Monthly Archives: November 2016

The Gillian Triggs Award

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I do not think that Gillian Triggs should be allowed to go unpunished and just slink off into her fully-funded retirement without some kind of memorial. My proposal is that we have an annual Gillian Triggs award to commemorate her tenure as head of the Australian Human Rights Commission. The award should be annually presented to the person, of whatever gender they choose to have, irrespective of national ethnicity, race, colour or religion, who has shown the most dense, obtuse and hypocritical understanding of human rights in Australia.

My aim, in the first instance, is that she should know that there are some of us who will remember, so that, even as she is enjoying her future retirement on the grossly inflated pension she will receive in spite of her lack of judgment and perspective, she will know there are others who hold her in contempt. If she doesn’t know about the GT Award, so much the better for her. But if she does, one hopes it will irritate and annoy, providing that tiny bit of reflection on the role she has played in Australian public life.

It is also important that the name of the award should not be bestowed in perpetuity, since that would provide future recognition. Instead, it is an award whose name will be changed in dishonour of someone else and that date of this change of name should occur three years after she finally departs from public life. There will no doubt be many who will unfortunately richly deserve the role as the name of the award given each year.

The nominations will be via Catallaxy readers and when a final list of five is determined, will be chosen by a survey of readers.

This will be part of the Catallaxy Awards that will be awarded in a number of categories which have not yet been determined. Feel free to suggest the kinds of public disservice that should be immortalised in these awards. The award winners will be published on April 1 of each year.

Keynesian economics refuted eight times over

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Who would know this? In fact, every legislator in Congress and the American president would know this, just no one else. As we all know, the American recovery has been the worst on record, without a single year in the last eight with growth above three percent. This will help you understand why.

Absent of an actual federal budget, all spending falls under a process called base-line budgeting to determine allocation. Federal distribution of the money within the continuing resolution, is essentially a year-over-year expenditure with a statutory increase based on inflation. Essentially, whatever was spent in 2009 was respent in 2010 along with a little bit more. What was spent in 2011 was a little more than ’10, and so forth.

Debt ceiling – failed stimulisIn February 2009 congress passed the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, or ARRA, commonly referred to as Obama’s stimulus plan. The stimulus was just shy of one trillion ($986 billion +/-).

At the time of passage this single stimulus expenditure reflected a growth of approximately 20% in total federal spending. The spending went directly into the deficit.

Approximately 30% of that “one time” trillion dollar stimulus was spent in 2009, the remaining 70% was spent in 2010. (*note fiscal years run from October 1st to September 3oth annually).

However, absent a federal budget -and because of baseline budgeting- it became a repeated expenditure in each of the following fiscal years.

The $1 Trillion Stimulus was spent eight more times.

Obama and the Congress have been systematically impoverishing the United States. This may be the most disgusting economic story I have ever come across. And for those of us also interested in economic theory and policy, as disgusting as all this is, it is the most complete refutation of public spending as the road to recovery ever found.

Meanwhile, the fool of a president is in Greece advising the Greeks not to pay their debts. The story is titled, GREECE IN FLAMES: Riots in Athens at Obama’s visit as Greeks scream ‘Barack go home’, but this is the bit that goes with the above:

Earlier, Mr Obama, 55, had delighted his Greek hosts by supporting debt relief for the recession-battered country, which has seen its economy shrink by a quarter in just seven years.

Greece hopes Obama will be able to persuade its foreign creditors to restructure some of its debt, which stands at nearly 180 percent of national output. . . .

He said: “We cannot simply look to austerity as a strategy.

“Our argument has always been that when the economy contracted this fast, when unemployment is this high, that there also has to be a growth agenda to go with it and it is very difficult to imagine the kind of growth strategy that’s needed without some debt relief mechanism.”

Everything about him and what he has done is an outrage.

Let’s give him the benefit of the doubt and just assume he’s merely delusional

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Soon he’ll be gone and his views will be as significant as those of any past president, maybe even less. But this really does turn my stomach since in no moment in the last eight years has he acted on any of it: Obama warns against ‘a crude sort of nationalism’ taking root in the U.S.. Take a couple of seasick tablets and then go read this:

President Obama warned Tuesday that Americans and people around the world “are going to have to guard against a rise in a crude sort of nationalism, or ethnic identity, or tribalism” taking root amid the populist movements that are gaining currency around the world. . . .

“We are going to have to guard against a rise in a crude sort of nationalism, or ethnic identity or tribalism that is built around an us and a them, and I will never apologize for saying that the future of humanity and the future of the world is going to be defined by what we have in common, as opposed to those things that separate us and ultimately lead us into conflict,” Obama said. . . .

“In the United States we know what happens when we start dividing ourselves along the lines of race or religion or ethnicity. It is dangerous. It is dangerous, not just for the minority groups that are subjected to that kind of discrimination, or in some cases in the past, violence, but because we then don’t realize our potential as a country when we are preventing blacks or Latinos or Asians or gays or women from fully participating in the project of building American life,” he said. . . .

