Author Archives: lawofmarkets

What’s the most overblown issue of our times?

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That was the question posed to a panel last night at FreedomFest, the most spectacularly interesting conference year after year I ever make my way to. In Las Vegas each year in July, a city more interesting than you might ever expect, and it has nothing to do with gambling or gamboling.

More later, but on the panel, each went for global warming (or whatever the in-fashion term might be) but the last panelist chose “White Supremacy” which, to me, won hands down.

Last night we were listening to Herman Cain, today it’s Candice Owen. If you want “diversity”, this is the place too come. Candice will be speaking on open borders.

And yet, in the hotel, Fox News was not in amongst the fifty or so stations I could choose from until I complained to management. The local paper politically is a super-charged version of The WP or NYT. How Trump keeps ahead is only because he is as articulate as he is, though every supposed error is featured beyond imagination.

And let me add these two items from Instapundit to round things out. Accusations of racism is the only arrow in the Democrat quiver and when you listen to “The Squad” – the new public face of the Democrats – there is nothing more repulsive and racist.

TAMMY BRUCE: Trump vs. AOC and ‘the squad’ – What bare-knuckle fight means for 2020.

Trump’s comments may be blunt, but they’re not “racist,” an accusation now thrown about by the Democrats as casually as saying hello. That, in fact, is the cold, hard strategy.

As Clay noted in his comments about Ocasio-Cortez accusing Pelosi of racism: “You’re getting push back so you resort to using the race card? Unbelievable.”

Unfortunately, it’s all too believable when smearing your opponents is the only card you have.

Still, after years of lies about his character and intention, USA Today reported the president’s approval rating among Republicans is now at 93 percent and the GOP’s approval rating among Americans is at 51 percent.

Trump is shoring up his base while at the same time turning Democrats against one another.

I’m not getting cocky, but this tumultuous week has nevertheless been a good week.

And then there’s this.

PAUL CURRY: The Squad to Re-Elect President Trump. “Donald Trump, by injecting himself into the Democrat’s civil war and compelling the Pelosi establishment to embrace the Squad, may have just pulled off a classic Tom Sawyer move. Rather than allowing the Democrats to reign in their extreme left flank and quell the temper-tantrum-like calls for impeachment, he has gotten the left to embrace their darker demons and make the Squad the face of the party. In doing so, he has made four freshman Congresswomen the Squad to Re-elect the President.”

It might be a Grand Master-level trolling event if Trump were to send them all campaign donations in the maximum amount.

It’s a pleasure to be at FreedomFest. Staying with my family in Toronto I never talked politics a single time. My wife, alas, wandered into a conversation with a cousin and never saw her insufferable indignation and anger coming, until it was too late. The shallower they are, the more angry they get is all I can say.

So interesting to see

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Still in North America and this PDT tweet is the most intense issue in American politics at the moment, especially on the right. Of course the left is thundering on about it, but many of those whom I read among right-side bloggers think this is the greatest blunder Trump has made and will cost him the election. Everyone who has said so has had 90% of their commenters disagreeing with the bloggers and agreeing with Trump. The tweet:

So interesting to see “Progressive” Democrat Congresswomen, who originally came from countries whose governments are a complete and total catastrophe, the worst, most corrupt and inept anywhere in the world (if they even have a functioning government at all), now loudly and viciously telling the people of the United States, the greatest and most powerful Nation on earth, how our government is to be run. Why don’t they go back and help fix the totally broken and crime infested places from which they came. Then come back and show us how it is done. These places need your help badly, you can’t leave fast enough. I’m sure that Nancy Pelosi would be very happy to quickly work out free travel arrangements!

This issue is still running across the page at Drudge which is now anti-Trump and has been anti-Trump for quite a while.

‘YOU CAN’T LEAVE FAST ENOUGH’

 

Income inequality

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A report on income inequality from the UN that shows how far beyond any traditional notion of inequality we have come.This is what “poverty” now consists of and is measured by:

The 10 indicators, namely nutrition, sanitation, child mortality, drinking water, years of schooling, electricity, school attendance, housing, cooking fuel and assets.

Cannot deny that these all matter. Let me, however, point out that no economy managed along market-economy lines has any of these problems at all.

He was just saying what he thinks

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Trump publicly defending Pelosi is the easily the most savage thing he’s ever done to anyone. She’s struggling to maintain control of her party and she’ll be forced to reject his “gesture of goodwill” or her rabid base will become even more convinced she’s a sellout. Genius.– Jesse Kelly

What does Jordan Peterson get right?

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Great answer at Quora to a stupid question from Harry Quinlan, “Husband, Father, Engineer, Undergraduate Bullsh*t Detector”

 

Here are a few things:

 

