying a market transaction.

Finally, consider what is required to enforce such bans. A few years ago I was in a debate with the leader of a Christian, conservative, pro-censorship lobby. The man was having a rant about how the State had to step in and make it a crime for individuals to possess erotic magazines. I pointed out that there were literally millions and millions of copies of these magazines. He said they should all be made illegal. I noted that the magazines were already in the hands of the public. He said that individuals who owned them would be given the option of destroying them or go to jail.

Note how quickly he was willing to fill the jails with people who hadn’t hurt anyone. I noted that such a campaign costs billions in law enforcement, jails, courts, public defenders, prosecutors, etc. I asked my opponent exactly how much money he was willing to spend to enforce his moral views on others. His response was to the point: “Whatever it takes, whatever it takes.” My reply was just as short: “Of course you are, because it’s not your money you’re spending.”

Even if we ignore the cost to individual liberty in our calculation we can’t ignore the economic costs of social conservative legislation. Conservatives don’t seem to mind when non-violent individuals are jailed for smoking pot, even if they have never hurt another person. But the cost of that imprisonment comes out to billions of dollars per year. Those billions are confiscated from the productive sectors of the economy. People are taxed to fund such crusades. The money they pay in taxes is taken from them, as is the freedom to spend that money in ways beneficial to their own family.

Conservatives literally make life harder for the working families of America. They strip them of some of their wealth. They make it harder for them to feed their children, or find a good school to educate them. They force them to forgo spending that would benefit them so that the conservatives can arrest pot smokers. And they want to make it crime to own erotica, something that would cost billions more.

Consider how “to protect the children” the political classes pushed through legislation on sexting. A teen who takes an erotic photo of himself or herself is guilty of child pornography. A survey which I previously mentioned shows that about one out of four teens in America has done this and about half have seen the photos. That means that about half the teens in America are legally qualified for the sex offender registries. Just be glad we don’t get all the law enforcement that the politicians want us to have—otherwise about half our young people would be in jail or on parole as sex offenders. (That is for that one crime alone. Add all the other sex regulations in and the numbers are probably much higher. Any more “protection” from the State and there wouldn’t be any teens left outside the prisons to protect.)

These sorts of crusades can’t be limited to the “guilty” either. Consider how the Drug Warriors constantly fuck up and raid the wrong house. Consider how many innocent people have been shot to death by Drug Warriors who, in their zeal to go out and kill someone, attacked the wrong house and murdered the wrong person. Surely a government program that murders innocent people is worthy of some second thoughts by the Right? Drugs can sometimes kill, but in the rare cases that they do so, they kill people who decide to take them. The War on Drugs kills more indiscriminately. Drugs can’t harm you unless you choose to take them. The War on Drugs can kill you.

Look at the Right-wing campaign on illegal immigrants for another example How is this fought? They pass laws forcing private businesses to seek ID from all employees. The conservatives are basically pushing through a series of laws that make national ID necessary for everything. You must have government issued ID to open a bank account, to get a job, even to rent housing in some places. And the business that neglects to follow the regulations can be fined or closed down. Conservatives have pushed a series of Big Brother regulations that control private industry all because of their obsessive hatred for immigrants.

The costs for these laws run into the billions. Everyone is forced to pay those costs through higher taxes and higher prices. Because the Right has forced ID requirements on daily life, to stop the immigrants, they have created a huge underground market for stolen ID. Much of the Identity theft problem we face today is the direct result of stupid legislation from social conservatives meant to stop immigrants. Any economic analysis would tell you that if you require ID for daily living, and you deny that ID to millions of people, you will create a huge market in stolen IDs. That is simple economics which conservatives pretend to understand. If they do, that makes it even worse for them since you could then argue the damage they inflict on innocent people was foreseeable.

I try to use government ID as little as possible. Other than my passport I have no US issued ID. Now the ID craze is permeating everything. I tried to adopt a cat from an animal shelter but they refused to let me do so unless I had US issued ID showing my home address. So the poor cat was left without a home. I couldn’t open a bank account. And even one of the major video rental shops refused to let me rent DVDs because I didn’t have a US issued ID, having only a foreign drivers license. A second chain, however, did take that ID. Checking into hotels requires ID, even if you are paying cash. This paranoia about illegals permeates our society so that more and more things require ID. That means we each find life slightly more difficult. It increases the incentives for ID theft. And with everyone wanting a copy of your ID it is easier now to steal ID than ever before. You literally have millions of places where ID information is being stored and where it can be stolen.

