What Will They Come Up With Next?

clipped from pajamasmedia.com Perhaps we are operating not just at the edge of our physical energy plant, but also near the edge of our civil energy plant. Was the Katrina-induced social breakdown in New Orleans a preview of what could happen at a national level in the even of a national crisis? It takes a crisis to reveal which virtues are actually vices. Gaza was not just the Arafat’s creation, it was also the result of the “International Community’s” policies taken to their logical conclusion. Gaza was a social experiment; a proving ground for diplomatic concepts, a test of ideology. In that poor patch the politics of symbolism, victimhood, guilt and dependency were tried out and given free rein to work their healing magic. And what it produced was a nightmare town of uneducated people ruled by gangsters and PR men. I’m sure the social engineers will go back to the drawing board. What will they come up with next?

CO2 Below The Surface

clipped from www.drroyspencer.com While you have probably seen graphs of the atmospheric carbon dioxide concentration slowly increasing over time, the graph above shows the yearly growth RATE, as well as the estimated yearly rate of emissions by humanity. It shows a couple of interesting things. First, the growth rate of atmospheric CO2 is, on average, only about 50% of what mankind emits. This means that Mother Nature takes out about 50% of the ‘excess’ CO2 that we pump into the atmosphere every year. And it seem like it doesn’t matter how much MORE we put in each year…nature still takes out an average of 50% of that amount. Secondly, it shows that there are huge year-to-year fluctuations in the amount of extra CO2 that shows up at Mauna Loa. Most of these fluctuations are due to El Nino and La Nina events.

Heresy

clipped from tapscottsbehindthewheel.blogspot.com Some heretical thoughts being bandied about at The Wall Street Journal where today's edition features an editorial that pushes the idea of liberating Detroit to build and sell cars and trucks that actually make money, instead of having to offer vehicles that first satisfy bureaucratic edicts from Washington bureaucrats. Along the way, the WSJ analysis focuses on the crucial role of the government's Corporate Average Fuel Economy (CAFE) rules in the undoing of the Big Three: "The fuel-economy rules apply equally to foreign brands, of course, some of which also specialize in big, powerful vehicles. But they afford themselves an out. BMW paid $230 million in CAFE fines from 1983 to 2007 to avoid building small cars at a loss to please Washington. Volvo paid $56 million. Daimler paid $55 million. "Why don't the Big Three take this out? Explains the Government Accountability Office, because they fear the political repercussions of being tagged with "unlawful conduct."

Welcome To The Bill And W Depression

clipped from www.prospect.org As an REO (foreclosed properties) valuation analyst I see first hand all over the country what is really happening. The real net to the investor is often less than 30% of UPB. I also see the trends daily in price drops, activity and new properties coming on the market. There were one million foreclosures in 2008 and easily 2.5M in 2009 based on current monthly foreclosure activity (ex. there were 250k notices filed in October alone. All of this real activity is evidence that the problem is worse than being let on. Values are likely to drop at least as much again as they already have in most markets except those that have already dropped 30% or more like Phoenix, Miami, San Fransisco and Los Vegas. This essentially means the housing market has already entered a full blown depression and we are maybe at the midpoint. The Feds cannot manipulate real supply and demand. Thats econ 101. Thank Bill Clinton for his "housing for everyone" mantra.

Uncertainty

clipped from www.washingtonpost.com They were. The "Roosevelt Rally" flattened. The arbitrary quality of other initiatives reinforced concerns. The New Deal centerpiece, the National Recovery Administration, helped some businesses compete and criminalized others for the same behavior. Sometimes Roosevelt goaded federal prosecutors into harassing corporate executives. Other times, he schmoozed the same execs at the White House. In 1936, FDR pushed through deficit spending. In 1937, he was Mr. Budget Hawk. Uncertain, markets froze. Businesses refused to hire or invest in equipment. Unemployment stayed stuck in the teens. The 'deal' part of the New Deal phrase was problematic; businesses didn't want individual favors, they wanted clear laws for all. Industrialist Ernest Weir summed up what his community was desperate for FDR to do: "Above all to make the program clear and then stick to it."

