People like people  -- but high IQ people need their solitude

The above heading encapsulates the findings of a paper from earlier this year by Li & Kanazawa.  Man is a social animal so the finding that people are happier if they have a lot of contact with friends is no surprise.  But why are high IQ people different?  I personally certainly fit the pattern described.  In a typical week I would see the lady in my life for an evening twice a week but have no other social contact in that week.  Since he lives in the same building as I do, my son drops in for a brief chat every few days but that is it.  I do however go to family birthdays and there are a few of them.

So can I offer an explanation of why high IQ people are so anti-social?  The easy answer is that high IQ people find normal people boring, and there is some truth in that.  But, on the other hand, people at all intelligence levels tend to choose their friends from people around their own IQ level.  So a high IQ  person would normally have pretty bright friends.  So boredom would be unlikely to be the crucial factor.

I am afraid that I can offer no general explanation but I note that in my own case, I consider my self-chosen "work" of keeping up with the politics of 3 countries -- the USA, the UK and Australia -- to be pretty engrossing and I need most of my time for that.  From my POV, I haven't got the time for a lot of socializing.  People do to a degree socialize when they have got nothing else to do.  I am rarely in that situation.

I do have both a brother and a son who see things very much as I do.  But that is not as good a thing as some might imagine.  Because we see eye to eye we basically  have nothing to say to one another.  Anything we say would just be a  repetition of something that the other believes. So there is surprising complexity in the way we high IQ people  behave.

There is an extended discussion of the matter here.  Information on the sample used is here


Country roads, take me home… to my friends: How intelligence, population density, and friendship affect modern happiness

Norman P. Li & Satoshi Kanazawa

Abstract

We propose the savanna theory of happiness, which suggests that it is not only the current consequences of a given situation but also its ancestral consequences that affect individuals’ life satisfaction and explains why such influences of ancestral consequences might interact with intelligence. We choose two varied factors that characterize basic differences between ancestral and modern life – population density and frequency of socialization with friends – as empirical test cases. As predicted by the theory, population density is negatively, and frequency of socialization with friends is positively, associated with life satisfaction. More importantly, the main associations of life satisfaction with population density and socialization with friends significantly interact with intelligence, and, in the latter case, the main association is reversed among the extremely intelligent. More intelligent individuals experience lower life satisfaction with more frequent socialization with friends. This study highlights the utility of incorporating evolutionary perspectives in the study of subjective well-being.

SOURCE

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It's the Ideology, Stupid

Some advice for Trump in taking on not just Clinton, but her philosophy

Arnold Ahlert

“Mr. Trump’s advisers and his family want the candidate to deliver a consistent message making the case for change. They’d like him to be disciplined. They want him to focus on growing the economy and raising incomes and fighting terrorism.” —from The Wall Street Journal

“His advisers are still convinced of the basic potency of a sales pitch about economic growth and a shake-up in Washington…"—from The New York Times

Note to Donald Trump, his advisers and the self-aggrandizing media "experts” who purport to be helping him:

It’s the ideology, stupid.

With acknowledgements to James Carville for the paraphrasing, it’s time to wise up. There is no “focus” or “sales pitch” that can shake the American public out of the doldrums that attach themselves to a choice between two highly flawed presidential candidates.

Unless. Unless that focus and sales pitch goes to the heart of what ails the nation. On Monday, following two nights of rioting, burning, looting and assaults on police and white people by black American mobs in Milwaukee — mobs energized by a completely legitimate shooting of an armed black thug by a black police officer, captured on camera —Milwaukee County Sheriff David Clarke, who by the way is black, provided a stellar example of illuminating the roots of the problem:

“The Milwaukee riots should be the last time the policies of liberal Democrats are held up as anything other than misery-inducing, divisive, exploitative and racist manipulation of the urban populations. Unfortunately they won’t. As Sheriff of Milwaukee County, I am furious that the progressive left has put my citizens in harm’s way and that I had to send my officers into cauldrons of anarchy and hatred that were created by the left.”
This spot-on analysis moves seamlessly to other arenas. Thus a sales pitch about economic growth becomes the idea that the “progressive” Left, led by Barack Obama, has produced the weakest recovery of the post-WWII era, even as the national debt skyrocketed from $10.6 trillion when Obama took office, to $19.4 trillion today.

A shakeup in Washington? Elitist insiders in both parties embrace progressive ideology’s global ambitions of amnesty for millions of illegals, massive amounts of immigration — including more Syrian “refugees” than the entire EU took in — and multi-nation trade deals negotiated in top secret. Progressives favor the practically unlimited expansion of H-1B visas demanded by tech oligarchs, who prefer employing foreign workers that undercut American wage-earners.

Foreign affairs? It is progressive ideology, courtesy of Obama and Hillary Clinton, that gave the world an “Arab Spring” enabling the rise and expansion of the Islamic State, the slaughter of Christians at genocidal levels, and the murder of four Americans in Benghazi. Progressive ideology has also put Iran on a glide path to nuclear weaponry, fueled Russian thug Vladimir Putin’s ambitions for recreating a Soviet Empire, and given the Chinese every reason to believe their expansionism in the South China Sea will remain unchecked. And Obama’s preposterous, progressive-inspired promise to “degrade” the Islamic State has given them extended time to recruit and propagandize with impunity, leading directly to the atrocities in, among numerous other places, Paris, Brussels, San Bernardino and Orlando.

The progressive-inspired destruction of the nation’s moral fabric? “The failed progressive urban policy causes anger and resentment in people that simmers below the surface,” Clarke writes. “The officer-involved-shooting was simply a catalyst that ignited the already volatile mixture of inescapable poverty, failing K-12 public schools, dysfunctional lifestyle choices like father absent homes, gang involvement, drug/alcohol abuse and massive unemployment.”

Like Trump must do, Clarke makes it clear who’s to blame. “Here are the facts: Milwaukee is run by progressive Democrats,” he explains. “Their decades-long Democrat regime has done nothing to reduce these urban pathologies, in fact, their strategies have exacerbated the situation by expanding the welfare state.”

Clarke is talking about Milwaukee, yet that same progressive failure is replicated in cities like Chicago, Philadelphia, St. Louis, Baltimore, Detroit and countless other urban wastelands where Democrats have maintained uncontested power for decades. Decades of societal dysfunction engendered by a progressive utopian vision known as the “Great Society” and the massive expansion of the integrity- and incentive-sapping welfare state it inflicted on the nation. Moreover, the progressive effort to promote the equality of “lifestyle choices,” decimated the nuclear family to the point where nearly three out of four black American children and more than half of all children delivered by women under 30 are born out of wedlock.

Trump must remind Americans that out-of-wedlock births spawn far higher levels of poverty and increasing levels of economic inequality progressives bemoan — even as they are the chief enablers of it.

Delivering a consistent message making the case for change? How about reminding Americans that Obama’s and Clinton’s progressive version of change — as in the fundamental transformation of an “inherently flawed” nation — has inflicted on America a virulent expansion of Us vs. Them identity politics, playing people off each other on the basis of race, religion, gender and class for the primary purpose of maintaining power? How about reminding Americans that Hope and Change™ has given rise to countless grievance groups including La Raza, the New Black Panthers, Black Lives Matter, CAIR, ISNA, the Rainbow Mafia, etc., all of whom are determined to use government as a vehicle for punishing their enemies and rewarding their friends?

Trump should also remind Americans that progressive ideology has corrupted government to the point where the IRS can single out conservative groups for extra scrutiny, while denying them a voice in the political process. That the U.S. attorney general can meet with the husband of an investigation subject on an airport tarmac with no repercussions. That the FBI can take “testimony” from Hillary Clinton without recording it, or putting her under oath — and then subsequently defend her by insisting a former secretary of state wasn’t “sophisticated” enough to understand classified email markings. And that a progressive-dominated Supreme Court will eviscerate the Constitution, with one “living document” ruling after another.

It is one thing to criticize Hillary Clinton per se. It is quite another to consistently tie her to a bankrupt ideology in all its despicable, hypocritical and repressive permutations. His two recent speeches on terror and law and order were a good start. Hopefully he’ll continue hammering the messenger and the message. And hopefully he’ll accept the reality he must do so in the face of a hostile and corrupt media, a Democrat Party willing to win by any means necessary, and a segment of establishment Republicans who would sell out their base to maintain their own elitist status quo.

“There’s only one answer,” Clarke maintains, “which is for the citizens of America to expose and heap scorn on this lying and dangerous triad of big government, liberal mainstream media, and the lost souls of the urban ghettos both these institutions feed upon for their power.”

Make no mistake: Progressive ideology cannot prosper without sufficient numbers of lost souls mired in human misery and ignorance. Even worse, its adherents believe caring is all that’s required to justify the consistently catastrophic results of their “enlightened” machinations.

Tie it all together, Mr. Trump. It just might win you the White House.

