tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-73477362024-03-27T05:17:19.068-07:00Error TheoryMoral science has two halves. There are the implications of thinking straight about fact and value (ideal theory) and there are the implications of not thinking straight. Ideal theory is the foundation, error theory the daily battle.Alec Rawlshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18106800937399442588noreply@blogger.comBlogger404125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7347736.post-63988142300734881542022-01-11T00:25:00.002-08:002022-01-11T00:25:51.665-08:00"Saving grandma" was a radical lie<p> What vaccinating the not-at-risk really did was squander the ability of the vaccines to protect grandma.</p><p><br /></p><p>My first Substack post. <a href="https://alecrawls.substack.com/p/saving-grandma-was-a-radical-lie">Check it out</a>.</p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><div class="blogger-post-footer">All content copyright © Alec Rawls, 2004-. Non-commercial use allowed with attribution. Commercial republication with permission. Please contact alec@rawls.org.</div>Alec Rawlshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18106800937399442588noreply@blogger.com8tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7347736.post-68477628710519350992021-01-09T16:29:00.028-08:002021-01-22T15:37:25.241-08:00Declare the election stealing states to be unrepublican and order new elections: A five step plan to save the republic in less than two weeks<p> <a href="https://qph.fs.quoracdn.net/main-qimg-ae109fd15e5f4ce6f5831689492818cf" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" data-original-height="567" data-original-width="591" height="385" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgFWfFj-TfnyZei6vQOQPYhhdaWfx8207yduT7UCwmJUqw4Rwe6HV9DDNtq0ApN88PIHlXftkFD3k_p-YQa7gZ01feg_Em-eW92D_Pz1SJUCWcASpZyNrDrG5rTl9_FqFdN35oysQ/w400-h385/Thanos-Ironman+captioned+50%2525.png" width="400" /></a></p><p><br /></p><p>With our communist Democratic party going full eliminationist totalitarian overnight, our great fighting president might be ready to embrace a new way to win:</p><p><br /></p><h3 style="clear: both;"></h3><h3 style="clear: both;">A five step plan to save the republic in less than two weeks</h3><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;">1. President Trump declares the election-stealing states to be unrepublican (the core definition of republicanism being popular sovereignty, where officeholders are selected by honest democratic majority rule elections)</div><p>2. He invokes the republican guarantee clause to invalidate all fruits of these unrepublican trees (such as Wednesday’s electoral vote count).</p><p>3. And he orders federally conducted re-runs of the tainted elections along with a corresponding delay in the presidential selection and inauguration process.</p><p>4. Somebody sues (either Biden or the tainted states), otherwise the order stands and Trump has a valid legal claim to the presidency until step 3 is completed, regardless of what competing claims to the presidency can be made by Joe Biden.</p><p>5. Faced with this dire ambiguity SCOTUS is forced to immediately take up the case. If the Court follows its established deference to the political branches on guarantee clause issues it should agree that new elections, conducted in impeccably open and honest fashion by the federal government, are a good and allowable remedy.</p><p><br /></p><p>Half of America breathes a huge sigh of relief while three quarters accept this democratic resolution, keeping the Democrats’ vast infrastructure of election stealing mechanisms from being cemented in place, thereby saving our republic from ending on January 20th</p><p><br /></p><h3><b>Nobody ever let President Trump know that he can order all of this on his own authority under the guarantee clause</b></h3><p>He has been looking to state courts and legislatures, to SCOTUS, to Congress, to Pence, urging everyone he can to step up and be brave enough to save our republic. If he knew that he could directly order all that is needed it is obvious that he would have done so long ago.</p>We must let him know while there is still time! <div><br /></div><div><div>Is Parler up to the job? Here is a <a href="https://parler.com/post/c16da779c61c4f35a7d44e6ed90f6815">Parley</a> for this post. Please parlay it!</div><div><br /></div><div>UPDATE: The commie carpet bombing managed to take out Parler, at least for now, so any other avenues you have for spreading this plan, please use them, maybe comment sections, or any online forums you can use. </div><div><br /><h3><b>The second half of the plan: a winning 8-part defense for President Trump to present to SCOTUS</b> </h3><p><b>1. Presidential authority</b> </p><p>According to Article IV section 4, the guarantee “that each state of the union shall have a republican form of government” is to be enforced by “The United States,” which means first of all the three branches of the federal government, including the executive branch. </p><p>Past Court rulings hold that interpretation and enforcement of the republican guarantee cannot be rendered by the Court (are nonjusticiable) because they raise “political questions” that can only be resolved by the political branches of government.</p><p>This means that President Trump cannot effectively bring suit on guarantee clause grounds which means that his only avenue for upholding his constitutional duty to enforce the republican guarantee is by acting on his own authority, deploying his inherent Article IV power to enforce the guarantee according to his own best understanding of what actions the clause empowers and requires.</p><p><br /></p><p><b>2. The President's interpretation of the guarantee clause </b> </p><p>Thus called upon to interpret the republican guarantee, President Trump judges first that his power under the guarantee clause is plenary: that the guarantee clause empowers him to take whatever actions are necessary in order to nullify the power of any unrepublican form of state government that emerges and ultimately to expunge that form of government (meaning the elements of the state government that make it unrepublican), or else the guarantee fails to be a guarantee.</p><p>It follows that if there is conflict between what is required to enforce the guarantee clause and any other constitutional provisions then it is the other constitutional provisions that must give way, and the reason why the founders would have framed this priority into the Constitution is obvious. If we lose our republican form of government we lose everything. It is the ark in which everything else is carried. It is the tree from which every fruit of liberty grows.</p><p>“A republic if you can keep it,” said Benjamin Franklin, and the republican guarantee is the ultimate weapon built into our Constitution for fighting back when it is our system of open and honest democratic elections itself that is at under attack.</p><p><br /></p><p><b>3. Evidence of unrepublican state governments </b></p><p>Here President Trump’s brief outlines the massive infrastructure of intentional vulnerabilities to vote fraud and election fraud that the Democrats have put in place over many decades, and the huge increase in that infrastructure for the 2020 elections, with details attached as exhibits.</p><p>It also outlines the massive evidence that all of these avenues of election fraud were fully exploited in at least a half-dozen swing states, with estimated levels of fraud in all of these states being at least several times larger than the narrow margins of “victory” in candidate Biden’s fraud-included vote totals, again with details attached. </p><p>A few examples: </p><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px;"><p>- Electronic voting machines designed at the behest of communist regimes for the express purpose of stealing elections</p><p>- Mass mailing of multiple unsolicited mail-in ballot applications to every address in a state, easily available for anyone to harvest and vote with little to no verification</p><p>- Plus older tricks like never cleaning up voter rolls and not requiring i.d. to vote and of course not allowing Republicans to observe the verifications or the vote counts</p></blockquote><p>Even with all these dirty tricks in full play the tainted states still had to yank the plug on election-night vote counting so they could close the gap with massive wee-hour ballot dumps, almost all for Biden. Hundreds of affidavits attest to the scope of the executed fraud. </p><p><br /></p><p><b>4. Harms from unrepublican state governments </b> </p><p>Estimated levels of fraud that are at least several times larger than the “winning” vote margin in the all of the tainted states means that on an honest count of the vote candidate Biden almost certainly lost all of these states (and likely some others as well) while candidate Trump almost certainly won all of these states.</p><p>These stolen (unrepublican) state elections in turn flipped the electoral college vote total from candidate Trump to candidate Biden, resulting in a stolen (unrepublican) presidential election. </p><p>President Trump has a constitutional duty under the republican guarantee to block the unrepublican state governments from inflicting these powerful harms. The unrepublican states have first stripped their own citizens of the power to choose their own leaders, then by carrying their fraudulent election results forward to the electoral college they are doing the same to The People of the whole United States.</p><p>In the current situation the magnitude of these harms is total. If the current election stealing attempt succeeds then the Democrats’ vast infrastructure of election stealing processes will get cemented in place and America will never see another real election but will become just one more communist hellhole where an unfree people have no power to vote out their tyrannical government masters. No more popular sovereignty. No more republicanism. </p><p><br /></p><p><b>5. Required remedy: nullification of elections and electors</b> </p><p>Blocking the power of the unrepublican states requires nullification of their 2020 election results and all electoral votes that proceed from them. Not only is this necessary to prevent harms, but it is also flows from the wording of Article IV.</p><p>The republican guarantee is in effect a standing declaration of war by the Constitution itself against any unrepublican form of state government that might emerge. That government must be and expunged and its influence must be interdicted and nullified. It is not left to Congress to declare war or not. The declaration of war is already in the Constitution and cannot be undone except by constitutional amendment. </p><p>The president’s job is to execute that war and in war you don’t allow the enemy state to pick your president for you, or you are not actually treating them as an enemy, as the Constitution requires. The Constitution regards these states as illegitimate and hence their power over the United States must be considered illegitimate.</p><p><br /></p><p><b>6. Required remedy: federally conducted re-runs of the tainted elections </b></p><p>To insure that presidential power to enforce the republican guarantee is never abused by an unrepublican president who seeks to nullify legitimate open and honest republican elections, the remedy imposed by the enforcement action must lead as directly and certainly as possible to impeccably open and honest elections, insuring that the nation proceeds in the wake of the enforcement action in the direction that the people themselves choose. </p><p>President Trump’s orders meet this requirement. Re-runs of the 2020 elections for national officeholders in the tainted states will be conducted by the federal government. Georgia election law will no longer be in effect. Instead the feds will make the election rules and, to fulfill the republican guarantee, will put together the most open and honest elections in American history, clearly demonstrating that there is no actual conflict between an honest election process and a process that is easily open to all legal voters.</p><p>Use of the military is appropriate because our armed forces are the only arm of the federal government that has the manpower (augmentable as necessary by National Guard units under the command of the U.S. military); they are the most respected institution in our society; and they follow orders. If we tell our soldiers to inspect every ballot in close concert with observers from all political parties who want to observe and with the press if they want to observe as well then our soldiers will follow every procedure just the way they are told, all the way up the line to the final vote tally.</p><p>They will check IDs and other identifying information, they will get signatures, they may ink fingers if that is called for. Insecure recently added mail-in ballot procedures will be barred, reverting to a secure system of absentee balloting limited to cases of actual need. Other Democratic Party schemes for enabling vote fraud will also be rejected. In particular, there will be no use of Smartmatic-derived election equipment, purpose built for stealing elections.</p><p>Instead the entire audit trail will be on pen and paper, with vote totals added up by human beings. This is nothing but addition people. We don’t need electronics to do addition for us. Calculators can be used to double check adding but for a fully auditable paper trail the best solution is visible human marking down and adding of votes, first at the precinct level, with these then added together city level, the county level and then for the state.</p><p>There is no need for our vote counting to be vulnerable to electronic hacking or manipulation. Put the whole pen and paper tally process on film. Make it 100% auditable down to looking back at the pen strokes that created it along with images of the ballots that each pen stroke refers to.</p><p>Popular sovereignty can and will be insured. </p><p><br /></p><p><b>7. Checksum of constitutional values verifies enforcement plan</b> </p><p>The constitutional harms that this plan incurs are small: just a few months delay in completing the presidential selection and inauguration process. At the same time, the constitutional benefits are the highest possible: we save our republican democracy itself from being permanently usurped by an unrepublican national government foisted on us by a cabal of unrepublican states. This vast outweighing of costs by benefits confirms the appropriateness of the priority that the wording of the guarantee implies. </p><p>Protecting the continued existence of our republic is a president’s highest duty. Faced with a would-be fatal outbreak of unrepublican state government President Donald J. Trump is blocking their attempted usurpation of our republic in the most republican way possible, proceeding directly to the most open and honest electoral remedy possible while intruding as little as possible on other constitutional provisions. </p><p><br /></p><p style="text-align: left;"><b>8. Argument for the Court’s own power and responsibility to enforce the republican guarantee</b></p><p>The only reason the Democrats were able to amass their broad arsenal of election stealing mechanisms in the first place is because SCOTUS never did its part to guarantee our republican form of government. Every substantial vulnerability to election fraud that the Democrats deployed over the last sixty hears should have been immediately struck down. There is never justification for it. Access to the vote by all legal voters can always be enabled by spending money. It can never justify enabling fraud.</p><p>Legal voters need i.d. cards? Spend whatever is necessary for all legal voters to get i.d.s and the same with security. If the system for issuing i.d.s is vulnerable to fraud then spend the money necessary to fully vet every applicant and find out for sure whether they are legal or not. Both of these desiderata can be secured at once, with no excuse for any substantial shortfall on either.