The Left Eats its Own

The Leviathan federal government has ensnared Harvard Law School.  Couldn't happen to a bunch of nicer folks.  Although the agreement appears not to involved money changing hands, so clearly there was some mercy based on the alignment of interests - Harvard wants to seem like it is cooperating with the feds to tackle a pressing problem and the feds want to seem like they are tackling the pressing problem and wants HLS to keep pumping out nice, high-earning political liberals.

Ponder for a moment the absurdity of female Harvard Law School students needing the US federal government to rectify a putative deficiency which apparently renders them vulnerable.  Remember, these are (putatively) the smartest, accomplished and most capable women (not eighteen year olds mind you, this is graduate school, these are grown women) in society, attending a school with the greatest agglomeration of legal expertise in the world, and yet these women, and the school, somehow need the federal government involved to rectify some sort of vulnerability or deficiency that exists.

I wish HLS had gotten stung for some lucre.  It's always nice to see lefties take it on the chin from the Big Government that they so fervently desire.  Apropos this instructive photo...

That (NYC) 70s Show

I've been on this theme before, but now it really seems to be picking up steam.

More Wishful Thinking from the Media/Academic Elite

Ugh, more pathetic wishful thinking about the economy and the Lightworker.

A roaring U.S. economy is strengthening President Barack Obama as he confronts a new Congress under Republican control.

A report today that the gross domestic product grew at a 5 percent annual rate from July through September, its best performance in a decade, sent the Dow Jones Industrial Average past 18,000 for the first time. Consumers gained from stronger employment, higher pay and lower gasoline prices -- countering criticism that Obama hasn’t done enough for middle-income Americans.

“There’s no way you can look at those numbers and say it’s not good news” for Obama and Democrats, said James Campbell, a political science professor at the University at Buffalo.

I have said it over and over - and predicted it outright - the economy is improving because businesses see the light at the end of the tunnel, namely the end of the Obama era.  Obama has been a spent force in Washington for a long time now, his policy-making ability is nil.  Of course, he can still be a thorn in business's side, like this, but he has to resort to executive branch assertiveness and extra-constitutional maneuvers to be relevant.  And of course, businesses are looking forward to a GOP-held Congress, if not for inspired policy-making than for definitive burial of an Obama legislative agenda.

It has been six years of waiting Obama out.  With his power mostly gone and tenure nearly over, it is high time to get back to business.  The stock market has known this for awhile, the real economy is just now reflecting that reality.

Hey, I Was Damn Close!

Hah! 

Many moons ago, I explicated the "Liberal Synonym Finder", in which you can look up Tea Party and find "sucky".  But I was wrong, apparently "icky" is exact term.

Again, Lefties Mis-Diagnose Gun Ownership Roots

Our old pal Francis Wilkinson shows up again to spout his ragingly biased nonsense somewhere other than Bloomberg News.  And this time he's talking guns.  I only highlight him (he's not worth engaging really) to play up a point that I made somewhat recently.

 Byron York attributes Kentucky and West Virginia GOP wins to guns, coal and freedom.  Fine, I happen to like all of those things.  I think each GOP win had something to do with at least one of those...most likely freedom  (n.b. what liberals don't understand is that guns are a subset of freedom).

Wilkinson's is a classic of the genre, he gets wherefore we are tending but fails to examine why.

“Despite a long-standing decline in violent crime and recent political victories for gun regulation in Washington State and elsewhere, gun culture in the U.S. continues to grow more aggressive. If the recent Pew survey is correct, it may also be growing more popular.

(Note: FW might be up for a Fox Butterfield Award here, but that is someone else's bailiwick...and not to pass up a trademark of another marquis blogger...wait, more guns, less crime?  someone should write a book about that perhaps...)

Anyhow, my point is that liberals continue to fail to see guns as a subset of freedom.  It isn't actually "gun culture," sinisterly jammed upon us by the NRA, that is the root of Wilkinson's dread; it is "freedom culture" that has been on the rise recently - the tens of millions of founding era books that have been sold these last many years, to the political rise of the Tea Party, to the plunging credibility of Congress and loss of faith in government at all levels.  You see the manifestations of increasing fear and distrust of government and a reawakening of concerns over our level of freedom nearly everywhere you turn (the political careers of Rand Paul and Ted Cruz are entirely owing to this phenomenon).  Gun ownership is just part and parcel of the overall trend, a more pronounced statement than, say, Lemonade Freedom Day, but emanating from the same concerns.  But liberals need the Big Lie and the Big Evil White-Guy Organization (so they can say "shut up"), thus they continue to misunderstand what is happening in the country.

DeBlasio and the (Quite High) Costs of Apathy

All I will say about Bill DeBlasio in the wake of the weekend's events are that I pinpointed, early on, that we'd be paying the wages of apathy.  As we are finding out, those costs can be quite high.

