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Monthly Archives: November 2017

As long as we have mobile phones what difference does it make?

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By Melanie Philips: The Deconstruction of Humanity. You will just have to read it for yourself. I’ll give you the first para, then the last plus one from the middle.

If you want a break from the spectacle of Britain tearing itself apart over leaving the European Union, you can upset yourself instead watching the spectacle of the western world tearing apart the very notion of what it is to be a human being. . . .

“Rigorous science”. How quaint that sounds. In our ideologically fluid world, that too is being washed away as we steadily dismantle not just the foundations of western culture, not just morality, not even just the primacy of reason but our very understanding of what makes us what we are.

Here’s the one from the middle. In her view this is the problem.

The ostensible aim of all this is to end discrimination, prejudice and social exclusion. This is untrue. The aim is unilaterally to change the entire basis of society from one governed by external moral rules and duties to one in which the only rule that has any authority is the duty to actualise our own inner potential and fulfil our own desires.

Could be. I actually think the left have run out of genuine problems to fix so are inventing distinctions to show how forward looking they are in comparison with everyone else. Whatever, it is the young and they are making the world in which they will have to live. Too bad for them.

MORE ON TOO BAD FOR THEM: This is Kurt Schlichter discussing At Least My Generation Will Have Our Revenge On The Millennials.

But while we’re still here together, with me owning stuff and you struggling to afford your daily kombucha smoothie, we face many shared challenges. There’s that giant debt, and there are those foreign people who want to kill us, and there is the terrifying fact that we are at each others’ throats here at home. We know how this plays out if we don’t fix it – bad for me, but super-bad for you. Maybe we should try and square things away. Maybe we should stop assuming the worst about each other, start thinking about what unites us instead of what divides us, and work together to make a better tomorrow. Maybe.

I just wish I thought it was funny, but things weren’t so great in Europe after the fall of the Roman Empire. In fact, it took more than a thousand years to get back to the same standard of living that had prevailed in the second century AD.

Not that anyone will notice

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It still has to make it through the Senate, but this is progress: House Republicans pass tax reform bill.

House Republicans on Thursday passed a monumental bill to cut taxes on businesses and individuals, the biggest step yet in the GOP’s once-in-a-generation effort to overhaul the American tax system. . . .

The House plan would permanently chop the corporate tax rate to 20 percent from 35 percent and make other tweaks aiming to make businesses more competitive. It would reduce individual tax brackets to four from seven and make changes to several tax breaks. Among them, the bill would limit state and local deductions and the mortgage interest deduction, eliminate the personal exemption and nearly double the standard deduction.

On other matters of more interest to the media, if you were wondering about evidence and sexual harassment and what it looks like, here is an actual example. It’s sort of even more obvious than the DNA on Monica’s dress, and the woman was herself outraged: Senator Al Franken Kissed and Groped Me Without My Consent, And There’s Nothing Funny About It.

It doesn’t much matter since the media is not trying to remove Democrats from the Senate, only trying to prevent Trump-supporting Republicans from being elected, the same approach being taken by Congressional Republicans as well. There are many reasons that the Republicans got around to finally doing something on the Trump agenda, and their clear willingness to throw away a Republican Senate seat by not defending the person who actually won the primary in Alabama is a not insignificant part of it. Really, what are they good for?

Meanwhile, the American economy is going forward, growth is accelerating and employment picking up. But since these are natural phenomena that have no relationship to who is president nor what he does, we can concentrate on what really matters, such as the sexual practices of actors and politicians in Hollywood and DC.

Did you know PDT has just come back from Asia?

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Among the other things that have been submerged by the Senate race in Alabama has been Donald Trump’s singular successes on his tour of Asia. The OZ, being slightly less demented than the rest, still finds it hard to actually say something positive about the American president. So here is Rowan Callick to prevent us from being deceived by appearances: Trump’s Asian tour had an air of success. He is no doubt referring to himself in his own first line.

Donald Trump’s loudest critics have been confounded.

The US President did not embarrass himself, his office or his country during his tour of Asia — the longest since George HW Bush’s visit 25 years ago.

However, that is the best that can be said. The bar was set low.

