Hope, Change, and Murdering American Citizens

I don't think this is what the Obamatrons had in mind. And I'm not sure which is more appalling. The news that Barack Obama has just decided to start killing American citizens without granting them the benefit of an arrest, a trial, or a conviction, or the fact that writers at National Review are actually supporting his dictate:

The Obama administration has authorized operations to capture or kill a U.S.-born Muslim cleric based in Yemen, who is described by a key lawmaker as Americas's top terrorist threat, officials said on Tuesday. The decision to add Anwar al-Awlaki, of al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, to the target list followed a National Security Council review prompted by his status as a U.S. citizen.

Officials said Awlaki directly threatened the United States. "Awlaki is a proven threat," said a U.S. official, speaking on condition of anonymity. "He's being targeted."

Rep. Jane Harman, chairwoman of the House of Representatives Homeland Security Subcommittee on Intelligence, described Awlaki as "probably the person, the terrorist, who would be terrorist No. 1 in terms of threat against us. He is very much in the sights of the Yemenis, with us helping them," said Harman, who recently visited Yemen to meet with U.S. and Yemeni officials. She told Reuters that Awlaki's U.S. citizenship made going after him "certainly complicated."

To his credit, Kevin D. Williamson is among the sane "conservatives" left at NRO:

I hate to play the squish, but am I the only one who is just a little bit queasy over the fact that the president of the United States is authorizing the assassination of American citizens? Andy writes that this is "obviously the right call." I might be persuaded that this is, in fact, the right call. But obviously? No hesitation there? It seems to me that the fact of U.S. citizenship ought to be a bright line on the political map.

Surely there has to be some operational constraint on the executive when it comes to the killing of U.S. citizens. It is not impossible to imagine a president who, for instance, sincerely believes that Andy McCarthy is undermining the Justice Department's ability to prosecute the war on terror on the legal front. A government that can kill its citizens can shut them up, no? I ask this not as a legal question, but as a moral and political question: How is it that a government that can assassinate Citizen Awlaki is unable to censor Citizen McCarthy, or drop him in an oubliette? Practically every journalist of any consequence in Washington has illegally handled a piece of classified information. Can the president have them assassinated in the name of national security? Under the Awlaki standard, why not?

Odious as Awlaki is, this seems to me to be setting an awful and reckless precedent. Consider how "interstate commerce" has been redefined over time to cover that which is neither interstate nor commerce, for the sake of political expediency. It is easy to imagine "national security" being treated the same way, particularly in an open-ended conflict against a loosely defined enemy.

No, this is not the right call. This is madness. And it is another step in the descent to open and unmitigated evil. There is no other way to describe it. The sickening thing is that without the ludicrous decision to grant citizenship to so many third worlders possessing zero loyalty to the nation, there would be no excuse for legally painting federal crosshairs on each and every U.S. citizen. This isn't merely a direct assault on the Constitution, it is far more impeachment-worthy than anything Bill Clinton ever did.

If Citizen Awlaki is deemed worthy of government assassination today, you can be assured that other American citizens will deemed "a proven threat" in the future.

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Supercritical

The Market Ticker notices that German banks are threatening the liquidity of the global financial markets as a result of the Greek situation:

The curve blowout this morning in Greek debt has been cataclysmic; of course CNBS is only mentioning it in passing, and so far the European market isn't reacting "too badly."

We'll see about that - how much of their debt is now sitting on bank balance sheets with a mark-to-market loss of how many billions due to the coupon shift upward? Oh no, we better not talk about the black hole opening up on bank balance sheets (again)..... that might be a problem eh?

Just remember that right up until Lehman blew up the market, while it had its ups and downs, didn't react "too badly" either.

42% worthless assets. Keep that number in mind. It's going to blow up sooner or later; the market can't be pumped far enough or fast enough to refloat those underwater properties.

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Human evolution observed in the wild

After only 150 years, Man finally witnesses evolution from one distinct species into another:

A dragon-sized, fruit-eating lizard that lives in the trees on the northern Philippines island of Luzon has been confirmed as a new species, scientists reported on Tuesday. Hunted for its tasty flesh, the brightly colored forest monitor lizard can grow to more than six feet in length but weighs only about 22 pounds (10 kg), said Rafe Brown of the University of Kansas, whose team confirmed the find.

"It lives up in trees, so it can't get as massive as the Komodo dragon, a huge thing that eats large amounts of fresh meat," Brown said by telephone. "This thing is a fruit-eater and it's only the third fruit-eating lizard in the world."

