Also, "psikhushka" (психушка) is the preferred nomenclature

(DANGER: NIGHTMARE FUEL AHEAD)

'If you don't believe in climate change you must be sick': Oregon professor likens skepticism to racism

Racism, check. Backhanded reference to the South, check. Superiority of urban-living to rural lifestyles, check. Call for awareness, check... Man, she was this close to getting that moonbat bingo-card filled out, too.

Worse yet, they want to live closer to you (somewhere near Innsmouth, judging from her photograph). Until you're shipped off for re-education, that is... It's for the greater good.

Tired clichés aside, I'll let John Aziz field this one(via ZeroHedge):

... [W]hat about my position that a ultra-complex (and arguably stochastic) system like the climate is not meaningfully modellable, and therefore that climate certainty is impossible? While it seems to make sense that higher levels of atmospheric CO2 will produce higher temperatures, and while there are a myriad of simplified models out there that seem to suggest the same thing, there is no substitute for long-term empirical evidence, of which we have very little. In a system as complex as the Earth’s climate, there could be a whole swathe of effects that we have not yet identified that could drastically change the outcome (for better, or for worse). For Norgaard, does an understanding of the limitations of probabilistic modelling constitute a mental illness? Should I be committed to treatment to “cure” me of my beliefs?

Because that is what Norgaard’s words lead me to believe. And that sounds worryingly like Neo-Stalinism.

As Vox is also fond of pointing out, bedecking politics with the trappings of Science! doesn't make the politics scientific, it makes the science* political (much in the same way that a gallon of ice cream and a gallon of sewage doesn't make two gallons of ice cream).

Care for an ice cream cone?

*Actual scientific content may vary

Self-explanatory, really

Tell us how you really feel

The West: An Interpretive Dance

Via the Smoking Gun:

JANUARY 28--Two Tennessee women who accused a man of rape have admitted to cops that they had consensually agreed to sex with him in exchange for a pack of cigarettes. One woman told investigators that the duo filed a phony police report because they "didn't enjoy the sex," according to cops.

Split between them, a five-dollar pack is about $2.50. Now, what two (or more) consenting adults do with themselves is none of my business, but I think he was taken for a ride, so to speak. Were they more attractive, or were another intoxicant involved, then perhaps they would have a case; regret is the new threshold of evidence.

Would they lie about something as serious as rape?

The Fed: An Interpretive Dance

Meet the new year, same as the old year

What do reporter David Reilly and the Great White Shark have in common? The ability to devour and digest insane amounts of garbage without ill effect, of course:

Hunkering down by the fire, I snuggled up with H.R. 4173, the financial-reform legislation passed earlier this month by the House of Representatives. The Senate has yet to pass its own reform plan. The baby of Financial Services Committee Chairman Barney Frank, the House bill is meant to address everything from too-big-to-fail banks to asleep-at-the-switch credit-ratings companies to the protection of consumers from greedy lenders.

I quickly discovered why members of Congress rarely read legislation like this. At 1,279 pages, the “Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act” is a real slog. And yes, I plowed through all those pages. (Memo to Chairman Frank: “ystem” at line 14, page 258 is missing the first “s”.)

The reading was especially painful since this reform sausage is stuffed with more gristle than meat. At least, that is, if you are a taxpayer hoping the bailout train is coming to a halt.

If you’re a banker, the bill is tastier. While banks opposed the legislation, they should cheer for its passage by the full Congress in the New Year: There are huge giveaways insuring the government will again rescue banks and Wall Street if the need arises.

The chief outrage is addressed in the title of the piece: "Bankers Get $4 Trillion Gift From Barney Frank". Yep, with a 'T'. Reilly goes on to point out that while the funds are not automatically dispensed, the caveats and restrictions are so (purposely) vague that the whole of it amounts to merely haggling over the price, as the old joke goes.

Working under the assumption that compounding the errors that caused the last crash does not actually provide a viable solution, and that said solution is not the forestallment of a necessary correction, and that HR 4173 receives corresponding support in the Senate (support from the White House is given, at this point), when will the next tsunami of corrections hit?

