Is This Where Sniping In the III Community Comes From?

While at Harvard in 2008, before becoming Obama's Regulatory Czar, Cass Sunstein co-authored a paper on how the government should handle conspiracy theories.  He suggested government agents or their allies "cognitively infiltrate" conspiracy theorist groups by joining "chat rooms, online social networks or even real-space groups" and influencing the conversation.  They went so far as to suggest the government "formally hire credible private parties to engage in counterspeech."  The Chinese government does this today, with the "50-cent party", so-named because of the fee they get for each positive, pro-party/government posting they make.  Hey, any good communist policy is a natural for the Obamanoids, right?

How this would work in practice would be that these government employees would be paid to find people who spout "conspiracy theories", and they would comment there.  Consider blogs in the liberty sphere; there's no doubt that a Big Government guy like Sunstein would believe that anyone who values personal liberty is a conspiracy theorist and potential terrorist who should be targeted (I don't think I'm going out on much of a limb here is attributing this belief to Sunstein).  They could post blog comments disagreeing with aspects of the stories on the blog, trying to break the credibility of the reports, and the trustworthiness of the story. 

It can now be confirmed that this is actually going on.  At least in the UK, in documents leaked by Edward Snowden, and reported by Glen Greenwald, formerly of the Guardian and now with FirstLook.org.   I urge everyone to read that piece, and see the formerly very classified documents detailing how the UK's GCHQ has given life to Cass Sunstein's wet dream of making disagreement with the government go away by "nudging"  everyone's behavior.  (And does it seem just a little too convenient that Bamster put Sunstein in charge of the oversight committee looking at whether or not the NSA has been "doing us wrong"? )

Over the last several weeks, I worked with NBC News to publish a series of articles about “dirty trick” tactics used by GCHQ’s previously secret unit, JTRIG (Joint Threat Research Intelligence Group). These were based on four  classified  GCHQ  documents presented to the NSA and the other three partners in the English-speaking  “Five Eyes” alliance. Today, we at the Intercept are publishing another new JTRIG document, in full, entitled “The Art of Deception: Training for Online Covert Operations.”  

By publishing these stories one by one, our NBC reporting highlighted some of the key, discrete revelations: the monitoring of YouTube and Blogger, the targeting of Anonymous with the very same DDoS attacks they accuse “hacktivists” of using, the use of “honey traps” (luring people into compromising situations using sex) and destructive viruses. But, here, I want to focus and elaborate on the overarching point revealed by all of these documents: namely, that these agencies are attempting to control, infiltrate, manipulate, and warp online discourse, and in doing so, are compromising the integrity of the internet itself.

Among the core self-identified purposes of JTRIG are two tactics: (1) to inject all sorts of false material onto the internet in order to destroy the reputation of its targets; and (2) to use social sciences and other techniques to manipulate online discourse and activism to generate outcomes it considers desirable. To see how extremist these programs are, just consider the tactics they boast of using to achieve those ends: “false flag operations” (posting material to the internet and falsely attributing it to someone else), fake victim blog posts (pretending to be a victim of the individual whose reputation they want to destroy), and posting “negative information” on various forums.

Now that we know for sure it's going on (as if we doubted), perhaps some of the bickering in the III-per community needs to be looked at as tactics being used against us.  I'm sure I'm way too small potatoes for them to care about dropping by here, but think of the big guys.  I personally think I've seen this sort of thing happening on some big commercial sites, like the Blaze or PJ Media.  Have you ever noticed how quickly comments about anything veer from the subject at hand to straight political diatribe, or ad hominem attacks on the people involved?   

(Cass Sunstein) 
I'm not suggesting there aren't real and legitimate disagreements between members of the Liberty / III-per movement, and I don't want to imply any dissent indicates the commenter is a stooge.  These things always happen.  But we have a government regulator who has admitted in open press that he wants to do this, even going as far as false flag operations, and now it turns out to be verified that it is actively going on.  It would be silly to think it can't be happening here, too.  Plus, having an argument with a troll has a whole new meaning when the troll is getting paid to argue with you, doesn't it?

So Many Big Problems Start Out So Small

It has been said that the worst kind of tyrant is the one who is dominating you for your own good.  There is no limit to what they will do - for your own good.  Keep that in mind when you read that Michelle Obama is trying to get restaurants to change their menus - for the children. Quoting from the LA Times,

First Lady Michelle Obama, who has been unable to convince the Smoker-in-Chief to give up that dreadful habit, now has some health suggestions for other American families and for restaurant menus across the country. The goal is to eat healthier, although that might hurt restaurant sales and cause disappointed children.

The LA Times piece goes on to say:

One idea Mrs. Obama had is to serve apple slices as the default side dish with, say, hamburgers, instead of French fries, which she confessed to liking.
Also she'd like less butter and cream in restaurant dinners, not enough to....
...ruin the flavor but enough to make them healthy. A difficult balance, millions have learned.

So what's the big deal?  Why not offer apple slices instead of French fries?  Aren't we in a terrible epidemic of childhood obesity?  Won't eating healthier help?

My argument is that it isn't her call and it shouldn't be any of the government's damned business.  It's the parents' call to ask the restaurants what they want their children's meals to be.  It's the market's call.  This is the first nudge in what will become a war.  Oh, and mark my words: this is a coming war. 

