Monthly Archives: January 2017

The deep state

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If you are not spooked by all of this then you are made of tougher stuff than I am.

MEDIA AND CIA FALL FOR ‘GOLDEN SHOWER’ HOAX…
TAPPER, BLITZER RATTLED…
YOU’RE ACTING LIKE NAZIS, TRUMP TELLS SPY CHIEFS…
Russian tech expert named in report never even contacted!
GREENWALD: ‘Deep State’ Sabotage…

The last of these comes with the title, “The Deep State Goes to War with President-Elect, Using Unverified Claims, as Democrats Cheer”. Here is the opening text, but I have to say this is terrifying and in no sense politics as usual, unless this really is politics as usual, although we have never actually seen it revealed so openly.

IN JANUARY, 1961, Dwight Eisenhower delivered his farewell address after serving two terms as U.S. president; the five-star general chose to warn Americans of this specific threat to democracy: “In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist.” That warning was issued prior to the decadelong escalation of the Vietnam War, three more decades of Cold War mania, and the post-9/11 era, all of which radically expanded that unelected faction’s power even further.

This is the faction that is now engaged in open warfare against the duly elected and already widely disliked president-elect, Donald Trump. They are using classic Cold War dirty tactics and the defining ingredients of what has until recently been denounced as “Fake News.”

Their most valuable instrument is the U.S. media, much of which reflexively reveres, serves, believes, and sides with hidden intelligence officials. And Democrats, still reeling from their unexpected and traumatic election loss as well as a systemic collapse of their party, seemingly divorced further and further from reason with each passing day, are willing — eager — to embrace any claim, cheer any tactic, align with any villain, regardless of how unsupported, tawdry and damaging those behaviors might be.

The serious dangers posed by a Trump presidency are numerous and manifest. There are a wide array of legitimate and effective tactics for combatting those threats: from bipartisan congressional coalitions and constitutional legal challenges to citizen uprisings and sustained and aggressive civil disobedience. All of those strategies have periodically proven themselves effective in times of political crisis or authoritarian overreach.

But cheering for the CIA and its shadowy allies to unilaterally subvert the U.S. election and impose its own policy dictates on the elected president is both warped and self-destructive. Empowering the very entities that have produced the most shameful atrocities and systemic deceit over the last six decades is desperation of the worst kind. Demanding that evidence-free, anonymous assertions be instantly venerated as Truth — despite emanating from the very precincts designed to propagandize and lie — is an assault on journalism, democracy, and basic human rationality. And casually branding domestic adversaries who refuse to go along as traitors and disloyal foreign operatives is morally bankrupt and certain to backfire on those doing it.

Morally bankrupt it most certainly is. Certain to backfire on those doing it is very optimistic. If this is how things really are, Nazi is not going too far at all in describing what is going on. If the evidence were not before our eyes of the way in which the media and the CIA have worked with the Democrats to undermine Trump’s authority you would think all of this is impossible.

Sheltering the left from reality

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Wile E Coyote must have eaten quite a lot of roadrunners in his time, even if not that roadrunner. Sylvester has to have eaten his fair share of birds, even if he never quite gets to Tweety. The big bad wolf may not have eaten those three little pigs, the ones with the clever oldest brother who built his house of brick, but he has certainly eaten his fair share of others. These are all extremely robust animals, whose fame rests on their role in never actually finally despatching their movie co-stars before the camera. But each looks very well fed and each is strictly a carnivore.

But these are just cartoons, right? Unfortunately it is a mentality that goes far wider that has helped to infantise the American public. The rest of this is about the movie Passengers (R/T: critics 31% – audiences 68%; iMDB 7.1) which you are advised not to read if you are thinking of going along. No spoilers here, since the film is pretty rancid already, but there will be fewer surprises left in the plot if you continue below.
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But this is not a movie review; this is a discussion of the American left as represented by its insistence that all film endings be Hollywood endings. In a Hollywood ending, whatever might be the set up, everything works out fine. Probabilities and reality have nothing to do with plot lines. Audiences must have endings that do not upset them. Reality must never intrude. No lamb is ever torn to bits by wolves. No bird is ever devoured by cats. No chicken is ever eaten by a fox. No one is ever harmed by members of protected minority groups.

You might say that movies are movies and the real world is real. Everyone knows the difference and movies are just for escapism. Except that politics as presented by the media has now become a form of escapism as well, and the editors of our media organisations understand perfectly what must never be reported that might in any way upset the delicate fake news narratives of which are the victims and who are villains. Some groups are Wile E. Coyote and others are roadrunners, and if you are the first, everything you do is bad, and if you part of the second, then you are presented in only a positive way.

