More winning! And more winning!

Now here is some more excellent news.

Now here is some excellent news:

"More than 7,000 refugee applicants entered Canada in 2016 through land ports of entry from the United States, up 63 percent from the previous year, according to Canada Border Services Agency (CBSA)."

Just more winning courtesy of Donald Trump.

According to Reuters these hapless refugees are fleeing a "worsening climate of xenophobia".

Really odd language for a "news" story to use, don't you think?

 Courtesy of Merriam-Webster

Definition of xenophobia

1. :  fear and hatred of strangers or foreigners or of anything that is strange or foreign
   
   
   
   
   So, based on nothing more than their own prejudices, these self-righteous hacks proclaim us to be xenophobes, because every one knows we are a hateful bunch who discriminate against everyone who is not white.

Fake News?

On January 26 The Washington Post's Josh Rogin wrote this,

"Secretary of State Rex Tillerson’s job running the State Department just got considerably more difficult. The entire senior level of management officials resigned Wednesday, part of an ongoing mass exodus of senior Foreign Service officers who don’t want to stick around for the Trump era." (Emphasis added)

Yikes! What a catastrophe. Well, no, not quite a catastrophe, more like a big fat nothing burger. Just more of the same exaggeration, hysteria and misleading nonsense that Trump has inspired in the left.

Here, courtesy of Yousef Munayyer is the State Department's organizational chart:


The names circled in yellow are those who resigned. Looks like there are one or two high ranking State Department officials left, doesn't it?

"Whether Kennedy left on his own volition or was pushed out by the incoming Trump team is a matter of dispute inside the department." Really?

"The State Department said that the four officials had submitted their resignations at the start of the new administration, as is standard practice with all political appointees throughout the executive branch of the government."

Actually, this is just a reporter covering his rear. All political appointees tender their resignations at the end of a presidential term. Whether and when those resignations are accepted is a decision left up to the administration. The resignations were accepted. Routine, unless a Republican is President. In that case it is an unprecedented catastrophe.

"“It’s the single biggest simultaneous departure of institutional memory that anyone can remember, and that’s incredibly difficult to replicate,” said David Wade, who served as State Department chief of staff under Secretary of State John Kerry.

Maybe.

If these people had been doing their jobs properly they should have very well trained subordinates ready to step up. Shouldn't they?






The press release below explains the reality which is, business as usual. Do not take at face value a word you read about Republicans in the Washington Post or New York Times. Ever.

About That Travel "Ban"

As I read all the hysteria regarding the temporary ban on US entry for people (mostly Muslim) from seven countries with serious Islamic terror issues, I notice that those objecting most loudly are actually missing the point.

Some, like Charles C.W. Cooke, a writer at National Review, are green card holders. I think he is from England (I can't find the link to his piece on the subject, sorry.) He describes the excruciating process one must follow to get a green card. He is correct. I remember it well even though I went through it over thirty years ago.

The implication of his piece is that green card holders have been thoroughly vetted and enough is enough.

Here is the problem as I see it. The people being targeted are not from England or Canada (like me) but from wildly unstable places with very uncertain record keeping regimes and notoriously corrupt governments. Our government has, in my opinion, no credibility on the subject of the admission of Muslims to this country.

I am sure the victims of the Boston Bombers and the San Bernadino shooter don't find the government credible. I know I don't. Trump made it plain during the campaign that he certainly doesn't. Those events, among others, would never have happened had the vetting agencies done their jobs in any competent way. People died, people were physically maimed for life. I can't imagine the psychological impact of having been a survivor of such catastrophes.

This is a temporary pause to fix our systems. That it temporarily inconveniences some people is unfortunate. One thing is certain. The one or two or three people coming here with bad intentions will not be here anytime soon. I never did agree with Obama's suggestion that we can absorb a few hits in the interest of political correctness, as he wanders about in armored cars surrounded by heavily armed people dedicated to his survival. What a pompous coward.

There are a lot of people complaining that the roll out of the policy was botched. Maybe, I don't know. I find I don't actually "hear" most of the critics, the din is so constant and loud.

Of course, that may just be exactly what Trump had in mind.

Scott Adams the creator of Dilbert, among other things, has demonstrated great insight into Trump's thinking over the last 2 years or so. I invite you to read this.

Good Job Mr. President

Donald Trump is President of the United States.