Cass Sunstein

(image from)

As you will see from that Amazon link, Nudge is co-authored by "Regulatory Czar" Cass Sunstein.  The idea behind the book is simple: we all have an inner Homer Simpson and an inner Mr. Spock who run our decision making.  While the Ruling Class Elites are under the control of their inner Spock, you're ruled by Homer.  You're too stupid to make good choices, so the wise and wonderful government will make them for you.  We'll put the fries elsewhere on the menu so that kids don't see them.  You don't get them unless you ask.  If that doesn't work, they'll make the fries cost a little more than the apples.  If that doesn't work, well, they'll just have to take them off the market completely.  You enjoy that weekly cigar?  It's too linked to mouth cancer, don't you know.  We'll have to quadruple the taxes on them.  Or more.  Or take them off the market.  It's for the children, you know.  By the way - that anger and revulsion you're feeling?  That "who the #?*! do they think they are??" feeling?  That's just another symptom of the "optimism and overconfidence" that your inner Homer gives you (last paragraph of that Slate piece).

The worst aspect of any health care insurance system is that my choices become your business.  I may not want to wear a hard helmet when I ride my motorcycle, but if the long term care for my chronic vegetative state adds a hundred bucks a year to your insurance premium you start to care about it.  When the plan is well-managed, the effect is barely noticeable.  When the government becomes the sole provider of health care there is not a single aspect of your life that isn't some bureaucrat's to rule over (and don't tell me we're not headed there or I'll 'pop a cap in yo ass').  Your weight, the amount of hours you sleep, whether you use your seat belt, how much bacon you eat, how often you hug your kids or have sex with your spouse - it all can be argued to have an effect on your or their health, which leads to the cost of the health care and irrevocably to the national budget. 

Eventually these "nudges" become pushes, full-body checks and then hits by NFL defensive tackles.  It may be that fries are outlawed, or it may be bacon, or health care is denied because you don't follow their nudges.  Prohibition, the last great experiment at changing people's behaviors, worked out so well, didn't it? 

New Executive Order To "Nudge" the American People

Yesterday, President Obama issued an executive order, "Using Behavioral Science Insights to Better Serve the American People".  It opens:

To more fully realize the benefits of behavioral insights and deliver better results at a lower cost for the American people, the Federal Government should design its policies and programs to reflect our best understanding of how people engage with, participate in, use, and respond to those policies and programs. By improving the effectiveness and efficiency of Government, behavioral science insights can support a range of national priorities, including helping workers to find better jobs; enabling Americans to lead longer, healthier lives; improving access to educational opportunities and support for success in school; and accelerating the transition to a low-carbon economy.

A good question at this point is, "whut?"  I thought Cass Sunstein had left the government, and a quick check shows he officially left in 2012, but this has his "Nudge" written all over it.  (Coincidentally, I'm sure, the Yiddish word for a really annoying, nagging person is a noodge - which sounds almost like nudge - and is pretty darned appropriate).  As I wrote about it way back then (2010):

The idea behind the book is simple: we all have an inner Homer Simpson and an inner Mr. Spock who run our decision making.  While the Ruling Class Elites are under the control of their inner Spock, you're ruled by Homer.  You're too stupid to make good choices, so the wise and wonderful government will make them for you.  ... You enjoy that weekly cigar?  It's too linked to mouth cancer, don't you know.  We'll have to quadruple the taxes on them.  Or more.  Or take them off the market.  It's for the children, you know.  By the way - that anger and revulsion you're feeling?  That "who the #?*! do they think they are??" feeling?  That's just another symptom of the "optimism and overconfidence" that your inner Homer gives you (last paragraph of that Slate piece).

The Daily Caller adds a little backgrounder here:

The new program is the end result of a policy proposal the White House floated in 2013 entitled “Strengthening Federal Capacity for Behavioral Insights.” According to a document released by the White House at that time, the program was modeled on one implemented in the U.K. in 2010. That initiative created a Behavioral Insights Teams, which used “iterative experimentation” to test “interventions that will further advance priorities of the British government.”

By no coincidence, those "priorites" almost always advance the goals of increasing the power and control of the federal government, though they are often couched as ways to cut overall program spending or produce better programs.

If you haven't been following Buttstain, here's a collection of every time I've mentioned him in this blog's 5+ years.  But let me tell you, I've got a whole lot of that, "who the #?*! do they think they are??" feeling that my inner Homer Simpson is causing.

(Cass Sunstein)

Back In The Saddle, So Let's Catch Up

The work trip I mentioned at the end of the previous post was more intense than I expected, and resulted in spending longer days than I'm used to working, leaving no time to tend to the blog.  I was in Toronto, Ontario, which is a first time for me, to visit a company that supplies parts to Major Avionics Company, where I work.  I traveled with two other guys whom I know but have never spent that much time with.

As a Floridian almost since birth, I've seen a lot of population growth.  Areas turning from cow pasture to housing developments and condominiums seemingly overnight.  Dredge and fill operations turning muck into dry land with channels cut out to deeper water and inviting waterfront housing.  But I don't think I've ever seen as much in building going on as in the downtown Toronto area.  I swear there was a crane every 500' across the city, from ground level to building tops.  It was rather amazing.  I don't know what you guys are doing up there, but God love you, as Joe Biden says.  Nice to see someone embracing growth and profit. 

(grainy iPhone pic from a parking lot)

---

It might be disappointing the Global Warming Zealots that while this season is supposed to be active, we haven't had a hurricane in the Atlantic yet, the last day of August, for the first time in the last 11 years - and I don't think one is possible for several days.  A local hurricane analysis site says that only 12% of the last 60 years have not had a hurricane by now - average date of the first Atlantic Hurricane is around August 10th, IIRC, and the chances of getting enough storms before the end of the season to meet the numbers called for by the famous Colorado hurricane predictions is about 5%. 

While the people who study hurricanes for a living say the correlation between global warmening and hurricane formation is far from proven, ever since Al "second Chakra" Gore put a picture of a hurricane coming out of the smokestacks of a nameless CO2 source, warmists have believed that higher sea surface temps necessarily mean more hurricanes.  The situation is much more complex than that, with global circulations, like the El Nino/La Nina Cycle (also called ENSO or the El Nino Southern Oscillation) playing a major role, as well as the Atlantic Decadal Oscillation and probably others.  The ENSO cycle is rather neutral now, not particularly conducive or disruptive to hurricane formation.  Those who follow it know a strong El Nino really disrupts hurricane formation by shearing the tops off the storms.

