Duh.

California Assemblyman Joel Anderson asking: "[S]ince when do you have a First Amendment right to yell fire?"

Well, for starters, any time there's a fire.

And that's just for starters when it comes to that argument.

Clarity from Kyle Bennett

Kyle Bennett wrote this, and I hope he doesn't mind my re-post here, but it's succinct and it is exactly correct.

A Note to the Uninformed

Blaming the current financial crisis on the failure of markets is like blaming an airplane crash on the failure of gravity.

The markets didn't fail, you demanded they do something impossible. This crash is the predictable and correct result of the inputs you provided. If you let an airplane turn into an ice-covered flying brick, gravity continues to do exactly what it will do - your flight plan might as well be a parabola - and people die. The NTSB never, in its investigations, asks "What went wrong with gravity?" What makes you think markets are any different? [emphasis mine-Ron]

You might think that we can find an alternative to markets, that markets are a political tool that can be chosen or rejected. They're not. They operate at all times and in all places, and always by the same laws. They are the given that your political positions are tested against.

You have failed.

Asking/telling the government to do anything to fix the problem is just more of the same error.

Been away, sorta...

Just a quick note to say hi to folks that drop by. I'm busy with other interests for a bit but I'll be back.

Civility, trust and honour.

A “POW Rolex” Recalls the Great Escape by Alan Downing

Underlined in Wilsdorf’s letter to Nutting are the words, “…but you must not even think of settlement during the war.” The news that Rolex was offering watches on a buy-now- pay-whenever” basis must have spread through the camps like wildfire. More than 3,000 Rolex watches were reportedly ordered by British officers in the Oflag VII B POW camp in Bavaria alone...Wilsdorf hedged his bet further by making this offer available to British officers only, in the belief that their word was their bond.[emphasis mine]

Great story.

I had such high hopes...

I saw this headline: 24 die as bus falls into ravine, Israelis say.

I hit the link.

...and it's just another PLUNGE.

Gimme a break, Olivia...

From Olivia Chow's website:

The poll-rigging behaviour sometimes known as “freeping” is a common tactic used by right-wing groups to get public opinion in their favour. “If you have to rig polls in favour of your opinion” said the administrator, “it says more about your core ethics and the weakness of your position, than it does the issue.” [emphasis mine--ed]

Olivia, rigging online polls has been done by zealots on both sides of the spectrum. Trying to spin that behaviour as solely owned by right-wing folks is just stoopid. Or dishonest. Or both. Additionally (given internet history), the tactic is only known as "freeping" if right-wing folks do it. Otherwise, it's just plain garden-variety vote/ballot stacking.

But let's keep this straight: an online poll is just a poll of site visitors: it's not scientific in the slightest. If a site happens to get more lefty visitors, the poll will generally reflect that. If it gets more righty visits--same-same. And sometimes [gasp!!! who'da thunk it??] folks from one side or the other will suggest visits to a site they don't usually frequent, just to influence the poll.

In other words, online polls are as true a reflection of reality as your outrage.

I couldn't be more impressed...

"Please pray for him not to suffer from this accident," a distraught Dong Yun Yoon told reporters gathered near the site of Monday's crash of an F/A-18D jet in San Diego's University City community.

"He is one of our treasures for the country," Yoon said in accented English punctuated by long pauses while he tried to maintain his composure.

"I don't blame him. I don't have any hard feelings. I know he did everything he could," said Yoon, flanked by members of San Diego's Korean community, relatives and members from the family's church.

Man who lost family when jet hit house: I don't blame pilot.

My sincerest condolences and respect.

There is an eloquence that comes naturally from honesty, from who you are:

"I know there are many people who have experienced more terrible things," Yoon said. "But, please, tell me how to do it. I don't know what to do."

December 6th

Woman in Chains/Tears for Fears

• Geneviève Bergeron (born 1968), civil engineering student.
• Hélène Colgan (born 1966), mechanical engineering student.
• Nathalie Croteau (born 1966), mechanical engineering student.
• Barbara Daigneault (born 1967), mechanical engineering student.
• Anne-Marie Edward (born 1968), chemical engineering student.
• Maud Haviernick (born 1960), materials engineering student.
• Maryse Laganière (born 1964), budget clerk in the École Polytechnique's finance department.
• Maryse Leclair (born 1966), materials engineering student.
• Anne-Marie Lemay (born 1967), mechanical engineering student.
• Sonia Pelletier (born 1961), mechanical engineering student.
• Michèle Richard (born 1968), materials engineering student.
• Annie St-Arneault (born 1966), mechanical engineering student.
• Annie Turcotte (born 1969), materials engineering student.
• Barbara Klucznik-Widajewicz (born 1958), nursing student.