I have written before about my reluctant vote for him and subsequent approval of his appointments.

I guess I shouldn't be surprised that he appears to have meant what he said all through the campaign and then during the post-election period.

He has barged into the lions' den and informed the lions that they are being evicted, he, having already evicted both of America's political dynasties.

"Today's ceremony, however, has very special meaning. Because today we are not merely transferring power from one Administration to another, or from one party to another – but we are transferring power from Washington, D.C. and giving it back to you, the American People.

For too long, a small group in our nation’s Capital has reaped the rewards of government while the people have borne the cost.
Washington flourished – but the people did not share in its wealth.

Politicians prospered – but the jobs left, and the factories closed.
The establishment protected itself, but not the citizens of our country.
Their victories have not been your victories; their triumphs have not been your triumphs; and while they celebrated in our nation’s Capital, there was little to celebrate for struggling families all across our land.

That all changes – starting right here, and right now, because this moment is your moment: it belongs to you.

It belongs to everyone gathered here today and everyone watching all across America.
This is your day. This is your celebration.

And this, the United States of America, is your country.

What truly matters is not which party controls our government, but whether our government is controlled by the people."

I did not  expect anything so aggressive. Obama looked as though he was trying not to throw up when congratulating Mr. Trump after the speech. Everything in the speech was a complete repudiation of him and his policies. Bill Clinton looked furious.

I thought it particularly comical when the camera showed Paul Ryan and Mitch McConnell smiling, clapping and nodding vigorously. They appear not to understand that they are part of the problem and will either acquiesce to the new regime or be driven from office.

The pitchforks have been delivered, let the stable cleaning begin.

Other People's Money

Every weekday I receive Jim Geraghty's National Review "Morning Jolt" via email.

Today's version examines some of our Obama experiences. He includes this:

"As Matthew Fleischer wrote in the Los Angeles Times in 2013, “Most young, middle-class Americans I know are happy that millions of previously uninsured people will receive free or heavily subsidized insurance under the Affordable Care Act. We just didn’t realize that, unless we had health insurance at work, we’d be the ones paying for it.”"

The never ending lamentation of the left. More stuff for everyone! Find someone else to pay for it!

Lefty's are always very generous...with other people's money.

Obama

I have written often of my complete disrespect for the soon to be ex-President.

His thin skinned narcissism, disdainful attitude, apparent lack of any knowledge of history and tenuous relationship with the truth are legendary. His legacy will consist simply of his betrayal of our allies and his serial lies to the American public. Well, his enabling of a nuclear Iran might figure in there as well if the new administration and Israel are unable to effectively counter his egregious policy.

I had written last summer of my concern that there would be no Presidential election in 2016. Happily I was wrong.  I remain concerned that the inauguration may still be postponed by some artful maneuvre on Obama's part, but the concern is a small one.

What I am more concerned about is that his decision to live in Washington post-presidency actually means that he intends to run a shadow government in opposition to the Trump Administration.

In the parliamentary political system that dominates the countries that were part of the British Empire, the "loyal opposition" appoints members of their party(s) as a "shadow cabinet" whose members are tasked to examine and critique the Government Ministers of each department.

We have a history of relatively quiet (at least for a respectable period of time) ex-Presidents. It is something of a tradition. Of course we have a lot of traditions that Obama actively disrespects. The Rule of Law, for example.

How many unlawful orders did Obama issue with respect to illegal immigration? I don't know. One is enough to demonstrate the point.

How many times did he amend the Obamacare act without benefit of Congressional action? I don't know. At least five.

The rule of law is, in my view, the most fundamental tradition of the United States. A President with no respect for it is a serious problem. Normalizing that lack of respect produces very predictable results. Sanctuary cities anyone? Check. A weaponized IRS. Check, got that too. A Justice Department whose chief meets secretly with the husband (a former President himself, found guilty of perjury) of a woman under investigation by the FBI? Check.

Convening a shadow government to relentlessly attack his successor will be no great surprise coming from Obama. A truly awful American with no respect for anything or anybody but himself.

Cuba

Obama's betrayal of the people of Cuba in favor of their dictators is business as usual for him as we all know, to our profound regret. What did he get for America in exchange for abandoning the Cubans stuck on that prison island? Nothing, as far as I can tell. About the same as he got from Iran for releasing them from their sanctions regime. Well to be fair, he seems to think that this betrayal of America, Israel and the entire Middle East, will come to be viewed as a great diplomatic triumph, burnishing his "legacy". Right.

