Monthly Archives: May 2014

James Logan: Patent Troll

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Way back in the olden thymes I had one of those conversations familiar to anyone in the tech world back then. The web was just getting going and everyone was putting up websites hoping to get rich. Someone I knew was involved in one such venture. He was giving me the elevator speech about how it was positioned to take advantage of synergies and vectors and so on.

After he was done I asked him how they planned to make money. I was not being cheeky, I just assumed he left that part out for some reason. Instead of telling me, he went into another spiel about unique visitors per month and page visits. My reply was something about the bank not taking page visits as payment on his mortgage. He thought I was daft, but not long after, the venture collapsed.

The great challenge of the tech boom was figuring out how to make money from things people did not need, but they could possibly want. Some services like porn figured it out for a while. Others like eBay and PayPal came up with real businesses to replace existing businesses. Others figured out how to transfers big chunks of their costs onto some unsuspecting sucker like the ISP.

Others figured out how to tax you through your phone bill or tax the person with who you were doing e-commerce. These parasites were not looking to add value to the system, but rather extract value. This is where patent trolls come into play. They shake down companies for rents, abusing the patent laws. They are just gaming the legal system to control an artificial bottleneck. That’s the racket of dirtbags like James Logan.

James Logan freely admits that he’s never made a podcast.

But he also insists he helped create the medium of podcasting. Logan says that it happened in 1996 — and that he has the patents to prove it.

In a controversial legal battle, PersonalAudio, the company founded by Logan, is suing comedian Adam Carolla’s ACE Broadcasting, two other podcasters and networks Fox, CBS and NBC, saying they are infringing on his copyright and owe him money.

The trial begins in September. Carolla has taken to the Web to raise money for legal fees against what he called “patent trolls.”

Carolla says he needs $1.5 million to face PersonalAudio in an East Texas courtroom that historically has been favored by patent litigants. So far, Carolla has pulled in just over $370,000 on the Fundanything.com crowdfunding website, including a $20,000 donation from e-commerce giant Amazon.

“The first thing they (PersonalAudio) said was ‘Give us $3 million,'” says Carolla, whose show is listed in the Guiness Book of World Records as the most downloaded podcast ever. When faced with the suit, Carolla said he chose to fight.

“Obviously, $3 million is out of the question,” he says. “But even if they said tomorrow, ‘Give us $100,000, and this will all go away’ — $100,000 for what?”

Should he lose, Carolla says he might shut down his show, a sentiment seconded online by others.

Podcasting has been around since at least 2004, initially as a vehicle to supply non-music programming for the Apple iPod, which launched in 2001. Apple began offering podcasts, through subscriptions and downloads, via its iTunes app in 2005.

As the popularity of smartphones and tablets has eliminated the need for subscriptions and downloads, sites such as TuneIn Radio, SoundCloud, Stitcher and Swell offer instant listening, both on the Web and via increasingly popular smartphone apps.

Nerdist’sChris Hardwick built a huge online following with his podcast, which he parlayed into a high-profile hosting gig with cable network AMC. Comedian Aisha Tyler, a co-host of TV’s The Talk, parlayed her popular podcast Girl on Guy into a best-selling book, Self-Inflicting Wounds. National Public Radio has found huge audiences for shows such as This American Life, Snap Judgement and Fresh Air, which regularly top the iTunes podcast charts.

The trials — six separate suits between PersonalAudio and Carolla, Discovery Networks, podcaster Togi Entertainment and the broadcast networks — will take place in a small Texan town with 24,000 residents. Marshall, three hours east of Dallas and near the Arkansas border, has become known as the “patent trial capital”, a popular place to get a trial in a city whose docket isn’t filled with other cases waiting to get a hearing.

Many patent cases take place there, and historically, litigants win 60% of the time, according to a recent study by PriceWaterhouseCoopers.

Carolla’s team fought the locale, seeking a bigger city and fearing the history.

PersonalAudio, based in Beaumont, Texas, has a handful of employees working on creating new technologies, says Logan, who himself is based in New Hampshire.

PersonalAudio has no products but instead owns patents and investments in several companies, including consumer tech company Bringerr.

Logan’s 1996 idea predates podcasting as we know it. His concept was downloadable entertainment via the Internet to a new kind of MP3 player he was trying to market. The product fizzled, so he switched gears to subscription of cassette tapes. He filed for and was granted several patents, which included the notion of having downloaded playlists.

In 2009, PersonalAudio amended the patent to include podcasting.

It is patently obvious this guy is adding nothing to any of these companies. They are not using his technology. He has not created anything unique or original that they are relying upon to do their work. He is good at fooling stupid government clerks in the patent office into giving him rights to things he never created. His entire business is built around the idea of finding someone he can sue in a courtroom full of rubes.

That’s the main problem with these patent suits. Their claims have no relationship with the real value of their product. Carolla would never pay $3 million to this idiot in order to record a podcast. He probably would not pay anything. Instead he would find some other way to do his show without using whatever it is this guy claims he owns. James Logan is simply a highwayman, one that robs you on the internet.

Piketty Ninnies

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David Brooks is a useful guy to watch at the moment, as he is popular with the managerial class. His book, Bobos in Paradise, is an excellent bit of cultural observation.  He knows his peers well and often does an excellent job describing their habits and world view. It is also why he sounds like a space alien when he addresses issues facing common Americans. Still, he scores with a column or two a year and this is one such example.

