Hating Government Transparency, Only Dictatorship Is REALLY "Liberal"

The Transparency Trap - David Frum - The Atlantic:


The author never actually specifies how to "fix" what he calls the transparency trap -- probably because he suspects his readership isn't ready for the call for dictatorship yet.


My favorite paragraph:

By the International Monetary Fund’s reckoning, American government spent about 40.65 percent of the national output in 2012. That’s somewhat, but not radically, less than what Germany’s government spent (44.93 percent), only slightly less than what Canada’s spent (42.02 percent), and more than either Australia (36.4 percent) or New Zealand (34.24 percent) spent. These raw numbers overstate the difference between the United States and other countries, however. The U.S. government tends to route its subsidies through the tax code—with child tax credits and deductions for state and local taxes—rather than by issuing mother’s allowances and aid to local governments, as other countries do. This mode of doing business makes both spending and taxes look lower in the United States, even when the country is doing nearly the exact same thing as its European counterparts.

I can say it over and over, and naturally only a very few people will read this Atlantic column -- the US **IS** spending money at European levels and beyond -- we are close to them in actual spending and when you add in our various tax "credits" (like "earned income credit" ... fill out your taxes and get a giant payment that is called a "refund" even when you paid in little or nothing) we largely EXCEED THEM!
So "liberals" actually loathe transparency -- especially when they are in power. We are spending like drunken sailors but not getting the "results" they somehow "expect", so the best solution is to hide the poor results!
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Blue State Diaspora

The Growing Blue-State Diaspora - NYTimes.com:



The article documents the reality, but doesn't say why.



My guess is that it is the same reason that Willie Sutton robbed banks "That's where the money is" ... in this case, it is "That is where the jobs are".



So is it REALLY true that even after all the blue-state policies have killed the jobs in their home states, when they move to states with policies that allow them to have a job there, they still don't get the connection?



I suppose, one should never underestimate human stupidity.



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JV Mission Accomplished?

An Earnest clarification | Power Line:



When W spoke on the Carrier Abraham Lincoln at the end of major combat operations in Iraq -- meaning the end of fighting Saddam Hussien's forces, the ship had a large banner displayed behind him indicating "Mission Accomplished" FOR THE SHIP -- the longest deployment by a US carrier.



Naturally, the media arm of "The Party" (Democrat) did all it could do to smear the sitting president in wartime by claiming that landing on the carrier was "a stunt", the administration erroneously put up the banner indicating "the war was over", etc.



In the unlikely event that I would ever be president I can guarantee I will do all I can to maximize my opportunities to ride in, drive, fly, etc any and all cool hardware that I can get my hands on! The media would hate me anyway, why not give them more interesting stuff to talk about? I'd definitely carry a 3 round auto burst,   double stack modified Desert Eagle .50 with  HEIAP rounds (High Explosive Incendiary Armor Piercing -- just to give anybody that got by the SS a special surprise.  Rather than golf I'd prefer to waste my time unwinding with the Fat Moose version of special ops training .. but I digress.



So BO released the current leader of ISIS in '09 and then declared them to be "Junior Varsity" earlier this year, and THIS is "the explanation".



We know how this works. How many times did we see the bogus "Mission Accomplished" meme repeated endlessly? Very few will even know of either the release or the JV remarks -- thanks to the way The Party and it's media arm operates, we really don't have "bias", we have a ministry of information and total control of the narrative that the masses are fed.



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Dowd, Golf, Artists

The Golf Address - NYTimes.com:



Alas, poor Maureen has been jilted yet again by a supposedly wonderful progressive male leader. Her column is rather devastatingly funny, an example of what even a "junior varsity wit" on the left is capable of. We had Buckley, PJ O'Rourke is damned good, and I like Jonah Goldberg pretty well too, but in general, the artistic gifts for writing, humor and art are far more lavish on the left of the political spectrum.



Which makes it easy to understand why the media, education and most of the country is in thrall to "The Party" ... as PJ once put it, God is a Republican and Santa Claus is a Democrat -- With the Democrats, the ONLY bad thing you can do is be a Republican! There are no limits on how much wealth you have (Gates, Buffet, the Kennedys, Mark Dayton, John Kerry, John Edwards, every movie and sports star ...  etc etc.). Behavior? Hell, there are NO standards ... child rape? Roman Polanski is still at large. Murder? See Ted Kennedy ... all manner of violence, drugs, sexual deviance, etc are celebrated as long as you worship at the alter of The Party and approve the sacraments of abortion, gay "marriage" and "something happening to the global climate that we are not longer sure about, but we are SURE that it is the OIL COMPANIES FAULT!" ...



