You Know, I Really Want To Try...

...but the more I read intellectually dishonest crapola like this, the more I come to think the Left in this country is completely beyond rational discourse. That so many people find such idiocy to be compelling argumentation scares the hell out of me. I understand people will have different values and different perspectives that will inform their political beliefs...but democracy is only possible when most people are not completely blinkered.

I have no idea what the percentage is these days, but we are trending in the wrong direction.

Oh! Blissful Day!

Don't get me wrong, I'm not talking about today. I'm imagining a day in the future when we no longer have to read or hear about the hackery that is the average Paul Krugman column. I, for one, won't care if Krugman is simply put out to pasture or if he is abducted by space aliens and transported to another galaxy and installed in a zoo of outlandish creatures. (Though I'll admit the latter does hold an added appeal.)

It simply boggles the mind that anyone as contradictory in his statements as Krugman is is afforded any credibility. Let's take his account of the economy the last few years:

Act I) Economy tanks (in part because we followed a housing bubble strategy advocated by one Paul Krugman.) Krugman counsels a massive governmental intervention into the economy to forestall an economic panic. TARP and the other bailouts ensue.

Act II) Economy still reeling Krugman advises a massive increase in governmental spending to kick start the economy. Enter Stimulus. Deficits, says Krugman, are our friend.

Act III) Economy still not responding, Krugman attacks the "Wall Street bailouts" and claims there has been no increase in government spending. (The claim is patently absurd, but no one at The Times bothers to point this out. "He's rolling," they said.)

Act IV) Krugman's finger feels a different breeze and Krugman discovers two new facts: 1) deficits are problematic, and 2) entirely the fault of Republicans!

Act V) Today Krugman is claiming any alteration to the spending pattern he has previously called A) vital, B) nonexistent, C) inconsequential, or D) problematical, is the end of Democracy as we know it.

Uh, thanks Paul. Oh and Paul. if you see strange lights in the night sky feel free to run after them waving you hands in the air.

Another Fine Whine

US eco-activist jailed for two years

An activist who became a hero to campaigners for disrupting a Bush administration auction for the oil and gas industry with $1.8m (£1.1m) in bogus bids was sentenced to two years in prison on Tuesday....

At a vigil outside the Salt Lake City courtroom where sentencing took place, supporters of DeChristopher's Peaceful Uprising civil disobedience movement shouted: "Justice is not found here."

As Bidder No 70, DeChristopher disrupted what was seen as a last giveaway to the oil and gas industry by the Bush administration by bidding $1.8m (£1.1m) he did not have for the right to drill in remote areas of Utah. He was convicted of defrauding the government last March.

Leftie blogs are outraged, OUTRAGED I SAY!, to discover the law applies to them. In fact, they claim, its all a corporatist plot!

Are you kidding me? If we ever saw an even playing field in the American justice system, perhaps, but it rarely works out that way. If you are part of the privileged corporate elite you can get away with anything, but not as an individual. Halliburton defrauding the US government of millions in Iraq? Slap on the wrist. Wall Street defrauding customers and driving the country and world into recession? No dessert tonight and do better next time. Environmental activist protests Bush land giveaway to Big Oil? Go to jail for two years.

So the crime by statute can lead up to a 10 year sentence and a $750,000 fine...and this nitwit gets 2 years (of which he will serve what, 10 months maybe) and a $10,000 fine and its the end of western jurisprudence.

If you cant do the time....

Morons: English Football Division

It's a weird world:

Doncaster Rovers have sacked the woman who plays mascot Donny Dog after she posed in her underwear for a Sunday newspaper.

Tracy Chandler, who appeared in the photographs posing alongside Donny Dog's head, said she has been sent an email by the Championship side telling her she has "disgraced the club".

Ms Chandler, who has volunteered in the role for three years, admits she did not tell the club what she was doing but stressed it was "tastefully done". She also said the pictures had raised money for the NSPCC – the same charity for which Doncaster's players produced a naked calender last year.