Many people join the political left driven by a concern for the poor. But, over the past several years, the Democratic Party has talked much more about the middle class than the poor. Meanwhile, progressive political movements like Occupy Wall Street directed their fervor at the top 1 percent. Progressive movies and books have focused their attention on conspiracy and oligarchy at the top, not “Grapes of Wrath” or “How the Other Half Lives” stories at the bottom.

This is natural. The modern left is led by smart professionals — academics, activists, people in the news media, the arts and so on — who tend to live in and around coastal cities.

If you are a young professional in a major city, you experience inequality firsthand. But the inequality you experience most acutely is not inequality down, toward the poor; it’s inequality up, toward the rich.

You go to fund-raisers or school functions and there are always hedge fund managers and private equity people around. You get more attention than them at parties, but your whole apartment could fit in their dining room. You struggle with tuition, but their kids go off on ski weekends. You wait in line at the post office, but they have staff to do it for them.

You see firsthand the explosion of wealth at the tippy-top. It really doesn’t help that you have to spend your days kissing up to the oligarchs and their foundations to finance your research, exhibition or favorite cause.

And right there he touches on precisely why a hitherto unknown economist named Thomas Piketty is taking the beautiful people by storm. The people writing at the NYTimes, teaching at big state universities and carrying bags for elected officials have grown resentful of their masters. They look around at lottery winners like Mark Zuckerberg and wonder why he gets to live like an 18th century French royal, while they toil in his fields. After all, they went to an Ivy League college too.

Obama declared inequality as “the defining issue of our time.” Obama is a spokesman, so he is a useful indicator about what vexes these people. His writers and teleprompter operators are members of the managerial class. What’s important to them will eventually turn up in one his carefully choreographed speeches. With an election coming and the Left on its heels, it is a safe bet they will be pounding this drum for the rest of the year in an effort to change the subject.

“defining challenge of our time.”
“defining challenge of our time.”
“defining challenge of our time.”

There may be something else going on here. If you look back at the last fifteen years, the period of this last Great Awakening of Progressive fanaticism, they don’t have a whole lot to show for themselves. In the 2000’s, it was mostly an extended tantrum about the unlettered rubes of the Bush administration. The Obama years have been a big disappointment to the Left. The great dreams of 2008 have been boiled down to one major initiative, health care, which has been a terrible flop.

If you are a member of the ruling class, it feels bad right now. The triumph of Obama is a distant memory and all the promise of that time amounted to nothing. More broadly speaking, this last fevered push by the Left never had much going for it. Health care is a math problem, not a moral problem. The rest of their agenda amounts to nothing more than weird fads cooked up by intersectional college professors with too much time on their hands. It’s been a total bust

The other side of the coin is the Right has nothing to offer. Conservatism in America has mostly functioned as a brake on the Progressives. Every once in a while they come up with a good policy and aggressively promote it, but for the most part they are the party-poopers telling the Left they can’t have what they want. Right now, the Left is exhausted and the Right has nothing to champion. That’s why the so-called conservatives sound like a bizarre mystery cult built around Reagan and buckley.

Ideologically, we are at a dead end. With no way forward, going back and re-arguing inequality suits both sides well. The real issue of this age, the demographic issue, is forbidden due to the dictates of egalitarianism. Since that is the only issue that actually matters, they are left talking about trivial and made up stuff. That and their feelings about one another, which is the root of the inequality stuff. The house servants are getting restless with nothing better to do.

The Blood Of The Innocent

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People have often asked my how I look so youthful. I’m pushing 50, but most people think I am in my thirties. I jokingly tell them that I drink the blood of the innocent, after sacrificing them to Baal. Normally, they laugh, uncomfortably, and assume I’m weirdly telling them to fuck off. On occasion someone will press me and I just say it is genes. No one wants to believe drinking the blood of unbaptized infants is a real thing, but now the wider world is finding out about my secret.

It may seem the stuff of gothic horror novels, but transfusions of young blood could reverse the ageing process and even cure Alzheimer’s Disease, scientists believe.

Throughout history, cultures across the globe have extolled the properties of youthful blood, with children sacrificed and the blood of young warriors drunk by the victors.

It was even rumoured that the North Korean dictator Kim Jong-il injected himself with blood from healthy young virgins to slow the ageing process.

Now scientists have found that young blood actually ‘recharges’ the brain, forms new blood vessels and improves memory and learning.

In parallel research, scientists at Harvard University also discovered that a ‘youth protein’ which circulates in the blood is responsible for keeping the brain and muscles young and strong.

The protein, known as ‘GDF11’, is present in the bloodstream in large quantities when we are young but peters out as we age.

Although both the discoveries were made in mice, researchers are hoping to begin human trials in the next two to three years, in studies which could bring rapid improvements for human longevity and health.

“This should give us all hope for a healthier future,” said Prof Doug Melton, of Harvard’s Department of Stem Cell and Regenerative Biology.

“We all wonder why we were stronger and mentally more agile when young, and these two unusually exciting papers actually point to a possible answer.

“There seems to be little question that, GDF11 has an amazing capacity to restore aging muscle and brain function.”

Last year the team discovered that the protein could repair damaged hearts. But the new study showed that that raising the levels of the GDF11 protein in older mice improved the function of every organ in the body.

Harvard stem cell biologist Prof Lee Rubin added: “We do think that, at least in principal, there will be a way to reverse some of the decline of aging with a single protein.

