Even if it’s true you’re not supposed to say it

The heading, Intelligence genes discovered by scientists with this as the sub-head: “Imperial College London has found that two networks of genes determine whether people are intelligent or not so bright.” From the text:

Genes which make people intelligent have been discovered and scientists believe they could be manipulated to boost brain power.

Researchers have believed for some time that intellect is inherited with studies suggesting that up to 75 per cent of IQ is genetic, and the rest down to environmental factors such as schooling and friendship groups.

But until now, nobody has been able to pin-point exactly which genes are responsible for better memory, attention, processing speed or reasoning skills.
“Our research suggests that it might be possible to work with these genes to modify intelligence”

Now Imperial College London has found that two networks of genes determine whether people are intelligent or not-so-bright.

They liken the gene network to a football team. When all the players are in the right positions, the brain appears to function optimally, leading to clarity of thought and what we think of as quickness or cleverness.

In my experience, highly intelligent does not correlate with common sense, but nevertheless makes a difference no matter what you are trying to do.

Obama attacks Trump to help Hillary so they say

This is the story Obama, Clinton may be setting up Trump to win Republican nomination and who knows if it’s true. Here is the heart of it:

In a head-to-head matchup, the RealClearPolitics average of national polls show Mrs. Clinton beating Mr. Trump by an average of 6 percentage points, significantly higher than other Republicans such as Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas and Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida, who trail Mrs. Clinton by 1.5 percentage points and 2.5 percentage points, respectively. All the other Republican contenders fare better in matchups with Mrs. Clinton than Mr. Trump in the average of national polls.

It’s a theory and a strategy. Personally, I think if Trump wins the nomination he will win the election in a walk.

Western prosperity and the good life

Gavin McIness reflecting on the good life and western propsperity.

Last night wasn’t particularly eventful. We went out to dinner with some guys from work to celebrate Christmas break. The restaurant wasn’t very fancy and we spent a normal amount of money. Then I put on my Third World glasses and screamed, “Holy shit!” When you compare your average American’s night out with the 50% of the planet who live on less than $2.50 a day, you realize we are gods. America is a country built on mind-boggling inventions, remarkably diligent entrepreneurs, and unfathomable mountains of hard work. We take all this greatness and indulge in opulence that makes the Roman Empire look like a trailer park. What is everyone complaining about? Right now we’re celebrating a tradition that involves getting drunk with people who love you, eating until your stomach hurts, and opening tons of presents. What the hell is in heaven, cheaper beer?

Anyone can do what we do. The technology is available, the resources are there, all of the know-how is written up in books. So why doesn’t anyone else do it? It’s not really a mystery but you are not allowed to say.

And now the heavyweight division

Republicans have been very reluctant to attack Obama for the whole of the past seven years. Whether it is the courtesies of the American system or Obama has the photos I don’t know. But now we shall see since he has moved to attack Donald Trump himself. This is from the NYT and featured at Drudge: Obama Accuses Trump of Exploiting Working-Class Fears.

President Obama said in a radio interview airing on Monday that Donald J. Trump, a leading contender for the Republican presidential nomination, is exploiting the resentment and anxieties of working-class men to boost his campaign. Mr. Obama also argued that some of the scorn directed at him personally stems from the fact that he is the first African-American to hold the White House.

That Obama reached for the race-card is disgusting and despicable but par for the course. Since nothing anyone in any leading position has said has referred to the President’s racial background – half white, half black – that he grabs for it in every controversy he is part of has degraded the American political system since it allows him to ignore the substantive parts of any criticism. But lets get to this business about resentment and anxieties, which are not just held by men, and not just held by members of the working class. Let us go on to what he had to say:

“If you are referring to specific strains in the Republican Party that suggest that somehow I’m different, I’m Muslim, I’m disloyal to the country, etc. — which unfortunately is pretty far out there, and gets some traction in certain pockets of the Republican Party, and that have been articulated by some of their elected officials — what I’d say there is that that’s probably pretty specific to me, and who I am and my background,” Mr. Obama told Steve Inskeep, an NPR correspondent. “In some ways, I may represent change that worries them.”