That's right. This picture disgraces the club:



While this is fine and dandy:



I particularly like the tasteful bit of some of the lads with their hands down their pants. Classy!

Me thinks the Doncaster Football club has a bit of a problem with women.

Could there be any other explanation?

Bad Judges

Head shaking time again:

A New Mexico man said today he will fight to keep up a controversial billboard that suggested his ex-girlfriend had an abortion.

The billboard has a photo of Greg Fultz holding the outline of a baby with a playground in the background. The large text beside the photo reads, "This Would Have Been a Picture Of My 2-Month Old Baby If The Mother Had Decided To NOT KILL Our Child!"

The sign is on White Sands Boulevard, the main thoroughfare in Alamogordo, N.M., and has been up since mid-May. Fultz's ex-girlfriend Nani Lawrence took him to court with a petition for domestic violence and charges of harassment and invasion of privacy....

Last week, Otero County Domestic Violence Court hearing commissioner Darrell Brantley recommended an order of protection for Lawrence and that the billboard be removed by 8:14 a.m. on June 17 on the grounds of harassment.

Judge James W. Counts is expected to approve these recommendations, but his office says they cannot comment on pending cases.

If this is "approved" all it shows is Brantley and Counts are rights denying idiots. This is so clearly protected speech you really have to be stupid, and I mean truly blithering, to not recognize it. In fact, no reasonable person with even a modicum of knowledge free speech jurisprudence could reach any other conclusion.



No names are used here. No telephone numbers are used here. The topic is clearly one of public controversy, even if presented as an example of how the issue affects individuals. It's protected speech. You have to be a moron to think otherwise.

I certainly hope there is a mechanism in New Mexico to hold judges civilly liable for egregious violations of civil rights.

Darn. I Don't Have My Tin Foil Hat Handy

Little did any of us know, well at least those of us who live in a world where a clear sky is blue and the moon isn't made of used Mazda parts, that Al Gore was the victim of a vast media conspiracy back in 1999 and 2000.

Unreal.

Krugman Lies To Everyone On Earth, Including Himself

I guess it gets really difficult to remember what you've said when one is Paul Krugman and basically every word you have uttered in the last fifteen years or so has been politically premised and never tempered by an actual principle, other than "Gee ain't I swell!" perhaps. The Unwisdom of Elites

The fact is that what we’re experiencing right now is a top-down disaster. The policies that got us into this mess weren’t responses to public demand. They were, with few exceptions, policies championed by small groups of influential people — in many cases, the same people now lecturing the rest of us on the need to get serious. And by trying to shift the blame to the general populace, elites are ducking some much-needed reflection on their own catastrophic mistakes.

Let me focus mainly on what happened in the United States, then say a few words about Europe.

These days Americans get constant lectures about the need to reduce the budget deficit. That focus in itself represents distorted priorities, since our immediate concern should be job creation. But suppose we restrict ourselves to talking about the deficit, and ask: What happened to the budget surplus the federal government had in 2000?

The answer is, three main things. First, there were the Bush tax cuts, which added roughly $2 trillion to the national debt over the last decade. Second, there were the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, which added an additional $1.1 trillion or so. And third was the Great Recession, which led both to a collapse in revenue and to a sharp rise in spending on unemployment insurance and other safety-net programs.

Great argument, except for the fact Krugman has been arguing for years that these deficits are not a disaster at all. In fact, Krugman has been claiming the only disaster is that we haven't been producing larger deficits.

So which is it Mr. Krugman? Are the record breaking deficits you've been advocating for a disaster or not?

I'll wait for you to look outside and try to guage which way the wind is blowing.

It's all you ever do anyway.

Talk About Unconvincing

Chutzpah award of the week: Justice to NCAA: Why no college football playoff

The Justice Department wants to know why the NCAA doesn't have a college football playoff system and says there are "serious questions" about whether the current format to determine a national champion complies with antitrust laws.

Critics who have urged the department to investigate the Bowl Championship Series contend it unfairly gives some schools preferential access to the title championship game and top-tier end-of-the-season bowl contents.

