Saturday, November 8, 2014

Weekend Newsbites: Sat. & Sun., Nov. 8 & 9, 2014


Shoot the Animals Down...

Beat the Animals Down...

Use Whatever Degree of Force is Necessary to Defend Civilization...!!!

All this media blather about "Ferguson" and how "the community" may react to a non-indictment of Officer Darren Wilson...

It sickens me.

Protests? Fine! Misguided but peaceful rallies... protests... whatever... FINE!

Civil disobedience? Within reason it should be - must be - "respected." And by "respected" I mean you load those engaging in civil disobedience into the paddy wagons, take 'em to jail, process 'em, and then let the judicial system run its course.

But Molotov Cocktails...? Place snipers on the roofs and "take out" anyone attempting to employ fire and gasoline as a "tool" to "protest." Shot 'em dead. Period.

Those engaging in property destruction...

STOP THEM.

By... any... means... necessary.

Folks... civilization must be defended. It's that simple.

6 comments:

William R. Barker said...

* TWO-PARTER... (Part 1 of 2)

http://online.wsj.com/articles/davis-in-84-1415394769

“Freedom is the freedom to say that two plus two make four,” Winston Smith wrote in his diary. “If that is granted, all else follows.”

Later a government functionary named O’Brien explains to Smith, the protagonist of Orwell’s “Nineteen Eighty-Four,” the totalitarian theory of epistemology: “I tell you, Winston, that reality is not external. Reality exists in the human mind, and nowhere else. Not in the individual mind, which can make mistakes, and in any case soon perishes: only in the mind of the Party, which is collective and immortal. Whatever the Party holds to be the truth, is truth. It is impossible to see reality except by looking through the eyes of the Party. That is the fact that you have got to relearn, Winston. It needs an act of self-destruction, an effort of the will. You must humble yourself before you can become sane.”

The Party, according to O’Brien, is the arbiter not only of empirical facts about the physical world but also of questions of pure logic. “How can I help seeing what is in front of my eyes?” Winston asks. “Two and two are four.”

“Sometimes, Winston,” O’Brien replies. “Sometimes they are five. Sometimes they are three. Sometimes they are all of them at once. You must try harder. It is not easy to become sane.” In due course, with the help of O’Brien’s torture device, Smith becomes “sane” and sees that two plus two are five.

In the real world, one of Tuesday’s election results has had the same effect on some liberal commentators.

“Of all the ways Democrat Wendy Davis lost her run for Texas governor, one particularly stands out: She failed to move the needle with women,” the Associated Press reports from Austin:

Exit polls show Davis fared no better with women than her male Democratic predecessor in 2010, despite being one of the most recognizable female candidates in the U.S. and a campaign that aggressively courted women with gender issues and attention-grabbing ads.

Republican Attorney General Greg Abbott won 54% of female voters — roughly the same edge Gov. Rick Perry had with women four years ago.

(And Abbott’s advantage wasn’t just among Republican women: He carried roughly double the support that Davis pulled with women who described themselves as politically independent.)

That’s not to say there was no “gender gap.” The exit polls show that women were considerably likelier to vote for Davis than men were, although Abbott out-polled Davis among both men (66% to 32%) and women (54% to 45%).

The poll found a greater degree of polarization along racial lines. Abbott vastly outperformed Davis among whites (72% to 25%), while Davis out-polled Abbott even more vastly among blacks (92% to 7%).

* GEEZUS...

Davis also won the votes of a smaller majority of Latinos (55% to 44%).

* I DO SO WORRY ABOUT WHETHER BLACK AMERICA CAN BE SAVED FROM ITSELF...

(*SIGH*)

* TO BE CONTINUED...

William R. Barker said...

* CONCLUDING... (Part 2 of 2)

The state of the American liberal Left is such that its intellectuals are seriously debating whether or not 54 is greater than 45.

Salon’s Jenny Kutner: “Last time I checked, though, there were thousands upon thousands of women in Texas considered Latina and African-American — what about their votes?”

The answer is rather obvious. Their votes - like everyone else’s votes - are counted twice in these breakdowns. The totals for whites, Latinos and blacks include the votes of both sexes, and the totals for men and women include the votes of all racial and ethnic categories.

* FRIGGIN' MORON!

Since women and minorities were likelier than men and whites, respectively, to vote for Davis, one would expect a further disaggregation of the numbers to show that minority women voted for Davis at higher rates than either minority men or white women.

Indeed that is the case.

Kutner writes, “As RH Reality Check’s Andrea Grimes reports, their votes were solidly in Davis’ favor: 94% of black women and 61% of Latinas voted for her. Only 32% of white women did.”

This raises a further interesting question: To what extent is the “gender gap” a result of lower sex ratios among nonwhite voters? The answer would appear to be only to a small extent. The exit poll did find lower sex ratios among blacks (among whom men made up 5% of the total electorate and women 7%) and Latinos (men 8%, women 9%) than among whites (men 33%, women 33%). But the gender gap was observed among all three racial and ethnic groups and was slightly wider among whites (26 points) than among the population as a whole (25).

