Welcome home, Randy!

I was most pleased to learn about the trade between the Patriots and the Vikings yesterday. Moss is still an elite receiver and the Vikings should never have traded him. Had they kept him and pursued Drew Brees, as I had wanted, I think they would have had more success over the last five years.

This bodes very well for the latter half of the season; between Moss, Rice, Harvin, and Peterson, the Vikings have assembled a fearsome collection of offensive talent to match their excellent defense. It should be enough to keep our resident divaquarterback both interested and happy; everyone has forgotten that the Vikings didn't begin particularly well in 2009 either despite starting off 3-0. The defending Super Bowl champion Saints and the Miami Dolphins are considerably more difficult than the Cleveland Browns and the Detroit Lions and both games were quite close.

And the magical moment that set the stage for the 2009 season, the Favre touchdown to Lewis with no time remaining in the third game, was only necessary because the Vikings were trailing a mediocre San Francisco team. So, if I wasn't feeling that the Vikes were going to walk away with the Super Bowl - as if any true Vikings fan would EVER think that for a second - I wasn't the least bit worried about their 0-2 start either.

Adding one of the great receivers of all time and a huge fan favorite isn't going to hurt either. Aside from what it means for the team's chances, I'm just glad to have Randy back where he belongs. He never should have left.

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Notes from Cicero

For some time now, I have been intending to make notes on the various bits and pieces I pick up while reading and post them here for whatever edification they might happen to offer you. And I very much recommend Mahan's two-volume Life of Nelson; unfortunately I failed to mark any of the salient points it contained while I was reading it. But here are two little things that caught my attention in my present reading, which is the first volume of Cicero's extant letters:

1. Those who believe in the New Economics aka Keynesianism will find it somewhat difficult to explain how despite more than two thousand years of technological development and the advancement of economic science, interest rates are still pretty much the same. As of this week, a 30-year fixed-rate mortage is around 4.5 percent. Plus ça change....

To P. Sestius in Macedonia: "In point of fact, money is plentiful at six per cent., and the success of my measures has caused me to be regarded as a good security."

2. Deflation has not always been considered a disastrous thing by the educated classes, at least by those not beholden to the bankers. And it is ominous to note his optimistic description of Rome and compare it to the present state of our latter-day Rome on the Potomac.

To Atticus in Epirus: In short, I was cheered to the echo. For the subject of my speech was the dignity of the senate, its harmony with the equites, the unanimity of Italy, the dying embers of the conspiracy, the fall in prices, the establishment of peace. You know my thunder when these are my themes.

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Feminists discover economics

Or at least, the basic concept of supply, although they remain innocent about the consequences of its intersection with demand. It's rather like watching monkeys figure out that the bright sparkly stuff dancing on top of the wood is hot:

“There is this notion of slut shaming in the media and it happens on a more personal level among people who shame one another. There is also something that is discussed on other websites but never in the wider media – something called slut rejection. The latter is what heterosexual men who seek a life partner supposedly engage in. I have personal experience with this. My ex did not try to shame me but upon knowing more about me, he just sort of faded away. Its so wrong that women may have to lie or not say anything and either strategy is prone to backfire. I believe that if men had less alternatives, that is if most or many women had a fruitful sexual history, then that would become the norm and therefore acceptable.”

That’s quite a remarkable statement, don’t you think? The feminist solution to slut shaming is to recruit so many women to sluthood that the supply of sexually inexperienced women will disappear. Men will have their fun in college, and when it comes time to marry, their only choice will be from among “fruitful” women. It’s interesting because it’s an acknowledgement that men can’t be rehabbed into the feminist way of thinking. The Women’s Movement tore down many walls, but the male brain is the last frontier, and the feminist siege cannot succeed in eradicating this last double standard.

As we have learned to expect, the feminist reaction to unforeseen and undesirable consequences is an intrinsically fascistic one of removing options from others rather than rethinking her assumptions. Susan Walsh's observations of this breakthrough moment in feminist intellectual history are correct. The constant attacks by anchor-jawed, furry-armed Pandagonian warpigs on what they call "slut-shaming" is little more than an attempt to reduce the supply of sexually inexperienced competitors for long-term relationship status. Seeing that forty years of constant K-BA propaganda has barely altered the male preference for female sexual inexperience in a life-long mate, they have begun to give up on the idea of haranguing men in favor of focusing on what has been a much more successful strategy of converting young women into easily accessible sex toys.

This may sound insane given what 6,000 years of written history about civilizations and their fate, and in fact it is both insane as well as societally destructive. But one must never forget that women are not only hypergamous, they are also solipsistic. In other words, most women assume that what they believe is good for them is therefore good for society, to the extent that they even recognize the existence of any society outside of their own selves. The feminist slogan "The personal is political", which dates back to a 1969 essay in the Feminist Revolution collection does not quite do the concept justice; "the self is society" would be a more accurate description.

This is the primary difference between a nihilistic practitioner of the crimson arts like Roissy and the feminists. The male predators recognize and accept the societal destructiveness of their attitudes and behavior. The feminists not only do not recognize their societal destructiveness, they stubbornly deny it. This is the difference between selfishness and solipsism.