In a letter this week, the department's antitrust chief, Christine Varney, asked NCAA President Mark Emmert why a playoff system isn't used in football, unlike in other sports; what steps the NCAA has taken to create one; and whether Emmert thinks there are aspects of the BCS system that don't serve the interest of fans, schools and players....

Bill Hancock, the BCS executive director, was confident the current system complies with the law.

"Goodness gracious, with all that's going on in the world right now and with national and state budgets being what they are, it seems like a waste of taxpayers' money to have the government looking into how college football games are played," he said.

In other words: "The government was so busy we were confident we could get away with violating the law. Besides, why would the government care about our little football games, which only generate a few billion dollars of business every year."

Mr. Hancock you are a tone deaf idiot.

That is all.

"I Don't Like What You Say And I'm Black, Therefore You Are Racist"

Welcome to "logic" in today's America: Anti-abortion fliers spark campus outrage

It has become the talk among African American students at the prestigious Princeton Theological Seminary -- racially charged fliers and postings. All of it is apparently anti-abortion literature.

Among the fliers was one that displayed a noose and another with the words "in the new klan lynching is for amateurs."

"I was shocked and appalled that someone would place something like that up at this particular institution," seminary student Maurice Stinnett told CBS 2's Derricke Dennis.

"There was a lot of devastation for me, psychological damage, injury, because I saw this as social bullying," student Shirley Thomas said.

Student leaders at the seminary, which neighbors Princeton University but is not directly affiliated, said the fliers first appeared on campus last November then reappeared in February for Black History Month.

The fliers originate from various sources, pointing out the number of African American deaths by abortion...

"People need to understand that racism is not dead," Thomas said.

Where to start, where to start...

First, can you believe how poorly written this news "story" is? I realize there has been a general slide in literacy in this country, but this is shockingly bad even for a journalist.

Second, how dumb do you have to be to give credence to the argument that it is racist to advocate for fewer abortions in the black community?

Third, is irony such a foreign concept to students at Princeton Theological Seminary that they are unable to see that calling ideas they don't like "racist" is itself a form of intellectual "bullying"? I guess the feeling is why have an intellectual discussion when you could more easily throw a temper tantrum.

How compelling.

"Progressives" Shocked To Discover Lockean Roots Of Constitution

Wow, the left is pretty stupid:

Every week, the Tea Party Nation hosts a weekly radio program, calling itself a “home for conservatives.” Two weeks ago, Tea Party Nation President Judson Phillips hosted the program and discussed changes that he felt should be made to voting rights in the United States....

PHILLIPS: The Founding Fathers originally said, they put certain restrictions on who gets the right to vote. It wasn’t you were just a citizen and you got to vote. Some of the restrictions, you know, you obviously would not think about today. But one of those was you had to be a property owner. And that makes a lot of sense, because if you’re a property owner you actually have a vested stake in the community. If you’re not a property owner, you know, I’m sorry but property owners have a little bit more of a vested interest in the community than non-property owners.

[Rather moronic emphases removed]

Phillips is of course correct about the property requirements originally needed in order to be a voter. The legal concept was that of a "freeholder." Phillips is also correct in his assessment of the reasons why the Founding Fathers (or most of them) supported such a view. Phillips is undoubtedly wrong in thinking such provisions could be re-implemented or would meaningfully address any current deficiency in our voting practices.

However, Phillips is actually engaged in working through the political theory (at least in a limited fashion) and that is a hell of a lot more than his critics seem willing or able to do.

Think Progress (which ironically seems to require very little in the way of thinking):

Phillips is advocating a policy of voter disenfranchisement that has its roots in the 18th century. When the United States was first founded, ownership of property was one of the requirements to vote in most elections. Many of these restrictions were phased out by the 1820s and replaced with requirements that the voter pays taxes. By 1850, these requirements, too, were phased out.

This is all true, but trite. It in no way is an attempt to asses the reasons why we would make the changes we did; how the changes affected the way politics happens; the relative strengths and weaknesses when compared to the freeholder system; in other words the kind of thinking that should be done when engaged in political theory.