In his usual manner, he did though, accomplish something for himself:

"The decision, formalized in a joint statement issued by both governments Thursday, comes as Obama tries to cement his historic opening of diplomatic relations with Cuba and one week before President-elect Donald Trump takes office."

Yes, no problem sentencing Cubans living in that giant prison to life there, he has "cemented his historic opening...". A complete disgrace.

Of course, giving everything away for nothing is Obama and his administration's preferred negotiating strategy. In fact, they are also willing to give away things that belong to others, including their lives:

Credentialism

Shaun King graced the pages of The New York Daily News recently with a lengthy article on the lack of graduate college degrees earned by the Trump cabinet nominees.

His piece begins with this revealing transcript:

"On Tuesday night, Ta-Nehisi Coates made a guest appearance with Trevor Noah on “The Daily Show” to discuss “My President Was Black” — his brilliant reflection on the Obama presidency. On Wednesday, The Daily Show posted a memed quote from Coates that has been liked over 230,000 times.
It says this:
If I have to jump six feet to get the same thing that you have to jump two feet for — that’s how racism works.
To be President, Obama had to be scholarly, intelligent, President of the Harvard Law Review, the product of some of our greatest educational institutions, capable of talking to two different worlds.
Donald Trump had to be rich and white. That’s the difference."

Quite revealing of Mr. King's racialist view of things and his apparent inability to differentiate between having acquired several degrees from a prestigious institutions and actually being "scholarly and intelligent". Having observed Obama closely for eight years he is neither scholarly, nor particularly intelligent, in my opinion. We still have not seen his transcripts. No doubt full of high grades, that is why they are concealed. He doesn't want the rest of us to know just how smart he is. We might suffer a blow to our self-esteem. Very thoughtful of him.

Of course all Trump had to do is be rich and white. A 40 year career and the amassing of enormous wealth was effortless. He is white, after all. It is truly a catastrophe that these accomplished black men, King, Noah and Coates, choose to believe such nonsense and worse yet, endorse it for other like minded victims of America's obvious, persistent and systemic racism.

Among the many things this collection of over-hyped, over paid young men do not understand is that many of us have come to understand that degrees are just credentials. They certainly indicate the ability to pass examinations and suggest the possibility of intellectual ability and scholarship.

Many of us have observed over the years that credentials are offers of proof of competence and we have also observed that they are no more than unreliable indicators. One need look no farther than Obama, Hillary Clinton, Kerry, Ben Rhodes and Robby Mook. All highly credentialed, all laughably and sometimes catastrophically incompetent.

Mr. King goes on to recount, in despair, the woeful lack of graduate degrees among Trump and his nominees.

Mr. King, this is a feature, not a bug. We are tired of the credentialed lecturing us on every conceivable subject while demonstrating their complete lack of practical knowledge. Remember Obama and his "shovel-ready jobs"? For those of us in the real world that notion was dead on arrival since the left has been making it more and more difficult to get a project underway for 40 years. Obama figured that out in only a year! Genius.

Donald Trump, with his lack of graduate degrees, actually knows what is required to get a project underway.

Rex Tillerson, with his lack of graduate degrees, actually knows what it takes to run a gigantic organization like the State Department.

Rick Perry, with his lack of graduate degrees, actually knows how to run a giant organization and a great deal more about the business of energy than former 
 "Secretary of Energy was Steven Chu — a Nobel Prize winning physicist who is currently the Professor of Physics and Professor of Molecular & Cellular Physiology at Stanford University. He has a B.A. in Math, a B.S. in Physics, and a Ph.D. in Physics from Berkeley." to whom King chooses to compare him. Chu, infamously, suggested that we should have $8/gal gas. Neither Mr. Chu nor I would suffer from such a disaster, most Americans would.

Mr. King, somehow, in this racist nation you have managed to become part of an educated elite that sneers at those of us without graduate degrees who still have the temerity to aspire to public service.

Donald Trump was elected, in part, as a reaction to the obvious contempt in which you and your cohort hold the rest of us. Well, I guess I am not among the contemptible since I have two graduate degrees. Most of the rest of us do not and demonstrate daily that we are very, very practical and competent people.