Hell, if it wasn't that God is real and Santa isn't, it would certainly be more fun to be a Democrat -- it is that damned reality thing that always gets in the way of the kind of party that would be possible if the world was as imagined by Democrats!



Anyway, the column is pretty darned funny. I keep wondering what part of NO PRINCIPLES and CONSISTENCY IS NOT AN ISSUE it is that folks like Maureen just can't seem to get?



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Political Gridlock, Socialism Works as Expected, France

As feud grows, French premier dissolves government:



The EU seems a bit closer to the end of socialism ( the point where they run out of other people's money) than the US, and France is "one of the leaders" (to the bottom) ....



The end of socialism isn't always all that good though ... Fascism, Communism, Dictatorship are common ways that it ends ... or the GOOD way! Complete economic collapse, depression, and people realizing that there is no free lunch and something like 80-90% of the population has to work to have a successful economy!



It appears that the world needs another solid lesson on this front before it realizes this rather simple fact yet again.



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Weapons of Mass Cultural Destruction

What Are Your Kids Learning In School? [Updated] | Power Line:

Literature can be one of the bulwarks of culture, or in this case it can be used as the equivalent of a bucket of cement to tie culture to and throw it in the river. Republicans are often accused of wanting a government so small they could "drown it in a bathtub", but it is obvious that the education arm of our government has and is drowning the intellectual and spiritual future of the nation in a cesspool of post modern, marxist, and just plain old insane thought.

It's hard to even read what proudly hails from literature curriculum IN THE TWIN CITIES, but it is important to know.

I will need to pray for forgiveness for my envy of Hinderacker for his daughters essay answer:

When my youngest daughter was, as I recall, in fourth grade, she was given an assignment to relate how she, personally, would combat global warming. She wrote that she would never live in a house bigger than John Edwards’ or fly on more private airplanes than Al Gore. 

That is American spunk! I fear that the numbers of youth with that kind of independent thinking brilliance is far to small to save us however.

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NY Times Getting Concerned on Christian Slaughter?

Who Will Stand Up for the Christians? - NYTimes.com:

It appears that at least one columnist at the NY Times is getting a little alarmed a the slaughter of Christians.

Historians may look back at this period and wonder if people had lost their bearings. Few reporters have traveled to Iraq to bear witness to the Nazi-like wave of terror that is rolling across that country. The United Nations has been mostly mum. World leaders seem to be consumed with other matters in this strange summer of 2014. There are no flotillas traveling to Syria or Iraq. And the beautiful celebrities and aging rock stars — why doesn’t the slaughter of Christians seem to activate their social antennas?

I suppose the beheading is disconcerting and the liberals are having less luck getting videos of it banned than they have had with various abortion videos -- "Silent Scream" comes to mind. I suspect a partial-birth abortion video might make beheading seem a little tame.

Yet again, we have a great example of "Christ is the issue". "Liberals" are move than fine with Buddhism, Hinduism and amazingly Islam ... the latter being incredibly sometimes called "the Religion of Peace".

For a Christian, the lack of concern is easy to understand. Christ is truly the great divider -- he even divides history into BC and AD. His doctrine is so radical that it defies human understanding, and is often converted by un-believers and even supposedly those attempting to believe into another "follow these rules" religion as are all the others on the planet.

Free, life changing salvation by Grace, available to all -- the scandal that rent history in two, and continues to do so to this day. It created what was once Western Civilization -- levels of prosperity, justice, peace, technology and economic success not dreamed of in history. The most Christian Nation on the planet, the US was so blessed it was able to land a man on the moon.

Much as in the Garden however, even the moon was not enough. Could there not be complete sexual license for pleasure with no more old tired restraining mores? Why must we work? Could there not be a full welfare state where each received all they desired without any requirement to earn it? Why is this Christian religion so oppressive? Can't we force it out of our schools and the public square so we can be god of our own lives?

So the very goose that layed the golden egg of the work ethic, restraining morals, dedication to career and craft as being in Gods service, the desire to treat even enemies with justice, etc became the enemy! The core values that built the success that was Western Civilization and especially the US were cast away, and ANY other religion or complete lack thereof became to be considered superior.

In world organizations like the UN and NATO, Christianity and Judaism were remindes of "colonial injustice
 ... and not worthy of assistance, and CERTAINLY not protection.

and so it goes -- and as the civilization declines, my guess is that very much as in the Roman Empire at the time of Augustine, the Christians will be blamed for the decline.



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Saddam, Osama, Baghdadi, Hello?