I think it's remarkable proof of the power of natural selection. And to think that it only takes three generations for homo sapiens to evolve into draco arboris! No doubt the families of those missing Japanese soldiers will not only be relieved to know the ultimate fate of their loved ones, but proud to know that both the Sakurakai and Shintaro Ishihara were right and the Japanese are, in fact, the most highly evolved form of Man on the planet.

Of course, we had better wipe these dragons out at once before the pressure placed upon them by quasi-cannibalistic Philippinos causes them to evolve the ability to breathe fire. And in other evolution news, the Missing Link was found again. What are the odds that it lasts longer than last year's extraordinary fossil find, Ida?

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The incoherence of the American liberal

Richard Cohen nonsensically points a finger at parents:

You will notice that in all the finger-pointing -- the students, the teachers, the administrators -- not a digit is aimed at the parents. Their children are accused of hounding a classmate to death and the parents apparently knew nothing. Not only that, they are somehow not expected to know anything. The teachers are supposed to know what's going on. The principal. Maybe even the school nurse. But the parents? No. They're off the hook. Not as far as I'm concerned. This tendency to blame teachers or administrators for all that happens in the schools is both unfair and unrealistic.

This is the sort of pure and unadulterated illogic that is so reliably produced every time an American liberal expresses her opinion. After laboring without cease to remove American parents from the child-rearing equation for forty years, they then have the gall to complain that parents are not doing the very job that liberals have been attempting to prevent them from doing for literal decades. Parents aren't expected to know anything about the school lives of their children for the very good reason that many teachers are not only encouraged, but trained, to actively prevent parents from knowing what their children are being taught at school, from having any influence upon what their children are taught at school, and from interfering in any way with how the school district elects to raise their children in loco parentis.

Cohen mentions the school nurse in what is apparently supposed to be a comedic ad absurdum. And yet, the school nurse is the very individual who will be prescribing medicines to school children without the consent or the knowledge of the parents. The devotees of the state cannot cheer on the state as it seizes the parental power, dictates mandatory schooling and medical interventions and bans corporal punishment and religious activity, then turn around and complain that parents no longer effectively perform the responsibilities that have been forcibly taken from them.

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Too big to nail

CNN reports on the shenanigans devised to protect Pfizer from the legal consequences of its large-scale lawbreaking:

By April 2005, when Bextra was taken off the market, more than half of its $1.7 billion in profits had come from prescriptions written for uses the FDA had rejected. But when it came to prosecuting Pfizer for its fraudulent marketing, the pharmaceutical giant had a trump card: Just as the giant banks on Wall Street were deemed too big to fail, Pfizer was considered too big to nail.

Why? Because any company convicted of a major health care fraud is automatically excluded from Medicare and Medicaid. Convicting Pfizer on Bextra would prevent the company from billing federal health programs for any of its products. It would be a corporate death sentence.

Prosecutors said that excluding Pfizer would most likely lead to Pfizer's collapse, with collateral consequences: disrupting the flow of Pfizer products to Medicare and Medicaid recipients, causing the loss of jobs including those of Pfizer employees who were not involved in the fraud, and causing significant losses for Pfizer shareholders.

"We have to ask whether by excluding the company [from Medicare and Medicaid], are we harming our patients," said Lewis Morris of the Department of Health and Human Services.

So Pfizer and the feds cut a deal. Instead of charging Pfizer with a crime, prosecutors would charge a Pfizer subsidiary, Pharmacia & Upjohn Co. Inc.

We are truly living in a post-republican age of American corpocracy. Not only is there no equality before the law, but it is clear that artificial persons and individuals of political influence are now regularly granted rights, privileges, and immunities that are denied to the citizenry.

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They didn't start the fire

A presumed Friedmanite named Luigi condemns indebted homeowners for doing exactly what the banks who wrote their mortgage contracts do whenever they make a bad real estate investment:

Homeowners who walk away from their mortgages undermine our financial system....Undermining the social norm to repay mortgages, as Lowenstein and White do, is thus a very bad idea. You might just as well say that when a theater is going up in flames, it’s “rational” to trample other people in rushing to the exits.

It is rational... for the person trying to escape. And the person to blame isn't the poor guy trying to avoid being burned to death, but the people who set the fire in the first place!

The contracts are clear, even if the consequences vary from state to state. If your mortgage is worth significantly more than your house, you have the right to walk away. The bank has the right to take the house. There is no moral question involved.

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Who needs Christianity?