SOURCE

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Obamacare Costs NY State Thousands of Jobs

One in five manufacturers in New York said they were reducing the number of their employees due to Obamacare, according to a survey from the Federal Reserve Bank of New York.

The survey asked businesses how the Affordable Care Act has affected them, including questions about health coverage costs, how health plans would change under Obamacare, and how the Cadillac Tax would apply to their current health care plans.

The number of manufacturers who said they were cutting jobs totaled 20.9 percent. Nearly a third of New York manufacturers said they would increase prices they charge on their customers due to Obamacare. Almost 13 percent said they would increase the proportion of employees working part-time.

The survey asked service sector firms the same questions and found that 16.8 percent of them would cut workers, 21.4 percent would raise prices due to Obamacare, and 15 percent said they would increase the proportion of employees working part-time.

SOURCE

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For more blog postings from me, see  TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH,  POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, and Paralipomena (Occasionally updated),  a Coral reef compendium and an IQ compendium. (Both updated as news items come in).  GUN WATCH is now mainly put together by Dean Weingarten. I also put up occasional updates on my Personal blog and each day I gather together my most substantial current writings on A WESTERN HEART.

Email me  here (Hotmail address). My Home Pages are here (Academic) or  here (Pictorial) or  here  (Personal)

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Taller people tend to be conservative

One should not get too excited by this study as the effect was small.  Height is only one influence behind conservatism. The authors below explain the finding as an effect of income but fail to ask WHY taller people have higher income. I think the answer lies with temperament.  Larger people and larger dogs tend to be more placid and less aggressive.  Why that is so is one for the neurologists.

But, whatever the reason, that placidity makes taller people  easier to work with and better suited to managerial positions.  And it also explains their politics.  It is Leftists who are the discontented people.  A tall placid man, by contrast, will be by that fact alone more contented.  It is people who are fired up by some grievance who become Leftists.  Taller people are harder to motivate in that way

I append the journal abstract to the article below


If you want to guess what political party someone supports, just take a look at their height. A new study has found taller individuals are more likely to back Conservative political positions, identify with a Conservative party and vote for Conservative politicians.

Researchers studying UK voters found that just a one-inch increase in height raises the person's support for the Conservative Party by 0.6 percent and their likelihood of voting for that party by 0.5 percent.

These findings may be linked to other studies that show taller individuals generally have a higher income than those who are short in stature.

After reviewing surveys from 9,700 people, which included the person's height, income and political views, the team found that not only are taller people more likely to support the Conservative Party and vote for Conservative candidates, they are also more likely to take a Conservative position.

These findings were observed in both men and women, however it was found to be twice as strong among men.

'If you take two people with nearly identical characteristics - except one is taller than the other - on average the taller person will be more politically conservative,' said Sara Watson, co-author of the study and assistant professor of political science at The Ohio State University.

Although these results may sound strange, Watson explained they do coincide with previous studies that show taller people generally earn more than those who are shorter – which suggests the two may be linked.

Watson said they conducted the study because, while political scientists have long theorized about an income-voting relationship, studies using real-world data have shown mixed results.  Some researchers find a link, while others see little or no effect.

'We were thinking about why there were so many seemingly contradictory findings,' she said.

During the study, Watson and her team pulled data from the 2006 British Household Panel Study, which includes self-reported height, income data and questions regarding the political views of a little over 9,700 adults.

After sifting through the data, researchers found that not only are taller people more likely to support the Conservative Party and vote for Conservative candidates, they are also more likely to take a Conservative position.

Researchers explored this further by investigating whether the effect of height on political beliefs could be explained through other channels, including race, education level, marital status and religion.  However, the team found that after all these factors their initial findings were found to be true.

The researchers also took into account potential explanations such as cognition and utilization of public health care. But no matter what was controlled in the study, the link between height and voting remained.

And although the relationship between height and political views were found in both men and women, the team discovered it was twice as strong among men.

For men, each additional inch of height increased their likely hood to support a conservative by 0.8 percent, whereas women it was just 0.4 percent.

In the second portion of the study, the team used height in an 'instrumental variable strategy', a way to estimate casual relationships, to further analyze the link between income and voting.

The team found that $665 was associated with each additional height and that a 10 percent increase in income raised the likelihood of voting Conservative by about 5.5 percent.

SOURCE

Height, Income and Voting

Raj Arunachalam and Sara Watson

Abstract

The claim that income drives political preferences is at the core of political economy theory, yet empirical estimates of income’s effect on political behavior range widely. Drawing on traditions in economic history and anthropology, we propose using height as a proxy for economic well-being. Using data from the British Household Panel Study, this article finds that taller individuals are more likely to support the Conservative Party, support conservative policies and vote Conservative; a one-inch increase in height increases support for Conservatives by 0.6 per cent. As an extension, the study employs height as an instrumental variable for income, and finds that each additional thousand pounds of annual income translates into a 2–3 percentage point increase in the probability of supporting the Conservatives, and that income drives political beliefs and voting in the same direction.

British Journal of Political Science, http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/S0007123416000211

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Meet the Salon Owner Fighting Eyebrow Threading Regulations

In 1985, Lata Jagtiani immigrated to New York City from India with a dream to be her own boss by opening her own salon. But because money was tight, Jagtiani made ends meet by working as a bookkeeper for various New York businesses before becoming a stay-at-home mom.

While raising her two children, Jagtiani continued to dream of opening her own business. The New York weather was tough on Jagtiani and her husband, so when they had the opportunity to relocate in 1995, they headed south.

The family of four had friends in Louisiana, so Jagtiani and her husband opened a T-shirt shop on Bourbon Street, New Orleans. Although the business took care of her family’s financial needs, Jagtiani had a skill she felt the city was lacking: threading.

As a young girl, Jagtiani’s older cousin taught her the ancient Indian art of threading, a technique used to precisely remove hair with the twisting of a thread.

In 2012, Jagtiani’s dream of being her own boss was fulfilled when she opened Threading Studio & Spa in Metairie, Louisiana.

But when Jagtiani opened her studio, she wasn’t aware of the local licensing laws put in place that would restrict her from doing her job.

Louisiana threaders began the battle against costly licensing in 2010 when the state added the practice of threading under the category of esthetics, a highly regulated and licensed trade in many states. This means anyone who practices threading must acquire an esthetician’s license or face thousands of dollars in fines and unemployment.

“I opened in 2012 and I didn’t know about the regulations. It [cost] me a lot. I didn’t know I needed a license to do anything but threading. The inspectors started coming in and asking me to get a license,” Jagtiani told The Daily Signal in a phone interview.

Jagtiani and former employees Ushaben Chudasama and Panna Shah are suing the Louisiana Board of Cosmetology for infringing upon their right to earn an honest living.

According to the Institute of Justice, a public interest law firm representing Jagtiani and her former employees, interpretation of the Louisiana Constitution, every citizen has the right to earn an honest living without “irrational government interference.”

Salim Furth, macroeconomics research fellow at The Heritage Foundation, told The Daily Signal in an email:

What Louisiana ought to do instead is to elevate its basic treatment of economic rights. Whether in the right to work as a threader or the right to build on one’s own land, the state should not be able to infringe on citizens’ economic rights without proving that the government has an important interest that cannot be achieved through less intrusive means.

According to the Institute for Justice, requiring threaders to obtain an esthetician’s license “suddenly forc[ed] threaders to jump through several regulatory hoops in order to work and [made] it illegal to pursue their calling without a pointless esthetician’s license.”

“They don’t even teach threading over there. They were teaching waxing and facials, but I don’t want to do that. I want to do threading and that’s about it,” Lata Jagtiani says.

In order to receive a license, students must complete 750 hours in a cosmetology program, says the law firm. Jagtiani said these programs cost around $12,000 and take six to eight months to complete but do not teach students how to thread. “It was all science classes,” she said, disappointed in the irrelevance of her mandatory schooling.

Of the 750 hours required, approximately 250 hours “are for sanitation, health and cleanliness, and all of these other things that we must teach for people to run a healthy and clean shop,” said Stephen Young, director of the Louisiana State Board of Cosmetology and a defendant in the lawsuit, according to The Associated Press.

Paul Larkin, senior legal research fellow at The Heritage Foundation, told The Daily Signal in a phone interview: “I cannot imagine a legitimate reason for all of the unecessary training required by Louisiana. This is a classic instance of the government abusing its authority to injure the public by protecting a cartel.”

The Louisiana Board of Cosmetology also has a conflict of interest when it comes to the local regulations, Furth argued in his email to The Daily Signal:

Louisiana shows what happens when regulation is allowed to run amok. The chair of Louisiana’s Board of Cosmetology actually owns and operates her own beauty college, so [Frances Hand] has a personal financial interest in extending the reach of cosmetology to cover more workers. Giving a businesswoman the right to regulate her own industry is pure crony capitalism. Louisiana voters should demand that customers, not industry insiders, should be in charge of regulating (or deregulating) occupations in the state.