---

I don't know how many people saw this, but Bamster put Cass Sunstein on the oversight committee tasked with looking at whether or not the NSA has been "doing us wrong".  Sunstein is the guy who famously wrote the book "Nudge".  The idea behind the book is simple: we all have an inner Homer Simpson and an inner Mr. Spock who run our decision making.  While the Ruling Class Elites are under the control of their inner Spock, personally you're ruled by Homer.  You're too stupid to make good choices, so the wise and wonderful government will make them for you.  (coincidentally, I'm sure, the Yiddish word for an annoyingly nagging person is a noodge - which sounds almost like it, and is pretty darned appropriate).

Sunstein doesn't fit oversight - I'll bet he's completely behind whatever the NSA is doing.  This is a guy who said in absence of other solid evidence, everyone who dies should be considered an organ donor, rather than assuming not, so he apparently believes society has a right to everything about you - hopefully not before you're done with those organs.  He "suggests government agents or their allies “cognitively infiltrate” conspiracy theorist groups by joining ”chat rooms, online social networks or even real-space groups” and influencing the conversation" - even if it turns out they're spreading the truth and not a conspiracy theory.

The paper also suggests that the government “formally hire credible private parties to engage in counterspeech.” That sounds an awful lot like the 50 Cent Party of online commentators who are paid per comment by the Chinese communist party to sway public opinion.

ZeroHedge called him "America's Goebbels", Hitler's head of the Ministry for Public Enlightenment and Propaganda. 

If you ever had any doubt NSA oversight was going to be joke, you can go back assuming the government has established itself as a ruling tyranny with absolute contempt for its citizens.

Is This the Reason for the Noise About Syria?

Maybe it's just me, but this really seems like it has the fingerprints of Samantha Power  all over it. Ms. Power, of course is our virulently anti-Israel UN ambassador and is married to Cass Sunstein.  Sunstein, of course, is the former regulatory czar for the administration and now on the committee tasked with determining whether or not the NSA is violating American civil rights. 

Why do I think it's her doing?  Ignoring the presidential politics for a minute (and everything this president does is weighed for domestic politics), Ms. Power is famous for being involved in the "Responsibility to Protect" project.  It seems to me she was deeply affected by the Rwandan genocide, as evidenced by her book "A Problem from Hell", and while I can't say I know she was a founder of ICRtoP, she is mentioned there many times.  The ICRtoP organization was at least partly founded by George Soros, and Power worked for Soros at one time. 

While I understand that watching a genocide would be horrible, does a nation stay perpetually at war to stop another one?  At what cost to that nation?  While this is admittedly arm chair psychology of the worst kind, I think that her inability to convince the President to get involved in Syria earlier - for the first 100,000 civilian deaths - increased her desperation to get into it now.

Looking around tonight, I see I'm not the only one on this trail.  Aaron Klein at WND wrote a piece on her involvement six days ago.  

The diplomats say that last week, Power recommended Obama strike in Syria without first consulting Congress, a move from which the president clearly seems to have backed away.

It's a role similar to the one she had in the (first) Libyan fiasco: urging the US get involved to provide air cover for Islamist rebels.  Back in 2011, when I was first writing about her and R2P, I found this gem:

Responsibility to Protect has the potential to, or if I may, is intended to, eliminate national sovereignty. 

“We can no longer hide behind state sovereignty.”

Klein offers quotes from an article by Soros that gave the philosophical basis to R2P.  According to Klein, Soros starts with the surprisingly reasonable idea (for him), that:

In the article, Soros wrote: “True sovereignty belongs to the people, who in turn delegate it to their governments.”

From there he goes directly to intervention:

Soros said that if governments “abuse the authority entrusted to them and citizens have no opportunity to correct such abuses, outside interference is justified.”

“By specifying that sovereignty is based on the people, the international community can penetrate nation-states’ borders to protect the rights of citizens,” he wrote.

In other words, if a government abuses its people, the "international community" can use its military to "...penetrate nation-states’ borders to protect the rights of citizens.”  With the strongest military in the world that means the US will be sent to do these things. 

More Tales From the Over Regulated State - Federal Fart Control

As generations of comedians have said, I'm not making this up.

As part of its attempt to regulate so-called greenhouse gases, the EPA has announced it intends to regulate cattle farting.  Cattle farts, like humans', contain methane, a greenhouse gas several times more potent than CO2. 

This comes despite falling methane emission levels across the economy since 1990.

The White House has proposed cutting methane emissions from the dairy industry by 25 percent by 2020.

Obviously, even those pinheads have to know that simply telling the cows not to fart won't achieve their goals - any more than telling any of us not to fart would curtail our personal methane production.  The only approach to cutting methane production by 25% that has even a remote chance of working would be to reduce the number of cattle by 25%. 

It’s not just the dairy industry that the Obama administration is clamping down on. The White House is looking to regulate methane emissions across the economy from agriculture to oil and gas operations — all this despite methane emissions falling 11 percent since 1990.

Methane emissions have largely been reduced because of the incentive for companies to capture it and sell it for monetary gain. Oil and gas companies, for example, have been looking for ways to increasingly capture methane leaked from drilling operations which they can then sell.

And here's the real meat of this proposal.  Just as diligently as oil and gas companies have been working to capture any methane production in their fields, (leaking methane is throwing away money and that just doesn't go over very well with any business I know), the EPA has been working to shut down energy production  from coal and other non-green (that is, real) sources.  They are, of course, as anti-progress and especially anti-American progress, as you'll ever find. 

