Monthly Archives: February 2011

Michael Totten interview here with Paul Berman, author of Flight of the Intellectuals, which I read and recommend to better under the history of militant Islam and why western “intellectuals” have basically left the building on the subject by anointing the wrong individuals (chief among them Tariq Ramadan, grandson of the founder of the Muslim Brotherhood) as the moderate Muslim Jesus-figure who will lead the world’s 1.5 billion Muslims into peaceful coexistence with everyone else. Excerpts below:

MJT: [Tariq Ramadan (grandson of the founder of the Muslim brotherhood)] has his defenders, and they’re aware of you and some of the others whom you quote in your book who are critical of him, but they don’t see what the big deal is. They don’t seem to think there’s much there there. Can you give us the short version of your argument?

Paul Berman: He has different kinds of defenders. Some of those people are his own fans or followers. But he also has defenders in the Western liberal press who are not themselves Muslims and certainly have no relation to the Islamist political movement.

The Western liberals, some of them, defend Ramadan for two reasons. If you listen to Ramadan for fifteen minutes, you will learn that he says all the right things, whatever a liberal-minded person would want such a man to say.

MJT: He does.

Paul Berman: He’s against bigotry, he’s against anti-Semitism, he’s against terrorism, he’s for the rights of women, he’s in favor of democratic liberties, he’s for a tolerant and multi-religious society ruled ultimately by secular values. He’s for science, learning, and enlightenment. He’s in favor of every possible good thing. There isn’t a single objectionable point in the first fifteen minutes of his presentation.

MJT: Yes.

Paul Berman: Unfortunately, the sixteenth minute arrives, and, if you are still paying attention, you learn that he wants us to revere the most vicious and reactionary of Islamist sheikhs — the people who promote violence, bigotry, totalitarianism, and terror. The sixteenth minute is not good. The liberal quality of his thinking falls apart entirely.

However, his liberal admirers in the Western press stop paying attention in the fifteenth minute, and they rush to acclaim him. They do it by mistake. That’s one reason.

But they are motivated also by something else. I think a lot of people without Muslim backgrounds have a hard time imagining how vast and complex and huge and finally ordinary the Muslim world is. There are a billion and a half Muslims, and they do have more than one opinion. But I think a lot of journalists and intellectuals whose experiences are mostly European or Western somehow end up imagining that the whole of Islam constitutes a single thing. They imagine that some single terrible error has occurred within Islam. And they imagine that the single terrible error is going to be undone and corrected by a single messianic figure. So they go about surveying the horizon looking for the grand good guy, the single person who is going to rescue us from the single terrible error.

On this basis, we have ended up with a lot of liberal-minded journalists who proclaim themselves to be the enemies of racism and bigotry, and who engage, even so, in the worst sort of stereotyping of a vast portion of mankind, in their enthusiastic quest for the great Muslim hope. These people hear the first fifteen minutes of Tariq Ramadan’s presentation, they leap from their seats and they say, “There he is. We found him.” And they rush into print to proclaim the good news.

Very interesting bit here:

MJT: You provided some examples in your book, and I’ve some experience with this myself. I was in Beirut when the Syrian military was finally thrown out by a million citizens taking to the streets, and the whole thing was dismissed by some people in the West as a right-wing Christian Gucci revolution.

Beirut, Lebanon, March 14, 2005

Paul Berman: Yes.

MJT: It was absolutely appalling, and I will never forget it. To this day I get hate mail from these kinds of people when I write about Lebanon.

Paul Berman: It really is something remarkable. I can understand it intellectually, but not emotionally. It comes from some old and very unattractive currents in Western thought that we can see over the course of the 20th century.

Remember, a lot of people despised the Soviet dissidents, too.

MJT: Right. What do you think causes this? I think I have it mostly figured out, but I still feel like I’m missing something.

Paul Berman: Well, I don’t have it entirely figured out either. [Laughs.] But I note it. In regard to the Soviet dissidents of the past, at least nowadays there is a consensus of opinion that, yes, the dissidents were correct and we should have listened to them. So why didn’t we? When I say “we,” I mean the intellectual community as a whole in the Western countries. And it’s for a whole set of reasons.

An outright sympathy for communism and the Soviet Union itself was only one of those reasons. This only accounted for one set of people.

There were other people who dismissed the dissidents for what you might call conservative reasons. They wanted to assume the Slavic world was hopelessly steeped in traditions of autocracy and ignorance and habits of obedience and deference — the traditions of tsarism. They could see very well that communism in the Soviet Union had replicated the whole tsarist system, in a new version. There was a leader at the top whose rule was uncontestable. There were the masses at the bottom who had to proclaim the wisdom of the leader at the top. And a lot of people looked at this and said, yes, this is what the Slavic world is supposed to be. This is the authentic thing. Slavs are inherently inferior to Westerners. They aren’t capable of being free people. They aren’t capable of thinking for themselves.

So when the dissidents rushed out and told us that the Soviet Union is crushing individual liberty or doing other oppressive things, our response to them was to pat them on the head and say, well, it’s nice that you got out, and you are welcome to stay, but you’re not talking about the real world. The real world is one where Slavs are destined to remain forever victims of oppressive tyrants, and this is because Slavs enjoy being victims, so we’re not going to take people like you, the dissidents, all that seriously.

The logic behind that kind of thinking is very appealing, to some people. It pictures a world that is dominated by cultures that we like to regard as authentic — cultures with unchanging deep qualities that go back thousands of years, and may be rich with cultural jewels, but will never produce anything more progressive and will certainly never embrace the kinds of freedoms and advantages and dynamism that we celebrate in our own culture. So that’s one idea.

