Just Sayin'...

Yours truly, April 22, 2014:

Have you ever noticed that the preponderance of the truly hard core left-wing bigotry and petty totalitarianism in higher education emanates from the crappiest of schools?

I think these unhinged types are trying to one-up the somewhat softer (but still crazy) gentry liberalism of the more elite institutions.

Kevin Williamson, May 16, 2014:

Brandeis disinvites Ayaan Hirsi Ali; Smith chases off Christine Lagarde of the IMF; Rutgers rejects Condoleezza Rice; and, now, Haverford scares off former Berkeley chancellor Robert J. Birgeneau.

Anybody else notice that the trend here is hysteria among students at pretty good but not that good colleges? I suspect that there is some intellectual overcompensation at work here.

  As my 12-yr old likes to say, "Hey, I'm just sayin'..."

Just A Reminder, Despite Massive Tax Hikes, Illinois Still Circling the Drain

Hey, just a reminder, Illinois, which passed massive tax hikes a few years ago, which drove businesses out of state, still can't balance its budget and faces another ratings downgrade from the worst-rated state to...I don't know, the worster rated state.

Illinois lawmakers are poised to approve a $35.7 billion spending plan for the year beginning July 1, knowing they’ll probably have to return after the November election to provide more funding to keep government operating. 

The General Assembly has been unable to extend personal and corporate income increases beyond their Dec. 31 expiration, or cut the budget by about $2 billion, the amount that would be lost in tax revenue.  While Democratic Governor Pat Quinn said he wanted to renew the levies, the proposal fell short of the votes needed in the House, where all members are up for re-election in November. The Senate is to take up the budget bills today.

The plan under consideration maintains spending at current-year levels, using dollars drawn from borrowing, transfers and delayed payments to vendors and state employees.  Illinois is the lowest-rated state, with an A3 grade from Moody’s Investors Service, and lawmakers acknowledge their actions risk another cut.

Jen Psaki Strikes Again

D teamer Jen Psaki (Tommy Veitor's female doppleganger?) continues to provide the hilarity that keeps America from crying.  I can't do any better than Bryan Preston's minimalist take on actual events...

Q: I mean — I mean — I’m talking, what specifically are you talking he doesn’t get enough credit for — (inaudible)?
PSAKI: For engagement initiatives like Iran, what we’ve done on Ukraine, efforts to dive in and engage around the world.
(Cross talk.)
Q: I mean, Russia has still annexed Crimea. I mean, Iran — there’s ongoing negotiations, but is that the success here that you’re talking?
PSAKI: We’re talking about engagement in the world and taking on tough issues that present themselves. And the United States continues to play a prominent role doing that.

Get that? Results don’t matter, just playing the game matters. Give yourself a big ol’ pat on the back just for showing up.

The “everyone gets a trophy” crowd is now running American foreign policy.

Unexpectedly!

Sameoldsameold from Bloomberg.

Consumer spending unexpectedly fell in April after the biggest surge in almost five years as incomes slowed. Household purchases, which account for about 70 percent of the economy, dropped 0.1 percent, the first decrease in a year, after a revised 1 percent gain the prior month that was the strongest reading since August 2009, Commerce Department figures showed.

Heh.

They told Glenn Reynolds that if he voted for Mitt Romney, troglodyte nativists would demand conformity and squelch cultural diversity, and they were right!

BLUESHIRTS!

Glen Sather and his team, notably Jeff Gorton, look like bloody geniuses right about now.  The coach swap with the Canucks and trading away your captain mid-season were bold moves that have paid off.

And how about this for a melt-your-heart (don't watch w/o tissues) story line.  And a few of the goons in the NFL could learn a thing or two about sportsmanship from these guys (Richard Sherman?).

Icy Reception, I'll Bet

Of course he got an icy reception.  He's the most anti-military C-in-C in a generation, he's cutting military funding, and he's using these kids' graduation - a singular event in their lives - for his own personal, narcissistic political aggrandizement.  I'd be pissed too.

4:2, So Where Is #YesAllMen ?

So, wait a second.

Elliot Rodger killed 4 men and 2 women, 3 with a knife or knives, 2 with a gun, and 1 with an automobile.

And yet this tragedy is a major impetus for gun control and a massively "trending" hashtag (not going to highlight it) of the "awareness" variety focused on the plight of women.

Where is the #YesAllAsianMen or #YesAllMen twitter campaign?  Where is the knife control policy push?  Where is the outrage at BMW for manufacturing the tools by which sociopathic, misogynistic losers can harm others?

Of course, we know where those campaigns are.  They don't exist because there is no political gain to them, there is no political herding to be accomplished, so they will never be launched.

McDonald's In Massive Capital Giveback

I predicted, back in 2009, that companies would shrink - via buybacks and dividends - rather than invest and grow aggressively because of the tenor, tone, and actions of the Obama administration and the Pelosicrats in Congress.

As a grace note to all this, let me point out that many large companies, Cisco and IBM for example, have announced large increases in their stock buyback programs to the tune of billions of dollars.  This means that there is a higher return to shrinking their capital base than to expanding and hiring.  That is the heart of the structural problem that Washington and Obama have created.  Until that reverses, we won't see any meaningful job creation.

I've chronicled this prediction along the way too.

Now, six years in, we still have corporations that see no compelling prospects to the point that they'd rather shrink than grow and invest.

McDonald's on Wednesday said it plans to return $18 billion to $20 billion to shareholders between 2014 and 2016 through a combination of dividends and share repurchases.

More cash in the pockets of shareholders.  (And this from a company with a black CEO that overwhelmingly caters to minorities and poorer people.  Not fitting the narrative.)

More Insane Rhetoric from...Yep...Profs at Crappy Colleges

I will say it again.  The most strident, illiberal and just-plain-insane rantings out of academia seem to come from the crappiest schools.  (The good schools do it too, but they are, at least, relatively restrained most of the time.)

Professor Elizabeth Ordonez, a retired Spanish professor from Metropolitan State University in Denver, accused “Zionist attack dogs” of pressuring the resolution’s supporters.

I think vast swaths of the higher education complex, which could very well comprise the language department at Metropolitan State, are just jobs programs for marginally employable loyal Democratic voters.