I’m becoming a patience-free zone with this kind of thing even with my own bar for journalist standards the lowest it has ever been. But really, such low-grade coverage puts our future at risk since it tears away at our alliance with the US. Lots of ignorance to choose from but let me focus on this:

There was no evidence . . . that the Trump administration has even tried to address with China the core issues that concern American and other international businesses, especially market access and the technology regime.

It appears China had been expecting tough negotiations on such issues. As soon as Trump had left, Beijing announced autonomously several market-opening moves that it had thought the US leader would have pushed for.

So it seems Trump didn’t ask for a thing and they gave it to him anyway. But then there was also this.

As trade studies Trump has ordered start being published, new rules for engagement are expected to be drafted in the US, which will require ­reciprocity on access and policing technology transfers.

Well that sounds like something.

Separating out the threads

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Let us see if we can pull apart the various threads over whether Roy Moore, a former justice of the Alabama Supreme Court, is fit to be a US Senator.

1) Ivanka: ‘Special Place In Hell’ For Child Predators… which no one is contesting. The question is whether Roy Moore is such a person.

2) There is no evidence for any of the accusations

3) The only supposed proof that Moore met one of the accused is a signature in a yearbook from 1977 in which mid-signature the ink changes colour – the colour of the ink goes from black to light blue – there are plenty of other reasons for thinking it’s a forgery including the woman’s lawyer won’t deny that it is

4) The media in the US has a history of bringing forward spurious accusations of sexual harassment and assault against Republicans none of which have any evidence other than the word of the accuser. Here is the list from 2016 against Donald Trump which have all disappeared since the election.

So where are we now. Here are a few conclusions that spring off the page.

The Republican mainstream are opposed to Trump’s agenda and will see him out of office as quickly as possible. The left and the media could not make this accusation stand if the Republicans wished to take the small bit of trouble required to show that the accusations are false.

To my tremendous disappointment, Drudge has crossed over and Instapundit may have as well.

Irrespective of the outcome in the Senate special election, Trump’s extraordinary achievements in Asia have been all but obliterated.

If The Swamp succeeds here, PDT will be next.

AN UPDATE: From Glenn Reynolds at Instapundit whose commenters are far more on the ball than the actual posters, including Glenn, unfortunately.

So on the one hand I feel like I’m not taking this seriously enough, but on the other hand I find it impossible to take seriously. Based on what we know so far, what percentile of awfulness in the Senate would Roy Moore be? Would he be 99th Percentile — making him the worst person in the Senate? Seems doubtful given that there’s a secret slush fund paying victims of Congressional harassment already. He can’t compare to such past lions as Ted Kennedy or Robert Packwood, and it seems likely that there are other, current ones that we just haven’t hear about. So say he’s at the 90th percentile. That means there are 10 sitting Senators worse than him. How exercised should I be about the prospect of him joining them? And maybe he’s only, say, 75th percentile!

Jonathan Adler makes a persuasive case that Moore is a constitutional illiterate, but it’s not like that would set Moore apart much in the World’s Greatest Deliberative Body.

The truth is, the Senate is just awful — and the House is no better — because it’s full of politicians. The real travesty here isn’t that we might send another clown to join the clown show. It’s that the clown show has so much power, and so little accountability, when it’s doing things that are a lot more serious than groping.

And no, this isn’t good, it’s terrible. It’s more evidence of our decline. And I feel bad for having to point it out, again.

Here then are the top comments at Instapundit.

 

  • Richard Allen • an hour ago

    If the allegations against Moore are actually true, then he would fit right in in Washington. His real sin is that he bucked the GOPe.

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    TempoNick  Richard Allen • 43 minutes ago

    That is my biggest reservation about the guy. Practically everybody hates him. Usually, not always but usually, people like that are self-righteous pains in the arses. There is a constructive way to change the system, and there are ways of being a jerk about it. I’m guessing there’s a reason why all the knives came out and it isn’t because he stands up for the Ten Commandments.

    But, whatever. He’s still better than the commie.

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    robcrawford2  TempoNick • 40 minutes ago

    Both parties hate Trump, too, yet he’s appointing conservative judges, pushing tax reductions, and enforcing immigration laws.

    Honestly, I wonder if “hated by both parties” shouldn’t be something to be proud of.