Is this all as predictable as it seems to be?

Speaking of instituitions...

If at first you don't succeed, use a bigger mallet:

In essence, the report calls for a new Bretton Woods-style system of managed international exchange rates, meaning central banks would be forced to intervene and either support or push down their currencies depending on how the rest of the world economy is behaving.

The proposals would also imply that surplus nations such as China and Germany should stimulate their economies further in order to cut their own imbalances, rather than, as in the present system, deficit nations such as the UK and US having to take the main burden of readjustment.

Of course! Brilliant! What could possibly go wrong this time?

Wait for it...

Although many economists have pointed out that the economic crisis owed more to the malfunctioning of the post-Bretton Woods system, until now no major institution, including the G20, has come up with an alternative.

No alternative that favors State-control of the currency, that is. Of course, no government (or aspiring government, or ramshackle clubhouse staffed by tin-pot soapbox dictators) worth its swirling cesspool of crawling parasites would advocate such a restriction on the most subtle form of taxation, would it?

How very apropos

The Final Exam of Voxiversity III: Liberal Fascism was posted today, and the timing could not be more perfect:

“At the moment, except for the people without insurance, we’re not in a health-care crisis,” said Stephen Wayne, a professor of government at Georgetown University in Washington. “You do need a crisis to generate movement in Congress and to help build a consensus.”

I am sure that Rahm and the Council of Doom are arranging something to bolster the flagging support for ever-increasing Federal control of the economy in the face of a manifesting depression that ought to offer up something truly worthy of the title "crisis".

Obama Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel said the administration made unprecedented health-care progress in eight months.

“We gave Congress a charge, we gave them broad outlines, which is the reason we are farther along than any of the five presidents that have tried,” Emanuel said in an interview yesterday. “We’re not there yet, and this speech is intended to finish the job.”

Stay the course, Rahm. I'm sure the marginal increases in speeches, outlines and hope-change will sufficiently stimulate the Congress into recovery...

I love a happy ending

Ask about his Comeback Tour

An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure:

Michael Jackson will be buried this week– without his brain. As his family tries to finalise details for the King of Pop’s funeral on Tuesday they have been told it will be held back for tests.

They faced the grim choice of waiting up to three weeks for Jackson’s brain to be returned to them or go ahead and bury him without it – which they have decided to do.

I think we all know why, though.

The predictability of powermongers and the idiots that follow them

A succinct and scathing examination of the utter idiocy behind HR 2454:

Before the last few years, scholars used to say that we couldn't get a depression today because policymakers wouldn't make mistakes as bad as the ones they made in the 1930s. Though we've made some great moves in the last year — increasing the money supply and guaranteeing money markets funds — we're also repeating many of the same mistakes as Hoover and FDR (propping up failing industries; raising taxes; wasting money on unneeded public works projects; corruption; expensive new anti-business government programs).

Certainly, the Smoot-Hawley bill of 1930 was dumb; it imposed huge tariffs on foreign goods imported into this country, which backfired when those countries raised their tariffs too. In a sense, cap-and-trade looked like it would be even dumber; it seemed that it might impose a tariff on our own US manufactured goods, but not on foreign goods. But the House realized this and decided to require the administration to impose tariffs on goods imported from countries that don't restrict their own emissions to the same extent as the US (tip to Maguire and OandO. This 21st century version of Smoot-Hawley will probably take years before the tariffs will be imposed.

The cap-and-trade bill, if passed by the Senate and actually implemented over the next few decades, would do more damage to the country than any economic legislation passed in at least 100 years. It would eventually send most American manufacturing jobs overseas, reduce American competitiveness, and make Americans much poorer than they would have been without it.

In other news, America still has manufacturing jobs.

The commentary regarding the smug, self-satisfied masturbatory group-think regarding carbon-footprints, offsets, credits, et al from Matt and Trey in the South Park episode "Smug Alert" is both devastatingly funny (although, as one might expect, not safe for work) and tragically accurate; much to the misfortune of the nation, the Bay Area has already demonstrated that not only does it produce power-hungry fascists with questionable mental stability, it can bring the rest of its party to heel with its lunacy.