‘Range of options’ under discussion to combat Islamic State - The Washington Post:

I must have read a hundred articles, columns, references in books, etc, etc on how "Reagan  made Saddam and Osama". The US wanted to contain Iran in the '80s, so we at least turned the other cheek relative to Saddam and probably gave him some aid, even though he was a nasty guy. Likewise, we supported the Mujahideen in Afghanistan against Soviet forces, and Osama Bin Ladin was one of their fighters.

One of the books I read on the topic was called "Blowback", and there was article after article on how "naive" Reagan was, and how he "created the whole terrorist problem". As I read those books and articles I always marvelled at the intelligence of the authors. I'm such a stupid guy I could have swore that the USSR was an ally of ours during WWII -- but naturally that can't be true, or FDR and Churchill would have been castigated just like Reagan, right?

Now we have a certain Baghdadi, released by the US in '09  ... my guess is that this piece of history will become even harder to find and may likely be re-written, because one could almost perceive BO as having some responsibility for major terrorists released on his watch. The way history is written though, I'm guessing this will "all be W's fault" ... if he had "done the right thing either after 9-11, or somehow "prevented it" ... or maybe it all goes back to Reagan. If he had never challenged the USSR, tben they would have kept the lid on ...

Oh, but wait, if you listen to the left on the re-write of the end of the USSR, it was "inevitable" -- Reagan maybe slowed it down!

It is clear that "Republicans are stupid and at fault", and "Democrats are brilliant and responsible for good things" .... so it's easy. Current ISIS rise has to be W's fault. So now BO and company are valiantly working to correct this wrong ... we just need to support them.

Back when 9-11 hit us, the left was (and mostly still is) certain it was W's fault for "failing to heed warnings" -- they had a big special investigation and there were a series of books on how W failed to protect the nation ("Your Government Failed You" by Richard Clarke was one). Of course it was only about 2/3 of the Democrats that believed W was incompetent in not protecting the country -- the OTHER 1/3 were certain that 9-11 was an "inside job" ... the "truthers", certain that Cheney and his minions, possibly with Jewish help planned and executed the whole thing as a pretext to war.

We listened to 20 years of stories about "Blowback" relative to Saddam and Osama, now, "strangely", even though the leader of our new dangerous foe was released by the US in '09, don't expect to hear much about it.

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ISIL, Ferguson, Kareem

Sound Diagnosis, Pathetic Prescription | Power Line:



The linked post / video shows our Secretary of Defense and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs stating the obvious ... call them ISIS or ISIL, they have surpassed Al Qaeda as the #1 terrorist threat and they are on the march. The US may have decided that the "War on Terror" was a bad idea and is over, but the enemy gets a vote, and their vote is WIN BABY, WIN!



Brilliant social commentator Abdul Jabbar has  written a column  calling for a "class war" in the US.



He is not alone ... as I blogged here http://bilber99.blogspot.com/2014/08/the-slaughter-bench-of-history.html



How long will it be before the disaffected blacks connect with the likes of ISIS to seek to forcibly  redress the perceived injustice of America? I remain surprised that we are not already regularly visited by suicide bombers at sporting events, on elevators or public transportation.



The ingredients are being mixed before our eyes, it is a genie not easily returned to the bottle once it is released.



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Life, Space Travel, Artificial Intelligence, Peak Oil and Perfect Bourbon More Complicated Than Thought

Atlantic Ocean current could be responsible for slowing global temperature increase | Science Recorder:



In the '60s, we were all pretty certain that we would have bases on the moon, travel to mars, and maybe farther by now. The US can no longer put a person in orbit.



HAL from "2001 A Space Odyssey" seemed very doable to a lot of AI researches even up into the '80s ... hopefully without the murderous insanity. Somehow, that objective seems to have moved a lot farther away. Might be nice to focus on easy phone configuration and less crashes before we take on sentience.



When I was in college, biology was "pretty sure" that life was "simply" mixing some proteins, perhaps a little laboratory "lightning", and "wallah" man would create life ... no big deal. The wait goes on ... probably gladly, when we humans bite some "fruit", the results are often not as positive as we imagine.



We've been at "peak oil" for pretty much my whole life if you like to believe "the experts" -- even with constant efforts to stop exploration and hamstring those that bring us the lifeblood of our current technology, it keeps moving into the future.



Somehow I think efforts will continue on the perfect bourbon, let alone craft beer, long after I've gone to my eternal reward.



In the linked article, scientists believe they have found a pesky Atlantic current that MAY be responsible for "slowing the warming" ... or as I posted earlier this week, maybe it is solar activity. or? Could it be that there are other things about the planet and it's climate that we are yet to figure out?