ObamaCare Hurts Poor, Dems Won't Care

So, in early days here, ObamaCare is hurting unions (despite all those exemptions granted union plans) and hurting the poor in many ways.  All we need is a story where "fatcats" exploit the law in order to enrich themselves to have the perfect Democrat creation (much like the economy that is great for capital and bad for labor).  I'm sure it's happening and such a story is out there, but I haven't done the research.

Will we hear the howls of opprobrium at such an unfair and evil system that hurts the poor and helps the rich?  No.  Because the results aren't important...it's all marketing and rhetoric for the ultimate goal.

How Many Euphemisms for "Black Kids" Can You Come Up With?

No matter how many you can, CBS News Miami has got you beat.

Leading "top left" story on Drudge from the weekend...mayhem in Ft.  Lauderdale.

"Youths", "instigators", "young people", "unruly and violent crowd", "troublemakers"

So, as we learn nearly instantaneously that twisted mass-murderer Elliot Rodger is, despite being the son of an Indonesian woman and a British man, a "white American," we are studiously kept from learning anything about these youths of indeterminate-race.

But alas...

Anybody up for a national conversation about race...?  No, didn't think so.

Is Piketty's "Capital" Another "Arming America"?

Well, the weekend brought a crazy turn of events in regards to the leftist IT-girl of the moment, Thomas Piketty.  The Financial Times has done some ciphering and is saying that Piketty's empirical work is suspect (wonkspeak for "facts are wrong").  The story is gathering steam and here is the raw take at this point.

The FT Isn't Just Saying Piketty Made A Mistake — It's Saying He Manipulated Data

aka He made shit up.

WOW.  This could blow up into a world-class intellectual scandal, completely discredit all of Piketty's work, and set leftist economics back decades after they put so much of their reputations on the line in ballyhooing Piketty.  This could be Michael Bellesiles all over again.  

Or it could all be covered up by the media, much in the opposite way that it stirred up controversy over Rogoff and Reinhart last year because their ballyhooed work didn't fit the narrative.  Piketty's work is the Mother of All Narrative-Fitting Things, so nothing to see here...

It is worth noting that after Bellesiles was exposed as an academic fraud and his thesis was debunked, the Supreme Court went on to strengthen, in the Heller and MacDonald rulings, the individual right interpretation of the 2nd Amendment, precisely what Bellesiles's book sought to undermine.  The Arming America controversy brought alot of material and legal argument up to the surface just in time for the SCOTUS to issue those landmark rulings.

If only the incipient Piketty hubbub were to progress in such a fashion, we might get a window of a decade or two safe from the prospect of a massively redistributive taxes, until the tyrants can regroup and/or incubate a new generation of redistributionists.

Global Investors Not High on Obama, Climate Change...

As the WSJ reports today, the Lightworking administration is stepping up its policy efforts focused on global warming climate change.  It's a cynical move as the American public puts global warming climate change well down at the bottom of the list of things it cares about.

As do global investors.  Bloomberg Markets is out with their new global investor poll and investors aren't too keen on climate change policy either - rating it at 2%, below both "aging population" and "not sure".  (Also curious, 36% of investors think it'll be better for the economic outlook is Republicans retain the House and take control of the Senate in November.  Click a page ahead on the interactive chart at the link.)

In other findings, optimism over political leaders' policies contributing to a positive investment climate reveals that Barack Obama garners a mere 37%, less than half of Angela Merkel's tally (76%), well behind David Cameron, Shinzo Abe and even Xi Jinping.  So, what was all that bulls**t we heard prior to the elect that global investors just loved Dear Lightworker???

Not News From 1773: Tea Party Rocks Great Britain

As this WSJ editorial points out, the Tea Party vs GOP Establishment theme is mostly a self-serving notion of leftist media elites.  The reality is much more nuanced and optimistic for the actual Tea Party movement.

But, what ought to be another, major element of the story is not the status of - three words - the Tea Party, but of Tea Partyism.  Tea Partyism refers to the political philosophical underpinings of the movement that goes by the moniker.  Tea Partyism comes is various forms and flavors, even in other countries.  In Great Britain, for example, they have an analogous movement to the Tea Party called UKIP, which just had a very good result in recent elections.

So, while actual individuals running for office in the US under whatever banners may be fodder for elite media snickering, the principles of constitutionally faithful government, economic liberty and restraining inept and intrusive bureaucracies is gathering a head of steam in the modern political arena.

Loathesome Cronyism Story of the Day

Story is here.  The Costa Concordia was a tragedy, but now it is an economic problem; and the local mafia Italian authorities want to rent-seek off of it.  The most cost-effective way to clean this problem up is the best solution for society at large. Forcing a "local" solution imposes what economists call "dead weight loss" on society.  Ultimately, we all pay that cost.  Tuscan politicians don't care - they see jobs.  Italian shipyards are struggling (except for Fincantieri) because they are Italian and come with all the sclerosis and inefficiency of the statist, union-dominated Italian model.

Local authorities attempt to force $275m demolition contract to be kept in Italy ahead of decisive Rome meeting next week, putting the $30m deal at risk from Boskalis for the use of the semi-submersible heavylift ship Dockwise Vanguard

The wreck of the Costa Concordia.

       

The president of Tuscany has said he will ban the semi-submersible heavylift ship Dockwise Vanguard from approaching the Island of Giglio in a statement that seems set to make sure that the wreck of the Costa Concordia will be demolished in Italy.

Enrico Rossi says he is ready to physically prevent the Boskalis vessel, the largest of its type in the world, from entering the region to lift and transport the wreck because of environmental hazards. Lifting the stricken cruiseship onto the 117,000-ton-lift-capacity Dockwise Vanguard (built 2012) runs the risk of displacing thousands of tons of water, much of it polluted by the ship’s sewage and other contaminants.

I hope the parties contracted to demolish the Costa Concordia tell these pols to pound sand and that they can enjoy the sight of the rotting hull off their coast for as long as they wish, until they are prepared to honor the terms of the original contract...

The Feds Defraud...Again

I think the answer to this question is "Absolutely, yes."

