Law of Markets

Dedicated to the economics and politics of the free market

Law of Markets

Monthly Archives: September 2018

This is why Trump won

Posted on by
Reply

The AFR have republished the anonymous “Senior White House Official” oped from the New York Times.

This paragraph stood out for me.

This isn’t the work of the so-called deep state. It’s the work of the steady state.

Yes. Indeed. That is why the electorate voted for person whose motto was “drain the swamp”.

SK ADD-ON: I didn’t want to start a second thread on this same topic, but I was going to link to the NYT article in the AFR, but also mention the AFR’s editorial titled, “ScoMo must have a crack at real economic reform”. So let me just note that there is a “resistance” here in Australia as well, some of it in the public service, if you will pardon the expression, and some even within the Liberals’ own party room. The words “economic reform” are a platitude; even the folks in Venezuela began with the promise of “economic reform”. The “resistance” in PDT’s administration are holdovers from Obama, who never once had the economy reach even three percent growth. So let me just add this from Breitbart.

For the first time since those passenger planes hit the World Trade Center 17 long years ago, Trump has at long last returned America to peace and prosperity… Something so rare, no one under the age of 30 even remembers what it’s like.

Well, let me tell you, I remember peace and prosperity, I recognize it when I see it, I see it now, and it is glorious and long overdue and hard-earned, and the guy who deserves the most credit for delivering it — all I can say is God bless his style, and goddamn the hysterics trying to gaslight me into caring about anything other than the substance his style delivers.

I have the same attitude to Scott Morrison. He seems to have the right instincts and would like to do the kinds of things I want done here. But there is resistance at every turn. For all that, he likes coal-driven energy, wants to limit the power of unions, seeks to balance the budget and add momentum to private sector activity by cutting regulations and other artificial impedements. You wouldn’t get any of that from our erstwhile PM and you certainly won’t get it if Labor wins the next election.

Smugness, a false sense of superiority and a compliant liberal press

Posted on by
Reply

From Instapundit. And it may be all they have, but it’s quite a lot.

I’ve written before about how jihadists and anti-Semites have mastered the PR game and co-opted the alleged intelligentsia of Oxbridge and the extreme US left.

But take heart: an Op/Ed in yesterday’s WSJ points out that smugness, a false sense of superiority and a compliant liberal press are all they have. The facts speak for themselves:

In 2012 [Corbyn] approved of a mural that grotesquely depicted Jewish bankers, and he did not reverse himself until earlier this year…In 2012 he appeared on Iranian television to celebrate the release of Palestinian terrorists by Israel in a painful prisoner exchange with Hamas. He referred to the returning convicts as “brothers.”

And most sickening of all:

In 2014 he laid a wreath at the graves of terrorists involved in the murder of Israeli athletes at the Munich Summer Olympics in 1972.

Meanwhile, this quote in the comments sums up what I also believe:

Comparing Corbyn’s overt anti-Semitism to Enoch Powell’s “Rivers of Blood” speech are only similar in that they are/were controversial. Powell was vilified for stating that if his country opens its borders to immigratnts whose values were incompatible with British values, Britain will cease to be Britain. He was, of course, correct, and there are now 1 million Muslims now living in metropolitan Londonistan. When Powell made that speech, how many British women and girls had to worry about acid attacks, FGM, forced marriages, honor killings or rape/grooming gangs?

As for Corbyn, what’s sick is that he’s not nearly as “controversial” as he should be. Why? Well, those 1 million Muslims in Londonistan agree with him. So do the millions of other Muslims in England, and the millions of other Btitish who’ve been barraged by Jew and Israel hatred from the BBC, the academy, the left and the media for the past 20 years.

And if you want truly macabre, this is near the norm in parts of the diaspora:

Keeping up with the outrage du jour

Posted on by
Reply

It’s hard to keep up with the stream of left perfidy and gross stupidity. Where we are today is the New York Times with their article from some deep state malcontent slagging off on the Trump administration while pretending to work on the elected president’s agenda. First from the President himself:

You can read the article here. A self-confessed deep state operative who is attempting to subvert the elected will of the nation. For more, treat yourself to these:

WASH POST: FRANTIC HUNT FOR LEAKERS...
TUCKER CARLSON: Pretty Good Idea Who Wrote Op-Ed...
TRUMP DEMANDS SOURCE...
HUNDREDS FIT 'SENIOR' LABEL...
Bookies place odds...
Tweet Gives Author Gender Clue?
WORD SLEUTHING...
MAG: Reveal yourselves!
GREENWALD: Unelected Cabal... 