We are long overdue for a second discussion regarding the voluntary association of "these United States".

When in doubt, empty the clip

- "We love the idea of the Kindle, but Amazon really needs to step up and start communicating more honestly with customers about the details of the invisible shackles they use when they sell us ebooks. How can their license agreement promise you permament access to a copy if that access to it is taken away after a certain number of actions?"

- Incredibly invasive, idiotic and inimical to even the pretension of liberty: more "change we can believe in".

- "In a 5-4 ruling, the Supreme Court has ruled that prosecutors aren’t obligated to turn over DNA for testing after someone has been convicted, even if the state acknowledges that a DNA test would prove conclusive as to guilt or innocence, and even if the defendant agrees to pay for the testing himself."

- "The Mexican legislature has voted quietly to decriminalize possession of small amounts of marijuana, cocaine, methamphetamine, heroin and other drugs. Past efforts have proved highly controversial, most recently three years ago, but President Felipe Calderón is expected to sign the bill into law this time."

- Speaking of drugs,votes, and advocating products and services without full disclosure...

Or, why I will never emigrate Down Under

The Aussies are wonderful folk, but there are just too many venomous, foul-tempered creatures native to the area that make it inhospitable for human habitation. Also, they have critters like this:

Scores of eastern tarantulas, which are known as “bird-eating spiders” and can grow larger than the palm of a man’s hand, have begun crawling out from gardens and venturing into public spaces in Bowen, a coastal town about 700 miles northwest of Brisbane...

While not deadly like other Australian spiders, the eastern tarantulas are venomous and can grow up to 6cm (2.4in) long with a leg span of 16cm (6.3in). Despite their common name, they do not eat birds, but can kill a dog with one bite, and make a human very sick.

They are also known as whistling or barking spiders for the hissing noise they emit when they are disturbed or aggravated at close range.

And now they're collecting en masse in the town square, cat-calling, making lewd faces at the ladies and causing the milk to sour?

No, no thank you. I don't like surprises, and spiders et al have a uncanny ability for surprise at the most awkward of times, and it just so happens that my least favorite kind of surprises are "potentially-lethal, maybe-hiding-in-your-shoe, maybe-hiding-in-the-laundry-or-perhaps-under-the-couch surprises". Combine that with a penchant for inexplicably congregating downtown, and that's a deal-breaker.

"A republic, if you can keep it."

Did anyone really believe that Pelosi or the Obama administration would not pursue this?

The ball is in Congress's court to craft a compromise in reinstating regulations on assault weapons, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) acknowledged Tuesday.

During an interview on ABC's "Good Morning America," Pelosi said that the Congress will work to find some middle ground between the previous ban, which expired in 2004, and the precedent laid by the Supreme Court in a ruling enumerating more concrete gunowners' rights last term.

"We have to find some level of compromise," Pelosi said, citing 53 victims of gun violence nationwide in less than a month. "And we have to rid the debate of the misconceptions people have about what gun safety means."

I'm not going to re-hash the arguments against this here, again, now; this is merely the latest in a long list of "a long train of abuses and usurpations", to quote some scholars that are, for lack of less delicate terms, passé.

We have lost it, ladies and gentlemen. The republic is gone, and the coming days will confirm this assertion in ways that we cannot imagine. Yes, that sounds melodramatic, but who among us could have imagined the Great Depression in 1928? Or the horrors of the First World War in 1912?

Considering the still-active frenzy of firearms-related purchases, is there an expectation that there will be widespread compliance with a nation-wide registration movement? In the fevered dreams of Beltway politicians, perhaps. Perhaps light sweet crude will fall to a permanent $5 per barrel, and perhaps Obama will unleash his unicorn-cavalry and cleanse the globe of nuclear arms forevermore, leaving pot-pourri and Skittles in their wake.

Perhaps it's time for some real change.

Czech please!