Granted Think Progress doesn't win the award for "I have no idea what I'm talking about stupid." That goes to Crooks and Liars. They quote the same Phillips soundbite above and respond:

Sure, let's just do away with the principle of "one man one vote" altogether! After all, the Roberts Court has now enshrined corporate personhood -- this would be the next logical step.

What? One man one vote? What does that have to do with the idea of restricting voting to Freeholders? Well, nothing. The poor folks at Crooks and Liars just got themselves confused while they were attempting to parrot another lefty site who were going on about the idea some Tea Parties tossed around about getting rid of direct election of Senators and mentioned that this would mean the principle of one person one vote for U.S. Senators would be violated. (This is so muddled I have no idea what they could be talking about. You cannot have "one man one vote" nationally when both Rhode Island and California both get to vote for two U.S. Senators. And since Reynolds v. Sims in 1964, all state legislatures have to adhere to "one man one vote." Simply giving state legislatures the task of picking U.S. Senators wouldn't alter that.)

The stupidity has given me a headache.

Maybe more later.

Please. I Beg You. Don't Make Me Sympathize With Rand Paul

This blog has never been a friend of Ron Paul. We like it that way.

In one of the rare instances where visiting the sins of the father upon the son made sense, I could cheerfully dismiss the Rand Paul senate race. In fact, I was happy that I did not live in Kentucky so I could be far removed from the Paulian nonsense.

But what did the Democrat in the race do? He launched an attack on Paul so despicable that even I had to say "This is simply vicious and wrong." Hell, even Democrat Claire McCaskill called it "very dangerous." I'd like to think she didn't just mean in the sense that it risks backfiring badly. This year what I'd like to have happen pretty much never will.

Krugman: "Deficit? What Deficit?"

Evidently, the sky is orange in Paul Krugman's world:

Here’s the narrative you hear everywhere: President Obama has presided over a huge expansion of government, but unemployment has remained high. And this proves that government spending can’t create jobs.

Here’s what you need to know: The whole story is a myth. There never was a big expansion of government spending.

This is what is known in the real world as a lie.

For the 2009 budget (i.e. the last submitted by Bush) the total outlay of the Federal Budget was $3.1 trillion. For the first two years of the Obama administration the outlays were $3.6 trillion and $3.8 trillion. Thus, when compared to the baseline 2009 budget, the Obama administration spent an additional $1.2 trillion. Let's compare that with other two year periods since 1998 shall we? (data)

1998: $100 Million
1999: $100 Million
2000: $100 Million
2001: $300 Million
2002: $300 Million
2003: $400 Million
2004: $500 Million
2005: $300 Million
2006: $500 Million
2007: $700 Million
2008: $300 Million
2009: $500 Million
2010: $1.2 Trillion
2011: $1.2 Trillion

Thus I refute Krugman.

Jacob Weisberg v. John Locke (And The Founders)

From Slate:

Palin's counter-snobbery holds those who live in the middle of the country, own guns, and go to church are more authentic, more the "real America," than those who live in coastal cities, profess atheism, or prefer a less demonstrative style of patriotism. But the insistence that gay people not be married, or that some go without health insurance, or that gas be lightly taxed, reflect choices about "how other people should live" no less than the opposite positions. Gingrich and others cast democratic decisions as illegitimate only when they conflict with right-wing ideology. If an unelected judge upholds gay marriage, he's practicing liberal elitism. But if the same unelected judge were to invalidate Obama's health care legislation, he would be defending the Constitution. Such hypocrisy is based on the construct of a pre-political state of nature, where we lived in abstract freedom until government arrived to limit and control us.

Thus Weisberg's "argument" boils down to "You cannot call me an elitist because I'm smarter than Hobbes, Locke, Rousseau, and all of the Founders." Yeah. That'll work, if you are an idiot.

So, if Weisberg rejects the political theory which grants individual and inalienable rights (i.e. the political theory underlying American government), I wonder what he replaces it with?