None of this is to be confused with the book from notorious media collector of anonymous and therefore unvarifiable sources, Bob Woodward, who released excerpts from his forthcoming tome the day before. Hardly anything about it today since the NYT has crowded it out. However, here is a contrary view, which you will not be able to find on Google – Deep State interviewer instead, as is the way of the world, but it is Sarah Sanders so all is good:

 

And then the day before that, and I suppose still continuing, there is the confirmation hearings for the next Supreme Court justice. From Instapundit:

THEY KEEP TELLING US TRUMP IS CRAZY, AND THEN . . . ACTING CRAZY: The Democrats’ No Good, Frivolous, Ridiculous Day. “It strikes me that the Democratic Party crossed a Rubicon of sorts today. They abandoned all norms not just of civility–something they purported to yearn for just a few days ago!–but of sanity. They deliberately turned a Senate confirmation hearing into a farce. There was no distinction between the howling left-wing mob that infiltrated the hearing room and the Senate Democrats. Not long ago, some Democrats resisted the crazier fringes of their party. No longer. There is no daylight among the violent fascist group Antifa, the crazed Democratic activists bleating about impeachment, and the establishment Democratic Party. They are now one and the same. So, disgusting as today’s hearing was, it at least achieved some clarity. There is no longer any wing of the Democratic Party that can be described as sane.”

And of course there was John McCain’s funeral orations already almost a week ago, discussed here:

Funeral services are not for the benefit of the defunct, who is beyond our praise or condemnation, but for the living, who know before long that they will follow the honored dead into a cold grave.

Senator John McCain’s funeral was the most ostentatious that Washington has accorded except for a president, and much grander than the 2006 funeral of Gerald Ford, for example. The American Establishment took the opportunity to mourn a world that it imagined but never inhabited.

The eulogies for the Arizona senator, to be sure, were a convenient occasion for the Establishment to show its dudgeon at “the pointedly un-invited President Trump,” as the New Yorker noted, calling the event “the biggest resistance meeting yet.”

It’s really a madness. No one, but no one could do what this president is doing. And with success at every turn, still they come. They are truly insane. They must think prosperity and a safe environment are just natural phenomena requiring no political direction at all. Fools every one, but dangerous fools.

Recreational outrage

Posted on by
Reply

Having been at the cutting edge of the Protest Generation of the 1960s, I can attest it was just for fun, and for me anyway, a safe activity since I never thought anyone would take us seriously. When these pussy establishment giants kept falling over to appease our stupidity I knew I had had enough. But on it has gone. This is from Lionel Shriver writing in The Spectator.

What is the real emotional experience of pouncing on minor infractions of rules right-on activists seem to be making up as they go along, and which only proliferate and grow more exacting the more cravenly the rest of us obey the last ones? (The latest: ‘stay in your lane’, or ‘white writers shalt not use AAVE’.) Nothing short of exhilaration. Crusaders relish locating another paper dragon to slay. In the guise of suffering and woundedness, the overriding emotion in call-out culture is a sensation of triumph….

The students cowering in ‘safe spaces’ don’t feel endangered; they’re claiming territory. In protecting the faux-helpless from noxious opinions via no-platforming, they’re exercising power. The experience of exercising power isn’t scary, except on the receiving end; it’s supremely gratifying. These people aren’t frightened. They want you to be frightened of them. And we’re not talking ‘microaggression’. PC police often prefer macroaggression, the kind that can get people sacked….

Progressives seem especially prone to disguise one feeling as another. Reliably entwined with self-deceit, the problem isn’t solely among the young. When American liberals my age claim to suffer from white guilt over slavery and the slaughter of Indians, I question whether they really feel guilty. They weren’t personal agents of these crimes, and they know it. Nothing wrong with being historically aware. But white guilt is often a blind for moral vanity.

What employers look for in graduates

Posted on by
Reply

From The Campus Review. This is an exact reprint.