Then there’s another idea that appeals to many people, which is based not on our own feeling of superiority, but on our own inferiority. We look at ourselves in the Western countries and we say that, if we are rich, relatively speaking, as a society, it is because we have plundered our wealth from other people. Our wealth is a sign of our guilt. If we are powerful, compared with the rest of the world, it is because we treat people in other parts of the world in oppressive and morally objectionable ways. Our privileged position in the world is actually a sign of how racist we are and how imperialistic and exploitative we are. All the wonderful successes of our society are actually the signs of how morally inferior we are, and we have much to regret and feel guilty about. So when we look at the world, we should look at it in a spirit of humility and remorse, and we should recognize that other people have been unfairly treated.

We should recognize the superiority of those other people over ourselves. Money-wise, we may be richer. But, morally, the other people are richer. And so, we should despise ourselves, and we should love the other people — the people who possess qualities so superior to our own as barely to be human. And then, filled with those very peculiar ideas, we set about looking for messianic figures who might express the superior culture of the other people, and might lead the human race to a higher stage of development. And if someone objects to this analysis, we say, oh, we inferior Westerners are incapable of understanding the mysterious thought-patterns of those other people, so who are you to judge?

MJT: I think you have it pretty well worked out.

Paul Berman: I assure you, I don’t.

MJT: This all sounds right to me. You just described two very different, even opposite tendencies, one which you’ve described as conservative, the other which could only be described as leftist. Lately, though, it seems what you describe as the conservative view of the Slavic world is now, in some ways, a left-wing view of the Arab world.

Some of the pics via nsfw Dockera.

Starts off with his resume and gets right into discussing his common sense, business approach to Constitutionally limited, fiscally accountable government. Then, he explains the evidence and logic he bases his policy positions on. This is probably the best, and certainly the most passionate, speech I’ve ever seen Gary Johnson make.

Via Fulminations Against Stupidity contributor (aka the smartest discussion group on Facebook) Steve Ortman, here’s a Michael Crichton lecture from 2003 that points out the impossibility of knowing what problems humans will face in 100 years and draws links between a slew of unscientific offerings from the Drake Equation to second hand smoke to nuclear winter to the ‘Population Bomb’ to … global warming. Short excerpt below:

Finally, I would remind you to notice where the claim of consensus is invoked. Consensus is invoked only in situations where the science is not solid enough.

Nobody says the consensus of scientists agrees that E=mc2. Nobody says the consensus is that the sun is 93 million miles away. It would never occur to anyone to speak that way.

Word.

Watch the video and weep. At least the social conservatives and moral crusaders admit, more or less, that they carry on – no zealously prosecute – the war on drugs in spite of it’s disastrous (and at this point seemingly intended) consequences. They believe drugs are really really bad (as opposed to alcohol, which they don’t regard (anymore) as really really bad) and that the natural, civil rights once secured to Americans by the Constitution, and for which millions of Americans have perished in battles near and far, do not include the right to voluntarily produce, distribute, or consume, such substances as marijuana, notwithstanding that a long, noteworthy list of American heroes, including such notable figures as George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, and Abraham Lincoln, endorsed, produced, and consumed marijuana because they found it useful and beneficial.

Republicans, thy name is hypocrisy. When you figure that out and begin consistently applying your own purported philosophy to your current partisan and ideological beliefs you’ll catch up to what Gary Johnson has been saying all along.

By contrast, Hillary Clinton’s basis for opposing the war on drugs is based on sheer, utter ignorance, or political self-interest (see below). She thinks America can’t end the war on drugs because there’s “too much money in it.” As if the deleterious consequences of the war on drugs, most notably among them the Fallujah-like levels of violence throughout the Americas (and most prominently on the US-Mexico border), result from anything other than federal prohibition of the production and distribution of once legal substances for which there is great (and logical) demand coupled with an unnerving willingness by the United States to prosecute, with paramilitary and at times actual military forces, a prohibition offensive tantamount to an actual war.

The time-honored cycle of government produced state-on-citizen warfare is as follows. Government marginalizes and prohibits the production and sale of once-legal products, then hangs warrants on the necks of businesspeople who yet supply them, making them pirates. Violence ensues as pirates work to preserve their liberty. Since prison (or worse) is already assured, pirates have great incentive to arm themselves and combat the state, which requires money. Fortunately for them, there is a great deal of money to earn in the black market government prohibition created. Like all wars, there’s much money to be made on both sides.

(Note: The Somalians, and others, attacking ships off of the Horn of Africa are hyenas, not pirates. Pirates are businesspeople whose trade has been marginalized or prohibited by the State, almost always to benefit controlling political interests. Hyenas scavenge by force.)

The war on drugs is basically about shooting the messenger. Hillary, if you really believe there’s “too much money” in drugs then attack the source. Retroactively imprison every person whom the government learns has consumed drugs, or at least poison their records with misdemeanor drug possession charges. Start at the top, with President Obama, toss in former Presidents Bush and Clinton, and work down from there.

Or did Hillary refer to the “money” involved in the prosecution of the war on drugs? There’s certainly a lot of money there. Like they say, follow the money. You’ll find who really supports the war on drugs. The war on drugs is a prime example of a bi-partisan consensus amongst the political class to utilize the immutable force of government to benefit controlling interests. Social conservative controlling interests support the war on drugs as a means to achieve what they believe is a moral society. Political interests, among them prisons, courts, police, homeland “security,” DEA, immigration, border control, paramilitary, and the private and public social and business interests that support them, throw their weight behind candidates who promise to continue if not ramp up the war on drugs. Witness the 2009 Democrat Congress expanding Bush’s disastrous Merida Initiative. Yeah, there’s too much money in it all right.

Hillary statement indicates she’s either economically illiterate, dishonest, or brutally honest. Reason’s below video was gracious enough to excuse her seemingly ignorant statement due to jetlag. Personally I think Hillary was being honest. Translation: “We can’t end the war on drugs, it’s a fucking goldmine for a multitude of domestic and foreign political interests that you have only scratched the surface of. Don’t you know how this game works?”