Or the Western European culture it inspired in light of the options:

The practice of human sacrifice is on the rise in Uganda, as measured by ritual killings where body parts, often facial features or genitals, are cut off for use in ceremonies. The number of people killed in ritual murders last year rose to a new high of at least 15 children and 14 adults, up from just three cases in 2007, according to police. The informal count is much higher — 154 suspects were arrested last year and 50 taken to court over ritual killings.

Children in particular are common victims, according to a U.S. State Department report released this month. The U.S. spent $500,000 to train 2,000 Ugandan police last year to investigate offences related to human trafficking, including ritual killings.

The problem is bad enough that last year the police established an Anti-Human Sacrifice Taskforce. Posters on police station walls show a sinister stranger luring two young girls into a car below bold letters that call on parents to "Prevent Child Sacrifice."

The thing that struck me as most interesting about this is the fact that it comes so soon after the Western media was up in arms about Uganda's anti-homosexual laws. Journalists are clearly more concerned about potential death sentences being meted out for criminal acts of homosexuality than they are about actual child murders being committed by witch doctors.

Now, some irreligious will quite reasonably declare a pox on both the Christian and pagan houses; the only form of child sacrifice practiced by secularists is abortion and the occasional collateral damage from mass vaccination. The problem with that perspective is that no matter what the 1950s science fiction authors believed, it is very clear godless secularism has about the same chance to be the cultural heir to Christianity that we had to be flying cars and living in undersea cities before the end of the 20th century.

As Chesterton, history, and demographics have all pointed out, when Christianity fails in a society, it is not going to be replaced by a lack of religion, but by a different religion. The more intelligent members of the irreligientsia would do well to ponder whether continuting to work towards that replacement is a wise policy or not.

It is also worth keeping in mind that Christians who are accustomed to fighting this sort of raw and undisguised evil are not likely to be as tolerant of open violations of Biblical morality as the average Western Christian.

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WND column

Ignoring History's Lessons

ALAN GREENSPAN, the former chairman of the Federal Reserve, proclaimed last month that no one could have predicted the housing bubble. "Everybody missed it," he said, "academia, the Federal Reserve, all regulators."... Mr. Greenspan said that he sat through innumerable meetings at the Fed with crack economists, and not one of them warned of the problems that were to come. By Mr. Greenspan's logic, anyone who might have foreseen the housing bubble would have been invited into the ivory tower, so if all those who were there did not hear it, then no one could have said it.
– Michael J. Burry, New York Times, April 3, 2010

Michael Burry is correct. Alan Greenspan is completely wrong to say everyone missed the housing bubble. Michael Burry recognized it in 2005. I saw it coming in 2002. And Edward Gramlich, a Federal Reserve governor, accurately anticipated the problem as far back as 2000. Moreover, Gramlich personally warned Greenspan about the way in which providing home mortgages to low-income borrowers would lead to widespread loan defaults that would have tremendously negative effects on the national economy. Greenspan, of course, disregarded Gramlich's warning and rejected Gramlich's recommendation to audit consumer finance companies because he correctly feared that shining a light on the widespread fraud being committed by the swarming mortgage brokers would reduce the availability of subprime credit.

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Attn Photoshop all-stars

It's sexier than the iPad. Or rather, it's much more useful than the iPad. It's the first pass at the default Adobe Photoshop CS4 mode. Of course, we don't use Photoshop to any great extent, so any suggestions from experienced Photoshop users for material improvements to the present commands assigned to the default Photoshop CS4 mode would be very much appreciated.

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He is risen

In the end of the sabbath, as it began to dawn toward the first day of the week, came Mary Magdalene and the other Mary to see the sepulchre. And, behold, there was a great earthquake: for the angel of the Lord descended from heaven, and came and rolled back the stone from the door, and sat upon it. His countenance was like lightning, and his raiment white as snow: And for fear of him the keepers did shake, and became as dead men.

And the angel answered and said unto the women, Fear not ye: for I know that ye seek Jesus, which was crucified. He is not here: for he is risen, as he said. Come, see the place where the Lord lay. And go quickly, and tell his disciples that he is risen from the dead; and, behold, he goeth before you into Galilee; there shall ye see him: lo, I have told you. And they departed quickly from the sepulchre with fear and great joy; and did run to bring his disciples word.

And as they went to tell his disciples, behold, Jesus met them, saying, All hail. And they came and held him by the feet, and worshipped him. Then said Jesus unto them, Be not afraid: go tell my brethren that they go into Galilee, and there shall they see me.