UPDATE:  No, no, no, no, no.  While I want to see DeBlamio go the way of the dodo as much as the next guy, it is important for citizens to reap the consequences of their shitty electoral choices.  Very important actually.  Democracy cannot be bailed out from itself, it must be allowed to self-correct if it is to survive.  From Barack Obama on down, having to live with these dickheads is the best solution to these dickheads.

Cuomo to "Red" New York: Drop Dead

In one day we get two news items that encapsulates Andy Cuomo's bankrupt and idiotic economic policy for the state of New York - energy no, casinos yes. 

By all means let's encourage the effective regressive taxation of poor and stupid people via gambling while we shut off the development of cheap and clean natural gas to fuel our economy and bring needed economic development to depressed rural New York (even though fracking is done safely nearly everywhere else in the USA, even in Jerry Brown's California).  Irony alert, the NY Department of Health was the ostensible authority that gave Cuomo the cover to carry out this liberal policy wish, but gambling has nothing to do with health...huh?

Residents of the Southern Tier are rightly pissed and this sentiment encapsulates the entire political dynamic of New York state.

When Conklin, N.Y., town supervisor Jim Finch heard the news, he began drawing up plans to secede from the state. “I’m serious,” said Mr. Finch, who oversees a town of some 5,000 people on the Susquehanna River just a few minutes’ drive from the Pennsylvania border. “New York City determines policy in the Southern Tier? That’s baloney.”

12 million liberal New York City area residents run the lives of 8 million mostly conservative upstaters, and it sucks for that later camp.  Non-NYC New York is a hollowed out shell of economic malaise and declining population thanks to elitist liberal policy emanating from the NYC political set.  If it weren't for NYC, Cuomo would have lost his re-election race this November.  Secession is one answer (not a good one, but one that I certainly understand), but one day upstaters are going to have to get off their butts and turnout at the polls in legendary numbers if they are ever going to throw the liberal NYC gorilla off their backs.

More here.

Just When You Thought John Kerry Couldn't Get Any Stupider

Only someone whose elitism has so retarded his brain, such as John Kerry, could actually think that it was the USA who has been "isolated" all these years.  The mind reels.

And isolated from what?  Tyranny, dysfunction and privation.  Isolate me from that all day long.  Kerry is hands down the most idiotic man to serve in public office quite possibly ever.

Henninger: Who's Stupid?

Pulitzer-prize winning WSJ Opinion columnist Dan Henninger has a must read column today, not so much for its penetrating analysis, but for its synthesis of what we all know into something obvious, yet upside-down to conventional wisdom.  The column is titled, "The New Stupid Party" and he, indisputably in my view, has a point.  Democrats are lapping the GOP on stupid.

The left has mocked, derided and made the American South an object is its elitist disdain for decades.  As of November the Democrats have all but been swept from the South in toto.  The left has mocked, dismissed and raged at white males for decades.  As Henninger points out 64% of white males voted Republican in this last election.  The elitist left has mocked, derided and ridiculed women of the right - mostly notably in the person of Sarah Palin - for decades.  Married women went for Mitt Romney 53-46 in 2012. 

The Dems didn't merely choose to disagree, they mocked, they belittled, they scoffed.  And they've been washed away except for an angry, largely powerless lame duck POTUS.

When you've so thoroughly alienated entire swaths of the American electorate, it doesn't matter if you mobilize a small army of Sandra Flukes and the ObamaPhone Underclass, you're going to lose - there a lot of white guys, married gals and Southerners out there.

Henninger is right, but I feel he's being too kind, the Warren Dems are not the New Stupid Party, they're the F**king Crazy Party.  But I quibble.

Once Again, Early But Not Wrong

Hey, here's what I wrote in 2008:

...we could see falling oil prices. If you are a petro-state, the combination of declining production and falling prices equals you're screwed. Of course, lots of things could happen and this analysis could be totally wrong, but I'm saying that there exists a significant probability that Russia is beginning its glidepath toward destabilization and, ultimately, disintegration. Once you're on that glidepath it is hard to break free, you can hang on if you are adept, but the destination is usually a given.

Not bad.

Venezuela...Again

Hey, just a reminder...I've been predicting the implosion of Venezuela for some time now.  All that needed to happen was a little nudge off the cliff from the oil market.  The nudge has arrived and default is all but certain.

I hate to say it, but the Venezuelan people deserve this.  When you embrace a charlatan and stick with him at all costs and through bitter experience, you wind up exactly where charlatanism takes you.  The world should not muster any sympathy for a people that choose tyranny and impoverishment again and again.

Apply the Appropriate Word: Hoax

The beginning of an appropriate reckoning must begin with a clear definition of what happened and where we are.  There have been numerous post-mortems of sorts on the UVA/Rolling Stone episode, exploring its meaning, yadayada.  Rubbish.

We need the right word, the correct label for what went on - and that word is "hoax".  And we need it in the mainstream press, not the far corners of admirable journalistic standards. 

Glenn "Instapundit" Reynolds provides the needed clarity.  He says it boldly on the pages of USA Today.  Hoax.  As in:

noun

1. something intended to deceive or defraud

The story does not "have holes."  There are not "inconsistencies."  Rolling Stone magazine did not "misplace trust."  It was a hoax.  It was a lie.  It was deliberate.  It was intended to jam lies through and have reactions, from outrage to legislation, live on long into the future.