By P.J. O’Rourke. Excerpts of this excellent article below:

[L]iberals are opposed to violence, which is very high-minded of them. Guns are a source of violence in America. Guns are not, however, the principal source. Young men are the principal source of violence in America. This is why it’s only a matter of time before liberals—being opposed to violence—propose young man control. This will entail:

• A thoroughgoing background check of criminal record and mental health status to be required before anyone is allowed to be a young man. A national masculine immaturity database will be created.

• A longer young man waiting period. The current waiting period of between 14 and 18 years (varying according to state laws) will be extended and made uniform nationwide so that the young are not legally men until 40. This will help prevent impulsive use of manhood by youths.

• The banning of concealed young men, especially if they are concealed behind Tea Party protest placards or anonymous antigovernment Internet postings. Likewise, sawed-off young men who tend to be more aggressive than their taller contemporaries; rapid-fire young men who talk back to teachers, guidance counselors, and other role model adults, and young men of the “fully automatic” type, who never need to be reminded to study, help with housework, or volunteer in their communities, and who seem so well adjusted until they plant a bomb in their high school.

• The removal from the market of certain varieties of ammunition for young men. For example, the Grand Theft Auto video game and beer.

• Federal registration of all young men. In fact, they already are registered. However, the problem with the current Selective Service system is that if young men are drafted, they’re given a gun…s

Young men are necessary, at times, even in the most progressive society. But no one can deny that young men need supervision and regulatory oversight. A move to strengthen young man control should not be seen as an attempt to curtail the use of young men for legitimate sporting or recreational purposes. America has a long-established tradition of being young and a man. Even Harry Reid is reputed to have once been both. Passage of sensible young man control laws will bring out the best aspects of this part of our national heritage.

In the future, when we Americans see a group of hulking, steroid-pumped, tattooed young men swaggering toward us on a lonely street, we will be able to feel secure in the knowledge that they are federally licensed and certified.

Because that’ll fix everything! And create government jobs! (Not to mention jobs saved!) It’s stimulus, see? Get with the program.

Which is to say, Obama is a never ending source of cannon fodder for Matt Drudge.

Link here. Also, Drudge’s avatar for his personal Twitter account has the following picture:

This man presides over the disastrous war on drugs. Yeah, it’s Obama. Look, I don’t mean to single out Obama for face-slap hypocrisy on drugs. The last two presidents also admitted drug use. And like Obama, neither Clinton nor Bush volunteered for retroactive prison time or to have their respective records poisoned with victimless misdemeanor crimes (which is the unfortunate plight of tens of millions of other Americans). But Obama’s the president right now, and winding down the Merida Initiative, which like previous similar initiatives in the war on drugs has spawned much violence and death, was in his (and the 2009 Democrat controlled Congress’) grasp, so he takes the heat right now. Furthermore, Candidate Obama made a joke about inhaling marijuana (“that was the point”) while President Obama’s Justice Department ramps up the prosecution of federal marijuana law, notwithstanding campaign promises to the contrary. Yet no one seems to give a damn. Let the record reflect that DuelingBarstools gives a damn.

Mahalo nui loa (that’s thank you very much) to Instapundit aka law Prof. Glenn Reynolds for linking to my law review article Who is Hawaiian, What Begets Federal Recognition, and How Much Blood Matters on his well trafficked website. Abstract below:

The Akaka bill proposes to federally recognize a Hawaiian governing entity similar to those of federally recognized Indian tribes. As the Akaka bill will institutionalize a political difference between Hawaiians and non-Hawaiians, who is Hawaiian is a timely, and controversial, issue. Also controversial is whether Congress possesses the authority to federally recognize a Hawaiian governing entity. This article addresses three questions that probe the heart of the controversy surrounding the Akaka bill: who is Hawaiian, what begets federal recognition, and how much blood matters. After analyzing relevant Indian jurisprudence, this article demonstrates that political history, not indegeneity, begets federal recognition. As such, it is the political-historical, not racial, definition of Hawaiian that is legally significant to the Akaka bill. Since, however, the Akaka bill utilizes an ethnic Hawaiian blood eligibility criterion, another important question – and one Justice Breyer raised in Rice v. Cayetano – is how much blood is necessary to distinguish ideological self-identification from legitimate racial identity. To the extent racial preferences may coexist with the equal protection components of the Constitution, this article contends that a preponderance of preferred blood is the logical quantum, but a fifty percent requirement is the most practicable.

Last March I wrote about the public whipping the federal government was giving Toyota:

Whenever the mainstream media or government make a concerted effort to make a mountain out of what no one is sure isn’t still a molehill I’m skeptical.  When it appears the mainstream media and government collude to both push the same viewpoint I’m even more skeptical. And when government has a vested financial and political interest in viewpoint they’re pushing my tendency is to go contrarian.

With regard to the Toyota situation, government has a significant vested interest (60% stake) in General Motors, a one of Toyota’s primary competitors.  As such, government possesses a significant financial interest in diminishing Toyota’s brand value and market share, since doing so gives GM a competitive advantage. Moreover, the current Congress and administration possess a strong political interest in boosting GM’s stock and diminishing Toyota’s stock - GM’s workers are heavily unionized and located mostly in blue states while Toyota’s US workers are not unionized, and located largely in red states.

This isn’t to say there is no plausible basis (see here, too) for the Toyota recall, or Congress calling hearings on the matter.  Indeed, last week I drove past the location of a deadly, throttle-gone-wild Toyota crash near Sante, San Diego.  But it is to say that government’s monetary and political interests in seeing Toyota diminished raises an extraordinary conflict of interest.

Lo and behold, the federal government has finally owned up to the fact that it had no factual basis for its public shaming of Toyota. Link via the Cato Institute, who was also rightly skeptical of the government’s haranguing of Toyota:

The Obama administration’s investigation into Toyota safety problems has found no electronic flaws to account for reports of sudden, unintentional acceleration and other safety problems. …
“We enlisted the best and brightest engineers to study Toyota’s electronics systems and the verdict is in. There is no electronic-based cause for unintended acceleration in Toyotas,” Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood said in a statement.