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    LarryD  robcrawford2 • 32 minutes ago

    Nowadays, anyway. I’m not an Alabaman, but it seems like nothing recommends Moore so much as his enemies.

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    happyfeet47 • an hour ago

    Mr. Moore is the #1 best choice for Alabama!

    • Avatar
      Dar ul Harb  happyfeet47 • an hour ago

      #otherRepublicansrolledover

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      sirpatrick  happyfeet47 • an hour ago

      He has my vote. 

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      TempoNick  sirpatrick • an hour ago

      I’d go to Alabama and vote for him too, but I’m not an illegal or a Democrat.

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      alexia_sf • an hour ago

      You might want to post something about the Allred accuser having had her divorce case overseen by Moore in 1999 even though she said she never had contact with him after the alleged assault. Minor detail I know, but I don’t know many people who would not have at least requested a different judge if he’d sexually assaulted the plaintiff.

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      andycanuck  alexia_sf • an hour ago

      Why would she ask for a change of venue with her attempted rapist? After all he signed her yearbook!

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      smmy33  alexia_sf • 31 minutes ago

      He supposedly molestered her, years later he is a judge in her divorce proceeding, she doesn’t ask for him to be recused or bring up the allegations even when he ruled against her, saw nothing wrong it but 18 years later she’s crying at just the thought of the event 40 years ago.

      But what is even more important. She got his signature from the divorce paper. That’s why it’s in two pens. The Roy in yearbook isn’t his signature at all and the Moore was a forgery and the stupid idiot thought the DA was part of his signature so she added it , but it his assistants initials he adds in court documents as a witness.

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      Dar ul Harb  smmy33 • 22 minutes ago

      The “two pens” thing is a hoax, BTW. Looks to me like an effect of the lighting in the room, combined with low-res JPEG compression of narrow out-of-focus features in the original image. Still probably fake though.

       
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      smmy33  Dar ul Harb • 14 minutes ago

      One could be a better resolution. Once they examine the ink, they know that it’s not 40 years old ink.

      Allred wouldn’t even deny on CNN the signature is a fraud…. The DA was taken right off her divorce papers…. The Roy is not how he signs his name, the Moore was copied from the divorce papers, along with the DA.

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      smmy33  Dar ul Harb • 12 minutes ago

      Ben is lying it was taken from CNN tweet

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      vbmoneyspender  Dar ul Harb • 15 minutes ago

      I thought the image came from CNN. Also, how does Benson explain away the two very different uppercase M’s in Merry and Moore?

      • Avatar
        Dar ul Harb  vbmoneyspender • 4 minutes ago

        When I bring the image into Photoshop, here are my observations:

        The “black-n’-blue” photo appears to have only been in focus in a narrow strip centered on the word “Roy” (or “Ray”) as though it was taken from an oblique angle, with limited depth-of-field. The “blue” part is out-of-focus, as is the inscription. The lighter color could be a combination of the original lighting conditions, the photo’s limited depth-of-field and out of focus, and JPEG compression artifacts blending the background color into the out-of-focus pixels. You’re talking about downsampling color in a relatively low resolution web image of a relatively thin feature.

        That’s assuming nobody changed the color of that section of the image deliberately, which I can’t see any evidence of, by the way. What I see is a gradual shift in color that affects the “77” in “1977” and the “Olde” and the “M” in “Moore”. But as Benson shows, another color image (apparently taken at a more direct angle, but still not quite in focus) does not exhibit this color shifted effect.

        As I said, I suspect the yearbook inscription has been forged by Allred’s client, but it’s probably not as obvious as “two pens” would have you believe.

Not giving credit where credit is due

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Just received this note so thought I would say something about the question asked. And until I remove this sentence you are reading now, think of this post as work in progress until I have put the right words in the right order. Here is the note:

I enjoy reading your contributions to Catallaxy on a regular basis. I can’t say I know a lot about economics, but I especially like hearing you arguments to current economic theory. Rational debate is a powerful tool.

Recently, I was at work and a conversation around the lunch room turned to America politics.

Most of my work colleagues are “Never Trumpers”, but when I pointed out the American economy was currently doing very well, with record high stocks and decade low unemployment, one of my colleagues said something thatade me questions Donald Trump’s success. The comment was…

“The current economic success in American has nothing to do with Donald Trump. It wouldn’t matter who was President at the moment. The economy just goes through natural peaks and troughs in a capitalist society.”..