Perhaps they just needed to have more confidence in their economic recovery:

March 26 (Bloomberg) -- The collapse of the Czech government threatened a new setback for the European Union’s stalled governing treaty, distracting the bloc’s leadership just as President Barack Obama presses for bolder European steps to confront the recession.

Czech Prime Minister Mirek Topolanek is set to tender his resignation today after losing a March 24 no-confidence vote, raising a new hurdle to passage of the treaty by lawmakers in Prague. A setback there may undercut a referendum in Ireland, the only other country that still hasn’t ratified it.

The defeat also hamstrung the Czech government midway through its six-month EU presidency, opening a political vacuum in the run-up to European Parliament elections and a battle over top EU appointments in June.

Naturally, this does not hamper the normal operating-procedure of the EU in any way whatsoever. Maybe. Probably.

Czech President Vaclav Klaus, 67, a self-professed EU “dissident,” will pick a new prime minister or dissolve the parliament if efforts to form a government fail. Klaus said on Feb. 19 he was “not ready to answer” whether he will give his final approval to the treaty if it makes it through the Senate.

I'm sure this turn of events is breaking hearts in Ireland at this very moment.

A design towards Absolute Despotism

America is at that awkward stage. It's too late to work within the system, but too early to shoot the bastards. - Claire Wolfe

To say that I am violently angry regarding the following is an understatement without parallel. The level of ruinous intent, the magnitude of the usurpation of liberty is likewise without parallel, and we must answer it.

Putting aside for the moment that centralized large-scale food-processing in this country is frequently worse on every level for all organisms involved than domestic small-scale production, this bill is, bar none, the most expansive, intrusive, irresponsible, tyrannical and in all other ways absolutist piece of putridity that I've ever had the displeasure to read. Here is the operative core of HR 875, which applies without exception to every American in possession of edible goods:

SEC. 3. DEFINITIONS:

In this Act:

(5) CATEGORY 1 FOOD ESTABLISHMENT- The term `category 1 food establishment' means a food establishment (other than a seafood processing establishment) that slaughters, for the purpose of producing food, animals that are not subject to inspection under the Federal Meat Inspection Act or poultry that are not subject to inspection under the Poultry Products Inspection Act.

(6) CATEGORY 2 FOOD ESTABLISHMENT- The term `category 2 food establishment' means a seafood processing establishment or other food establishment (other than a category 1 establishment) not subject to inspection under the Federal Meat Inspection Act, the Poultry Products Inspection Act, or the Egg Products Inspection Act, that processes raw seafood or other raw animal products, whether fresh or frozen, or other products that the Administrator determines by regulation to pose a significant risk of hazardous contamination.

(7) CATEGORY 3 FOOD ESTABLISHMENT- The term `category 3 food establishment' means a food establishment (other than a category 1 or category 2 establishment) that processes cooked, pasteurized, or otherwise ready-to-eat seafood or other animal products, fresh produce in ready-to-eat raw form, or other products that pose a risk of hazardous contamination.

(8) CATEGORY 4 FOOD ESTABLISHMENT- The term `category 4 food establishment' means a food establishment that processes all other categories of food products not described in paragraphs (5) through (7).

(9) CATEGORY 5 FOOD ESTABLISHMENT- The term `category 5 food establishment' means a food establishment that stores, holds, or transports food products prior to delivery for retail sale.

(13) FOOD ESTABLISHMENT - (A) IN GENERAL- The term `food establishment' means a slaughterhouse (except those regulated under the Federal Meat Inspection Act or the Poultry Products Inspection Act), factory, warehouse, or facility owned or operated by a person located in any State that processes food or a facility that holds, stores, or transports food or food ingredients.

(Italic-emphasis added.)

Whiskey-Tango-Foxtrot, over?

Take a little while to read the whole bill; it's important, and it's nearly impossible to succinctly describe the horrific amount of bureaucracy proposed or trangressions defined.