How much Toyota shareholder value did the federal government vanquish? Good government is less government. Fact.

GTFO, by the way, stands for get the fuck out. Which is what government needs to do with regard to the economy. Cut the crony corporatism bullshit, Obama. Please? Here’s Gary Johnson laying it down:

A PROGRAM FOR REAL JOB CREATION

Governor Gary Johnson

The economic turmoil of recent years has many victims.  None, however, have been more devastated than the millions of Americans who have lost jobs and those who are today still unable to find work.

Washington’s response to the jobs crisis has largely consisted of spending hundreds of billions of Federal dollars – mostly borrowed – to “stimulate” the economy.  Not surprisingly, this effort to use government growth to create private sector employment has not worked.  To the contrary, this unprecedented expansion of government has simply exacerbated the problem.

Real and lasting job growth in the United States will only occur by way of a private sector that is allowed to recover and prosper in a policy environment of lower government debt, greater available capital, and less interference in the marketplace.

To achieve real job growth, the Administration and Congress must pursue policies that adhere to two fundamental guiding principles.  First, rather than applying short-term fixes, such as so-called stimulus, that have long-term negative consequences, policies should be implemented that make sense in the long run as well as the near term.  Second, policies should reflect the reality that true job growth will only be produced by improving economic productivity.

Consistent with those principles, the following steps will produce real jobs for Americans:

1. Balance the Budget Now

The federal debt and continuing deficit spending are clearly unsustainable, due largely to entitlements.  That reality stands squarely in the way of investment capital that could and would fuel growth and produce jobs.  Likewise, excessive spending – including much of the recent “stimulus” programs, farm subsidies, earmarks and more — requires added taxation.  Added taxation shifts dollars from productive to unproductive activities, and jobs are lost.

The same is true of most of Europe, which, combined with the inherent investment risks in developing countries, creates an opportunity for the U.S. to get its house in order and once again become the world’s safe haven for investment.  Bringing entitlements under control and dramatically reducing wasteful spending will result in capital flowing into the system –generating greater investment and greater employment.

2. Reform the Tax Code

The current U.S. tax system is rife with innumerable loopholes, deductions and exemptions; thus, it requires higher tax rates to raise sufficient revenues.  Eliminating those features will allow a broader tax base paying lower rates to generate the same revenues.  The resulting simpler system will avoid artificial distortions in the marketplace and allow resources to be shifted to job-creating investment and growth.

3. Reduce Regulation

Rules and regulations imposed on businesses are enormous disincentives to increased employment.  Obviously, some regulation is necessary; however, much of what government piles on businesses today has little common-sense justification.  Also, excessive regulation perversely hampers the entrepreneur and small business. Eliminating unnecessary and counter-productive regulations will facilitate entrepreneurship and free small businesses – the best job creators we have – to compete on a level playing field.

4. Eliminate the Corporate Income Tax

It is no mystery that many businesses can and will gravitate toward countries with lower taxes.  Increasingly, the U.S. corporate tax burden exceeds that in many modern, developed countries.  The inevitable result is business — and jobs — shifting overseas.  Eliminating the corporate income tax will increase investment within the U.S. and boost employment.  Any impact on the Federal deficit will be slight and short-lived, as greater corporate activity and employment generates increased tax revenues.

5. Allow States to Establish Minimum Wage Rates

In reality, the minimum wage is a crude instrument for redistributing income.  While it raises the wages for some, it causes others to have no wages at all.  A uniform, federally mandated minimum wage rate distorts regional job markets and needs, and ignores differences in living costs.  The majority of states already have minimum wage laws and rates in place, with some being higher than the Federal rate, some lower, and many the same.  A few states have no minimum wage separate from the Federal mandate.  Allowing these states’ minimum wages to function without Federal interference will reduce distortions and allow the creation of more jobs.

6. Repeal Davis-Bacon

The Davis-Bacon law forces Federal construction projects to pay “prevailing wages”, raising costs and reducing the number of people who are employed to work on those projects.  Repealing it will better align those projects with the labor and wage rates actually required to do them.  The result will be more jobs.

7. Stop Extending Unemployment Insurance Benefits

While the compassionate argument for extending unemployment benefits can be compelling, that near-term compassion must be weighed against the larger issue of creating an incentive for people to remain unemployed.  As the economy shows signs of recovery, further extensions and their distortions of the job market should be avoided.

by Alex Fidel

A new law is being proposed to make sharing TSA body scanner images a crime, AOL reports.

Those found guilty of violating the Security Screening Confidential Data Privacy Act, legislation being co-sponsored by Democratic Sens. Charles Schumer of New York and Ben Nelson of Nebraska, could spend up to a year in prison and be fined up to $100,000.

The disconnect here is just jaw-dropping. They are still searching us without probable cause; treating us as guilty before proven innocent. Privacy violated is privacy violated regardless of whether it is shared or not. We need to abolish the Dept. of Homeland Security and the TSA. Anything short of that is a cocktease, or rather, the audacity of grope.

Great article on Taki’s Mag: Google as Fat Elvis. You should read the whole thing (long excerpt below). The article fleshes out something Occimatic pointed out to me a while ago, which is that Google is the trustafarian in a ski resort town who sells marijuana below market value because he believes marijuana should be (more) available to everyone. He can do this because he’s rich. Yet his seeming generosity displaces other suppliers of marijuana, greatly diminishing or literally putting out of business those growers and sellers who don’t know him or choose not to deal with him (and of course he can’t deal with everyone). Due to less production and distribution there’s soon less marijuana available, thus driving up the price of marijuana for everyone – subsidy notwithstanding. At a certain price point the trustafarian is no longer willing to subsidize other people’s consumption, so he purchases and hoards a large supply of marijuana for personal consumption (obtaining a discount price, naturally). Everyone else is shit out of luck – pay more or don’t smoke. That marijuana is now less available and more expensive than before his subsidy leads him to believe that his subsidy was the final barrier between the forces of economic good (subsidy) and evil (capitalism, just ask Michael Moore). He concludes that capitalism is bad, and that the only solution to making marijuana cheaper is endless subsidy (naturally coming from someone other than him, he’s out of subsidy money in the same way progressives calling for higher taxes take advantage of tax breaks, deductions, and loopholes, and don’t make annual, voluntary donations to the US treasury, which accepts such donations). This scenario, not fiction unfortunately, plays out every day in wealthy private schools (with minority populations of working folk) and ski resort towns populated by trustafarians and the service-sector working class who migrate there each winter to work. Trustafarians’ good intentions make it harder for the non-wealthy to get high, as well as it making it more difficult for the non-rich to enter the marijuana marketplace to grow, innovate, or distribute. That’s basically Google.