Kutner and Grimes, however, draw a different conclusion from the race-and-sex breakdown. Here’s Grimes:

"You’ll hear that Greg Abbott 'carried' women voters in Texas. Anyone who says that is also saying that Black women and Latinas are not 'women,' and that carrying white women is enough to make the blanket statement that Abbott carried all women. That women generally failed to vote for Wendy Davis. As if women of color are some separate entity, some mysterious other, some bizarre demographic of not-women. . . "

* SERIOUSLY... THEY'RE BOTH APPARENTLY RETARDED!

Once more, with feeling: Greg Abbott and the Republican Party did not win women. They won white women.

Kutner echoes the sentiment: “That’s certainly not enough women to say that Abbott won the whole gender (though that’s a ludicrous statement in the first place). It seems to be enough, though, to result in the erasure of votes from women of color, Grimes notes.”

It was left to Jonathan Chait of New York magazine to assume the Winston Smith role:

"“My admittedly crude method of answering the question ‘Did Greg Abbott or Wendy Davis win the female vote’ would be to compare the number of women who voted for Abbott with the number of women who voted for Davis, and define the larger number as the winner.” He adds, “Nobody is saying the votes of women of color don’t count. Everybody’s vote counts for one vote. I am comfortable stating that Barack Obama won the women’s vote in 2012, even though he lost white women.”

William R. Barker said...

http://online.wsj.com/articles/holman-jenkins-does-the-fed-read-the-election-returns-1415405151

Let’s recap: After a crisis caused by a long buildup of government-sponsored excesses in housing and elsewhere, Mr. Obama has only wanted to author more excesses: a fuel-mileage reform that doubles down on Rube Goldbergism; a health-care reform that doubles down on trying to make health care appear affordable by shifting its cost to taxpayers; a banking reform that doubles down on Too Big to Fail.

All along, let’s face it, this set of priorities has been partly enabled by the Fed.

At a speech in Paris on Friday, as fellow central bankers (even the French!) were talking about the need for deregulation and pro-market reforms, Ms. Yellen — the latest great enabler — continued to sing the praises of quantitative easing to solve all problems.

The European Central Bank’s Benoît Coeuré threw down a gauntlet last month: “Talking vaguely about structural reforms, but not doing them, is the worst of all worlds. It creates uncertainty over the path of real interest rates, without in tandem raising expectations of future growth.”

Translation: If politicians don’t start dealing with growth-inhibiting tax and regulatory policies, the global monetary Hail Mary will itself become a source of instability. The meltdown of 2008 will be nothing compared to the one that’s coming.

But give Mr. Obama credit for disabusing Americans of one piece of silliness. Pious bunk is the idea that a special providence always delivers America the leaders it needs. We’ve had good luck and bad luck in our presidents. Mostly, though, it wasn’t luck at all: It was the ordinary wisdom of each electee to try to give the country what it needed — rather than what he, in his vanity, needed to give it.

Well, voters have rendered their verdict. They want growth. They don’t want the Obama formula of stock-market bubbles for the rich and unreformed liberalism for everybody else.

Is Ms. Yellen listening?

Judging by this week’s election, voters didn’t appreciate the irony of Federal Reserve Chair Janet Yellen ’s speech a few weeks ago lamenting a rise in “inequality.”

The Federal Reserve’s main ministration for a weak recovery, after all, has been stoking a “wealth effect.” By levitating the stock portfolios of the top 1%, jobs and wage growth for the other 99% would be stimulated. “Higher stock prices will boost consumer wealth and help increase confidence,” once explained ex-Fed chief Ben Bernanke.

It hasn’t worked.

The only confidence stimulated has been the confidence of hedge funds that stocks might be a good bet in the short term if central banks are printing money.

Still missing is the kind of confidence that would boost the incomes and prospects of people who don’t own stocks for a living.

The simplest and most convincing analysis of this secular stagnation is from former Fed Chairman Alan Greenspan , who emphasizes a single datapoint: the missing investment in “long-lived assets” such as homes, buildings and industrial equipment—i.e., assets that require long-term optimism by employers, entrepreneurs and young people starting families.

* IS YELLEN LISTENING? IS BOEHNER? IS MCCONNELL? ARE THE RINOs?

William R. Barker said...

* TWO-PARTER... (Part 1 of 2)

http://online.wsj.com/articles/obamacare-goes-to-rewrite-1415404718?_outlook

President Obama and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid packed the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals this year in hope of dodging another Supreme Court review of ObamaCare.

(Mr. Reid broke Senate filibuster rules to add three liberals to the D.C. Circuit with the expectation that the en banc court would favor the Administration.)

But now it appears their gambit has failed, as the Supreme Court Justices announced Friday that they’ll hear a serious statutory challenge. King v. Burwell will test, as so many other cases have in the Obama era, whether this Administration can unilaterally rewrite the law to suit its political ends.