Indistinction

clipped from onecosmos.blogspot.com God is distinguished by his indistinction from any other distinct things...--Meister Eckhart "Eckhart was obviously fascinated by the question of what we think we are doing when we attempt to speak about God. In one sense, his whole surviving corpus is an exploration of this issue. Why is speech necessary when silence is more fitting?" (McGinn). You might say that Eckhart picks up where Aquinas himself left off, in the abysmal silence at the beginning and end of all verbalization; which is why he could say that "the Word which is in the silence of the fatherly Intellect is a Word without word, or rather a Word above every word." In the beginning -- or at the Origin, to be precise -- is the wordless Word, or pure spirit-breath hovering over the face of the deep.

Or Is The Warming The Result Of The Cloud Change?

clipped from www.drroyspencer.com The central importance of feedbacks to the global warming issue can not be overstated. How the radiant flows of energy in and out of the Earth system change with temperature is THE most critical piece of knowledge we need in order to predict whether manmade global warming will be benign — or catastrophic. It is obvious that good estimates of feedbacks are needed from our observations of natural climate variability. This would provide the most important test of climate models: do the models exhibit feedbacks consistent with those we observe in nature? I am now convinced that the main difficulty in diagnosing feedbacks from observations of natural climate variability has been related to the issue of causation when observing cloud behavior. The best way to introduce what I mean by this is with the following question: When low cloud cover is observed to decrease with warming, is the cloud change the result of the warming, or is the warming the result of the cloud change?

If The OHsu Fits

clipped from gatewaypundit.blogspot.com In his December 22 letter, Cohen also noted that Hsu was already "notorious for his political activities" and that it was "inevitable" that his client's "connections" to Bill and Hillary Clinton "and other democratic notables--including perhaps the president-elect--will be introduced at trial." Before becoming a key fundraiser for Hillary Clinton's presidential bid, Hsu co-hosted a 2005 California fundraiser for Obama's political action committee and introduced the Illinois Democrat to Marc Gorenberg, a Silicon Valley venture capitalist who later joined the Obama campaign's national finance committee. Prosecutors allege that Hsu directed his investors to donate money to specific candidates, and then reimbursed them in violation of federal campaign laws.

Looking Away

clipped from www.chicagotribune.com Of course, Tuesday's fiasco could have been avoided. Democrats in the state legislature could have stripped Blagojevich of his appointment powers and imposed a special election. Obama also could have demanded it. But as he has done so often in his career, Obama avoided a confrontation and looked the other way. Democrats tried to finesse this, and they allowed Blagojevich the opening he needed, to hold that news conference and defy everybody. And so I'm forced to tip my hat to Gov. Dead Meat on this one, for sheer brazenness. He's no jester. And it takes guts to keep a straight face while Democrats about you are losing theirs.

Impossible?

clipped from townhall.com Whoever called politics "the art of the possible" must have had a strange idea of what is possible or a strange idea of politics, where the impossible is one of the biggest vote-getters. People can get the possible on their own. Politicians have to be able to offer the voters something that they cannot get on their own. The impossible fills that bill perfectly. You want the government to create more jobs for people when there is widespread unemployment? It's been done. During the Great Depression of the 1930s, the government employed more young men in the Civilian Conservation Corps than there were in the Army. The money to pay for all this had to come from somewhere-- and that meant that there was less money left to employ other people in the private sector. While jobs created by the government may not have reduced total unemployment, these jobs increased votes for the administration, which is the real bottom line in politics.

Of A And B

clipped from townhall.com Another pitfall to straight thinking is sometimes called the cause and effect fallacy. That fallacy is made when a person sees event B coming on the heels of event A and then says A caused B. There may no causal relationship at all. Such is the case when the rooster crows and shortly thereafter the sun rises. That is easy to see but many historians assert that the 1929 stock market crash caused the 1930s Great Depression. Little is further from the truth. Instead, it was caused by inept fiscal, monetary and regulatory policies of the Hoover and Roosevelt administrations.