“It isn’t out of question that GDF11, or a drug developed from it, might be worthwhile in Alzheimer’s Disease.”

It is likely that the protein is at least partly responsible for the parallel finding by Stanford University that young blood can reverse the signs of ageing.

In the study, the blood of three-month-old mice was repeatedly injected into 18-month-old mice near the end of their natural life span.

The “vampire therapy” improved the performance of the elderly mice in memory and learning tasks.

Structural, molecular and functional changes were also seen in their brains, the study published in the journal Science found.

If the same were seem in humans, it could lead to new therapies for recharging our aging brains and novel drugs for treating dementias such as Alzheimer’s disease.

“We’ve shown that at least some age-related impairments in brain function are reversible. They’re not final,” said Dr Saul Villeda, of Stanford’s School of Medicine.

Ageing mice given eight infusions of young blood over three weeks improved their performance in mental tests of fear condition and locating a hidden platform in a water maze.

Evidence was seen of new connections forming in the hippocampus, a brain region vital to memory and sensitive to ageing.

Dendritic spines – finger-like extensions from the branches of neurons that are thought to play a role in memory formation – also became more dense.

Infusions of blood from other elderly mice had no effect, the study, published in the journal Nature, found.

“This could have been done 20 years ago,” said lead researcher Dr Tony Wyss-Coray of Stanford.

“You don’t need to know anything about how the brain works. You just give an old mouse young blood and see if the animal is smarter than before. It’s just that nobody did it.”

“Our data indicate that exposure of aged mice to young blood late in life is capable of rejuvenating synaptic plasticity and improving cognitive function.

“Future studies are warranted in aged humans and potentially those suffering from age-related neurodegenerative disorders.”

Dr Eric Karran, from the dementia charity Alzheimer’s Research UK, said: “This technically complex study looks at the effects of exposing old mice to blood-borne factors from young mice on age-related cognitive decline.

“Although the treatments tested here rejuvenate certain aspects of learning and memory in mice, these studies are of unknown significance to humans.

“This research, while very interesting, does not investigate the type of cognitive impairment that is seen in Alzheimer’s disease, which is not an inevitable consequence of ageing.”

Given the fear of age hammered into American society, starting with the baby Boomers, I will not be shocked if this gets a lot of support. The success of the little blue pill proves that generations of indoctrination have made us fear age more than anything other than death by old age. Anything that promises to extend vitality will get explored and marketed to a people who can’t be bothered to have children, but wish to live like them for eternity. Human sacrifice is not unrealistic.

The Jesus Hoax

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It seems like a decennial occurrence. Some scholar somewhere discovers some new proof that Christianity is all bunk. The most recent hoax was proof that Jesus was married. That would prove once in for all that Christianity is a conspiracy by the terrible white males to oppress women, Jews, blacks etc. As is always the case, the proof turns out to be nonsense. The newly discovered papyrus by Harvard Divinity School professor Karen King is a hoax.

In September 2012, Harvard Divinity School professor Karen King announced the discovery of a Coptic (ancient Egyptian) gospel text on a papyrus fragment that contained the phrase “Jesus said to them, ‘My wife . . .’ ” The world took notice. The possibility that Jesus was married would prompt a radical reconsideration of the New Testament and biblical scholarship.

Yet now it appears almost certain that the Jesus-was-married story line was divorced from reality. On April 24, Christian Askeland—a Coptic specialist at Indiana Wesleyan University and my colleague at the Green Scholars Initiative—revealed that the “Gospel of Jesus’ Wife,” as the fragment is known, was a match for a papyrus fragment that is clearly a forgery.

Almost from the moment Ms. King made her announcement two years ago, critics attacked the Gospel of Jesus’ Wife as a forgery. One line of criticism said that the fragment had been sloppily reworked from a 2002 online PDF of the Coptic Gospel of Thomas and even repeated a typographical error.

But Ms. King had defenders. The Harvard Theological Review recently published a group of articles that attest to the papyrus’s authenticity. Although the scholars involved signed nondisclosure agreements preventing them from sharing the data with the wider scholarly community, the New York Times NYT -1.40% was given access to the studies ahead of publication. The newspaper summarized the findings last month, saying “the ink and papyrus are very likely ancient, and not a modern forgery.” The article prompted a tide of similar pieces, appearing shortly before Easter, asserting that the Gospel of Jesus’ Wife was genuine.

A good rule with all science, hard and soft, is secrecy means dishonesty. If you refuse to release your data and methods, you’re up to something. It is why most people think Michael Mann is a fraud. He refuses to release his data and methods. The reasons for this are all bad. Going to the extraordinary step of forcing the researchers to sign NDA’s was a big red flag. You see the same thing here. There is a lot of effort going into concealing that which should be made public.

Then last week the story began to crumble faster than an ancient papyrus exposed in the windy Sudan. Mr. Askeland found, among the online links that Harvard used as part of its publicity push, images of another fragment, of the Gospel of John, that turned out to share many similarities—including the handwriting, ink and writing instrument used—with the “wife” fragment. The Gospel of John text, he discovered, had been directly copied from a 1924 publication.