Meagan Forbes, the attorney at the Institute for Justice representing Jagtiani, said threading is a “simple technique that just involves a simple strand of thread—it’s not invasive. There’s no skin to skin contact even between the practitioner and customer.”

Jagtiani echoed Forbes’ statement that threading is noninvasive, therefore it shouldn’t be so highly regulated. “It’s safe. Very safe,” Jagtiani said.

Furth added to the fact that an unskilled threader does not pose any threat to society. “In full disclosure, I actually had my eyebrows threaded once, purely by accident. It stings if it’s done right; an incompetent threader would just end up with a mess of string on her own hands.”

“My customers were so happy. They don’t want me to close, they want to come back to me for threading. They are so happy with threading they don’t want to do waxing. I had so many clients, and now they are so miserable,” Jagtiani said.

SOURCE

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For more blog postings from me, see  TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH,  POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, and Paralipomena (Occasionally updated),  a Coral reef compendium and an IQ compendium. (Both updated as news items come in).  GUN WATCH is now mainly put together by Dean Weingarten. I also put up occasional updates on my Personal blog and each day I gather together my most substantial current writings on A WESTERN HEART.

Email me  here (Hotmail address). My Home Pages are here (Academic) or  here (Pictorial) or  here  (Personal)

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Poll: Majority of Americans Oppose Taking Syrian Refugees Into the U.S.

A Chicago Council on Global Affairs poll released Monday found that just 36 percent of Americans overall said they were in favor of “accepting Syrian refugees into the United States.”

The responses reflect a partisan split, with 56 percent of Democrats and 18 percent of Republicans in favor of accepting Syrian refugees.

Support for accepting Syrian refugees has fallen overall from 42 percent in the 2014 poll. Democrat support has risen slightly from 55 to 56 percent since 2014 while Republican support has fallen from 27 to 18 percent.

The 2016 poll also asked Americans about U.S. military actions in Syria.

Overall those surveyed favored a limited amount of action. Seventy-two percent overall were in favor of conducting airstrikes against violent Islamic extremist groups and 57 percent favored sending Special Operations Forces into Syria to fight Islamic State terrorists.

Just 42 percent overall supported sending combat troops into Syria.

The 2016 Chicago Council Survey based its poll results on a national sample of 2,061 adults, 18 years of age or older, living in all 50 US states and the District of Columbia. The poll was conducted June 10-27.

SOURCE

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Milwaukee Sheriff Clarke on Riots: ‘This Thing Has Been Hijacked for a Political End’

According to Milwaukee County Sheriff David Clarke, the riots over the weekend in Milwaukee in protest of the fatal shooting of a black man by police have “been hijacked for a political end; it’s a political construct now”

“We get our authority from the consent of the governed, if something’s bothering them we should have discussions about it. But this thing has been hijacked for a political end; it’s a political construct now. I mentioned it two years ago if you want to go back and look at some of the tapes. I said this was a political construct this whole war on police- that in fact a war on police, mirrored what had gone on in the 1960’s,” Clarke said during a press conference on Sunday.

“There’s a lot of misunderstanding I think in terms of what causes these situations. The police use of force serves as an igniter, there’s no doubt, but to an already volatile situation a volatile mix of urban pathologies – failed urban policy that exacerbates inescapable poverty, failing public schools, inadequate parenting, father-absent homes – we all know when fathers are not around to shape the behavior of young boys they often times grow up to be unmanageable misfits that the police have to deal with in an aggressive fashion,” Clarke said.

“Pathologies like, lifestyle choices – questionable lifestyle choices, gang involvement, drug and alcohol abuse, as well as massive unemployment – those are the ingredients those are the things that cause resentment, anger and frustration to boil beneath the surface then all of a sudden a police situation comes along and that’s why I said it’s an igniter, but it’s an igniter to an already festering situation.”

Clarke later added, that failing to punish criminals leads to a repeat of criminal behavior.

“Just about everybody in this room has heard me over the last five years minimum-talking about the role of the criminal justice system. The prosecutor’s office, the sentencing practices in this area of Milwaukee County and – I don’t know I guess people didn’t think it played a big role – but we’re seeing it now. Not just last night but we’re seeing it time and time again - when some individual goes out and does something heinous, we look and they have a long, lengthy criminal history that nobody applied any sanctions to – or any meaningful sanctions let’s put it that way. Maybe some sanctions – a slap on the wrist – but that’s not meaningful.

As I look, the individual that lost his life- 13 arrests. Some serious stuff. Recklessly endangering safety, that’s a felony first degree. Felony – dismissed -  I don’t know why, I don’t have the reason but somebody- it isn’t going to be me- if you all have an interest you’ll go back and start peeling back the layers to find out what happened.”

“You punish unwanted behavior you’ll see less of it. If you do nothing about unwanted behavior you’re going to see a repeat of more of it,” Clarke said.

SOURCE

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Beginning of the End: The ‘Un’Affordable Care Act Continues to Unravel

Obamacare banner hangs torn on the side of a building. (AP Photo)
Health plan companies left and right are seriously questioning their involvement in Obamacare or dropping out altogether. And these are heavy hitters—UnitedHealthcare, Humana, Aetna and some Blue Cross Blue Shield companies. Cooperatives established under the law are collapsing as well. Just seven of the 23 remain.

Citizens’ Council for Health Freedom (CCHF, www.cchfreedom.org) points to these occurrences as the beginning of the end—the unraveling of the Affordable Care Act. President Obama’s legacy act is in deep trouble.

These departures are the “tremors” before the earthquake, the total implosion of Obamacare. Now it’s time to repeal the law and head back to health freedom.

Insurance companies will issue double-digit premium increases this fall, on or around Nov. 1, when Obamacare enrollment begins again. And of special note—premium increases and open enrollment will come just a week before the election.

The impending expiration of two of the federal “3R” subsidy programs that were instituted to shield health plans from the high cost of adding uninsured people with pre-existing conditions—reinsurance and risk corridors—is one reason premiums will skyrocket. Some politicians want to establish a national government insurance company—the public option—and some insurers suggest Congress create permanent federal subsidies to keep them in the game, but isn’t it time we go back to the affordability of freedom and free markets?

This is where CCHF’s new initiative, The Wedge of Health Freedom (www.JointheWedge.com), comes in.

The Wedge restores affordability and patient-centered care and is a new way of doing health care that puts patients and doctors in control and makes affordable pricing available to the insured, the uninsured and the subsidized.

Wedge-like practices are already operating nationwide but many Americans don’t know about them. So CCHF is branding this affordable option as The Wedge of Health Freedom to draw the public’s attention to the patient-centered, freedom-embracing slice of American health care that is mostly invisible to the public today. We aim to make The Wedge visible, protect it and grow it. The Wedge, focused on the delivery of care, will let patients and doctors come together in an affordable, confidential relationship that benefits both of them.

SOURCE

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Perhaps the Ancients Weren’t So Dumb: A Flood of Evidence Is Embarrassing the ‘Experts’

Were the ancients dummies? If so, why does archaeology keep confirming what they wrote? I’ll tell you why a healthy dose of humility can help us understand the past.

In his conversion story, “Surprised by Joy,” C. S. Lewis explains how his close friend, Owen Barfield, demolished his “chronological snobbery.” Lewis defined chronological snobbery as “the uncritical acceptance of the intellectual climate of our own age and the assumption that whatever has gone out of date is on that count discredited.”

In Lewis’s time, much of academia was already convinced that every past generation formed a staircase of progress, leading (of course) to enlightened modernity. And since Lewis’s death, many intellectuals have only become more convinced of their own perch at the pinnacle of history. These days, we barely even notice the snobbery.

But it’s time to notice, especially in archaeology. An article last week in The New York Times describes new evidence for the Chinese great flood, an event which ancient records say coincided with the rise of China’s first imperial dynasty. For many years, Western academics have considered this flood a myth—on par with Noah’s Flood in Genesis which, unsurprisingly, they also dismiss as fiction.

But several new dig sites have unearthed inscriptions that refer to just such a flood along the Yellow River, almost 4,000 years ago. And a team of geologists led by Qinglog Wu of Peking University in Beijing says they’ve found evidence in the rocks of a natural dam that trapped several cubic miles of water. When the dam collapsed, it sent a deluge downriver large enough to wipe out a civilization—just as the Chinese legends suggest.

Western experts were less than enthused at the news. The Times quotes several prominent archaeologists who scoff at the discoveries as attempts to read too much into Chinese myths. Dr. Paul Goldin of the University of Pennsylvania derides what he sees as a “fixation” among Chinese archaeologists with “[proving] that all the ancient texts and legends have some fundamental truth … It shouldn’t be every archaeologist’s first instinct,” he says, “to see if their findings are matched in the historical sources.”