It may well be that humankind cannot bear very much reality, but the left cannot, it seems to me, bear any at all. The left, in their delusion that they are making this a better world, are the creators of a large measure of the political evil we find, but even so, demand that they are never presented with an accounting for the horrors they have helped to create through their passive acquiescence. They are determined never to have to confront the evidence and consequences of their misjudgements, and the mainstream media fully intend to conspire with them in ensuring the problems they cause are never brought to their attention.

It is a world where everything works out and in which no evil is found.

Outback Aarhus

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img_2223

Don’t want to go too far into my trip to Europe stories, but the photo is of the TV in the lobby of the hotel here in Aarhus in Denmark which is from an episode of The Flying Doctors that was being shown on the main TV station, with subtitles, at 8:00 am. And at the other end of the lobby, the TV was showing highlights from the tennis in Australia. I am here with a bunch of students, but it does turn out that Aarhus is the European Capital of Culture for 2017. Truly does represent why coming to Europe is such an immense pleasure (but also reminds me why being able to return to Australia is an even bigger pleasure).

Trump’s winning strategy and how it came to be

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Kellyanne Conway describes what she did after a meeting in August at a point when Trump was in desperate need of a campaign manager. The story continues:

It was then that Trump offered her the job.

Conway accepted, as long as another person was in the C-Suite, a term derived from the use of the letter C in most high-level positions such as chief or chair. That other person was Steve Bannon, former Goldman Sachs executive, U.S. Navy officer, and publisher of Breitbart News, a right-wing news organization.

Conway then gave Trump her thoughts about how he could win, and about the issues and messaging it would require.

“He already knew that. His instincts are excellent,” she says. “He had already built a movement, but he needed to have some people around him who create the right environment.

“So how did we leverage that into a campaign strategy? And, conversely, as I said to him on that first day, ‘Let’s see who Hillary Clinton is not, nor ever can be, and let’s try to do it and be it.’ ”

Conway and Bannon saw Clinton as someone who lacked an uplifting message and couldn’t break above 44 to 47 percent in polls. They also felt she would have a devil of a time knitting together the Obama coalition.

Meanwhile, Conway says she reduced the hassle and background noise for Trump, hoping to create an atmosphere in which he could flourish. “And I tried to take account of his gifts.”

Trump’s rallies soon became speeches, the kind of events where he began to use a teleprompter and to talk about policy. He started to offer a bullet-point outline of something that people could actually envision. He was still “able to add a great deal of personal flair and humor and off-the-cuff remarks at the rallies,” Conway says, “And people loved that.”

This is how history is made in those normally hidden recesses of the decision-making process. There was nothing inevitable about any of it. But that is merely politics. There is also this:

Her faith — she is a devout Catholic— has helped keep everything in perspective.

“Faith plays a minute by minute part of my life. It is constant,” she says.

“This,” she says, pointing to everything that is going on around Trump Tower, “is consequential, this is exciting and historic in its own way, but it is nothing compared to the universe in which we live, the God that I worship, and the totality of our lives.

“I do believe that God placed me in this position at this time to do my small part to create an environment to allow Mr. Trump to flourish and to help to create a campaign structure with our fabulous team.”

It almost makes you think a return to sanity is possible.

California there it goes

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A disaster in statistics – sent to me without a source so take it for what it’s worth. If accurate, a disgrace in almost every respect.

California

CA stats are:

Hispanic………… 14,990,000 million
Caucasian……….14,920,000
Asian……………… 5,736.098
Black …………….. 2,552,858
Am Indian………….. 648,172

Note, Hispanics outnumber Caucasians. But, another interesting statistic is this:

34% of the nations 67,980,000 million people who receive welfare live in California, and California has only 12% of the entire U.S. population [Fed stats].

This means:

23,113,200 million welfare recipients live in California.
39,487,345 million people total live in California. [more welfare recipients than workers]

According to your stats, Clinton beat Trump in CA by 2,708,893, so you could say she didn’t do that well in California!

We hear a cacophony of blaring and bleating from the media and the Hillary gaggle that she won the popular vote and therefore she should be president. 65,124,828 to 62,652,263 or 48.2% to 46.3% with the remaining 5.5% going to the other candidates.

But here are the facts:

Trump led in the total popular vote for all states……. except California.

Hillary won California 5,860,714 to Trump’s 3,151,821. 61.6% to 33.1% exclusive of the other candidates. [a margin of 2,708,893]

Thus, California gave Hillary the popular vote for all states as claimed by the Democrats and their media stooges.