Who actually benefits from that? It hasn’t stopped illegal immigration. It just made ID theft a national problem. It adds huge costs to the private sector, inconveniences every American, and can cause huge headaches for those who had their ID stolen. The only ones who benefit are government agencies trying to track what private individuals do. There are now more paper trails with which they can spy on the public.

The point is that conservative social crusades destroy individual freedom. Of course, conservatives don’t care about those kinds of freedom. They deny the validity of social freedom and only love economic freedom. Yet they must undermine economic freedom in order to fund their moral crusades. The great irony in all this is conservatives constantly prattle about individual freedom even while they are working so hard to destroy it. Conservatives are NOT opponents of Big Government. They merely want a different kind of emphasis for the omnipotent state and their actual voting records and history proves it. Socialists of the soul, which is what conservatives are, still yearn for Big Brother and all he entails—they just want him stifling liberty in ways different from what the Left wants.

Honor killing in Arizona & Let the baby die.

2009-11-03T08:29:00.004+01:00

There are two stories that caught my attention and both are worthy of mention.

The first is the sad story of Noor Almaleki who immigrated to the United States with her Muslim family from Iraq. Not long ago the father took Noor to Iraq for an arranged marriage, one which Noor rejected. She returned to the Phoenix, Arizona area and left her family and moved in with her boyfriend.

Her father, Faleh Almaleki, felt his daughter's actions brought dishonor on the family and in accordance with his "traditional family values" and his "religious convictions" used his car to run his daughter down when she was walking in a parking lot. She was with her boyfriend's mother who was also seriously injured in the attack. Noor died.

The father then fled to Mexico where he caught a plane to London. British authorities apprehended him when he landed and sent him back to the United States where he is now in custody. The brother, Peter-Ali Almaleki said he was sorry his sister suffered seemingly tried to justified the execution by saying: "One thing to one culture doesn't make sense to another culture." No, it may not. But murder is murder and any culture that condones murder is barbaric and unworthy of survival.

Yes, traditional family values and religion can be used to do awful things to people. Oddly Americans can understand that when the evil is perpetrated by Muslims. Tomorrow Christian voters will go to the polls in the hopes of stripping the equal rights of gay people away. They do so in support of traditional family fvalues and their religious beliefs. The principle is the same, only the degree is different.

Let the baby die?

A child is born with a serious neuromuscular condition. It is one year old and has been in hospital since birth. The child can see,hear and respond to his parents. He can play with toys but can't breath on his own. The insurer tells the parents that the plug has to be pulled and the baby should be left to die.

Ask yourself if this is an example of the evils of private medical care and private insurance schemes? Isn't this sort of case precisely the reason that we are told that state medical care is necessary and compassionate. With the state behind the care, and with universal coverage, then infants like this child won't be left to die. So we are told.

The problem is that the infant is not American but British, and the insurer is the socialized medical system in England. Doctors for the National Health Service have decided that the quality of life for the infant is not good enough to warrant living. They believe that medical care ought to be removed and the child left to die. The boy's father is going to court to try and stop this.

It appears that life support has been withdrawn from children, without parental consent, when brain damage existed. But no such damage is present in this case. A loss in court could substantially change the powers that physicians have over life and death in the British national health system.

Photo: Noor Almaleki.

Naked Pumpkinhead joggers are sex offenders say police.

2009-11-02T20:52:00.002+01:00

This video depicts a rather odd Halloween activity in Boulder, Colorado. It is the annual Naked Pumpkinhead Run where naked joggers put a pumpkin on their head and run through the streets. What you will see above is last year's Run. This year it didn't happen. Apparently this silly prank is not consider a "sex crime" by the local police and anyone caught in this activity will be arrested as dangerous sex offenders. Anyone still think those sex offender registries actually mean anything? According to the Wall Street Journal the police chief has decided to crack down on this horrible crime.

So he intends to stop it.