Well, I feel deep in your heart there are wounds time can't heal
And I feel somebody somewhere is trying to breathe
Well, you know what I mean, It's a world gone crazy keeps woman in chains

H/T Mike at Rational Reasons

A couple of quick jots...

This one time...at caucus:

One of the Caucus members said that the Taliban were able to put out better videos than Dion's staff. (Western Standard)

Ooooh. That's gotta hurt ;-)

Me at SDA:

Lesson: Bailouts support identifiable voting blocs is all. They're bribes.

People who support the bailouts don't give a rat's ass about the at least equivalent number of jobs scattered throughout the economy that will be lost, caused by the dollars consumers don't have to spend because they're funding the bailout.

And an interesting tactical thing:

Let's say there's an election in the next while, and you're still thinking wrongly enough about economics and philosophy to want what the coalition wants. Two way split, anyone? The best communicator? The most experienced governing party? I mean, who do you vote for...it's not like there's a huge ideological difference. And the Bloc? Lotsa Quebec folks kinda like them, even knowing they won't govern.

Fun times.

Oh. And this:

Evidently Oprah was talking to some reporters about a gathering some time after the election,

"I said I would be happy to talk to Sarah Palin when the election was over… I went and tried to talk to Sarah Palin and instead she talked to Greta [Van Susteren]. She talked to Matt [Lauer]. She talked to Larry [King]. But she didn't talk to me.”

Winfrey’s comments came in response to rumors she refused to invite the former vice presidential candidate on her popular daytime show.

But why would a daytime talk show host not want a vice-presidential candidate on the show before an election? Fear of poor ratings?

Just askin'...

They may be right...

Harper put it to the other parties that they should stand on their own two feet when it came to raising funds and operating as parties.

Without exception, the other three parties screamed "we'd die".

OK. Maybe they're right.

But that's not Harper's fault.

If the conservatives went broke today, they'd have money by Monday; they're used to raising their own.

Time for an Election

If the Coalition is as great a deal as its supporters say it is, then I'm sure they'll also trust Canadian voters to recognize that fact.

If the Harper Conservatives are as great a deal as their supporters state, then I'm sure they'll trust Canadian voters to recognize that fact.

It's really quite simple: the folks who don't want to, or won't, put their preference up to a vote don't trust Canadian voters to make the right decision.

All else is just puffery, grandstanding and self-serving rationalization.

Not beyond me...

The Prairie Wrangler poses this question (probably rhetorically) over at his blog:

how the opposition can play the “the Conservatives haven’t spent enough” card not a week after the “the Conservatives have spent us into a deficit” card is beyond me

Easy. Politics Without Principles.

Wanna know how much sense a bailout makes?

Read this: "Autoworker chief pleads for government to save his job by stealing others' money to give to him".

If you want to know how well an American automaker bailout will go, look no further than AIG, which made the very same claims: "too big to fail," "bridge loan," "we need time to reorganize." The government gave AIG an initial $85 billion infusion, described as a "loan" -- which doesn't make sense, because loans are made to be repaid, and AIG wasn't expected to pay it back. It does make sense when one realizes it was all a bait-and-switch: the government didn't intend to make a real loan, but to buy out a strong controlling portion of AIG. And as scary as it should be to any liberty-loving person, it was merely a prelude to nationalizing the rest of the major insurers and other big industries.

And by the way, do the math: if you get 79.9% ownership for the initial $85 billion, then what does $152.5 billion get you? Doesn't it seem like the investment is effectively throwing money into a black hole? If you were a private investor who put $X into a badly performing company for 80% ownership, and suddenly you had a capital call for another 79.4% of your initial investment, wouldn't you start wondering if you should pull out while you can and write off the losses?

AIG claimed it would sell off "assets" to repay the loan, and the loan is necessary to keep it afloat because there's insufficient income to meet its debt obligations (in no small part from credit default swaps). If this were done by an individual, the situation would be someone who has a sudden cut in earnings, gambled away the next several months of pay, owes money right now to a great many people, and has been refused by banks for a loan to repay his existing debts. He just doesn't have the income to repay the latest loan. AIG effectively said it needed a payday loan for the next six months, which it will use to pay off the people currently breathing down its neck, and it will repay the latest loan by selling its furniture. Ask yourself: who in his right mind would become the next creditor to such an irresponsible person? No rational person would.

H/T Billy.

Catch-up...

Been busy lately, but I wanted to point Canadian readers to this post at Somena Media.

