"The stimulus failed"

In which I am not exactly surprised to be proven correct again:

Originally, I intended to just clip out the statement from Keynesian economist Jeffrey Sachs that “the stimulus failed,” which Joe Scarborough had to dig to get, but the entire segment is worth viewing. First, Sachs confirms — on MS-NBC, no less — that the Obama administration and Democrats in Congress had no strategy for long-term growth. The stimulus was a collection of short-term minor stimuli, combined with liberal hobby horses that Democrats had ridden for twenty years. Scarborough tries to defend Keynesianism from the Keynesians, but the failure can’t be separated from the philosophy.

The amusing thing about the failure of the stimulus isn't that its failure was predictable, but rather that the shameless excuse-making of the Neo-Keynesians regarding its failure was also not only predictable, but predicted too.

And note all the talk about double-dip recessions, coming right on schedule in Q2 2010. Remember, as per RGD, the Great Depression 2.0 talk isn't supposed to kick off in earnest for another two quarters.

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WND column

Solving the Middle East

Helen Thomas has come in for an amount of criticism for her suggestion that the Jewish population of Israel should return to Germany and Poland. Setting the increasingly ineffective histrionics about anti-Semitism aside, (an accusation that has lost its potency since the professionally offended hate hustlers began slinging it at everything from Merry Christmas greetings to criticism of Wall Street felons), that criticism is well justified.

Encouraging Jewish emigration to Europe is an absurd idea for several reasons. The Europeans don't want them, as was made eminently clear some 50 years ago. Nor do the New Ummayads, who make up a miniature and increasingly independent Umma within the creaky seculardom of the European Union. And most importantly, Israeli Jews don't harbor any desire to return to a continent where they were banished from various kingdoms more than 30 different times over the centuries.

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The next civil war

Looks to be more East vs West than North vs South:

There were half a million fewer whites in California in 2008 than in 2000, a period when the state's overall population grew by 4 million to 38.1 million, according to a study released Thursday by the state Department of Finance. By 2008, whites made up 40 percent of Californians, down from 47 percent at the turn of the century. In 2000, Hispanics comprised 32 percent of the population; that number grew to 37 percent in 2008.

It's not going to take until 2042 for Hispanics to become a majority in California. The problem with linear projections of the sort in the article is that they do not take dynamic behavioral responses into account; whites will flee California even faster as the Hispanic population naturally begins to turn its numbers into political dominance. And, as we've seen, the Aztlan independence movement has already taken its first baby steps.

However, there are alternatives to this expected future, some of which might surprise you. See tomorrow's column for details.

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Mailvox: a consensus of go karts

JB muses on the limits of science:

It's funny how the same bad epidemiological science (weak and inconsistent macro correlations instead of hard causations) that underpins the disaster of modern dietetics is also responsible for the entirety of the case against smoking. Confusion also arises on both issues when experiments conflate the effects of processed, unfresh, adulterated ingredients with fresh, unadulterated ones, and forget to factor the rise of industrial processing into their timelines.

These massive scientific errors have caused untold premature deaths. The entirety of western civilizational diseases, including cavities, heart disease, cancer and diabetes, could be eliminated in an instant by returning to a paleolithic high or all meat diet. This is indisputable: the onset of all these diseases has been observed in paleolithic societies switching to western food.

But then, the fifth highest cause of death in America is medical error. And global warming scientists recently attempted to construct a framework for world government on a knowingly fraudulent premise. So we should all be wary of science.

What else has science disastrously gotten wrong? Ah yes, psychology, politics, history, sociology, the family, gender relations, economics... better to ask what science gets right: Physics. Math. Engineering. Repeatable, testable, non-human endeavors.

Human-heavy fields are still too filled with biases and complications and dynamism for one to trust the scientific consensus to be correct, much less the popular consensus. It is necessary to read widely and with a mind not only open but eager to absorb ideas intelligently presented but patently insane. Otherwise one will never escape the idiosyncratic mental strictures of one's time and place.

With the singularity approaching before the next century, human brains will soon be regarded as little more than go karts in a world of F-15s. Now why would one blindly trust a consensus of go karts?