A Liberal Discovers Conservatism

 I came across this piece in the New York Times recently, written by Mark Lilla, a humanities professor at Columbia. Here is an excerpt from the latter part of the piece.

"As for narrower issues that are highly charged symbolically and can drive potential allies away, especially those touching on sexuality and religion, such a liberalism would work quietly, sensitively and with a proper sense of scale. (To paraphrase Bernie Sanders, America is sick and tired of hearing about liberals’ damn bathrooms.)

Teachers committed to such a liberalism would refocus attention on their main political responsibility in a democracy: to form committed citizens aware of their system of government and the major forces and events in our history. A post-identity liberalism would also emphasize that democracy is not only about rights; it also confers duties on its citizens, such as the duties to keep informed and vote. A post-identity liberal press would begin educating itself about parts of the country that have been ignored, and about what matters there, especially religion. And it would take seriously its responsibility to educate Americans about the major forces shaping world politics, especially their historical dimension."

That is an explanation of the conservative approach. The author, of course, does not see it that way. He thinks he is suggesting a whole new way of looking at liberalism.

Which reminds me of this hilarious article to which I think I have to linked before. The key paragraph being:

"So the story here is that a hippie accidentally stumbled upon the concepts of division of labor and trade and the science of economics. He came across all of it as if it were some weird new revelation that no one had ever thought of before, because clearly he has never thought about it before (and probably won’t, even now that he has stumbled across it)."

 A liberal who finds the outcome of our recent election "repugnant" has "accidentally stumbled" onto the key concepts of conservatism. Hopefully he will be able to persuade his audience to follow his lead. Pretty soon we will all be conservatives and having a much more peaceful political and cultural life.

Is It Possible They Really Believe These Things?

When one is unable to persuade one's audience that one's position on an issue is correct it is easy to default to blaming the audience. They are just too stupid to understand what you are saying. Having failed to persuade most of the people I interact with of the correctness of my opinions I have a lot of experience at avoiding the "they are stupid" explanation of my failures.

That being said we once again find the left erupting in  furious fits at the appointment of Scott Pruitt as EPA administrator.

Via The Weekly Standard we get to share these priceless quotes:

"House minority leader Nancy Pelosi says the Pruitt nomination must be blocked "for the sake of the air we breathe, the water we drink, and the planet we will leave our children." New York AG Eric Schneiderman says Pruitt is a "dangerous and an unqualified choice." Independent socialist senator Bernie Sanders declares the Pruitt pick is not only dangerous but also "sad." The League of Conservation Voters calls Pruitt not just a global warming skeptic but "an outright climate denier.""

I have read countless times over the years that Republicans want to poison our air, water and children, in no particular order. Is it possible that the left actually believes this stuff? Is it possible that they do and really are stupid? I hope not.

Each time I read this stuff I wonder where it is that they think we Republicans get our air and water. Is it really likely that we want to poison ourselves and our children? In my experience most of us are pretty normal, nice people, dems too, for that matter.

I bring all of this up because of this article which posits this theory:

Conservatives often win elections because of the hysterical, overblown reaction their common-sense plans receive from the left.

 Read the whole thing.

Hysterical and overblown pretty much sums up the left's reaction to Pruitt.

Happily, the left never seems to learn anything from experience, to paraphrase John Hinderaker of Powerline fame.

Donald J Trump

As a reluctant Trump voter on November 8, I find I am an enthusiastic Trump supporter on December 5.

I did not realize before the election just how disturbed I had been at the prospect of a Clinton presidency and the continuation of the unbearable burden of the Emperor's New Clothes America I had been living in since the election of Obama.

Thanks President-elect Trump. I had not understood how much the lack of political and cultural sunshine had affected me.

I was reluctant about DJT for all the reasons most conservatives were. I have often read that his publication of the list from which he would choose his Supreme Court nominee mollified a lot of us. It certainly did me. It did not make me enthusiastic though. I could settle for keeping the court leaning right no matter what else I had to give up in exchange.

Apparently we will be getting a DJT who is considerably more conservative than most of us reluctant supporters would ever have hoped for.

There is a very important song in the Passover liturgy sung during the seder (ritual meal) called Dayenu. The word means "enough".  It begins,

"Had he brought us out of Egypt, but not executed judgments against the Egyptians, it would have been enough.
Had he executed his judgments against them but not upon their gods, it would have been enough."

You get the point, be grateful for the big victory. Take whatever else is offered gratefully.