“Globalization, combined with technology, combined with social media and constant information, have disrupted people’s lives, sometimes in very concrete ways,” he said. “But also psychologically, people are less certain of their national identities or their place in the world. It starts looking different and disorienting.”

“And there is no doubt that has produced populist movements, both from the left and the right, in many countries in Europe. When you see a Donald Trump and a Bernie Sanders, very unconventional candidates, have considerable success, obviously there’s something there that’s being tapped into,” he said. “I think at times of significant stress, people are going to be looking for something, and they don’t always know exactly what it is that they’re looking for, and they might opt for change, even if they’re not entirely confident what that change will bring.”

The most divisive president in history, completely delusional if not totally off with the fairies, lecturing us on how we ought to come together with him leading the way. His approval ratings in positive territory matched against the election results are the most certain recent example of the Bradley Effect I know.

Dealing with media bias

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Media bias is among the largest problems our democracies have, and I don’t have to tell you in which direction that bias goes. This election has been a truly learning experience: MRC/YouGov Poll: Most Voters Saw, Rejected News Media Bias. Here are the reported stats:

Key findings:

7 in 10 (69%) voters do not believe the news media are honest and truthful.
8 in 10 (78%) of voters believe the news coverage of the presidential campaign was biased, with nearly a 3-to-1 majority believing the media were for Clinton (59%) vs. for Trump (21%).
Even 1/3 (32%) of Clinton voters believe the media were “pro-Clinton.”
8% of Trump voters said they would have voted for Clinton if they had believed what the media were saying about Trump.
97% of voters said they did not let the media’s bias influence their vote.

It is this last one that is the most ludicrous finding. It is impossible not to be influenced by the media and anyone who thinks they are not is kidding themselves in a very comprehensive way. The media are like crowd noise at a football match which affects not just the players but the referees. The number of so-called conservatives I met with during the election who were saying things that came straight out of the New York Times was astonishing.

It was therefore interesting to read the second editorial in The Oz this morning: Making the media listen again. It begins:

Donald Trump’s victory has exposed serious flaws in so-called quality media, mainly a refusal of many ideologues to deal with facts.

If “ideologues” is the new word for journalists, I could not agree more. So this is what they think should be done, which I agree with while doubting it is even remotely likely:

Best report the facts, listen to the public and share a variety of opinions.

A variety of opinions on the pages of a paper you no longer trust is not going to work. You need to be able to balance what is found there with sources that are seeing the world as you see it yourself. What made following the election so that I could see more clearly what was going on depended on the following online sources, of which there were others from time to time. I didn’t necessarily agree with everything they wrote, or even their general political line, but they did give me a different perspective and helped to anchor my thoughts in the midst of a maelstrom. These are the ones that worked for me in alphabetical order:

Ace of Spades
Atlas Shrugs
BadBlueNews
Breitbart
Drudge
FrontPageMag
Instapundit
Lucianne
Powerline
PJ Media
Quadrant
Stefan Molyneux
Taki’s Mag
VDare

The MSM has discredited itself. For those of us on this side of politics, reading newspapers or watching the news will now and forever be an endurance test in getting through presentations and articles we no longer trust. At least, for now, there are alternatives. To a very important extent, Donald Trump is president-elect because of the alternative media. Watch below:

The 1980’s are no longer asking for their policy back

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Trump and Putin vow to tackle ISIS together as they hold breakthrough talks after billionaire’s election

President-elect Donald Trump and Russian leader Vladimir Putin have vowed to tackle ISIS together after holding breakthrough talks on the telephone.

Less than a week after the billionaire’s election, the Kremlin said Putin called Trump yesterday to begin negotiations over how best to tackle to terrorism.

The Russian is reported to have said he is ready for dialogue with the US “on the basis of mutual respect, non-intervention into each other’s internal affairs”.

According to the news agency Kremlin, Putin and Trump have agreed to “work to channel bilateral relationships into constructive cooperation, to combine efforts to tackle international terrorism and extremism, and to continue contact by telephone and to work towards meeting in person”.

“The importance of creating a solid basis for bilateral ties was underscored, in particularly by developing the trade-economic component,” the Kremlin said in its statement.

It added that the countries should “return to pragmatic, mutually beneficial cooperation, which would address the interests of both countries as well as stability and safety the world over.”

The two men will maintain contact by phone and seek to meet each other in person, the statement said.

Obama really is going to be gone really soon. And on top of everything else, the 1980s really will no longer be calling and asking for their foreign policy to be returned. How have we endured the past eight years?

There are Moore idiots than you would believe

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A very disturbing video but one that is easily associated with the left and their ways of doing things. There will be four relentless years of anti-Trump reporting across the media, as disproportionate in its presence as the absence of any serious anti-Obama reporting over the last eight. What is the meme of the moment is that Hillary erred in assuming she would win the industrial north-east. If only she had listened to Bill and not her advisors etc. The new authority on the anti-Trump wagon is Michael Moore whom I discussed a couple of days ago under the heading, Michael Moore’s idiot’s agenda. Idiots’ agenda or not, he is now featured in both The Australian and The Age. Here from The Oz yesterday we have Michael Moore: the rust-belt prophet which is reprinted from The Times. Can’t get more establishment than that.