“President Obama’s plan to reduce climate-disrupting methane pollution is an important step in reining in an out of control industry exempt from too many public health protections,” Deborah Nardone, campaign director of the Sierra Club’s Keeping Dirty Fuels in the Ground campaign. “However, even with the most rigorous methane controls and monitoring in place, we will still fall short of what is needed to fight climate disruption if we do not reduce our reliance on these dirty fossil fuels.”

Aside from the obvious anti-technology, anti-energy independence aspect, this obviously falls into  Moochelle's famous dietary nonsense, too.  Its a progressive perfecta!  If there's 25% less cattle, the cost of beef in the diet has to go up, and people will eat even less of it.  Reeks of a Cass Sunstein "Nudge"  doesn't it? 

Prototype cattle methane collector.  Srsly. 

Remember:  as always, fart control isn't about the farts - it's about the control.

Say Goodbye to 75W Incandescant Bulbs

I wasn't aware until today that 75 W light bulbs were outlawed on January 1st, following 100 W bulbs into the dustbins of history. Lou Frenzel writes in Electronic Design:

As of the first of the year, the manufacture and sale of 75-watt incandescents is against the law.  That ban happened to 100-watt bulbs last year.  Next year, 60 and 40-watt bulbs go on the no-no list.  All of that is due to the controversial Energy Independence and Security Act (ESIA) of 2007.  The Act does not ban the actual use or purchase of these bulbs, just their manufacture and sale.

Outlawing purchase takes care of itself because all stock will eventually get sold.  And since these bulbs burn out, the "actual use" part takes care of itself without the Feds having to get up close and personal.  Similar to the ban of T12 fluorescent bulbs I wrote about last June, and the 100 W bulbs mentioned in that quote, it's all the result of our insect overlords deciding we aren't smart enough to choose our lighting needs on our own. 

Consider it a nudge.  We may not have an officially recognized "Nudge Unit" like they do in the UK, but it all comes down to that book by Cass Sunstein many of us have written about many times before.  

Like most people, I've had a few CFL bulbs here, and I've had pretty uniformly bad results with them.  First off, not one has lasted as long as claimed (a topic of serious discussion in engineering forums), second off, there's that problem with mercury contamination when they die, and finally, I don't like the light color - even the ones claimed to be daylight bulbs.  In one fixture (ceiling in my garage) they last no longer than incandescent bulbs and cost several times more. 

At the moment, I'm writing under the light of four LED bulbs.  Those were on sale at four for $60 (instead of the usual $80) and each puts out the same number of lumens as a typical 60W incandescent.  I've only had them in since October, but this fixture is one of the most used in the house, and might be on as much as 8 hours a day.  I'd like to go to more LEDs around the house, but they're still pretty high on the cost curve, and there are very few equivalents to the 100W bulbs I like in many places.  Maybe my stockpiled 100W and 60W bulbs will last long enough for a couple of price drops. 

Frenzel points out a reality that many greenies miss, but misses another himself:

I think the big question for the home owner is: Am I really saving money?  Probably not.  According to the U.S. Energy Information Administration and the Department of Energy, residential lighting represents only 9 to 13% of total electrical power usage.  Most electrical energy goes to refrigerators, air conditioning, water heaters, and other appliances.  So if you replace all your bulbs with CFLs or LEDs you are only saving a fraction of your total electrical bill.

While he's right about the lighting representing a small portion of electricity use, in places with a real winter, incandescent bulbs make a real contribution to heating the living space.  Energy efficient bulbs may save electricity in the fixture, but make you spend it on your heating.  As always, solutions that only look at one small part are usually not solutions and make the problems worse.  They always act as if the law of unintended consequences doesn't apply to them.  

left to right, regular incandescent, CFL, LED, from Sylvania

Banning light bulbs without a good replacement is just another example of big government overreach.  Like declaring it's time for solar power, legislators think they can mandate changes to inescapable laws of nature.  Solar power will have its day, and LED bulbs will have their day, but neither of those days is today.  CFLs might have already been as good as they're ever going to be.

More Tales From the Over Regulated State - A Series

In which tonight's episode can be entitled "You Don't Need to Outlaw Guns - You Just Need to Outlaw Shooting".  Either the "Nudge" tactic, or the full linebacker hit tactic.  

The Volokh Conspiracy links to a story of OSHA attacks on indoor shooting ranges.  In an investigation of the Illinois Gun Works indoor range, to borrow the words of Jim Stafford,

One day this feller from Washington come by
And he spied us and he turned white as a sheet!

To quote from the original link:

Many of alleged OSHA violations at the safety training range involved noise exposure for the instructors. Among OSHA’s suggestions were to eliminate training in “larger caliber” handguns such as “9 mm Luger and/or .45 Colt”  and substitute “handguns of smaller caliber,” such as .22LR. And “Prohibition of any shotguns and/or rifles firing in the firing range.” (p. 6). In other words, eliminate training for all firearms except those which are least likely to have the stopping power to be effective for self-defense. And ensure that the range can never provide students with personal instruction in the use of the firearms which constitute the vast majority of firearms which people actually own.

In addition to thinking the noise was too loud (all together now, THEN TAKE SILENCERS OFF THE NFA LIST), they were shocked, shocked! that someone might have to touch a round of ammunition without gloves.  Dudes, if you're worried about the miniscule amount of lead dust in that environment, you're done with your job.  Workplaces are safe now.  Everyone go home and start looking for honest work.  And - seriously - man to man - if you think 9mm Luger is a big, loud  major caliber, you might want to check into an addadicktome or those little blue pills.  Just sayin'...

The one that I got the biggest laugh out of was this:

...employees used Hoppes #9 solvent for cleaning guns, but Illinois Gun Works had not relabeled each Hoppes bottle to list all the hazardous chemicals therein. (pp. 54-55). 