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Mailvox: Catkiller's crusade

I have no idea what Catkiller is going on about here, but if you are one of those freaks who keep sending me things like "I bet 100,000 people like cheetohs better than Dalia Grybauskaitė" on Facebook, this may appeal to you:

Go to http://www.amaze.fm/ and fill out the short form to become a fan. You'll have to confirm your free account on your email. Then go to our list of songs under "Mindclear". You can do this by searching or just click on the "charts" link. Our songs are "This Song", "Nock", "Killing Your Dream" and "The First Star". Rate them out of five stars and make a comment if you like. The important thing is the rating. We're already in the top ten with two songs at the time I'm writing this. If we're at #1 at the end of the week, Hugh Hewitt will play us on the radio. Maegan will be thrilled. Just one vote is huge, so your vote might be the one that puts us over the top.

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Technofascism redux

Steve Jobs has lost the techno-hipsters:

Then there's the device itself: clearly there's a lot of thoughtfulness and smarts that went into the design. But there's also a palpable contempt for the owner. I believe -- really believe -- in the stirring words of the Maker Manifesto: if you can't open it, you don't own it. Screws not glue. The original Apple ][+ came with schematics for the circuit boards, and birthed a generation of hardware and software hackers who upended the world for the better. If you wanted your kid to grow up to be a confident, entrepreneurial, and firmly in the camp that believes that you should forever be rearranging the world to make it better, you bought her an Apple ][+.

But with the iPad, it seems like Apple's model customer is that same stupid stereotype of a technophobic, timid, scatterbrained mother as appears in a billion renditions of "that's too complicated for my mom" (listen to the pundits extol the virtues of the iPad and time how long it takes for them to explain that here, finally, is something that isn't too complicated for their poor old mothers).

The model of interaction with the iPad is to be a "consumer," what William Gibson memorably described as "something the size of a baby hippo, the color of a week-old boiled potato, that lives by itself, in the dark, in a double-wide on the outskirts of Topeka. It's covered with eyes and it sweats constantly. The sweat runs into those eyes and makes them sting. It has no mouth... no genitals, and can only express its mute extremes of murderous rage and infantile desire by changing the channels on a universal remote."

The way you improve your iPad isn't to figure out how it works and making it better. The way you improve the iPad is to buy iApps. Buying an iPad for your kids isn't a means of jump-starting the realization that the world is yours to take apart and reassemble; it's a way of telling your offspring that even changing the batteries is something you have to leave to the professionals.

Needless to say, I won't be acquiring an iPad myself. I wouldn't mind a tablet-sized ebook reader, but I want something that runs open source software, isn't tied into a DRM machine, and permits me full control over its operations. I don't care about the way in which Apple prevents the tinkering that Doctorow so values, but I am utterly hostile to Apple's transparent attempt to exert control over practically everything its users attempt to do. I have very fond memories of my Apple //e and appreciate their industrial design and their marketing skills, but I could not possibly despise their technofascistic, DRM-centric philosophy more.

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Dante's Inferno cantos XVI and XVII

Next week's reading is cantos XVIII and XIX

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Deliver us from evil

I am often bemused by those who appeal to the so-called "problem of evil" in questioning the existence of God. While there are, I think, a number of perfectly rational reasons for intelligent individuals to doubt the existence of the supernatural or a Creator God, the problem of evil is most definitely not one of them. Indeed, an appeal to it is nothing more than a demonstration of complete theological ignorance.

Without evil, Man is not fallen. Without evil, there is no bondage to sin. Without evil, there is no reason for Jesus Christ to sacrifice himself for us. Without evil, there is no purpose to the Crucifixion, no significance to the Resurrection, and no need for our salvation. Without evil, there is no basis for the very foundation of the Christian faith.

It is because there is evil in the world that Man has need of Jesus Christ. It is because Man is by nature slave to sin that we have need of the one who can set us free. And it is because we owed a debt that was beyond our capacity to pay that Christians are grateful for the epic sacrifice that we commemorate today.

And it was the third hour, and they crucified him. And the superscription of his accusation was written over, THE KING OF THE JEWS. And with him they crucify two thieves; the one on his right hand, and the other on his left. And the scripture was fulfilled, which saith, And he was numbered with the transgressors. And they that passed by railed on him, wagging their heads, and saying, Ah, thou that destroyest the temple, and buildest it in three days, Save thyself, and come down from the cross.

Likewise also the chief priests mocking said among themselves with the scribes, He saved others; himself he cannot save. Let Christ the King of Israel descend now from the cross, that we may see and believe. And they that were crucified with him reviled him. And when the sixth hour was come, there was darkness over the whole land until the ninth hour.