In the absence of government involvement, this would attract a swarm of shareholder tort lawsuits.

Told Ya' So

Here is a headline from the CNBC.com's lead story right now...

"Everything the Fed thinks it knows may be wrong"

 Where have I heard this before...?

Most troubling is that establishment types don't see it this way, in a classic case of the Reaganite truism that it isn't that liberals are dumb, it is that so much of what they know is wrong.

...

Even if they're looking, they're looking at the wrong things.  Elites have failed us before you know.  One iron rule of Donny Baseball's Highly Refined and Usually Correct World View is that your real risk is not what/where you think it is.

...

Bottom line, we are in absolutely uncharted territory, and the elites are dismissing the dangers because they feel that they have it all figured out.  Be afraid.  Be very afraid.

Is the MSM Still Flogging "Unexpectedly"? Really?

It's usually Al Hunt's JournoList hack-shop  aka Bloomberg News with this, but today CNBC is getting in on the "unexpectedly" action.

Yes, nearly six years into the dismal and embarrassing economic policy morass of the Obama administration and crappy economic data is still unexpected.

Our Sad, Sad Tourism Spokeman-in-Chief

Ugh.  Will the embarrassment never end?  (Of course it will, eventually.  Perhaps, on January 20, 2017...maybe.)

Latest genius economic stimulus idea out of the painfully awful and soul-crushing Obama White House - tourism.

Sparking economic growth through tourism is the latest pitch from President Barack Obama, who’s ramping up his jobs message leading into November’s U.S. congressional elections.

Tomorrow, Obama heads to the National Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, New York, to deliver a speech on tourism and jobs. Last week, Obama helped dedicate a museum on the site of the World Trade Center in New York to remember the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks and their almost 3,000 victims. 

Tourism?  The Baseball Hall of Fame?  This is economic policy?  Shoot me, please.

I would say that this is quite a come-down for the Lightworking, God-like, Smartest President Ever, who is bored with us and the job of being President, but this is just the latest in what has been five plus years of nothing (and I mean nothing) but bone-headed economic ideas. 

Remember, the tire gauge and weatherization and cash for clunkers and all those claims that our economy needed ObamaCare (yes, the economy needs $500 million spent on five state insurance websites that are now being scrapped!)

Finally, does this mean that he now supports going to Vegas?

More Media Crap About Hedge Funds

Good God.  The MSM's ongoing antipathy towards hedge funds is ... ongoing.

Every few months or so, the highly underpaid geniuses in the media business feel the need to tell you that the people in the hedge fund business are highly overpaid mediocrities.  Reductive Freudian penis imagery is quite useful in this regard.

OK, we get it.  A predominantly white-male group is scamming the public and garnering unto themselves undue influence and power that is both unearned and pernicious.

(Incidentally, I could say the same about the media.  It's mostly a bunch of weaselly white guys too.  They talk a big game about 'speaking truth to power' yadayadayada, but it's mostly a sham, they're just propaganda artists with bylines.  Same dichotomy - big honkin' Johnson in terms of their view of themselves versus flaccid Irishness in reality...Ezra Klein, I talking about YOU!)

Anyway, it never stops.  Here is the latest from The Journolist Crew at Bloomberg View.  There are all the usual things wrong with this as the umpteen previous version of this EXACT SAME article, which have been addressed over and over.  But the fatal flaw is right there, blaring in the title.

"Hedge Funds Won't Make You Rich"

I'm not sure who makes that claim.  In fact, when I started my hedge fund many years ago, my principal financial backer took me aside and gave me, in his words, the one piece of advice I'd need to run my hedge fund.  "Remember," he said, "you are not in the get rich business, you are in the stay rich business."  In other words, the type of clients I'd have were more interested in preservation of capital than return on capital. There may be some that quibble, but in over a decade I have found that those with staying power and a rock-solid reputation in this industry hue to that view of their role.  I have NEVER heard of a hedge fund marketing pitch by anyone other than a scamming scheister that says, "you will get rich investing in my fund."  So, we are talking about a straw man here.

Then there is the classic lefty argument for things that they don't like and can't come to terms with - the players don't understand their own interests.  This is the Thomas Frank/What's Wrong with Kansas argument.  We have to ignore the fact that people choose over and over again a certain alternative, because, well, they're stupid.  Even though ALOT of very rich and putatively savvy people and institutions invest alot of money in hedge funds, they clearly don't understand what is in their best interests and must be wrong.  Ugh.  Just Ugh.

UPDATE:  Here is an intelligent rebuttal by Matt Levine of Bloomberg News that says many of the same things that I said, citing a recent Citibank survey of the hedge fund industry.

Did the Job Market Vigilantes Win?

We are still mired in the Robert Half Economy.  (h/t Carpe Diem)

Temporary and contract staffing employment increased 0.41% from the prior week. The index set a record, reaching 95 in week 16. This is the highest week-16 level since inception of the index

In a sense I have been correct that the "Job Market Vigilantes" have made a large contribution towards muting the presidency of the Worker of the Light.  (The Robert Half Economy is a corollary development to the phenomenon I call the JMVs.)  His administration's own incompetency and cynicism is most at fault, but it is hard to deny that the steady, ongoing jobs market misery has gone a long way to limiting Dear Leader's capacity to get things done.

Binders Full of Men?

To borrow a phrase word  Heh.

Remember, it's not sexism when girls do it.  Just like it's not racism, ageism, or any other damn ism when the left does it.

Government Scandals and the Nachman Phenomenon

Just for shits and giggles, let's make a quick list of federal agencies that have been in the news lately for being incredibly dysfunctional:
1) The Veterans Administration - this story is front and center these days, because, well, it doesn't reflect well on government-run healthcare precisely as we plunge deeper into...government-run healthcare...

2) The Secret Service - there is some very good news about the most recent scandal making the news regarding the Secret Service.  The good news is that the scandal does not involve hookers.

This is all just in the last few days.  Go back, oh I don't know, a couple weeks and we can add HHS for their ongoing atrocious display of idiocy surrounding the rollout of ObamaCare, EPA for its highly paid porn-watching and/or double agent pretending employees, the State Department for somehow losing track of $6 billion dollars.