Needless to say, the feminist strategy of supply restriction is doomed to failure just like every other totalitarian attack on the supply of anything that Man particularly desires. As we have seen in 30 years of war on drugs, it would not work even if it were encoded into law and utilized government force. American men are already turning to foreign women who have not been rendered less attractive to them by feminist attitudes and bestial behavior; the more successful feminists are in ruining those they consider to be their competitors, the fewer American women will find American men willing to marry them or American men they want to marry. Those who still seek to marry and are deemed marriageable by women will not come to accept hard-ridden Alpha leavings any more than they do already. Instead they will either seek out non-American women who are increasingly available to them via the Internet and immigration or they will not marry at all; there is no need to commit to a woman who has been riding the copulatory carousel when one can simply insert a quarter instead.

Mrs. Walsh's reader is to be commended, however, for recognizing a reality that so many women still fail to recognize. Every new sexual partner taken by a woman renders her marginally less attractive to men interested in permanent commitments and reduces her potential marital value.

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Why publishing deserves to die

I have repeatedly urged those who would be professional writers to pursue it as a fulfilling hobby, not a lucrative profession, because conventional publishing is a dying industry. My thesis tends to be supported by the fallout from the latest Duke scandal. Read, writer, and despair:

In the last 24 hours, we've received several of these types of inquiries. This is from a woman at the William Morris Endeavor agency, who requested her information because they want to represent her:

We think this thesis was GENIUS! Can you help in any way? Would be amazing & much appreciated.

I'm an editor at HarperCollins publishers, where I specialize in pop culture and entertainment books. I'm intrigued and entertained by [the writer]'s PowerPoint "f*ck list," which is making the rounds online and am wondering if you could give me her email address or forward my note of interest to her.

At least Katie Price demonstrated that she had superlative self-marketing talent in addition to her aggressive plastic surgery and willingness to take her clothes off anytime anyone pointed a camera in her direction before being handed her book contracts. This rather unattractive young woman doesn't even have that going for her.

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Et tu, Jonah

Mr. Golberg takes an astonishing position on the Obama administration's assertion of a right to assassinate American citizens without trial:

Some civil libertarians seem to think we can never, ever kill an American citizen without a trial by jury (and perhaps not even then). That argument would have been silly during the days of conventional warfare. Now it’s plain crazy. And the Obama administration is right. This is no job for courts. Wars and how we fight them are political decisions, properly left to Congress and the president.

Jonah should know better. He is, after all, the one who built the case against the pragmatic, "it's just this one brick" approach of progressive totalitarianism in his very good Liberal Fascism. He further compounds his error when, after being correctly called on his erroneous reasoning by a reader, he attempts to justify his position by bringing up the example of World War II.

"Surely, “the battlefield” is a very amorphous term these days. An American fighting in Nazi uniform in 1943 could be killed and even singled out for killing without a trial by jury, or at least I think that’s the case. Awlaki — like all of al Qaeda — refuses to play by the rules even the Nazis agreed to. I’m at a loss as to why they should be rewarded for it."

Of course, the only reason that an American fighting in Nazi uniform - more likely Wehrmacht, but never mind that - could be killed on the battlefield was because no one knew he was an American. The Constitution clearly and explicitly deals with the question of treason in time of war, which makes since because it was written by men who had recently fought in the Revolutionary War, so it is ludicrous to appeal to some pragmatic sense of sobriety and sanity and claim that it supersedes the Constitution.

Article III
[Section 3.] Treason against the United States shall consist only in levying War against them, or in adhering to their Enemies, giving them Aid and Comfort. No Person shall be convicted of Treason unless on the Testimony of two Witnesses to the same overt Act, or on Confession in open Court.

Jonah isn't one of National Review's Trotskyites, so it is a little disappointing to see him toeing the anti-constitutional neocon line on this issue.

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The consequence of female choices

I have frequently written on the way that some women choosing to work has a negative impact on the ability of other women to choose to stay home and raise their children. Despite the fact that the economic logic behind this statement is impeccable and the reality of these consequences are inescapable, many critics, especially women, have nevertheless scoffed at this and insisted that the decision of one woman to work cannot possibly have any effect on subsequent choices available to other women.

Their economically illiterate doubts make the following comments by the author of a new feminist book blaming the lack of female executive achievement on a "culture that undervalues an entire gender" all the more ironic:

The New York Times asks about the impact of women choosing to “flee” the workforce (a loaded question), Feldt explains:

They make it harder for the rest of us to remedy the inequities that remain. We have to make young women aware of how their choices affect other women. It should be acceptable criticism to point out that, although everyone has the right to make their own life decisions, choosing to “opt out” reinforces stereotypes about women’s priorities that we’ve been working for decades to shatter, so just cut it out. And, the “individual choice” women have to become stay-at-home moms becomes precarious when they try to return to the workplace and find their earning power and options reduced. If we could see child-rearing as a necessary task and not an identity, and if we could collectively recognize that facilitating it benefits us all, we would go much further in guaranteeing women’s choices than we do when we are expected to uncritically celebrate every individual’s decisions.

The amusing thing is that while Gloria Feldt asserts "We have to make young women aware of how their choices affect other women", she is talking about the immaterial and imaginary effect of "reinforcing stereotypes" whereas I am pointing to a material decline in real wages as well as a reduced chance to marry a man who is capable of supporting a wife and children, much less is more successful than the woman interested in him.