</p><p>The guarantee clause is stated as a direct check on states’ power, in particular over election laws, since the core meaning of republicanism is electoral. The Court’s ignoring of that check let the Democrats’ arsenal of election-stealing tools pile up to the rafters until the only guarantee was that it would soon succeed in ending our republic. It is necessary rub this irresponsibility on the part of the Court into their faces a little bit so they don’t do it again, because that is the danger here.</p><p>The Court might seek some way to avoid the guarantee clause issue. Thus it must be urged on them that they too have a constitutional duty to enforce the guarantee and make sure that it is a guarantee: that they enable whatever steps are necessary to keep an election stealer from gaining the presidency and ending our republic forever.</p><p>This constitutional responsibility must take precedence over all other constitutional concerns. The Court can’t just rule on some other constitutional principle (like legislative supremacy) that Biden is president and so the case is void. Every other constitutional grounds must give way to the guarantee clause and that is as true for the Court as it is for the President.</p><p>End of defense</p><p><br /></p><h3>Political dynamics</h3><p>Win or lose the political dynamics of this guarantee clause enforcement order would be advantageous. The Democrat and NeverTrump# mob would all be stuck angrily denouncing the prospect of guaranteed open and honest elections: “Impeach him NOW, before he is able to reveal the actual will of the people!” </p><p>It’s also a strong move for branding Biden/Harris as illegitimate, which is crucial when all evidence of the massive Democrat election fraud is censored by our radical-left Democrat-controlled internet monopolies and news media corporations. </p><p>But most important is the strong chance that the Court would take the case seriously and rule favorably. We should actually get re-run elections. That is the constitutionally correct remedy for our current predicament. We just have to give our new conservative Supreme Court the chance to say so.</p><p><br /></p><h3>Guarantee clause links</h3><p>Some background on the Article IV guarantee that each state "shall have a republican form of government" <a href="http://www.floppingaces.net/2020/12/08/president-trump-can-stop-the-steal-by-enforcing-the-article-iv-guarantee-that-each-state-shall-have-a-republican-form-of-government-step-one-is-to-have-the-army-conduct-the-upcoming/">here</a>, <a href="https://theconservativetreehouse.com/2020/12/28/the-guarantee-clause-the-electoral-count-act-of-1887-the-dni-ratcliffe-report-on-foreign-interference-and-vp-mike-pence/">here</a>, and <a href="https://constitutioncenter.org/interactive-constitution/interpretation/article-iv/clauses/42">here</a>.</p><p><br /></p></div></div><div class="blogger-post-footer">All content copyright © Alec Rawls, 2004-. Non-commercial use allowed with attribution. Commercial republication with permission. Please contact alec@rawls.org.</div>Alec Rawlshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18106800937399442588noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7347736.post-78957053870410808012020-12-08T17:00:00.007-08:002020-12-08T17:36:33.780-08:00President Trump can Stop the Steal by enforcing the Article IV guarantee that each state "shall have a republican form of government”: step one is to have the Army conduct the upcoming Georgia runoff elections<p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops: 96.5pt;">By Alec Rawls</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops: 96.5pt;">At the constitutional debates in New York Alexander Hamilton
<a href="http://www.rawls.org/US_Supreme_petition.htm#_ftn15">asserted</a>
that: </p><p></p><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px;"><p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;">"The true principle of a republic is, that the people should choose
whom they please to govern them. Representation is imperfect in proportion as
the current of popular favor is checked."</p><p></p></blockquote><p></p><p class="MsoNormal"><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops: right 6.5in;">Opposite to this republican
democracy is the phony form of democracy preferred by Joseph <a href="https://www.liveabout.com/stalin-it-isnt-the-people-who-vote-that-count-3299175">Stalin</a>
where: “those who cast the votes decide nothing, those who count the votes
decide everything.” In this election-fraud based phony-democracy the will of
the people is annihilated, creating a definitively unrepublican form.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops: right 6.5in;">This form must never be
allowed a live birth. If election fraud ever succeeds even once in being the
key determinant of one faction’s rise to majority control over the powers of American
government then our republic will be lost forever. Not only will the election
stealers will be far better placed to steal elections going forward but being a
bunch of criminals they will inevitably also deploy multiplying other ways of abusing
their authority and imposing tyranny.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops: right 6.5in;">We have only ever had two
choices: republican liberty or tyranny, a fork which now reaches its crux as
all evidence points to massive electoral fraud by our bottomlessly criminal
Democratic Party (voting machines designed by communist dictators for the
express purpose of stealing elections, not allowing observers, 4am 100K out-of-custody
ballot dumps for Biden, etcetera ad nauseum.) <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The definitively unrepublican form, where
elections outcomes are determined by the vote counters, not the voters, is
making a concerted bid across several states for control of the nation.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops: right 6.5in;">It is such assaults on our
very form of government that the Article IV section 4 <a href="https://www.law.cornell.edu/constitution/articleiv">guarantee clause</a>
was written to defend against: <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 0.5in; tab-stops: right 6.5in;">“The United
States shall guarantee to every state in this union a republican form of
government…” <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops: right 6.5in;">This is our Constitution’s
most direct protection against election fraud and it authorizes whatever actions
are needed to fend off usurpation. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>That is
part of what the word “guarantee” means: that when it comes to preserving government
of the people by the people and for the people the available remedies are
whatever it takes. If any necessary means is ever barred then unrepublican
government wins and the promised guarantee against it is not fulfilled. <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops: 12.2pt 196.25pt;">Another meaning of “guarantee”
is to try to eliminate or minimize risk. On this grounds the Supreme Court
never should have allowed our Democrat-run states to enact their host of fraud-enabling
election rules. <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops: 12.2pt 196.25pt;">There is no incompatibility
between election security and elections that are easily open to all legal
voters. We put such an election process together in Iraq in very short order.
It is a travesty that in the fraudulent name of protecting legal voters Democrats
were allowed to burn our own election security to the ground.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops: 12.2pt 196.25pt;">When states implement
election methods that are readily vulnerable to voter fraud and election fraud
the only reason is because they <i>want</i> to enable election stealing. The Courts
have a duty under the guarantee clause to weed out these planted
vulnerabilities and the president now has a guarantee clause duty to overcome the
Stalinist coup these vulnerabilities are enabling.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops: 196.25pt;"><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops: 196.25pt;"><b>The guarantee clause places a
check on the power that the Constitution gives to the states to run the nation’s
elections <o:p></o:p></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops: 196.25pt;">How can the republican guarantee
provide a primary defense against election fraud at the <i>federal</i> level
when it is written as a limit on the forms that <i>state</i> governments can
take? Because it is paired in a check-and-balance arrangement with two other provisions
of the Constitution (<a href="https://constitution.congress.gov/browse/article-1/section-4/">Article I
section 4</a> and <a href="https://www.law.cornell.edu/constitution/articleii">Article
II section 1</a>) that empower each state to establish its own election rules
and conduct its own elections for federal as well as state officers. This
allocation of election authority to the states is designed to maintain state
sovereignty and provide a counter-balance to federal power but it also introduces
a vulnerability. <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops: 196.25pt;">The framers biggest concern was
always to keep our republic from being usurped by a tyrant or a coalition of
would-be tyrants (“a republic if you can keep it”). State control of elections are
a possible point of entry for tyrannical unrepublican phony democracy, not just
at the state level but in the election of federal officers, so the framers
added two checks. <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops: 196.25pt;">First the Article I section 4 “elections
clause” includes an oversight role for Congress, which is empowered to “make or
alter” state election regulations. This is a preventative measure. If some
states were to intentionally introduce vulnerabilities into their election
systems – say through mail-in voting schemes that basically helicopter-drop
ballots all over the state then allow these ballots to be counted with almost
no verification requirements under an “all votes must be counted” standard – then
Congress could step in and shut down this invitation to mass vote fraud.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops: 196.25pt;">But Congress might do nothing, if
as today one of its chambers is controlled by the party of vote fraud. Thus the
founders wisely did not trust Congress either and added a second check on top
of the first, one that is not just preventative but can be used to cut down any
unrepublican form of government that succeeds in springing up, be it in the form
of phony state-run elections for state offices or phony state-run elections for
the state’s federal officeholders.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops: 196.25pt;">This is the guarantee clause, sitting
like a bright red fire axe in a windowed frame with a sign that says “in case
of unrepublican ignition break glass.” Judges, politicians and pundits all
invoke the phrase “the Constitution is not a suicide pact.” The guarantee
clause is the one provision of the Constitution that actually states this explicitly.
When our republic itself is threatened there is a duty, and an allocation of
power, to prevent its loss.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops: 196.25pt;">We are now in that emergency. In
several states the people who count the votes are on the verge of getting away with
stealing the 2020 elections from the electorates of those states and if they succeed
they will in the process succeed in stealing the presidency and possibly even
both houses of Congress.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops: 196.25pt;">Our Stalinist Democrats are on
the verge of completing an election-stealing coup that will end our republic
forever and our best tool for stopping them is the emergency power that the
framers included for just this eventuality. Its first great advantage is that
it authorizes whatever is needed to overcome an unrepublican phony democracy, otherwise
the guarantee is not actually a guarantee. It’s second advantage is that there
is no limit on what branch of the federal government may invoke it. The guarantee
is issued by “The United States,” which touches all three federal branches. <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops: 196.25pt;">Since the clause carries the
whiff of grapeshot (confrontation with an unrepublican form of government) the
obvious expectation is that primary enforcement responsibility would fall to
the president, empowering him to initiate on his own authority whatever steps
he deems necessary to restore real democracy, with no requirement that he first
has to win any lawsuit or otherwise wait for judicial okay. Just as the
president has inherent war powers so too he must have inherent guarantee clause
powers.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops: 196.25pt;">For the other branches: the courts
can also uphold the republican guarantee as a grounds for suit; Congress can
call for it to be enforced; and ultimately We the People are also clearly
invited, not just in the guarantee clause but in the Declaration of
Independence, in the Second Amendment, and in many other places, to oppose an
unrepublican form of government. We are all part of The United States.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops: 196.25pt;"><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops: 196.25pt;"><b>Federal takeover of Georgia
elections<o:p></o:p></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops: 196.25pt;">Trump campaign lawyer Rudy
Giuliani has collected enough evidence of massive election fraud in Georgia to
make it almost certain that candidate Trump received far more legal votes than
candidate Biden, which provides more than enough grounds for President Trump to
invoke the republican guarantee and order a federal takeover of the upcoming
Georgia run-off elections. That candidate Trump is himself an aggrieved party
does not in any way diminish President Trump’s constitutional duty to expunge the
unrepublican phony-election form that has arisen in Georgia.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops: 196.25pt;">Under this federal takeover Georgia
election law would no longer be in effect. The feds would make the election rules
and, to fulfill the republican guarantee, would be obligated to put together
the most open and honest elections in American history, clearly demonstrating
that there is no actual conflict between an honest election process and a process that is easily open to all legal voters.</p>
<span style="mso-bookmark: _Hlk58251446;"></span>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops: 196.25pt;">Use of the military makes sense
because our armed forces have the manpower; they are the most respected
institution in our society; and they follow orders. If we tell them to inspect
every ballot in close concert with observers from all political parties who
want to observe and with the press if they want to observe as well then our
soldiers will follow every procedure just the way they are told, all the way up
the line to the final vote tally. <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops: 196.25pt;">They will check IDs, they will
get signatures, they may ink fingers, if that is called for. Insecure recently
added mail-in ballot procedures would be barred, reverting to a secure system
of absentee balloting limited to cases of actual need. Other Democratic Party
schemes for enabling vote fraud would also be rejected. In particular, there
would be no use of purpose-built Dominion or Smartmatic election stealing software
and machinery.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops: 196.25pt;">If this plan is implemented soon
enough it might even be possible for the feds to hold the Georgia runoff
elections on their already scheduled January 5<sup>th</sup> date but that would
not be necessary. It would be helpful though if the federal takeover could at
least be announced by December 13, since early mail in voting in Georgia <a href="https://georgia.gov/vote-2020-runoff-elections">begins</a> on the 14<sup>th</sup>.