Come again? Shouldn’t archaeologists want to know if what they’re digging up has significance in known history? Sadly for many in the West, the answer is a resounding “not really.” This dismissal of ancient writings—including the Bible—is rooted in chronological snobbery. The ancients, experts today assume, were just too dumb or superstitious to get their own histories right.

This attitude has not only blinded us to potential discoveries, it’s made it very embarrassing for archaeologists when the ancients do turn out to be correct. I think, for example, of the recent discovery of Goliath’s hometown, Gath. Or what about the unearthing of evidence for the biblical King Hezekiah, the likely discovery of the palace where Pilate tried Jesus, or the compelling evidence that “the house of David,” contrary to decades of secular scholarship, was founded by a real, historical man after God’s own heart?

All of these discoveries came as shocks to archaeologists and historians who doubted that such figures, places, or people ever existed. But again and again, our belief that the ancients were better at making myths than they were at recording history has handicapped archaeology, and left a lot of smart folks scraping egg off their faces.

Now, I’m not suggesting every legend is a history textbook, or even that Scripture renders archaeology superfluous. What I’m suggesting is that we set aside our chronological snobbery and stop dismissing the ancients out-of-hand.

They were not dummies. And we who dig up the remains of their civilizations aren’t always as clever as we like to believe.

SOURCE

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A libertarian gun-hater??

Libertarians normally view the right to bear arms as an important liberty.  How come then the current Libertarian Presidential candidate, Gary Johnson, threw straight into the trash a historic pistol that was given to him?  A libertarian vote is normally a wasted vote but that is doubly true this time.  Story here

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There is no evidence that Aristotle actually said this but the American Left seems to be trying all-out to prove it right anyway



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For more blog postings from me, see  TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH,  POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, and Paralipomena (Occasionally updated),  a Coral reef compendium and an IQ compendium. (Both updated as news items come in).  GUN WATCH is now mainly put together by Dean Weingarten. I also put up occasional updates on my Personal blog and each day I gather together my most substantial current writings on A WESTERN HEART.

Email me  here (Hotmail address). My Home Pages are here (Academic) or  here (Pictorial) or  here  (Personal)

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Wealth Tax Looms As Greeks Forced To Declare All 'Assets' To Tax Authority

The USA is only a little behind Greece in heavy debt usage so Greece may offer a vision of what is in all our futures

In Greece's ongoing collapse into utter farce, The Greek finance ministry confirmed some more details of the long-planned registration of all kinds of private wealth that will go into effect in February 2017. As KeepTalkingGreece reports, more than 8,500,000 tax payers registered in Greece will be called to declare all moveable and immovable assets, their total “wealth”, and even cash they possess even if it is below 100 euro.

Furthermore, the taxpayers will have to register changes in their assets when they occur and not annually.

And under the new scheme, Greeks are mandated to have registered everything they own, with taxpayers having to add moveable and immovable possessions such as paintings, antiques, jewelry, even historical weapon, etc but also the cash they have in their wallets or under the mattress.

“Taxpayers must declare all the cash they have in their hands, even one euro!” an official from the Finance Ministry told newspaper To Vima on conditions of anonymity.

Within a month, the taxpayer will have to submit a modification statement, if there are any changes in his possessions status.

"This will affect any case of property transfer or acquisition, but not of income, which is being declared each year, and are directly updated by the tax authorities.

The simple question every Greek (and European and American and Japanese) citizen should be asking - why does the government want to know this? ...and besides what gives them the right to invade the citizenry's privacy to such a degree?

The answer is sadly simple. The road the dystopian "wealth tax" endgame has been long-written. As we pointed out in 2011, the "muddle through" is dead... and there are only painful ways out... And now it is time to face the facts. What facts?

The facts which state that between household, corporate and government debt, the developed world has more than $20 trillion in debt over and above the sustainable threshold by the definition of "stable" debt to GDP of 180%.

The facts according to which all attempts to eliminate the excess debt have failed, and for now even the Fed's relentless pursuit of inflating our way out this insurmountable debt load have been for nothing.

The facts which state that the only way to resolve the massive debt load is through a global coordinated debt restructuring (which would, among other things, push all global banks into bankruptcy) which, when all is said and done, will have to be funded by the world's financial asset holders: the middle-and upper-class, which, if BCS is right, have a ~30% one-time tax on all their assets to look forward to as the great mean reversion finally arrives and the world is set back on a viable path.

But not before the biggest episode of "transitory" pain, misery and suffering in the history of mankind. Good luck, politicians and holders of financial assets, you will need it because after Denial comes Anger, and only long after does Acceptance finally arrive.

The truth is far, far uglier than anything anyone in a position of power will tell you because acknowledgment would imply the need to come up with solutions that involve more than merely extending the event horizon for a little longer. Alas, even politicians now realize there is only so far that the can can be kicked.

There is one thing we would like to bring to our readers' attention because we are confident, that one way or another, sooner or later, it will be implemented.

Namely a one-time wealth tax: in other words, instead of stealth inflation, the government will be forced to proceed with over transfer of wealth. According to BCG, the amount of developed world debt between household, corporate and government that needs to be eliminated is just over $21 trillion. Which unfortunately means that there is an equity shortfall that will have to be funded with incremental cash which will have to come from somewhere. That somewhere is tax of the middle and upper classes, which are in possession of $74 trillion in financial assets

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IRS Increases 'Marriage Penalty,' Unmarried Cohabitants To Get Twice The Mortgage Interest Deduction

There are a thousand good reasons to never get married: in-laws, divorce attorneys, and the inevitable ravages of age on one’s attractiveness come immediately to mind.

But there are also significant tax hits that come with getting hitched, or as they’ve collectively been coined, the “marriage penalty.” For example, the 28% tax bracket kicks in at $91,150 of income if you’re single, but at only $151,900 — an amount basic math tells you is less than double $91,150 — for married taxpayers. In addition, single taxpayers start to lose 3% of itemized deductions when adjusted gross income exceeds $258,250; married taxpayers, however, will lose itemized deductions once adjusted gross income exceeds only $309,900.

Late last week, the IRS exacerbated the marriage penalty by offering a very large reward for unmarried taxpayers who co-own a home: double the mortgage interest deduction available to married taxpayer.

In AOD 2016-02, the IRS acquiesced in the Ninth Circuit’s decision in Sophy v. Commissioner, in which the appeals court overturned a Tax Court decision and allowed a same-sex, unmarried, co-habiting couple to each deduct the mortgage interest on $1.1 million of acquisition and home equity debt. In reaching its conclusion, the Ninth Circuit determined that the mortgage interest limitation is meant to apply on a per-taxpayer, rather than a per-residence, basis. The AOD issued by the IRS confirms that the Service will follow this treatment.

Let’s take a look at what this means:

Mortgage Interest Deductions, In General

Section 163(h)(3) allows a deduction for qualified residence interest on up to $1,000,000 of acquisition indebtedness and $100,000 of home equity indebtedness. Should your mortgage balance (or balances, since the mortgage interest deduction is permitted on up to two homes) exceed the statutory limitations, the mortgage interest deduction is limited to the amount applicable to only $1,100,000 worth of debt.

Now assume for a moment that you and your non-spouse lifemate/bookie/Japanese body pillow go halfsies on your dream house, owning the home as joint tenants. And assume the total acquisition mortgage debt is $2,000,000 and the total home equity loan $200,000, making total debt $2,200,000, with each of you paying interest on only your $1,100,000 share of the debt.

Are each of you entitled to a full mortgage deduction — since you each paid interest on only $1,100,000 of debt, the maximum allowable under Section 163 — or is your mortgage deduction limited because the total debt on the house exceeds the $1,100,000 statutory limitation?

In 2012, the Tax Court concluded that the answer was the latter. In Sophy v. Commissioner, this issue was surprisingly addressed for the first time in the courts (it had previously been addressed with a similar conclusion in CCA 200911007), with the Tax Court holding that the $1,100,000 limitation must be applied on a per-residence basis.

Thus, in the above example, even though the joint tenants each paid mortgage interest on only the maximum allowable $1,100,000 of debt, each owner’s mortgage interest deduction would be limited under the holding in Sophy because the maximum amount of qualified residence debt on the house — regardless of the number of owners — is limited to $1,100,000. Assuming the joint tenants each paid $70,000 in interest, each owner’s limitation would be determined as follows:

$70,000 * $1,100,000 (statutory limitation)/$2,200,000 (total mortgage balance) = $35,000

Instead of each owner being entitled to a full $70,000 interest deduction, the Tax Court concluded that the mortgage interest deduction was limited for both because the total debt on the house exceeded the statutory limits. The court reached this conclusion after examining the structure of the statute and determining that the plain language required the applicable debt limitation to be applied on a per-residence basis:

Qualified residence interest is defined as “any interest which is paid or accrued during the taxable year on acquisition indebtedness with respect to any qualified residence of the taxpayer, or home equity indebtedness with respect to any qualified residence of the taxpayer.” Sec. 163(h)(3)(A)

The court then added, “The definitions of the terms ‘acquisition indebtedness’ and ‘home equity indebtedness’ establish that the indebtedness must be related to a qualified residence, and the repeated use of the phrases “with respect to a qualified residence” and “with respect to such residence” in the provisions discussed above focuses on the residence rather than the taxpayer.