Google has a simple approach to business development. If there is an online business somewhere which looks promising, interesting, or nifty, Google will either buy it outright or create a lousy knockoff product, often effectively destroying the competition. What’s weird is that Google doesn’t make any money from these “other businesses”—12 years after their incorporation and six years after their IPO, they still make all their money from selling ads associated with search terms. Sure, they have email, Google Docs, Google Shopping, Blogger, their own programming language, YouTube, mapping software, a coming ripoff of pandora.com’s music service, a photo-sharing service, Orwellian Panopticon and medical-data services, a browser, an ersatz PayPal which nobody uses, a clone of Yahoo!‘s financial service, a cell-phone OS, Orkut (their version of Friendster/Facebook), and lately a Groupon ripoff, but they can’t figure out how to make money from any of these products. They only make money selling ads, same as they always did. Sure, Google has to grow, and it’s hard for them to grow much more in selling ads: They already own a substantial share of the world’s advertising market. For the last 12 years, they have certainly taken over some new markets, but they have failed to monetize any of them.

Imagine if I was CEO of an unregulated electric utility. I make a lot of money selling electricity to my captive audience. So I use my money to buy DVD-player companies, electric-oven companies, and electric-car companies, all ostensibly to drive up demand for my electricity. In the process I ruin the industries who can’t compete with my monopoly, which is giving these things away at below-market costs. Would this be good for human progress? This is what Google wants you and their shareholders to believe. Destroying other companies or absorbing them into the collective is supposed to be seen as some kind of social good—or even something good for the shareholders. If there were any kind of shareholder activism in a company such as Google, this kind of goofing off would not be allowed. But of course, Google’s shareholders are a bunch of hysterical fanboys who don’t understand what “badly managed company” means. If they noticed, they’d have a greater percentage of Google’s head count working on the core business (aka, Search) and they’d have less of the kitchen-sink approach that did Yahoo! so much good.

A developing scandal is Google’s war on ” content farms,” websites which generate content that people want to view. A content farm is based on the idea that if lots of people want the information, you can serve them an ad and make money for your content. More or less, this is a capitalistic version of Wikipedia. I don’t know how useful “actual” content farms such as eHow are, but when I have a regular-Joe type of question, it’s usually one of these which answers it. I suppose there may be really obnoxious ones out there, but they should be automagically removed from any sane search algorithm already. The thing is, nobody is really sure how the new content-farm algorithm will play out. Will the new algorithm destroy competitor IPOs’ value? Will it ruin Internet treasure cracked.com? Is Alex Jones right that this algorithm change will effectively destroy alternative media’s page rank? Time will tell. The fact that people are actually worrying about this indicates that Google’s power reminds folks of an evil corporation.

Google ritually purifies themselves with the holy water of “open-source” software and nebulous contributions to human knowledge such as scanning all books into their search engine. The funny thing is, I use open-source stuff written by Amazon, Yahoo!, and even unfashionably evil companies such as AT&T and NEC all the time, but I have yet to find a Google open-source project which was actually useful for anything. Microsoft has also digitized many books which it also gives away, and it never gets credit for it. Either way, I don’t buy Google’s holy-Joe act. Google’s acquisitions and R&D work remind me of the wealthy brat in the Richard Pryor/Jackie Gleason vehicle, The Toy. They didn’t need any of these things to make their business better; they just wanted these toys because other people had them. If Google wants to actually do some good in the world (and for their shareholders), it would kill all those 20% time goof-off projects, put those people to work making the search features perform better, and fund an honest R&D lab the way AT&T did back when they had a monopoly over America’s networks. Bell Labs make human life better in countless ways that Google doesn’t. The Amazon and PayPal guys have decided to do just this with their wealth: They’re funding private space exploration. What do we get from Google? We get “Fat Elvis” features such as Google Buzz.

PayPal’s founder is backing the Seasteading Institute, who’s mission is furthering the establishment and growth of permanent, autonomous ocean communities, enabling innovation with new political and social systems. By contrast, my least favorite thing about gmail was having Buzz – easily the worst social network on the Internet – forced onto my email interface.

Maybe when Google dies on the toilet while trying to squeeze out a worthwhile software program, we will be nostalgic for the way they once were. Maybe we’ll use Google impersonators for searching. In the meanwhile, here, have some Quaaludes, guys.

DuelingBarstools send a heartfelt thank you to the 26 Republicans and the 122 Democrats who voted against extending surveillance authorities in the original Patriot Act. To the rest of you House schmucks, today you traded the chance to increase individual liberty for a false illusion of security. Your ignominious place in history is assured. How does that taste? Please take John Adams’ advice literally:

Crouch down and lick the hand that feeds you. May your chains rest lightly upon you and may posterity forget that you were our countrymen.