“Two factors immediately indicated that this was a forgery,” Mr. Askeland tells me. “First, the fragment shared the same line breaks as the 1924 publication. Second, the fragment contained a peculiar dialect of Coptic called Lycopolitan, which fell out of use during or before the sixth century.” Ms. King had done two radiometric tests, he noted, and “concluded that the papyrus plants used for this fragment had been harvested in the seventh to ninth centuries.” In other words, the fragment that came from the same material as the “Jesus’ wife” fragment was written in a dialect that didn’t exist when the papyrus it appears on was made.

Mark Goodacre, a New Testament professor and Coptic expert at Duke University, wrote on his NT Blog on April 25 about the Gospel of John discovery: “It is beyond reasonable doubt that this is a fake, and this conclusion means that the Jesus’ Wife Fragment is a fake too.” Alin Suciu, a research associate at the University of Hamburg and a Coptic manuscript specialist, wrote online on April 26: “Given that the evidence of the forgery is now overwhelming, I consider the polemic surrounding the Gospel of Jesus’ Wife papyrus over.”

It was (probably) Mark Twain who said a lie is halfway around the world before the truth gets out of bed. It will take decades before the usual suspects stop insisting Jesus was married. Every Christmas and Easter, the same nitwits claim the Christian holidays were ripped off from pagans. It seems the people who know the least about Christianity choose to be its harshest critics. You don’t have to be a religious person to see that a society run by Christians is better than one run by professors.

Having evaluated the evidence, many specialists in ancient manuscripts and Christian origins think Karen King and the Harvard Divinity School were the victims of an elaborate ruse. Scholars had assumed that radiometric tests would return an early date (at least in antiquity), because the Gospel of Jesus’ Wife fragment had been cut from a genuinely ancient piece of material. Likewise, those familiar with papyri had identified the ink used as soot-based—preferred by forgers because the Raman spectroscopy tests used to test for age would be inconclusive.

It is perhaps understandable that Ms. King would have been taken in when an anonymous owner presented her with some papyrus fragments for research. What is harder to understand was the rush by the media and others to embrace the idea that Jesus had a wife and that Christian beliefs have been mistaken for centuries. No evidence for Jesus having been married exists in any of the thousands of orthodox biblical writings dating to antiquity. You would have thought Thomas Aquinas might have mentioned it. But this episode is not totally without merit. It will provide a valuable case study for research classes long after we’re gone and the biblical texts remain.

That’s the art of the con. The confidence man first seeks to win the trust of the mark and he does that by appealing to their biases. Sometimes it is vanity. Sometimes it is hatred of something or someone. Maybe it is the mark’s desire to be famous. In this case, the confidence men sensed a strong  desire by female academics to feminize antiquity, so  they created an artifact to meet that need. Look for similar hoaxes to write blacks and Jews into the history of white people in the coming decades.

Reparations

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The other day on Marginal Revolution, Steve Sailer was holding forth on an IQ topic in the comments section. As is often the case, the comments drifted into the areas of race and all of the taboos that surround the topic. These days, it is hard to have a serious on-line discussion about race, because everyone is afraid and the discussion gets loaded up with moral posturing. Anyway, Sailer responded to someone with this:

One way or another, white America is going to be paying the Slave Trade Tax for, roughly, ever. Therefore, I don’t mind giving racial preferences to the 12% or whatever of the population who are the direct descendants of slaves in America, and I don’t mind the 1% who are American Indians having casinos or whatever.

On the other hand, I’m not at all happy about ethnic preferences for immigrant groups, such as the 17% (and rapidly growing) of the country who are Hispanics. They chose to come here. And I’m not at all happy about the business breaks that Asians get, which are so valuable that in 1982 Indians got the government to move them out of the Caucasian category and in with the Orientals so they could get minority business development breaks on government contracts and low interest SBA loans.

– See more at: http://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2014/05/do-social-problems-cause-economic-problems-or-vice-versa.html#comments

One way or another, white America is going to be paying the Slave Trade Tax for, roughly, ever. Therefore, I don’t mind giving racial preferences to the 12% or whatever of the population who are the direct descendants of slaves in America, and I don’t mind the 1% who are American Indians having casinos or whatever.

On the other hand, I’m not at all happy about ethnic preferences for immigrant groups, such as the 17% (and rapidly growing) of the country who are Hispanics. They chose to come here. And I’m not at all happy about the business breaks that Asians get, which are so valuable that in 1982 Indians got the government to move them out of the Caucasian category and in with the Orientals so they could get minority business development breaks on government contracts and low interest SBA loans.

Charles Murray is probably right and we will be clawing each others eyes out in the not too distant future as a result of the racial spoils system. It is one thing for the dominant group to buy off the minority group to keep the peace. Once you get into competition between groups for a share of the spoils, the result is predictable. As Steve notes, immigrants are jumping on this system, which will accelerate the problem. The suicidal whites in charge now will be pushed aside one way or another.

A way out of this trap is reparations for slavery. Reparations pops up from time to time, but no one takes it seriously. The reason is the people making the case are ridiculous or simply illiterate. The problem is compounded by the difficulty of calculating a fair number for reparations. In civil suits, the actual damages have to be proved. Punitive damages are usually done by a formula of some sort.

If we were actually settling up with real former slaves, that would be a good starting point. The last slave died in 1971, but most were long gone 100 years ago. One of the unreported facts of Reconstruction is black life expectancy fell dramatically after slavery, so most of the former slaves were gone a few decades. Even their direct decedents were gone by the early 20th century.