In an illustration of how multiple smart people can look at the same set of facts and reach a different conclusion, late last year the Ninth Circuit reversed the Tax Court’s holding, deciding instead that the $1,100,000 limitation on qualified debt is determined on a per-taxpayer, rather than a per-residence basis.

Key to the Ninth Circuit’s decision was the statute’s treatment of married taxpayers who file separate returns for purposes of deducting mortgage interest. Section 163(h)(3) provides that “in the case of” a married taxpayer who files a separate return, the $1,000,000 limit on qualified residence interest and $100,000 of home equity interest are reduced to $500,000 and $50,000 respectively. The Ninth Circuit placed great emphasis on the use of the phrase “in the case of,” noting that it suggests an exception to the general limitations, and that aside from that specific exception, married taxpayers filing separately should be treated identically to married taxpayers under Section 163.

The statute gives each separately filing spouse a separate debt limit of $550,000 so that, together, the two spouses are effectively entitled to a $1.1 million debt, the same amount allowed for single taxpayers. Thus, the point of the language was to treat two married taxpayers who file separately the same as married taxpayers or a single taxpayer, which indicates that the limitations are to be applied on a per-taxpayer, rather than a per-residence basis.

Lastly, the court reasoned that if the limitation is to be applied on a per-residence basis, there would be no need to impose a 1/2 limitation on married couples filing separately. If the limit were indeed intended to be $1,100,000 per house, then married couples who live together but file separately would be forced to split the limit; there would be no need to add additional language to the statute to accomplish that result. If the $1,100,000 limitation is to be applied on a per-taxpayer, basis, however, the limiting language would serve a purpose, as it would prevent a married couple who files separately from deducting interest on a total of $2,200,000 and get twice the benefit of a married couple who files jointly.

Impact

The impact of Sophy and the Service’s subsequent acquiescence are a bit muted in the wake of the Supreme Court’s 2013 decision in Windsor and its 2015 ruling in Obergfell, which together represent a seismic shift in the treatment of same-sex couples for federal tax purposes. Going forward, same-sex couples who are legally married under state law will no longer be forced to file as unmarried taxpayers; rather, any couple that is married under state law, same-sex or otherwise, will only be permitted to file married filing jointly or married filing separately. In other words: same-sex couples — welcome to the marriage penalty!!

Cohabitation, of course, is not limited to same-sex couples, and so the Service’s decision to allow each taxpayer who co-owns a house to claim an interest deduction on the full $1,100,000 of debt — provided they are not married filing separately — should be a welcome one for many.

SOURCE

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For more blog postings from me, see  TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH,  POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, and Paralipomena (Occasionally updated),  a Coral reef compendium and an IQ compendium. (Both updated as news items come in).  GUN WATCH is now mainly put together by Dean Weingarten. I also put up occasional updates on my Personal blog and each day I gather together my most substantial current writings on A WESTERN HEART.

Email me  here (Hotmail address). My Home Pages are here (Academic) or  here (Pictorial) or  here  (Personal)

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The abandonment of traditional values has negatively affected the nation as a whole, but blacks have borne the greater burden

Walter E. Williams

One of the unavoidable consequences of youth is the tendency to think behavior we see today has always been. I’d like to dispute that vision, at least as it pertains to black people.

I graduated from Philadelphia’s Benjamin Franklin High School in 1954. Franklin’s predominantly black students were from the poorest North Philadelphia neighborhoods.

During those days, there were no policemen patrolling the hallways. Today, close to 400 police patrol Philadelphia schools. There were occasional after-school fights—rumbles, as we called them—but within the school, there was order. In contrast with today, students didn’t use foul language to teachers, much less assault them.

Places such as the Richard Allen housing project, where I lived, became some of the most dangerous and dysfunctional places in Philadelphia. Mayhem—in the form of murders, shootings, and assaults—became routine.

By the 1980s, residents found that they had to have window bars and multiple locks. The 1940s and ’50s Richard Allen project, as well as other projects, bore no relation to what they became. Many people never locked their doors; windows weren’t barred. We did not go to bed with the sound of gunshots. Most of the residents were two-parent families with one or both parents working.

How might one explain the greater civility of Philadelphia and other big-city, predominantly black neighborhoods and schools during earlier periods compared with today? Would anyone argue that during the ’40s and ’50s, there was less racial discrimination and poverty? Was academic performance higher because there were greater opportunities? Was civility in school greater in earlier periods because black students had more black role models in the form of black principals, teachers, and guidance counselors? That’s nonsense, at least in northern schools. In my case, I had no more than three black teachers throughout primary and secondary school.

Starting in the 1960s, the values that made for civility came under attack. Corporal punishment was banned. This was the time when the education establishment and liberals launched their agenda that undermined lessons children learned from their parents and the church.

We have replaced what worked with what sounds good.

Sex education classes undermined family/church strictures against premarital sex. Lessons of abstinence were ridiculed, considered passé, and replaced with lessons about condoms, birth control pills, and abortion. Further undermining of parental authority came with legal and extralegal measures to assist teenage abortions, often with neither parental knowledge nor parental consent.

Customs, traditions, moral values, and rules of etiquette are behavioral norms, transmitted mostly by example, word of mouth, and religious teachings. As such, they represent a body of wisdom distilled through the ages by experience and trial and error.

The nation’s liberals—along with the education establishment, pseudo-intellectuals, and the courts—have waged war on traditions, customs and moral values. Many people have been counseled to believe that there are no moral absolutes. Instead, what’s moral or immoral is a matter of personal convenience, personal opinion, what feels good, or what is or is not criminal.

We no longer condemn or shame self-destructive and rude behavior, such as out-of-wedlock pregnancies, dependency, cheating, and lying. We have replaced what worked with what sounds good.

The abandonment of traditional values has negatively affected the nation as a whole, but blacks have borne the greater burden. This is seen by the decline in the percentage of black two-parent families. Today, a little over 30 percent of black children live in an intact family, where as early as the late 1800s, over 70 percent did. Black illegitimacy in 1938 was 11 percent, and that for whites was 3 percent. Today, it’s respectively 73 percent and 30 percent.

It is the height of dishonesty, as far as blacks are concerned, to blame our problems on slavery, how white people behave, and racial discrimination. If those lies are not exposed, we will continue to look for external solutions when true solutions are internal. Those of us who are old enough to know better need to expose these lies.

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What Can Racial Discrimination Explain?

Walter E. Williams

A guiding principle for physicians is primum non nocere, the Latin expression for “first, do no harm.” In order not to do harm, whether it’s with medicine or with public policy, the first order of business is accurate diagnostics.

Racial discrimination is seen as the cause of many problems of black Americans. No one argues that racial discrimination does not exist or does not have effects. The relevant question, as far as policy and resource allocation are concerned, is: How much of what we see is caused by current racial discrimination?

From the late 1940s to the mid-1950s, black youth unemployment was slightly less than or equal to white youth unemployment. Today, black youth unemployment is at least double that of white youth unemployment. Would anyone try to explain the difference with the argument that there was less racial discrimination during the ’40s and ’50s than today?

Some argue that it is the “legacy of slavery” and societal racism that now explain the social pathology in many black neighborhoods. Today’s black illegitimacy rate is about 73 percent. When I was a youngster, during the 1940s, illegitimacy was around 15 percent.

In the same period, about 80 percent of black children were born inside marriage. In fact, historian Herbert Gutman, in an article titled “Persistent Myths about the Afro-American Family” in The Journal of Interdisciplinary History (Autumn 1975), reported the percentage of black two-parent families, depending on the city, ranged from 75 to 90 percent.

Today, only a little over 30 percent of black children are raised in two-parent households. The importance of these and other statistics showing greater stability and less pathology among blacks in earlier periods is that they put a lie to today’s excuses. Namely, at a time when blacks were closer to slavery, faced far more discrimination, faced more poverty, and had fewer opportunities, there was not the kind of social pathology and weak family structure we see today.

According to the National Assessment of Educational Progress, sometimes referred to as the Nation’s Report Card, nationally, the average black 12th-grader’s test scores are either basic or below basic in reading, writing, math, and science.

“Below basic” is the score received when a student is unable to demonstrate even partial mastery of knowledge and skills fundamental for proficient work at his grade level. “Basic” indicates only partial mastery. Put another way, the average black 12th-grader has the academic achievement level of the average white seventh- or eighth-grader. In some cities, there’s even a larger achievement gap.