Knowing that the President has now been in place 12 months, and knowing that the Republicans still have not released their tax plan, is the above statement true?

Nothing like magical thinking to make you believe in the tooth fairy.

The parlous state that Obama left the American economy in will require an astonishing amount of luck combined with a great deal of very well constructed policy to move past. You do know that in the entire eight years Obama was president, the US economy on not a singe occasion achieved a growth rate as high as 3%. Trump has now achieved it twice, with more to come. Obama even inherited the recovery phase following the GFC which is almost invariably an economy’s period of strongest growth since part of what happens is the recovery of ground lost during the recession. Instead, low growth and stagnant employment. There is not an economic story to tell to his credit, even with interest rates at near zero and public spending at an all-time high, which in standard economic theory are a good thing.

The political business cycle works like this. The left elects a typically economically ignorant numbskull who thinks markets don’t matter and public spending plus charisma are all that is required. The result is economic damage that goes on until finally enough of the socialists in our midst finally decide to get rid of these incompetents and bring in someone who knows what they are doing. Very old story. Whitlam in the 1970s, Rudd-Gillard in the 2000s, Jimmy Carter giving way to Reagan, Labour followed by Thatcher etc. The return to market principles lasts just long enough before another adventure in socialist central direction, which is why we can never rid ourselves of bad policy. But most of the time, socialist wreck things followed by conservatives who fix things up. Your mate is one of those who cannot bear to recognise that non-market policies never work. Had Hillary been elected, the certainty is that no recovery of any kind would have been visible. Ignorance of the necessities of market-based policies is the rule, and only deep deep pain for a large number of people finally get them to turn around. Venezuelans may just be there now, but the entire country invited the problems it has and the cure, if they ever get around to one, will be short-lived because the world is filled with people who believe strong economies are like good weather, just part of the nature of things, and into every economy a bit of rain must fall, etc etc. You won’t convince him, but at least you can see it for yourself.

So let me get into a bit about foreign trade and protection. Let me take you to Joan Robinson, Keynes’s most devoted follower, but not everything she says is wrong. Such as this, wher her point is that free markets are good for world trade, if good at all, but can harm individual economies quite substantially:

The case for Free Trade was basically the same thing as the general case for the individualistic pursuit of profit, though, starting from Ricardo’s theory of comparative costs, it was dressed up in a different form. It exhibited an equilibrium position in which competition leads to the maximum utility in the world as a whole being produced from given resources.

But, to appeal to the politicians and the voters, the good of the world as a whole was too thin. The argument that protection could benefit one country only at the expense of the rest would not do; the public might have answered: ‘If it is going to benefit us, lead us to it. Nor was it sufficient to prove, in a hard-headed classical style, that Free Trade would benefit the United Kingdom. It had to be shown that, under it, each and every country would be better off, so that it could be preached round the world with a good conscience. Protectionists are represented as being mere lobbyists for particular interests. A tariff might benefit one trade, but it was bound to do more harm to the rest of the economy than good to those protected.

If is true enough that the demand for a tariff more often comes from a lobby than anywhere else, but it is not true that no good national arguments can ever be found for protection. . . .

Even so, after all the interesting problems had been ruled out, the case for Free Trade as a benefit to each nation could not be made out. The weak spot in the analysis was in overlooking the implications of the assumption of universal perfect competition. It is obvious enough that any one group of sellers can normally do better for themselves collectively by agreeing to keep up prices than by competing individualistically. They do less business, but at a higher profit per unit. Similarly any one nation, within the conditions of the equilibrium model, may be better off with a smaller volume of trade at higher prices of exports in terms of imports than at the Free-Trade position.

“Trusting the ABC was a rookie mistake”

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An interesting article about the hysterics at the ABC and their fellow hysteric our interim Prime Minister: Four Corners stopped truth from ruining its ripping yarn. It’s about how nothing has come of the Royal Commission after “the ABC’s Four Corners announced to the world that the Northern Territory ‘tortured children’, and engaged in ‘barbarism’ in facilities such as Don Dale”. Here’s how the article ends.