He will station more than 40 officers on the traditional four-block route tonight, with two SWAT teams patrolling nearby. All have orders to arrest gourd-topped streakers as sex offenders.

Last year the police also decided to act but only ticketed runners and most charges were later dropped or reduced to disorderly conduct. This year the police chief decided that the runners were actually dangerous sex offenders who had to be apprehended. According to the report the entire city council and the mayor all disagree with the actions of the police. But since when do elected officials make the rules? In the new America the police make the rules. What do they call that again?

Also consider that nudity per se is not actually illegal in Boulder. The Journal writes, "the city has had a long, proud history of nudity." So the police, who now run the town apparently, decided that the run amounts to indecent exposure—once again the idea that the human body is indecent, a very sick concept if you think about it, has reared its very ugly head. That laws states that it is a crime to expose one's genitals in circumstance "likely to caused affront or alarm." Please note that only the genitals can be exposed in such a manner. Quite honestly I suggest more fists have been displayed in a way that causes alarm than genitals but waving a fist in public is not a crime.

The absurdity of the police threat is that they know this run does not cause "affront or alarm." In fact, it is held late at night, after children have gone to bed. And the streets line up with people there with the purpose of watching the run. Clearly the throngs of willing viewers are neither alarmed or affronted.

The Journal also reports: "Those convicted of indecent exposure rarely get jail time, but they must register as sex offenders, just as rapists do. Which seems a bit excessive to Boulder Country District Attorney Stan Garnett."

Remember that these Pumpkinhead joggers would be registered sex offenders. They would be listed in the registry with their photos and their home addresses listed. They would be restricted on where they could live. They would be forbidden to have certain jobs. They would be required to register with the police and forbidden to engage in Halloween activities in the future—due to allegedly being a threat to children.

Three people, wearing shorts did run on Halloween night. Police, couldn't see what was happening for sure and that prompted "officers to descend on the area." With SWAT teams on the ready to arrest joggers, and hell, maybe shoot a few for sport, the police were ready. They also simply closed parking garages so people had no where to park and couldn't attend the party. Police even were stationed on rooftops to keep an eye out for Naked Pumpkinheads.

Remember that these joggers would have been listed for indecent exposure. They would have been listed int he same category as a flasher masturbating in front of a group of shoppers. When you read the "offense" in the registry the wording is always kept vague and general so readers DO NOT KNOW the actual circumstances, even if they think they do. In one case a man who had been listed as an offender for being too aggressive with an adult woman was murdered by a neighbor. The neighbor said he had to do kill the man since he was on the registry that meant the man was a threat to the children in the neighborhood. In Maine, a teen who had consenting sex with his girlfriend, was put on the registry. He was later executed on his doorstep by a vigilante who pulled his name and address off the web site for sex offenders.

Just this week I read a story in my local paper of a man who was arrested and found guilty of sexually molesting a boy. What caught my attention was that the offense was vaguely listed and it said that the "crime" could have taken place in 1974. Based on the man's age that would have made him 12-years-old at the time. Decades ago, as a child himself, he "molested" another kid and now will be listed on the sex registry with a current photo. We don't know the circumstances of the offense because, as usual, the facts are hidden from the public. But when people see the photo they will see a guy in his late 40s, and read he molested a child. Few will know he was child and none will know the circumstances.

Why do people think this registries actually provide useful information?

A video worth watching.

2009-11-02T11:40:00.000+01:00

At least they can be entertaining.

2009-11-02T04:15:00.003+01:00

One thing you can say about fundamentalist Christians is that if they don't scare the beejesus out of you they will tickle your funny bone with their antics. Of course, they are dead serious about their nuttiness. They really believe it. Consider the post from Charisma magazine that Pat Robertson's web site reprinted concerning Halloween.

According to the article, which got some publicity that Robertson didn't want so he deleted it with no comment, there is a "demonic godhead" made up of the Luciferian Spirit, the Antichrist Spirit and the Spirit of Belial. (I should note that as far as I know this sort of theory is not actually in the Bible. The article warns Christians about Halloween because there are "time-released curses" that are loosed to enable "demonic activity" "to ensnare souls."

They also claim that "most the candy sold during this season has been dedicated and prayed over by witches." Those little devils at Nestle, pulling a trick like that.