  1. Sociology & Psychology is dominated by a mix of left, far left and Marxists & there is a Female majority – Thus there is a considerable amount of Group-Think that infects their studies and reports such that the conclusions are not sound and the data is not repeatable.[1]
  2. Gender differences are only partially socially constructed and Men and Women differ in preferences. Men prefer things (e.g. Engineering), Women prefer people (e.g. Medecine).
  3. Sociologists might say that the gender difference in preference is small BUT Peterson is still right because that small shift in the curve matters. If a Sociologist denies this, it can only be because it does not suit their Ideology or they are ignorant of how Standard Distributions work. (e.g. Men are slightly more physically violent than Women but that small difference is enough such that nearly all of the most violent people are Men, Women’s small difference in preference for people is sufficient to explain why so many more Women than Men are in teaching, nursing, etc.)
  4. Where Men and Women have MOST equality in the world (Sweden) Gender Difference in preference is stronger. This backs up what Peterson is saying and makes the Social Constructionists & Radical Feminists very unhappy because it is the opposite of what they were expecting.
  5. Petersons detractors are mostly forced to attack HIM rather than what he is saying because they would lose the debate in any rational forum.
  6. Young men are in trouble these days because they lack the support services that young women have and many are afflicted with the messages of shame and “privilege” that come from the radical feminist position where gender bashing is the main sport. This can be measured in many ways, suicide rates, educational outcomes, employment opportunities, incarceration. New economic & educational data is now skewed in favour of young women. This would come as a shock to many feminists who have been brainwashed in the opposite position since they were very young.
  7. If you asked most Women what the gender pay gap is they would say ~17% or more in favour of Men. This is an aberration of statistics that left-wing Sociologists conveniently ignore because they would not be able to justify their claims of a Patriarchy, Male dominance and a glass ceiling. Young women under 40 in the UK (for example) are doing just as well as men. It is mostly when they are older & have children that the pay gap appears. Again, this would shock most people of a feminist persuasion. The data on this can be hard to find because it is not ideologically or politically correct.

The John Birch Society and National Review

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An interesting episode in political history: The Inside Story of William F. Buckley Jr.’s Crusade against the John Birch Society. It begins:

Of all the crusades William F. Buckley took on in his half century on the national political stage, none did more to cement his reputation as a gatekeeper of the conservative movement — or consumed more of his time — than that which he launched against the John Birch Society, an organization Robert Welch founded in 1958 and used as his personal vehicle to influence public policy. In 1961, Buckley complained to a supporter of both National Review and the JBS, “I have had more discussions about the John Birch Society in the past year than I have about the existence of God or the financial difficulties of National Review.”

Do read on. It may well be that the JBS was a step or two too far in the 1950s and early 1960s, but they were not the enemy Buckley made them out to be.

A how-do-you-change-the-entire-economy thing

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Via Instapundit. What you already knew and what no amount of evidence will convince the gulls on the left how true this is. We are continuously menaced by utter fools led by unscrupulous rogues.

The Washington Post have a glowing profile of Saikat Chakrabarti, AOC’s chief of staff, and the author of her infamous Green New Deal rollout in February, with a curious, and not at all unexpected admission. Just look for the “unexpected” below.

On a Wednesday morning in late May, emissaries of two of the strongest political voices on climate change convened at a coffee shop a few blocks from the U.S. Capitol. Saikat Chakrabarti, chief of staff to Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.), was there to meet Sam Ricketts, climate director for Washington Gov. Jay Inslee (D), who is running for president almost exclusively on a platform of combating global warming. A newly released plank of Inslee’s climate change agenda had caught the attention of Chakrabarti and his boss, who had tweeted that Inslee’s “climate plan is the most serious + comprehensive one to address our crisis in the 2020 field.” Pleased by the positive reception from the demanding Green New Deal wing of the climate struggle, Ricketts had set up this meeting with Chakrabarti to establish a personal connection and share approaches to climate advocacy.

“Congrats on the rollout,” Chakrabarti told him as they sat down. “That was pretty great.”

“Thank you again for the kudos you guys offered,” said Ricketts. “We wanted to be pace-setting for the field, and I think we’re there now. … I want to ask you for input … in addition to hearing what you guys are working on.”

Chakrabarti had an unexpected disclosure. “The interesting thing about the Green New Deal,” he said, “is it wasn’t originally a climate thing at all.” Ricketts greeted this startling notion with an attentive poker face. “Do you guys think of it as a climate thing?” Chakrabarti continued. “Because we really think of it as a how-do-you-change-the-entire-economy thing.”

As conservative national security commentator John Noonan tweets in response, “One of the central tenets of Climate Change skepticism is that the threat is exaggerated to achieve political ends that are divorced from environmental health. Here’s an outward admission that the issue is used as a stalking horse for ambitious economic restructuring.”

As in the Venezuelan New Deal for America and everywhere else.

Political judgement

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PDT is extraordinary in so many ways, not least of which is his political judgement. This is from, Trump Compares Ocasio-Cortez To Nazi Sympathizer, AOC Takes It As A Compliment.

The book, “American Carnage,” states that Trump saw Ocasio-Cortez on a cable news show and said: “I called her Eva Perón. I said, ‘That’s Eva Perón. That’s Evita.”

Trump reportedly told his team to contact then-Rep. Joe Crowley (D-NY) — who Ocasio-Cortez upset in the Democratic primary — to tell him that “he better get off his fat ass and start campaigning.”

No one else saw it then but Trump did. And he saw her danger as well. Nancy Pelosi and other Dems are seeing it as well, and who knows how electable she will be when she finally turns 35. Political madness is a contagion and as mad as AOC is, she is far from a discredited entity among her own constituency. In her own political judgement she may be the same kind of phenomenon as PDT.

Beggars welcome

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An amazing story to go along with the Refugees Welcome people: Fake beggars in Melbourne revealed as wealthy Chinese con artists.

It’s understood an alleged syndicate is arranging passports and tourist visas in China before ‘beggars’ fly in to work the streets and then send the cash they collect back to China electronically.

Is this an Australian first? Are we really the biggest suckers in the world?