I just think he’s a far-left loon, and that pretty well covers the kinds of change he represents. If his standard of concern is whether something might “destroy the United States”, as he says below, I’m not sure short of a nuclear war what he would include. This is truly disturbing:

“This is a serious challenge — ISIS is a virulent, nasty organization [!!!!!] that has gained a foothold in ungoverned spaces effectively in Syria and parts of western Iraq,” Mr. Obama said, referring to attacks the group organized in Paris and apparently inspired in San Bernardino. “But it is also important for us to keep things in perspective, and this is not an organization that can destroy the United States.”

As for destroying the United States, there are other nations along the pathway to the US that might find things have deteriorated to a very considerable extent because of the American President. Think about this, a reminder of where things have gone with Iran:

The Iran deal isn’t merely sub-par diplomacy, it is a scandal. I don’t see how a president who took seriously his duty to preserve American security could have entered into it. There is another scandal, too: a journalistic one. Here, as in so many instances, reporters have covered up for the Obama administration by deliberately failing to report the facts surrounding the Iranian nuclear debacle. It would be interesting to compare the number of minutes that network news broadcasts have devoted, over the last few months, to the fulminations of Donald Trump with the minutes they have devoted to the crumbling of the Iran agreement. Likewise with column inches in our supposedly sophisticated newspapers.

But Obama has now taken on Donald Trump who will or will not react and will or will not reply directly to what has been said. This really is a moment of truth. I don’t know why it has taken so long for such a showdown to have occurred, but the time has now arrived. Is Trump up to it? We are now about to find out.

My favourite economics text of all time

It’s that time of year again. Even as living standards continue to slowly ebb, there is still virtually no understanding why spending of itself cannot hasten growth and increase employment. I have just submitted a paper on my favourite economics text of all time, Henry Clay’s Economics: an Introduction for the General Reader as the hundredth anniversary of its first publication in 1916 is next year. It is why I adopted his title when I wrote my own text. This is part of what I wrote on Clay’s second edition that was published 26 years later and after the publication of The General Theory in 1936. He is trying to explain what’s wrong with Keynesian theory.

Clay then makes the crucial point in noting the error in trying to generate recovery through higher spending, which brings his argument back to the very core of the classical theory of recession and unemployment.

“The error lies in ignoring the patent fact that neither money nor income as such provides employment but only spending.” (Clay 1942: 265)

This is the fundamental difference between classical theory and modern macro confined to a single sentence with no elaboration. It is merely Clay’s restatement of John Stuart Mill’s “demand for commodities is not demand for labour” (see Kates 2015). Clay knows this – it is a “patent fact”. So obvious may it have seemed to him he may not have felt any need to explain further. For whatever reason, this single sentence is his only attempt to bring the classical denial of the possibility of demand deficiency into his critique of the Keynesian Revolution that surrounds him.

The downwards spiral we are now part of is to see our economies floundering, thinking that public spending will improve our economic prospects, therefore increasing public spending and then finding things only getting worse. A hundred years ago they may not have been as wealthy and their technology may not have been as good, but they did at least understand what was needed to hasten recovery after an economic downturn.

Soros and the progressive internationalist cause

This is a theme I have dwelt on before, progressive internationalism. Every era comes to an end for some reason. This is the reason for the end of ours. Here we have more of the same urged on by George Soros. The author here seems to see some kind of benevolence in Soros’ actions, but the actual drive is hatred for the open societies by the left.

George Soros, “a prominent international supporter of democratic ideals and causes” is no exception to the rule.

Under the false pretext of “democracy promotion” the notorious magnate created a network of foundations and instigated a series blatant regime changes in Eastern Europe and the former Soviet republics after the collapse of the USSR.