I have always found it amusing that science fetishists seldom realize how hopelessly wrong their understanding of material reality is. For example, they genuinely believe that technology is the fruit of science, when both history and logic conclusively demonstrate that science is the result of technological advancement. They have the basic relationship between the two precisely backward.

Given their inability to understand such a simple and obvious fact, to say nothing of all of the many manifest failure of the scientific method in areas where its application is either complicated or simply inappropriate, their confidence in it as the only method of human understanding or "progress" is not only remarkable, but risible. Hence the quasi-religious aspect of scienceology, which should never be confused with the actual scientific method.

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Less school, better scores

It is amazing how people can stubbornly resist reaching the obvious conclusion:

Don't bother showing up for school. The doors are locked and the lights are off.

Peach County is one of more than 120 school districts across the country where students attend school just four days a week, a cost-saving tactic gaining popularity among cash-strapped districts struggling to make ends meet. The 4,000-student district started shaving a day off its weekly school calendar last year to help fill a $1 million budget shortfall....

The results? Test scores went up.

So did attendance — for both students and teachers. The district is spending one-third of what it once did on substitute teachers, Clark said. And the graduation rate likely will be more than 80 percent for the first time in years, Clark said.

Imagine if they went to zero! Consider this. Children learn to crawl, walk, and speak multiple languages without ever sitting in a classroom or having a formal teacher. Why, then, is it assumed that they absolutely require one in order to learn history, math, or science? Especially when one takes into account the demonstrated ignorance of those who have had the supposed benefit of 12 or more years of mass education.

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Inferno quiz delayed

I'm hoping to post it tomorrow, but it could be Monday. My apologies.

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Liberal fascism is back

Assuming it ever really went away. And eugenics is back with it:

Both Gates and Rumsfeld’s presence at this year’s event indicates that some very important developments are set to unfold over the course of the next 12 months, particularly with regard to Iran as well as the global warming agenda, which has been on the ropes since the Climategate scandal and the failed Copenhagen summit in December.

Gates’ Bilderberg presentation will also likely include information about his eugenicist projects to lower global population figures.

During a recent TED conference, an organization which is sponsored by one of the largest toxic waste polluters on the planet, Gates told the audience that vaccines need to be used to reduce world population figures in order to solve global warming and lower CO2 emissions to almost zero.

Stating that the global population was heading towards 9 billion, Gates said, “If we do a really great job on new vaccines, health care, reproductive health services (abortion), we could lower that by perhaps 10 or 15 per cent.”

Quite how an improvement in health care and vaccines that supposedly save lives would lead to a lowering in global population is an oxymoron, unless Gates is referring to vaccines that sterilize people, which is precisely the same method advocated in White House science advisor John P. Holdren’s 1977 textbook Ecoscience, which calls for a dictatorial “planetary regime” to enforce draconian measures of population reduction via all manner of oppressive techniques, including sterilization.

This points to the inherent incoherency of left-liberal thought. Bill Gates has spent loads of money expanding the global population by fighting diseases in third world countries. Now he wants to end the very lives he was previously so concerned with saving. And remember, these New Eugenicists are the very people who deny their ideology can be linked in any way to Fascist and Nazi ideologies despite the fact that they are advocating precisely the same deadly policies.

What are they going to inject in those population-reducing vaccines, Zyklon-B?

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Mailvox: give to Caesar

JB wonders when it applies:

Not sure if you've run into this, but I've noticed a pattern when debating a liberal (Christian or not) about taxes and big government. When they get to the point where they have lost the argument, they throw a grenade with the statement, "Render unto Caesar that which is Caesar's".

Now, I'm not one to take the words of Christ lightly. It is true, Jesus did not go out of His way to incite rebellion against Rome, and seemed to endorse the concept of taxation with that statement. However, something doesn't sit right with the liberal's logic when they resort to that statement.

I wonder if you or the Ilk have a solid response to the Render Unto Caesar argument.

I usually run into this with regards to taxes. My response is always the same as the response that preceded the advice. "Show me the coin used for paying the tax. Whose portrait is this? And whose inscription?" In other words, show me Caesar! So, while you can reasonably use this verse to justify writing a check to assorted dead men or the Federal Reserve, it is a poor argument in support of state or Federal taxation.