Human kind is frequently certain, most often very wrong -- but given the species "we've got it THIS time" design, and specifically the highly optimistic nature of each succeeding generation of youth, I believe that I can point to the continued leaps to "certain conclusions" with much more certainly than any of those conclusions.



Wisdom will remain far harder to attain than theories and data that appears to support such theories in some locations and time.







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Holy Sunstroke Batman! Sun Influences Climate!

Sun’s activity shown to influence natural climate change:

The article is a very well written scientific discourse undeserving of my juvenile title, but really, how obvious is this? Stooges like Al Gore would like us to believe that the climate of the earth is uni-variable based on level of CO2 alone -- put more in, it gets warmer, put less in it gets colder. I continue to be simply floored that ANYONE with greater than 20 years of life on the planet and education beyond 8th grade would be so foolish as to give that thesis a moments notice!

If you think that only a single variable is affecting almost anything you are looking at in the real world, it is a pretty ironclad rule to LOOK HARDER. Let's not talk about the times we were trying to start something -- choking, checking spark, etc and discovered it was OUT OF GAS. Humans have a remarkable tendency to ASSUME (thus making an ass out of you and me) as well as jump to a conclusion -- "this explains EVERYTHING"!

We also love to believe "it's us"! We did it, we are the center, it is all about US! The earth has had 4 large ice advance/declines in the last 500K years, plus numerous smaller fluctuations, and man is only conceivably a factor in the last 10K years, there MAY be something else involved!

In this case, along with water vapor, methane, dust and no doubt a number of other things, we have THE SUN. Yes, that very large quite close star that at least those of us in the higher latitudes notice has a pretty darned significant impact on climate every year, appears to not be an absolute flat output candle -- and of course there are axis wobble and orbital variations that get thrown in there as well.

The article is worth a read -- the authors judiciously avoid questioning C02 based Warmist orthodoxy -- they probably need government funding, but they at least seem willing to consider something beyond CO2.

The study shows an unexpected link between solar activity and climate change. It shows both that changes in solar activity are nothing new and that solar activity influences the climate, especially on a regional level," said Dr Muscheler. "Understanding these processes helps us to better forecast the climate in certain regions." 

The upshot of all this is that the team claims that these results provide a testable theory for an alteration of current orbital sun/climate hypotheses, as the position and strength of the eddy driven jet is, along with other influences, proven to be related to orbital forcing (the effect on climate of slow changes in the tilt of the Earth's axis and shape of the orbit).

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BO Calls Baghdadi on Beheading

Islamic State claims beheading of American journalist - Chicago Tribune:

This is W's fault.  We have a Nobel PEACE  Prize winner as President. I can imagine the call to ISIS now ...
Hey, Bro, this is Barack man ... I know you guys, I'm one of you. Hey Baghdadi man, gotta say that I LOVE the name! Could be a rappah! Like BAG  Daddy! Sweeeet! 

Say, I had you released back in '09, and I think we understand each other. I went to a Muslim school, I'm down with the Koran, Muhammad and all that. Check out the "church" I went to for 20 years, hell, God DAMN America! You gotta dig that, right?!!! FUCK these stupid Honkeys! You are kicking ASS over there and I'm your biggest fan! Kill a couple Christians for me man!

Hey, I'm a Luo Tribesman myself -- screw this US gig, lots of white shit, lots of racism -- we should smoke some blunt sometime! Where are you on that Muhammad 9 year old chicks thing? Let's talk that out in the NEAR future!

Anyway, I can dig some beheading for a good cause -- say John Boehner ( "Boner" as I call him) ...

So anyway, I'm not sure I can get you Boner right away, but consider it a future swap. I'll skate on this in any case -- I always do, but there are a lot of "tidy whitey" folks here in the US that just don't see the righteousness in a good beheading. I can help you more if you let this one slide and give me a shot at getting you close to some better heads -- say the Boner!

Anyway, T TIME! I gotta go -- just give my cell a ring and we will git it done! Nice chattin, Praise to Allah and all that! Later Bro  ...

... but perhaps the links called too early or our "citizen of the world" couldn't get a good connection.

Anyway, it is Ws fault, I'm certain of that.

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Hating Government Transparency, Only Dictatorship Is REALLY "Liberal"

The Transparency Trap - David Frum - The Atlantic:



The author never actually specifies how to "fix" what he calls the transparency trap -- probably because he suspects his readership isn't ready for the call for dictatorship yet.