And yet Americans still fall for (and vote for) political promises that government can do things to make our lives better.  I call it the Nachman Phenomenon.

The Aussies Just Saved $5.25 BILLION

Simply beautiful.

Australia’s conservative coalition is set to cut more than 90 percent of the funding related to global warming from their budget, from $5.75 billion this year to $500 million, over the next four years.

Environmentalists and leftist politicians in the country protested the move by conservative Liberal Party Prime Minister Tony Abbott’s governing coalition to slash funding for climate programs, arguing such funding for green energy and reducing carbon dioxide emissions were necessary to stop global warming.

Don't like it, lefties?  Win a damn election then.  Elections have consequences.  Oh, and bugger off...

Jay-Z and Bey Didn't Get the "Demand a Plan" Memo

ChicksOnTheRight ask, "Wait, I thought we were supposed to be demanding a plan?"

Didn't Mr. and Mrs. Jay-Z get the memo?

Democrats Pine Away to Be Your Over-Lords

Hey, just a reminder that lefties are sloshing BIG money around in shadowy networks toward hard-core left-wing groups.

Oh, and also, it's Democrats who don't think too much of respecting and following the law.  This isn't new.  Remember when Bev Perdue, former (thankfully) Governor of North Carolina, suggested we suspend elections?

She got what she deserved.  Loose talk of undermining our democracy and republic of laws, should be met with brutal consequences at the ballot box, if not tarring and feathering…

If you scratch a Democrat enough, you'll find a communist…and they'll take away every last one of your damn rights if you let them.

UPDATE:  As if on cue, we have the left's desires made known: deport Republicans and jail global warming climate change deniers!

Best Henninger Ever?

In case you missed it, this could be the greatest Dan Henninger column ever and that is saying something (even better than the "Let Them Eat Wind" column).  Just a few tidbits to entice you to RTWT...

No one could possibly count the compromises of intellectual honesty made on American campuses to reach this point. It is fantastic that the liberal former head of Berkeley should have to sign a Maoist self-criticism to be able to speak at Haverford. Meet America's Red Guards.

and

Years ago, today's middle-aged liberals embraced in good faith ideas such as that the Western canon in literature or history should be expanded to include Africa, Asia, Native Americans and such. Fair enough. The activist academic left then grabbed the liberals' good faith and wrecked it, allowing the nuttiest professors to dumb down courses and even whole disciplines into tendentious gibberish. 

as I said, RTWT.

Piketty. It's All About the Coming Wealth Tax

There are alot of great critiques of Thomas Piketty's book that lefties are fawning all over as the greatest thing since ever (here is just the latest, from Martin Feldstein, who says that Piketty's numbers don't add up), but this one reveals the book to be what it really is...intellectual cover for the coming wealth tax.

Lefties have ALWAYS wanted to simply take wealth from the wealthy.  From raw, bald expropriation to more subtle, seemingly innocuous re-distributionist schemes, the goal is always the same.  They want to do it for its own sake, but in the current time they need to do it because everything they've built faces collapse.  The liberal state is insolvent, everything they've worked for and built up over the decades is at risk.  Walter Russell Mead puts a fine point on when he posits the collapse of the "blue model."  From the fiscal follies exemplified by Detroit and Illinois to the inevitable demographic wreckage of Social Security, progressive governance is facing its end days, unless it can come up with gobs of money to keep itself going.

And where is it going to get this money?  They already tax pretty much everything.  The only arrow left in the quiver and the only arrow big enough to be of any use is a wealth tax.  They've pined for it for decades, but now it is urgent.  Life as most lefties know it cannot go on unless they start grabbing huge chunks of private wealth.  Everything they do is focused on bringing this policy achievement home.

And I mean EVERYTHING.  For example, much under the radar, one of the first things the Obama administration did was to neuter the offshore tax havens.   Lightworker has spent six years grinding the Swiss banks and other offshore banking centers into dust to prepare the battlefield for the coming wealth tax, so that wealth can't just sneak away from the taxing authorities.

Then there is the beyond-profligate explosion of federal spending, which I have highlighted as "the plan behind having no plan."

And now there is Piketty's book - the intellectual cover.  A small piece, but a necessary one to be sure.  You can't pull off something this big unless you have all the pieces of the puzzle together...you need the Crisis, the Demon, the Case and the Leader.

- The Leader - the presidency of Barack Obama is the unique set of circumstances, politically and culturally, to do this, from his enormously effective cult of personality to the handy-dandy ability to label opposition to him as racist.  (Fortunately, this moment is cratering fast, but it wasn't supposed to be this way, and still, the progressives will fight and scratch to keep the moment alive until it undeniably has no pulse)

- The Bad Guy - The demonization of "the 1%" didn't just come out of nowhere, and why do you think Harry Reid keeps harping about the Koch Brothers?

- The Crisis - you need as dire a fiscal situation as you can get, and they are engineering it

- The Case - this is where Piketty comes in

All of this is part of the Big Push for the wealth tax.  It is so close the lefties can taste it.  Let's hope the American people don't buy it and the moment passes.

Multiple Reasons for NYT's Decline

The Powerline guys do a bit of diagnosis as to why the New York Times is a dying journalistic enterprise.  I think they're on to something, but I think there is more to it.  The Times is an increasingly niche player because it has shrunk itself into its ideological box and alienated vast swaths of the news-consuming public.

Forgive the inherent boastfulness of this, but the Times has alienated me and I should be the type of person they should be desperate to attract.  I'm a news junkie and a high-earner (and it is my intention to be "an influencer" as I become a billionaire in the mold of the Koch brothers).  I've covered this before here and here.  Furthermore, and perhaps most important, the Times simply doesn't give me what I need to be effective at what I do...reality.  The Times doesn't give me reality, it gives me the things that the elitist, metropolitan, progressive would like to read about.  The most pernicious tool of bias in MSM is not how they cover things, it is what they choose to cover and what they choose to ignore.  And the Times ignores alot.  Thus you don't get reality, you get something else.  That means the Times is not a practical tool for me.