Survey results highlight philosophical debate about universities’ purpose

Have you noticed that students aren’t that resilient? Eleven thousand global employers have. In the QS Global Skills Gap in the 21st Century Report, they reported a lack of resilience as the largest student skill gap, among many others.

The report, by QS and student recruitment agency the Institute of Student Employers, found that employers thought students deficient in 12 of the 15 skills surveyed.

Having also gleaned insights from 16,000 students, the report authors noted that students and employers held different views on which skills were most valuable. While students believed creativity and data analysis were key, employers preferred problem-solving, teamwork and communication skills.

The results also varied by business size, as well as location. For example, large companies prized leadership over technical skills, and North American employers were relatively satisfied with their graduate employees – especially compared with Latin American ones.

Global Overview of Core Skills: Importance v Satisfaction

Photo: QS/Institute of Student Employers

Dasha Karzunina, Market Insights Manager at QS, said the report verifies widely-held beliefs about students’ skills gaps. This implies that a purpose of university education is to prepare students for employment. Undoubtedly many – if not all universities would affirm this. Yet some people argue that preparing students for employment is the job of vocational providers, not universities.

These, however, are lone voices. Students want graduate jobs, so universities, swayed by market forces, attempt to ready students for them. Examples include the growing emphasis universities place on inculcating soft, transferable skills in students to suit the rapidly shifting employment landscape, and the increasing prominence of experiential learning and industry placements across degrees.

To further prepare students for careers, universities could introduce measures that enhance their resilience – their largest skill ‘gap’. For instance, universities could consider improving resilience as part of the student experience, even as an educational outcome.

The American media cannot stop lying

Posted on by
Reply

Below you may find the entire text of 11 Craziest Revelations From Bob Woodward’s Book on Trump’s ‘Nervous Breakdown’ Presidency, which is trying to explain just how wonderful Woodward’s worthless book is.

But before you read that, you should read this: Trump Unleashes on Woodward, Accuses Him of Making Up Quotes and Being a ‘Dem Operative’. From which:

mattis statement

The rest is a summary of Bob Woodward‘s book about the Trump administration, Fear taken directly from the 11 Craziest Revelations. But if you want to apply the word “crazy”, it is to the people who first write and then hunger for stuff like this.

The book, as the Washington Post reports, naturally and as a matter of course “paints a harrowing portrait of the Trump presidency, based on in-depth interviews with administration officials and other principals.” These are the traitorous monsters who actually spoke to Woodward, the kind of people who produce a movie about the first landing on the moon but leave out the planting of the American flag on the moon’s surface. They hate America. These then are the “revelations”, not one of which is a matter of any kind of policy issue, even if they were true.

As the article portrays it, “here are the most stunning moments from Fear: Trump in the White House, set for release on Sept. 11″. You will no doubt all be stunned that anyone would think any of this matters even in the slightest.

1. Defense Secretary James Mattis is “exasperated” by Trump acting like a fifth grader

Woodward writes that in one National Security Council meeting from January, Trump questioned why the U.S. was spending money maintaining a presence in the Korean Peninsula. “We’re doing this in order to prevent World War III,” James Mattis told him, per Woodward.

After the meeting, Mattis “was particularly exasperated and alarmed, telling close associates that the president acted like — and had the understanding of — ‘a fifth- or sixth-grader.’”

2. Chief of Staff John Kelly rips Trump

Woodward’s quotes from John Kelly, Trump’s chief of staff, are stunning. He called the president “unhinged,” and apparently uttered this magnificent stream of consciousness in a group meeting:

“He’s an idiot. It’s pointless to try to convince him of anything. He’s gone off the rails. We’re in Crazytown. I don’t even know why any of us are here. This is the worst job I’ve ever had.”

3. Reince Priebus called Trump’s bedroom “the devil’s workshop”

But not for the reason you might think… Per the Post:

Woodward writes that Priebus dubbed the presidential bedroom, where Trump obsessively watched cable news and tweeted, “the devil’s workshop,” and said early mornings and Sunday evenings, when the president often set off tweetstorms, were “the witching hour.”

Trump, for his part, described Priebus “like a little rat. He just scurries around.”