My favorite paragraph:

By the International Monetary Fund’s reckoning, American government spent about 40.65 percent of the national output in 2012. That’s somewhat, but not radically, less than what Germany’s government spent (44.93 percent), only slightly less than what Canada’s spent (42.02 percent), and more than either Australia (36.4 percent) or New Zealand (34.24 percent) spent. These raw numbers overstate the difference between the United States and other countries, however. The U.S. government tends to route its subsidies through the tax code—with child tax credits and deductions for state and local taxes—rather than by issuing mother’s allowances and aid to local governments, as other countries do. This mode of doing business makes both spending and taxes look lower in the United States, even when the country is doing nearly the exact same thing as its European counterparts.

I can say it over and over, and naturally only a very few people will read this Atlantic column -- the US **IS** spending money at European levels and beyond -- we are close to them in actual spending and when you add in our various tax "credits" (like "earned income credit" ... fill out your taxes and get a giant payment that is called a "refund" even when you paid in little or nothing) we largely EXCEED THEM!



So "liberals" actually loathe transparency -- especially when they are in power. We are spending like drunken sailors but not getting the "results" they want because government isn't "efficient enough" (now THERE is an oxymoron!) ... want efficient government? Get a dictator.



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The Slaughter Bench Of History

Reparations for Ferguson - Atlantic Mobile:

I wonder what percentage of the black population thinks as this man? The Atlantic seems to find him representative enough to be "not a kook".

There have been young people fighting outside my window for as long as I can remember. I was no older than five sitting on the steps of my parents' home on Woodbrook Avenue watching the older boys knock shoulders in the street—"bucking" as we called it then—daring each other to fire off. From that point on I knew that among my people fisticuffs had their own ritual and script. The script was in effect that evening: show cause "some niggas jumped me in the park" "I ain't no punk" "wait right here son, I'm bout to get my shit"

"My people" . There is always going to be scripted violence among "my people". I'll admit to ignorance on "get my shit" ... too cultural for me, but maybe gun? After all, 10's of young black men die by gunfire at each other each month in Chicago alone, and nobody is writing lamentations in the Atlantic for them. That is acceptable scripted cultural violence I guess -- better to call out the extremely exceptional cases of white on black killing.

Then we come to the money quote -- the idea that maybe we could escape "the slaughter-bench of history", soon to be rebutted,

We know that America is exceptional in one key respect—we came to democracy without much bloodshed. Around the world, from Hungary and Russia to Iraq and Nigeria, we see the dream of peaceful democratization dragged again and again to what the philosopher Hegel called the slaughter-bench of history. Racial strife and murderous governments, not liberty and democracy, are the rule in history, the established pattern. We know that, mercifully, democratization scourged us only once in ferociously modern style: during the Civil War.

This is a quote from another author, James Poulos -- and the author if the column is not in the mood to accept that a mere 600K dead is sufficient blood to cover the sin of slavery.

So he ends with the not subtle at all threat that "his people" are going to visit "the slaughter bench of history" onto the US at some point -- at which I assume we will have the same sort of "justice" found in vast swaths of Africa today. His position seems to be that such is proudly part of the legacy of "his people".

This is not the singular, special fault of the police. The police are but the tip of the sword wielded by American society itself. Something bigger than Stand Your Ground, the drug war, mass incarceration or any other policy is haunting us. And as long we cower from it, the events of this week are as certain as math. The question is not "if," but "when."

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Big Money In Politics, D $104M R $76M

Senate Democrats have $8M July, have $32M banked - SFGate:



You will read and hear quite a lot about Citizens United, the Koch brothers and the evils of "big money in politics".



What you don't hear is that in pretty much every case the Democrats have something around a 25-35% advantage -- union, government, education, legal, finance, telecommunications, medical, etc ... buried in this article are the figures in title -- Democrat Senate fund raising vs Republican. It's from SF, they can afford to lift the curtain and let the masses chat with Oz a bit.



The Ds  pretty much have to have a fundraising advantage, they are the dominant party and basically everyone has to curry some level of favor with them if they want to prosper -- the unions need laws to allow them to force membership, education needs grants, subsidies, new rules to force more required degrees and certifications, lawyers need more laws for them to both charge and defend various people -- the lawyer winning on both sides financially ... and so it goes.



When over 50% of the economy is either government spending, tax breaks or credits, or government DIRECTED spending (you have to put a scrubber on your smokestack, you have to keep this kind of medical record), it is no wonder the dominant party dominantes in political fundraising and spending.



I suppose that given the amount of time they have been dominant -- since the 1930's, it is also not surprising that they are dominant in the media, so we hear very little about their political spending dominance, and are instead fed myths about "big corporate money" and "the Koch brothers".



The game is to really have a token opposition in name only .., a few left leaning Rs that can be trotted out and demonized while letting the masses think they are not under one party rule.



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