For me, had DJT only appointed a suitable Justice, it would have been enough. All of the rest of what he has already done is gravy. Hopefully much more to come.

Some excellent appointments, and the obvious competence of his team persuade me that we are entering a very dynamic period of American ascendancy, driving the left to a cacophonous gnashing of teeth and rending of garments (to continue my religious theme). They, notoriously, believe that America is the world's biggest problem.

In the countless articles I have read wherein the left explains why they lost the election there is a central  theme, "we didn't get our message across". To be fair, there are a few writers on the left who recognize that the message itself was the problem.

Please believe me when I tell you, you did get your message across and a lot of people don't like it. We don't like being told that because we disagree with you we are either racist, misogynistic, homophobic, Islamophobic or just plain "deplorable", to quote one famous harridan, former politician and failed presidential candidate.

You told us, very clearly, that the next four or eight years would be very much like the last, only worse. If you are white and disagree with us "shut up". If you are white and wealthy and disagree with us, "shut up and give us your money". If you are white, wealthy, disagree with us and male, well, its the re-education camp for you.

Reading current "news" stories in the mainstream media reinforces, for me, the idea that the left still, almost a month later, does not understand why DJT is President-elect.

A perfect example, in my opinion, is the explosion of pontificating derision heaped on DJT for having spoken directly to the President of Taiwan.

A headline at CNBC:

"Trump may have just thrown decades of US-China relations into disarray"

Followed by these pearls of conventional wisdom:

"With this phone call and the follow-up tweet, Trump is risking fundamentally upending decades of US policy towards Taiwan and enraging China, the world's only other Superpower. China sees Taiwan not as an independent country, but rather a part of China."

That is why we elected DJT. What China thinks is fine. What we think is also fine. When the two conflict it is neither necessary nor desirable to bend to China's way of thinking.

Those days, happily, appear to be over. 

None of the articles I have read on this kerfuffle include the relevant historical context. We had full diplomatic relations with Taiwan from the late 1940's until 1979 when we recognized Red China as part of our Cold war strategy. The Cold War, at least that one, is long since over and there is no reason to indulge its artifacts other than political correctness.

Our friends should rejoice, our enemies and detractors take pause. It appears that political correctness at the level of international diplomacy, and hopefully elsewhere, is on the wane.

I have never liked DJT's slogan, "Make America Great Again". America has always been great, in my view. So great, in fact, that it managed to survive 8 years of relentless attack by its Chief Executive and his anti-American minions.

I would like to mention that the first enthusiastic Trump supporter I encountered, very early in the primary process, was my youngest son. He was onto something. The second was his younger sister. A couple of pretty smart kids, eh? Wonder where they came from!

Email redux/Updated

On July 15, 2016 I published a post that I cannot link to directly, entitled

The Curious Case of James Comey and Donald Trump/Updated 

analyzing, to the extent I am able, Mr. Comey's "Emperor's New Clothes" justification of the FBI's failure to recommend that DOJ  prosecute HRC for her obvious criminal negligence with respect to the private server she used during her tenure as Secretary of State.

Today, according to the New York Times the investigation is being re-opened.

As one who had interpreted the FBI's decision as a catastrophe for the rule of law, I am very grateful. Hopefully the organization will redeem itself. On the other hand, perhaps I am just playing Charlie Brown to Comey's Lucy, again. We will see. UPDATE: I am Charlie Brown, again!

It is interesting to note that the impetus for the re-opening of the investigation appears to have come from emails discovered during the FBI investigation into Anthony Weiner's sexting a minor.

As an avid consumer of crime novels and movies it often appears that the criminal masterminds featured in these entertainments are brought down by seemingly irrelevant and or serendipitous events.

Here's hoping.

The Clinton Method/Updated

The AP reported here on the number of meetings that HRC had with "...people outside of government". More than half of them were Clinton Foundation donors, according to the report.

The implications are clear that either:
a) If you want to meet with the Secretary of State to pitch your case you need to donate to the Clinton Foundation and/or,
b) If you are already a donor you can demand access in exchange for an undertaking to keep donating.

In either case, as is so often the case with the Clintons, the whole thing stinks.

Scott Johnson, one of the proprietors of the Powerline, blog writes today of a telephone interview HRC did with Jake Tapper of CNN last night. UPDATE: It appears that the interview was with Anderson Cooper, not Tapper

Mr. Johnson writes, correctly in my view, that HRC's attempt to explain all these meetings with donors away as innocuous is "pathetic". 