The "Vacuum"

clipped from www.jewcy.com A major fallacy ensues from this one-sided premise, which is that Israel is the sole stimulus for Hamas response, and therefore it alone bears the responsibility for the undeniable misery in Gaza. Those quick to point out how Olmert's miscalculations have hurt the people he governs will typically suggest that military incursions "radicalize" Arab sentiment, leading to more suicide bombers and more dead Israelis. Assuming this is true, why is it that the corollary is never asked: namely, how does Hamas radicalize Israeli sentiment? A much remarked-upon fact of the last 72 hours is that Israel's ultra-left-wing party Meretz has endorsed Operation Cast Lead, a development that should concern partisans of both sides. If there is merit to the "root causes" argument, then surely it applies to the decisions undertaken by a Jewish policy as much as it does to those undertaken by a Muslim one. Or does a belligerent Israeli consensus form in a vacuum?

Believe It

clipped from online.wsj.com So to recap all of this change you can believe in: A Kennedy and Cuomo are competing to succeed a Clinton in New York; the skids are greased for a Biden to replace a Biden in Delaware; one Salazar might replace another in Colorado; and a Governor charged with political corruption in Illinois wants one of his cronies to succeed the President-elect. Let's just say we're looking forward to 2009.

The Amazing Coincidence

clipped from online.wsj.com The left's hope is that derivatives are so poorly understood that people can be convinced that turmoil in the market for credit default swaps -- an effect of soured mortgage loans -- is actually a cause of this crisis. Credit default swaps (CDS) are insurance policies against companies or investment vehicles going bankrupt and being unable to pay their creditors. This insurance is cheap when things are going well, and very expensive when investors expect the relevant entities to fail. Turns out that the markets for CDS and other derivatives not tied to the housing crisis are functioning normally. in an amazing coincidence, it is the failure -- or the expected failure -- of entities with heavy exposure to toxic mortgages that is putting extreme financial strain on those who sold insurance. But the problem can't possibly be the toxic mortgages encouraged by Washington, according to the politicians. It must be the system of insuring against the collapse of those who bought the mortgages.

Welcome to We The Free! Using this blog: In addition to being mainly a personal research (linker) blog, I tend to keep some of my favorite posts bumped high and even dated into the future (notice the date on this post?). To read the very latest just click through to the "Cycles of History" post and scroll down from there... [ --This post held bumped to top-- ]

Fanning The Lazy

clipped from econlog.econlib.org It seems that AIG and other institutions became lazy and relied on the investigations and reasoning of others. Fannie and Freddie were recklessly buying subprime mortgage backed securities, funded by their government guarantee. The major credit ratings agencies were eager to go along with government pressure to approve subprime MBS bonds. They were comfortable having a an effective monopoly as government-approved companies. So, I think the suits got it wrong, thinking: Why stay out of a market that everyone else has confidence in.? AIG got into trouble evaluating the risk of default for banks holding mortgage backed securities. Banks bought AAA rated mortgage securities, supposedly rock-solid. The AAA ratings were given by government-approved ratings agencies. Insurers like AIG and other institutions relied on those ratings, and insured those banks by selling credit default swaps, which seemed to be a conservative risk. The actual risk of those mortgage securities was far higher.

Alarmed And Begging For Rescue

clipped from econlog.econlib.org "Third, that even though much of the public instinctively and correctly opposed the bailout, it sailed through without costing Congressmen their seats." I heard a story on NPR about a poll that showed that the public was fairly evenly split on the issue of bail-outs. In addition, the media overwhelmingly sold the financial problems as the worst the world has ever seen since creation and hounded politicians for a solution. Policians saw that the media was on their side and would portray them as heroes. Then the media pimped for the pols and told the public they were stupid for opposing bail-outs. Mencken said that the art of practical politics is to keep the public alarmed and begging for rescue. The mainstream media empower politicians in practicing their dark arts.