It would be good not to have to invalidate any already submitted ballots.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops: 196.25pt;">Of course the Georgia state government
is likely to sue over a federal takeover and the courts will at that point have
to weigh in but the legitimacy of such federal action is straightforward. The
massive evidence of election fraud in Georgia justifies the president’s assessment
that Georgia’s election process is dishonest/unrepublican. Then there are the
many intentional vulnerabilities to fraud that are built into the system. These
add weight to the assessment that the constitutional guarantee of republican/honest
elections is far from met. <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops: 196.25pt;">In simplest terms, blatantly
dishonest elections, full of documented criminal behavior, would be replaced
with clearly honest elections. That is a huge net benefit in terms of
constitutional values. <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops: 196.25pt;">Under normal conditions federal
takeover of any state’s elections would impose a huge cost in constitutional
values since it would violate the Constitution’s allocation of electoral
authority to the states, but once Georgia is seen to have adopted a definitively
unrepublican form (a phony Stalinist “democracy” that is of by and for the vote
counters) then any authority that the Georgia state government holds over the
state’s elections becomes a negative, something the Constitution promises in
the guarantee clause to expunge, not protect.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops: 196.25pt;">At that point the federal
takeover of the state’s elections only produces benefits. The people get their
votes honestly counted and no one is harmed. Election stealers are left crying
because they can’t steal any more elections but in the eyes of the law it is a benefit,
not a harm, when criminals stop getting away with crime. <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops: 196.25pt;">In sum there is a strong and simple
case to make under a very powerful constitutional provision. With a majority-honest
Supreme Court, which we now seem to have, the Court shouldn’t be an obstacle to
a federal takeover of Georgia’s runoff election, especially given the Court’s
history with the guarantee clause.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops: 196.25pt;"><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops: 196.25pt;"><b>How can the guarantee clause be
powerful when SCOTUS has broadly described it as nonjusticiable?<o:p></o:p></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops: 196.25pt;">If you have only ever learned one
thing about the guarantee clause you probably know that the Supreme Court has
repeatedly found it to be “nonjusticiable”: they have decided that they cannot
enforce it. <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops: 196.25pt;">If it is not enforceable, doesn’t
that make it weak? No. <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops: 196.25pt;">SCOTUS has had trouble finding a
way that <i>the judiciary branch</i> can enforce the republican guarantee, but with
no imputation that the other branches of government cannot enforce it. Just the
opposite: the reason the Court has declined to interpret the clause is because it
keeps being raised in cases that involve conflicts that in the Court’s view can
<i>only</i> be settled by the other branches of government. <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops: 196.25pt;">If anything this enhances the
president’s freedom to start enforcing the guarantee clause on his own
authority. The courts are unlikely to interfere when the Supreme Court’s well
established position is to stand back with its palms up saying: “don’t look at
us, the courts can’t get involved in that guarantee clause stuff.” <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops: 196.25pt;">As it turns out, the received
wisdom about the guarantee clause being nonjusticiable under existing Court
precedent is completely wrong, which is a very good thing. Here is what
happened. <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops: 196.25pt;">Every guarantee clause case that ever
reached the Court ended up being declared nonjusticiable because it fell into
one of two “political question problem” pitfalls, but each pitfall has also
been avoided in some of the cases, showing that each type of political question
problem can be gotten past. It is just a matter of bringing the right case, one
that doesn’t raise either kind of political question problem.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops: 196.25pt;">I found this out twenty years ago
when I sued the State of California <i>pro se</i> in a ballot access case that
actually turned out to be just the kind of clean case that did not raise either
kind of political question problem. If I could have gotten a judge to understand
I could have brought the crucially important guarantee clause into active adjudication
for the first time in our nation’s history, thus I appealed all the way to the
Supreme Court thinking that maybe Justice Thomas would see the momentousness of
the opportunity and grab it up. Alas, he is just one man.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops: 196.25pt;">And that is how I happen to know
something about the republican guarantee. For details on the two kinds of
political question problem and how they can both be avoided see my Supreme
Court <a href="http://www.rawls.org/US_Supreme_petition.htm">brief</a> (the
guarantee clause stuff is towards the end).<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops: 196.25pt;">The viable path to adjudication that
I discovered is important now because we want the Supreme Court to do more than
stand back with its hands up. We need them in the fight, backing the effort to
force honest elections. They should have been using the guarantee clause to
weed out the Democrat’s intentionally planted election-fraud vulnerabilities for
50+ years now, but in the present moment the standard view of precedent is not
all bad. <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops: 196.25pt;">It is helpful that until the Supremes
can be presented with the right case they at least are not likely to <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>block a well designed guarantee clause enforcement
effort that President Trump undertakes on his own initiative. According to received
wisdom the Court ought in this circumstance to be loathe to interfere.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops: 89.7pt;"><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops: 89.7pt;"><b>Step two: announce federal re-runs
of the tainted 2020 House and Senate races, which will in turn require that finalization
of the presidential selection process be delayed (otherwise the party accused
of cheating, if it wins the presidency, will terminate the re-runs)<o:p></o:p></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops: 196.25pt;">Guarantee clause enforcement could
also be used to require federally managed re-runs of the 2020 general elections
in a host of states where outcomes were most likely flipped by what the evidence
says is massive election fraud. Re-running of House and Senate seats in those
states could well give Republicans a majority in the House and strengthen the Senate
majority that honest runoff elections in Georgia will most likely secure.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops: 196.25pt;">In constitutional terms this
would be a huge pile of benefits raked in by enforcement of the guarantee clause: election results that come out differently when elections are
honest! Constitutional values don’t get any weightier than that. But the only
way these benefits of honest elections can be secured, the only way they can be
guaranteed, is if completion of the presidential selection and inauguration process
that is set out in the Constitution gets delayed by at least a few months.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops: 196.25pt;">It will take that long to re-run
the tainted elections. Then there is the fact that one of the presidential candidates
is the beneficiary of the cheating that the evidence says took place. If he becomes
president before the tainted House and Senate races are re-run he will almost
certainly cancel the re-runs, so the only way to guarantee the re-runs is to
delay the inauguration.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops: 196.25pt;">Note that provisions for the
possibility of a delayed inauguration are already set out in the Constitution: <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops: 196.25pt;">20<sup>th</sup> Amendment, <a href="https://constitution.congress.gov/constitution/amendment-20/">clause 3</a>:
<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 0.5in; tab-stops: 196.25pt;">“… If a
President shall not have been chosen before the time fixed for the beginning of
his term, or if the President elect shall have failed to qualify, then the Vice
President elect shall act as President until a President shall have qualified.”<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops: 149.15pt;">Democrats will cry that any delay
in completion of the presidential selection/inauguration process is an overthrow
of our constitutional process but it is not true. The Constitution not only
contemplates this possibility but has prepared for it.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops: 196.25pt;"><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops: 196.25pt;"><b>Step 3: Delaying presidential
selection/inauguration until down-ballot elections are re-run will afford time
to also re-run the presidential election in the tainted states<o:p></o:p></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops: 23.25pt;">Once a delay in the presidential
selection and inauguration process is called for there is no reason that this
delay should not also be used to re-run the tainted presidential contests, again
conducted in maximally open and honest fashion by the federal government.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops: 23.25pt;">The constitutionally specified
four year presidential term creates a timeliness issue for resolution of the
presidential selection process but once a guarantee clause action is taken the timeliness
issue flips. Instead of it being important to settle election disputes quickly
it instead becomes important to not draw the schedule up short or the republican
guarantee is not guaranteed, as it must be. Priority number one: guarantee that
we still have a republic.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops: 23.25pt;">This would be the case whether delay
was first called for in order to guarantee completed honest re-runs of tainted House
and Senate races or whether it was first called for in order to guarantee
completed honest re-runs of the presidential election in the tainted states.
Either way the Supreme Court will end up having to weigh the competing sides of
the constitutional conflict that is presented. <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops: 23.25pt;">On one side is the importance of
letting the republican guarantee be an actual guarantee, on the other is the
significance of changing the dates on finalization of the presidential selection
process by a couple of months this one time. Constitutional provisions give way
to other constitutional provisions all the time and this one is pretty obvious:
what is a couple months to make sure these decisive national elections are not stolen
when the consequence if we do let them be stolen is that we lose our republic
forever? <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops: 196.25pt;">Thankfully that decision would be
made by a majority-conservative Supreme Court. Given the chance to save the
republic by making a sound legal decision they would likely take it. We just
have to give them that chance.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops: 196.25pt;">When the Democrats lose the honest
re-runs by a country mile they can throw whatever temper tantrums they want,
and they will, but they will be exposed firstly as having tried and failed to steal
the 2020 elections, then as a bunch of rioting criminals going forward. <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops: 196.25pt;">As a result, this round of America’s
long Civil War with the Democratic Party will be won with relatively little bloodshed,
prayers be to God, and we’ll have a chance to clean up our election system going
forward.</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops: 196.25pt;"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal">This post was originally published at <a href="http://www.floppingaces.net/2020/12/08/president-trump-can-stop-the-steal-by-enforcing-the-article-iv-guarantee-that-each-state-shall-have-a-republican-form-of-government-step-one-is-to-have-the-army-conduct-the-upcoming/">Flopping Aces</a><o:p></o:p></p><div><br /></div><p></p><p><br /></p><div class="blogger-post-footer">All content copyright © Alec Rawls, 2004-. Non-commercial use allowed with attribution. Commercial republication with permission. Please contact alec@rawls.org.</div>Alec Rawlshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18106800937399442588noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7347736.post-54323920217584497122017-12-14T15:58:00.000-08:002017-12-14T16:06:30.241-08:00Mueller's unconstitutional open warrant must be modified to look at WHOEVER might have colluded with the Russians, not just Trump<span style="font-family: "calibri";">Andrew McCarthy sets out to answer in today's <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/mueller-needs-to-make-a-change/2017/12/13/fbf93682-e050-11e7-bbd0-9dfb2e37492a_story.html?utm_term=.0a58916c20f8">Washington Post</a>: "<span style="font-family: "calibri" , sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; margin: 0px;">is special counsel Robert S.
