30 November 2006

Council Opening

The Watcher’s Council has an opening for a new member.

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29 November 2006

Careful with those statistics, Eugene!

[source, source]

Conventional wisdom tells us that: (1) the vast majority of US households have experienced no increase in real income for more than a quarter century; (2) real wages have been stagnant for that same period; (3) low-wage burger-flippers have replaced high-paid factory jobs; (4) only the top one percent or ten percent have benefited significantly from rising productivity or asset prices; and (5) the once-robust middle class has been shrinking.

Just about everybody treats those assertions as if they are facts. That includes politicians on both sides, talking-head partisans, economics correspondents, and columnists—many with undisguised or thinly-veiled political agendas. They are supposed to be the experts, and the masses (like me) have to trust them; after all, our busy lives permit us only a limited amount of time for paying attention to politicians and the press. When the experts are nearly unanimous, that’s a good signal that the five conventional wisdom assertions have to be true . . . isn’t it?

That brings us to the big surprise, which Alan Reynolds sums up clearly and concisely: “Not one of those statements is even remotely close to being true.�

Reynoldsincomeandwealth This book (Income and Wealth, by Alan Reynolds) is one of the best debunkings of conventional wisdom I’ve come across in a decade. It is a step-by-step dismantling of conventional wisdom about income and wealth distribution.

The best part is that this is a college textbook on economics, not just a popularization.

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No secrets from Big Sister

[source]

Going into the election, Pelosi and her lieutenants believed the vote would be close. Pelosi was making phone calls late into Wednesday night trying to persuade members to vote for Murtha.

But the ballot was a secret one. So members who supported Hoyer but didn’t want to anger Pelosi just told her what she wanted to hear.

Inside the room where the election was being held, there were boxes for members to drop their secret ballots. Pelosi and her crew watched as people voted. Some members actually brought fellow lawmakers with them when they marked their ballots so they could prove to Pelosi that they did vote for Murtha. And because the Murtha vote ended up being so small, the Pelosi forces can count almost down to the last ballot who voted for Murtha and who for Hoyer.

Just try to imagine the outcry had the Republican leadership violated a secret ballot in this manner. It does tell you what you need to know about what Democratic Party leaders are willing to do to maintain their power.

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28 November 2006

What are my satellites, chopped liver?

[source, source]

House Speaker-elect Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) told reporters on Wednesday that she feels it is “sad� that President Bush continues to blame Iraqi insurgent violence on al Qaeda.

If it’s not al Qaeda’s fault that they are killing soldiers and innocent civilians, then who should be blamed? Bush? U.S. Soldiers? America?

Hey, the money was good and utilization has been way down these last couple of years.

UPDATE: Bill Roggio on a leaked report from Iraq. Beyond the selective leaking Roggio details, note that the report, cited (if misleadingly) by the Washington Post assigns quite a bit of responsibility to Al Qaeda. Perhaps Pelosi should try reading the local papers.

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It's not like they're real people, after all

Via Tammy Bruce is this headline which demonstrates what a severe case of reality dysfunction so many members of Old Media suffer from —

Gaza truce takes hold despite rocket fire

Clearly the thought is that cease-fires only apply to Israel and if Israel doesn’t respond militarily to such attacks, it counts as a cease-fire. It’s an attitude that manages to be demeaning and vicious to everyone involved but doesn’t raise an eyebrow among the Old Medians.

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Inspirational message — without me you're nothing

[source]

The federal Liberal women’s caucus tells women that without government, they are incapable of making progress.

Judy Sgro says it’s not so much the dollars as the message the [recent social program] cuts send.

“I think Harper and his Conservative government, based on their policies, would clearly prefer women would stay barefoot and pregnant in the kitchen and move us backwards 40 years,� she said.

Meanwhile the message that Belinda, Sgro, et al want to send is that but for government women move back—because they are otherwise helpless? She should have added, “based on my policies, we would clearly prefer that women are held hostage to the whims of bureaucrats and politicians like me. That way I’ll be worshipped as their saviour.”