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The Lizard Queen returns

I warned you she wasn't finished. But Obama is:

Some called a Barack Obama-Hillary Clinton pairing the "Dream Ticket" in 2008. It didn't happen. But what about 2012? "It's on the table," veteran Washington Post reporter Bob Woodward told CNN's John King in an interview Tuesday on John King, USA. "Some of Hillary Clinton's advisers see it as a real possibility in 2012."

Hillary is not going after Biden, she's going after Obama. This is just a strategic ploy to get her name back in play. Then, after the Democrats lose both the House and Senate in November - and probably even if they just lose the House in an embarrasing manners - Team Clinton will begin playing upon the fears of the surviving politicos that they will lose their jobs in 2012 if they are forced to run with the weight of the Obama administration dragging them down.

Forget 2016. She wants to run in 2012. But she can't do so without pushing Obama aside. And given what a vindictive bitch she is, the thought of humiliating the man who robbed her of what would have been a historic presidency, and more importantly, an easy walk to a historic presidency, has great appeal to her. The main problem with this scenario is that even if Rodham-Clinton successfully convinces the Democratic superdelegates to dump Obama, she can't seriously hope to win unless the Republican leadership provokes the Tea Party into supporting a third-party candidate by arranging the nomination of another Dole/McCain RINO.

And they would never be dumb enough to do that, would they?

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Worst boss ever

I blame a deeply homophobic society. Clearly poor Mr. al Saud snapped under the pressure of the repression, prejudice and social rejection he had experienced:

A gay Saudi prince beat and strangled his male servant to death in a frenzied sexual assault at their luxury London hotel suite, a court heard on Tuesday. Saud Bin Abdulaziz Bin Nasir al Saud, 34, who is a grandson of Saudi Arabia's King Abdullah, killed Bandar Abdullah Abdulaziz on February 15 after abusing him for weeks, the court heard.

The 32-year-old victim was found with severe injuries including bite marks on his cheeks in a bloodstained bed in the suite at the Landmark Hotel, which he was sharing with the prince, prosecutors said.

Needless to say, this incident doesn't exactly provide evidence of the psychologically healthy state of the orientaionally challenged that a few commenters asserted the other day. On the other hand, I tend to doubt that we can conclude that Mr. al Saud strangled and semi-cannibalized Mr. Abdulaziz out of shame and remorse over his orientation either.

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Foreclosuregate is the big one

At least, the biggest fraud exposed to date. And I have no doubt there will be more. Notice that as I concluded in yesterday's column, it is the states, not the Feds, who are leading the charge on this:

The Texas Attorney General's office called for a halt on all foreclosures today amid widespread scrutiny over the way foreclosures are processed nationwide. Notices to suspend foreclosures were sent to 27 loan servicers doing business in Texas, including Bank of America and JPMorgan Chase & Co

Here's hoping that they follow up with the appropriate prosecutions. Not only of the bankers, but their regulatory enablers such as Ben Bernanke and Tim Geithner as well.

UPDATE: In which we are given a lesson in how the defenders of the banks are going to play this one:

"Judge Jack S. Cox of the 15th Judicial Circuit ruled that Attorney General Bill McCollum lacked standing to file his subpoena against Shapiro & Fishman law firm of Boca Raton, effectively blocking an investigation of that firm's foreclosure practices."

Notice what was ruled here - a Judge ruled that consumer protection laws do not apply if the person defrauding you is an attorney.

The Law of Rule is at work again. It's become increasingly apparent how the courts are utilizing that "no standing" concept in order to throw out damaging lawsuits that threaten the favored classes. No doubt some court will discover that the laws don't apply if the corporation defrauding you is a bank.

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Mailvox: the homophobia hypothesis

CM was one of the few first-time emailers to write in regarding the Clementi suicide who managed to remain coherent, civil, and emotionally continent in objection to my post on the subject:

My evangelical brother told me about your blogging on the Clementi suicide. He directed me to it because he thought I had made a few observations consonant (the kid had a false sense of security, believing that official bureaucratic pronouncements matched sentiments on the ground; online coming-out is too easy and lowers the threshold for the kind of cussedness that being openly gay requires) with yours. While he cautioned that I'd still disagree with "half of it", I wasn't prepared to read such low snark—nor to be so misunderstood.

Poor Tyler Clementi got in over his head by bringing a man home to his dorm before developing a thicker skin. When faced with bureaucratic indifference, some revulsion or amused contempt from his dorm-mates, and possibly hostility, blame or hysteria from his lover and/or parents, he couldn't take it. A dutiful kid, he probably naively expected support rather than to have his sense of violation compounded. It was not because he felt shame at being identified as gay or despaired over his "evil" act of sexual discovery.

You really ought to go over to Salon and read the far more thoughtful, nuanced responses to this article. They far surpass the article itself, your blog item, and the comments at your blog.

As his was a reasonable email, I did as requested and found myself actually laughing out loud at the article, although in CM's defense, it must be noted that he was recommending the responses to the Salon article and not the article itself. The writer's attempt to blame a gay conversion therapist and James Dobson as well as the ever notorious "society" is more than a little amusing; apparently the Boston Red Sox and Clementi himself are about the only ones whose hands are not dripping with Clementi's blood. To quote the author: "The guilty parties are everywhere"!

That's helpful. It would appear someone needs to let Mr. Fenton know that the man committed suicide and by definition, he is the only individual who can possibly be held directly responsible for the action. But on to those surpassing comments....