Only an OSHA weenie would complain about this, because most of us love the smell of Hoppes #9!  They even make an air freshener that releases the scent 24/7 so we can get more of it.   Besides, what good does labeling the containers do?  Sure, you should clean your gun with adequate ventilation - anyone with an IQ above room temperature knows this - but simply labeling the chemicals doesn't make them any less dangerous.

OSHA is a serious impediment to business in this country and while I joke about this, they're deadly serious.  In this case, they've assessed fines of $111,000 against this little shop.  Like most government single-issue focuses, they've cycled through the Pareto chart enough time to be just working on unimportant things, but they keep tying businesses up with expensive regulations that lead to tiny marginal improvements if any improvement at all.  They may have improved worker safety 40 years ago, but now they're pretty much useless.   Their terror over the lead dust is a great example.  When the EPA started, there was widespread lead in the environment, and that has been reduced to tiny fraction of what it was, largely by requiring unleaded gas and getting the lead out of paint.  The shooting instructors aren't making lead products, they're encountering micrograms of the metal. 

Personally, I think there might be another dynamic at work here, too.  This shop is just outside of  Chicago.  So what major city is involved in a tax-wasting war against its citizens to prevent the McDonald decision from being implemented?  What city was trying to regulate gun permits out of existence by requiring applicants to travel long distances to practice at ranges that don't exist in the city?  What city is run by Rahm Emmanuel, who served in the same administration as Cass Sunstein, the Czar of Nudge? 

Coincidence?  Oh, I'm sure.  Nothing to see here.  Move along.

The question is whether this is going to spread out and hit many more ranges.  If it does, you can expect fewer ranges, at the very time we need more and more ranges due to the incoming new shooters.  

Arm Them Today - Fight Them Tomorrow

After all, they're the same men you were fighting yesterday.
 
The Telegraph (UK) is running with the story that jihadists who fought our guys in Iraq, and perhaps killed US soldiers or Marines, are now fighting under our protective air cover.  Not "they're members of a group" who fought us, actual jihadis who fought us are in Libya now.

Abdel-Hakim al-Hasidi, the Libyan rebel leader, has said jihadists who fought against allied troops in Iraq are on the front lines of the battle against Muammar Gaddafi's regime.

If that doesn't give you warm fuzzy feelings, how about this gem:

Mr al-Hasidi insisted his fighters "are patriots and good Muslims, not terrorists," but added that the "members of al-Qaeda are also good Muslims and are fighting against the invader".

When these reports first started to surface, they were coming from the government, so we all laughed and said, "That's good ol' Daffy Qa-daffy for you!  Ha ha!".  I don't particularly feel like laughing now.   So, the jihadis don't mind us being there because "the enemy of my enemy is my friend".  I wonder whom he'll be fighting if they win and his current enemy is no longer there?  So Senator "Maverick" McCain wants to arm them?  If we send them guns, will American forces be looking down the barrels of our weapons in six months?

If you want to know whom to blame for us being involved in this mess, look no further than the darling couple in the White House, Cass Sunstein and his wife Samantha Power.  I couldn't tell you which one is more virulently anti-Israel.  I suspect he's more dangerous, but it could just be I've been studying him longer. She is the creator (one of the creators?) of "Responsibility to Protect" (R2P) the UN doctrine that's responsible for us being there.  New Zeal has a good overview of this. Samantha Power seems to be driven by angst over the Rwandan genocide, especially angst that her heroes did nothing to stop it.  Her book, "A Problem From Hell: America and the Age of Genocide" lays out the ideas that led to R2P.

Responsibility to Protect has the potential to, or if I may, is intended to, eliminate national sovereignty. 

“We can no longer hide behind state sovereignty.”

Let that sink in and don't overlook this detail.  Libya itself may be a nothing.  We may be out of there in a few weeks.  The principle and the precedent, though, may just have been established that the US has no right to do what it deems its own national interest, under penalty of international courts.

Now That It's Over ... Why Libya?

Now that the Libyan Kinetic Military Action is winding down, Qadaffi is on the run, and Sharia Law is being safely ensconced into the new Libyan legal system, I have to go back to wondering:  why there?  This has always been in the pile of "things that make you go WTF??" for me.  When this first started back in March, I commented on some things that just didn't seem right to me: 

To begin with, they've apparently instituted a central bank; their own version of our Federal Reserve.  I won't comment on the wisdom of a central bank, but doesn't it seem strange that a ragtag group of fighters, while not having sufficient C3I to fight a meaningful resistance still has a group that opens the "Central Bank of Benghazi", and signs an oil agreement?... Shouldn't you actually, you know, win before you do this?

and included short mention of Samantha Power (wife of the regulatory czar Cass Sunstein) and the UN Responsibility to Protect movement, (which WSRA links to today):

Second, it might mean that Responsibility to Protect stuff is just a cover.  The attention to Samantha Power, then, could be a distraction.

Still, why Libya?  Is it that they were not virulently anti-Israel enough for Samantha Power and George Soros, who has employed her in the past?   Human rights?

No doubt Daffy Qadaffi, the Transvestite of Tripoli, was not a beneficent ruler who allowed freedom for this people in absolute terms, but Libya is reported to have had the best standard of living in Africa (and here, too) so they certainly didn't have it as badly as many other populations under dictatorships. 

For Richard Falk, the UN special rapporteur for human rights in Palestine, the “degree of repression” in Libya is not "more pervasive and severe" than in other authoritarian countries. Even according to Amnesty International's country reports of human rights conditions, that of Libya differs little from many other countries; regarding the Arab allies in the NATO war alliance, such as Saudi Arabia, it is even much worse.  (source)

They publicly dismantled their WMD program in late '03 during the early phases of the Iraq war.  They were trying to open tourism with the rest of the world again.  They were, by all I can tell, not a problem in the region.  Unlike Syria, where "Butcher" Al-Assad is killing his people by the hundreds.  Unlike Sudan, where Muslims are killing Christians in prolific numbers.