The future they envision for women is one of dependence on the state, including the male taxpayers who feed it.

Exactly. They’re looking for better groomed pets, not fellow citizens.

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A stream, not a flood

Via Tammy Bruce is this article about how when illegal immigrants are deported, natives can be found to fill the jobs. I have never found it the least bit plausible that we need the illegal part of current immigration to maintain our economy.

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Rangel — Only losers join the military

I want to make it abundantly clear: if there’s anyone who believes that these youngsters want to fight, as the Pentagon and some generals have said, you can just forget about it. No young, bright individual wants to fight just because of a bonus and just because of educational benefits. And most all of them come from communities of very, very high unemployment. If a young fella has an option of having a decent career or joining the army to fight in Iraq, you can bet your life that he would not be in Iraq.

US Representative Charles Rangel

The only mystery is why this video clip won’t ever appear in any Republican National Committee advertisements.

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Reality Dysfunction Watch

[source, source]

[Former Sen. John] Edwards would not be caught dead inside a Wal-Mart. Saying that the company pays its employees too little, Edwards has embarked on an anti-Wal-Mart crusade. He instructs his staff members and all Americans not to shop at Wal-Mart.

“Wal-Mart makes plenty of money. They need to pay their people well,” Edwards said at a Pittsburgh anti-Wal-Mart rally in August.

So naturally Edwards is holding his book signing at Barnes & Noble instead of Wal-Mart. Which is too bad for his anti-low-wages campaign, because in Manchester Wal-Mart pays hourly employees more than Barnes & Noble does.

The Barnes & Noble where Edwards will hawk his book pays $7 an hour to start. The Wal-Mart that sits just yards away pays $7.50 an hour.

Oh, the humanity!

How has someone who apparently never checks his thoughts against objective reality not only survived but prospered? I suppose that such a personality was a successful lawyer shouldn’t be surprising.

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27 November 2006

Once again, facts are deadly to social science tenets

An interesting study about the relationship between racist attitudes and support for redistributionist government. The gist is not so much that these two are correlated, but that the strong presumption of social scientists that they are anti-correlated has no basis in fact.

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22 November 2006

Shut up and Win

Tammy Bruce reports that the semi-silence in the last election worked so well the Democratic Party plans to shut up for two years in order to win again in 2008. Maybe someone should tell Representative Rangel.

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Things to never write on the Internet

It’s a post-modern, self-referential in-joke, but I still thought it was funny.

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So much for Bazooka Joe Bubblegum

[source, source]

The makers of Welsh Dragon Sausages were warned they could face legal action if they did not specify which meat they were using. “I don’t think any of our customers actually believe that we use dragon meat,” said Jon Carthew, of the Black Mountains Smokery at Crickhowell, after receiving a warning letter from trading standards officers.

Because the regulators are that dumb or they think Europeans are that dumb?

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Who are we to dispute "typical"?

[source]

In Aurora, Colorado, a man and his wife kept a 24-year-old Indonesian woman as a slave. The man, Homaidan al-Turki, a member of an influential Saudi family, repeatedly raped her over a four-year period. The wife was allowed to plead guilty to mere theft; after her 60-day sentence is up, she will be deported. Thankfully, however, al-Turki was convicted by a jury of sexual assault, extortion, theft and false imprisonment.

At his sentencing proceeding, al-Turki declined to apologize because, he said, he was engaged in “traditional Muslim behaviors” and thus did not commit any crimes. The judge, engaging in traditional American judicial behaviors, aptly slammed him with a sentence of 27 years to life in jail.

Naturally, our friends the Saudis are unhappy. So of course the State Department has hopped to it. Rather than a curt note explaining that this is what happens to slave-keeping rapists in America, State has flown the Attorney General of Colorado to Saudi Arabia to answer King Abdullah’s “aggressive” questions — and those of other members of the al-Turki family, who are just astounded that “a jury can give credibility to an Indonesian maid.” For them, the only possible explanation for the outcome is — drum roll — “anti-Muslim bias.”