Is this a result of racial discrimination? Hardly. The cities where black academic achievement is the lowest are the very cities where Democrats have been in charge for decades and where blacks have been mayors, city councilors, superintendents, school principals, and teachers. Plus, these cities have large educational budgets.

I am not arguing a causal relationship between black political control and poor performance. I am arguing that one would be hard put to blame the academic rot on racial discrimination. If the Ku Klux Klan wanted to destroy black academic achievement, it could not find a better means for doing so than encouraging the educational status quo in most cities.

Intellectuals and political hustlers who blame the plight of so many blacks on poverty, racial discrimination, and the “legacy of slavery” are complicit in the socio-economic and moral decay. But one can earn money, prestige, and power in the victimhood game.

As Booker T. Washington long ago observed, “there is another class of coloured people who make a business of keeping the troubles, the wrongs, and the hardships of the Negro race before the public. Having learned that they are able to make a living out of their troubles, they have grown into the settled habit of advertising their wrongs—partly because they want sympathy and partly because it pays. Some of these people do not want the Negro to lose his grievances, because they do not want to lose their jobs.”

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Compensating Differences

By Walter E. Williams

What economists call an ability to make "compensating differences" is a valuable tool in everyone's arsenal. If people are prohibited from doing so, they are always worse off. You say, "Williams, I never heard of compensating differences. What are they?"

Jimmy Soul's 1963 hit song, "If You Wanna Be Happy," explained the concept of compensating differences. His lyrics went: "If you want to be happy for the rest of your life, never make a pretty woman your wife. So from my personal point of view, get an ugly girl to marry you." His point was that an ugly woman would treat you better. But more importantly, a less attractive woman's willingness to compensate for her differences enables her to effectively compete with a pretty woman.

It goes the other way around, too. I've presented people with the following scenario: Suppose you saw a fat, ugly cigar-smoking old man married to a beautiful young woman. What kind of prediction would you make about the man's income? Everybody I've asked guesses that he would have a high income. The fat, ugly cigar-smoking old man would essentially be telling the beautiful young woman, "I can't compete for your hand the same way a guy like Williams can, so I'm going to offset my handicap by offering you a higher price."

Some might view it as unfair that a fat, ugly cigar-smoking old man could not win a pretty woman's hand on the same terms as a handsome man. Suppose they enacted a law saying beautiful women cannot treat fat, ugly cigar-smoking old men any differently than they treat handsome men. Then what would happen to the probability of a fat, ugly cigar-smoking old man's marrying a beautiful woman? Most people would guess that it would go to zilch. What the law would do would be to remove the less preferred man's most effective tool for competing with the more preferred man.

There are many real-world examples of compensating differences. Full-fledged doctors receive hourly pay that ranges between $80 and $157. A brand-new intern earns about $34 an hour. What do you think would happen to a hospital's willingness to hire an intern if there were a minimum hourly wage for interns of, say, $60, $70 or $100? There would be less willingness. Worse, there would be reduced learning opportunities for brand-new doctors. Worse still is that a hospital administrator would say, "If I must pay that higher minimum hourly wage no matter whom I hire, I might as well hire the most qualified." Thus, the higher minimum hourly wage would discriminate against the employment and skills acquisition of the least skilled intern.

During the 1930s, '40s and '50s, one could not prevent whole neighborhoods in the north from going from white to black occupancy virtually overnight. This was before government anti-discrimination laws related to housing. You might wonder how poor, discriminated-against people managed to seize the land-use control of neighborhoods. They did it through the market mechanism. For example, there might have been a racially discriminatory landlord who rented his three-story brown stone building to a white family for $100 a month. Maybe six black families approached the owner with the proposition that if he cut the building up into six apartments, each family would pay him $50 a month. That would mean that he could earn $300 a month renting to blacks rather than $100 renting to a white family. The evidence suggests that landlords opted for the higher earnings. Black people simply outbid white families.

Compensating differences abound. Even though chuck steak is less preferred, it outsells filet mignon. Less-preferred Toyotas compete effectively with Mercedes-Benzes. Costume jewelry competes with fine jewelry. In each, the lower price compensates for the difference. You might say, "Williams, people are not cars, steaks or jewelry!" That's true, but they respond to the same economic laws as cars, steaks and jewelry — just as people would obey the law of gravity the same way bricks would if they fell off the Empire State Building.

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For more blog postings from me, see  TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH,  POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, and Paralipomena (Occasionally updated),  a Coral reef compendium and an IQ compendium. (Both updated as news items come in).  GUN WATCH is now mainly put together by Dean Weingarten. I also put up occasional updates on my Personal blog and each day I gather together my most substantial current writings on A WESTERN HEART.

Email me  here (Hotmail address). My Home Pages are here (Academic) or  here (Pictorial) or  here  (Personal)

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An explanation of Arab reality-denial

Historian David Pryce-Jones: Writing of the Arab defeat of 1973, he observes, "It appeared impossible to admit this disaster, indeed parties of school children are taken round the military museum in Cairo that presents as victory a war that ended with Israeli tanks closing on Cairo. In their culture, the dread of shame is so strong it enforces denial of reality. Mistakes are inadmissible, and repetition therefore takes the place of correction."

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Trump Detroit Speech Separates GOP Wheat from Chaff

Donald Trump’s speech before the Detroit Economic Club was an economic conservative tour de force and there is no longer any excuse for anyone who claims to be a believer in free enterprise and limited government to not support the GOP nominee.

Don’t like Obama’s pen and phone approach? Trump announced that he will rescind Obama’s Executive Orders, effectively wiping out his extra-Constitutional legacy. Hillary Clinton will expand the Constitution ripping pen and phone approach taking away power from the people’s representatives in Congress.

Concerned that having the highest corporate tax rate in the world is harming economic growth? Trump’s tax plan lowers this corporate tax rate encouraging investment in America rather than draining mid-sized and small business, which don’t have armies of accountants, of the profits needed to reinvest and grow their businesses. Hillary wants to raise the corporate tax rate making this a very simple choice.

Perhaps regulatory overreach is your bête noire? Trump’s speech made it clear that he will rip Obama’s job killing regulatory expansion out by the roots, curtailing the power grabs at the Environmental Protection Agency, the Departments of Labor, Interior and various agencies ranging from the IRS to the National Labor Relations Board to the Federal Communications Commission.  Freeing American business from just some of the trillions of dollars of economic costs attributed to Obama’s regulatory spree will be a boon for workers and will give hope to those who have either abandoned or never entered the workforce that they can prosper in 21st century America.

Hillary, on the other hand, promises more of the regulatory onslaught that has played a role in making the last decade the worst in terms of economic growth since the Great Depression. Accepting Obama’s new normal of sub 3 percent annual growth is consigning America to a declining future and our young people to a world where the American dream is an Ozzie and Harriet illusion.

And if you are concerned about what you think Donald Trump’s trade policy will be, he made it clear that the goal is not to be isolated, but instead to negotiate better deals for America. Hillary Clinton on the other hand claims to oppose the Trans-Pacific Partnership while her confidante, Governor Terry McAuliffe of Virginia publicly assures Wall Street that once elected Hillary will once again support it.

Even after Trump’s triumphant economic address which hit all the touchstones of free market policy, with a direct contrast to Hillary Clinton, Senator Susan Collins announced that she will not vote for him largely because she thinks he is uncivil.

It is ironic that every six years, Senator Collins asks GOP conservatives to hold their noses and vote for her because she votes for a Republican for Senate Majority Leader, but in denouncing Trump for tone, she admits that lower taxes, growing the economy, rolling back the Obama regulatory machine and establishing a trade policy that helps Mainers from having their jobs offshored are not what is important to her.

The choice is stark. Trump’s economic vision is largely a conservative one designed to get the government out of the way and allow American business and workers to compete on a fair playing field in the world economy. Hillary’s economic policies continue the slide toward national insolvency, giving more power to D.C. and strip-mining the nation’s wealth to engorge the public employee unions who support her. Now, any GOP leader or consultant who still supports Hillary or continues playing the absurd #NeverTrump game can no longer claim that protecting free enterprise is a primary goal.

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The Left’s War on Grit

Eric Bolling

I hate the question, “What’s the secret of your success?” There is no secret to being successful. Ask anybody who is successful and they will say some version of the same thing—perseverance, mental toughness, or my personal favorite: grit.

Grit is getting up again and again after being knocked down to continue the fight. Grit is going over, around, or straight through obstacles to reach your goals—no matter how much it hurts to do so. Grit is the power to try, fail, and rebuild yourself in a nation of endless possibilities. Grit is the soul of the American spirit.