"A couple of Asian Americans college students at an Ivy League with regular tolerance campaigns hardly seem like the types to be in lockstep with the conservative Christian agenda."

"In other words, the writer would like to see large swaths of people jailed, not becuase of their involvement in any particular crime, but because they hold beliefs that the writer opposes. Thanks for the clarification, L.M. Fenton. It is always good to know exactly where your political opponents stand. Understanding that that the left-wing and the homosexual rights community wants to criminalize their opposition for holding fast to their public views is helpful to this debate."

"I disagree with focusing on the pranksters for the sole or even bulk of the blame. Only weak people jump from bridges and weak child jumpers belong to the ones who raised them."

"Indeed, these are not Christo-fascist redneck southerners here, but two highly educated privileged young people at an elite liberal college, and on top of that, neither of the are white and likely neither are Christian. Most people of Indian descent are Hindu or Muslim and most people of Asian descent Buddhist or Muslim; heck, they could be atheists or agnostics for all we know. But I'll bet neither of them are Pentecostal Christian Conservatives and I'll bet neither Ravi nor Wei would have the faintest idea who James Dobson is. Unfortunately, like the Phoebe Prince incident, it may turn out that Mr. Clementi was already depressed and unhappy and even suicidal BEFORE this incident took place. It wouldn't make it right -- it was absolutely deplorable, ugly behavior -- but it might explain why he killed himself instead of (say) beating the crap out of Mr. Ravi."

These comments may be more thoughtful than a blog post which I admittedly scribbled in minutes, but I really don't see much difference between what I wrote and most of the comments that don't echo the "we are all guilty" theme. I certainly can't say that I disagree with any of the ones quoted above. Moreover, it is worth pointing out that the "homophobia kills homosexuals" hypothesis is both logically unsound and empirically incorrect. Unlike most of my hysterical critics, I happen to be somewhat familiar with recent research into suicide statistics as part of the process of responding to Richard Dawkins's claims about the psychological damage of being raised Catholic while writing The Irrational Atheist.

The orientationally-challenged argue thusly. Or more accurately, they would argue thusly if they had the emotional continence to actually present their argument in a rational manner:

1. Homosexuality is psychologically healthy and is not shameful. Therefore, homosexuals do not kill themselves out of shame of their sexual predilection.
2. However, homosexuals are known to kill themselves at higher rates than psychologically normal individuals do.
3. Therefore, there must be some external force that supersedes their psychological normality and causes some of them to kill themselves.
4. Society, particularly Christian society, rejects homosexuals.
5. Therefore, it is the social rejection of society, especially Christian society, which is serves as that external force causing otherwise psychological healthy homosexuals to kill themselves out of shame, guilt, fear, and/or social rejection.

The logical structure of this argument is sound enough. And yet, the argument also happens to be completely wrong. If it were true, then we should be able to observe the following material consequences as a matter of course.

1. Tolerant societies that have adopted social measures such as homogamy and orientational equality laws will have lower male suicide rates, especially among the orientationally challenged, than less tolerant societies.

2. Religious societies where the orientationally challenged are most rejected will have the highest male suicide rates, especially among the orientationally challenged.

3. Male Suicide rates will have fallen over time as societies have grown more socially progressive and tolerant of the orientationally-challenged. These declines will be most marked in the most tolerant societies.

Now let's look at the facts. We will define a tolerant society where homogamy or civil unions are recognized; here are six tolerant societies: Belgium, Austria, Switzerland, France, Sweden, the Netherlands. Next we will define moderate religious society, where homosexuality is generally considered to be wrong, but not illegal: Ireland, USA, Italy, Mexico, Honduras, Paraguay. And finally, we will define an intolerant society as one where homosexuality is illegal: Saudi Arabia, Algeria, Libya, Cameroon, Kenya, Uganda.

According to the World Health Organization, the average male suicide rate for tolerant secular societies is 21.6 per 100,000. The average male suicide rate for moderate religious societies is 9.6 per 100,000. And the average male suicide rate for intolerant societies is unknown because as it turns out, none of them publicly report suicide rates. However, in searching for these unreported rates, I did find a study that reported primary indicators of high societal suicide rates that can be used to estimate them; perhaps one day I'll see about doing so for these countries.

One of the only countries where the specific issue has been studied is in the heavily secular and tolerant country of Norway where 20% of gay men between the ages of 16-24 attempt suicide at least once. It would appear highly unreasonable to attempt to blame either James Dobson or intolerant Southern Baptists for the self-destructive actions of young gay atheist Norwegians.

So it is clear that the first logical conclusion of the homophobia hypothesis is false. The second conclusion is unclear, but the available evidence suggests it is false. As for the third conclusion, it is also false since suicide rates are trending upward rather than falling, especially among young men.

a) "In 21 of the 30 countries in the World Health Organization (WHO) European region, suicide rates in males aged 15-19 rose between 1979 and 1996."

b) "Canadian suicide rates greatly increased in the 1960s and 1970s and, while they have levelled out in the 1980s, they are still at the highest level in Canadian history. Between 1960 and 1978, the overall suicide rate rose from 7.6 per 100,000 population to 14.8, according to Statistics Canada figures."

c) "Each year, almost 5,000 young people, ages 15 to 24, kill themselves [in the United States]. The rate of suicide for this age group has nearly tripled since 1960, making it the third leading cause of death in adolescents and the second leading cause of death among college age youth."