Then there’s another problem. If you were living in sub-Saharan Africa in the 17th or 18th century, life was going to be short and brutal. Slavery sounds awful, but it turns out to have been better than living in Africa. Slaves had value to their owners so they took care of them. There is no better place to be black than America. The decedents of slaves are reaping a huge reward for being the decedents of slaves. If we are going to build a case for reparations, you have to factor in that huge benefit, as well.

All that said, what’s the price of a clean conscience? Whites in charge of America pretend to be racked with guilt and demand all whites feel shame for slavery. Settling up with black people may very well be the best solution to finally close the books on this issue for good. It may also be the only way to dismantle the racial spoils system before it tears the nation apart. Given the push for open borders, we may have but a few more years before things get very tough.

A simple proposal. Everyone descended from slaves, over the age of 25 gets $10,000 per year, distributed on their birthday. To get on the gravy train of reparations, they must do a few things. One is you must provide a genealogical history showing you are directly descended from former slaves on both sides of the family. That means if you’re Barak Obama, you’re not getting reparations, but his wife would be eligible. The kids would not be as their father is not a descendant of slaves.

Another requirement would be DNA testing. We know enough at this point to confirm the basics. Weeding out the hustlers and con-men would be a little easier with DNA evidence. Someone who is 50% Chinese, indicating a Chinese parent, could look like Tiger Woods and thus try to get on the payroll. This would also be a service to people who cannot piece together their genealogical records completely. If you are the relative of someone who has established their line, you can use that information.

Finally, the criminals would lose their entitlement. Sending checks to prisoners or their families is asking for trouble. Once the person has paid their debt to society and been crime free for a number of years, then the benefit can resume. Using this program as a nudge to obey the law is a low cost choice with some obvious benefits. Most black criminals would not be motivated by this provision, but some would. Given the enormous crime rate among blacks, a little goes a long way.

The data on recipients would need to be public. That way the public can help supervise the program by spotting and reporting cheaters. It could also have value to scientists researching DNA, evolution and so forth. The Civil Rights Act  and the Voting Rights Act would be repealed as part of the program. The savings on mischief from those programs would off-set the cost of reparations. The books would then be closed on slavery and segregation. Normalcy would be restored.

That’s why this can never happen.

One way or another, white America is going to be paying the Slave Trade Tax for, roughly, ever. Therefore, I don’t mind giving racial preferences to the 12% or whatever of the population who are the direct descendants of slaves in America, and I don’t mind the 1% who are American Indians having casinos or whatever.

On the other hand, I’m not at all happy about ethnic preferences for immigrant groups, such as the 17% (and rapidly growing) of the country who are Hispanics. They chose to come here. And I’m not at all happy about the business breaks that Asians get, which are so valuable that in 1982 Indians got the government to move them out of the Caucasian category and in with the Orientals so they could get minority business development breaks on government contracts and low interest SBA loans.

– See more at: http://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2014/05/do-social-problems-cause-economic-problems-or-vice-versa.html#comments

One way or another, white America is going to be paying the Slave Trade Tax for, roughly, ever. Therefore, I don’t mind giving racial preferences to the 12% or whatever of the population who are the direct descendants of slaves in America, and I don’t mind the 1% who are American Indians having casinos or whatever.

On the other hand, I’m not at all happy about ethnic preferences for immigrant groups, such as the 17% (and rapidly growing) of the country who are Hispanics. They chose to come here. And I’m not at all happy about the business breaks that Asians get, which are so valuable that in 1982 Indians got the government to move them out of the Caucasian category and in with the Orientals so they could get minority business development breaks on government contracts and low interest SBA loans.

– See more at: http://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2014/05/do-social-problems-cause-economic-problems-or-vice-versa.html#comments

One way or another, white America is going to be paying the Slave Trade Tax for, roughly, ever. Therefore, I don’t mind giving racial preferences to the 12% or whatever of the population who are the direct descendants of slaves in America, and I don’t mind the 1% who are American Indians having casinos or whatever.

On the other hand, I’m not at all happy about ethnic preferences for immigrant groups, such as the 17% (and rapidly growing) of the country who are Hispanics. They chose to come here. And I’m not at all happy about the business breaks that Asians get, which are so valuable that in 1982 Indians got the government to move them out of the Caucasian category and in with the Orientals so they could get minority business development breaks on government contracts and low interest SBA loans.

– See more at: http://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2014/05/do-social-problems-cause-economic-problems-or-vice-versa.html#comments

One way or another, white America is going to be paying the Slave Trade Tax for, roughly, ever. Therefore, I don’t mind giving racial preferences to the 12% or whatever of the population who are the direct descendants of slaves in America, and I don’t mind the 1% who are American Indians having casinos or whatever.

On the other hand, I’m not at all happy about ethnic preferences for immigrant groups, such as the 17% (and rapidly growing) of the country who are Hispanics. They chose to come here. And I’m not at all happy about the business breaks that Asians get, which are so valuable that in 1982 Indians got the government to move them out of the Caucasian category and in with the Orientals so they could get minority business development breaks on government contracts and low interest SBA loans.

– See more at: http://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2014/05/do-social-problems-cause-economic-problems-or-vice-versa.html#comments

One way or another, white America is going to be paying the Slave Trade Tax for, roughly, ever. Therefore, I don’t mind giving racial preferences to the 12% or whatever of the population who are the direct descendants of slaves in America, and I don’t mind the 1% who are American Indians having casinos or whatever.