Now, it is important to note that it is not any wiser to refuse to pay the tax money demanded by the IRS than it is to refuse to pay the protection money demanded by the Mafia. But it does mean that the Biblical justification doesn't apply.

As for government, the liberal Christian's logic breaks down because what applies to a divine Emperor manifestly does not apply to a democracy, not even a constitutional republic in which the democracy is strictly limited. Whereas the imperial subject owes the Emperor nothing but obedience, the citizen of the republic has a duty to ensure that his duly elected government acts legitimately according to the bounds of the republic's constitution.

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Obama and the Gay Old Party

It would appear that Larry Craig is far from the only closeted Republican lawmaker. And if these reports have any substance to them, the Obama White House is about as straight as a male chorus line on Broadway:

Last month, Blagojevich’s trial judge, U.S. District Court judge James Zagel, a crony of former Illinois Republican Governor Jim Thompson, ruled that all 500 hours of phone calls intercepted and taped by Fitzgerald could not be played during Blagojevich’s trial as demanded by Blagojevich and his defense lawyers. Blagojevich demanded that Fitzgerald “show up in court and explain to everybody . . . why you don’t want those tapes that you made played in court.”

WMR has learned that the tapes may contain salty references Obama’s and Emanuel’s private lives.... Blagojevich’s trial is scheduled to begin on June 3 and Fitzgerald’s main interest is to keep the trial focused on Blagojevich, especially after he managed to “flip” Blagojevich’s former chief of staff John Harris to testify against the impeached and ousted governor. WMR learned from informed sources that one lawyer on Harris’s defense team is involved in a gay partner scandal that was discovered by the attorney’s wife.

Some of the wiretaps may reveal that it was not Valerie Jarrett, Obama’s longtime friend and current White House policy adviser who was Obama’s top candidate to fill his U.S. Senate seat, but the young 32-year old “pick up basketball” friend of Obama, Giannoulias, then serving his second year as state Treasurer. However, Obama has avoided campaigning for Giannoulias in Illinois and there are indications that the president has “thrown Giannoulias under the bus,” according to some Democratic political circles in Chicago.

Mutiple Chicago sources report that Republicans who see Giannoulias’s Obama connections as providing an edge in his Senate race this year should not celebrate prematurely. Giannoulias’s GOP opponent, U.S. Representative Mark Kirk, a Naval Reserve intelligence officer, has also been identified as a closeted gay man. Kirk divorced his wife last year after an eight-year marriage. They had no children.

In addition, U.S. Representative Aaron Shock, who took over the House seat vacated by Obama’s Republican Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood, is, according to Chicago Boy’s Town sources, a habitué of Minibar, a noted gay bar in Chicago’s gay district. For an extremely young first term member of the House, observers were surprised when GOP Minority Whip Eric Cantor of Virginia named Shock as a Deputy Minority Whip.

As insane as it all sounds, there are three factors that suggest it might not be entirely fiction. First, where are Obama's old girlfriends? Unlike every other president, they just don't seem to exist and there's hardly a woman alive who once had an even remotely notable lover that isn't eager to let the world know that they were once an item. If a woman has ever dated a musician or an athlete, she'll be sure to let you know about it... and there is no way that a woman who was involved with a president, let alone this particular president, would keep her mouth shut.

Second, the decision of the Blagojevich judge to prevent the defense from putting the recordings made by the prosecutor on the public record is deeply suspicious. If Blagojevich walks away with nothing more than a hand slap, it will be obvious that whatever he knows is too explosive to permit it to reach the public. And third, the invitation to Sen. Bill Frist's Brokeback-style event is precisely the sort of idiotic "hidden" message that gay artists always love to try to sneak past the straights. Of course, it could have been nothing more than an immature gay staffer's handiwork; I once pointed out to Spacebunny no less than seven penises, including one ejaculating, on an airline's kiddy lunch package and I tend to doubt it said anything about the CEO's recreational pursuits.

