". . . a republic, if you can keep it."
“The Dark Enlightenment” is term popularized by John Derbyshire here.
Here, with thumbnail reviews, are the currently active blogs I find most useful (other than VDARE.com of course! and Taki’s Magazine, in which I am also an interested party). The order is alphabetic—no invidious distinctions here!
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“The high incidence of rape around the country makes the situation untenable, and we urge the [national] commissioner to resolve this,” the committee said.
“Without rape kits we lose crucial evidence, which is key to the successful prosecution of rapists.”
(Read more)
The Olympics combines two of a politician’s favorite things — flag waving and subsidies for large public works projects. I am impressed with the Swiss. Bravo.
www.usatoday.com/story/sports/olympics/2013/03/03/swiss-voters-reject-2022-winter-olympics-bid/1960123/
The story:
Russia condemns ‘unfair’ Cyprus bank levy as bailout fears grow
On one hand, the economy of a government is their “sphere of exploitation” (to use Hoppe’s term from Austrian vs. Marxist Class Analysis). So why would Putin not welcome this action, which punishes those who dare escape his sphere of exploitation, and will likely discourage others from escaping?
Two reason:
1) Russia wants to improve itself by attraction rich, capable entrepreneurs from the west, like the Frenchman Depardieu.
2) In the twisted, counter intuitive world of post-Soviet economies, the exploiters are often trying to escape their own prison. I suspect most politicians of post-Soviet countries had money in Cyprus.
Now that the precedent has been set, now that a western government has simply closed banks and helped itself to between 6.7 and 10 percent of each depositor’s money, I wonder if I should close my IRA.
Waiting thirty years for a tax break under these conditions seems ridiculous. The dollar will certainly collapse before then. The only question is how audacious the crimes of politicians will be when their system is in its death throes.
Let’s wait and see how big a bank run this action sparks.
#Cyprus Depositors Vent Fury Through Social Media
A popular hunting shotgun could be banned under one of the bills moving through the state Capitol.
A pump or semi-automatic shotgun is the gun most hunters in Colorado use. It’s a gun state Sen. Greg Brophy, R-Wray, says could be banned under a bill that’s already passed the House and Gov. John Hickenlooper says he’ll sign.
“They’re coming after the standard shotgun,” Brophy told CBS4 Political Specialist Shaun Boyd. (Read more)
Yes, the mighty Lobby didn’t get what it wanted, for now. It seems Sen. Schumer gave up ground here in exchange for a leadership position later.
I am not one for admitting I am wrong but sometimes the evidence is so overwhelming that I have to say it. I was wrong.
Specifically I have been repeatedly wrong when I said that the Israel lobby could not be defeated unless and until the President of the United States confronted it directly. In that situation, I always believed the United States would prevail. I did not understand that a deft president could beat the lobby through indirect means — by quietly using his authority to prevail.
But that is what happened when the Obama administration first nominated and then achieved the confirmation of former Senator Chuck Hagel for Secretary of Defense.
There of course are those who accept the line put out by the lobby, most notably its main component AIPAC, that it was neutral on Hagel.
That is just silly. If AIPAC was neutral, it could have ended the whole battle against him by issuing a statement that it recognized a president’s right to choose his own cabinet. That might not have stopped Republican groups like Bill Kristol’s Emergency Committee ror Israel or Sheldon Adelson’s Republican Jewish Coalition from pursuing their smear campaign against Hagel, but it would have stopped the very mainstream Anti-Defamation League and the American Jewish Committee from joining the attack. AIPAC’s public silence on a campaign waged by its closest allies demonstrated what it wanted: Hagel’s defeat.
President Obama outsmarted the lobby by ignoring it. He understood that if he could get Sen. Chuck Schumer to endorse Hagel, then the game would be over. That is because Schumer, a Jewish senator from New York, is the de facto leader of the lobby’s forces in Congress.
Usually a hardliner on all matters relating to the Middle East, Schumer might have been expected to oppose Hagel and thereby give a signal to his fellow Democrats that doing so was the safe pro-Israel position. Had he done that some Democrats would have felt that they had better oppose Hagel.
With most Republicans already on record as opposing his nomination, just a shift of a few Democrats would have killed the nomination. Schumer’s announcement in support of Hagel guaranteed that not a single Democrat would oppose him.