It's a posting of Bruce Clark's "A Critique of the Indian Residential Schools Truth and Reconciliation Commission" with a reference that Mr Clark was the lawyer for the Gufstason Lake defendants.

Read the whole thing, but the short version is that because of the limitations/terms of the Commission, "the commission can not expose wrongdoings of the government." Mr Clark further states "The commission will look at symptoms but neither the cause nor the liability of the causer. It can not and will not investigate crimes by the government."

I'm not sure I entirely agree with Mr Clark's conclusions, and I did some investigating that led me to believe that the Commission may actually discover/expose any such facts it finds, only leaving any consequent civil or criminal legal adjudication to actual trials regarding the specific incidents, for example.

That would mean that the Commission itself is to be only an impartial fact-finding agency, and not--instead--a civil or criminal trial court apportioning blame, reparations, liability etc.

However, what I don't know is if I am correct. I could be very wrong, and the Commission could be hamstrung exactly to the degree Mr Clark says it is.

I hope not, and I'll be paying attention, because, if there is one thing I *am* very, very sure of, it's that Mr Clark (in fact, every First Nations citizen) has every good reason to distrust the Canadian federal government given past actions. I don't blame Mr Clark one bit for being suspicious.

And I hope First Nations people aren't betrayed again.

The Great Regulation Shortage of 2008

Look around you because it's an astonishing trick.

The politicians and bureaucrats are (so far, successfully) framing the economic mess you're surrounded with as "The Great Regulation Shortage of 2008."

I guess it's understandable because the meddlers are fighting to keep their taxpayer funded "regulator jobs".

The important question is, though: "Why on earth would anybody still believe them?"

Rex Murphy, Human Rights, Ezra, etc...

HT to Ezra/pointing at Rex Murphy on Human Rights...

From Rex (go read it all...)

The essential point is that the most basic rights, those of freedom of thought, speech and expression, belong to the individual. That is why we call them intrinsic or human rights. They are rights that inhere in our basic status as human beings. They are our most profound rights, belonging to our character as human beings. And, for that reason, we neither multiply them trivially nor dilute their force and meaning by placing them in piecemeal cohabitation with less fundamental accommodations.

Like the right not to wash one's hands while working in a fast-food restaurant, or the alleged right to strip past a certain age, or the right not to be offended by a Mark Steyn article. These "cases" may have merits, and some wild philosopher may articulate those merits. But they do not abide, as rights, on the same plane as freedom of thought, speech and expression. They may be something, but what they are will not be inscribed on any cenotaph: They are not human rights.

Human rights, the real ones, are ours from the beginning. They are not bestowed by the state, because the state does not "own" them; they are not a state's or a ruler's or, for that matter, a human-rights commission's to give. It equally follows that they are not a state's or a commission's to abridge, circumscribe, tamper with or make a toy of.

There's a simple test that goes a long way to deciding if a Human Right as described is real, or simply one of the many made-up fakes masquerading as actual rights these days, and it's this:

Real "rights" don't require that you do anything to, or for, anybody to recognize or provide them; all they require is that you leave other people alone.

So: when it's not a real right, pretty please, stop referring to such things, even casually, as "rights". It just confuses people.

You can always use the term "legal permissions" or "State permissions", or "involuntary taxpayer provided benefits" or "coerced business accommodations" or some such in your efforts to be accurate. You'll find that terms like that fit the bill for essentially all the fake rights.

And, just to be very clear: claims for "positive rights", "economic rights" and "social rights" always and every time are claims against your real rights. They are nothing more than arguments to take your stuff.

A note on Ms. Palin...

Antonia Zerbisias has a completely different take on it than I do, but hats off to Antonia for linking to this from The Nation's Katha Pollitt

Palin's presence on the Republican ticket forced family-values conservatives to give public support to working mothers, equal marriages, pregnant teens and their much-maligned parents. Talk-show frothers, Christian zealots and professional antifeminists--Rush Limbaugh and Phyllis Schlafly--insisted that a mother of five, including a "special-needs" newborn, could perfectly well manage governing a state (a really big state, as we were frequently reminded), while simultaneously running for veep and, who knows, field-dressing a moose. No one said she belonged at home. No one said she was neglecting her husband or failing to be appropriately submissive to him. No one blamed her for 17-year-old Bristol's out-of-wedlock pregnancy or hard-partying high-school-dropout boyfriend. No one even wondered out loud why Bristol wasn't getting married before the baby arrived. All these things have officially morphed from sins to "challenges," just part of normal family life. No matter how strategic this newfound broadmindedness is, it will not be easy to row away from it. Thanks to Sarah, ladies, we can do just about anything we want as long as we don't have an abortion.