But in our society, we value grit less every day. Thanks to radical leftists, the liberal media, and collectivist stalwarts teaching our kids at all educational levels, “grit” is no longer considered an essential component of success—or of the American character. We value our personal security and our personal liberty, but they’re not the same thing. Sometimes, the freedoms we enjoy under personal liberty can shake the foundations of our personal security.

Here’s the thing: To be gritty and tough, you have to take risks, and by definition with risk comes the possibility of failure—a lack of security. The grit comes in when you fail, get back up, dust yourself off, and keep trying, as many times as it takes for you to get the job done.

That’s why grit is such an essential component of the American character. We’ve always been a mentally tough people—because we had to be. You can’t survive slavery or brave weeks on a rickety ship on the Atlantic without some serious grit, folks.

Grit, however, is anathema to liberals. Gritty, free-thinking citizens are harder to control. Oh, sure, liberals love to spout happy talk about perseverance and the American dream, but they are doing everything they can to make sure there is only one path to this dream: through the government.

What they don’t realize is that if the government is the way, it actually isn’t the American dream anymore. Because the American dream is about building something for yourself, not about being handed something by someone else, especially not a bloated, inefficient, deck-stacking government.

Liberals, by nature, just aren’t comfortable with risk. The dirty little secret of liberalism is that, at least in today’s form, it’s not liberal at all. Liberals don’t want “liberty.” They can’t handle the messiness of real democracy in a dynamic republic. Instead of allowing individual citizens to pave their own way in life, liberals want a bunch of technocratic “experts” to decide what is best for the rest of us.

So, it is very much in the left’s interests for the citizenry to be soft, docile, and obedient. That’s why liberals have spent decades putting forth what I sometimes call the “softness doctrine,” which tells Americans that the ideal person is conformist, collectivist, and in need of government assistance in nearly every aspect of life.

Think of the 2012 Obama campaign’s “Life of Julia” nonsense as the perfect example. This slideshow tells the life story of the fictional cartoon character “Julia” and how she benefited from a benevolent government literally from cradle to grave.

Grit, however, is anathema to liberals. Gritty, free-thinking citizens are harder to control.

It’s also perfect nonsense. Do you think it was an accident that the Obama team created a cartoon to tell this story? It’s fitting that the tale is told in the same media form as a Disney fairy tale, because Julia’s life is just as much a fantasy as Cinderella’s or Snow White’s. It’s the Joe Camel of political advertisements.

This is how they spread the “softness doctrine.” Our government, media, and academia are brainwashing all of us—especially our kids—into being mushy blobs of fragile self-esteem, all in the name of “progressivism.”

As they do with masculinity itself, today’s liberals treat grit like an anachronism from a time when people hadn’t evolved enough to live in the progressive paradise that they believe is just around every corner. Grit is unnecessary. You don’t have to be mentally tough, because if you have a problem, a supposedly benevolent government will take care of it for you—and take care of you.

While this cotton candy philosophy may make sense to sophomoric college students and sheltered media elites, those of us who have fought in the trenches of our own lives, the global economy, and the nation’s politics know better. You can’t save everyone, and when you try to do so, you end up doing much more harm than good.

This isn’t just a social problem—though it most certainly is that—it is also an economic and national security problem. Do you think China and Russia will sit back and let us continue to be the most powerful nation in the world once we’re too soft to fight for market share—or even our homeland?

As a nation, we need to toughen up, stop whining, and get to work.

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DOJ action against Baltimore police part of national takeover of local police

Americans for Limited Government today issued the following statement in response to findings by the Department of Justice Civil Rights Division against the Baltimore Police Department:

“The courts in Baltimore have already found that Baltimore police were not guilty of any criminal wrongdoing in the death of Freddie Gray. The Department of Justice Civil Rights Division reopening and pouring salt in this wound is a travesty both for the people of Baltimore, and for law enforcement officers across the country who risk their lives every day to keep the peace. If not for the DOJ’s callous politicization of incidents in Ferguson and Baltimore, communities and police might have already come together in an honest dialogue on how to prevent future tragedies. Unfortunately, President Obama would rather attempt to score cheap political points with key voting constituencies than to allow reconciliation.

“The DOJ action in Baltimore is just the first step by the Obama administration to federalize police activity in that city. Eventually, this will become a federal court order consent decree, where the DOJ will sue Baltimore, and the city will settle without contest, agreeing to federal regulation, as has been done in cities across the nation. This regime has been endorsed by a representative of the UN Human Rights Council, and involves DOJ entering into consent decrees with cities to regulate every aspect of policing, including searches, stops and the use of force. This is the nationalization of local policing done through judicial fiat that Congress would never approve.

“What is truly sad is that after almost 8 years in office President Obama continues to be the divider in chief, seeking political gain from creating discord.”

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Obama Hid the Truth About ISIS

A special congressional joint task force has officially confirmed what has been suspected for months: The Obama administration through U.S Central Command scrubbed intelligence reports showing the rise of ISIS as a critical threat to the United States and the world. The reports were altered for political purposes to present a rosier, less threatening picture of the terror army to the American people. In other words, the administration wanted to prove ISIS was a "jayvee" team as President Obama claimed in September 2014.

According to a report released Tuesday by the task force, the scrubbing and changing of reports was done at senior levels, not by low level intelligence analysts.

"After months of investigation, this much is very clear: from the middle of 2014 to the middle of 2015, U.S. Central Command’s most senior intelligence leaders manipulated the command’s intelligence products to downplay the threat from ISIS in Iraq.  The result:  consumers of those intelligence products were provided a consistently ‘rosy’ view of U.S. operational success against ISIS.  That may well have resulted in putting American troops at risk as policymakers relied on this intelligence when formulating policy and allocating resources for the fight," Congressman Mike Pompeo, who served on the joint task force which investigated the matter, said in a statement Thursday. “The cultural breakdown in Central Command’s intelligence process resulted from an administration-wide understanding that bad news from Iraq and Syria was not welcomed.  Claims that ISIS was the ‘JV team’ and that al-Qaeda was ‘on the run’ were both a result—and a cause—of the politicization of intelligence at CENTCOM.  This intelligence manipulation provided space for both ISIS and al-Qaeda to grow and it put America at risk."

“Intelligence products always contain some level of uncertainty.  But during this period, nearly every error was in one direction:  downplaying the threat from radical Islamic terror consistent with the administration’s narrative that this threat was not significant.  I urge the Department of Defense Inspector General to hold accountable the intelligence leaders that failed our service members fighting our wars on the ground,” he continued.

SOURCE

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For more blog postings from me, see  TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH,  POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, and Paralipomena (Occasionally updated),  a Coral reef compendium and an IQ compendium. (Both updated as news items come in).  GUN WATCH is now mainly put together by Dean Weingarten. I also put up occasional updates on my Personal blog and each day I gather together my most substantial current writings on A WESTERN HEART.

Email me  here (Hotmail address). My Home Pages are here (Academic) or  here (Pictorial) or  here  (Personal)

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Muslims are the sea in which the Jihadi fish swim

Consider this: A Muslim man in England decides it is time he made his trip to Mecca, which is religious obligation for all Muslims who can do it.  So he arranges his affairs, books his tickets and arrives in Mecca.  He marches around the Kaaba 3 times and abuses the Devil.  And when he gets back home he is pleased with himself and will have honorific title "Hajji" from then on.

So he will have met the obligations of his religion.  Except that he has not. Going on a Haj is only a minor command in the Koran. The big and often repeated commandment is to wage Jihad on unbelievers.  But he doesn't do that, nor do 99% of Western Muslims.  Why?  Because it is obvious  that if he does so he is very likely to end up dead or in prison for a long time.  He has the normal human instinct for survival.

But in supporting his local Mosque, he supports the teaching of the Mullah. Mullahs are always urging Jihad on their congregants.  And there will be some listeners in the Mosque who like the idea of being a hero.  They will usually be people who are psychologically or socially marginal but the point is that the Mosque is where they get the sense of mission that they have. If there was no Mosque and no Mullah preaching Jihad, they would go off in some other direction.

So the local Muslim community is the life-support system for Jihadis.  Take away that community and no-one would hear of Jihad and would certainly not have it preached at them.  So Muslim populations should be sent home not because they have done anything wrong but because they are what in law is called "accessories before the fact".  They share a responsibility for the murderous attacks on us committed by their more devout members.

Those who change their religion could stay.  How would we know that a conversion was sincere?  Easy. Just ask them to say something no Muslim would say  -- e.g.  "Islam is a false religion and the Koran is the ravings of an insane pedophile"

So he will have met the obligations of his religion.  Except that he has not. Going on a Haj is only a minor command in the Koran. The big and often repeated commandment is to wage Jihad on unbelievers.  But he doesn't do that, nor do 99% of Western Muslims.  Why?  Because it is obvious  that if he does so he is very likely to end up dead or in prison for a long time.  He has the normal human instinct for survival.