Here’s the House Republicans who bucked the GOP party line and voted for liberty. Reps. Justin Amash (Mich.), Roscoe Bartlett (Md.), Rob Bishop (Utah), Paul Broun (Ga.), John Campbell (Calif.), John Duncan (Tenn.), Mike Fitzpatrick (Pa.), Chris Gibson (N.Y.), Tom Graves (Ga.), Dean Heller (Nev.), Randy Hultgren (Ill.), Tim Johnson (Ill.), Walter Jones (N.C.), Jack Kingston (Ga.), Raul Labrador (Idaho), Connie Mack (Fla.), Kenny Marchant (Texas), Tom McClintock (Calif.), Ron Paul (Texas), Denny Rehberg (Mont.), Phil Roe (Tenn.), Dana Rohrabacher (Calif.), Bobby Schilling (Ill.), David Schweikert (Ariz.), Rob Woodall (Ga.), and Don Young (Alaska).

“Asserting your Constitutional rights is not a trick in any way,” says Steve Silverman of the Flex Your Rights Foundation. “What the police officers do is a trick.”

Silverman started Flex Your Rights in 2002 after spending years working with college students who lost scholarships because of minor drug busts. Since then the organization has produced two popular videos, Busted: The Citizen’s Guide to Surviving Police Encounters and 10 Rules For Dealing with the Police, both of which have millions of views on YouTube and have been screened in classrooms and communities around the country.

Silverman sat down with Reason.tv’s Tim Cavanaugh to discuss the best tactics to employ during a police encounter and to explain why it is in your best interest to refuse to consent to a search, even if you have nothing to hide.

Good read here from the NRO (via Instapundit). My first reaction a few months ago to news of favored unions and big business receiving waivers from Obamacare’s provisions was Bullshit. As in:

It’s telling that public sector labor unions – whose platinum, lifelong health care programs are assured by taxes and municipal bonds, as opposed to directly out of pocket like other employers and individuals – want out of Obamacare due to cost increases and other inefficiencies. Here’s an excerpt of an excellent article by a law professor at Columbia University explaining the sordid history of monarchs and executives granting unequal treatment under law, as well as why such waivers have no justification under the United States’ Constitution.

Even more strikingly, no American constitution, state or federal, allowed dispensation, let alone its delegation. Nor should this be a surprise. The power to dispense with the laws had no place in a constitution that divided the active power of government into executive and legislative powers. The dispensing power was not a power to make laws, nor even a power to repeal laws, but rather a power to relieve individuals of their obligation under a law that remained in effect. It thus was a power exercised not through and under the law, but above it.

Of course, after a violation of a statute, the executive could refrain from prosecuting the offender or even pardon him. Until the legislature changed the law, however, neither the legislature nor the executive could simply tell a favored person that he was not bound by it.

Waivers can be used for good purposes. But since the time of Matthew Paris, they have been recognized as a power above the law — a power used by government to co-opt powerful constituencies by freeing them from the law. Like old English kings, the current administration is claiming such a power to decide that some people do not have to follow the law. This is dangerous, above the law, and unauthorized by the Constitution.

Also, here’s Indiana Gov. Mitch Daniels (and likely candidate in GOP 2012 primary) explaining why Obamacare is a bad deal for states.

Fuck yourselves. Please let the door hit you on the way out. Also, please see below (adapted from Freedom Animates Me) for why I bid you good riddance:

The problem with [Social Conservatives] is that [their] limiting principles… are a grab-bag of affection for big-government, social engineering, economic intervention, and corporatism, all buttressed by mega-church morals that effectively trump equal treatment, logic, and science.  In short, [Social Conservatives] are conservative, which I like, but [their] limiting principles too often conflict with individual freedom.

Within my lifetime ‘conservatism’ will be defined by the preservation of individual freedom, and nothing more. You’ll know that day is here when Jack Hunter, not Rush Limbaugh, rules the airways, and Judge Napolitano, not O’Reilly, has the prime slot on Fox.

You’ve likely heard already (and, like me, probably didn’t care) that AOL bought HuffPo. I’ve never been to AOL’s website in my life, and I rarely go to HuffPo. I’m only posting about this because a few comments on the article discussing AOL’s purchase are pretty funny, and set me on a rant.

Arianna will be another rich person benefiting for herself through Capitalism; and will continue to keep her advantage alive by advocating Socialism for everyone else.

–

In keeping with President Obama’s speech today, I’m sure Arianna will be sharing all the proceeds of this transaction with HP employees and contributors. Sharing the profits only seems fair.

[Updated - Changed the title to better reflect what the Reason video discusses, which is that that thinking-drinkers of the revolutionary era, like modern drunkards such as el DuelingBarstool, have an important if not disproportionately large effect on freedom, if for no other reason than obscene quantities of passion and a willingness for hurling it (along with their / our opinions) wherever necessary. So, I salute those DuelingBarstools before me (rather than appearing to take credit, which the former title of this post (the DuelingBarstools Effect) appeared (at least in hindsight) to do.]

Another Gem from Reason: Who is responsible for America’s culture of freedom?

Much credit is given to the Founding Fathers who crafted the Constitution, but what about the drunkards who threw horse manure at British soldiers?

Historian Thaddeus Russell explores the taboo side of America’s fight for freedom in his new book, A Renegade History of the United States . Russell’s list of heroes of freedom includes pub owners, prostitutes, and sexually liberated pirates.

“People who existed and operated purely for their own pleasures and interests expanded freedoms for all of us, says Russell. “They broke open American culture in ways that most of us—not all of us—value if not cherish today.”

Approximately 10:00 minutes.

Interview by Ted Balaker. Shot by Zach Weissmueller, Alex Manning and Paul Detrick. Edited by Detrick.

The following is a speech titled Preserving Religious Freedom given Elder Dallin Oaks. By way of background, Dallin Oaks is an apostle in the LDS church.  He is a graduate of the University of Chicago Law School, former President of Brigham Young University and former Justice on the Utah Supreme Court. He was rumored to be on the list of persons potentially considered for the United States Supreme Court (around the time of O’Connor/Reagan).

Preserving Religious Freedom

I am here to speak of the state of religious freedom in the United States, why it seems to be diminishing, and what can be done about it.