For that reason, and the fact that the Times probably loathes people like me, I haven't bought the Times in years.  Thus the Times isn't lying around the house for my kids to pick up if/when they get interested in the news.  My kids will need to have the Times jammed in their faces to know that it even exists, let alone that it may even be important.  Multiply me by a couple hundred thousand and you have a recipe for the slow, inevitable decline of a product.

Vessel of Evil White Oppression Found...Literally

So, they think they've found the wreck of Columbus's Santa Maria off the coast of Haiti, huh?  

Well, given that Columbus is inarguably evil for bringing down nothing but pestilence, poverty and oppression upon brown people, shouldn't the Haitians of all people demand that we leave this artifact at the bottom of the ocean rather than surface it and lionize the catastrophe of hegemonic white privilege?

Nah...take the money...

“Ideally, if excavations go well and depending on the state of preservation of any buried timber, it may ultimately be possible to lift any surviving remains of the vessel, fully conserve them and then put them on permanent public exhibition in a museum in Haiti.

I Don't Want To Be Known As That Gay Football Player, But Watch Me Kiss My Boyfriend

I agree. 

It's sad to see (my neighbor) Roger Goodell join the ranks of the thought police along with Adam Silver, the poobahs at Mozilla and pretty much every university president in America. 

I don't want my smash-mouth football with a side of social justice. 

As Laura Inghram has admonished other entertainers, just sing and spare us the lectures.  That's actually what I am sure most NFL players want - just to play - but when you have a multi-billion dollar franchise you are going to have corporatist overseers of that value.  And when you have corporatist overseers (particularly ones based in NYC) you are going to have weaselly subservience to public relations/brand image concerns.

I am indifferent to the football fate of one Michael Sam, but I am not indifferent to the loss of our ability to speak our minds and hold personal views, even if they are considered retro-grade by some. 

One last point on Michael Sam.  While I wish him no ill, are we really to believe him when he says that he wants to be known as just a football player, not a gay football player, and then proceeds to engineer the world seeing him plant a big ole' wet one on the lips of his boyfriend?  Now he will forever be known as that gay football player, despite his, now scantly believable, protestations.  And, as John Hinderaker posits here, the Rams will be under enormous pressure to make room for Sam on their roster regardless of his training camp performance.  Smart maneuvering on Sam's part, but gratingly cynical.

UPDATE:  Did I say gratingly cynical?

We Deserve It

In the WSJ today, Eliot Cohen says, in much greater detail, what I said here - America is failing because of the adolescent losers we've chosen to lead us.

This is what happens when you turn the elections of leaders of a great nation into a high school-type popularity contests.  You can thank your media for that.

Leftism Eats Itself

Not content to demonize and shout down their political and ideological opponents, lefties are targeting impure lefties for ostracism.   IMF President, Christine Lagarde, (an elitist lefty in good standing if ever there was one) has had to withdraw as a commencement speaker upon the now familiar tantrum of a small group of indoctrinated, coddled, puerile adolescents at some college somewhere.

This is what leftism does.  It creates an orthodoxy around it victimologist worldview and proceeds to ruthlessly enforce fealty to that worldview.  Stray an iota - which most inevitably do, because the dogma is just too nutty - and you are de facto excommunicated.

I Don't Suck and Am Not Sorry

I don't know what to make of this.  I hope it is parody, but it probably isn't, in which case I weep for these doofuses...

...but also, rather than weep it is incumbent on the rest of us not to let this gibberish go unopposed.

Speaking for myself...I can declare confidently that I don't suck, and therefore am not sorry.

So there.

I'm Laughing At Felix Salmon All Over Again

Trolling through the NBfPB achieves I came across this post about our (as in our country) brokeness.  It's a great post and you should read it, but I thought I would just highlight this one tidbit…here is a typical media lefty lamenting our parlous finances and what it means for all those poor, dedicated, selfless public servants…

Right now, with the shutdown, we’ve already reached the point at which the government is breaking very important promises indeed: we promised to pay hundreds of thousands of government employees a certain amount on certain dates, in return for their honest work.

Naturally, I laughed that one out of the park on the spot.  But it is extra delicious to bring this up again on the heels of the news that the EPA has at least one (and I'm sure it is just one) $125,000 employee who watches 4 hours of online porn a day that it knows about.  This is, of course, on top of the scammer who maintained that high paying EPA job while doing nothing and claiming he was working as a spy.

As with most most things, it starts with your assumptions…make the wrong one, and everything that follows is wrong.  In this case, and every case, lefties assume that government employees are these selfless, altruistic public servants giving us their very best day in and day out in the hope of a better tomorrow.  Pshaw.  Vast numbers of them are perniciously incompetent, cheesy spongers.

You could slash the federal workforce by a third and we wouldn't be able to tell the difference.  Well, that's not true, we would.  Things would be appreciably more pleasant.  

2014 Could Be Bad for the Obamacrats at the State Level Too

I got the re-election call wrong (as did a lot of people like Michael Barone), but I did predict that Mr. Lightworker would do enormous damage to the Democratic Party before it was all said and done.  This assessment would suggest I was right.

Given the long-term cycles of American political history, Obama’s second midterm this year should be even worse for Democrats than the disastrous Obama first midterm in 2010. And the polls are bearing out that possibility.

Dems either never anticipated this or gambled that holding the White House was worth whatever damage they would sustain elsewhere.  Aside from gaining the Senate, which is BIG, it looks like Republicans might actually extend the gains they made in statehouses in 2010, which was game-changing.  Losing more state houses could be disastrous for Dems.

Smart Republican governance at the state level will create the next wave for the GOP at the national level.  It's already happening.  Michigan and Wisconsin have staged full-on turn-arounds due solely to their bold Republican leaders.  Numerous states like Kansas, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Florida, Oklahoma, Missouri, Tennessee and North and South Carolina are moving noticeably in the right direction under the GOP.  And  states that were already doing it right, like Texas and North Dakota, are continuing the winning streak.

All Democrats at the state level have managed to achieve is to drive their states further into the fiscal abyss and pick fights with gun owners.

Although, no one should be getting cocky.

Dark Horse Is My Horse, And Has Been for Years

The buzz is building slowly.  I think.

I can hope, can't I?

You heard it here first, and when I say first, I'm talking 2010…the guy is the anti-brain fart.  And God knows we need it.