Government Is Here To "Help"

clipped from econlog.econlib.org Reason TV has a video of a panel discussion that really articulates the frustration that libertarians feel about the financial bailout. As Tim Cavanaugh points out, the bailout redistributes from the prudent to the profligate. As Veronique de Rugy points out (footnoting Andrei Shleifer, et al), when people lose confidence and trust in one another, their confidence in government increases. Thus, government failure that undermines confidence winds up reinforcing the demand for government! Bernanke, Geithner, and Paulson were hailed as saviors, even though they could just have easily been portrayed as bumblers. The whole thing was portrayed as government having no choice but to come in and clean up the private sector's mess, rather than an ill-conceived attempt to stop markets from adjusting to a mess that was created by a combination of market failure and government failure.

More Head Banging Goodness

clipped from michellemalkin.com I know I’m getting to be a broken record on this, but how long will this country keep trying to cure the disease with the disease? Headline: “GMAC loosens credit to make vehicles easier to buy.” Call it the subprime auto loan prescription. Easier auto loans for more people. The struggling financing arm of General Motors Corp., rescued by $5 billion in federal aid on Monday, plans to use some of the money to make cars and trucks more affordable to a larger pool of customers. Flashback Nov. 25: Borrow. Spend. Panic. Repeat. Mish sums this madness up perfectly: The more money wasted on stupidity like this, the longer the recession, and the slower the recovery. There is only so much capital, and using that capital to keep failed business models alive is sickening. Pardon me while I bang my head against the wall some more.

Cracked

clipped from pajamasmedia.com HEH: “Two years ago, like many somewhat financially literate readers, I was perusing newspapers stories about crazy negative amortization mortgages and exclaiming, ‘What are they, on crack?‘ Now we have our answer.”

Sad To Say...

clipped from www.powerlineblog.com "Two plus two always equals four, never five," he said. ... Before his speech, the assembly voted to raise the age at which workers can retire with a government pension by five years, to 65 for men and 60 for women. Officials said the change was needed because Cuba's population was aging rapidly due to a declining birth rate and immigration. Castro said Cuban managers need to demand more from their workers, who receive free education and health care and subsidized food rations but on average earn only $20 a month. ... He expressed dissatisfaction with the system of subsidies for those who can work, but do not, saying government handouts discourage Cubans from being more productive. It's sad to say, but there are many in Congress and even some in the administration who could take a lesson from Castro's realism.

Dave Barry's Real Life

clipped from www.extrememortman.com If you work for the New York Times, or if you are a fierce loyalist and fan of the New York Times, you may not want to read Dave Barry’s 2008 year in review. Why?  Because in an year in which Barry hilariously eviscerates the media — sample:  “A mesmerizing speaker, Obama electrifies voters with his exciting new ideas for change, although people have trouble remembering exactly what these ideas are because they are so darned mesmerized. Some people become so excited that they actually pass out. These are members of the press corps” — he saves particular and substantial ridicule for the New York Times. Collection: Barack Obama, continuing to shake up the establishment, selects as his running mate Joe Biden, a tireless fighter for change since he was first elected to the U.S. Senate in 1849. Some may call this satire. Others may call it, well, real life.  Dave Barry really may not be making this up.

"They chose dishonour. They will have war." -- Winston Churchill

Unfair

clipped from pajamasmedia.com A lot of people have been comparing the Ponzi scheme allegedly run by Madoff to the Ponzi scheme run by the U.S. government, also known as Social Security. That’s entirely unfair. To Madoff.

A Quote You Can't Place -- Why Not?

"First he incites war, then falsifies the causes, then odiously wraps himself in a cloak of Christian hypocrisy and slowly but surely leads mankind to war, not without calling God to witness the honesty of his attack." --Do you know who said this?

Anyone paying attention to politics circa 2006 would reasonably guess that it's a quote from some famous Democrat about George Bush. But it isn't -- the answer is here at the end of the second paragraph.

Did that make you blush? Then don't forget to take the "Who said it?" quiz (second item down) while you're flustered -- you may miss a few there too...