Mueller III running an impartial investigation?" But l</span></span><span style="font-family: "calibri";">ike everyone else Andrew is skipping past the original sin
that establishes the entire enterprise as highly criminal and proves already
that Rosenstein and Mueller are the founding criminal conspirators. That
original sin is the wording of the investigatory charge that Rosenstein
authored and Mueller accepted. It is an unconstitutional open warrant of
precisely the kind that the Fourth Amendment was written to bar. It is Star
Chamber. </span><br />
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px;">
<span style="font-family: "calibri";">The order starts out okay. Mueller was appointed not as a
prosecutor but as a special investigator, and the purpose is <a href="https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Appointment_of_Special_Counsel_to_Investigate_Russian_Interference_with_the_2016_Presidential_Election_and_Related_Matters">stated</a> without
prejudice: “to ensure a full and thorough investigation of the Russian
government's efforts to interfere in the 2016 presidential election.” </span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px;">
<span style="font-family: "calibri";">Under a “full and thorough” investigation either Hillary<span style="font-family: "calibri" , sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; margin: 0px;"> (already known to have taken $145m from
the Russians in Uranium One) </span>or Trump
might be found to have illegally colluded with Russia. Russia might or might not
have been involved in WikiLeaks. Cloudstrike might or might not have been lying about
Russian fingerprints on the DNC hack/leak, etcetera. The FBI might or might not have used a known-to-be-phony Russia-sourced anti-Trump dossier to mislead the FISA court into allowing the agency to spy on Trump. All would be proper
subjects for investigation. Wherever the “Russia” story goes.</span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px;">
<span style="font-family: "calibri";">But the specifics of the order narrow the target of the
investigation to one man: </span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px;">
<span style="font-family: "calibri";">(i) any links and/or coordination between the Russian
government and individuals associated with the campaign of President Donald
Trump; and</span></div>
<div style="margin: 0px;">
<span style="font-family: "calibri";">(ii) any matters that arose or may arise directly from the
investigation</span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px;">
<span style="font-family: "calibri";">This is the inverse analog to Comey and Strozk finding
Hillary innocent of criminal wrongdoing with her private email server before
conducting an investigation. Here Rosenstein limited who the supposed
investigation into Russian interference could focus on before the “full and
thorough” investigation had even begun. </span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px;">
<span style="font-family: "calibri";">The illegality is that the naming of Trump as target (not
upon probable cause, or supported by oath or affirmation, or particularly
describing the place to be searched and the persons or things to be seized)
turns the investigatory powers delegated to Mueller into an unconstitutional
open warrant.</span></div>
<br />
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px;">
<span style="font-family: "calibri";"><b>A subpoena is a form of warrant and using it in prosecutorial fashion certainly activates Fourth Amendment protections</b></span></div>
<div style="margin: 0px;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin: 0px;">
<span style="font-family: "calibri";">A subpoena is form of warrant.<span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>The targets are required to
provide information. That is a seizure. They themselves are compelled/seized to
appear before the special counsel, all of which would be acceptable as
investigation. The problem is that the limitation of the investigation to one
man turns the special investigator into a special prosecutor operating with no
probable cause and no other Fourth Amendment limitations. </span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px;">
<span style="font-family: "calibri";">That is blatantly illegal, and the easily predictable likely
consequence is the gravest imaginable: the successful suppression of the voting
rights of the winning electoral coalition in the last presidential election.
This is the highest of high crimes — usurpation — and<span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>Rosenstein and Mueller both have a highest
obligation, their oath to protect the Constitution, to protect against such
criminality. Instead they both whole-heartedly engaged in it, personally shaped
it (Rosenstein) and carried it forward with the most blatant bunch of democracy
haters imaginable (Mueller).</span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px;">
<span style="font-family: "calibri";">To think that this was not all fully intentional is
ludicrous but the illegality of the order and of Mueller’s acceptance of it
does not depend on intentions. An open warrant against the president is highly
illegal and of utmost importance to defend against whether the perpetrators
understand the wrong of it or not. </span></div>
<br />
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px;">
<span style="font-family: "calibri";"><b>Real Russia collusion has been uncovered</b></span></div>
<div style="margin: 0px;">
</div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px;">
<span style="font-family: "calibri";">Of course we now know, thanks to investigations by Congress, that there <i>was</i> a very ambitious and
illegal collusion with the Russians to influence the 2016 election, not by Trump
but by Hillary Clinton, who paid the Russians for the phony anti-Trump dossier.
It now seems that the DOJ and the FBI were also involved in this illegality,
using the phony dossier to mislead the FISA court into letting them spy on
Trump, which is a whole further crime in itself, but there is no indication that Mueller is investigating any of this.</span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px;">
<span style="font-family: "calibri";">FBI/DOJ must have known about Hillary paying the Russians
for the phony dossier because of what has come out about the many incestuous
relationships between The FBI and GPS Fusion, which acted as Hillary’s bag man
with the Russians, and<span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>all of them have
deep ties to Hillary. Mueller and Rosenstein were both deeply involved in these
webs of personal relationships. The actual Russia conspirators who are rapidly being uncovered by Congress seem to all now be working for Mueller!</span></div>
<div style="margin: 0px;">
<span style="font-family: "calibri";"><br /></span></div>
<div style="margin: 0px;">
<span style="font-family: "calibri";">Mueller cannot plead ignorance of who these
people were. They have been his “right hand men,” marking the whole crew, starting with Rosenstein and Mueller, as one
big gang of co-conspirators, committing the most monstrous criminal act in the
history of the nation.</span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px;">
<span style="font-family: "calibri";">Much of this criminality can only be pinned down by amassing
numerous key particulars but the criminality of the original sin — the blatant
unconstitutionality of Rosenstein’s open warrant against the president and
Mueller’s acceptance of if — is 100% proven by its mere existence.</span></div>
<div style="margin: 0px;">
<br /></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px;">
<span style="font-family: "calibri";"><b>The GOP establishment won't let Trump end Mueller's investigation but he can and must modify Mueller's order so that it is no longer unconstitutional </b></span></div>
<div style="margin: 0px;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin: 0px;">
<span style="font-family: "calibri";">The threat of the “establishment GOP” harridans to back
Democrats in impeaching Trump if he touches Mueller ties Trump’s hands in many
ways. He can’t just terminate the monstrous criminal plot against him, even
though it is fully within his inherent powers to do so, but what he can do is
condemn the illegal nature of Mueller’s open warrant and demand that the special
investigator’s orders be reformulated so that they no longer violate the
Constitution, meaning they cannot name the president himself as the designated target but
must order Mueller to investigate improper Russian election influence and
collusion with Russia to influence our election by whatever parties may be
found to have engaged in such activities.</span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px;">
<span style="font-family: "calibri";">Mueller should also be instructed to follow not just
whatever leads may be uncovered by his own investigation but to also consider
evidence of Russian influence and Russian collusion uncovered by Congressional
investigations and by inspectors general. As written now Mueller is actually
required to ignore all of Congress’ work in uncovering Hillary’s election
collusion with the Russians. Under provision ii he can only follow what he
himself uncovers.</span></div>
<div style="margin: 0px;">
<span style="font-family: "calibri";"><br /></span></div>
<div style="margin: 0px;">
<span style="font-family: "calibri";">Certainly he can take a cue from Congress about what to look
into so he can repeat their discoveries for himself, if he wants to, but as things stand he can also
use provision ii of the order to studiously ignore other findings if he wants
to. That</span><span style="font-family: "calibri";"> needs to be changed. The writing of the desired
conclusion into the order itself is highly illegal and must end.</span></div>
<div style="margin: 0px;">
<span style="font-family: "calibri";"><br /></span></div>
<div style="margin: 0px;">
<span style="font-family: "calibri";">(Written as a WAPO comment this afternoon. Still needs some links to documentation, but the substance here is the argument.)</span></div>
<b></b><i></i><u></u><sub></sub><sup></sup><strike></strike><span style="font-family: "calibri";"></span><div class="blogger-post-footer">All content copyright © Alec Rawls, 2004-. Non-commercial use allowed with attribution. Commercial republication with permission. Please contact alec@rawls.org.</div>Alec Rawlshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18106800937399442588noreply@blogger.com32tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7347736.post-271472604672782392016-09-22T21:11:00.002-07:002016-09-23T14:18:13.191-07:00Crutcher's arm clearly seen reaching INSIDE his SUV at moment of shootingNobody else seems to have noticed yet what was caught by the helicopter camera as it flew by the <i>other</i> side of the SUV from where Mr. Crutcher's is standing. Terence Crutcher's body is momentarily visible through the SUV's moonroof and right at that instant he can be clearly seen reaching <i>inside</i> the SUV. His <i>entire forearm</i> is visible inside the SUV.<br />
<br />
The clearest video seems to be from <a href="http://www.cnn.com/2016/09/21/us/terence-crutcher-police-shooting-point-counterpoint/">CNN</a>. Here is a screenshot at the 47 second mark (click image for full resolution):<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiG0AOwnmbe11jAvjC6RwRXAkn4Xrxr7zXwY8QpuOMBM_BmiD84k-Ekt0w4U08_QpTyvk9w9at6WF2OXnw3wPTy7blQ6fsxKe0LunynrxPYhhqSas49CArOZ87uIxI-qw9uo2TgLw/s1600/Cruther%2527s+arm+clearly+visible+reaching+INSIDE+his+SUV.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="171" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiG0AOwnmbe11jAvjC6RwRXAkn4Xrxr7zXwY8QpuOMBM_BmiD84k-Ekt0w4U08_QpTyvk9w9at6WF2OXnw3wPTy7blQ6fsxKe0LunynrxPYhhqSas49CArOZ87uIxI-qw9uo2TgLw/s320/Cruther%2527s+arm+clearly+visible+reaching+INSIDE+his+SUV.png" width="320" /></a></div>
<br />
Surrounding video frames show the movement of Crutcher's arm inside the SUV. Once you know where to look you can watch the video at normal speed and be able to see Crutcher's arm pull out from inside the SUV as he falls away from being shot. No doubt about it. So it looks like Officer Betty Shelby will be cleared.<br />
<br />
Tulsa police must already know that the window of Crutcher's SUV was down, since they would have pictures of the crime scene that have not been released yet, but Tulsa prosecutors must not have realized there is video that verifies Shelby's claim that Crutcher was reaching into the SUV when she shot him. Otherwise it is hard to see how they could possibly have charged her with <i>anything</i>, never mind <a href="http://fox8.com/2016/09/22/tulsa-police-officer-charged-with-manslaughter-in-shooting-of-terence-crutcher/">manslaughter</a>.<br />
<br />
I hope D.A. Kunzweiler's reaction to this proof of her veracity is a glad one, instead of wishing it would go away, but given how fast he charged her I suspect the latter. It looks like prosecutors are hoping that throwing her to the mob will reduce racial tension but appeasement only whets the appetite of the appeased. Kunzweiler needs to listen to President Reagan. "No Danegeld":<br />
<br />
<iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/w3VJc89eYcQ" width="560"></iframe>
<br />
<br />
Note that it is Crutcher's <i>right</i> arm that reaches in, not his left, so Officer Shelby's lawyer Scott Wood got that detail wrong (at the CNN link), but otherwise Shelby's story is borne out, and possibly the left-arm bit too. Video from several seconds earlier, when the helicopter is behind Crutcher, does seem to show him reaching in with his left arm, so maybe Shelby <i>should</i> have shot him then, but the actual shooting occurred when he reached in with his right arm, which makes sense, as that reach-in would have been more visible to Shelby.<br />
<br />
<div id="success">
</div>
<br /><div class="blogger-post-footer">All content copyright © Alec Rawls, 2004-. Non-commercial use allowed with attribution. Commercial republication with permission. Please contact alec@rawls.org.</div>Alec Rawlshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18106800937399442588noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7347736.post-37739248447926732102016-02-16T17:28:00.000-08:002016-02-17T15:32:49.529-08:00Nugent's blistering critique of Jewish anti-gunners was/is not anti-SemiticEvery category of anti-gun activist needs to be hit where its members are most vulnerable. I have gone after the Newtown Mothers group for angrily demanding that all of America's school children be just as thoroughly stripped of protectors as their own slaughtered children were. Last week Ted Nugent did the same for Jewish anti-gun leaders, who he slammed for betraying their own history.<br />
<br />
Gun control enables genocide, so how can the group whose victimization gave rise to "never again" be so heavily represented among those who would let it happen again? That is a paraphrase. Nugent was less gentle, <a href="https://www.facebook.com/tednugent/posts/10153471495187297">writing</a> "Jews for gun control are nazis in disguise," but the substance is the same. These Jews are advocating the Nazi policy of civilian disarmament that enabled the slaughter of European Jewry.<br />