On the other hand, I’m not at all happy about ethnic preferences for immigrant groups, such as the 17% (and rapidly growing) of the country who are Hispanics. They chose to come here. And I’m not at all happy about the business breaks that Asians get, which are so valuable that in 1982 Indians got the government to move them out of the Caucasian category and in with the Orientals so they could get minority business development breaks on government contracts and low interest SBA loans.

– See more at: http://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2014/05/do-social-problems-cause-economic-problems-or-vice-versa.html#comments

Inside the Left

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It’s always good to search around the websites of the fringe Left. It is like watching a homeless man soil himself. You’re disgusted, but you can’t help but feel sorry for the wretch. The hard thumping wackos that write for these sites are nutty as fruitcakes, but you can’t help but wish there was a cure for their mental disease. There isn’t and it is important to remember that guys like Markos Moulitsas would gladly hustle you off to the death camps if possible. Here’s an example.

I had already been planning on cartooning the National Rifle Association’s ridiculous annual meeting when my nephew’s unarmed friend got killed in what is shaping up to be another “Stand Your Ground” case.  The circumstances surrounding this shooting may make things a little more difficult for the shooter, who was basically laying in wait to murder someone.  The shooter’s defense attorney has already said his client is going to use a Castle Doctrine/Stand Your Ground defense.

The Left has a long list of abracadabra phrases. A popular one these days is “stand your ground.” They have disconnected it from any real meaning as we see here. In no state does someone in their home have a duty to retreat. Therefore, “stand your ground” laws would never apply. Further, castle doctrine laws have been common since Blackstone. Self-defense is the most sacred human right.

Regardless of what the circumstances are in this particular case that happened to strike close to my family, it is perfectly clear that the NRA is stoking the fires of paranoia and fear in order to pass legislation, sell more guns and make more money.  All you have to do is listen to the apocalyptic, conspiratorial speech made by the NRA’s Wayne LaPierre to get so scared you probably will rush right out and buy a couple AR-15s.  (Which were conveniently available at the time of the speech in an adjoining gun showroom that covered nine (9) acres.)

The NRA does not sell guns. They certainly have seen a  boom in membership. That’s exclusively due to lunatics like Mark Fiore out banging their pots and pans on the street in favor of gun confiscation. People tend to notice things and they noticed that these crazies keep saying they want to gut the 2nd Amendment. They do the sensible thing and organize a defense.

It is baffling to me that members of Congress speak at the NRA’s annual gun fest, an orgy of military hardware marketed to civilians, while the head of the gun lobby group essentially trumpets the need for armed revolt.  (Join now, buy now!)  As a bonus, the NRA held a “Youth Day” last Sunday, which coincidentally was the day my nephew’s unarmed 17-year-old friend was killed.  Ugh.  While you’re watching the cartoon, see if you can pick out which lines are direct quotes from Wayne LaPierre, and which are my interpretation.

A common trick with these people is insisting ignorance furthers their argument. His bafflement is presented as proof that his opinion is valid. This is absurd. His bafflement actually tells us we should discount his opinion because he obviously fails to grasp some basic elements. It is a byproduct of the totalitarian mind. Ideas, opinions and facts outside of those acknowledged by the Left don’t exist. Therefore, placing anything in the set of items that is unknown means they are irrational. It’s a passive-aggressive way of declaring something off-limits.

The puzzling thing is how is it Western society has produced so many crazy people like Mark Fiore? These people are generally smart and usually educated. What is it that has gone wrong with Mark Fiore and his coreligionists on the Left? Why would they join a movement hell bent on collective suicide? It’s as if some outside group has found a way to turn up the volume on crazy people in the west, while turning down the volume on the normal people. it looks like a plot by people who hate us.

Kill The Witch!

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The various witch hunts going on America at any one time are pathetic and degenerate, but at least we’re not burning the witches or throwing them in jail. That’s going to change as the Left becomes more deranged, so it is coming soon. Here in America we are a little behind the other English speaking nations. Unencumbered with a First Amendment, they will throw people in jail for saying unapproved things.

A candidate in the European elections was arrested on suspicion of racial harrassment after quoting a passage about Islam, written by Winston Churchill, during a campaign speech.

Paul Weston, chairman of the party Liberty GB, made the address on the steps of Winchester Guildhall, in Hampshire on Saturday.

A member of the public took offence at the quote, taken from Churchill’s The River War and called police.

The passage from the book, written by the wartime Prime Minister and first published in 1899, focuses on Churchill’s observations about Islam while serving during the Anglo-Egyptian reconquest of the Sudan.

Mr Weston told his audience: ‘Improvident habits, slovenly systems of agriculture, sluggish methods of commerce, and insecurity of property exist wherever the followers of the Prophet rule or live.

‘Thousands become the brave and loyal soldiers of the faith: all know how to die but the influence of the religion paralyses the social development of those who follow it.

‘No stronger retrograde force exists in the world. Far from being moribund, Mohammedanism is a militant and proselytizing faith.’

Police officers arrested Mr Weston, mid-speech, for failing to comply with their request to move on under the powers of a dispersal order made against him.

He was further arrested on suspicion of religious or racial harassment.

Behaviorally, humans have not changed a whole lot since we moved from hunter-gatherer to settled life. Religion is what holds people together, fostering cooperation and providing ways to punish the freeloaders and trouble makers. Two thousand years ago Mr. Weston would have been stoned for saying bad things about Woden. One thousand years ago he would have been broken on the wheel for saying bad things about Jesus. Today, he is arrested for saying bad things about Mohamed.