“Now his foundations are up to their eyeballs in promoting propaganda serving the US-UK war agenda for destroying stability in Syria as they did in Libya three years ago, creating the current EU refugee crisis,” Engdahl stresses.

It seems that Soros is making every effort to exacerbate the ongoing refugee crisis in the EU: the infamous philanthropist is urging European leaders to accept about one million of refugees annually and at the same time he is encouraging the desperate asylum seekers to flee to Europe.

And it will just go on because Soros is far from the only one with such attitudes and beliefs in positions of power.

Hillary Clinton plays Princess Leia

princess leia hillary clinton

hillary as princess leia

hillary as princess leia 3

princess leia hillary clinton

Hillary Clinton above and Princess Leia to the right. I don’t know if it was intentional, but it hit me around three quarters of the way through the film that it’s the same person. I might add that it is very difficult to get publicity stills of Princess Leia off the net. If I can find a better one at some stage, I will post those as well. [And now, in updating two months later at the beginning of March 2016, there is not a single other photo available anywhere. Quite, quite remarkable and you do have to wonder. But more than ever the resemblance is striking.]

And it’s not the only reason to avoid the film. You may go as I did because you went to the first one and have been going ever since. But as a film and a night’s entertainment, it may have been the worst film I have seen all year. See Mark Steyn for a more extended take. Nevertheless, in keeping with the last remaining social convention of modern America, I will say nothing about the story itself.

Let me also add this from Instapdundit: The ‘secret weapon’ behind Star Wars who was Marcia Lucas, George Lucas’s first wife, now departed from the scene and almost erased from history, who was the one with the judgement that made Star Wars work.

The TnT show

Who does this sound like?

Donald Trump is a standard-issue liberal-leaning businessman who, having decided that his best chance for glory lies with the GOP, found a few hot button issues that appeal to conservatives. If you move beyond these issues and get him off-message, he reverts to the liberal notions and cliches that predominate among the rich and famous.

The only difference between how Trump is described and our Malcolm is that he hasn’t even found a single one of those issues, hot button or not, that appeal to conservatives. Whatever he does that is reminiscent of the the conservative side of the ledger is only being done because he has been forced to by the 43 who would be in open rebellion if he tried to dodge the original agreement. But if you want to have some idea of what the PM is like, let me take you to Geoffrey Luck’s review of Malcolm Turnbull’s biography found at Quadrant Online. If you are looking for evidence that Malcolm has always been a man on a mission, go to the link. Here is a bit from the start on how he ended up leading a party of the right without having any principles to match.

Well explained is how despite the temptation of many ALP friends and mentors, Turnbull made the objective decision that in Labor, his wealth would ultimately frustrate his obsessive ambition to become prime minister.

I have no idea what Trump will be like as President but there he will almost surely be, in the same way that I still have no idea what Malcolm will be like as PM although that is what he now already is. But both from the business class, both from the left and both overflowing with confidence in their abilities.

An imagined Donald Trump on Hillary Clinton

More parody. This was picked up at Powerline which is described as this rendering of Donald Trump as re-imagined by Masterpiece Theater. I assume that the words are Trumps even if not the sound. Whether this is the actual transcript being followed, the points made are also extraordinarily accurate, and nothing I have ever heard from an actual Republican in quite such a devastating way.

Movie rebellion

This is a great parody that unfortunately you can only see at the link: How Ken Burns would tell the story of ‘Star Wars’. Tonight we will see the latest instalment. Since the first (Episode IV), it has been more of a duty to complete the set but off we will go, if for no other reason than to make sense of parodies like this one. And I did laugh at the idea of Senator Jar Jar Binks.

On filmic matters of a similar kind – dealing with Hollywood’s love of violent rebellion against established authority – we went to see Suffragette . What I had never appreciated was how violent these protests were. The film also did lead me to this documentary about the single most famous moment in suffragette history.

For me, the documentary was more interesting than the film but these are the more systematised views: Rotten Tomatoes: critics 74%/audiences 72%; IMDb: 6.9.