The article also claims that bonfires are demonic tradition and that when schools have bonfires they are participating in "pagan, occult rituals." The minister who wrote the article claims that she has "prayed for witches who are addicted to drinking blood and howling at the moon." I can imagine that when she's around there is a lot of howling at the moon. But I'm not sure it is blood-drinking witches who have gone loony.

Crazy Pat's website also claimed that during Halloween there are secret activities that go on. (Don't you love how the crazies always talk about "secrets" that these morons somehow have figured out but the rest of the world doesn't know about -- the conspiracists make similar claims about the secret and their special knowledge of the conspiracy.) According to the article these activities include:

• Sex with demons
• Orgies between animals and humans
• Animal and human sacrifices
• Sacrificing babies to shed innocent blood
• Rape and molestation of adults, children and babies
• Revel nights
• Conjuring of demons and casting of spells
• Release of "time-released" curses against the innocent and the ignorant.

Lucky for you the article promises that if you have opened the door to the evil spirits you can call Crazy Pat's prayer line and speak with "a CBN Prayer Counselor." Actually what these people need, on both ends of the phone, is to talk to a good psychiatrist.

The funniest incident I remember from Crazy Pat was when he was predicting massive hurricanes to hit the US that particular year. He went on and on about the damage these would do and how God had personally warned him about them. That year the US didn't have a single hurricane. Actually Pat shouldn't feel too made, the global warming modelers were making the same predictions that year and they weren't any closer to the mark.

Note: The provider here links to a cached version of the article as the originally has vanished from Pat's website—maybe the Devil took it down.

The lunatics are out: Happy Halloween

2009-10-30T05:24:00.003+01:00

The Amazing Grace Baptist Church has organized a good old fashioned Christian tradition for Halloween: their annual "Halloween Book Burning." But don't expect to go and roast marshmallows, it is only for church members and those with personal invitations from the crazy pastor.

They want to burn "ungodly" books and their list is a long one, including most translations of the Bible, which they call "Satan's bibles." In there view the only legitimate Bible is the King James Version. Apparently God has only one correct version of his word and he needed a gay British monarch to arrange it for him.

The church also will be burning "Satan's music" which includes the following: "country, rap, rock, pop, heavy metal, western, soft and easy, southern gospel, contemporary Christian, jazz, soul, oldies but goldies, etc." That "etc." category sound interesting.

Sadly, the secularists, humanists, liberals and atheists are preventing a good old fashioned heretic burning. So they will have to limit their fun time to the burning of books and music. As compensation for such a restriction on their "religious freedom" they are promising "fried chicken, and all the sides."

You just know this good ol' boy is yearning to burn a sinner.

Libertarians at an all time high and I don't mean drugs.

2009-10-28T05:25:00.003+01:00

David Boaz, at the Cato Institute, has made it a hobby to keep track of the opinion polls and what they reveal about libertarian sentiments. One problem in doing this is that you can't simply ask people if they are libertarians since many people don't know the term, and don't know what it means if they do know the term.

But Gallup has asked two questions to help determine political ideology from respondents. Boaz lists the two questions as:

Some people think the government is trying to do too many things that should be left to individuals and businesses. Others think that government should do more to solve our country’s problems. Which comes closer to your own view?

Some people think the government should promote traditional values in our society. Others think the government should not favor any particular set of values. Which comes closer to your own view.

A libertarian would say that the government is doing too much in the economy and would say that government should not be int he business of promoting "traditional values." Combine the percentages of people taking both positions and you have a rough idea of how many people are inclined toward libertarianism—whether they know it or not. Here are the results of a yearly poll since 2000. And the trend is upward. Almost one in four Americans is inclined toward liberty.

Finally, the real motivation comes out.

2009-10-27T04:55:00.003+01:00

Most people have heard the story of Eric Williamson, the man arrested for being naked in his own house. I hesitated on blogging about the case because I felt information was missing. In addition the story was changing fairly quickly.

First, we were told the woman had been cutting across private property and saw the man inside the house naked. She called police who came rushing down in force. When there were questions about the woman being on private property and not on public property the story evolved. Now she claimed to have seen the man twice, once while cutting across the property where he lived and a second time in front of his house on the sidewalk. I found that story change a bit convenient.