I'm feeling good, because I am only rarely wrong, usually way too early, but rarely wrong...

I Love It...Operation Pouty Face

Best post ever, about some deadly serious business and the collection of nitwits that is the American Celebrity Left.

UPDATE:  Even the weenies at Bloomberg View don't think this hashtag thing is going to work very well.

And while #BringBackOurGirls has become popular worldwide, the campaign originated in Nigeria, where citizens are becoming more vocal about demanding accountability from their government. That, more than any intervention from the West, is what it will take to root out Boko Haram and silence outrages from the likes of Abubakar Shekau.

Barring the use of something akin to a US Navy SEAL team, those princesses ain't coming back...

Do Lefties Really Have the Public in Their Corner?

Whilst shaking the money tree among those solid 99%ers Steven Spielberg and Babs Streisand, the Worker of the Light claimed this...

“The good news is we’ve got public opinion on our side if people actually turn out — on every issue.

Is this true?  Maybe, but probably not.  I guess it depends on what polls you look at and how you ask the question.

On climate change, over 60% are somewhat or very skeptical of the need for action.  On taxes, over half the country thinks federal taxes are too high.  LightworkerCare remains highly unpopular.  Americans are split on how to handle immigration.  I think the polling is favorable on gay marriage directionally, but only among millennials is there majority support.  The minimum wage is the only area where there seems to be no ambiguity on where Americans stand, but that is about it. 

It is also worth noting that nearly every "right/wrong direction" or confidence or optimism measure is severely underwater.  The federal government and expanded government power is uniformly viewed very poorly.

The Lightworker's rallying cry is at best admirable optimism in the face of contrary reality.

Poverty As Progress Reprise

I've blogged before about how uneconomic "renewable" energy boondoggles are driving populaces to burn MORE of what is supposedly bad, like coal.  Well, this piece (h/t Carpe Diem) talks about how the same is driving people to burn wood.  In that context it is worth reprising this classically insightful post from long ago.

Poverty As Progress?

Don Luskin turns us on to this outstanding post on George Reisman's blog taking the NY Times to the woodshed for its moronic blather about energy conservation Japan. Read the whole thing, but here is the distilled essence of Reisman's critique - what the the NYT describes in Japan is not conservation, it is poverty.

Reisman sarcastically praises the glorious, green future that the Times pines away for, but this vision of poverty as progress is not new. In this post, I relate the ideas put forth by Peter Huber and Mark Mills on energy to my own experience to show that less energy means we are poorer, materially and, in a sense, spiritually. Huber and Mills dubbed these 'poverty as progress' types as Lethargists and they expose their illogic as deftly and devastatingly as Reisman does. Huber and Mills:

"Slower trips, dimmer bulbs, smaller refrigerators, and such aren't more efficient; they're slower, smaller, darker - they nudge us toward a less frenetic, peripatetic, and physically expansive way of life. Perhaps it is a good thing. But it is not more efficient, it is more sedentary, calm, and quiet - in short, more lethargic."

Huber and Mills also point out that the Lethargists of the 1970s made no apologies about what they were after; they cared not one iota about efficiency, what they wanted was for us to do less. They wanted us to live simpler, less active, in essence poorer, lives. Do not mistake this for somethig other than what it is - it is our supposed betters' desire to impose a lifestyle and material conditions on us, otherwise known as tyranny, albeit petty tyranny.

Did the Russians Fake an Election?

Of course they did.

But what is more interesting is that the Crimean "election" to henceforth live under Putinism was decided by roughly the same percentage as that of New Yorkers who elected DeBlasio.  The wages of apathy can be as destructive as the wages of tyranny, which in this case was friendly Russian soldiers with guns watching over the polls.

Countries Doing It Right: Canada, and Now Australia

I've highlighted unemployment figures in places like Canada before.  In smaller countries the numbers aren't that impressive but adjusted for population they are truly extraordinary.  Canada's record has been truly impressive.  Because they haven't choked off their entrepreneurial spirit and gone on a success-demonizing jag like we have.

It looks like it might be Australia's turn.  15,000 jobs added in a country of 20 million souls is impressive.  Maybe because they've sent Gillard, Rudd, Swan and that wrecking crew packing in favor of the sensible Tony Abbott.

Just Thoughts...

Watching the MVP Award presentation to KD right now.  I am struck but how stiff and uninspiring Adam Silver is.  He's the anti-David Stern.  Maybe that's what the NBA needs right now, but I doubt it.  I predict the Silver era in the NBA will be inauspicious at best.

Obama Admin Pulls Kerry Off the Mound

Read this article and tell me the most salient detail?  Here is a snippet of it, which is highly representative of the whole thing...

Susan Rice was sent on her first trip to Israel as National Security Adviser to both pressure the Jewish state to embrace two-state solution plans and try to make Jerusalem amenable to a nuclear deal with Iran. Rice met with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu today in advance of Thursday’s U.S.-Israel Consultative Group consultations.

“They discussed a wide range of regional and bilateral issues, including the United States and Israel’s close security cooperation, which has been unprecedented under President Obama’s leadership. On Iran, Ambassador Rice emphasized the critical importance of pursuing a comprehensive solution that assures the international community that Iran’s nuclear program is exclusively peaceful. She reiterated that the United States will not allow Iran to acquire a nuclear weapon, and that diplomacy is the best way to resolve the international community’s concerns peacefully. Ambassador Rice told Prime Minister Netanyahu that the United States will continue intensive consultations with Israel as P5+1 and the EU negotiations continue,” the White House said in a readout of the meeting. “On Israeli-Palestinians negotiations, Ambassador Rice noted that, while we have come to a pause in the parties’ talks, the United States remains convinced that lasting peace can only be secured through direct negotiations that lead to two viable, independent states living side-by-side in peace and security.”

Aside from that laugh line that I bolded above, what stands out?  Trick question, because what stands out is what is not in the article, namely John Kerry.  This is Kerry's domain and he's been all over Israel and related issues since Day 1.  But he's off in South Sudan or somewhere like that.  And Rice has never been to Israel.  Why Rice and not Kerry?