But, deduct her California vote from her national vote, leaving her with 59,264,114, and deduct Trump’s California vote from his national total,leaving him with 59,500,442.

So, in effect, Hillary was elected president of California and Trump was elected president of the rest of the country.

This exemplifies the wisdom of the Electoral College, to prevent the vote of any one populace state from overriding the vote of the others. Trump’s Campaign Manager, Kellyanne Conway, whose expertise is polling, saw this early on and devised her strategy of “6 pathways to the White House”. This meant ignoring California, with its huge Democrat majority, and going after the states that would give him the necessary Electoral votes to win, FL, NC, MI, PA, OH, and WI. It worked and our country Will Be Secure – after January 20, 2017.

One other tidbit: California is one of 11 “welfare states” where there are more people living off the government dole than there are working for a living. A perfect example of those who vote for a living. Since they have some time on their hands they are the ones who have time to “protest,” (in other words riot)!

They also have an incentive to continue to vote for a living. A micro image of what is wrong with the welfare state.

Fake science

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This comes via Mark Steyn and is a quote from Judith Curry who has just resigned from her position at the University of Georgia. Here is the deeper reason she gives:

A deciding factor was that I no longer know what to say to students and postdocs regarding how to navigate the CRAZINESS. . . . Research and other professional activities are professionally rewarded only if they are channeled in certain directions approved by a politicized academic establishment — funding, ease of getting your papers published, getting hired in prestigious positions, appointments to prestigious committees and boards, professional recognition, etc.

How young scientists are to navigate all this is beyond me, and it often becomes a battle of scientific integrity versus career suicide (I have worked through these issues with a number of skeptical young scientists).

She, of course, is discussing climate “science”, but it is just as true in economics where no one, and I do mean no one, discusses the fantastic failure of Keynesian theory. It must be true all over the place with some scientific conclusions not even allowed into the debate.

Failure of historic proportions

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The headings and concepts are all right, but the wording is still ridiculously weak: What Obama won’t tell you about his legacy. What the story should state is that Obama has been a disaster from one end of his presidency to the other. It must still be impossible to say this in the US and keep your friends, and possibly your job. Here are the points made picked up at SmallDeadAnimals under the heading Obama’s legacy of failure.

1. It’s (still) the economy, stupid

The expansion that began in June 2009 has been the weakest since World War II, with real gross domestic product growth averaging 2.1%. At 7 1/2 years and counting, it is also among the longest on record. But it hasn’t packed much of a punch. Cumulative growth of 16.5% since the trough is well shy of the 38.4% increase during the 1982-1990 expansion and 42.6% from 1991-2001, according to the Wall Street Journal.

2. A Legacy of Ashes

Obama’s continued popularity hasn’t had much of a trickle-down effect. In the eight years since he was first elected, Democrats have lost more than 1,000 seats at the state and national level. Republicans now control 4,170 state legislative seats compared with 3,129 for the Democrats, an all-time low.

3. Keep your friends close

At his year-end press conference on Dec. 16, which was short on questions, long on answers, Obama spoke about his response to the Russian hacking of Democratic National Committee emails during the election.

He said that when he met with Russian President Vladimir Putin in China in September, he told him to “cut it out” in terms of the hacking.

Sorry, Mr. President, the world isn’t afraid of you and your empty threats.

4. Divided we stand

Obama may have broken racial barriers when he became the first African-American president of the U.S., but his election did nothing to improve race relations. In fact, a majority of Americans (54%) say that race relations deteriorated under Obama, according to a recent CNN/ORC poll.

5. That which must not be named

Radical Islamic terrorism. Obama has spent eight years deftly avoiding using those three words to call an act what it is. He has intellectualized his position by claiming the phrase “equates Islam with terrorism,” which is counterproductive to U.S. counterterrorism efforts.

Instead, Obama prefers terms such as “workplace violence,” even if the terrorists in question pay homage to Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, leader of the Islamic State. A terrorist act provides an opportunity for the president to lecture the nation on the need for stricter gun-control laws.

History is written by the historians, which essentially means it is written by academic liars. This is what really happened, which only a minority freely acknowledge.

Economists will never ever get it right until they return to Say’s Law

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Two things sent to me by friends of which this is far and away the most significant. There may be about half a dozen economists in the world who understand the difference the absence of Say’s Law makes to economic theory. Mark Skousen is one of them, and he has just written an article on Which Is More Accurate, Say’s Law or Keynes’s Law? Here is the start:

We all know that teachers, especially at the college level when students are away from their parents, can have tremendous influence.