During conversations with Four Corners, I sought and repeatedly was given assurances that the highest ethical standards were being applied. In the opinion of other news outlets, trusting the ABC was a rookie mistake. That trust was why it was given the ­extraordinary access.

Those ethical standards can be found in the ABC’s Code of Practice under the heading Impartiality and Diversity of Perspectives. I believe Four Corners failed all five guidelines.

The ABC is a federally funded public service organisation. It withheld information from a Prime Minister and based on partial information the Prime Minister made a call to spend $50m. Since that time, the ABC has declared its footage unavailable; attempted to suppress evidence before a royal commission; and, when asked, has refused to investigate itself. Even an ABC journalist referred to it as a “hatchet job”.

If the royal commission report does not deliver scalps or, worse still, fails to even recommend criminal investigations and prosecutions, it will be because the information that led to its establishment was deeply flawed and misleading.

“Deeply flawed and misleading” – given the way it operates I thought that was already the first item on the ABC’s Code of Practice in how it presents the news.

Gladstonian liberalism in the modern age

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If I am going to get into personal labels, I am a Gladstonian liberal. So here we are with the naming of things where “liberal” is the equivalent of insane while “conservative” is prudential common sense:

The differences between the classical-liberal and conservative traditions have immense consequences for policy. Establishing democracy in Egypt or Iraq looks doable to classical liberals because they assume that human reason is everywhere the same, and that a commitment to individual liberties and free markets will arise rapidly once the benefits have been demonstrated and the impediments removed. Conservatives, on the other hand, see foreign civilizations as powerfully motivated—for bad reasons as well as good ones—to fight the dissolution of their way of life and the imposition of American values.

Integrating millions of immigrants from the Middle East also looks easy to classical liberals, because they believe virtually everyone will quickly see the advantages of American (or European) ways and accept them upon arrival. Conservatives recognize that large-scale assimilation can happen only when both sides are highly motivated to see it through. When that motivation is weak or absent, conservatives see an unassimilated migration, resulting in chronic mutual hatred and violence, as a perfectly plausible outcome.

Since classical liberals assume reason is everywhere the same, they see no great danger in “depreciating” national independence and outsourcing power to foreign bodies. American and British conservatives see such schemes as destroying the unique political foundation upon which their traditional freedoms are built.

Here is the definition of Gladstonian liberal from Wikipedia which seems accurate enough for me and is utterly and in every way distinct from the “classical” variety as defined above.

Gladstonian liberalism is a political doctrine named after the British Victorian Prime Minister and leader of the Liberal Party, William Ewart Gladstone. Gladstonian liberalism consisted of limited government expenditure and low taxation whilst making sure government had balanced budgets and the classical liberal stress on self-help and freedom of choice. Gladstonian liberalism also emphasised free trade, little government intervention in the economy and equality of opportunity through institutional reform. It is referred to as laissez-faire or classical liberalism in the UK and is often compared to Thatcherism.

It is also the essence of the economics and political philosophy of John Stuart Mill. See his Principles of Political Economy and On Liberty to see these things spelled out. (A modern version of the economics of Mill can be found in my Free Market Economics.)

Personal freedom and personal responsibility within a society of limited government, tolerance and open enquiry guided by an all pervading Judeo-Christian ethic. And to go back to Wikipedia, this is the foreign policy approach for a Gladstonian liberal.

In foreign policy, Gladstone was in general against foreign entanglements, but he did not resist the realities of imperialism. For example, he approved of the occupation of Egypt by British forces in 1882. His goal was to create a European order based on co-operation rather than conflict and on mutual trust instead of rivalry and suspicion; the rule of law was to supplant the reign of force and self-interest. This Gladstonian concept of a harmonious Concert of Europe was opposed to and ultimately defeated by a Bismarckian system of manipulated alliances and antagonisms.

Let me therefore go to the last para of the first article discussed for an interesting and enlightening comparison.

Brexit and Mr. Trump’s rise are the direct result of a quarter-century of classical-liberal hegemony over the parties of the right. Neither Mr. Trump nor the Brexiteers were necessarily seeking a conservative revival. But in placing a renewed nationalism at the center of their politics, they shattered classical liberalism’s grip, paving the way for a return to empiricist conservatism. Once you start trying to understand politics by learning from experience rather than by deducing your views from 17th-century rationalist dogma, you never know what you may end up discovering.