<br />
It is fine to take issue with Nugent's execution. There is a reason I didn't call the Newtown Mothers "Adam Lanza in disguise." That hyperbole would just create more sympathy for these women whose moral perversity already gets a pass because everyone has so much sympathy for them.<br />
<br />
But flawed execution does not alter the legitimacy and importance of Nugent's critique, so how about we edit the execution a little and see if we can find some common ground? Consider this an exercise in alternate history.<br />
<br />
<br />
<b>If Ted Nugent knew how to use Photoshop</b><br />
<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjYmKQCYeAn2t5OPWDDEWpLa1_bsmR-tDfcK3ziKf6tiKsB06RdiMprk5WU7vPX_0yNTpmSBhidbbuXUHbtAS-_azFNZVBdjN11cpzJbZ4R_hjcTOSKhTmXCgPAd9jAeRO7xP4KgQ/s1600/Nugent_AntiJewishAntis_fixed.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjYmKQCYeAn2t5OPWDDEWpLa1_bsmR-tDfcK3ziKf6tiKsB06RdiMprk5WU7vPX_0yNTpmSBhidbbuXUHbtAS-_azFNZVBdjN11cpzJbZ4R_hjcTOSKhTmXCgPAd9jAeRO7xP4KgQ/s320/Nugent_AntiJewishAntis_fixed.png" width="163" /></a></div>
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(click for larger image)</div>
<br />
The photo-collage of leading anti-gun Jews that Nugent used to illustrate his initial post (the center portion of the graphic above) contained elements that people familiar with anti-Semitic propaganda recognize as impugning the loyalty of American Jews. In particular, the little American flags were originally little Israeli flags with the Star of David in the middle.<br />
<br />
Most people would only see those flags as an indicator of Jewishness and it is quite clear that Nugent did not intend any imputation of loyalty to a foreign power. His issue was strictly these people's anti-gun idiocy. So change the flags, do a little editing to the commentary on the individual anti-gun honchos (in red), and make the graphic self-contained by including a toned down version of Nugent's explanation for why and how anti-gun Jews warrant their own special critique (but not too toned down).<br />
<br />
So how did I do? Is this about right?<br />
Ted??<br />
What do y'all think?<br />
<br />
Nugent has angrily denied that he intended anything anti-Semitic and there is no reason to doubt him. A normal person does not see an Israeli flag as anti-Semitic and if you don't have Photoshop skills you have to go with what is available. Bloomberg, Feinstein, Shumer + 9 more? That's a pretty good start. Just really does need that little bit of editing.<br />
<br />
Some critics think it is anti-Semitic to single out anti-gun Jews at all. No it isn't, any more than it is anti-mom to criticize anti-gun moms for wanting all children to be undefended, and it is important to single them out. It is important to go after each of these groups where they stand.<br />
<br />
Moral error has no authority and no amount of victimization can change that. Point out the most personal and blatant moral perversity of our various anti-gun groups and their moral authority can be shattered. They want to impose on everyone exactly what got their own loved ones killed. How perverse is that?<br />
<br />
Ted Nugent deserves credit for recognizing the validity of this response. There is a special critique that can be leveled anti-gun Jews and kudos to Nugent for stating it.<br />
<br />
<br />
<b>Turning the moral authority of the Newtown Mothers back against themselves</b><br />
<br />
The reason I immediately recognized the validity of Nugent's attack on anti-gun Jews (while many others <a href="http://www.nationalreview.com/article/431247/ted-nugent-anti-semitism-disgraces-gun-rights-movement-nra#comment-2513271074">accused</a> him of doubling down on anti-Semitism), is that I have already been down this road. When the Demanding Newtown Mothers put out a one-year anniversary video their ticking-clock motif powerfully evoked the pro-gun understanding that when seconds count it is doesn't help that the police are only minutes away (fifteen in the Newtown case), so I reversed it back onto them by <a href="http://errortheory.blogspot.com/2013/12/evil-is-coming-ticking-clock-newtown.html">adding</a> a pro-gun voice over:<br />
<br />
<iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/Z0Ls3NxzHkU" width="560"></iframe><br />
<br />
Finally the urgent dread on the Mothers' faces directs an obviously necessary course of action: get those children some armed defenders! Turning their story back onto them works.<br />
<br />
So I'm right with you Ted (and glad to have the company). Now we just need a few thousand more. In the meantime I hope people can realize that jettisoning Nugent over THIS of all things, something he is insightfully right about, would be a disastrous and unpardonable mistake.<br />
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<div class="blogger-post-footer">All content copyright © Alec Rawls, 2004-. Non-commercial use allowed with attribution. Commercial republication with permission. Please contact alec@rawls.org.</div>Alec Rawlshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18106800937399442588noreply@blogger.com9tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7347736.post-67238973042582905692015-10-03T11:51:00.001-07:002015-10-08T11:39:50.613-07:00NYT's gay "modern man" marks how far the Democrat's inversion of tolerance and approval has progressedNYT's "<a href="http://thewriterinblack.blogspot.com/2015/10/fisking-27-ways-to-be-modern-man.html">modern man</a>" is obviously gay. Not that there is anything wrong with that, but he seems to think that everyone else should be gay too, or else they are not modern, or not a man? You have to be gay to be a man? Really?<br />
<br />
But this is perfectly in line with the double-standard supremacism that the various groups who make phony claims of victim status are all demanding these days as their due redress. It is no longer enough to tolerate homosexual behavior. Now everyone must approve it (marriage being society's stamp of approval), and those who only tolerate without approving are not themselves tolerated, but are severely punished by the power of the state. The small tolerated minority hops directly into a new position as an intolerant power.<br />
<br />
By this standard, then of course you have to be gay to be a man. Gays are no longer a minor group relying on and receiving the tolerance of the majority, they are an intolerant group, out to marginalize and destroy all who do not approve of them, and this has become the standard for all of the victim-cliamant groups. The suppression of disapproving but tolerant majorities is the payment that intolerant minorities are receiving for joining the Democrat's 51% tyranny of the majority.<br />
<br />
I live in Palo Alto where the high school just ended its tradition of selecting a homecoming king and queen with male and female courts on the grounds that this tradition might be uncomfortable or offensive to transgender students or staff. You know, like when Morgan Hill banned American flags from school property on the grounds that it might offend the large percentage of students whose loyalty is to Mexico, not the United States.<br />
<br />
But wait a minute. If anyone expresses discomfort about transgender students they are immediately subject to severe re-education demands if not expulsion, so why is discomfort about heterosexuality on the part of hypothetical transgenders not only presumed but validated and placed as a controlling interest? Again, majority views are not tolerated while minority views are not just tolerated but are imposed on all.<br />
<br />
People of Mexican heritage are presumed to be offended by the American flag in the same school where any student to took offense at the Mexican flag would subject to extreme corrective measures by the state. Tolerance for majority views is denied and approval for minority views is required.<br />
<br />
Same on race. The vast majority of interracial crime in America is black on white yet the only news stories in which race is raised as an issue are the rare man-bites-dog cases where a white attacks a black. Brutal intolerance by blacks is swept under the rug while tolerant disapproval of the manifest perversities of black American culture are not tolerated.<br />
<br />
This monstrous inversion of the necessary priority of tolerance over approval is virtually total within every institution that Democrats control: the news media, entertainment, academia, K-12, the professional societies, most philanthropies, most social media and the Democratic Party. To the extent that this ideology is enforced it is the absolute destruction of liberty to the very last brick, a complete totalitarianism.<br />
<br />
The only saving grace is that Democrats only have partial power. They control all of our information industries but they have not achieved a secure majority of political power, so we are not done yet, but we are very close, and the K-12 brainwashing of the next generation will make the identity-group left's destruction of liberty hard to stop.<br />
<br />
The NYT's gay "modern man" is a ludicrously bad joke, but it is also a very dangerous joke, like finding a single Lionfish where invasive species had not been previously found. It tells us, oh no, the infection has spread all the way to this far corner of the globe, which means it is everywhere, and as idiotic as this Lionfish looks it will be hard to push back.<br />
<br />
These perverts are raising YOUR kids, six hours a day, plus television time, plus social media time. They are very close to winning/destroying everything.<br />
<br />
<br />
UPDATE: It is obviously not necessary to the theme of this post that <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2015/10/02/fashion/mens-style/27-ways-to-be-a-modern-man.html?_r=0">Brian Lombardi</a>, the author of the NYT's "modern man" lunacy, actually be gay instead of just a <a href="http://thefederalist.com/2013/12/17/dozen-funniest-variations-obamas-pajama-boy-propaganda/">pajama-boy</a> type anti-man. Either way, the theme of the NYT piece is that to be a "modern man" you have to be at extreme odds with the majority view of manliness. And yes, the NYT piece is written very much in a bossy, "this is how it's done guys," way, ridiculously so, as in Lombardi's "way to be a modern man" #7:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
7. The modern man buys only regular colas, like Coke or Dr Pepper. If you walk into his house looking for a Mountain Dew, he’ll show you the door.</blockquote>
That's a caricature of a spoiled eight year old. Did Lombardi come up with his examples of manhood by using George Costanza's "<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cKUvKE3bQlY">opposite</a>" method? Whatever you think an actual man would do, say the opposite?<br />
<br />
<a href="http://thewriterinblack.blogspot.com/2015/10/fisking-27-ways-to-be-modern-man.html">Writer In Black</a> offers a full fisking where 25 out of Lombardi's 27 are seen to be pretty much the polar opposite from manliness. Black's non-opposite response to #7:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
The modern man drinks whatever he wants. If it's Diet Cherry Mountain Dew, it's Diet Cherry Mountain Dew. The modern man does not apologize for his choice of beverage. </blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
If a guest asks for something the modern man does not stock the modern man says something like "I'm sorry but I don't have that. Would you perhaps like..." and then offers a selection of what the modern man does have. If a modern man knows in advance that a guest has a particular preference, the modern man will insure that he has a supply of it. See "courteous" above. </blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
The modern man's guests never leave hungry or thirsty unless it's by their own choice. </blockquote>
<div>
So Lombardi could be opposite boy, or he could be pajama-boy, but the obvious explanation is that he is a flaming homosexual, deeply girly, with the somewhat common over-the-top streak. This would actually seem to be proven by Lombardi's "way to be a modern man" #1:</div>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
1. When the modern man buys shoes for his spouse, he doesn’t have to ask her sister for the size. And he knows which brands run big or small.</blockquote>
It isn't just that no heterosexual man would deprive his wife or girlfriend of her favorite shopping activity by buying shoes for her (unless it be with the express idea that they <i>won't</i> fit, so she can return them and get what she wants). It's that revealing bit about knowing which brands run big or small. To know that a man would have to be trying on his own feet the same styles and brands as he is looking to buy for his spouse, which means the spouse must also be a man.<br />
<br />
Then it makes sense. They both have girl brains, they both love shoe shopping and they can think of sharing what they know about how certain brands fit, but that is only even possible for homosexuals.<br />
<br />
Yeah yeah, Lombardi says he has a wife named "Linda" and that they have three children, but that is what the gays are doing now, right? They are calling themselves husband and wife and adopting children. I just hope the kids come out okay.<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
17. Does the modern man have a melon baller? What do you think? How else would the cantaloupe, watermelon and honeydew he serves be so uniformly shaped?</blockquote>
Can you say "that's so gay"? Not that there's anything wrong with that, but it's gayer than Saint Patrick's Day in San Francisco.<br />
<br />
Okay, here's one that isn't gay, unless a person wants to put a nasty negative spin on gayness:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
25. The modern man has no use for a gun. He doesn’t own one, and he never will.</blockquote>
That is a wussified, pantywaist, icky-ew type flaming, which is really an unfair caricature of homosexuality. Homosexuals are not morons.<br />
<br />
But that's the only contra-indication to Mr. Lombardi being gay. His list finishes strong on the female-brained theme:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
26. The modern man cries. He cries often.</blockquote>
Like, at that time of the month?<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
27. People aren’t sure if the modern man is a good dancer or not. That is, until the D.J. plays his jam and he goes out there and puts on a clinic.</blockquote>
Dancing is neither gay nor straight, but if ever there was a sentence that reads with a lisp...<br />
<br />
At the very least, Brian Lombardi is a definite putths.<div class="blogger-post-footer">All content copyright © Alec Rawls, 2004-. Non-commercial use allowed with attribution. Commercial republication with permission. Please contact alec@rawls.org.</div>Alec Rawlshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18106800937399442588noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7347736.post-7893564314057472582015-09-10T21:19:00.002-07:002015-09-10T22:29:41.775-07:00To end white privilege put all black (and white) criminals in jail<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;">White people have a very clear privilege compared to