I wonder sometimes if we are even that sophisticated. There’s strong evidence that the smart fraction running pagan society knew it was mostly nonsense. They enforced the rules because it was the only way they knew how to keep everyone in line. The Catholic Church went after Utopian heretics because they knew they disrupted society (as we see today). They let a lot of harmless heretics go unmolested. Today’s ruling clergy seems to really believe in Cultural Marxism.

 

Bush Versus Clinton II, The Final Reckoning

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Just as the Clinton Crime Family plots its course for 2016, the Bush clan is plotting to install another member on the thrown. Jeb Bush is the next in line. He was groomed to be the 2000 candidate, but he was too much of a pussy to do it so his retarded brother ran and the rest was history. Jeb has been making sure he stays in the news while his people plant stories like this one in the media.

Jeb Bush’s increasingly serious and public examination of a run for president has shaken the ranks of establishment Republican donors and fund-raisers who had planned to back Gov. Chris Christie of New Jersey in 2016, forcing many of them to rethink their allegiance to the embattled governor.

In private conversations that are now seeping into public view, some of them are signaling to Mr. Christie’s camp that, should Mr. Bush enter the race, their first loyalty would be to him, not to Mr. Christie, according to interviews with more than two dozen of them.

Many of those who, because of geography and personal ties, were expected to line up behind Mr. Christie say they now feel torn. And it is clear that Mr. Christie’s recent troubles, especially the George Washington Bridge scandal, are adding to the allure of Mr. Bush, a former Florida governor.

Lawrence E. Bathgate II, a former finance chairman of the Republican National Committee and a major donor in New Jersey, said he dreaded the prospect of having to choose between the two men, calling it “a fraught decision.”

David V. Hedley, a former Wall Street executive and Republican fund-raiser in New Jersey, said he also felt tugged in two directions, conceding that “it’s tough right now for me.”

And Christine Todd Whitman, a former Republican governor of New Jersey, put it this way: “It would be awkward. It would be very awkward.”

Nowhere is the consternation greater than among the hundreds of top donors and so-called bundlers who cut their teeth on Bush family political campaigns. If Mr. Bush runs, they must choose between bucking their ties to the first family of Republican politics or turning their back on Mr. Christie, who does not take well to disloyalty.

“Those of us that have been dedicated to the Bush family for years would obviously have to take a Jeb candidacy into extremely serious consideration,” said Fred S. Zeidman, a Texas businessman and top fund-raiser for George W. Bush’s two presidential campaigns who has helped introduce Mr. Christie to potential supporters in his state.

Mr. Christie and Mr. Bush have not officially declared their intentions for 2016. Mr. Christie’s advisers say his political focus this year remains on leading the Republican Governors Association, which has broken fund-raising records during Mr. Christie’s tenure as chairman, which began in November.

The presidential chatter is “irrelevant to us,” said William J. Palatucci, Mr. Christie’s top adviser and a former law partner. “You know it’s out there, but it’s just not part of our conversation.”

Mr. Bush’s public flirtation with a White House bid, however, has interrupted Mr. Christie’s carefully honed plan to rebuild the faith of donors shaken by a series of high-profile controversies and resignations within his administration.

The language used there is interesting The Left always describes Republicans as if they are a Bond villain. They all but described him as being in a secret lair. In reality, the typical Republican is a house trained toady. Then you have their bizarre obsession with traffic, which no one outside of the Left thinks is important. The NYTimes has spent more time on a traffic jam than Obama’s abuse of the IRS or Obama’s decision to let Americans die in a terror attack. That’s the nature of cults.

For decades now, the GOP has been trying to turn itself into the Democratic party circa 1985. They are convinced that will win back the areas around coastal cities. So far, it has only angered the Left, which sees that as a threat. It turns off normal Americans who increasing see both parties as a collection of snobs. But, the rich people run both parties and they like being seen as elitist snobs so here we are with potentially two old re-runs from a bygone era running for President.

Clinton will be the nominee, but no one will be thrilled. She angered the hard core fanatics back in the 1990’s and never went through the proper self-criticism sessions as part of their rehabilitation ritual. It’s what gave Obama the opening. The Democrats have nominated some hilarious losers, but a maladroit clodhopper like Obama normally would have been just a sideshow. Hatred of Hillary gave Obama a stage. It is hard to see the Left warming to crooked Hillary.

That said, the GOP is a party without a purpose. The institutions that are supposed to provide the ideas for the party are husks of their former selves. They have not produced a single new policy in decades. Instead it is a broken record of tax schemes and bellicose pronouncements about the fringes of the empire. The only reason they remain in business is the Democrats look like the day room at the local asylum. Buch versus Clinton would show both sides are worthless.

A Glimpse of the Future

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One of the things that is never discussed, as it is not permitted, is how non=white tribes here in America feud with one another. It is just assumed that since whites are evil, all non-whites get along in order to defend against the evil white man. That’s not true in the least, as non-whites are much more tribal than whites. As a result, they tend to dislike everyone outside their tribe, not just white people.

For example, here in Lagos on the Chesapeake, Indians and Koreans own the cash businesses in the ghetto. There are some Nepalese in there, but most people assume they are Indians. The Koreans have their own off-the-books financing system to help new comers get a start. They still do the old school sponsorship thing with immigrants that used to be common in the US. The newcomer is sponsored by someone who helps they get started, in exchange for a little interest on the investment.