4. Trump mocked H.R. McMaster’s suits and said he looks like a beer salesman

Per the Post:

He often mocked former national security adviser H.R. McMaster behind his back, puffing up his chest and exaggerating his breathing as he impersonated the retired Army general, and once said McMaster dresses in cheap suits, “like a beer salesman.”

5. Trump called Attorney General Jeff Sessions a “traitor” and “mentally retarded”

Woodward writes that Trump called Sessions, a frequent target of his public ire, a “traitor” for recusing himself from the Russia investigation.

“This guy is mentally retarded,” he reportedly said. “He’s this dumb Southerner. … He couldn’t even be a one-person country lawyer down in Alabama.”

6. Trump demeaned Rudy Giuliani by describing him as a baby that got his diaper changed on live television

After the release of the Access Hollywood tape during the 2016 campaign, in which Trump bragged about groping women, Rudy Giuliani was one of the few surrogates that went on TV to defend him.

“Rudy, you’re a baby,” Trump said after Giuliani’s TV hit. “I’ve never seen a worse defense of me in my life. They took your diaper off right there. You’re like a little baby that needed to be changed. When are you going to be a man?”

7. After Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s chemical attack, Trump demanded Mattis assassinate him

Per the Post:

After Syrian leader Bashar al-Assad launched a chemical attack on civilians in April 2017, Trump called Mattis and said he wanted to assassinate the dictator. “Let’s fucking kill him! Let’s go in. Let’s kill the fucking lot of them,” Trump said, according to Woodward.

Mattis told the president that he would get right on it. But after hanging up the phone, he told a senior aide: “We’re not going to do any of that. We’re going to be much more measured.” The national security team developed options for the more conventional airstrike that Trump ultimately ordered.

8. Senior aides steal documents off Trump’s desk

Gary Cohn, Trump’s former top economic adviser, took documents off Trump’s desk to thwart his attempts to pull out of trade agreements, per Woodward:

Cohn, a Wall Street veteran, tried to tamp down Trump’s strident nationalism regarding trade. According to Woodward, Cohn “stole a letter off Trump’s desk” that the president was intending to sign to formally withdraw the United States from a trade agreement with South Korea. Cohn later told an associate that he removed the letter to protect national security and that Trump did not notice that it was missing.

Cohen pulled a similar move when Trump was threatening to pull out of NAFTA.

9. Trump said his reluctant condemnation of white supremacists after Charlottesville was “the biggest fucking mistake I’ve made”

Per the Post:

Trump was sharply criticized for initially saying that “both sides” were to blame. At the urging of advisers, he then condemned white supremacists and neo-Nazis, but almost immediately told aides, “That was the biggest fucking mistake I’ve made” and the “worst speech I’ve ever given,” according to Woodward’s account.

10. Cohn threatened to resign over Trump’s response to the Charlottesville rally, which Trump called “treason”

When Cohn gave Trump his resignation letter, the president accused him of “treason”, and convinced him to stick around.

Kelly had similar sentiments to Cohn. “I would have taken that resignation letter and shoved it up his ass six different times,” Woodward reports Kelly told Cohn.

11. Trump’s legal team desperately tried to convince Mueller that the president can’t sit through an interview without lying

John Dowd, Trump’s former lawyer, really did not want the president to testify to Mueller under oath.

According to CNN’s report on Fear, Woodward reports that Trump’s lawyers held a mock interview with Mueller to see how the president would fare.

Trump failed, and Dowd concluded he could not sit for an interview under oath with Mueller without committing perjury.

Per CNN, Dowd took that information to Mueller:

Then, in an even more remarkable move, Dowd and Trump’s current personal attorney Jay Sekulow went to Mueller’s office and re-enacted the mock interview. Their goal: to argue that Trump couldn’t possibly testify because he was incapable of telling the truth.

“He just made something up. That’s his nature,” Dowd said to Mueller.

Washington Post reports Dowd told Mueller the interview would also make the U.S. president “look like an idiot”:

“I’m not going to sit there and let him look like an idiot. And you publish that transcript, because everything leaks in Washington, and the guys overseas are going to say, ‘I told you he was an idiot. I told you he was a goddamn dumbbell. What are we dealing with this idiot for?’”