blacks. Strangers do not expect, upon seeing our race, that there is a very
substantial likelihood that we will turn out to be violently and viciously
criminal, whereas with blacks this is a likelihood that absolutely cannot be
ignored, for anybody who does not want to be violently and viciously violated.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;">That is a huge racial privilege and society ought to
try to reduce it. So who is to blame for it and now do we get rid of it? Black
criminals are to blame for it and we get rid of it by putting all criminals,
white and black, into prison or into the ground and keeping them there.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;">Do an effective job getting rid of the criminals and
you get rid of the expectation that unknown blacks who are met in free society
will turn out to be criminals. That is how society gets rid of "white
privilege," by cracking down harder on criminals, not going easier on
them, as this <a href="http://pjmedia.com/instapundit/213637/">BlackLives</a> criminals'-lobby
is urging.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;">If black privilege is desired as a kind of compensation,
that can be achieved too. Let the white criminals continue with their marauding
and only remove the black criminals from free society. Then it is unknown
whites who will be assigned an especially high likelihood of turning out to be
criminal, and voila: black privilege, in the exact mirror image of the white
privilege that exists today.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;">To limit crime, people can either defend
themselves (the right to keep and bear arms) or they can call for more police</span></b><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;">Policing is an inferior solution to crime. That's
because society has an unfortunate tendency to criminalize whatever any
powerful enough interest group finds momentarily bothersome, and then these
laws stay on the books forever, which over time ends up criminalizing a whole
lot of things that should not be criminalized, making law enforcement a
sometimes serious nuisance, which in turn makes more intense law enforcement a
more serious nuisance.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;">The better solution is the one what the founders of
this country wrote into the Constitution. People can defend themselves against
crime by keeping and bearing arms. Because serious and violent criminals get stripped
of their gun rights the effect of gun rights over time is to systematically shift the balance of power on the streets in favor
of the law abiding. Kids coming up see who has the power and they scorn the
criminal path.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;">It is an ideal system. Unfortunately blacks in this
country keep depriving themselves of it by voting Democratic, and that is
entirely on blacks, who are the author of their own powerlessness in the face
of crime. Don't blame the police and don't blame whites. I've been <a href="http://www.rawls.org/Blacks+Guns.htm">lobbying</a> for black gun
rights for 20 years.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;">Having voted for their own disempowerment, leaving
no solution to black crime but a more burdensome police presence, it is no
surprise that many blacks are unhappy with the police, but this cannot account
for the radical perversity of the OnlyBlackLivesMatter movement.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;">BlackLivesMatter is a lobby in defense
of the worst criminal behavior</span></b><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;">Their two leading martyr icons are a pair of blacks
who were killed while committing attempted murder (<a href="http://errortheory.blogspot.com/2015/07/media-still-claiming-that-trayvon.html">Trayvon
Martin</a> and Michael Brown). That's a criminals' lobby, directly on the
side of the worst bad guys, so long as they are black.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><br />
Other BlackLives icons were not killed intentionally but died of accidents and
happenstance that proceeded from their own criminal decisions to fight the
police (Oscar Grant and Eric Garner), but BlackLives again inverts blame, as if
dying makes the drunk driver who causes an accident a victim instead of a
perpetrator.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;">Some BlackLives icons died while police were
enforcing questionable laws (Eric Garner, selling "onsies," and
Freddie Gray, not even allowed to carry a folding knife). Who is to blame
there? BlackLives, for voting Democrat, when it is Democrats who pass these
noisome laws. Don't blame the police for enforcing the laws YOUR votes
supported.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;">Always backwards, always trying to switch blame from
the innocent to the guilty, with no compunction and no limit. The peak of their
outrage is in response to what any normal moral person regards as a "feel
good story of the day": when a criminal attacks an intended victim and it
is the criminal who ends up dead. The most immediate goal of the BlackLives
group is to protect black criminals from the people who are trying to resist
their criminal behavior.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;">Which side has the <a href="http://www.cnn.com/2009/POLITICS/02/18/holder.race.relations/">cowards</a> who
can't handle an honest discussion on race?</span></b><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;">BlackLives activists are welcome my interrupt my
visit to the restaurant with obnoxious demands for "conversation on
race," but don't expect it to be one sided. I will gladly explain where
white privilege comes from and how to get rid of it. Permanently remove all of
the serious criminals from free society and there will be no white privilege.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;">Alternatively, treat the police as the enemy, have
some demagogic success in making police pay a price for shooting blacks in self
defense, and you force them to retreat and become less effective at controlling
black crime, which jacks the already disgustingly high rate of violent black
criminality up yet another notch, which forces every rational person, white,
black or "other," to be that much warier of unknown blacks.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;">Of course those who declare for the BlackLives
criminals'-lobby are no longer unknown. They are known to be allegiant to the
criminal side and should not be trusted one inch. Odd that they seem to be hurt
by that distrust. Their icons are attempted murderers. They hold stopping the
worst crimes to be an injustice. It is a purely racist movement. They will side
with the worst criminal over his intended victim purely on the basis of race.
To them ONLY race matters. This is a radical evil.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;">That some not-all-bad people get caught up in it is
comprehensible. The policing that black criminality brings down on innocent
blacks is a serious burden and people who are in pain often lash out in ways
that makes the pain worse. Society just needs to reject the racist dyspepsia of
BlackLives, regardless of its threatening magnitude, and actually get rid of
white privilege by doing a much more effective job of removing all criminals
from society.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;">The best way is by allowing the law abiding
citizenry of all races to end criminal threats with a gun. The other way is by
upping police activity, but one way or another the criminals need to be
eradicated.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;">Knowing that unknown blacks pose a high
risk of vicious criminality is NOT racism</span></b><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;">To have a pejorative meaning the term
"racism" cannot refer to rational information processing, and it
doesn't, not if we are being logical. The logical meaning of racism is to
continue to expect a person to act as other members of their racial group on
average tend to act even when the information one has about the person as an
individual indicates a different character. If a black individual shows a
strongly law abiding character it would be perverse to still treat him as if he
is as likely as other blacks to engage in vicious criminality. <i>That</i> would be racism.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-size: 18.6667px; line-height: 21.4667px;"><br /></span></span>
<span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-size: 18.6667px; line-height: 21.4667px;">Logically, information about a person as an individual trumps information about group behavior. Like all additional information it needs to be accounted, and it is better information. Wherever individual information is available it reveals where group based expectations are off the mark (or on the mark) in the particular case, rendering the group-based information irrelevant henceforth on the revealed point. </span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;">There is an industry of blacks concocting ways to
see things that aren't racist as racist because this is seen as a source of
power. If you can claim victimization you can demand redress, but of course it
tends to backfire. People aren't going to want to have anything to do with you
at all if they have to worry that you are going to concoct false charges
against them as a way of trying to make off with some ill-gotten gain.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;">It is a kind of criminality and fits with the other
ways that people (white and black) expect unknown blacks to turn out to be
criminals, and that is not working out so well for blacks. Think Vester Lee
Flanagan II, who <a href="http://nypost.com/2015/08/28/reporters-everyday-comments-deemed-racist-by-on-air-killer/">murdered</a> his
television ex-co-workers for such "racist" comments as telling him
that some other reporter was "out in the field." "This guy was a
nightmare," said one co-worker, "Management’s worst nightmare."<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;">This near-criminal extortion game raises negative
expectations about all blacks, but it blows back most directly on the
individuals who engage in it. People recognize what they are, that these are
bad people who can't be trusted. Their particular bad nature of course
interprets the negative reaction to their demagoguery as racism. So we get
these crazy-angry blacks, constantly looking for any way they can find to
interpret everything under the sun as racist, and when people quite rationally
recoil from the imminent threat they present, they are enraged, in Flanagan's
case to the point of murder, but it goes far beyond Flanagan.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;">The entire BlackLives movement is doing the same
thing. Whenever a black is injured in the commission of even the most murderous
crimes the movement erupts with insane cries of racism, prompting their shock
troops to burn down their own cities and viciously attack any whites or Asians
they can get their hands on.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;">As a result, there has probably been a solid 20%
increase in "white privilege" over the last few years. The more
monstrously racist blacks on average become, the more strongly people recognize
the danger that blacks on average present. Hire a black who you don't know to
be immune to demagogic race-mongering and you could end up with one of a
million potential Vester Flanagan's on your hands.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;">There is a whole movement built around Vester's kind
of thinking and it seems to be widely embraced on the black left. Since most
blacks are on the left, expect more and more employers to be willing to
risk equal opportunity lawsuits rather than risk bringing a racist time-bomb
into their workplace. BlackLivesMatter is the biggest engine of white privilege
and black disadvantage ever.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;">Now they are waging a <a href="http://www.breitbart.com/texas/2015/09/06/graffiti-calling-for-violence-against-cops-spreads-across-texas/">graffiti
campaign</a> across Texas urging the ambush murder of police officers, as
was done to police officer, husband and father Darren Goforth. When the
murder-baiters get caught, plaster their name far and wide so that they will
never be hired as long as they live. That is the proper individual punishment
for bad individual behavior, but when all that people know is a person's racial
group it is rational for them to take into account group behavior. This
widespread black descent into the most extreme moral depravity is going to make
everyone that much warier of all not-well-known blacks.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;">It is not racist to expect people let
into college under lower standards to be less able than other students</span></b><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;">Beyond the epidemic of deliberate attempts to
concoct phony claims of racism there is also a real difficulty that a lot of
well meaning people have in understanding what is and isn't racism. They think
that any expectation about racial groups, no matter how rationally founded, is
supposed to pushed out of their mind. That is morally insane. <i>All</i> information
has to be rationally processed.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;">Rational information processing is how we get to the
King ideal of judging people by the content of their character instead of by
the color of their skins, by learning to give individual information its proper
priority over group information, but we can't do that if we at the same time
try to block people from rationally processing group information. Everything irrational
is nonsense. It is known to be wrong. Not being willing to embrace known error
is a quality of mind. Do you care whether you are making sense? The war against
rational processing of group information, to the extent that it is successful,
destroys the quality of mind that is needed if people are to give individual
information, when available, its proper priority over group information. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;">Want to get rid of the presumption that black
college students are less well qualified than their peers? Stop admitting them
under lower standards. All that affirmative action in college admissions has
achieved is to shift the entire population of black students out of their
element, from where they would be on a par with the other students to where
they are less qualified, and the same happens with jobs.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;">Promoted ahead of ability on the basis of race,
co-workers all rationally expect blacks to be less able. Knowledge of them as
individuals may come to confirm that expectation or to reject it but the
"white privilege" remains: that whites don't have to endure the
rational group-based expectation that they don't merit their position.</span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;">To get rid of white privilege we have to get rid of
the affirmative action policies that create it. We could go further, if we want
to create a black privilege, by raising the bar for blacks to be hired.