If you were going to ask me to point out a global hot spot of oppression that needed to capped, Libya would not have made my list. 

No, if we were going to get rid of an oppressive dictatorship, we don't have to go over to Africa; one of the worst is right here, 90 miles from Florida.  I'm talking about Cuba, of course.  Read Babalu blog if you're not familiar with the reality of Cuba, or a nice summary of the early days of the regime, here.  It's one of the most brutally repressive regimes on earth.   I refer to Chavez in Venezuela as "Fidel's Dumber Brother".  His regime is trying to achieve the same levels of stupidity as Fidel's in Cuba.  If we just wanted to show off a bunch of military hardware, we could have off'ed Kim Jung Il and liberated North Korea, where people don't have even a tiny fraction of the quality of life of the Libyans, and where everyone is starving, even the Army (who gets more than the people).

This clearly wasn't some sort of altruistic move, motivated by higher things.  I come down to just a couple of possible reasons:

1. Oil - for the Europeans mostly.  True, the US doesn't buy Libyan oil directly, but oil is pretty dang fungible, and any added to the world supply affects the price of all of it.  But oil was already flowing from Libya.  I doubt there's a big increase coming.
2. Israel.  Always the center of goings on in the Middle East and north Africa, Libya just wasn't anti-Israel enough for the thug-nuts in DC. This is probably down the path a bit, but there sure is a lot of evidence that leftists and Islamists are working together to overthrow Western, free-market life.  Destroying Israel would be a big part of that.  Followed shortly thereafter by the destruction of the US. 

The Fight for Freedom Becomes An Every Day Job

I guess I just never expected we would have to battle our government every day of our lives. 

How about how the ATF suddenly, by stroke of the acting director's pen, changed 40 years of law to make it a Transfer to move a gun around a store.  Really?  Why?  Why now?  To quote Codrea's excellent piece:

I know the perceived intent here involves shipping guns to contractors, evaluators and the like, but if I just read these words on their own as written, I can see it being interpreted that such transfers could even include renting guns at shooting ranges.  I find the timing curious, because the antis have recently begun referring to this as a "federal loophole" and using anecdotes to stir up the hysteria to close it.

It's a "federal loophole" for a gun maker to send a copy to a laboratory to measure its performance?  Really?  Even if the ruling was to make it harder for the gun companies to send an evaluation sample to a magazine or TV show for review, why?  There are no records of any crime being caused this way.  Note that this is a regulatory nudge, Cass Sunstein's favorite term, that never went in front of Congress.  No way to write your representative or senator to try and head it off. (Hat Tip to Dave Codrea)

How did Clinton aide Paul Begala put it?  "Stroke of the pen, law of the land. Kinda cool!"

If you're not a "gun person" you may not know there is no such thing as "gun show loophole".  The same laws exist for sales at a gun show as anywhere else.  In fact, they can be more restrictive.  Mrs. Graybeard and I spent the afternoon at a gun show in West Palm Beach yesterday, and while I can buy any gun from anyone in my home county in a private sale by just plunking down an agreed upon price, at yesterday's gun show attendees needed to find an FFL, do a full transfer and wait 5 days.  There is an exception for state concealed carry licensees, as there should be, but they've made it harder to buy a gun at a show than when there isn't a show.  Stupid.  Criminals get guns by stealing them, not from gun shows.  How would they like a 5 day cooling off period and a Federal licensee to siphon $50 off every political contribution? 

How about a takeover of the financial industry?  Put together with health care, the big 3 automakers, and all the rest, I've heard from various sources that we're looking at 60% of the economy being in the government's control.  All your financial data are belong to us.  There will no longer such a thing as a private life.  May I add that every market follower I can find who has read the law says it will have no effect on the piracy that caused our financial mess, and will probably help the bad guys?  You knew that already? 

How about our abandonment of the fight against Islamofascism?  Deputy National Security Adviser John Brennan is a man who refers to Jerusalem by its Arabic name, Al-Quds, and who peppered a speech recently with a minute of Arabic. I don't have a problem with him speaking Arabic, I have a problem with how he runs his office.  With three attacks in a few months, we appear to be dropping the ball.

We've seen the enemy and it's not just the jihadists. It's also our own government, which refuses to see this very real enemy. How can we fight and defeat what we refuse to see?

Allowing the construction and dedication of an in-your-face mosque at ground zero on September 11?   As Gates of Vienna puts it, this is a new battle in a very old war.

We have essentially pre-surrendered in Afghanistan, by giving an "out-by" date.  If the enemy had any sense, they would lay low, and the peace would encourage us to leave earlier.  Once we're gone, it would take a completely different America to go back.  The way I see it, our current administration wouldn't go back into Afghanistan if a 9/11 level attack happened again, and it could be proven it came from there. 

How about securing the border?  Citizens shut down the capitol phone system a couple of years ago under GW Bush, when a repugnant amnesty bill almost floated.  Looking at the status of the southern border, it's hard not to conclude the Fed.gov has given up on enforcement.  The people, on the other hand, support stricter immigration controls by large measures.  The support in Arizona is so strong, it's hard to imagine a scenario that backs the "racism" card.

Need I go on?

The administration is attacking the people on every front.  It is requiring not just resistance, contacting our representatives and all of the usual things, it's getting to where citizens are going to need to split up the work: "I'll go fight my representative about gun things if you fight the financial takeovers".  The problem is that there are no lobbyists for us. 

Wasn't this supposed to be a government "of the people, by the people and for the people"? 