As Instapundit likes to dryly declare, "the country is in the very best of hands." And there is no question that Republican commentators are scenting more than a little blood in the water these days, as the American Spectator's Peter Ferrara is now thinking that Obama won't even serve out his full term:

Months ago, I predicted in this column that President Obama would so discredit himself in office that he wouldn't even be on the ballot in 2012, let alone have a prayer of being reelected. Like President Johnson in 1968, who had won a much bigger victory four years previously than Obama did in 2008, President Obama will be so politically defunct by 2012 that he won't even try to run for reelection. I am now ready to predict that President Obama will not even make it that far. I predict that he will resign in discredited disgrace before the fall of 2012.

I think the possibility of a resignation is less remote than one would normally assume due to Obama's personality. Like Sarah Palin, Obama is a narcissistic lightweight who craved the position, not the power. He's already "made history", he's clearly not enjoying himself, and he has no sense of duty, so it's basically all downhill from here for him at this point. So, if some sort of face-saving exit is offered to him, I wouldn't be surprised to see him take it.

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An inexcusable omission

By which Catkiller shockingly demonstrates that his knowledge of metal is far from encylopedic:

Seeing as how it's Memorial Day Weekend, I figured we'd look at the greatest rock songs with a military or martial theme. I debated in my head whether or not to limit the list to only songs with a patriotic bent, but I think that would be too limiting. But if you want to use that as your own personal criterion, don't let me stop you. So, to be clear, these aren't the most patriotic rock songs necessarily.

None of them even begin to compare with Disturbed's INDESTRUCTIBLE. Not for music and not for lyrical content. It's not even close. The solo isn't flawless like the solos in STRICKEN and OVERBURDENED, but the the basic guitar line is awesome. And it is unabashedly, unapologetically, pro-American soldier while simultanously casting a somewhat skeptical eye upon "the powers" that send him to war.

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The cam-grabbers

The blue-suited badge gang is desperately trying to ban recorded evidence of their wrongdoings:

In response to a flood of Facebook and YouTube videos that depict police abuse, a new trend in law enforcement is gaining popularity. In at least three states, it is now illegal to record any on-duty police officer. Even if the encounter involves you and may be necessary to your defense, and even if the recording is on a public street where no expectation of privacy exists.

Radley Balko is correct to advise legislative action, but he doesn't take it far enough.  The right to film and record all government officials and employees in the performance of their official duties should be made a Constitutional Amendment.

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Less work, less pay

This chart on sex self-segregation by the clock shows the primary reason women make less money than men.  They harbor a strong disinclination for work outside of normal working hours.  This is concomitant with the research that has shown women work fewer hours per week on average than men.  The excuse that it is "for the children" doesn't fully account for the gap since there are only around 35 million American households with children under 18 vs 72 million American women in the labor force.  Moreover, it is a feeble excuse; an employer doesn't care why a woman isn't working, if she's not working then obviously he shouldn't have to pay her.

Now, there's absolutely nothing wrong with women putting their children's interests ahead of maximizing their income-earning potential.  Putting children before Powerpoint is an excellent choice and in my opinion, more women should work fewer hours and spend more time ensuring the viability of the human race.  The enlightened employer who offers the greatest amount of time flexibility to his female employees will usually find himself benefiting from a higher quality of women willing to work for him.  On the other hand, it is absurd to insist that having children is not a choice, that an employer is to blame for the life choices that his employees happen to make, or that there should be no negative consequences to one's paycheck when one is working less than other employees.

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Wait, so pulling demand forward doesn't work?

Housing Double Dip a Done Deal

Everybody take a nice long look at today's Pending Home Sales Index from the National Association of Realtors, because it's just about the last positive picture we're going to see for a while. Yes, the index rose even more than expected, as buyers rushed in to take advantage of the home buyer tax credit. And yes, those numbers will show up in Existing Home Sales in May and June, but then look out.

This index is based on contracts signed in August, and that's how the credit was set up; you had to sign your contract by April 30th and close by June 30th in order to get your $8000 if you're a first time buyer and $6500 if you're a move up buyer.

And then came May, traditionally the height of the spring housing season. Mortgage applications to purchase a home began to sink. Now, four weeks later, mortgage purchase applications are down nearly 40 percent from a month ago to their lowest level since April of 1997. Yes, you can argue that a larger-than normal share of buyers today are all cash, but those are largely investors.