I think that's an easy one.  The Israelis are sick of him.  They probably told him not to come back, may have even denied him a visa.  After that "apartheid" schtick, the Israelis likely sent very clear back channel messages to DOS to stay-the-f**k-away for a spell.

Duranty Prize Awarded, My Horse Nowhere To Be Seen

Once again, my submissions of brilliance have been ignored over at PJ Media.

The 2013 Duranty Prize for mendacious journalism has been awarded and my suggestion did not win, place or show.  I am not sure if it even qualified. 

My thesis was simple, the most mendacious journalism of the year had to be the journalistic enterprise that supported and covered up the most mendacious Person and/or Statement of the Year, and we all know that to be Barack Obama and the "if you like your healthcare..." lie.  Thus I nominated Greg Sargent of the WashPost for egregious ObamaCare propagandizing.

Alas, no.  Anyway, I am sure that David Kirkpatrick of the New York Times deserves his Duranty and I am sure I will have ample opportunity submit worthy suggestions for 2014, such is the state of our modern American media.

Go Figure

Millions of Germans (e.g. Jews) needed a means to protect themselves from their own government (the Nazi Party).

Millions of Europeans (just one example, Poles) needed a means to protect themselves from outside governments (Nazi Germany).

Millions of Syrians, it now seems, need a means to protect themselves from barbaric non-governmental threats.

Millions of Ukrainians need a means to protect themselves from their fellow citizens as well as indeterminate forces in unmarked uniforms (hired Russian agitators).

Millions of Venezuelans need a means of protecting themselves from free-lancing, government-affiliated thugs.

The story of history is one of helpless and defenseless people having their lives turned upside down at best and being killed at worst.

And yet the Second Amendment is still seen around the world as crazy...

Africa Can Deal With Western Enviro-Weenies

This "Africanist" thinks that elitist Westerners would sacrifice Africa for their climate change agenda.

Sacrificing Africa for Climate Change

Western policies seem more interested in carbon-dioxide levels than in life expectancy.

He's undoubtedly right about elitists motivations and arrogance, but that shouldn't instill any fear that Africans won't gain higher standards of living.  Trust me, they're gonna drill for oil no matter what the West says.  If they can keep their leaders from then stealing all the wealth, they'll do OK.  Africa's big problem is not a bunch of Western enviro-ninnies.

Nothing to See Here

I am sure there is zero connection between this public school giving kids an assignment to explore Holocaust denial and the fact that Interim Superintendent is named Mohammed Z. Islam.

Lefty's Nice, Over-Nuanced, Psuedo-Intellectual Way of Saying that Obama Is One Arrogant MF

To an elitist lefty: "The world seems to disappoint him."

Translation for normal people:  "What an arrogant motherf**ker."

UPDATE:  This is so right, but - think about it - so crazy:  “Obama’s sad little minions are now touting his sociopathy as a benefit. It’s our fault that Barry is so very uncomfortable with reality. We’re to blame for his inability to see the world as it is, not as he’d like it to be,”

Remember, some of us saw this from Day One.  DAY ONE!

Also, I am reminded of this...

God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change,

The courage to change the things I can,

And wisdom to know the difference.

The guy is none of these things - serene, courageous, nor wise.  And I thought he liked Niebuhr...

Dying? Try, Dead.

These guys think they are prescient saying we are watching the Obama presidency die.

News flash.  It died in 2013.  The stock market knew it.  I knew it.

With the exception of the passage of ObamaCare and his re-election, it was actually over within months of it starting in 2009.

Another Convention-Busting Article in Weekend WSJ

The cover article of the lifestyle section of the Weekend WSJ shouldn't, but may, come as a surprise to many.  It posits that you've been lied to - that saturated fats will kill you - by a messianic scientist who got the government to believe him and pound home the message.  Shocker, I know.

The science has long since debunked this, but the public perception has lived on and thrives to this day.

I've never believed it and, while I am not the picture of health, I'm pretty darn healthy for a forty-something dude (three set, 2 hour singles tennis match yesterday!) and I've enjoyed the butter, the steaks, the ice cream, etc over the years, which has made me happy, which may be why I am healthy...hmmm.

Maybe Malthus Didn't Even Believe Malthus

I was very intrigued by this review of a new book on Thomas Malthus in the weekend section of the WSJ.  I haven't given Malthus much thought since college and, let's face it, his name is a throw-away pejorative for our ever-present self-loathing doom-and-gloomers.

Based on this, perhaps Malthus is a due further study and/or perhaps rehabilitation.

A further irony is that Malthus, over his lifetime, questioned his own principle of population and became, in many ways, its fiercest and most original critic. Malthus had an empirical cast of mind and did not turn away from contradictory evidence. He wrestled with the case of Russia, for example, where the fertility of the soil was unparalleled but poverty was extreme. ...

As time went by, Malthus was also more and more impressed by the way that population growth was proving to be a spur to innovation. Even in countries that were fully settled and cultivated, agricultural improvements kept boosting food production per acre—a phenomenon that has not since abated. Malthus could only conclude that "no country has ever reached, or probably will ever reach, its highest level of production." Rather, "it was want of industry, or the ill direction of that industry, [that] was the actual limit to a further increase of produce and population, and not the absolute refusal of nature to yield any more."

That last bit sounds a lot like this quote from modern day uber-optimist of human capacity, Peter Huber.

"'Energy supply' is determined not by 'what's out there' but by how good we are at finding and extracting it. What is scarce is not raw energy but the drive and the logic that is able to locate, purify, and channel it to our own ends." 

Breaking News

The Supreme Court rules that prayers that open town council meetings do not violate the Constitution, even if they routinely stress Christianity. 

Lefties' heads to explode at the coming aggressive expansion of the Christianist theocracy in 3...2...1...

UPDATE:  Looks like one small, positive step back in the right direction where we are not trying to violently expunge any trace of religion from the public square.

Why Is The DOJ Shutting Down Porn Stars' Bank Accounts?

This is amazing to me.

Under what legal authority does the DOJ claim to be able to do this?

And does anybody think they'll stop after they're through with the porn stars...?

Why Is America In Decline? Tommy Vietors in High Places.