It is actually an excellent example of the Clinton method. Here is the gist of her explanation as reported by Mr. Johnson.

“I know there is a lot of smoke, and there is no fire. This AP report? Put it in context. This excludes nearly 2,000 meetings I had with world leaders, plus countless other meetings with U.S. government officials when I was secretary of state. It looked at a small portion of my time,”.

In time honored Clinton fashion she did not answer the obvious question of the appearance of impropriety. She answered a question that was never asked. I don't recall any commentators wondering why she was wasting her time with these meetings. They want to know why they happened at all.

The answer is unfortunately obvious to anyone with eyes and the willingness to see what is before them. The woman is hopelessly corrupt.

As Mr. Johnson says of her explanation, " One doesn’t need to be a genius to see through it." I guess I just proved his point!

Black Lives Matter, Again

I have written about the BLM movement before . I have also proposed a way to address the real problems that plague so many in the black community .

Today, through Instapundit.com, I came across this bit of nonsense. It includes this hilariously self-righteous self-parody:

"I think there are several police officers who are good people."

Several? Wow, how thoughtful of you. There are more than 900,000 law enforcement officers in the USA. Nice to know that "several...are good people".

How does any publication allow such a spectacularly stupid sentence to appear in print?

I don't know.

Socialism Again, Again

I have written before about socialism and its utter failure every time it is tried. I devoted a post to it on June 12, 2016 if you would like to have a look. I can't link directly to it.

This 2013 Salon article written by David Sirota was brought to my attention recently. I can't remember where it was linked and apologize for being unable to attribute it properly.

Mr. Sirota wrote,

"No, Chavez became the bugaboo of American politics because his full-throated advocacy of socialism and redistributionism at once represented a fundamental critique of neoliberal economics, and also delivered some indisputably positive results. Indeed, as shown by some of the most significant indicators, Chavez racked up an economic record that a legacy-obsessed American president could only dream of achieving."

Mr. Chavez's legacy doesn't look too good today. I can't find any recent articles by Mr. Sirota on the subject. Sean Penn  has been pretty quiet too.

Time, as they say, tells all. Mr. Chavez and his hand picked successor ran into Margaret Thatcher's Law:  "The trouble with Socialism is that eventually you run out of other people's money."

From the Los Angeles Times (via Powerlineblog.com),

"But 2006 also was the year that President Hugo Chavez nationalized 10 of the 16 privately owned sugar refineries and turned them over to worker cooperatives, part of his “21st Century Socialism” agenda. After taking office in 1999 and until his death in 2013, Chavez also seized thousands of acres of sugar cane plantations and made them communal properties.

Comradely gestures to be sure, but sugar production has rapidly declined ever since the seizures. In May, scarcities got so bad that Coca-Cola temporarily suspended production of its popular line of soft drinks, saying it couldn’t buy enough supplies of the industrial sweetener."

The LAT article documents the complete wrecking of Venezuela's private economy through nationalization. For "nationalization", read, the taking "of other people's money".

The money runs out every single time and then you get the partially shared misery which is the real promise of socialism. The elites of socialist countries never participate in the misery. To paraphrase Glenn Reynolds of Instapundit.com, in free market systems the rich become powerful. In socialist systems the powerful become rich.

As I posted this past June:

"Take a close look at any socialist country and what you find, once the veneer has been removed, is a kleptocracy. The rich and connected become richer, the poor poorer and the middle class disappears.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3192933/Hugo-Chavez-s-ambassador-daughter-Venezuela-s-richest-woman-according-new-report.html

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/may/21/fidel-castro-lived-like-king-cuba

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/02/18/north-korea-luxury-goods_n_4808823.html"

I keep writing about the disaster that is socialism because I think it is important that it be described as what it is, not what Mr. Sirota and so many people on the left want it to be. It is a very seductive ideology. What decent person would not prefer that poverty cease to exist, that everyone has everything they need and a lot of what they want?