That means real organic buyers are exiting in droves.

This is precisely why I haven't conceded anything about my home price predictions for 2010 even though prices have been rising instead of falling this year.* Notice how the language is beginning to sour, as "V-shaped recovery" has been gradually supplanted by "double-dip" and worse terminology. The so-called recovery has been nothing but a statistical illusion caused by carefully targeted Federal intervention designed to make things look better in an attempt to fool the economy into stabilizing itself. While this may sounds incredibly stupid, it's actually the correct action if you happen to subscribe to Keynesian economic theory, based as it is on "animal spirits".

The problem is that animal spirits are a symptom, not the disease. It is the amount of debt that is the issue, the economic cancer that has metastasized throughout the entire global economy. Getting the patient pepped up on financial coke and methamphetamine might make him feel invincible for a while - see the equity markets - but it's not going to forestall his demise. It should be interesting to see what the estimated 40-percent drop in housing demand will have on the markets this fall.

*It seems I was correct not to concede anything, because in looking up the current NAR data to see how far prices had to fall this year in order to salvage my prediction, I discovered that my prediction of national median existing home prices falling below $165k before the end of 2010 had already been proven correct! NAR reports US prices as having fallen to $164,600 in February; they have since risen back up to 173,100. We'll have to wait until December 31st to see who is more correct at the end of the year, Lawrence Yun at $179,500 or me at $165,000. However, at this point, I wouldn't count out the possibility of a collapse below $140,000.

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He looked guilty, your Honor

Lest you think my view of the Rule of Law being dead in America is unjustified:

Ohio's highest court has ruled that a person may be convicted of speeding purely if it looked to a police officer that the motorist was going too fast. The Ohio Supreme Court ruled Wednesday that an officer's visual estimation of speed is enough to support a conviction if the officer is trained, certified by a training academy, and experienced in watching for speeders. The court's 5-1 decision says independent verification of a driver's speed is not necessary.

With this helpful new judicial technique, I have no doubt that crime clearance and conviction rates will skyrocket, making for a safer, crime-free America! This is practically a perfect example of subjective law. Why even bother with actual written speed limits at this point when we can simply leave it to the discretion of the favored class to decide who is going too fast at any given moment.

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Let them fend for themselves

Unsurprisingly, some women are upset that most people are inclined to stay out of a domestic dispute, especially if the woman is lower class:

Last night, ABC used hidden cameras and actors to see what regular people would do if they saw an obviously abused woman being harassed by her boyfriend. A lot of regular people failed the test.

Failed the test? I'd say they passed it, assuming that the test is of their intelligence. Only a white knighting gamma or a clueless fool doesn't know that many women are aficionados of the "let's you and him fight" game. If I don't know the couple involved, there is very little chance that I am going to risk injury or jail on behalf of a woman with a taste for the thug life. And since women are so strong and independent these days, why should they expect help from anyone of either sex? I respect the right of women to not only make their own decisions, but also to experience the full consequences of those decisions.

This isn't to say I have never intervened in a violent situation. If I happen to know the people involved and understand the situation, I will consider escalating the level of violence without warning to bring the situation to a close. An acquaintance once punched his girlfriend in the jaw right in front of me; she was a friend of mine who had previously dated one of my best friends. So, I immediately bounced his face off a nearby brick wall. Twice. However, to be honest, I have to admit that I had always disliked the guy and it is entirely possible that my reaction was less white knightly and more opportunistic.

Anyhow, the point is that you should never get involved in a violent situation unless you intervene without warning and with a conclusive level of violence. Unless the situation CLEARLY and ABSOLUTELY justifies you incapacitating the assailant without warning, stay completely out of it. Don't posture, don't lecture, and don't white knight. It's not your business and you really don't want to end up like the Hispanic guy who was killed trying to help a woman who couldn't even bother to call for help for her rescuer.

This doesn't mean that one must suffer the interruption to one's dinner, of course. Etiquette demands that one clear one's throat, lean over, and say: "My dear man, I could not possibly care less what sort of gorilla sex games the two of you happen to enjoy, but unless this is part of the scheduled dinner theatre, I would be most appreciative if you would throttle your woman outside the premises, thank you very much."