According to the National Bureau of Economic Research, 28 percent of Korean-American men and 20 percent of Korean-American women own their own business—the highest rate of entrepreneurship in the country. Indians have something similar, but it is more kin-based. It’s why you see clusters of Indians in an area and they have similar last names. There names mean something. If you know a little bit about the surnames, you can get a sense of where they came from in India.

Regardless, the result is Koreans and Indians own a lot of small retail business in and around the ghetto. These are businesses that are not high margin, like liquor, convenience stores and smoke shops. They are high risk. It takes balls of stone to own a liquor store in the ghetto. Running a gas station in or even near the ghetto is almost a death wish. That’s why they can be had for cheap and that’s why immigrants take these businesses. They have more guts than cash.

There used to be a Palestinian guy, who owned a C-store near the ghetto. He was missing an arm, having had it blown off back in the territories. Compared to dodging terrorists and Jews in a refuge camp, selling smokes and skittles in the ghetto was a good deal. He did all of his business from behind bullet proof glass. Cameras watched the perimeter for locals plotting an assault on the business.

This, in part, why blacks hate foreigners so much. From their perspective, the people exploiting them in their community are all the same. They seem them as proxies or maybe tools of the white majority. Blacks don’t like Jews very much, because blacks are not that dumb. They know the Jews are the most powerful tribe in the country, so they are not fooled by the effort to make Jews intersectional. The Koreans and Indians serving this “community” are just another face of the man.

As a result, the blacks hate Koreans and Indians. The Koreans and Indians are not all that fond of the blacks. East Asians treat blacks with utter contempt, as if they are just talking moneys. South Asians, on the other hand, play the skins game, claiming they too are victims of whitey, despite being well off. Look around and you see a lot of social just types coming from the south Asian community. In time, we’ll learn that dumb browns are better than smart browns.

Tribal conflict will only get worse as the nation becomes majority-minority. When one ethnic group can dominate the rest, the minorities tend to band together. For most of American history, WASP culture dominated American culture and everyone else fell in line with it. The “everyone else” was mostly Catholics and blacks. When no one group dominates, then it becomes a free-for-all. Everyone has a reason to distrust everyone else. Balkanization soon follows.

Suspicion and distrust of those outside the group is a behavioral trait that most likely pre-dates all others. Our own history of race tells us that this is not a behavior that is easily modified. President Obama, who is multi-racial, wears his racial suspicion like a medallion. His attorney general, from Barbados, is proudly hostile to whites. If reaching the peak of society is not tempering these traits, it’s not happening at the other end of society either. Throw in a bunch of of new groups with their own grievances and the result will be a lot of public shouting.

This is the future. America will be a country where everyone gets frustrated with everyone outside their group. The public space, where groups intersect, will be a 24×7 shouting match about who owes what to whom. History provides no examples of a country dominated by a grievance culture. Up until now, people have been smart enough to keep their distance from one another whenever possible. Maybe everything will work out just fine. Or, maybe not. Time will tell.

The High Cost of Diversity

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In Pennsylvania, the police can now search your vehicle whenever the spirit move them. This is all about stopping drug mules on the interstate. Those drug mules are almost exclusively black and Hispanic. The cops don’t advertise it, but they are trained to look for young NAM males driving rented cars. The drug gangs want to eliminate one reason to stop the vehicle. Using a rental means all the lights work and license is in order. They also figured out that local cops tend not to pull over out of state drivers.

The problem with that is they need a reason to pull over T’Q’uan. These people are idiots so the mule is often smoking weed while driving or otherwise doing something the cops can use as an excuse. But, it will be a lot easier to run a wide-scale version of stop and frisk on the nations highway system if they no longer need a warrant. They would also like to search mobile phones without a warrant as well. That way they can get a jump on the rest of the crew once they pull T’Q’uan or Julio over in I-95.

That sounds great until you think about the abuses that will surely follow. Cops are mostly decent people, but it is a close call. A lot of cops are sociopaths, attracted to the position because they can push people around with impunity. Many are just crooks with enough on the ball to know it is better to be a crook with a badge than a crook without a badge. The crime rate among cops is not encouraging, if you are looking to trust your liberty to these people.

There are a couple of things to consider in that graphic. One is cops are much whiter than the general population. Adjusted for race, the crime rate of cops will be much higher than the general population. Second, the number of robberies is most certainly an outlier. Bad data is my guess. Cops steal like mad. Everyone knows it, but it is rarely reported or prosecuted. Violent crimes are too difficult to hide so they get investigated.

Crime in America is mostly a NAM issue. The drug game, outside of crystal meth, is a black and Hispanic activity. Plenty of whites take drugs, but the drug game is run by blacks and Hispanics. Legalization of weed will further this trend. Murder is not entirely drug related, but a big part of the yearly homicides committed by young NAM males in the drug game, mostly at the street level. Controlling this population has been the focus of policing, prisons and social policy for 50+ years.

The fact is, you can have diversity or liberty, but not both. Otherwise, you get a violent free-for-all of tribal warfare. The reason Continental Europe is naturally authoritarian is it is how you survive when surrounded by a bunch of people not like you. For the Dutch to have remained Dutch for 2,000 years meant defending their turf against all comers. This required a high degree of discipline. The same is true of every other group in Europe.

The same will be true of America.