We're Awash in Junk Science - and Junk

Earlier in the week, Borepatch posted another update on the junk science coming out of not just the climate modelers/IPCC, but science in general.  The link was to the Economist, "How Science Goes Wrong".  The potential impacts on society are devastating, as the impact from biochemistry illustrates:

A rule of thumb among biotechnology venture-capitalists is that half of published research cannot be replicated. Even that may be optimistic. Last year researchers at one biotech firm, Amgen, found they could reproduce just six of 53 “landmark” studies in cancer research. Earlier, a group at Bayer, a drug company, managed to repeat just a quarter of 67 similarly important papers. ... In 2000-10 roughly 80,000 patients took part in clinical trials based on research that was later retracted because of mistakes or improprieties.

But the killer comment comes from the comments to Borepatch's post by AndyN, who links to a similar story on Reason.com asking "Can Most Cancer Research Be Trusted?"

My favorite quote: "I explained that we re-did their experiment 50 times and never got their result. He said they'd done it six times and got this result once, but put it in the paper because it made the best story. It's very disillusioning."

I've told the story that Mrs. Graybeard had a bone marrow transplant for breast cancer in 1997, and that paper that was based on turned out to have been falsified.  Furthermore, with the passing of our friend I talked about in that post, she is the only survivor out of a group of 8 who were all given a 75% chance of survival based on cancer staging studies.  Was survival pure dumb luck, or was it factors that had absolutely nothing to do with the therapy?  If the research can't be trusted, we're not much more advanced than bleeding people or applying leaches.  Anybody remember when Steve Martin did "Theodoric of Yorik" the barber on SNL in the '70s?  The really ironic part of this is that academic researchers are usually held up as more ethical than the drug companies who are "only in it for the money" - and certainly the way they've turned cholesterol lowering drugs from a useless curiosity into a multi-billion dollar industry (cf here or here) shows they're not completely innocent of bad research themselves.  But in this case, the drug companies, by trying to duplicate the studies, are performing arguably the most important part of science: independent verification.  From Reason:

These results strongly suggest that the current biomedical research and publication system is wasting scads of money and talent. What can be done to improve the situation? Perhaps, as some Nature online commenters have bitterly suggested, researchers should submit their work directly to Bayer and Amgen for peer review?

The experiences of my wife and her group underline that bad medical research isn't a victimless academic vice.  Real people were subjected to really awful treatments (doctors call it "the most grueling ordeal in medicine") that provably did nothing for their survival chances.  And it's not just medical science that's filled with bad research and outright (intentional or not) fraud. A popular psychological journal paper on "priming" has largely been disproven (9 separate studies failed to replicate the results), while the idea already has "made it out of the lab and into the toolkits of policy wonks keen on “nudging” the populace".  (If need be, search this blog for mentions of Cass Sunstein)  Particle physics, held out as the "hardest of the hard sciences" has been victimized by not "blinding" the study properly:

But maximising a single figure of merit, such as statistical significance, is never enough: witness the “pentaquark” saga. Quarks are normally seen only two or three at a time, but in the mid-2000s various labs found evidence of bizarre five-quark composites. The analyses met the five-sigma test. But the data were not “blinded” properly; the analysts knew a lot about where the numbers were coming from. When an experiment is not blinded, the chances that the experimenters will see what they “should” see rise. This is why people analysing clinical-trials data should be blinded to whether data come from the “study group” or the control group. When looked for with proper blinding, the previously ubiquitous pentaquarks disappeared.

and:

Other data-heavy disciplines face similar challenges. Models which can be “tuned” in many different ways give researchers more scope to perceive a pattern where none exists. According to some estimates, three-quarters of published scientific papers in the field of machine learning are bunk because of this “overfitting”, says Sandy Pentland, a computer scientist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

In August of 2005, John P. A. Ioannidis published one of the most downloaded papers ever, "Why Most Published Research Findings are False".  In it, he presents a long list of factors that are associated with results being false.  One that lept out at me was this:

Corollary 6: The hotter a scientific field (with more scientific teams involved), the less likely the research findings are to be true.

Which explains Climate Science in one sentence.

Naturally, it wouldn't be this blog if I didn't take a shot at how this is much more of a problem when there's a huge government like we have now. 

We spent a while yesterday looking at the "Man on the Street" interviews that Mark Dice has on YouTube, and it doesn't take long to convince you that these people shouldn't be left alone with scissors, let alone in a voting booth or making important decisions.  That thought leads to the idea that we should be led by only "Philosopher Kings", Technocrats who will be experts in the fields and choose the right course of action for us based on Science.  That's an exceedingly dangerous course in politics, because it's generally a feature of command governments, and that's generally accompanied by millions dead.  What this research into how well science is working is saying is that the consensus is almost always wrong, and the scientists really aren't any more qualified to make important decisions than the people who think Lee Harvey Oswald killed Jesus in the 1300s with a stolen gun. 

and that is the problem....

Nanny State Madness - Put Calories on Grocery Receipts

From the Nanny Madness of the UK, a proposal to put "food quality" scores on grocery receipts. 

Well, a new proposal says the “traffic lights” system – widely adopted on food and drink packaging since 2013 – should be migrated from individual items to entire receipts. Forget the problem of making it through checkout without impulse-buying three bags of bonbons and a copy of Heat! magazine; now it is about the half-price pizza catapulting your basket into “red” territory.  

“Instinctively, it seems like a good idea,” says Ed Morrow, campaigns manager at the Royal Society for Public Health. “If health information is just on the product, it’s easy to ignore, but if you get another reminder at the till you might start to compare receipts, see what you’ve scored each time, then try to do better. Doing things that gamify the experience of shopping can be a good motivator in terms of changing behaviour.” That is if you want your midweek trip to Tesco to be gamified: is this just 21st-century code for the nanny state? “It’s not telling people what to do,” Morrow says. “All it does is provide people with extra information.”