With such clarity established we can now move forward appropriately (although we won't), i.e. the UVa administration can be taken to task for overreacting to a hoax rather than responsibly investigating it.  Rolling Stone can be taken to task for being a fraudulent journalistic enterprise.  And so on down the line.  Here's hoping. 

Some Sort of Confectionary Incident in Sydney

Looks like some "confectionary workplace violence" in Sydney…although now that Tony Abbott is PM, no such Orwellian bullshit is likely to emanate from down under, in contrast to what might come out of the Lightworker Disaster.

Loathesome Lefty Loose Cannon Dislikes Politics

A Washington state Democrat said that Republicans dubbed the Affordable Care Act “Obamacare” so that they could symbolically destroy President Obama when they destroy the bill.

Wow, what meanies.  But I recall another derisive moniker for a broad policy program:  Reaganomics.

Tit for tat, Jimbo.  It's called "politics."  Even still, you could have called this POS law anything and it would still be wildly unpopular.  Also, I recall Mr. Lightworker actually embracing the designation of the law in his name - his narcissism knowing no bounds.

The Rising Middle Classes Across the World Will Doom Climate Policy

Exxon lays out the basic reality that dooms the global warming climate change climate disruption policy movement to failure - a rising global middle class won't be denied. 

Even as the most advanced economies cut energy use by almost one tenth through 2040 and add hundreds of millions of fuel-efficient vehicles, booming growth in places like India, South Africa and Thailand will boost demand for fuels 36 percent, the Irving, Texas-based company said in its annual outlook. Emissions will surge as an expanding middle class in poorer nations demands electricity, schools and hospitals.

I was ahead of Exxon by about six years.

Bring Back Obamaphone Lady!

So, lots of hints that Mitt Romney is running for President again.

I'm looking forward to more poignant and enlightening commentary as to his policies and his character from the electorate...

Teach Journalists Not to Write Lies About Rape!

Why do American leftists/feminists wreck lives by lying about rape at UVA but maintain deafening silence over true, violent gang rape in India?

Because affluent, southern white males are their ideological enemies; illiterate, urban Indian males are not.

Why are most trendy lefty causes based on lies?  Because their ideological enemies' behavior doesn't actually live up to lefties' grotesque visions or how they'd like the public to see their enemies.

n.b. title with apologies to Instapundit.

Mark Morford Is As Arrogantly (and Ignorantly) Condescending A Lefty Douchebag As You Will Find

This is the most ignorantly condescending arrogant blather you will read today or perhaps any day...

So. Want to try and unpack this creepy factoid? Break it down a little? It’s not difficult:

You’re a scared white person, almost certainly male. You do not live in a major city, or near a university or intellectual hub of any note, nor have you ever traveled very far from your home town, much less out of state or anywhere further than, say, Mexico. Once. And that was enough.

You do not read complicated books. You do not like new or weird things. You watch lots of TV, mostly Fox News, which rejoices in showing you endless images of angry foreigners and minorities in pain: tear gas explosions, fights in the streets, looting, this time involving sad, small-town black people in Ferguson, all of them protesting the acquittal of that murderous white cop....

The matrix is simple enough: The more scared you are, the more isolated, the less educated and the less traveled and the less exposed to unfamiliar ideas, to different modes of life, to the Other, to the staggering and effervescent variety of human existence, the more you will see a gun as an obvious and necessary choice. 

Incidentally, I will school Mark Morford any day on history, ideas, books, 'well-traveled-ness', 'educated-ness', whatever.  I bet you he is the biggest phony intellectual going and I could run rings around him in any debate other than in, say, feminist perspectives on aboriginal yoga in pre-colonial Congo.

But anyway, let's break it down Mark.  I am male, got to give you that. White too, and I feel no shame over the lack of any pigment in my skin.  I've lived and worked in and around the country's largest city all my life.  I've attended two separate Ivy League universities (Mark's not telling what his education credentials are).  I can spit to two colleges from my house.  I've travelled to 25 foreign countries.  I don't watch any TV.  I read everyday, I especially like "complicated" books about history, economics and philosophy.  I like to think I have been significantly "exposed to unfamiliar ideas, to different modes of life, to the Other, to the staggering and effervescent variety of human existence" (although, I wouldn't actually express it that way).

So, did I buy a gun on Black Friday?  Nope.  My gun safe is already too full.

Why They Spend, Why They Don't Care

On the occasion of our national debt* topping $18 trillion, it is worth reprising my warning on why the Obamacrats are spending with abandon, titled "The Plan Behind No Plan". 

It should be obvious by now that Obama and his base want to break the country, because when you break something, you get to rebuild it, and lefties want a "do over", they don't like America as it is.

*  This figure is debt, as in bonded commitments.  Liabilities, which are unbonded promises made, is closer to $100 trillion.