Although the case against it is not yet absolutely conclusive, there is definitely sufficient evidence to conclude that the "homophobic society causes suicide" argument is false. The homophobia hypothesis empirically fails, and logic points to false assumptions being made the first and fifth points. This conclusion is supported by the fact that, far from being a causal factor in suicide, religion tends to be the strongest inhibiting factor known to social science. "Numerous studies have found a statistical relationship between normative religious beliefs (as indicated by church attendance, church membership, or religious sanctions against suicide) and national or regional suicide rates (e.g., Huang, 1996; Kelleher, Chambers, Corcoran, Williamson, & Keeley, 1998; Neeleman, Halpern, Leon, & Lewis, 1997). Across different regions of the United States, higher levels of Catholic Church membership are associated with lower suicide rates (Burr, McCall, & Powell-Griner, 1994). The Ukraine’s western provinces, where more people attend church, have lower suicide rates than its eastern provinces, where fewer people attend church (Kondrichin & Lester, 2002). Nations that publish relatively more religious books tend to have lower suicide rates (Cutright & Fernquist, 2001; Fernquist, 2003a)."

In addition to their flaming hysteria, one of the most amusing things about the homocritics was their frequent reference to my supposed "ignorance" when it is completely clear that they don't know even the most basic facts about suicide or its causal factors. Even so, does the failure of the homophobia hypothesis mean that my idea about the dichotomy between shame over one's orientation and gay rights propaganda creating a psychological disturbance encouraging one to commit suicide is correct? No, of course not. In fact, I have come across an alternative thesis that I consider to potentially present a stronger logic. But more on that in a future post.

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I'm sure the science is sound

I mean, just because the man is a shameless embezzler and a thief doesn't mean that he's not a good and scrupulous scientist, right?

A central figure behind the Center for Disease Control’s (CDC) claims disputing the link between vaccines and autism and other neurological disorders has disappeared after officials discovered massive fraud involving the theft of millions in taxpayer dollars. Danish police are investigating Dr. Poul Thorsen, who has vanished along with almost $2 million that he had supposedly spent on research.

Thorsen was a leading member of a Danish research group that wrote several key studies supporting CDC’s claims that the MMR vaccine and mercury-laden vaccines were safe for children. Thorsen’s 2003 Danish study reported a 20-fold increase in autism in Denmark after that country banned mercury based preservatives in its vaccines. His study concluded that mercury could therefore not be the culprit behind the autism epidemic.

His study has long been criticized as fraudulent since it failed to disclose that the increase was an artifact of new mandates requiring, for the first time, that autism cases be reported on the national registry. This new law and the opening of a clinic dedicated to autism treatment in Copenhagen accounted for the sudden rise in reported cases rather than, as Thorsen seemed to suggest, the removal of mercury from vaccines. Despite this obvious chicanery, CDC has long touted the study as the principal proof that mercury-laced vaccines are safe for infants and young children....

Leading independent scientists have accused CDC of concealing the clear link between the dramatic increases in mercury-laced child vaccinations beginning in 1989 and the epidemic of autism, neurological disorders and other illnesses affecting every generation of American children since. Questions about Thorsens's scientific integrity may finally force CDC to rethink the vaccine protocols since most of the other key pro vaccine studies cited by CDC rely on the findings of Thorsen's research group. These include oft referenced research articles published by the Journal of the American Medical Association, the American Journal of Preventive Medicine, the American Academy of Pediatrics, the New England Journal of Medicine and others. The validity of all these studies is now in question.

One of the reasons I have always been dubious about the supposed safety of vaccines is the money. Not only do scientists resolutely refuse to do proper double-blind studies of the issue, but there is a tremendous amount of pharmaceutical money creating a powerful incentive for them to discover that injecting poison into infants is as safe as giving them breast milk. And I've never quite understood why people who grasp that tobacco money can corrupt science are totally incapable of realizing that pharmaceutical money can do the same.

It's a good thing science is self-correcting. All it takes is for a scientist to disappear with $2 million and his colleagues will begin to think that perhaps they should consider double-checking his work.

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WND column

An Ugly Autumn

For more than two years, I have been tracking the fraud being committed on an ongoing basis by America's largest banks. As I described in a June column titled "The bank-failure recovery," all of America's largest banks have been inaccurately reporting the value of their assets. Based on the information revealed by the FDIC regarding the 129 bank failures this year, it is safe to conclude that around 45 percent of the value of the financial assets reported by the banks are, in fact, completely worthless.

UPDATE: Karl Denninger has a lot more details on the burgeoning banking scandal I described in today's column:

REMICS were newly invented in 1987 as a tax avoidance measure by Investment Banks. To file as a REMIC, and in order to avoid one hundred percent (100%) taxation by the IRS and the Kentucky Revenue Cabinet, an MBS REMIC could not engage in any prohibited action. The "Trustee" can not own the assets of the REMIC. A REMIC Trustee could never claim it owned a mortgage loan. Hence, it can never be the owner of a mortgage loan.

57. Additionally, and important to the issues presented with this particular action, is the fact that in order to keep its tax status and to fund the "Trust" and legally collect money from investors, who bought into the REMIC, the "Trustee" or the more properly named, Custodian of the REMIC, had to have possession of ALL the original blue ink Promissory Notes and original allonges and assignments of the Notes, showing a complete paper chain of title.