None. Trouble is, as I have explained before, socialism relies on the unicorn that is the expulsion of human nature from the economic equation. As Venezuela's unfortunate citizens have shown us again, human nature is immutable and cannot be ignored. Socialism cannot work. I wrote, in the June 12 post,

"  Why? Because socialism cannot co-exist with human nature. It is counter-intuitive to a human not to take advantage of every opportunity to improve the quality of his own life. Thus, every socialist regime becomes brutal when persuasion is insufficient to suppress human nature and people refuse to countenance the shared misery absent coercion." Forced labor is now on the agenda.

Even the fervent Socialist, Bernie Sanders is not immune to the demands of human nature.

 http://www.people.com/article/bernie-sanders-600k-summer-home-vermont

Socialism in action as opposed to in thought.

Human Nature, Again

I have long advised that policies and philosophies that ignore human nature are bound to fail. If your goal is to persuade those with a surfeit of the laziness component of human nature to become productive members of society, removing work requirements from welfare programs is not going to help you achieve your goal.

This fact, proven many times over, has been ignored by liberal policy makers many times over.

This article is just the latest in an endless supply of examples of the immutability of human nature. Add a work requirement to a welfare program and watch two things happen.

First, participation plummets.

"Maine, one of the most proactive states in reinstating work requirements for food stamps, saw its caseload of able-bodied adults without dependents decrease by 80 percent within just a few months after re-establishing the work requirement."

 Second, those forced to work or starve find work and end up much better off than they were while accepting the unrestricted handouts.

"The Foundation for Government Accountability identified that nearly 60 percent of Kansans who left the food stamp rolls following the establishment of food stamp work requirements found employment within 12 months and, “their incomes rose by an average of 127 percent per year.”"

Once more with feeling:

"One nice thing about being a liberal is, no one expects you to learn from experience."
 http://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2016/06/what-happens-when-liberal-heroines-crumble.php

Peace Loving "Palestinians"

I am no fan of the New York Times. The ethics of the editors appear to be almost entirely situational, they change opinions without ever acknowledging the change, those of their "reporters" almost non-existent, they will "report" almost anything their liberal friends tell them.

Occasionally they surprise us. This is one of those times.

"In an effort to appeal to Palestinians ahead of hotly contested elections, the party of President Mahmoud Abbas listed one of its main achievements as having “killed 11,000 Israelis.”"

The NYT and every other main stream newspaper have been telling us for years how Abbas is a "moderate". I guess this is the proof. His opponents have probably killed more of us.

To any of you who believe that there is any current path to a two-state solution, please stop talking and try thinking until you have something to say that is worthy of discussion.

The leadership of the "Palestinians" is divided between awful (Fatah in the West Bank) and worse (Hamas in Gaza).

Then there is Israeli leadership. I am an acquaintance of one opinion shaper in Israel. Donniel Hartman is president of the Shalom Hartman Institute. I attended a private meeting with him in 2013 during which he lamented that we should be doing more for the "Palestinians" and our failure to do "more" is one reason for the continuing troubles. He failed to define "more".

I am reading his latest book, "Putting God Second, How To Save Religion From Itself". It contains at least one example of the moral relativism (I am only on page 43 of 170) that results in a belief that the reason the people who have sworn to kill you and all your brethren and brag of their buddies killing 11,000 of you, is that you didn't do enough for them.

"As more and more people are being killed daily in the name of one god or another, I often wonder about the religious sensibilities of these pious perpetrators of murder and pain." P.43

To my knowledge there is only one god in whose name "more and more people are being killed daily". His name is Allah, his prophet is Mohamed and if you publish a funny picture of Mohamed you will be threatened with death and, perhaps,  killed .

To borrow Rabbi Hartman's construction: I often wonder about the rationality of intellectuals who seem unable or unwilling to understand the obvious.

Islam, again

I have linked to Andrew McCarthy of NRO before. He  recently wrote about Islam and why our policies with respect to identifying the problems it has and dealing with them have been such a failure.

He has more than a passing familiarity with Islam and its practitioners having been the US Attorney for the Southern District of New York when the "Blind Sheik" tried to take down the World Trade Center in 1993 . The "Sheik" and his minions remain in jail.

In his recent article he makes a distinction that I think is very important and had not previously occurred to me.

"...it should by now be perfectly obvious that that there is no “Islam,” at least not if we are talking about a monolithic belief system. There are sects of Islam, all vying for supremacy in what is, in the main, a conquest ideology — with the various splinters having very different ideas about what conquest entails, and with no papal analogue to impose order by decreeing orthodoxy and condemning heterodoxy."