I am waiting for the denunciations of how this is not, in fact, “typical Muslim behavior”.

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20 November 2006

Charity is what we say it is, neither more nor less

[source, source, source]

Next week, the new Charities’ Bill will finish its passage through Parliament. It should become law before the end of the year. In spite of being billed as “the biggest review of charity legislation in the past 400 years”, it has generated very little comment. This is surprising, because the Bill will vastly increase the power of the Charities’ Commission to dissolve charities, confiscate their endowments and assets, and give them to what the Commission considers a more genuinely “charitable” cause.

[…]

If they do not, the Commission will declare the organisation no longer a charity. And then, under the new Bill, its endowments can be seized and given to a charity of whose aims the bureaucrats do approve.

Note that this is not unregistering a charity, or eliminating its favorable tax treatment. It is confiscating the assets. It’s the perfect companion piece to this, the march of the State in taking complete control of “charity” and making other forms de facto illegal.

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Why does Old Media hate us?

An excellent article on the causes of the difference between the patriotic reporting of war in the past and the dishonest reporting of war today.

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17 November 2006

Making charity a crime

[source]

Would you believe Israeli Defense Minister and former socialist labor leader Amir Peretz criticizing a wealthy citizen for being charitable because it’s the job of the state, and only the state, to help individuals who need it? Sheesh!

Defense Minister Amir Peretz on Thursday blasted business tycoon Arkady Gaydamak for financing a free weekend in Eilat for 800 residents of the rocket-battered western Negev town of Sderot.

“The state of Israel does not allow rich men and philanthropists to gain control from the distress of citizens,” said Peretz. “This phenomenon cannot continue. We will prepare an organized and established plan to alleviate these residents so they will not need to knock on the doors of philanthropists.”

One thing I’ve noticed in my frequent contacts with Israel and Israelis (being married to an Israeli) is that the Israeli state managed to severely damage the philanthropic impulse that once dominated Jewish life. A combination of statism taught in public schools, combined with the prevalent (and understandable) idea that one is owed something by the state after years and years of military service, has led many Israelis to conclude, completely contrary to Jewish tradition, that charity and volunteerism is for suckers. You can see how the attitude of folks like Peretz doesn’t exactly help.

Socialism requires such disintermediation. Nothing can stand between the State and its subjects, certainly not anything that might call in to question the omnicompetence of the State.

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14 November 2006

Hearst's Heirs

Via Little Green Footballs is this post by Bruno Stevens which describes how his pictures of the war in Lebanon were changed by editors in the USA to promote flat out lies about the pictures depicted. One is left grasping at wild thoughts to try to comprehend the basis for Old Media being such active tools of theocratic fascists.

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Helping or shunning, either way America is to blame

Via Natalie Solent is a link to a post and comments that have a lot of detail debunking the “USA armed Ba’athist Iraq” myth.

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Outsourcing

[source]

Syria and Iran have reportedly replenished all Hezbollah’s destroyed arsenal stocks. Hezbollah, according to the Times of London, now has more rockets than they had before the most recent Israeli invasion. If this is, in fact, true, UNIFIL ought to just go home right now. These foreign soldiers are useless except as human shields.

I wonder how the troops feel, knowing that their mission is to be injured and killed as a propaganda gift from the UN to Hizb’allah.

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06 November 2006

Promoting the proper sized dogs agenda, one state at a time

I like cats and dogs, though as everyone knows, I’m partial to cats. […] But not yip dogs. I hate yip dogs. If you can punt it, it shouldn’t be a dog.

With this, the Orbital Mind Control Laser Network endorses Meryl Yourish for Senate.

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Your physical constants mean nothing to us

Via Transterrestial Musings, a tour de force take-down of the Stern report on global warming. The author shows how the UN

  • undervalued the sun’s effects on historical and contemporary climate
  • slashed the natural greenhouse effect
  • overstated the past century’s temperature increase
  • changed a fundamental physical constant
  • tripled the man-made greenhouse effect

But other than that, there’s not much substance to the report.

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