Unfathomable

clipped from atlasshrugs2000.typepad.com "Even the Rabbi and his wife at Nariman House were sexually assaulted and their genitalia mutilated" Remember, the Rabbi's wife was pregnant. I think it might have been easy to deny the evil of the Nazis and their barbarism before their inconceivable atrocities were exposed. They were a most advanced, "modern" country - lovers of art, music (Wagner!) culture and technologically, they were ahead of the curve. Islam, OTOH, has none of the brilliant disguises of the Third Reich. They contribute nothing to the advancement of humanity. They marinate in their hate, are prideful of their savagery and blood lust. And yet, the West apologizes, caves, bows, grovels ...... and so the pious Muslims strive to top their execrable wickedness, thereby insuring further capitulation and appeasement from the West. More information is slowly coming out about the pious Muslims that attacked Mumbai November 26th - Mumbai's 9/11 and their depravity is unfathomable. This is pure evil.

Merry Christmas!

clipped from www.powerlineblog.com

Even in Iraq...

The Constitution Will Not Be Televised

""I hope to persuade you that the decline of a print-based epistemology and the accompanying rise of a television-based epistemology has had grave consequences for public life, that we are getting sillier by the minute."
-- Neil Postman, Amusing Ourselves to Death

Neil Postman argued persuasively that the content of our discourse depends on the means of communication. For example, he pointed out, smoke signals cannot be used to send complicated messages. Postman, a deep thinker and talented writer, believed that the written word as a communications medium permits careful, rational thought. Television, in contrast, only has room for thinking that is shallow and superficial. "

The Past Blasts

clipped from http://www.powerlineblog.com/archives2/2007/12/019319.php Resolved, That the aim and object of the Democratic party is to preserve the Federal Union and the rights of the States unimpaired, and they hereby declare that they consider that the administrative usurpation of extraordinary and dangerous powers not granted by the Constitution — the subversion of the civil by military law in States not in insurrection; the arbitrary military arrest, imprisonment, trial, and sentence of American citizens in States where civil law exists in full force; the suppression of freedom of speech and of the press; Resolved, That the shameful disregard of the Administration to its duty in respect to our fellow citizens who now are and long have been prisoners of war and in a suffering condition, deserves the severest reprobation Sound familiar? The Democrats are saying 1) The war is lost; 2) Let's negotiate; 3) The Constitution is trashed; 4) They steal elections; 5) We support the troops. You've got to hand it to these Dems. They're certainly consistent.

That was the 1864 Democratic Party platform. Yes, 1864.

War has never solved anything you know. LOL

Today's NYeT BDS Update

clipped from www.ibdeditorials.com Media Bias: The paper of record blames the "mortgage bonfire" on President Bush and his "laissez-faire" housing policies. But to get there, the Times completely ignored history prior to 2002. That's when Bush gave a speech in Atlanta and announced a goal to increase minority homeowners by 5.5 million. According to the Times, this was the event that started the mortgage meltdown. "He pushed hard to expand homeownership, especially among minorities," its lengthy front-page piece asserts. "But his housing policies encouraged lax lending standards." If the Times had said the same thing about Bush's predecessor, its story might have a kernel of truth to it. Clinton and his top banking regulators were far more aggressive in pushing minority homeownership. It's plain the New York Times is trying to litigate its case — without full discovery or a fair trial — on behalf of its client, the president-elect, who derided the Republican "Ownership Society" during the campaign.

Entitlement

clipped from pajamasmedia.com The probable appointment of Caroline Kennedy, the 51-year-old daughter of former President John Kennedy, to fill Secretary-of-State nominee Hillary Clinton’s New York Senate seat is both laughable and yet a parable for our bankrupt times. Consider aristocratic entitlement. Ms. Kennedy apparently spends a great deal of her time divided between her Park Avenue Upper-East-Side Manhattan townhouse and her hereditary estate on Martha’s Vineyard. She has had no real experience with the ordinary lives of New Yorkers, either a few dozen blocks away in Harlem (despite a sudden ad hoc lunch last week with the Rev. Sharpton at a soul food diner) or the state’s rural towns to the north. Ms. Kennedy is about as undiverse as one could imagine. But there is plenty of evidence that Ms. Kennedy reflects the current Democratic Party’s obsession with celebrity and Hollywood-like imagery

Cycles of History Again: We're Somewhere In The Bold Print...