58. Most importantly for this action, the "Trustee"/Custodian MUST have the mortgages recorded in the investors name as the beneficiaries of a MBS in the year the MBS "closed." Every mortgage in the MBS should have been publicly recorded in the Kentucky County where the property was located with a mortgage in the name similar to "2006 ABC REMIC Trust on behalf of the beneficiaries of the 2006 ABC REMIC Trust." The mortgages in the referenced example would all have had to been publicly recorded in the year 2006.

59. As previously pointed out, the ¡°Trusts¡± were never set up or registered as Trusts. The Promissory Notes were never obtained and the mortgages never obtained or recorded.

60. The "Trust" engaged in a plethora of "prohibited activities" and sold the investors certificates and Bonds with phantom mortgage backed assets. There are now nationwide, numerous Class actions filed by the beneficiaries (the owners/investors) of the "Trusts" against the entities who sold the investments as REMICS based on a bogus prospectus.

61. In the above scenario, even if the attorney for the servicer who is foreclosing on behalf of the Trustee (who is in turn acting for the securitized trust) produces a copy of a note, or even an alleged original, the mortgage loan was not conveyed into the trust under the requirements of the prospectus for the trust or the REMIC requirements of the IRS.

62. As applied to the Class Members in this action, the end result would be that the required MBS asset, or any part thereof (mortgage note or security interest), would not have been legally transferred to the trust to allow the trust to ever even be considered a "holder" of a mortgage loan. Neither the "Trust" or the Servicer would ever be entitled to bring a foreclosure or declaratory action. The Trust will never have standing or be a real party in interest. They will never be the proper party to appear before the Court.

63. The transfer of mortgage loans into the trust after the "cut off date" (in the example 2006), destroys the trust's REMIC tax exempt status, and these "Trusts" (and potentially the financial entities who created them) would owe millions of dollars to the IRS and the Kentucky Revenue Cabinet as the income would be taxed at of one hundred percent (100%).

This is really big and is likely to dwarf the Lehman Bros. collapse in terms of its consequent effects. While the federal government's response is almost surely going to be an attempt to forgive all of the tax income owed and wave off all of the criminal violations, the desperate states whose laws were violated aren't going to be easily persuaded to go along with the whitewashing and give up all of that legitimate tax income.

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Global Warming Nazis

I had previously preferred the term "global warming fascists", but the term simply doesn't do justice to these twisted, human-hating idealogues.  It appears we may end up eventually having to go to war with the sick bastards should they take over a country or two just like we did with their German predecessors; as with the National Socialists, the global warming extremists genuinely believe that their mad pseudo-scientific myths justify killing people. 

Fortunately, given that their tanks will be solar-powered and their cruise missiles will be launched by turbine windmills, it should take a lot less than five years to defeat them and wipe them out.  And, seeing how they won't be utilizing carbon anymore afterwards, it will be a win-win.



It's clear that the pro-warming media has the vague idea that something has gone seriously wrong here, even if they don't quite understand what the negative reaction is all about.

"While many people said they found the short an amusing way of addressing the issue of apathy towards climate change issues, others found it tasteless and unnecessarily violent."

Yeah, that was just explosively hilarious, wasn't it? I mean, about the only thing that would have made it funnier if the self-appointed climate saviors were murdering Jewish schoolchildren... no, make that gay Jewish schoolchildren. Ho, ho, ho.

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Teachers is smart

Okay, so it appears I may have overestimated the average intelligence of teachers when I calculated it at around 90 IQ.  Mea culpa.  Now, here's the damning quote: "Every other student in class accepted my lesson without argument...."  Keep in mind that's almost surely true of your public-schooled children too, even when they are being taught that black is white and kilometers are longer than miles.

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CGW request

If anyone has a collection of old Computer Gaming World magazines from the early 1990s, I am looking for an article written by Mike Weksler about 3D hardware that referenced both Chris Taylor and Ime. It probably mentioned a chip called 3GA as well and would have run sometime between 1992 and 1995. Unfortunately, I'm not sure what issue it was except that it was after the first 100 issues that are archived online at the CGW Museum. If you can tell me the issue, or better yet, scan the article and send it to me, I would appreciate it.

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VPFL Week 3

84 Bane Sidhe (2-1)
57 Winston Reverends (2-1)

82 RR Redbeards (2-1)
63 Blackmouth Banksters (2-1)

76 Valders Quixotes (2-1)
73 Moundsview Meerkats (0-3)

68 Meigs Marauders (2-1)
54 MS Swamp Spartans (0-3)

57 Judean Rhyneaux (2-1)
55 Greenfield Grizzlies (1-2)

My two much ballyhooed young starting RBs, Shon Greene and Ryan Matthews, have cost me at least two games already. Here's hoping that Pete Carroll has the brains to start handing the ball to the electric Leon Washington.

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I tend to agree

The Ferenghi have abandoned literary capitalism:

“I’ve decided not to publish any more books in the traditional way. 12 for 12 and I’m done. I like the people, but I can’t abide the long wait, the filters, the big push at launch, the nudging to get people to go to a store they don’t usually visit to buy something they don’t usually buy, to get them to pay for an idea in a form that’s hard to spread … I really don’t think the process is worth the effort that it now takes to make it work. I can reach 10 or 50 times as many people electronically.