Although I will refer briefly to some implications of the Proposition 8 controversy and its constitutional arguments, I am not here to participate in the debate on the desirability or effects of same-sex marriage. I am here to contend for religious freedom. I am here to describe fundamental principles that I hope will be meaningful for decades to come.

I believe you will find no unique Mormon doctrine in what I say. My sources are law and secular history. I will quote the words of Catholic, Evangelical Christian, and Jewish leaders, among others. I am convinced that on this issue what all believers have in common is far more important than their differences. We must unite to strengthen our freedom to teach and exercise what we have in common, as well as our very real differences in religious doctrine.

I.

I begin with a truth that is increasingly challenged: Religious teachings and religious organizations are valuable and important to our free society and therefore deserving of special legal protection. I will cite a few examples.

Our nation’s inimitable private sector of charitable works originated and is still furthered most significantly by religious impulses and religious organizations. I refer to such charities as schools and higher education, hospitals, and care for the poor, where religiously motivated persons contribute personal service and financial support of great value to our citizens. Our nation’s incredible generosity in many forms of aid to other nations and their peoples are manifestations of our common religious faith that all peoples are children of God. Religious beliefs instill patterns of altruistic behavior.

Many of the great moral advances in Western society have been motivated by religious principles and moved through the public square by pulpit-preaching. The abolition of the slave trade in England and the Emancipation Proclamation in the United States are notable illustrations. These revolutionary steps were not motivated and moved by secular ethics or coalitions of persons who believed in moral relativism. They were driven primarily by individuals who had a clear vision of what was morally right and what was morally wrong. In our time, the Civil Rights movement was, of course, inspired and furthered by religious leaders.

Religion also strengthens our nation in the matter of honesty and integrity. Modern science and technology have given us remarkable devices, but we are frequently reminded that their operation in our economic system and the resulting prosperity of our nation rest on the honesty of the men and women who use them.  Americans’ honesty is also reflected in our public servants’ remarkable resistance to official corruption. These standards and practices of honesty and integrity rest, ultimately, on our ideas of right and wrong, which, for most of us, are grounded in principles of religion and the teachings of religious leaders.

Our society is not held together just by law and its enforcement, but most importantly by voluntary obedience to the unenforceable and by widespread adherence to unwritten norms of right or righteous behavior. Religious belief in right and wrong is a vital influence to advocate and persuade such voluntary compliance by a large proportion of our citizens.¹ Others, of course, have a moral compass not expressly grounded in religion. John Adams relied on all of these when he wisely observed that

“we have no government armed with power capable of contending with human passions unbridled by morality and religion. Avarice, ambition, revenge, or gallantry, would break the strongest cords of our Constitution as a whale goes through a net. Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people.  It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.”²

Even the agnostic Oxford-educated British journalist Melanie Phillips admitted that

“one does not have to be a religious believer to grasp that the core values of Western Civilization are grounded in religion, and to be concerned that the erosion of religious observance therefore undermines those values and the ’secular ideas’ they reflect.”³

My final example of the importance of religion in our country concerns the origin of the Constitution. Its formation over 200 years ago was made possible by religious principles of human worth and dignity, and only those principles in the hearts of a majority of our diverse population can sustain that Constitution today.⁴ I submit that religious values and political realities are so inter-linked in the origin and perpetuation of this nation that we cannot lose the influence of religion in our public life without seriously jeopardizing our freedoms.

Read the whole thing.

The  Washington Post’s Mensa Invitational once again invited readers to take any word from the dictionary, alter it by adding, subtracting, or changing one letter, and supply a new definition.

Here are the winners:

1. Cashtration (n.):  The act of buying a house, which renders the subject financially impotent for an indefinite period of time.

2. Ignoranus: A person who’s both stupid and an asshole.

3. Intaxicaton:  Euphoria at getting a tax refund, which lasts until you realize it was your money to start with.

4. Reintarnation:  Coming back to life as a hillbilly.

5. Bozone (n.):  The substance surrounding stupid people that stops bright ideas from penetrating. The bozone layer, unfortunately, shows little sign of breaking down in the near future.

6. Foreploy: Any misrepresentation about yourself for the purpose of getting laid

7. Giraffiti:  Vandalism spray-painted very, very high.

8. Sarchasm: The gulf between the author of sarcastic wit and the person who doesn’t get it.

9. Inoculatte: To take coffee intravenously when you are running late.

10. Osteopornosis:  A degenerate disease. (This one got extra credit.)

11. Karmageddon:  It’s like, when everybody is sending off all these really bad vibes, right? And then, like, the Earth explodes and it’s like, a serious bummer.

12. Decafalon (n):  The grueling event of getting through the day consuming only things that are good for you.

13. Glibido: All talk and no action.

14. Dopeler Effect: The tendency of stupid ideas to seem smarter when they come at you rapidly.

15. Arachnoleptic  Fit (n.): The frantic dance performed just after you’ve accidentally walked through a spider web.

16. Beelzebug (n.): Satan in the form of a mosquito, that gets into your bedroom at three in the morning  and cannot be cast out.

17. Caterpallor (n.): The colour you turn after finding half a worm in the fruit you’re eating.

The  Washington Post has also published the winning submissions to its yearly contest, in which readers are asked to supply alternate meanings for common words.