So what convinced Schumer to stand with Obama on Hagel? My friends on Capitol Hill, who without exception correctly predicted Schumer’s position, tell me that it was made clear to him that he could not oppose Obama on Hagel and still expect to become leader of Senate Democrats when Harry Reid retires. (Read more)
I have posted in the past about the policy of ethnic separation around the Jewish houses in Hebron. Shuhada street – once the location of a central market – was first closed to Palestinian cars, and now even Palestinian pedestrians must walk along a tiny dirt road, while Jewish settlers and their guests get the rest of the street. The pretext might be security, but the policy (like in the rest of the West Bank) is ethnic segregation.
Watch this B’tzelem video to see what’s going on not far away, on the road near the Tomb of the Patriarchs:
The great Congressional Quarterly reporter Jonathan Broder has gotten AIPAC to go on the record with its plans to exempt Israel from sequestration. (I can’t provide link as CQ is by subscription only.)
He writes of the “battalions” of AIPACers who descended on Congress today to demand “tighter sanctions against Iran, relief for Israel aid from automatic spending cuts, and a new designation of the Jewish state as a ‘major strategic ally,’ a status that would help insulate Israel from any further aid cuts.
At the top of their agenda is convincing lawmakers to support a new Iran bill (HR 850) from House Foreign Affairs Chairman Ed Royce, R-Calif., and supported by ranking Democrat Eliot L. Engel of New York, that would extend existing sanctions targeting Iran’s energy and financial transactions to include an even broader range of its commerce with the rest of the world. Several senators are working on a measure which is expected to be even more expansive.
The grassroots lobbyists also asked lawmakers to find some way to shield the $3.1 billion in annual U.S. aid to Israel from the automatic across-the-board spending cuts that took effect on March 1. Under the sequester, Israel stands to lose $155 million. Israel is the largest recipient of U.S. foreign aid.
Starting on Monday, certain buses running from the West Bank into central Israel will have separate lines for Jews and Arabs.
The Afikim bus company will begin operating Palestinian-only bus lines from the checkpoints to Gush Dan to prevent Palestinians from boarding buses with Jewish passengers. Palestinians are not allowed to enter settlements, and instead board buses from several bus stops on the Trans-Samaria highway.
Click here to subscribe to Haaretz for only $1 for the first month
Last November, Haaretz reported that the Transportation Ministry was looking into such a plan due to pressure from the late mayor of Ariel, Ron Nahman, and the head of the Karnei Shomron Local Council. They said residents had complained that Palestinians on their buses were a security risk.
The buses will begin operating Monday morning at the Eyal crossing to take the Palestinians to work in Israel. Transportation Ministry officials are not officially calling them segregated buses, but rather bus lines intended to relieve the distress of the Palestinian workers. (Read more)
Great analysis by my former economics professor Patrick Barron:
The problem with comparing the price of gold in dollar terms today and its price in the past is that it ignores dollar inflation. The price of gold today is around $1,600 per ounce. It peaked in dollar terms roughly a year ago at just under $2,000 per ounce. Prior to the recent run up, the peak price of gold at year end occurred in 1980 at $612 per ounce. So, let’s look at the price of gold today, taking into account dollar inflation since 1980.
First let’s look at the government’s own Consumer Price Index. In December 1980 the CPI stood at 86.3. In January 2013 it was 230.3. (This is hardly believable; i.e., that prices have gone up only 2.7 times since 1980.) Nevertheless, adjusting for the CPI increase since 1980, the price of gold today should be $1,633…about where it is right now.
But now let’s look at inflation of the money supply. In 1980 M1 was $.420 trillion and M2 was $1.605 trillion. As of January 2013, M1 is $2.470 trillion and M2 is $10.445 trillion. So, taking into account the great inflation in M1 and M2, the price of gold should be either $3,600 per ounce (M1 equivalence) or $3,983 per ounce (M2 equivalence) for the price of gold, IN DOLLAR TERMS, to match its price at year end 1980.
Another way to look at the relationship between the dollar price of gold and dollar inflation is to calculate gold’s dollar coverage price; i.e., for the Fed, which owns 262 million ounces of gold, to back the dollar in gold and make it truly redeemable, it would be forced to set the price at either $9,427 per ounce (M1) or $39,866 per ounce (M2). In other words, at any lower price the Fed would not be able to redeem all of its dollars. (Read more)
This young man may be a little too eager to show off his intellect rather than make the clearest possible arguments. Nevertheless, this video is very thought provoking.
Quietly and without much notice, the Air Force has reversed its policy of publishing statistics on drone strikes in Afghanistan as the debate about drone warfare hits a fever pitch in Washington. In addition, it has erased previously published drone strike statistics from its website. (Read more)