Granted, I appear to have skipped the whole "bestseller" bit unless you want to count a very specific and esoteric niche, but I am leaning more and more towards small publishing houses despite the various offers I have from traditional publishers. That being said, WND Books did a very nice job with RGD, so I'll probably continue to do my non-fiction with them.

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R.I.P. Joe Sobran

A great American has died. But we are fortunate in that his words remain with us. One of his more important articles was this one from 1999 on teaching your children about government.

Teach Your Children Well
by Joseph Sobran
Mises Daily, August 23, 1999

Because I write about politics, people are forever asking me the best way to teach children how our system of government works. I tell them that they can give their own children a basic civics course right in their own homes.

In my own experience as a father, I have discovered several simple devices that can illustrate to a child's mind the principles on which the modern state deals with its citizens. You may find them helpful, too.

For example, I used to play the simple card game WAR with my son. After a while, when he thoroughly understood that the higher ranking cards beat the lower ranking ones, I created a new game I called GOVERNMENT. In this game, I was Government, and I won every trick, regardless of who had the better card. My boy soon lost interest in my new game, but I like to think it taught him a valuable lesson for later in life.

When your child is a little older, you can teach him about our tax system in a way that is easy to grasp. Offer him, say, $10 to mow the lawn. When he has mowed it and asks to be paid, withhold $5 and explain that this is income tax. Give $1 to his younger brother, and tell him that this is "fair". Also, explain that you need the other $4 yourself to cover the administrative costs of dividing the money. When he cries, tell him he is being "selfish" and "greedy". Later in life he will thank you.

Make as many rules as possible. Leave the reasons for them obscure. Enforce them arbitrarily. Accuse your child of breaking rules you have never told him about. Keep him anxious that he may be violating commands you haven't yet issued. Instill in him the feeling that rules are utterly irrational. This will prepare him for living under democratic government.

When your child has matured sufficiently to understand how the judicial system works, set a bedtime for him and then send him to bed an hour early. When he tearfully accuses you of breaking the rules, explain that you made the rules and you can interpret them in any way that seems appropriate to you, according to changing conditions. This will prepare him for the Supreme Court's concept of the U.S. Constitution as a "living document".

Promise often to take him to the movies or the zoo, and then, at the appointed hour, recline in an easy chair with a newspaper and tell him you have changed your plans. When he screams, "But you promised!", explain to him that it was a campaign promise.

Every now and then, without warning, slap your child. Then explain that this is defense. Tell him that you must be vigilant at all times to stop any potential enemy before he gets big enough to hurt you. This, too, your child will appreciate, not right at that moment, maybe, but later in life.

At times your child will naturally express discontent with your methods. He may even give voice to a petulant wish that he lived with another family. To forestall and minimize this reaction, tell him how lucky he is to be with you the most loving and indulgent parent in the world, and recount lurid stories of the cruelties of other parents. This will make him loyal to you and, later, receptive to schoolroom claims that the America of the postmodern welfare state is still the best and freest country on Earth.

This brings me to the most important child-rearing technique of all: lying. Lie to your child constantly. Teach him that words mean nothing--or rather that the meanings of words are continually "evolving", and may be tomorrow the opposite of what they are today.

Some readers may object that this is a poor way to raise a child. A few may even call it child abuse. But that's the whole point: Child abuse is the best preparation for adult life under our form of GOVERNMENT.

Joseph Sobran
February 23, 1946 - September 30, 2010
Reactionary Utopian Archive

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That didn't take long

When I saw that a number of hypersensitive orientationally-challenged individuals in faux mourning for someone they never met were visiting in order to emote in their inimitably dramatic fashion over my dispassionate observations on the Clementi suicide, my first thought was, "I wonder how long it will take before someone sees fit to strike a blow for truth, justice, and the Sodomite Way by vandalizing Wikipedia?" It turns out the answer was 19 hours and 46 minutes. It was surprisingly calm and measured in comparison with the militant New Atheists, actually.

"...according to this ethic, "only a woman who is not entertaining the possibility of sex with a man can be considered a wholly innocent victim", rape is nevertheless "really fun," and that "[n]either the Jew nor the Christian need hesitate before asserting the act of rape to be just totally awesome and justly giving the rapist bitchin' high fives."

I rather like that version; pity someone has already reverted it. But to paraphrase Norman Mailer, thank you, predictable bitches! I note that despite 300+ comments still no one has yet managed to answer the perfectly straightforward question: by what recognized moral or ethic does one conclude that a) homosexual activity is moral, and b) rape is immoral?

I ask merely for informationpersonal amusement, you understand.

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Mailvox: an atheist on the religion survey

S contemplates the Pew quiz:

I read with considerable interest your post earlier today about the Pew religious knowledge quiz. I took the test and was surprised to discover that even though I'm an atheist (and am apparently rather unusual in professing that I don't really hate religion and have no particular desire to destroy the concept of God), I scored 73%. So, not great, but not bad either. By way of background, I've got an undergraduate degree in Maths and Economics, and a Master's in financial Mathematics. I seemed to do pretty well compared to both believers and non-believers from all backgrounds.