And at the ninth hour Jesus cried with a loud voice, saying, Eloi, Eloi, lama sabachthani? which is, being interpreted, My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me? And some of them that stood by, when they heard it, said, Behold, he calleth Elias. And one ran and filled a spunge full of vinegar, and put it on a reed, and gave him to drink, saying, Let alone; let us see whether Elias will come to take him down.

And Jesus cried with a loud voice, and gave up the ghost. And the veil of the temple was rent in twain from the top to the bottom. And when the centurion, which stood over against him, saw that he so cried out, and gave up the ghost, he said, Truly this man was the Son of God.

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Employment application advice

Karl Denninger points out how it is possible to take advantage of the legal maze that surrounds the modern corporate employment:

So here's the deal folks: While I can't ask you about your health status nor if you have dependents, nothing prohibits you from putting that information on your resume if it is to your advantage - and it is, if you are in excellent health and have no dependents.

Will this matter?

In this economy you better believe it. This has been true forever, but it has become even more true with the passage of Obama's "Health Care" law. So if you're unemployed and have these cost-impacting facts in your favor, make damn sure you list them.

An employer cannot ask about this, nor can you realistically discuss this in an interview, but absolutely nothing prohibits you from listing this as a "personal attribute" on your resume. If nothing else, in a tie-breaking circumstance it will get you the interview you need to have a shot at the job.

Never forget that no matter what bizarre obstacles are placed in your way by the bureaucrats of the world, you can usually figure out a way of bypassing them. But this usually requires first taking the time to understand the nature of the obstacle and what it was originally designed to prevent.

On a related note, CS, who is in the military and has an engineering degree, wishes to poll the hivemind.

I decided that the prudent course of action would be to learn some marketable skill and start working on independent income sources before separating from the military (which I can't do as yet because of contractual obligations). My ambition is to be self employed and make a good income that depends on the quality of product I create (versus, for instance, the current situation: a salary that depends upon the number of hours I physically exist in a particular space per week).

The trouble is that I need a skill I considered writing, which I enjoy, but there doesn't seem to be good money in it. Investment sounds attractive, but far too risky. These are things that I would like to do in addition to a primary occupation. Upon reflection, I remembered that I had a ball in my high school and college "intro to computer programming" classes years ago. I realized that expertise in programming could have many advantages:

1) It results in products of genuine value.
2) In our inreasingly computerized world, good programs and programmers should remain in demand.
3) The product is information, possibly meaning greater versatility in creation, marketting, and distribution above physical products. In theory, this could allow the smart programmer to have a very high degree of control over his own time and effort.
4) If it's at all like my high school and college experiences, it's challenging and rewarding.
5) One knowledgeable about computers is at a distinct advantage in the modern world.

6) I'm guessing it ingraines a habit of thinking things through thoroughly and logically. Whch brings me to my request. I would very much appreciate answers to these questions:

1) Is it worth it to try? (please note that I don't want to be a dabbler; if this i to be a source of income, then I want to be an expert)
2) What practical advice can you offer on gaining expertise as quickly as possible? For instance, what books and programs should I have? What type of computer do I need? Should I take a college course? Are there any people or organizations I ought to contact? Remember that I am at present almost completely ignorant about computers, so I have to start at the most basic level.
3) What are the best ways to make money as a programmer? I'm especially interested in those that would allow me to be self-employed.
4) What blogs, websites, publications, and other sources should I be familiar with?
5) What are the pitfalls to be avoided?

Have at them. Note that he's smart enough to avoid wasting his time with writing and investment, although I'm not sure about assumptions 2 and 5. It seems to me that trades such as plumbing and electricity are probably a safer bet in the present circumstances, but I don't know much about the present demand for those services.

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Another RGD error

GL spots a problem on page 70:

"The unemployment rate is the third major statistic that is considered to be fundamentally unreliable, and like the previous two it is closely watched by politicians, economists, and Wall Street. Like GDP and CPI, it is an estimate, though it is theoretically a little less difficult to estimate due to the obvious fact that there are far more economic actions and goods being sold than there are people in a national economy, so the challenge of figuring out how many of those people are working is somewhat reduced. This does not mean that it is difficult, though, since the definition of employment can vary greatly from one individual to the next."

The last sentence should read: "This does not mean that it is not difficult...." I appreciate the correction. Those inclined to a critical perspective should feel free to commence arguing how this proves that every economic prediction in the book is false, Keynes and Friedman were both correct, Ben Bernanke saved Western civilization, now is the right time to invest in equities, and the global economy has recovered.

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