But in supporting his local Mosque, he supports the teaching of the Mullah. Mullahs are always urging Jihad on their congregants.  And there will be some listeners in the Mosque who like the idea of being a hero.  They will usually be people who are psychologically or socially marginal but the point is that the Mosque is where they get the sense of mission that they have. If there was no Mosque and no Mullah preaching Jihad, they would go off in some other direction.

So the local Muslim community is the life-support system for Jihadis.  Take away that community and no-one would hear of Jihad and would certainly not have it preached at them.  So Muslim populations should be sent home not because they have done anything wrong but because they are what in law is called "accessories before the fact".  They share a responsibility for the murderous attacks on us committed by their more devout members.

Those who change their religion could stay.  How would we know that a conversion was sincere?  Easy. Just ask them to say something no Muslim would say  -- e.g.  "Islam is a false religion and the Koran is the ravings of an insane pedophile"

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Stop Lone Wolf Terrorism by Ending Muslim Immigration

by DANIEL GREENFIELD

Lone wolf terrorism is the biggest trend in Islamic terrorism. Unlike classic Islamic terrorism, it requires no cells stretching across countries the way that 9/11 did. The perpetrators don't even need to enter the country under false pretenses the way that the World Trade Center bombers did.

In many cases, they are already citizens. Some were even born in their target country.

Classic counterterrorism is directed at organizations. It's inadequate for stopping individual Muslim terrorists like Omar Mateen who was able to murder 49 people at a nightclub in Orlando or closely related duos like the Tsarnaev brothers in Boston or the husband and wife team who carried out the San Bernardino terrorist attack which took the lives of 14 people.

Even the standard technique of planting informants into mosques, deeply opposed by the Islamic lobby in the United States, fails when individuals decide to act alone or only trust their wives or brothers to be in on the plot with them. If an individual Islamic terrorist fails to let his plans slip, either online or to an FBI informant, stopping him can be extremely difficult if not entirely impossible without a stroke of luck.

And Islamic terrorists only need to be lucky once. We have to be lucky every time.

Every absurd Islamic terror plot broken up by law enforcement, the type of thing dismissed by the media and ridiculed by commentators, launching rockets at planes, underwear bombs and blowing up trains, contained the seed of a horrific terrorist attack just like Orlando, Boston or Nice.

When you turn on the evening news and see a running death toll, it's because one of those absurd and ridiculous terror plots actually succeeded. And it's happening more and more often.

The reason is simple. Unlike classic Islamic terrorism which required organization and infrastructure, the new brand of Islamic terror only needs one thing... Muslims.

Lone wolf terrorism operates entirely off the existing Muslim population in a particular country. The bigger the Muslim population, the bigger the risk. Any Muslim or Muslims who have settled in a particular non-Muslim country can answer the call of Jihad at any given time without warning.

There is no way that the FBI or other law enforcement agencies could begin to monitor even a fraction of the Islamic settler population sympathetic to terror. The FBI alone has almost 1,000 active ISIS cases it was investigating last year in all 50 states. It does not have nearly the resources it needs to handle them.

As the Muslim settler population in the country increases, the number of cases will grow. No matter how much law enforcement expands the scope of its operations, it will not be able to keep up with the high natural birth rates of the Muslim settler population whose terrorists don't need a fraction of the training or skills that trained law enforcement figures do. The more the Muslim population grows, the more terror attacks like Orlando, Boston and Nice will get past law enforcement.

Any technological or logistical solutions to this crisis on the law enforcement end will only be band aids.

The source of the problem is Islamic immigration. That is the only possible solution. The only way to reduce the growth of the lone wolf Islamic terrorism problem is to reduce or end Muslim migration.

If this is how bad it is when Muslims are only 1% of the population, what happens when the Muslim settler population doubles and then doubles again? Accompanying these rising population numbers will be rising influence by the Islamic lobby. Islamic groups such as CAIR with a history of terror ties and opposition to counterterrorism will have even more power to stymie law enforcement investigations. The end result will be far more successful Muslim terrorist massacres taking place on a constant basis.

Muslim immigrants are already inherently privileged when it comes to their ability to enter this country ahead of far more peaceful and far more deserving groups. For example, the vast majority of Syrian refugees admitted to this country are the Muslims who perpetrated and are perpetuating their religious war in the region rather than their Christian and Yazidi victims who face slavery and genocide at their hands.

This Islamic immigration privilege must be withdrawn. Muslim immigration must at the very least be scaled back to a level that law enforcement can cope with. At best it must end entirely until the Muslim world manages to stabilize its way of life to the extent that it can peacefully co-exist with non-Muslims.

There will be endless arguments over what percentage of Muslims support terrorism, but our own experience of recent attacks shows that many of them came from attackers who overtly appeared to be "moderate" and "ordinary". For every Islamist activist dressed in Salafist fashion and tweeting praise of ISIS, there is at least one, if not many more, whom you would pass on the street without a second look.

Before the Boston Marathon bombing, the Tsarnaevs did not seem like Jihadists. They would have been classed with the general category of "moderate" Muslims. And then they struck.

That is how it is.

The internet has decentralized terrorist training camps. Any Muslim can acquire the skills and equipment he needs to kill a few or a dozen or even a hundred if he chooses to follow his religion.

Not every Muslim will shoot up a nightclub or bomb a marathon, but we have no foolproof way of telling them apart. And even many Muslims who would not shoot up an office party in San Bernardino will still sympathize with the perpetrators. And even those Muslims who don't will often continue supporting the Muslim lobby of organizations like CAIR that stymie law enforcement investigations of Islamic terrorism.

Muslim immigration makes Muslim terrorism worse.

Once we understand this inconvenient truth, then everything else naturally flows from it. The type of terrorism that we are dealing now won't be beaten by breaking up organizations or droning terrorist leaders in training camps in Yemen or Pakistan. The enemy is right here. He speaks our language. He walks down our streets. He looks at us with hate in his Halal heart and he plots to kill us.

He may pledge allegiance to ISIS or Al Qaeda, but he is part of the larger organization of Islam. It is this organization, more than any of its Jihadist factional subdivisions, that represents the true threat.

Lone wolf terrorism is a viral threat that is spread by Islamic migration. We can only end it by closing the door. As long as the door to the Muslim migrant stays open, we will live under the threat that our neighbor or co-worker will be the one to kill us tomorrow or the day after that.

SOURCE

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McCARRAN-WALTER ACT OF 1952......TRUMP IS RIGHT!

The post below has been out for a couple of months now but almost entirely on Facebook.  Time to circulate it more widely, I think

Well, well, I bet if you asked your Senator or Congressman, they would say they have never heard of this law.  And who was the last President who enforced this law?  The most "holier than thou" president and a Democrat, Jimmy Carter

Trump was recently severely criticized for suggesting that the U.S. should limit or temporarily suspend the immigration of certain ethnic groups, nationalities, and even people of certain religions (Muslims).

The critics condemned such a suggestion as, among other things, being “Un-American,” dumb, stupid, reckless, dangerous and racist.

Congressmen and Senators swore that they would never allow such legislation, and our (Muslim) president called such a prohibition on immigration 'unconstitutional'.

Well, as Gomer Pyle would say, “Surprise, Surprise!”  It seems that the selective immigration ban is already law and has been applied on several occasions.

Known as the McCarran-Walter Act, (the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1952) allows for the "Suspension of entry or imposition of restrictions by a president.  Whenever the president finds that the entry of aliens or of any class of aliens into the United States would be detrimental to the interests of the United States, the president may, by proclamation, and for such period as he shall deem necessary, suspend the entry of all aliens or any class of aliens as immigrants or non-immigrants or impose on the entry of aliens any restrictions he may deem to be appropriate.”

The act was utilized by Jimmy Carter, no less, in 1979 to keep Iranians out of the United States,  but he actually did more.  He made all Iranian students already here check in, and then he deported a bunch.  Seven thousand were found in violation of their visas and 15,000 Iranians were forced to leave the United States in 1979.

It is of note that the act requires that an applicant for immigration must be of good moral character and "attached to the principles of the Constitution.”  Since the Quran forbids Muslims to swear allegiance to the U.S. Constitution, technically, all Muslims should be refused immigration.

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There is a  new  lot of postings by Chris Brand just up -- covering most of his usual themes

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For more blog postings from me, see  TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH,  POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, and Paralipomena (Occasionally updated),  a Coral reef compendium and an IQ compendium. (Both updated as news items come in).  GUN WATCH is now mainly put together by Dean Weingarten. I also put up occasional updates on my Personal blog and each day I gather together my most substantial current writings on A WESTERN HEART.

List of backup or "mirror" sites here or  here -- for when blogspot is "down" or failing to  update.  Email me  here (Hotmail address). My Home Pages are here (Academic) or  here (Pictorial) or  here  (Personal)

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Note

I've got a bad cold at the moment so no  blogging today.  I may be out of action for a few days