Co-workers would rationally expect blacks hired under such policies to be
extra-qualified. But we shouldn't allow any racial group to have these
"privileges." The cost is high (suffering bias in hiring, or high
rates of criminal victimization), and the resulting privilege is unfair.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="blogger-post-footer">All content copyright © Alec Rawls, 2004-. Non-commercial use allowed with attribution. Commercial republication with permission. Please contact alec@rawls.org.</div>Alec Rawlshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18106800937399442588noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7347736.post-66826270499157686532015-07-15T15:51:00.001-07:002016-02-17T16:24:56.922-08:00Media still claiming that Trayvon Martin was shot while walking home from 7-Eleven but key revelation from trial was that Martin ran home first, then went back out, angry at "creepy ass cracka"Two years after George Zimmerman’s acquittal widespread pre-trial misinformation about Zimmerman’s shooting of Trayvon Martin remains set in media stone. It’s as if the trial never happened. After the last spate of coverage for Zimmerman’s shooting of Trayvon Martin I started rounding up a survey of the coverage. That was back in February when the DOJ announced it would not file civil rights charges against Zimmerman.<br />
<br />
As documented below, almost every news report summarized Zimmerman’s shooting of Martin as occurring while Martin was on the way back to his father’s house from a nearby 7-Eleven. That is a direct contradiction of the testimony from Martin’s friend Rachel Jeantel who had been on the phone with Martin when Martin and Zimmerman first saw each other. Martin initially started to approach Zimmerman, then decided to run away, at which point his phone call with Jeantel disconnected. She said in court that when they reconnected a short time later Martin sounded tired and told her that he was back by his father’s house (first reported by <a href="https://twitter.com/LawSelfDefense/status/350269192148230144">Andrew Branca</a> at <a href="http://legalinsurrection.com/2013/06/zimmerman-update-exclusive-mid-day-4-west-cross-examination-of-rachel-jeantel/">Legal Insurrection</a>).<br />
<br />
The fatal confrontation occurred a couple of minutes later about a hundred yards back in the direction where Martin and Zimmerman had first seen each other. Thus the best and only evidence we have says that the beating of Zimmerman by Martin and the shooting of Martin by Zimmerman occurred, not when Martin was on his way home, but shortly after he <i>left</i> home, apparently in search of Zimmerman, who he called a “<a href="https://twitter.com/LawSelfDefense/status/350255988445687809">creepy ass cracker</a>” according to Jeantel.<br />
<br />
Of course that changes everything. It strongly suggests that Martin went back out to find Zimmerman, which strongly supports Zimmerman’s claim that it was Martin who initiated the confrontation and Martin who attacked him.<br />
<br />
This best and only evidence about the actual sequence of events doesn't tell the story that our Democrat-dominated media wants to tell. They believe that stories of black victimization are advantageous for their political side so that is what they publish, the facts be damned.<br />
<br />
When civil rights charges were not filed against Zimmerman most news reports explained this result by emphasizing the difficulty of <i>proving</i> that the reason Zimmerman shot Martin is because Martin was black, and their counter-to-evidence statement of the facts allowed them to create the impression that it was <i>likely</i> that the shooting of Travyon Martin was a race-motivated execution. Thus was the utter lack of any case against Zimmerman presented as yet another re-victimization of the black community.<br />
<br />
Several major news reports went so far as to assert another strongly counter-to-evidence claim: that it was Zimmerman who initiated the fatal confrontation, and <i>The New York Times</i> fixed blame further by reporting that Zimmerman “got out of his car — ignoring the advice of a police dispatcher.” Anyone who is willing to <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/special/nation/last-minutes-trayvon-martin-911-calls/">listen</a> to the recording of the call can verify for themselves that it was only after Zimmerman was already out of his car and could be heard getting winded that the police dispatcher advised him not to follow, at which point Zimmerman immediately replied “okay.”<br />
<br />
The claim that Zimmerman declined to follow police advice is just a flat lie, which is no surprise. The Grey Lady is always the worst violator of journalistic ethics. Every lie that fits in print, if it serves the Democratic party’s perverse conception of its own interests.<br />
<br />
This is obviously never going to stop so the second anniversary of Zimmerman’s acquittal seems a good time to lay out the actual evidence from the trial as it contradicts the media’s ongoing narrative. To keep this post manageable I am putting a lot of documentation (full survey results, etcetera) in a set of five addenda. The body of the post focuses on the evidence that Martin made it home before the fatal confrontation, and the front page coverage that this revelation received during the trial.<br />
<br />
All the reporters know about it! Which makes their counter-to-evidence statements of fact all the more damning. Here are the first three summaries of the shooting incident that I came across when the DOJ announced there would be no civil rights charges against Zimmerman.<br />
<br />
<br />
<div>
<div>
<b>Mis-statements of fact, set in media stone</b></div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
From <a href="http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/2015/02/24/no-federals-charges-against-george-zimmerman/23942297/">USA Today</a>: </div>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
Zimmerman shot Trayvon, 17, on Feb. 26, 2012, as the teen walked back to a relative's home after purchasing snacks at a convenience store in Sanford, Fla.</blockquote>
<div>
From <a href="http://abc30.com/news/doj-to-announce-no-charges-in-trayvon-martins-death/532561/">ABC</a>: </div>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
The case sparked intense discussions over race in America because Martin was walking to his home with only Skittles and an iced tea in his hands.</blockquote>
<div>
And from <a href="http://www.usnews.com/news/articles/2015/02/24/doj-no-civil-rights-charges-against-george-zimmerman-in-trayvon-martin-case">US News</a>: </div>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
Zimmerman shot Martin in a Sanford, Florida, gated community after what Zimmerman described was a violent tussle with the 17-year-old. Martin was unarmed and walking back to the house where he was visiting father after a trip to a local convenience store.</blockquote>
<div>
Contrast these media summaries with the key revelation from the trial, where Martin’s friend Rachel Jeantel <a href="http://edition.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/1306/27/atw.01.html">testified</a> about her second phone call with Martin, after he had run away from Zimmerman’s initial surveillance. The first call disconnected when Martin started running. When Martin and Jeantel reconnected 18 seconds later (see the phone-call timeline in Addendum 1) she testified that he sounded tired and (at some point in the conversation) that he said was back by his father’s house (about a hundred yards beyond where the fatal confrontation occurred):</div>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
JEANTEL: He sounded tired, sir. </blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
WEST: And you don't know how far he may have run. </blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
JEANTEL: No, sir. … </blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
WEST: And you have this conversation with him for a couple of minutes, and then he says he sees the man again? </blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
JEANTEL: Yes, sir. … He told me that he was close to him. </blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
WEST: Right. At that point he [Trayvon] decided to approach this man and say, why are you following me? </blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
JEANTEL: Yes, sir. </blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
WEST: And he could have just run home if he wasn't there. </blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
JEANTEL: He was already by his house. He told me.</blockquote>
<div>
There is no other evidence about where Martin was during the three and a half minutes between his running away from Zimmerman and his fatal encounter with Zimmerman a hundred yards from his father’s house. The best and only evidence is Jeantel’s claim that Martin told her at some point during this second phone call that he was back by his father’s house. That evidence says he was <i>not</i> heading home when the confrontation occurred, but has just <i>left</i> his home, very likely with the intent of confronting Zimmerman.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
Is it too much to ask that the media’s one and two line summaries of the case not directly contradict key evidence from the trial? We don’t have a real press anymore. We have <a href="http://pjmedia.com/instapundit/?s=Democratic+operatives+with+bylines+">Democratic operatives with bylines</a>.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
<br /></div>
</div>
<div>
<div>
<b>“That’s real retarded sir”: Jeantel’s testimony about Martin getting back to his house was the most highlighted moment of the entire trial thanks to defense attorney West's confused attempt to refute it</b></div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
When Jeantel revealed that during the second phone call Martin had said he was by his house, Zimmerman’s attorney Don West, not realizing that Jeantel had just made his case for him, started suggesting that maybe Martin had been lying about having reached his father’s house. When West persisted in this counter-to-interest line Jeantel astutely observe that West was being “real retarded,” landing the exchange on the front page of most major newspapers.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
Any reporter who is the least bit familiar with the case would have to know about it. Even left-wing outfits like <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/06/27/trayvon-martin-rachel-jeantel-george-zimmerman-trial_n_3509141.html">Huffpo/AP</a> reported it (6/27/13):</div>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
At one point, West suggested that though Martin told her he was by his father's fiancee's house while Zimmerman was following him, that she doesn't know that for sure. </blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
"Why he need to lie about that, sir?" Jeantel asked West. </blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
"Maybe if he decided to assault George Zimmerman, he didn't want you to know about it," West replied. </blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
"That's real retarded, sir," she said.</blockquote>
<div>
Together with the eyewitness testimony of <a href="http://www.cbsnews.com/news/george-zimmerman-trial-neighbor-testifies-trayvon-martin-was-straddling-zimmerman-moments-before-fatal-gunshot/">John Good</a> that it was Martin who was on top raining down punches “MMA style,” and the <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NMQo3YrEniU">physical evidence</a> that Martin had been bashing Zimmerman’s head into the concrete, Jeantel’s testimony that Martin said he was home, and by implication must have gone back out in search of Zimmerman, makes self-defense a near certainty.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
The <a href="http://lawofselfdefense.com/zimmerman-trial-if-state-cant-get-murder-2-can-they-get-manslaughter-yes-and-no/">burden of proof</a> goes the other way. It is the prosecution that has to show beyond reasonable doubt that Zimmerman was <i>not</i> defending himself, thus the only miscarriage of justice was that Zimmerman was ever charged at all, but that truth does not serve the media’s interests, and to evade it they are willing to mis-report even the most high profile facts.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
In my semi-complete survey (Addendum 3) only Fox and NBC managed not to actually contradict key evidence but no press organization described how the evidence supported Zimmerman’s claim of self-defense. Presented with an opportunity to shed light on why civil rights charges were not viable our press corps chose instead to either take a pass or to actively un-explain the decision, making it seem as if a guilty man was going free (again), in most cases by directly contradicting the facts that came out in the trial.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
They all know that the trial’s big “that’s real retarded sir” moment was about Jeantel’s revelation that Martin said he was back at his house minutes before the fatal confrontation. They just don’t want <i>you</i> to know what they know.</div>
</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
<div>
<b>Alternate juror explains the import of Trayvon having reached his house before the confrontation</b></div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