"A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can only exist until the voters discover that they can vote themselves largess from the public treasury. From that time on the majority always votes for the candidates promising the most benefits from the public treasury, with the results that a democracy always collapses over loose fiscal policy, always followed by a dictatorship. The average age of the world's great civilizations has been 200 years. These nations have progressed through this sequence:


from bondage to spiritual faith;
from spiritual faith to great courage;
from courage to liberty;
from liberty to abundance;
from abundance to selfishness;
from selfishness to complacency;
from complacency to apathy;
from apathy to dependency;
from dependency back again to bondage."

Making Us All Rich

clipped from bloomberg.com “How do you get a bailout, Dad? Does it go to good or bad companies?” Bailout Criteria “I know it must sound strange, Junior. Many of the companies getting government money did bad things. They took risks with other people’s money. They padded their own pockets instead of watching out for their customers. And they lost a lot of money in the process.” “How do you get paid to do bad things? You don’t give me my allowance unless I walk Rusty after school, take out the garbage and clean up my room.” “You’re right, Junior. The government should really help those in need.” “C’mon Dad. If it were that simple, the government could write everyone a check for a million dollars, and make us all rich.” “Junior, I can tell you really have a knack for this stuff. I’m glad I could help you.”

The Children

clipped from www.davidwarrenonline.com In this book, the magnificent Dutch historian and linguist shows that play is not merely an element in human societies, but essential to them; that human cultures are themselves largely products of many forms of play. "Civilization is, in its earliest phases, played. It does not come from play like a babe detaching itself from the womb: it arises in and as play, and never leaves it." As Christmas approaches, we have been taught to think of the poor and the disabled, the old who are shut in, the dying in our hospitals, the prisoners in our jails -- and at our best we visit them. But we must remember that the largest disadvantaged group in our society -- often deprived alike of love and of their freedom -- is our children. Christmas means nothing if it is not for them.

The Welfare Of Ponzi

clipped from www.davidwarrenonline.com And the same bailout principle designed to save Detroit's unions by bankrolling management might be applied in this case. Just bail out Mr. Madoff's Ponzi scheme until the economy improves, and it becomes self-funding again. Why not? For decades, every government in the Western world has been using current revenues to pay health, unemployment, old-age, and every other kind of "insurance" and "pension" entitlement. This is the core financial principle of the welfare state. It is a Ponzi scheme on a scale vastly beyond even Bernard Madoff's imaginings. But instead of having the people who conceived and executed this scheme arrested, we have honoured them as great humanitarians and "progressives." The authors of what is actually the biggest Ponzi scheme in the history of the world have needed a constantly growing population, earning constantly more dollars per head, being constantly inflated (both the dollars and the heads), to keep their scheme running.

Sugarplum Gumdrops

clipped from iowahawk.typepad.com WASHINGTON - Flanked by officials from the United Elf Toytinkerers union, SantaCorp CEO Kris Kringle today told the House Ways and Means Committee that without immediate government financial help, his firm would be forced to declare bankruptcy, lay off thousands of elves and reindeer, and potentially cancel its annual worldwide Christmas Eve toy delivery. "These are grim economic times for everyone, but even more so for non-profit toy manufacturers in the Snow Belt," said Kringle. "Our accountants have indicated that we are on track to exhaust our reserves of cash and magical pixie fairydust by December 23. Oh deary me." Kringle and UET union president Binky McGiggles presented a draft emergency bailout plan to the committee calling for US $18 trillion in federal grants, loan guarantees, and sugarplum gumdrops that they said would keep the company solvent through December 26.