* UNFORTUNATELY... NOWADAYS THE ONLY THING SUPREME COURT CASES "TEST" IS THE INTEGRITY OF INDIVIDUAL JUSTICES. THE FOUR LEFTISTS WILL PRETTY MUCH ALWAYS VOTE FOR THEIR POLICY PREFERENCES... KENNEDY AND ROBERT... (*SIGH*)... THERE'S SIMPLY NEVER ANY WAY TO GUESS HOW THEY'LL RULE.

* ANYWAY...

The announcement means that at least four Justices want to hear the arguments in King, which claims that under the plain text of the ObamaCare statute subsidies can only flow through exchanges “established by the State.”

* IT'S NOT JUST A "CLAIM." THAT IS THE TEXT!

The Administration via the IRS wrote its regulation to say subsidies could flow through the federal exchange too.

* VIA THE IRS... (*BZZZ*)

* VIA REGULATION... (*BZZZ*)

The Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled in favor of the government, though the opinion said it was a close call. A 2-1 panel of the D.C. Circuit ruled the other way, only to have the decision vacated by the entire D.C. Circuit, which voted to hear the case en banc in the coming months.

At a July 22 press conference, Mr. Reid boasted about his filibuster play and proclaimed that, “It seems clear to me that that decision will be overturned.”

(Then there would be no splits between the circuit courts, and the Supreme Court would be less likely to take the case.)

Harry has had a rough week. By taking the Fourth Circuit appeal in King, the Supreme Court makes his machinations moot. The D.C. Circuit now needn’t hear its case en banc, because the Supremes are already hearing the same question. Oral argument is likely to take place in the spring with a ruling before July.

The Supreme Court is right to settle the matter as soon as possible. Legal uncertainty hangs over the law’s implementation, and the longer it takes to be settled the greater the eventual tumult if the IRS diktat is overturned.

And on the merits it should be.

* YEAH... BUT THAT DOESN'T MATTER TO THE LEFTISTS... NOR NECESSARILY TO ROBERTS AND/OR KENNEDY.

* TO BE CONTINUED...

William R. Barker said...

* CONCLUDING... (Part 2 of 2)

The state-exchange language is no drafting error. Jonathan Gruber, an architect of the law, said in 2012 that the text was written this way to give states an incentive to set up their own exchanges.

The IRS pulled the federal-exchange switcheroo in order to salvage Mr. Obama’s domestic-policy prize.

* BUT...

But Congress writes laws, and federal agencies can’t decide on a whim to rewrite them because the original language becomes politically inconvenient.

* UNLESS THEY CAN GET FIVE SUPREME COURT JUSTICES TO SIGN OFF.

(*SHRUG*)

If the Justices tolerate doing so in King, it will be open rewrite season across the federal bureaucracy.

* IT ALREADY IS. LET'S NOT SUGARCOAT IT. THE TREND IS UNMISTAKABLE.

It’s hard to predict how the High Court will rule, as we learned in the ObamaCare case on the individual mandate. Chief Justice John Roberts saved the day for Mr. Obama by ruling that the mandate was justified because it was really a tax. Never mind that in writing the law, Democrats had repeatedly declared that it wasn’t a tax.

* IN ALL SERIOUSNESS... STRICTLY ON THE MERITS, ROBERTS SHOULD HAVE BEEN IMPEACHED. HE BASICALLY ADMITTED HIS RULING WENT AGAINST BOTH THE TEXT AND THE BEST UNDERSTOOD INTENT OF THE WRITERS/PASSERS OF THE BILL.

But the current Court has shown growing impatience for this Administration’s abuses of executive authority. “It is not our job to protect the people from the consequences of their political choices,” the Chief Justice famously wrote in the first ObamaCare case.

* BUT IT IS YOUR JOB TO DEFEND THE CONSTITUTIONAL RIGHTS OF THE AMERICAN PEOPLE. AND WITH YOUR OBAMACARE DECISION YOU TURNED YOUR BACK ON BOTH THE CONSTITUTION AND "WE THE PEOPLE."

We are about to find out if he thinks his job is to save the President from the consequences of willfully rewriting black-letter law.

* I WISH I COULD SAY I WAS CONFIDENT THAT ROBERTS WILL RULE CORRECTLY. UNFORTUNATELY... I'M NOT. NOT EVEN CLOSE!

William R. Barker said...

http://www.kswt.com/story/27332931/arizonas-immigrant-smuggling-law-struck-down

A federal judge has struck down Arizona's 2005 immigrant smuggling law on the grounds that it's trumped by federal statutes.

The ruling Friday by U.S. District Judge Susan Bolton marked the latest in a string of restrictions placed by the courts on Arizona's effort to get local police to confront illegal immigration.

Bolton ruled the state law deprives federal authorities of their exclusive right to prosecute smuggling crimes.

* WHICH IS OF COURSE BULLSHIT.

Arizona's smuggling law was passed as lawmakers responded to voter frustration over the state's position as the nation's then-busiest immigrant smuggling hub. The smuggling law had been used frequently in Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio's trademark immigration efforts, though the courts have curbed his immigration powers over the 17 last months.

* WHAT AMERICA NEEDS IS MORE JOE ARPAIOS AND FEWER SUSAN BOLTONS.