And the winners  are:

1. Coffee, n. The  person upon whom one coughs.

2. Flabbergasted, adj.  Appalled by discovering how much weight one has gained.

3. Abdicate, v. To give up all hope of ever having a flat stomach.

4. Esplanade, v. To attempt an explanation while drunk.

5. Willy-nilly, adj.  Impotent.

6. Negligent, adj.  Absent mindedly answering the door when wearing only a nightgown.

7. Lymph, v. To walk with a lisp.

8. Gargoyle, n.  Olive-flavored mouthwash.

9. Flatulence, n.  Emergency vehicle that picks up someone who has been run over by a steamroller.

10. Balderdash, n. A rapidly receding hairline.

11. Testicle, n. A humorous question on an exam.

12. Rectitude, n. The formal, dignified bearing adopted by proctologists.

13. Pokemon, n. A Rastafarian proctologist.

14. Oyster, n. A person who sprinkles his conversation with Yiddishisms.

15. Frisbeetarianism, n. The belief that, after death, the soul flies up onto the roof and gets stuck there.

16. Circumvent, n. An opening in the front of boxer shorts worn by Jewish men.

by Alex Fidel

At 17, Jason Becker had already attained the status of guitar god. He had released a neo-classical progressive metal breakthrough album with Cacophony, a band he formed with ex-Megadeth guitarist Marty Friedman, called Speed Metal Symphony. While showing much musical dexterity, they also displayed an immense amount of feeling, many instances of Japanese style (Marty Friedman now lives in Japan), and ability to write catchy licks and listenable solos, setting themselves apart from the generic wash of shred guitarists who just seemed to play scales up and down without doing anything noteworthy with them. They both put Cacophony on hold to simultaneously record solo albums; Becker’s Perpetual Burn and Friedman’s Dragon’s Kiss. Once again, Becker displayed an ability to shred like no other, but also had a great deal of feeling, as can be heard in the first section of “Altitudes,” and his guest appearance on Friedman’s “Jewel.” He also demonstrated many uses of complex and odd progressive style licks, utilizing odd timing and unorthodox note/chord/scale/harmony choices.

They came back together for the second Cacophony album, Go Off! The instrumental title track demonstrated their ability to write crazy riffs, with the intro consisting of very complex syncopated phrasing, but the rest of the album is a bit more of an attempt to have better songwriting, and less showing off.

Cacophony then split ways when Jason tried out for David Lee Roth’s band, as Steve Vai, former Frank Zappa guitarist (Zappa called him his “little Italian virtuoso”), had just quit the band to pursue solo work. Jason then recorded a home demo of Van Halen’s “Hot For Teacher,” in which he threw in a few sweep-picking techniques as to ‘one-up’ Van Halen. Jason got the gig, and then they began work on Roth’s A Little Ain’t Enough.

About a week into rehearsals, Jason started to feel a numbness in one of his legs. It began to become a concern to him, so they went to a hospital and ran some tests. It turned out to be Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis (ALS), otherwise known as Lou Gehrig’s Disease. At only 19, and at the beginning of a journey into major rock stardom, Jason would start to lose his ability to move. He was able to finish recording the album, which went gold. He could not join the tour, as he was starting to feel weakness in his hands.

He then begun composing and recording what he could. He eventually moved to a keyboard; with both hands, then with only one. Once he could no longer lift his arms, his friend Mike Bemesderfer developed a motion sensor system, in which Jason would wear a visor with two devices on it, that detected motion, which moved a mouse on a keyboard. A device under his chin would be where he would use his mouth to click.

Once all the compositions were gathered, he hired musicians to play what he couldn’t record. Those and the songs he recorded before he lost his ability to play guitar were released in the album Perspective, the first album in music history to be released by a person with ALS.

Doctors told Jason he only had a few years to live, but Jason kept on keepin’ on. He eventually lost his ability to move his head, to breathe, and to speak. His father developed an eye geometry system, allowing Jason to communicate with eye movements.

He took a break from composing for a while, but then began to compose using his eye method to communicate ideas to a person. This resulted in three new tracks on a best of release, Collection. Guitarists who played on these new songs included Steve Vai, Marty Friedman, and Joe Satriani.

Nowadays, there is a documentary in the works, and this Spring, there will be an event at Slim’s in San Francisco, called Jason Becker’s Not Dead Yet Festival, where Jason Becker himself will be in attendance, and Joe Satriani and Richie Kotzen are among the musical acts performing. This will be on March 26th.

Jason’s set on reminding the world that he’s not dead yet!

Jason Becker links:

Official Site
Facebook
Jason Becker Movie
Jason Becker Movie IndieGoGo Fundraising page

See below a couple of mildly amusing pictures that are as old as the Internet, Jihad’s newest weapon of destruction, a mug specifically designed for cookies and milk (ie: super awesome), a necktie I can believe in, how Seagulls see themselves in mirrors, an Indian train, and a few random funny pics from DuelingBarstools constributor Occimatic.

by Alex Fidel

Check out John Dennis’ new site, the John Dennis Report/Freedom and Prosperity PAC.

It is rumored that he might run for Senate.

Of late I’ve been very impressed by the writing at the American Thinker, Taki’s Mag (in particular John Derbyshire), and Steve Sailer. Check them out in the Magna Cum Blogroll. Excerpt from an American Thinker article below:

When thirteen U.S. soldiers at Fort Hood, including a pregnant woman, were mowed down (and thirty more wounded) in cold blood, President Obama didn’t interrupt a Native American shout-out to renounce the horror.  When Obama finally did speak, he urged us not to jump to conclusions.  Since then, next to nothing has been said about the slaughter.  The fact that the murderer was a Muslim automatically disqualifies the soldiers from being “good victims.”

In contrast, during the recent, also horrific Tucson massacre, twenty people were injured and six killed by an apparently psychotic 22-year-old.  Given that the Fort Hood murders involved an internal jihad, doesn’t this incident pose a greater safety risk to this country than a lunatic in Tucson?  Consequently, shouldn’t Fort Hood have been dissected and analyzed for months on end?

However, since the politicos found a way to blame Tucson on conservatives, this latter atrocity has garnered much more publicity.  In fact, Obama presided over a huge memorial service for the families and survivors of Tucson.  No comparable event was held for the loved ones of Fort Hood.

The left divides the world into good and bad victims.  People who are viewed as part of an aggrieved group are “good victims.”  Those who suffer at the hands of  these protected groups are not afforded this same status.  In fact, “bad victims,” like the middle school teacher, as well as me, are made to feel responsible for being assaulted.  Good victims are showered with attention because they reinforce the leftist party line.

He’s here to do what he thinks is right. Rock on Rand!