“John, I understand,” Mueller reportedly replied.

To Trump, Dowd put it bluntly: “Don’t testify. It’s either that or an orange jumpsuit.”

Trump disagreed, assuring Dowd: “I’ll be a real good witness.” Dowd disagreed, and resigned the next day, per the Post.

Sit down and be counted

Posted on by
Reply
Former Iranian President Mahmoud
Ahmadinejad Tweets Support for
Colin Kaepernick
Breitbart Sports, by Dylan Gwinn    Original Article
 
Former Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad took to Twitter on Monday, to lend support to anthem-protesting former quarterback Colin Kaepernick. Ahmadinejad wrote: The #NFL season will start this week, unfortunately once again @Kaepernick7 is not on a NFL roster. Even though he is one of the best Quarterbacks in the league.#ColinKaepernick #NFL — Mahmoud Ahmadinejad (@Ahmadinejad1956) September 3, 2018 Ahmadinejad served as Iran’s president from 2005-2013. During that time he ruthlessly suppressed all political opposition. Most notably in 2009, when he oversaw the murder and incarceration of
Did Nike make a huge NFL-like
mistake embracing Colin Kaepernick?
American Thinker, by Thomas Lifson    Original Article
 
Is there business logic for Nike embracing Colin Kaepernick? I think there is, for the NFL and athletic shoe business are very different. In the conservative blogosphere, on Fox News, and among my friends, the name of Nike has been forever damaged by the brand’s embrace of Colin Kaepernick, who sparked the widespread disrespect for our flag by NFL players kneeling during the National Anthem. (snip) Nike has recently been losing ground to Adidas. The endorsement power of Michael Jordan for the Air Jordan line of shoes had been hugely profitable, but that power is fading: (Tweets) Charles Robinson, NFL reporter for Yahoo

Nike shares drop amid backlash
over new Kaepernick ad
Reuters, by Staff    Original Article
Shares of Nike fell 3 percent on Tuesday as calls for a boycott of the sportswear giant gained traction on social media following its choice of Colin Kaepernick as a face for the 30th anniversary of its “Just Do It” slogan. Former San Francisco quarterback Kaepernick, the first NFL player to kneel during the national anthem as a protest against racism, posted a black-and-white close-up of himself on social media on Monday featuring the Nike logo and “Just do it” along with the quote, “Believe in something. Even if it means sacrificing everything.” Over 30,000 people were tweeting with the hashtag #NikeBoycott on Tuesday

There is then, of course, this:

Nike’s Kaepernick Ad Has Cost The Company Over $4 Billion So Far

Sanctimony at its highest level

Posted on by
Reply

I have been watching the opening of the Kavanaugh hearings. It is a bizarre exercise in which every bit of what the Democrats are doing is a fishing exercise to hope that something might yet come up that might, if the right slant is put on the issue, be made to discredit the nominee. There are millions of pages of text that the Dems are hoping to comb through to find something, just anything at all will do. And now, even as I watch, there are protestors getting up, screaming and then being led out. As Drudge has it:

CHAOS AT KAVANAUGH

Kavanaugh has given 370 decisions in his time and countless speeches. They are available already and have no doubt been gone through with a fine tooth comb but with nothing that has come up so far. But there is always some freak chance something might come up. That is what all of the histrionics are about.

For a bit of balance, you might turn to this as a reminder not just that there does remain sanity, but also how much remains at stake: President Trump Evansville Indiana Rally Drew Largest Crowd Ever to Ford Center….

THE MORNING AFTER: Didn’t make it through the night so missed this endorsement by Senator Ted Cruz. The first point is obvious. Cruz lays out why Brett Kavanaugh ought to be elevated to the Supreme Court. There are five million documents they already have. But he goes into the detail about what Kavanaugh’s role as “staff secretary” for President George HW Bush. These are papers he sorted through and passed along, but did not write. All that is made clear below.

THE MORNING AFTER: Didn’t make it through the night so missed this endorsement by Senator Ted Cruz. The first point is obvious. Cruz lays out why Judge Kavanaugh ought to be elevated to the Supreme Court. There are five million documents they already have. But he goes into the detail about what Kavanaugh’s role as “staff secretary” for President George HW Bush. These are papers he sorted through and passed along, but did not write. There is nothing relevant to the Senate hearing in any way. These papers provide absolutely no insight into anything that the Judge believes about anything. All that is made clear below.