The reason I write today about this is that I just finished watching Bill Maher "debating" Bill O'Reilly on the Factor tonight after taking that quiz and was appalled by the immaturity and folly of a supposedly "enlightened" atheist. Now I'm not a big fan of O'Reilly's, but I was stunned to see just how utterly ignorant a militant atheist like Bill Maher is about Christianity, which he apparently hates with a vengeance. He seems to think that the Bible is the literal word of God, when even an atheist like me understands that this is not the way the Bible is written, nor is it the way the Bible is canonically interpreted. He thinks that Christian scripture and law is derived from the Old Testament- he quoted from Deuteronomy stating the Mosaic law that he who breaks the Sabbath shall be killed, even though the actual quote is from Exodus, and Maher quoted it out of context. He seems to believe that Christianity and science are incompatible, but I've accepted for a long time now that the Enlightenment simply could not have happened without Judeo-Christian tradition, law, and science.

Vox, I doubt you and I will ever agree about the existence or nature of God. However, I find myself strongly agreeing with you about these pinheads (to coin a phrase) who call themselves atheists but who are little more than "social autists" with little understanding of what they criticise. And even where we inevitably disagree, I suspect that our disagreements will generally be far more genial and fair-minded than anything that atheists like Bill Maher are capable of. Thanks for the great writing; I certainly look forward to reading a lot more of it to come.

S understands, in a way that many do not, that I have absolutely no problem with atheists qua atheists. I was, after all, agnostic for a long time and I still find myself generally more comfortable in secular intellectual culture than in American evangelical culture. For example, if you peruse my reading list for 2010, you will look in vain for the religious self-help books and rehashed theological fiction that make up the vast majority of CBA publishing today. I'd much rather kick back in the Comfy Chair and read Balzac or Procopius than anything that is likely to appear in a Northwestern Bookstore.

The fact is that I neither despise nor pity those who don't believe in God. My opinion about them is similar to what it would be of those who don't believe in gravity because they cannot see it. (See the actual force, not its effects.) Because the effects of rejecting God are both clearly delineated and observable, I simply find it a little strange that some people cannot see those effects and on that basis deny the existence of the causal factor. But that doesn't bother or upset me, it merely causes me to mentally shrug my shoulders and think, "well, good luck with that".

On the other hand, having a very small degree of orange-green color blindness, I can completely understand the bewildered feeling of an individual who simply does not see the big orange letter on the green background to which another individual is pointing, wondering what on Earth he could possibly be seeing.

The atheists with whom I do have a problem, and for whom I regularly demonstrate a great deal of contempt, are the liars, the cheats, the deceivers, and the malicious. If one genuinely believes that religion is a crutch for the weak and psychologically needed, what does it say about those who are so eager to kick that crutch out from under those who clearly need its support? And, as an armchair intellectual, I find their willful ignorance of history, religion, and philosophy to be as astonishing as it is irksome. Intelligent? I don't even consider them to be educated. To claim that religion either causes war or is an important strategic element of war is to be every bit as ignorant as the apocryphal Flat Earth proponents so often cited; the significant difference being that the Religion Causes War Society not only exists but is even willing to expound their ludicrous and historically illiterate arguments in public.

Anyhow, I very much welcome atheists of S's stripe here. I don't expect anyone to agree with me all the time about anything; my best and oldest friend has made a habit of playing Devil's Advocate in our conversations for more than three decades. The reason I value the questions and the doubts of intelligent atheists who are more interested in rational debate than in exhibiting their psychological issues is because they help keep the Christians and other theists from lapsing into intellectual sloth and thereby prevent this blog from devolving into the sort of circle jerk that has rendered the New Atheism so toothless.

But speaking of the quiz, it is worth pointing out, as Bethyada noted yesterday, that the Pew Forum ignored its own definitions of "atheist" and "agnostic" in reporting the results. Whereas self-identified atheists and agnostics scored 20.9, the Pew Forum defined an atheist as "someone who does not believe in God" and an agnostic as "someone who is unsure that God exists". Therefore, the "nothing in particular" crowd should have been included in the "atheists and agnostics" group - supporting the case made in TIA, these Low Church Atheists outnumber the self-identified High Church ones by a factor of 4.5 - which reduces the atheist and agnostic score to 17.4, below that of white evangelicals at 17.6.

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Incompetent biologists

The butterfly collectors should probably leave the metaphysics and philosophy alone considering that they can't even do their own jobs properly:

A study has found that a third of all mammal species declared extinct in the past few centuries have turned up alive and well. Some of the more reclusive creatures managed to hide from sight for 80 years only to reappear within four years of being officially named extinct in the wild....

Dr Diana Fisher, of the University of Queensland, Australia, compiled a list of all mammals declared extinct since the 16th century or which were flagged up as missing in scientific papers. ‘We identified 187 mammal species that have been missing since 1500,’ she wrote in the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B. ‘In the complete data-set, 67 species that were once missing have been rediscovered. More than a third of mammal species that have been classified as extinct or possibly extinct, or flagged as missing, have been rediscovered.’

That is a stunning record of professional incompetence, one that is surpassed only by Keynesian economists. Clearly one can safely ignore pretty much everything these intrepid scientists declare about one species magically transforming into another one as well, considering their proven inability to determine if a specific species even exists or not. And, needless to say, this raises some serious doubts about the assertion made by various members of the profession that God doesn't exist either. If you're not capable of correctly ascertaining the existence or not-existence of the Vanikoro Flying Fox of the Solomon Islands, then logic dictates you should steer very clear of the debate about the existence of God.

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