Collectively (and I'm loathe to use that term), we're in a bit of a bind with our elected representatives ignoring their responsibilities as our official representatives, instead regarding their office as license to demand military escort and misappropriate funding for personal interests that was ear-marked for inappropriate spending elsewhere. This, however, takes the cake and everything used to make it:

The bill’s sponsor is Rep. Rosa DeLauro (D-CT), with 39 co-sponsor, all Democrats. It gets more interesting to find out that DeLauro is married to Stanley Greenberg, who counts Monsanto among his corporate clients. It is also is an interesting coincidence that large corporations are much better equipped to comply with the onerous requirements and paperwork this bill dumps on “Food Production Facilities” then the lowly local farmer or backyard gardener.

I can see the headlines now: "Local man arrested, charged with growing foodstuffs with intent to consume."

I understand that this bill is still in committee, and that alone is of no import, but as HR 875 has 39 co-sponsors is an indicator that the we are leaving the "awkward stage". The very idea that this is acceptable legislation makes my blood boil in my veins, and there has been nary a falsetto squeak from the mainstream-media regarding the submission of this bill or the barely-concealed nature of the relationship of the sponsor to the beneficiaries.

It is fortunate that things cannot remain this way for long, and that God willing, we will collapse under our own weight and perhaps restore a form of government more suitable to protecting the natural rights of free men; any other course will perpetuate a State devoted to the destruction of everything it touches.

Reverberating disquietude

Keynesian economic theory failure gave the thread of monetary policy a good jerk (insert Bernanke joke here), and now the whole sweater is starting to unravel:

While Barack Obama was being sworn in to office on Capitol Hill yesterday, the people of Iceland were starting the first revolution in the history of the republic. The word "revolution" might sound a bit of an overstatement, but given the calm temperament that usually prevails in Icelandic politics, the unfolding events represent, at the very least, a revolution in political activism.

Four months after the collapse of Iceland's entire financial system, no one has accepted any responsibility. Our currency has lost more than half its value, rampant inflation has already eaten up most people's savings, property values have dropped by more than a third and unemployment is reaching levels never seen before in the life of our young republic. The fault is clearly shared between the business elite and the government, which failed to regulate the newly privatised financial sector, allowing a few incompetent and egotistical business tycoons to gamble with the nation's fortune. And yet neither the government nor the bankers – who, by the way, seem to have disappeared into the cold thin air – see anything wrong with their own behaviour.

And while Iceland is an excellent microcosmic example of what can be expected as the correction takes its course, it is not alone:

The financial meltdown has become part of the real economy and is now beginning to shape real politics. More and more citizens on the edge of the global crisis are taking to the streets. Bulgaria has been gripped this month by its worst riots since 1997 when street power helped to topple a Socialist government. Now Socialists are at the helm again and are having to fend off popular protests about government incompetence and corruption.

In Latvia – where growth has been in double-digit figures for years – anger is bubbling over at official mismanagement. GDP is expected to contract by 5 per cent this year; salaries will be cut; unemployment will rise. Last week, in a country where demonstrators usually just sing and then go home, 10,000 people besieged parliament.

The United States has avoided the worst of it so far, but that in itself is a small comfort: the damping effect of the Federal government's interventionist policy prevents a swift correction of accumulated mismanaged assets, just as that same interference amplifies existing and/or expanding "bubbles" in the economy. When the good times were good, we enjoyed a level of opulence unseen since the halcyon days of Palatine Hill.

However, to draw on thermodynamic law and popular wisdom, there ain't no such thing as a free lunch. Predictably, unfortunately, and inevitably, the crash will mirror and match the meteoric rise of the economy pound-for-pound, inch-for-inch, and the very same Statist high-priests that kept the economy from correcting itself will keep the correction from clearing the detritus of failed institutions to make way for new growth.

Strangely enough, it is not all that different from the Federal government's forest-management policy in the western United States: unmitigated growth and fire-suppression until a "critical mass" stage, wherein a devastating, yea, holocaustic inferno consumes the entirety of the diseased and dying forest, causing otherwise healthy trees to explode from the heat and sterilizing entire swathes of wilderness.