I assumed that this second claim on the woman's part would cause the police to reconsider the arrest. Instead they redoubled their efforts and acted in ways I thought highly improper. The police distributed a leaflet basically begging other people to file charges against the man by claiming they too had seen him naked. It is one thing if others say this happened repeatedly but when the police solicit complaints they are, whether wittingly or not, soliciting people to file false accusations. There are plenty of people who want their 15 minutes of fame and wouldn't mind falsely accusing another person to do so.

It seemed odd to me that the police seemed to have so much invested in this case. The easiest thing to do would have been to say that all complaints have to be investigated and leave it at that. But the police were actively trying to get other people to make charges as well. I wanted to know why. Now the Washington Post has revealed the reason:

As officers tell it, the 45-year-old woman, the wife of a Fairfax police officer, was walking her son to school about 8:40 a.m. along a well-traveled path between public tennis courts and the house where Williamson had been living for three months when a noise drew her attention to a side door.

Now their extraordinary interest in proving the man's guilt is clear. The woman is married to a police officer and the boys in blue will always rally around one of their own, no matter whether their own is wrong or not. It is just the same crap we see from cops repeatedly, where they will lie and fake evidence to support one of their own, even if one of their own is a criminal. I'm not saying the woman is a criminal but she was trespassing on private property and she saw a naked man because of it. Get over it.

Ah, but what about her child. Actually it was her son and I suggest the boy has seen a penis before. The man didn't have anything the boy lacked. And the description of the incident that has been given indicates the man was not a flasher. Exhibitionists usually don't operate from inside their own homes, they prefer to ambush people. Of course, there are exceptions. Exhibitionists also do this because it is sexually stimulating to them. All the descriptions of the incident lead one to conclude this man was not stimulated in any way. Frequently such incidents are combined with masturbation. The exhibitionists prefers to shock a viewer and get them to watch him orgasm. Again this didn't happen either. The man was in his kitchen and wasn't aroused and wasn't masturbating.

Exhibitionism, like most paraphilias, is often planned in advance. The expectation of the incident adds to the excitement for the exhibitionist. They will place themselves in such a manner as to "ambush" an unsuspecting victim (usually a man showing himself to a woman). So they will go someplace where victims are likely to be found. But could this man know that a woman was going to cut across his property that morning?

The evidence against him is very circumstantial indeed. And the incident doesn't seem to fit the pattern for exhibitionists. Of course, it is possible that the he did it on purpose, didn't find the experience arousing (but does it anyway for some other reason) and was willing to do it in a manner where he was sure to get caught. Most exhibitionists will not use their home as their base of operations for the "show" they put on. They don't want to get arrested, just be seen. So typically they will hang out away from their home or be sitting in a car so they can make a speedy get-away. To me everything about the case still says he was probably doing precisely what he said he was doing: making coffee in the morning, in his own kitchen, without getting dressed.

Once again the American pre-occupation with, and fear of, nudity is astounding. Should plain nudity alone be shocking? It was certainly common in the parks of Germany, in full public display of everyone. Beaches in France were the same way. I remember a hotel in Paris that overlooked a public pool where the women swam topless. The hotel staff said that no one, except Americans, found this offensive --- which is why they said Americans were the only ones who sat looking out their windows all the time.

Much of the law on this topic assumes that nudity per se is obscene. What a strange position to take over the human body. The truth is, most nude humans are totally uninteresting. A rare few have the bodies that attract attention and, sadly, they are the ones who tend to stay clothed the most. I've walked down the street and seen naked people through their windows. I neither slowed down, stopped, or stared. It was a glimpse and not particularly shocking or upsetting. Why should it be?

I certainly can understand the question of whether sexual activity in public is acceptable. But plain nudity is rather boring and I don't see why Americans have to make more of it than is warranted. You'd think these people thought we were born with diapers on. Outside of the Islamic world the United States is still pretty unique in this rather bizarre and contradictory view regarding nudity: it is obscene and disgusting yet people are fascinated by it. Well it is neither obscene nor disgusting and, to be quite honest, not that fascinating.

Photo: this rather boring photo is a satellite image of the Tiergarten park in Berlin. Those dots on the ground are naked people. Horrified?