Labels will get in the way but I think the core principles are clear. And it need hardly be pointed out that the worst imaginable rationalist dogma is found under the heading of “socialism”, the absolute antithesis of Gladstonian liberalism which is socialism’s most intractable enemy.

High minded stupidity of the deepest and most obstinate kind

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A bit of a conversation on my post on Illogical Negativism. The brutal gormlessness of these people is a trial. PDT must be astonished to see such idiots at every turn, supposedly on his own side who buy the left-agenda cover to cover and who cannot be taught how to do battle. My central point was in dealing with the Washington Post and CNN, “they are liars who count on the complicity and ignorance of others”. This was my conversation online with “Marcus”. He goes first.

Marcus
#2551682, posted on November 13, 2017 at 6:58 pm (Edit)

Yeah…

Look, it’s possible that this is all part of a co-ordinated smear campaign to destroy an up-until-now obscure Republican Senate hopeful. Stranger things have no doubt happened.

But what you also hear in this case is people defending Moore by saying that even if it’s true, no biggie. The Bible says this! The Democrats did that! Seriously, if the best defence of Moore is “If Bill Clinton can get away with rape, so should one of ours” then maybe he’s not worth defending.

If it is a false smear campaign, that will no doubt come out in the coming days. But when people ask why these alleged victims are only waiting until now to come forward, maybe they haven’t been paying attention to what else has been going on recently. Women have waited decades to come forward against Harvey Weinstein. Men have waited decades to come forward against Kevin Spacey. Obviously, the feeling out there is that the time for victims of old crimes to forward is right now, and while that doesn’t mean that every accusation is going to be true, the fact that Moore is supposedly “one of us” doesn’t mean that they’re going to be false either.

So I replied below. Ignorant as the day is long to describe Roy Moore as “an up-until-now obscure Republican” means every bit of this is new to him but is totally unperturbed by his lack of any historical context. But I stuck to the main point, why do you accept the word of your ideological enemy?

Steve Kates
#2551738, posted on November 13, 2017 at 8:22 pm (Edit)

Look, it’s possible that this is all part of a co-ordinated smear campaign to destroy an up-until-now obscure Republican Senate hopeful. Stranger things have no doubt happened.

There would be nothing strange about that at all given how stupid the stupid party is. Everything under the sun is possible, but as David Hume pointed out, which is more plausible, that this event stayed quiet for 38 years and all the events are correctly remembered, or that the woman and her mother have lied to help the Democrats steal a Senate seat? On the other hand, how much press is there about this story: DEMOCRAT Sen. Robert Menendez may have had sex with underage hookers in Dominican Republic: prosecutors. Here there is no end of evidence but with no surprise at all, none of this makes the press, even though his trial is going on right now and the events were only a year or two back. And even where it is reported, how often do you see the party in question named? The issue is not the right or wrongs of what he did, which I would not defend, but whether he did any of it and this is just political lying of the most common garden variety.

Obstinate as well as clueless, back he comes.

Marcus
#2552285, posted on November 14, 2017 at 10:43 am (Edit)

There would be nothing strange about that at all given how stupid the stupid party is. Everything under the sun is possible, but as David Hume pointed out, which is more plausible, that this event stayed quiet for 38 years and all the events are correctly remembered, or that the woman and her mother have lied to help the Democrats steal a Senate seat?

Women, plural. My understanding is that there are four of them who’ve all made similar allegations, and that even some of his ex-colleagues in the DA’s office raised questions over his … uh, taste in women.

On the other hand, how much press is there about this story: DEMOCRAT Sen. Robert Menendez may have had sex with underage hookers in Dominican Republic: prosecutors. Here there is no end of evidence but with no surprise at all, none of this makes the press, even though his trial is going on right now and the events were only a year or two back. And even where it is reported, how often do you see the party in question named?

If that’s true Menendez should be hung out to dry. If your main point is that there’s a double standard in how these things are reported, well, of course I agree with you on that. That doesn’t mean that when these allegations are made against Republicans they’re not newsworthy.