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Calling the bankers' bluff

More and more Americans are discovering that bankers are more bark than bite:

A growing number of the people whose homes are in foreclosure are refusing to slink away in shame. They are fashioning a sort of homemade mortgage modification, one that brings their payments all the way down to zero. They use the money they save to get back on their feet or just get by. This type of modification does not beg for a lender’s permission but is delivered as an ultimatum: Force me out if you can. Any moral qualms are overshadowed by a conviction that the banks created the crisis by snookering homeowners with loans that got them in over their heads.

“I tried to explain my situation to the lender, but they wouldn’t help,” said Mr. Pemberton’s mother, Wendy Pemberton, herself in foreclosure on a small house a few blocks away from her son’s. She stopped paying her mortgage two years ago after a bout with lung cancer. “They’re all crooks.”

Foreclosure procedures have been initiated against 1.7 million of the nation’s households. The pace of resolving these problem loans is slow and getting slower because of legal challenges, foreclosure moratoriums, government pressure to offer modifications and the inability of the lenders to cope with so many souring mortgages.

The average borrower in foreclosure has been delinquent for 438 days before actually being evicted, up from 251 days in January 2008, according to LPS Applied Analytics.

I wouldn't say they are all crooks, but certainly all the big bankers are. I don't see why anyone who has a mortgage with any bank that received TARP money should pay them so much as a single dime. It is very clear that the rule of law no matter applies in the USA, so there's no reason why the enmortgaged masses shouldn't follow the lead of their would-be financial masters and ignore anything that isn't in their immediate pecuniary interests.

If your credit is already ruined, why on Earth would you continue to send what little money you have left to a collection of bankrupt thieves and scam artists.

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Look out, ladies!

Al Gore is on the prowl!

Al and Tipper Gore, whose playful romance enlivened Washington and the campaign trail for a quarter century, have decided to separate after 40 years of marriage, the couple told friends Tuesday. In an “Email from Al and Tipper Gore,” the couple said: “We are announcing today that after a great deal of thought and discussion, we have decided to separate.

Between Tipper's campaign against rock music and Al's global warming scam, I don't think there has been a more awful political couple since the Perons. But let's face it, their relationship was never the same after Naomi Wolf started dressing him.

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Feminism made you fat

Clayton Cramer explains:

When I was in elementary school, I had very few classmates who were even chubby. There was one kid out of 400 in my elementary school who would be considered fat (and probably not even obese)—and he was from Turkey. There are many causes of the increasing obesity problem, and this article focuses on one very substantial cause—but let me emphasize that it is not the only cause—just one that liberals caused.

One of the advantages kids had back then was mothers who were home, and actively involved in child rearing. Even mothers who had to work full-time (like mine) still managed to play an active role in encouraging healthy dietary habits. I was limited to one soft drink a day. Dinner included reasonable portions of meat, a starch, and vegetables—and as much as I hated overcooked vegetables, I was expected to eat them. Desserts were infrequent in our house—perhaps once a week. Nearly every other kid that I knew came from a similar home, with parents making similar efforts to encourage self-discipline and healthy eating....

This transformation didn’t just “happen.” It was the result of a conscious decision by liberals to actively promote the idea that no woman was really “fulfilled” unless she had a full-time career—and staying home and raising kids wasn’t part of the career track. Through active propaganda campaigns and passage of laws banning sex discrimination in employment, liberals destroyed the postwar social consensus that a man would normally be the primary breadwinner. Part of what helped destroy that postwar consensus was that there were a lot of well-educated women who wanted to be more than just mothers. Another factor was the rise of no-fault divorce, which made it much easier for guys to dump their families. Women who had been content to be homemakers now had no choice but full-time employment.

I recall that there were two fat kids in my high school graduating class of 160, and only the girl was obese. And while it's been some time since I was last in the USA, but I distinctly remember desperately looking around for a harpoon until I realized that evolution works too slowly for all of the grotesque, waddling creatures I saw to be land whales.

Just one more aspect of societal decline for which feminism is to blame. And what was the benefit, again?

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