Palin described “America’s Affordable Health Choices Act” as death panels. The Cathedral, (meaning the MSM, the politicians, the professoriat, senior public servants, and assorted people employed in the upper reaches of the ever more numerous quasi governmental organizations) react with apocalyptic outrage – thereby drawing the public’s attention to various parts of the act that are, indeed, death panels. Sarah Palin smiles sweetly and lets them hammer themselves to pulp. After uncontrollably inflicting massive damage on themselves, they delete most disturbing parts of the act – which retreat looks to the public like an admission that Obama indeed intended to murder their poor old Grandma and Sarah Palin’s cute little baby. (more…)
Archive for the ‘politics’ Category
The Amazing Brilliance of Sarah Palin
Friday, August 21st, 2009Denying Darwinism
Tuesday, August 18th, 2009There is on the blogs a lot of debate as to when the idea of common descent and the tree of life originated – “genetic future”, as usual, gets it correct, “Panda’s Thumb” gets it correct, and “genetic inference”and “evolving thoughts” as always, get it politically correct.
From any political post of “genetic inference” and “evolving thoughts” you can deduce that they will lie about Darwin, and conversely from the fact that they are lying about Darwin, you can deduce their position on every question of political significance. (more…)
Purple shirts:
Sunday, August 9th, 2009And so it begins: Purple shirts
In democracy, it is always a winning move to raise the ante, for example politicize car designs, or to politically determine who gets the job and who gets the promotion with the state enforcing political correctness in the workplace. Since democracy is all about building the biggest coalition, and splitting the other guys coalition, it always an advantage for political activists have more stuff, and more important stuff, politically determined.
And once what is at stake is large enough, it is always a winning move to become violent, and the only answer to violence by one faction is violence by the other, thus the end stage of democracy is exemplified by the Wiemar parties, where the major parties were the commies and the nazis, and all the other parties were necessarily remaking themselves into something very similar.
Hotair thinks this will rebound against the Obamessiah, but history tells us otherwise. People love the strong horse, and despise the weak horse, and beating people up looks very much like strength if you can get away with it.
Off budget deficit
Tuesday, August 4th, 2009Long ago, the government found a new way to run a deficit: Create a nominally private business with government appointed management, to carry out a government directed mission. (more…)
“We may be seeing the beginning of the end of the recession”
Friday, July 31st, 2009
“We may be seeing the beginning of the end of the recession”, says Obama
It has become apparent that the way for economists to become important, respected, even get Nobel prizes, is to tell politicians and bureaucrats what they want to hear, which is usually that there is sound economic reasons to do whatever pleases lobbyists, special interest groups, and strategically important voting blocks.
Here is Bernanke on the housing boom back before it burst – he is telling us that the there is no bubble, that the government inflating prices will not cause crash and recession – were he to tell us something different people might think that the government pressuring banks to throw trillions of dollars in the general direction of people of the politically correct race but economically incorrect credit rating might lead to serious problems.
That does not of course mean the recession is going to get worse. What it does mean, however, is that all the very clever economic experts around Obama will tell him that things are going to be fine, regardless of whether they are going to be fine or not.
Because some of the people around Obama are crazies, notably his science Czar, craziness automatically becomes mainstream, and the good and the great start figuring out clever rationalizations why those programs are not crazy at all.
Well Obama has stuck his neck out a little, and made his prediction, so it is only fair that I stick my neck out and make my prediction: My prediction is for high unemployment, high inflation, or both, leading to ballot box stuffing and heavy intimidation of white and aged voters in the vicinity of the voting booth in 2010 and 2012
You are probably a federal felon
Sunday, July 26th, 2009There are a lot of laws, indeed they are growing so fast that not only can they not be read by legislators, but with in creasing frequency not even printed, existing only in electronic form, no longer practical to commit to paper. Further, many of these laws are deliberately overbroad for the convenience of prosecutors
Thus for example Krister Evertson was convicted of abandoning hazardous waste – notwithstanding the fact that the materials were not waste, nor abandoned, nor even stored unsafely. The law is that someone’s materials, if hazardous, can constitute waste even if they are extremely valuable to him and under lock and key in secure storage, and once the EPA has broken into that secure storage using cutting torches, he has abandoned the materials.
A law that on its face appears to be about potentially hazardous chemicals dumped in a creek, also covers potentially hazardous chemicals on private property in locked chemical and criminal resistant stainless steel container. And furthermore, nearly all chemicals have been declared hazardous.
The same is true of an enormous variety of other laws on other matters, laws that now multiply faster than is physically possible to print them – each law written to include all possible behavior that the state might possibly want to punish, not to exclude behavior that is innocent and honest.
One more crazy murderous totalitarian pal of Obama’s
Monday, July 13th, 2009Zombietime reads the writings of Obama’s science Czar, discovers he is a total loon who wants to use the panic du jour to impose a totalitarian world state. (more…)
Speaking power to truth
Monday, July 13th, 2009If an economist wants to get places, he had best tell politicians and bureaucrats what they want to hear. The danger is that if says it often enough, he will himself come to believe it.
Larry Summers is an economist. When Bush was in power, he believed in Bushonomics, which got him into trouble in an academic environment of rigid, mindless, and unthinking left wing orthodoxy. Now, however, it seems he firmly believes in Obanomics. (more…)
The universal government white paper:
Friday, June 19th, 2009In my earlier post Creating the next crisis I critique the same white paper on solving the financial crisis as Arnold Kling critiques
On of his commentators has an excellent summary of this paper, and indeed every similar governmental and quasi governmental paper addressing every crisis:
- Politicians are of course entirely lily white and innocent, except that the other party allowed bad people in the private sector to do bad things.
- Some government agencies failed to do enough.
- Solving the problem requires more power to the government.
- Those government agencies that failed the worst, shall get the largest increase in money and power.
Creating the next crisis:
Wednesday, June 17th, 2009In a free market, financiers who take stupid risks lose money, and cease to be financiers. The core of the Obama Bush interventions is to ensure that financiers who take stupid risks continue in business and continue in charge of other people’s money.
In the Washington Post, Obama’s chief financial advisers explain their program:
In theory, securitization should serve to reduce credit risk by spreading it more widely. But by breaking the direct link between borrowers and lenders, securitization led to an erosion of lending standards, resulting in a market failure that fed the housing boom and deepened the housing bust.The administration’s plan will impose robust reporting requirements on the issuers of asset-backed securities; reduce investors’ and regulators’ reliance on credit-rating agencies; and, perhaps most significant, require the originator, sponsor or broker of a securitization to retain a financial interest in its performance.
“How big a financial interest?” I hear you ask.
Summers is a little bit vague, about this, but if you dig, the answer is five percent – enough to make a difference, but not enough to make a significant difference, not enough to deter banks from making irresponsible loans.
The fundamental problem is that the government wants banks to continue make loans to irresponsible borrowers in important voting blocks, borrowers who should not be able to borrow money, and therefore must maintain a regulatory structure that enables bad loans. A transfer of wealth from a concentrated interest group (financiers) to an important voting block (hispanics) is not politically feasible. So instead, such dud loans must ultimately wind up being financed by the government.
The government issues regulations that require financiers to refrain from “discriminating against” a voting block – which seeming benefits the voting block at no cost to the government. But there is no such thing as free lunch. Who will pay?
You can be sure a concentrated interest group is not going to pay.