My best example is when I ask my economics students “Which is more accurate, Say’s law or Keynes’s law?” Say’s law (defined below) is named after the 19th century French economist J.-B. Say, while Keynes’s law is named after the 20th century British economist John Maynard Keynes.

Most of the students have never heard of either law, so on the blackboard or PowerPoint, I simplify the definition as follows:

Say’s Law: “Supply creates demand.”
Keynes’s Law: “Demand creates supply.”

Before we have any discussion, I ask the students to intuitively decide which one makes more sense, and why.

Invariably, the vast majority of students side with Keynes. Demand, they say, is essential. Without consumers willing to buy a product, suppliers will go out of business. They conclude, consumer spending drives the economy.

What can you do? These students are as clueless as most economists about what causes an economy to grow and employ. Read the whole thing. Then there’s this, Chief economist of Bank of England admits errors in Brexit forecasting. Forecasting errors are a dime a dozen and comes with the territory. The subtitle captures more of what’s wrong with economics:

Andrew Haldane says his profession must adapt to regain the trust of the public, claiming narrow models ignored ‘irrational behaviour’

This irrationality in economics – the latest pile of junk which comes under the heading “behavioural economics” – is as nonsensical as it gets. It seems to be news to economists that people make mistakes, which after the fact they describe as irrational behaviour. It’s the same guk I am getting in Michael Lewis’s Undoing Project. My great classical economists all understood the role of mistakes, and even crowd behaviour, in moving an economy off course. The point about the market economy was that you could not be wrong for very long since you would then lose your shirt, as many did. The modern view is that governments should do the spending to make up the difference, and they can be wrong for a very very very very long time. Even now with government debt rising, no one is seriously trying to cut it back. Classical economists universally would have understood the problem. A modern economist is miseducated to such a fantastic extent that they still think Keynesian theory is right and Say’s Law is wrong. And as long as that goes on they will never get anything right.

Sous le pont d’Avignon and other things

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We are in the south of France, in Avignon in particular, which is why blogging has been absent.

Yesterday we visited the graves of John Stuart Mill and Harriet Taylor Mill. Mill’s grave is in simple white marble with “John Stuart Mill” engraved on the side. Searched around for Harriet’s and only after a while worked out that they are buried together, as I would have thought, but her tombstone sits above Mill’s and could only be read if I stood on my tiptoes. Every grave beside it was about ten feet high with religious symbolism a feature, unlike theirs which had none. But the most outrageous part was the little sign put at the foot of the gravestone in 1980 by the French which reads:

“En hommage a John Stuart Mill

“Defenseur des femmes”

I suppose he might have found that all right but seemed a bit thin as a descriptor to me. Mill died here in 1873 because Harriet died here in 1858 and he stayed close for the rest of his life. Must say, however, that the winter here has become a bit brutal for the likes of me. I no longer laugh at 2 degree weather with my Australian-thinned blood, especially with the mistral coming across any open space we enter. Particularly difficult on le pont d’Avignon where the wind almost carried us over the sides. Fascinating place with the fourteenth century papal palace the most outstanding feature. I wrote a first year university paper about the Avignon papacy which in many ways was my introduction to power politics.

An interview with Howard Bloom

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At the link is an interview conducted by Grégoire Carnlorbe with Howard Bloom. I am meeting with Grégoire tomorrow, who had undertaken a similar interview with me on Say’s Law. In preparation for our meeting he has sent me the interview he did with Bloom which deals with the history of Islam and which has been published at Gatestone. Here is an excerpt:

They are rational and they are something more—they are idealists. They want to free us. They want to save you and me.

As they see it, you and I were made from a clot of blood by Allah, by God. We were given everything we have by Him. Since we are His creations, we will experience true justice and peace only if we live by His laws and are enlightened by His truths. What are those laws and truths? The ones that God himself gave to Mohammed in the seventh century. Islam believes it is out to save us in an even more profound way. If we are tricked into following false laws, believing in false gods, and sticking to what Osama bin Laden used to call false “opinions, orders [and] theories,” we will go to an unspeakably painful hell. Our earthly life is but a brief interlude, a brief gift, a brief test to see if we can follow God’s path. But hell and heaven are forever.

Islamic militants want to save you so you can spend the time that really matters, the time that lasts the longest, the time from your death to the Day of Judgement, in the luxurious upper rooms of paradise. Only if your eyes are opened to the legacy of Mohammed, only if you are persuaded to drop all other “opinions, orders, theories and religions” can Islam save you. What happens, according to them, if you stubbornly refuse Islam? What happens if you cannot be won over to the light? You must be wiped out. You must be kept from corrupting the minds of others and dragging them down to hell with you.

A very enlightening essay that is worth your time.