Spectacular

clipped from pajamasmedia.com JOHN TIERNEY: Does being spectacularly wrong about a major issue in your field of expertise hurt your chances of becoming the presidential science advisor? Apparently not, judging by reports from DotEarth and ScienceInsider that Barack Obama will name John P. Holdren as his science advisor on Saturday. Dr. Holdren, now a physicist at Harvard, was one of the experts in natural resources whom Paul Ehrlich enlisted in his famous bet against the economist Julian Simon during the “energy crisis” of the 1980s. In 1980 Dr. Holdren helped select five metals — chrome, copper, nickel, tin and tungsten — and joined Dr. Ehrlich and Dr. Harte in betting $1,000 that those metals would be more expensive ten years later. They turned out to be wrong on all five metals, and had to pay up when the bet came due in 1990 Next: Paul Wolfowitz for head of the Arms Control and Disarmament Agency.

Just A Guy In My Neighborhood Under The Bus (Part 82364)

clipped from ace.mu.nu One good thing for Republicans: Obama is a moronic liar. Clinton was a good liar (much to our annoyance). This cat is a retarded one. That will be helpful. So why did he tell such a ridiculous lie? I have to imagine it was to head off the next round of questions. Like what exactly did Rahm Emanuel propose as a counter-offer for Blago's pay-for-play requests? How much did he entertain the idea of playing ball one more time? At what point, if any, did Emanuel say "This is illegal and improper and these discussions are now ended?" Or did he continue trying to "work with" Blago? I assume Emanuel wasn't offering money for the seat. (Ass-ume.) But did he offer to have Obama campaign for Blago? Fundraise for him? You can just see the Obama pattern unfolding with the Senate seat fixing scandal. 1. I don't know him 2. I know him a little 3. I know him but I thought he'd gone to rehab 4. I'm giving a major speech condemning everything he stands for

Deja Failure

clipped from www.davidwarrenonline.com In his paper of 1985, Cardinal Ratzinger simply went the extra step, to tell us what that regime is. He reminds us that "Western Civ" created free markets, and not vice versa; and inevitably, that the Roman Catholic Church created Western Civ. Like every other component of a high civilization, the market economy is, in itself, a mixed blessing, therefore a dangerous idol. All my adult life, it seems, I have been explaining to libertarians that this is the difference between us: that we're both in favour of free markets, but only one of us is also in favour of civilization. I am not a social liberal, like most of them, but rather an intense social conservative. Moreover, I hold that all civilizations remain "socially conservative" until such time as they begin to collapse: as true of Confucian China as of the Christian West. The rebuilding we need begins with church and family.

No, Sorry -- An F

clipped from legalinsurrection.blogspot.com The AG also does not address the existence of the alternative legislative impeachment process, other than to say that it might take too long. The failure to address this alternative other than in passing requires at least a full grade level deduction. If a criminal or ethical taint were sufficient to constitute a "disability," then there would be no need for a constitutional impeachment provision in the Illinois Constitution, which gives the sole power of impeachment to the House of Representatives, with trial in the Senate, presided over by the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court. The AG again construes the Constitution in such a way as to render one of its provisions meaningless. What is most shocking about the AG's papers is that I expected so much more. Some case authority. Something other than strained arguments based on the dictionary. Something more highbrow than quoting Barack Obama and Harry Reid. The AG may end up winning this case, but not on the strength of her papers. C-

And this woman was on Obambi's short list to replace him. [bad language deleted]

Out Of The Memory Hole

clipped from www.youtube.com

"Winning Glory"

clipped from althouse.blogspot.com So the safeguard against the AG's abuse of power is that the court will have the role of deciding? How can it be the court's role to make the final call about things that belong in the realm of impeachment? Why do constitutions put impeachment trials in legislatures? Because courts are ill-suited to such decision-making. AND: Keep in mind that the legislative impeachment process is something under the control of Madigan's own father. The court asked her Madigan was asked "Do you know why your father has been appearing to be somewhat reticent on the -- (off mike)?" She told them to "ask him," which, the transcript notes, provoked laughter. Do you think that's funny? The speculation is that the speaker is sitting back on this so Lisa can take the lead and get ownership on the issue," said one House member who favors impeachment but requested anonymity. What a misguided notion of how to win glory!