I am willing to bet that the recovery will take a similar course: decades.

A Christmas Carol

Christmas-themed music renditions of songs that were tiresome in their original format (now exhumed and injected with syntha-pop) play in every building in this town equipped with a speaker-system. Changing buildings doesn't help, either. They're all tuned to the same feed with a time-delay, so the odds are that you'll be hearing the same song presently that drove you out of the previous shrine to consumerism.

It's everything I imagined pearl-diving would be like: after five minutes, a grimace appears on my face, and I need to resurface before I start thrashing and black-out.

That thing's operational!

Hat-tip to Vox for letting us know the balloon went up.

And people ask me why I don't support universal suffrage... With McCain vowing support for Obama's policy in the Senate and his primary opponent as Secretary of State, do you suppose that this might be a shell-game?

I never thought that I'd see the day when I viewed a fiery economic apocalypse as the easy way out.

Eye for an "aye"

The Republicans are in italics. (Original link to Campaign for Liberty.) Print it out, distribute it to your friends and family.

Vote. Them. Out.

I don't care if he/she was your college roommate, or sends you Christmas Cards, or you personally saw them walk an old lady across the street. Their actions belie a willingness on par with touching your children in an inappropriate way, nevermind the willingness to ignore an estimated 100-300:1 ratio of public sentiment against this bailout.

AYES:

Ackerman Allen Andrews Arcuri Bachus Baird Baldwin Bean Berman Berry Bishop (GA) Bishop (NY) Blunt Boehner Bonner Bono Mack Boozman Boren Boswell Boucher Boyd (FL) Brady (PA) Brady (TX) Brown (SC) Brown, Corrine Calvert Camp (MI) Campbell (CA) Cannon Cantor Capps Capuano Cardoza Carnahan Castle Clarke Clyburn Cohen Cole (OK) Cooper Costa Cramer Crenshaw Crowley Cubin Davis (AL) Davis (CA) Davis (IL) Davis, Tom DeGette DeLauro Dicks Dingell Donnelly Doyle Dreier Edwards (TX) Ehlers Ellison Ellsworth Emanuel Emerson Engel Eshoo Etheridge Everett Farr Fattah Ferguson

Fossella Foster Frank (MA) Gilchrest Gonzalez Gordon Granger Gutierrez Hall (NY) Hare Harman Hastings (FL) Herger Higgins Hinojosa Hobson Holt Honda Hooley Hoyer Inglis (SC) Israel Johnson, E. B. Kanjorski Kennedy Kildee Kind King (NY) Kirk Klein (FL) Kline (MN) LaHood Langevin Larsen (WA) Larson (CT) Levin Lewis (CA) Lewis (KY) Loebsack Lofgren, Zoe Lowey Lungren, D. E. Mahoney (FL) Maloney (NY) Markey Marshall Matsui McCarthy (NY) McCollum (MN) McCrery McDermott McGovern McHugh McKeon McNerney McNulty Meek (FL) Meeks (NY) Melancon Miller (NC) Miller, Gary Miller, George Mollohan Moore (KS) Moore (WI) Moran (VA) Murphy (CT) Murphy, Patrick Murtha

Nadler Neal (MA) Oberstar Obey Olver Pallone Pelosi Perlmutter Peterson (PA) Pickering Pomeroy Porter Price (NC) Pryce (OH) Putnam Radanovich Rahall Rangel Regula Reyes Reynolds Richardson Rogers (AL) Rogers (KY) Ross Ruppersberger Ryan (OH) Ryan (WI) Sarbanes Saxton Schakowsky Schwartz Sessions Sestak Shays Simpson Sires Skelton Slaughter Smith (TX) Smith (WA) Snyder Souder Space Speier Spratt Tancredo Tanner Tauscher Towns Tsongas Upton Van Hollen Velázquez Walden (OR) Walsh (NY) Wasserman Schultz Waters Watt Waxman Weiner Weldon (FL) Wexler Wilson (NM) Wilson (OH) Wilson (SC) Wolf