[W]hile Palin did not win the Hillary vote, the love she got from Republican women, including very conservative, traditional women, shows that what I like to call the feminism of everyday life is taking hold across the spectrum. That old frilly-doormat model of femininity is gone.

As far as I see it, the above being generally true and generally good stuff, Palin and her candidacy did way more for "the feminism of everyday life" than, say, Bill Clinton (the last great Democratic "emancipator") ever did.

It might be gracious to just give her some of the credit for it...without being snide. After all, she did all that by just being who she was.

Oh, yeah...what wasn't true in the above quote? This part:

No one said she belonged at home. No one said she was neglecting her husband or failing to be appropriately submissive to him. No one blamed her for 17-year-old Bristol's out-of-wedlock pregnancy or hard-partying high-school-dropout boyfriend. No one even wondered out loud why Bristol wasn't getting married before the baby arrived.

Absolutely true that "Talk-show frothers, Christian zealots and professional antifeminists" didn't say that stuff; virtually nobody from the Right did.

But lotsa sniggering passive-aggressive statist-leftist jokesters did.

Confusing?

Antonia Zerbisias notes: "How people can vote for the first African American president in American history, with all that implies, while simultaneously voting to discriminate against gays is testament to the incoherence of American politics and the lack of clear cut philosophy guiding people's choices...."

"....How do some people deny other people the right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, even when it's no skin off their noses?" she asks.

She's correct that there's a lack of clear-cut philosophy at the heart of what she sees as the disconnect.

The right of people (of any and every gender...and number) to marry, free of government preference or censure, free of state interference, is based on an ultimately individualist position: the individual right to choose the structure of one's own consensual relationships.

Pretty much everything Barack Obama stands for, though, is antithetical to individualism. And so Obama's voters made a mistake individualists wouldn't make. That's not a surprise.

Update:

I found this quote here at MSNBC:

"I think it's mainly because of the way we were brought up in the church; we don't agree with it," said Jasmine Jones, 25, who is black. "I'm not really the type that I wanted to stop people's rights. But I still have my beliefs, and if I can vote my beliefs that's what I'm going to do.

What Ms. Jones actually means, of course, is "if I can vote to make others behave according to my beliefs, that's what I'm going to do".

A perfect example of what I'm talking about.

And this (another perfect example) in the same article:

"What the church does is give that perspective that this is a sacred issue as well as a social issue," said Derek McCoy, African American outreach director for the Protect Marriage Campaign. "The reason I feel they came out so strong on the issue is one, for them, it's not a civil rights issue, it's a marriage issue. It's about marriage being between a man and a woman and it doesn't cut into the civil rights issue, about equality.

I'm sure Mr. McCoy wouldn't have a problem if, say, his behaviour was to be affected by, say, a strict Muslim view, then. After all, to Mr. McCoy it's "a sacred issue as well as a social issue"; it's not at all about his right to choose his own consensual relationships.

Yeah, I'd say "the lack of clear cut philosophy guiding people's choices" is exactly the problem, Antonia.

Finally.

And it's about time. A Democrat says it, in an open letter to journalists):

If you want to redeem your honor, you will swallow hard and make a list of all the stories you would print if it were McCain who had been getting money from Fannie Mae, McCain whose campaign had consulted with its discredited former CEO, McCain who had voted against tightening its lending practices.

Then you will print them, even though every one of those true stories will point the finger of blame at the reckless Democratic Party, which put our nation's prosperity at risk so they could feel good about helping the poor, and lay a fair share of the blame at Obama's door.

You will also tell the truth about John McCain: that he tried, as a Senator, to do what it took to prevent this crisis. You will tell the truth about President Bush: that his administration tried more than once to get Congress to regulate lending in a responsible way.

This was a Congress-caused crisis, beginning during the Clinton administration, with Democrats leading the way into the crisis and blocking every effort to get out of it in a timely fashion.

If you at our local daily newspaper continue to let Americans believe — and vote as if — President Bush and the Republicans caused the crisis, then you are joining in that lie.

If you do not tell the truth about the Democrats — including Barack Obama — and do so with the same energy you would use if the miscreants were Republicans — then you are not journalists by any standard.

You're just the public relations machine of the Democratic Party, and it's time you were all fired and real journalists brought in, so that we can actually have a news paper in our city. -- Orson Scott Card

I have huge differences of opinion with Mr Card, but he's right about what he's saying here.

Read the whole damning thing.

A grateful H/T to QandO

Understand? This financial mess is *not* a result of free-market failure.

Big "gun control" laughs at Boston Legal

Gun Control - The best bloopers are here