From the early days of the Lightworker presidency I predicted not-good things based on a fundamental flaw in the personage of said Worker of Light.

Finally, and this is not a blunder but rather a fundamental flaw, Obama's legislative support is only as good as his public sheen. The reason he had to stack his administration with Clintonites is that he had no decent network to speak of. His limited experience in government, and life actually, has left him lacking in broad and deep connections to people who can achieve things and stand by him.

I've chronicled the parade of B Teamers and C Teamers that have, by necessity, populated the ranks of the Obama administration. This phenomenon runs from the highest cabinet posts held by the likes of John Kerry and Kathleen Sebelius to low level jokers like Jen "Hashtag" Psaki and, now Tommy "Dude" Vietor.

With doofi like these in important government posts is it any wonder we are a nation in decline?

John Kerry Has Been Removed to the Safe House

Whenever the US Secretary of State is in a place like South Sudan, he/she's been banished for bad behavior.

Two Tier Healthcare

So, there's an editorial in the WSJ today by a doctor/think-tanker predicting the coming "two tier" healthcare system, one for the relatively well-off and one for the rest.  It's a good read.

But it's not new to me.  I made this prediction a long time ago.

Happy Kwanza !!

No, not the phony holiday cooked up in 1966 in order to stick it to The Man Santa Claus...

Happy Kwanza, as in the oil field offshore Angola, where energy firm Cobalt Energy recently announced significant drilling results.

U.S. firm Cobalt International Energy has discovered significant quantities of oil offshore Angola, state oil firm Sonangol said, calling the find the biggest so far in the promising pre-salt layer in the Kwanza Basin.  

Oil drillers hope discoveries under a deep submerged salt crust off Angola known as pre-salt may match the prolific finds beneath similar deposits off Brazil on the other side of the Atlantic in recent years.  

Analysts say Angola, Africa's No. 2 oil producer, could double its oil reserves, which are currently estimated at just under 13 billion barrels, if pre-salt drilling proves successful. Drilling at Cobalt's Orca-1 well in Block 20/11 reached a depth of 3,872 metres and has successfully produced over 3,700 barrels of oil and 16.3 million cubic metres of gas per day, Sonangol said in a statement on Thursday. "The results ... confirm the importance of the find, which is considered the biggest to date in the Kwanza basin," it added.  

Cobalt estimates the well may hold between 400 million and 700 million barrels of oil.

So dirt poor Angola is sitting on what could be $25 trillion of wealth, and the global warmists think that blocking a pipeline from Canada to the US is going to make a difference?  No way.

Geithner Lives!!!

Well, of course, Turbo Tax Timmy Geithner is still alive...

I'm talking about his spirit, his ethos, his mantra...his schtick.  The stick that says, "we don't know, but we know you're wrong."  Well, let's have Timmy express it in his own words.

"We're not coming before you to say we have a definitive solution to our long-term problem. What we do know is we don't like yours."

Got that?  We don't know, but we're gonna criticize you anyway.

Channeling TTT today is Jay Carney...we don't have numbers, but we nonetheless can say that those numbers are wrong...

"We dispute their numbers. We don't have hard, concrete numbers, but we dispute them," the press secretary reasonably explained.

Really Jay, between the TTT schtick and that whopper from yesterday, they don't pay you enough to make a fool of yourself like this.

Holy Crap: Democrat Decries "F**king Ni##er Town"

I'm beginning to think we DO have a racism problem in America, and it's locus is deep within the Democratic party.  Forget about (Democrat and NAACP honoree) Donald Sterling, check this out...

New Jersey city council chairman and mayoral candidate Marie Strumolo Burke was caught on tape lamenting her city’s descent into a “fucking nigger town” — and nearly all media reports failed to identify her as a Democrat.

Burke is chairman of Belleville, New Jersey’s city council and is running for mayor in the town’s June election. And yes, she is a member of the Democratic Party.

Zoinks.  Yikes.  Wow.

A REAL Financial Advice Column for 20-Somethings

CNBC has one of those nice, anodyne financial advice columns up geared towards "20-somethings."  It's fine and harmless as far as it goes.  The advice is likely good for anybody, not just those in their 20s, but, like I said, it's fine.

A more impactful and raw advice column might suit 20-somethings better as we live in a world of deep uncertainty and fraught with the potential of severe dislocations.  Of course, 20-somethings could always start with some general advice at investing for the future given the realities today, but let's customize it a bit to be more useful to them given their age.  So, let's give it a whirl...

1)  Save, but Don't Stop There, Invest - as a youngling, your biggest advantage is time.  You can harness the power of compounding like a 40-something could only dream about.  Sock away every bit you can, but don't stick it in low yielding crap.  Invest for the long haul in something that is relatively immune from the Fed's current financial repression.  No point in using your inherent time advantage to earn 0.5% in a savings account.  Think about a dividend paying stocks or high grade corporate bonds.  If you really want to think outside of the box, think about owning land.

2) Don't Count on Social Security - if you think Social Security will be there for you, you're smoking something.  It's going bust and/or it'll be eroded of purchasing power that it won't mean a thing.  Save on your own, don't even think these entitlements will be there for you.

3) Don't Lend to Governments - You lend to governments by buying their bonds.  Don't.  They're mostly all broke.  Your generation represents the most recent entrants into the Ponzi scheme, don't participate.

4) Learn About Smart and Legal Tax Avoidance - Your tax bill is likely one of your largest bills, larger than you utility bill, your clothing bill, maybe even your food bill.  Learn to minimize it.  A corollary to this is to take free (or freeish) money when it is offered.  Does your company offer matching 401k contributions?  Take it.  Anytime you can get paid for doing something you are already doing, take it.

5) Stop Voting for Socialists - Yeah, I'm sure it felt really good being caught up in the Obama movement and having that Elizabeth Warren bumper sticker on your Subaru, but if you intend to work hard, save/invest and play by the rules, eventually socialists (here in America we call them Democrats) will attempt to steal what you have.  You can give them power now and they will put in place policies that inhibit you from getting ahead, but, more dangerously, they will start building the policy machinery to steal what you've worked hard for, saved and built.  You can follow all this good advice and 30 years down the road have most of it taken from you because you were politically naïve.