What it does mean is that conservatives should do what they can to ensure people like Menendez face the level of scrutiny they deserve, without risking their integrity to defend people like Moore by coming up with lame justifications for his alleged behaviour (as in the case of the state auditor who used Mary and Joseph to explain why paedophilia is perfectly okay).

The issue is not the right or wrongs of what he did, which I would not defend, but whether he did any of it and this is just political lying of the most common garden variety.

Well, none of us knows the truth about Moore at the end of the day. Maybe he’s guilty, or maybe he’s the victim of a baseless political smear. All I’ll say is that it disturbs me how readily some people will try to defend the indefensible when it suits their side’s political ends. We saw the Democrats sell their souls to protect the Clintons over the last couple of decades, merely to preserve their political power, and now that they’ve lost even that, they’re left with nothing. I’d hate to see the same thing happen to the Republicans, or the right more generally.

My last go, not attempting to get him to see the point, which he never will, but just because you really want to say what an ah and fw he is. This is what I wrote instead.

Steve Kates
#2552419, posted on November 14, 2017 at 12:35 pm (Edit)

Ah Marcus. Such high mindedness! Such honourable intentions! You fight with the tactics you know will work and if the other side knows you are vulnerable to being taken down by fabricated ancient stories from unreliable sources promoted by your enemies, that is what you will see. It is the political equivalent of an IED. To give yourself a bit of credibility here, what you need to do is preface your remarks with something along the lines of,

“Donald Trump is the best thing that has happened in American politics in more than a generation and I would do anything I could to help him achieve his agenda, but this business with Moore is a step too far since even the slightest possibility that he may have done what this girl says he did 38 years ago is beyond the pale and I prefer to see a Democrat take the safest of Republican Senate seats and help sink Trump’s agenda if this is even remotely true”.

Naturally, you would have to completely discount the possibility that they are lying, or even that they don’t quite remember exactly all the details of an event that took place almost four decades ago, and assume that she has no political agenda or wishes to assist the Democrats with their own political agenda. And as for Menendez, or Bill Clinton, or The Lolita Express, yes we are against them too, but in the meantime we must not sully our side with even a hint of any of this even if the probability is close to nil that although none of it can be verified, it is actually an accurate account of what happened almost forty years ago.

If there’s more, I will let you know. The suggested preface will naturally never appear.

Illogical negativism in, logical positivism out

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I have a post up at Quadrant Online: Weaponising Illogical Negativism. This is how it starts, discussing the base philosophical creed across the media and the left.

The core principle of logical positivism which underpins verification as the basis for scientific investigation of the truth of any statement:

A statement that cannot be conclusively verified cannot be verified at all. It is simply devoid of any meaning.

This then is the principle of illogical negativism, now applied near universally across the media and throughout the Left. It is the principle that denies any need whatsoever to verify any statement that suits the political outcome sought by the person making the statement or hearing it.

A statement that cannot be conclusively denied cannot be denied at all. It is simply true because someone has said it and conforms to what those who hear the statement prefer to believe.

Let us look a little more deeply at this principle, seen everywhere among the empty heads of the Republican Party as much as among Democrats. No evidence or factual underpinnings are required, only that someone says it and it suits others that it has been said.

Or to put it more plainly, they are liars who count on the complicity and ignorance of others. Now go to the link to see what has brought all this to mind.

“It would be a great thing to have a good relationship with Russia, Trump said”

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PDT is afraid of nothing. Here they are, out to railroad his presidency because of some alleged form of pre-election collaboration with Putin and Russia, and here he is, just yesterday, collaborating with Putin and the Russians: Putin and Trump talk Syria, election meddling at brief meeting. The US and Russia working together against a common enemy works for me, and apparently for them as well.

U.S. President Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin agreed a statement on Syria during a brief meeting at a summit in Vietnam on Saturday and Putin again dismissed allegations of meddling in last year’s U.S. election.

And walking into the media-Democrat Lion’s den, this is how the article ends.

“It would be a great thing to have a good relationship with Russia,” Trump said.

It would indeed. It would be great if the relationship between Russia and the United States could somehow be reset. It would be a true benefit if the President could have more flexibility now that the election is over, if you know what I mean, which no Democrat following the party line would ever do.

And then there’s this, in late-breaking news: South Korea, China agree to manage North Korea issue peacefully, in stable manner. It would be great to have a good relationship with China too.