Michael Moore is the rust belt prophet. The documentary maker and author was almost the only commentator in America who predicted that Donald Trump would become the 45th president. Having come from the Michigan wilderness, the son of a car assembly-line worker, he understands middle America. He might be seen as part of the liberal elite but he has been warning for years that too many have been left behind. “I live in what they call the flyover but I like the Bob Dylan line, ‘the country I come from is called the Midwest’,” he says.

Last July he posted “five reasons why Trump will win”. He now feels vindicated, though not smug. “I have been trying to warn people for many months. I was in the UK in the week leading up to Brexit and I saw the fake bubble that the establishment were in. The day after the vote I went on TV and said: “‘I am from one of the Brexit states’, and they said, ‘You aren’t even from England’, and I said, ‘I live in that part of the US that is filled with the same anger I heard in Britain’. It was clear they wanted to send a message they didn’t like what was happening to them.”

See, what a genius he is, a true man of the people, a working class guru to help forge a new consensus. And then we get the same from The Age today, When inclusiveness isn’t: how Hillary Clinton and the Democrats got it so wrong, this one also from The Times, but the New York variety. And if you go to the link you can play a video which comes with this caption:

How Michael Moore predicted Trump’s win…
… and what he now thinks of Hillary Clinton and the Democratic Party.

Meanwhile, let me repeat, the central issue of the election was open borders. It wasn’t the only issue but it was the most important. If Trump had proposed amnesty in any form, he would not have won. Try to find that in any paper anywhere. With Trump, we have a reprieve on so many issues, but not some kind of permanent victory. I can only hope those who understand what’s at stake will be able to bear up under what will be a relentless campaign from the media who will now notice that the economy is in a mess, America’s international allies are abandoning her, and health care is an impossible expense.

Voter fraud in the United States is not an accident

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It is the deliberate policy of the Democratic Party. What other interpretation do you have for this: REPORT: THREE MILLION VOTES IN PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION CAST BY ILLEGAL ALIENS?

Although some states require some form of ID before voting, California, Illinois, Iowa, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Minnesota, Nebraska, Nevada, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, North Carolina, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Vermont, West Virginia, Wyoming, and Washington, D.C. all require no identification before voting.

What would stop me from voting if I showed up and asked for a ballot in any of these places? Putting an end to this must be added to the Trump agenda.

Everyone loves a winner

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mad-election-cover-1960

I remember seeing the cover for the first time there on the newsstand and wondering how they had got it right, even before the election was over. And while you cannot tell from the picture, half the magazine was printed with Kennedy at the start and the other half with Nixon, with the print suddenly turning upside down when you got to the staples in the middle. “We were with you all the way, Jack’. So let me give you the relevant passage from Henry V:

From this day to the ending of the world,
But we in it shall be remembered-
We few, we happy few, we band of brothers;
For he to-day that sheds his blood with me
Shall be my brother; be he ne’er so vile,
This day shall gentle his condition;
And gentlemen in England now a-bed
Shall think themselves accurs’d they were not here,
And hold their manhoods cheap whiles any speaks
That fought with us upon Saint Crispin’s day.

At that level, there are no friends (or enemies), only associates. You know the joke, if you want a friend in Washington, buy a dog. It was reading Trump’s twitter feed that made me think of the Henry V passage and the Mad cover.

Donald J. Trump ‏@realDonaldTrump 13h13 hours ago
Governor John Kasich of the GREAT, GREAT, GREAT State of Ohio called to congratulate me on the win. The people of Ohio were incredible!

Donald J. Trump ‏@realDonaldTrump 14h14 hours ago
Jeb Bush, George W and George H.W. all called to express their best wishes on the win. Very nice!

Donald J. Trump ‏@realDonaldTrump 14h14 hours ago
Mitt Romney called to congratulate me on the win. Very nice!

“Very nice!” must be the Trump equivalent of GFYS. But he will not shun their company nor their presence from this time forward. That is not how politics works. If you have power to share and a hand to lend in getting things done, all is forgiven and forgotten (for the moment). But the reality is that Trump will never trust any of them ever again. If you weren’t there on St Crispin’s Day, how much can you be trusted when the tide begins to turn, as in politics it eventually must?

Another media lie

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And this one is more ridiculous than all the others: New York Times publisher vows to ‘rededicate’ paper to reporting honestly. Confession may be good for the soul, but there are limits:

The publisher of The New York Times penned a letter to readers Friday promising that the paper would “reflect” on its coverage of this year’s election while rededicating itself to reporting on “America and the world” honestly.

Fool me once, etc. But the reality beneath it all is that people read the NYT so that they can avoid finding out what’s going on that might suggest that people on the right have a legitimate point of view. That kind of reporting you will never see in the mainstream American media.