His context for this assertion is the vacuousness of our current administration and its unwillingness to identify the problem. Some major Islamic factions are our enemies and ought to be identified as such. Claiming, as Mrs. Clinton did in the immediate aftermath of the Nice massacre: "Let’s be clear: Islam is not our adversary. Muslims are peaceful and tolerant people and have nothing whatsoever to do with terrorism." is just wrong.

 

Major factions of Islam are our adversary and we would do well to understand this as clearly as Mr. McCarthy does.

Affirmative Action

As I shake my head in confusion at the policy decisions being made in the name of equality I tend to make predictions. I often wonder if my predictions will be accurate.

Men in the ladies' room? An obviously terrible idea fraught with entirely predictable danger.

ObamaCare? An idea so bad it is impossible to understand how anyone with a brain could think it a good idea.

Abandoning, for whatever high-minded set of ideals, the incredibly successful criminal law and policing regimes of the past twenty-five years, is an astonishingly stupid idea. Crime rates are a fraction of what they were in the 1990's. No, we have not accomplished this by incarcerating an entire race of people. Any guesses as to what happens now?

Treating college students like precious snowflakes in order to cushion them from the devastating blow of hearing something they find insulting.

The list goes on and on. Most of them are so obviously wrongheaded to me because they defy human nature. I described my thoughts on human nature here (scroll to the 2nd post).

I often wonder whether my analyses are correct and look for evidence that they are, or not, in an effort to stay honest and avoid confirmation bias.

I am joined by multitudes in concluding that Affirmative Action programs in higher education were always a bad idea. Some people knew just how counter-productive they
would be from the start. One man predicted, in 1969, exactly where we would find ourselves as a result of installing Affirmative Action programs. His name was Macklin Fleming and at the time he wrote his incredibly prescient letter he was a Justice on the California Court of Appeals.

He was writing the Dean of Yale Law School (his alma mater) about the school's announced intention to admit 38 black students who could not qualify under the school's normal standards.

The letters between the Dean and Fleming, as well as analysis can be found here .

I will share some excerpts taken from the link.

"If in a given class the great majority of the black students are at the bottom of the class, this factor is bound to instill, unconsciously at least, some sense of intellectual superiority among the white students and some sense of intellectual inferiority among the black students... The fact remains that black and white students will be exposed to each other under circumstances in which demonstrated intellectual superiority rests with the whites.

...No one can be expected to accept an inferior status willingly. The black students, unable to compete on even terms in the study of law, inevitably will seek other means to achieve recognition and self-expression. This is likely to take two forms. First, agitation to change the environment from one in which they are unable to compete to one in which they can. Demands will be made for elimination of competition, reduction in standards of performance, adoption of courses of study which do not require intensive legal analysis, and recognition for academic credit of sociological activities which have only an indirect relationship to legal training. Second, it seems probable that this group will seek personal satisfaction and public recognition by aggressive conduct, which, although ostensibly directed at external injustices and problems, will in fact be primarily motivated by the psychological needs of the members of the group to overcome feelings of inferiority caused by lack of success in their studies. Since the common denominator of the group of students with lower qualifications is one of race this aggressive expression will undoubtedly take the form of racial demands–the employment of faculty on the basis of race, a marking system based on race, the establishment of a black curriculum and a black law journal, an increase in black financial aid, and a rule against expulsion of black students who fail to satisfy minimum academic standards."

Exactly what has occurred. Re-segregation. It is inconceivable to me that a large number of people, including those promoting the policy, were not able to see its short comings and pitfalls. They subscribed to it anyway.

Their complacency was probably a combination of fear of being judged racist and the "hope" that their good intentions would usher in their desired result. "Hope" as we all know, is not a strategy. Human nature, while ameliorable, in my opinion, simply cannot be ignored. Ignoring it is just a short-cut to ensuring its assertion and the failure of the  preferred policy.

Learning Nothing from Experience

"One nice thing about being a liberal is, no one expects you to learn from experience."
 http://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2016/06/what-happens-when-liberal-heroines-crumble.php

John Hinderaker, the author of the quote above, has a nice habit of often getting things just right.

I have written a couple of posts about socialism recently. In all of those words I never came close to the clarity of Mr. Hinderaker's brief statement.

 http://www.heritage.org/research/reports/2016/05/research-review-universal-preschool-may-do-more-harm-than-good