The second issue is that Cruz who had been on the other end of Donald Trump’s ferocious rhetoric during the nominating process is in every way supportive to the fullest extent of now President Donald Trump. The contrast with the recently departed Senator McCain is clear.

Women’s oppression in the modern West

Posted on by
Reply

At the start of the day I came across this: Junk Science and the Feminist Manipulation Agenda: Part 1. This was how the article began:

In his tearjerker Aug. 19 article in The New York Times, “How Sexism Follows Women From the Cradle to the Workplace,” Jim Tankersley provides a rich example of how fake news functions in tandem with junk science to vilify traditional gender norms, which, if only the cultural elite can have their way, shall be unthinkable for all “respectable people.” Both Tankersley himself and the scholars he cites display profound irresponsibility where epistemic rigor and contextual understanding are in order. This, of course, is only to be expected, for the primary goal here is Power—Power culminating in the road to serfdom—not excellent work.

There was then this: Today’s men are paying for the sins of their sexist fathers taken from The Financial Times of all places! The core point, which is the final para:

I suspect the more that is done to make life easier for working women, the better it will be for everyone. Until then, I like to think the only people who should really worry about the push for gender equality are dopey men. They have long been the big winners from discrimination. If a few miss out in future, that is something I will find easy to justify.

Finally I came across this at the end of the day: Doctor Tells Truth About Gender Pay Gap In Medicine. Then He Was Forced To Apologize. And what was this awful truth?

“Female physicians do not work as hard and do not see as many patients as male physicians. This is because they choose to, or they simply don’t want to be rushed, or they don’t want to work the long hours. Most of the time, their priority is something else … family, social, whatever,” Tigges told the Journal. “Nothing needs to be ‘done’ about this unless female physicians actually want to work harder and put in the hours. If not, they should be paid less. That is fair.”

To say that “female doctors work fewer hours because they prioritize their children” is a modern wrong-thought for which recantation and repentance are mandatory, even if it’s true.

AND THIS JUST IN: From The Campus Review:

Julia Gillard with Curtin University vice-chancellor Professor Deborah Terry, who recently awarded the ex-PM an Honorary Doctorate of Letters. Photo: Curtin

Gillard talks ‘glass labyrinth’ at uni lecture

The move towards gender equality in leadership positions is occurring at a “glacial” pace, former prime minister Julia Gillard says.

Gillard says problems remain across politics, business and in the media with women still having to contend with stereotypes that they are less interested or adapted to leadership roles.

She says across the globe women currently account for 23 per of national parliamentarians, 26 per cent of news media leaders, 27 per cent of judges, 15 per cent of corporate board members and 24 per cent of senior managers.

“Now, if we were seeing a fast rate of change in the statistics I cited then there would be nothing wrong with sitting back and waiting to wake up in a more equal world,” Gillard said in a lecture at the University of Adelaide on Tuesday. “But the rate of change is glacial.

“For example, the number of women in senior management globally has risen just one percentage point in 10 years.

“In politics, at the current rate of progress, it will take another half-century to reach parity with men.”

The former PM said it was equally troubling that any gains made could also be reversed, citing the slump in the representation of women in the current US cabinet under President Donald Trump.

And continues thereafter, found at the link.

 

IT JUST KEEPS ON COMING:

Men Pay $895 at ‘Male Feminism Camp’ to Cope With Their Own Toxicity

“If manhood was a texture…”

Are you a man? Are you confused by rapidly changing social norms on matters of sexuality and gender? Are you scared you might find yourself on the wrong side of the #MeToo revolution?

Fear not.

For $895 you could have secured yourself a place in this summer’s “Women Teach Men” wellness retreat in the scenically mountainous town of Ojai, California.

“If manhood was a texture,” quizzes an Instagram post by the official event account. “What would it be? How does it feel? Can it change?”

Are 900 bucks (not including travel) more than you can afford to spend on a single weekend  at at the 5-star Ojai Valley Inn, but you are still perturbed by the toxicity of your own masculinity?

Fear not.