Sheer madness.  Let's start with the knowledge that there's no evidence that forcing restaurants to put calorie counts and nutrition summaries on menus does anything.  In fact, the evidence is that the requirement to post nutrition counts makes work for restaurants and raises prices but consumers don't care.  Now let's extrapolate to the grocery receipt.  This is based on the assumption that what the buyer bought is eaten between grocery store trips as it came from the store, and not prepared into meals combined with other things they already have or buy elsewhere.  The buyer could just as well be feeding friends, donating food, or storing it so that it's eaten over a longer length of time or at some time in the future.  All of the nutritional guidelines are based on consuming a mix of foods in meals and the quality of the meal is based on comparison to standard daily intakes of some amount of food.  There is simply no way to get that from a grocery list, unless everything that person buys is  precooked meals from that store and that's all they ever eat. 

Let's go with a simple example.  Someone buys some food that the food police code as red.  Then they go to another shop and buy other things coded green to make a meal that changes the nutritional data completely.  The article states it's likely to be accurate in the long run, but I don't see how.  Averaging bad data doesn't make it good data.  It just makes a bad average.

The proposed "traffic light" method.

Mrs. Graybeard and I have a running joke that the purpose of buying celery is to put it in the refrigerator until it gets limp and has to be thrown out.  That's an exaggeration, of course (exaggeration is the essence of humor), but we honestly think we've thrown away more celery than we've eaten.  That's a way to bias the data, too.

Nutrition codes on a grocery receipt are meaningless information that aren't going to affect anything, are based on several faulty premises, and will create costs that the poor customers are going to have to pay for - so that they can ignore it.

But remember the line in the first clip from the article where Ed Morrow said, “It’s not telling people what to do?”  Anna Taylor, executive director at the Food Foundation. removes any doubt that telling people what to do is exactly what this is about.  It just uses a Cass Sunstein "Nudge" approach.

“What would be really interesting is if the retailers link it to algorithms set up for loyalty cards for those who want it,” says Taylor. “So, if a till receipt shows lots of reds, you might get vouchers to buy more veg. That’s when it could start to get really powerful. But let’s be clear: the whole food system has to work harder to make the easiest choices the healthy choices. That’s what needs to change.” 

No, Ms. Taylor.  What needs to change is you.  You need to go away. 

Question for You Psychology Experts Out There

So what happens when a malignant narcissist gets insulted?

(White House photo - doing their part to feed the messianic image.  An excellent summary of some of the messianic imagery is here).

In the nearly two years since the election of Barack Hussein Obama, many commenters have remarked on his apparent narcissism and sociopathic tendencies (Charles Krauthammer was apparently the first).  With a sentence like that, it might be difficult for you to believe that I feel sorry for Mr. Obama - really.  He was left by his father at an early age, then abandoned by another father, and finally by his mother before being raised by his grandparents. Everyone knows that he was taken under the tutelage of Frank Marshall Davis, a communist.  His mother's and (genetic) father's ties to communism are trivial to document.  Everybody who cares to read about it knows these things.  Dinesh D'Souza's book "The Roots of Obama's Rage" seems to do an excellent job of deconstructing the psychological mess in the most powerful office in the world. 

Abandoned by father, abandoned by mother, shuffled around like excess baggage, and some writers have commented that they think young Barry Sotero was sexually abused.  How can someone going through that not be screwed up?  I feel sorry for the guy, but we can't waste time with that.  Now his problems are our problems, and the way he reacts to the insult of his agenda  being repudiated by the American people will set the tone for the next two years.  Mr. Obama is still the president for the next two years, so get the idea out of your head that this election changes everything.  To quote Dinesh D'Souza,

We are today living out the script for America and the world that was dreamt up not by Obama but by Obama's father. How do I know this? Because Obama says so himself. Reflect for a moment on the title of his book: it's not Dreams of My Father but rather Dreams from My Father. In other words, Obama is not writing a book about his father's dreams; he is writing a book about the dreams that he got from his father. ( bold added )

Think about what this means. The most powerful country in the world is being governed according to the dreams of a Luo tribesman of the 1950s — a polygamist who abandoned his wives, drank himself into stupors, and bounced around on two iron legs (after his real legs had to be amputated because of a car crash caused by his drunk driving). This philandering, inebriated African socialist, who raged against the world for denying him the realization of his anti-colonial ambitions, is now setting the nation's agenda through the reincarnation of his dreams in his son. The son is the one who is making it happen, but the son is, as he candidly admits, only living out his father's dream. The invisible father provides the inspiration, and the son dutifully gets the job done. America today is being governed by a ghost.

How will he react?  Vanderleun says in this article:

Of all people Time’s Mark Halperin, tool and fool and formerly full-time Obama pegboy, writes, "The White House is in over its head, isolated, insular, arrogant and clueless about how to get along with or persuade members of Congress, the media, the business community or working-class voters." (note re: pegboy: I didn't even know they had a word for that!)

This man hates the culture that produced him and with reason. Far from reining him in, the coming destruction of the Democrats only frees him to get his hate on in a more direct and unrestrained manner.

Elected under the cloak of being a "uniter," this is a man whose one central wish is to disassemble the Constitution and the United States at the same time. When the oath was given, his heart said, "destroy, dissolve, and leave defenseless the Constitution of the United States, so help me Me."

With the likely numbers of positions in the house and senate that the Stupid party can claim back from the Evil party, the Stupids can still do nothing on their own.   If they succeeded in passing bills to repeal the health care bill or any of the other kilo-page bills, Obama would simply veto them.  With the intricate ecosystem of czars he has appointed, congress can be made completely irrelevant.  All government can be done by regulatory fiat.  That's the essence of what Cass Sunstein specializes in. 

So what happens when a malignant narcissist gets insulted?   They become filled with rage at the people who don't idolize them; filled with malignant anger at anyone who does not appreciate how wonderful they are.

God help us all.  And God save the Republic.