If reporters cannot figure it out for themselves, an alternate juror came out after the trial and <a href="http://www.foxnews.com/on-air/on-the-record/2013/07/18/record-legal-panel-breakdown-zimmerman-alernate-juror-speaks-out">explained</a> it to everyone. In his account the keys to the verdict were the injuries to Zimmerman and Jeantel’s admission that Martin had reached his father’s house, then somehow ended up pummeling Zimmerman a hundred yards away. If the best evidence they had was that Martin had gone back out looking for Zimmerman, that strongly supported Zimmerman’s claim that it was Trayvon who attacked him:</div>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
And then she [Rachel Jeantel] called back and she called to talk to him again. </blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
At that point, Trayvon said he had lost the man and he was at this -- this -- where his father was staying. He was at that place. At the same time of that -- that happening, George Zimmerman had only just gotten out of his car about 25, 30 seconds. So he was still up at the T. </blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
And Trayvon, according to Jeantel's -- or Rachel's testimony, would have been down the other end of the buildings at that point. So somehow, those two got back together up at the top of the T. </blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
And you know, we don't know how that happened but -- and in all likelihood, in my mind, you know, even if George Zimmerman had walked down to where Trayvon was, they both walked back up to the T. So that would have implied that Trayvon had followed George Zimmerman back up. </blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
If George Zimmerman didn't walk down there, then Trayvon walked up, back up to the T somehow because then the earwitnesses heard the noises up there, most of the earwitnesses, I believe. One of them said the noises went the other direction. But the majority of them had the noises coming from the top of the T down to the truck where -- where John Good saw him laying on the ground, or Trayvon on top of George Zimmerman. </blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
And I believe that John Good said that it was -- I believe -- I believed that it was Zimmerman because he had the color of the jacket that he had. </blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
And so tying all those together and the injuries that George Zimmerman had, that's where I -- that's where I came to my conclusion that it was justifiable.</blockquote>
<div>
With the revelation that Trayvon had reached his father’s house the verdict is easy to explain, which is why the press pretends that this information never came out.</div>
</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
<div>
<b>If anyone had their civil rights violated it was George Zimmerman, first by Trayvon Martin, then by President Obama</b></div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
Between Martin and Zimmerman the only one who seems to have been motivated by race (necessary for a civil rights violation) was Trayvon Martin. In contrast to Martin’s racially bigoted “creepy ass cracker” remark, Zimmerman did not mention Martin’s race (“he looks black”) until asked by the 911 dispatcher (regardless of NBC’s <a href="http://www.nationalreview.com/article/381387/sorry-nbc-you-owe-george-zimmerman-millions-j-delgado">doctoring</a> of the 911 tapes to say otherwise).</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
The 911 tapes also reveal incredible forbearance on Zimmerman’s part. A voice that can only be Zimmerman’s was recorded screaming for help (or “<a href="http://abcnews.go.com/Nightline/video/trayvon-martin-explosive-evidence-16374729">yelping for help</a>” according to the police report) 14 times in 38 seconds, and before that 911 call began the fight had already been going on for 27 seconds (the gap between the end of the second Martin-Jeantel call and the first 911 call), plus whatever part of the fight Jeantel heard before her call disconnected.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
Over this span Zimmerman absorbed numerous “MMA style” ground-and-pound punches and had the back of his head smashed into the concrete multiple times before he finally pulled his gun and fired a single shot at his assailant. Wow dude, what took you so long?</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
The strong evidence that Martin went back out from his house to confront the “creepy ass cracker” who had been keeping an eye on him indicates clearly that Martin’s use of life-threatening force against Zimmerman was not in self-defense and had a clear racist motivation. Martin <i>was</i> violating Zimmerman’s civil rights, while Zimmerman’s extraordinary reluctance to use lethal force belies any claim that he was acting in other than self-defense.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
The obvious miscarriage of justice here was the decision to charge Zimmerman at all, never mind under blatantly racist pressure from the President of the United States, who was <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/obama-if-i-had-a-son-hed-look-like-trayvon/2012/03/23/gIQApKPpVS_story.html">emoting</a> at the time how: “If I had a son, he would look like Trayvon.”</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
In 1986 The U.S. Court of Military Appeals <a href="http://nlgmltf.org/military-law/2009/command-influence/">opined</a> that “Command influence is the mortal enemy of military justice,” and the same holds true for the civilian courts. Due process must prevail not just in the courts but in the prosecutor’s office and there is no more improper process than to base a prosecutorial decision on racial sympathy for one of the parties, never mind under the influence of high level political pressure, but this is exactly the pressure that “constitutional scholar” Barack Hussein Obama brought to bear.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
As Zimmerman <a href="http://www.latimes.com/nation/nationnow/la-na-nn-george-zimmerman-video-20150323-story.html">himself</a> has protested, that is a real wrong. In contrast, there is nothing wrong at all when a murderous assailant is killed by the defensive actions of his would-be victim. If only it could always turn out that way.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
The end</div>
</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
<b>Further documentation and discussion are provided in the following five addenda</b></div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
<div>
Addendum 1: Map of the scene and phone call timeline</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
Addendum 2: Other counter-to-evidence media claim (that Zimmerman initiated the fatal confrontation and that he disregarded police instructions or advice) </div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
Addendum 3: My semi-complete survey of errant media summaries of the facts</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
Addendum 4: Rachel Jeantel’s post-trial revelations</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
Addendum 5: The Media’s refusal to portray Trayvon (“no limits nigga”) Martin as he saw himself</div>
</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
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<b>Addendum 1: Map of the scene and phone call timeline</b></div>
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The 7-eleven that Trayvon Martin was walking back from (1125 Rinehart Rd) was a half mile or so to the east/left down Oregon Avenue at the top of the image above (click for larger). When George Zimmerman first spotted him inside the gated Twin Lakes community Martin and his friend Rachel Jeantel had already been talking on the phone for about fifteen minutes. That could explain why Martin seemed to Zimmerman to be “just walking around” in the rain, “looking about.” Here is the beginning of Zimmerman’s <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/special/nation/last-minutes-trayvon-martin-911-calls/">call</a> to the Sanford police department. He gives his location as near the clubhouse, which is near the intersection inside the northern gate: </div>
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Zimmerman: Hey, we've had some break-ins in my neighborhood and there's a real suspicious guy. … This guy looks like he's up to no good or he's on drugs or something. It's raining and he's just walking around looking about.</blockquote>
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Martin saw Zimmerman watching him and correctly assessed that Zimmerman was looking at him as a possible criminal. According to Jeantel’s <a href="http://www.mediaite.com/tv/witness-trayvon-called-george-zimmerman-a-creepy-ass-white-kill-my-neighbors-cracker/">testimony</a> Martin called Zimmerman a “creepy-ass cracker,” which she would later explain to <a href="http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/1307/15/pmt.01.html">Piers Morgan</a> meant “a person who act like they are police.”</div>
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From Zimmerman’s call, Martin’s first reaction to being watched seems to have been aggressive, before he changed his mind and <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/special/nation/last-minutes-trayvon-martin-911-calls/">ran away</a>:</div>
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Zimmerman: Something's wrong with him. Yep, he's coming to check me out. He's got something in his hands. I don't know what his deal is. </blockquote>
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Dispatcher: Ah, OK, just let me know if he does anything. </blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
Zimmerman: Get an officer over here. … </blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
Zimmerman: s---, he's running. … Down toward the other entrance of the neighborhood.</blockquote>
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The “other entrance” is at the southeast corner of the neighborhood, next to Martin’s father’s fiancée’s house. </div>
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<b>The second Jeantel-Martin phone call</b></div>
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It was <a href="http://www.charlesapple.com/2012/05/interesting-trayvon-martin-graphic-in-yesterdays-washington-post/">7:11:41 PM</a> when Zimmerman told the police dispatcher that Martin was running. Seven seconds later, at 7:11:48, the first Jeantel-Martin phone call disconnected (see the 13:35 mark of this video testimony from T-Mobile representative <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l3ZvB8tGAT4">Raymond MacDonald</a>) and the evidence suggests that he ran all or most of the way back to his father’s fiancee’s house.</div>
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It was only 18 seconds later, at 7:12:06 PM, when Jeantel got Martin back on the phone for a final three minutes and 38 seconds (see the 13 minute mark of the T-Mobile testimony). When they reconnected Jeantel<a href="http://edition.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/1306/27/atw.01.html"> testified</a> that Trayvon sounded tired, and at some point in the call he said he was back at his house. As quoted earlier:</div>
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JEANTEL: He sounded tired, sir. </blockquote>
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WEST: And you don't know how far he may have run. </blockquote>
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JEANTEL: No, sir. … </blockquote>
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WEST: And you have this conversation with him for a couple of minutes, and then he says he sees the man again? </blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
JEANTEL: Yes, sir. … He told me that he was close to him. </blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
WEST: Right. At that point he [Trayvon] decided to approach this man and say, why are you following me? </blockquote>
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JEANTEL: Yes, sir. </blockquote>
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WEST: And he could have just run home if he wasn't there. </blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
JEANTEL: He was already by his house. He told me.</blockquote>
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<b>WAPO phone-call timeline, with the two Martin-Jeantel phone calls added</b></div>
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The Washington Post created a <a href="http://www.charlesapple.com/2012/05/interesting-trayvon-martin-graphic-in-yesterdays-washington-post/">graphic time-line</a> of Zimmerman’s call to the police, and the subsequent 911 calls. I added timing marks and annotations for the Martin-Jeantel phone calls as well (click for larger image):</div>
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It is not clear how much of the struggle Jeantel heard before her phone disconnected, but it seems that the fight went on for at least about 80 seconds.</div>
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<b>Zimmerman did NOT get out of his car against police advice</b></div>
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Note also that when the police dispatcher asked Zimmerman if he was following the suspect, Zimmerman was already out of his car. He did <i>not</i> get out of his car against police advice, which is another piece of disinformation that some leading press outlets are pushing (see NYT in addendum 2 below.</div>
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At the 2 minute mark in WAPO’s <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/special/nation/last-minutes-trayvon-martin-911-calls/">recording</a> of Zimmerman’s call he says that the suspect is running. A few seconds later, at the 1:52 mark, Zimmerman can be heard getting out of his car and shutting the door (WAPO’s time stamps count down instead of up). Zimmerman’s breathing quickly starts to get heavy and there is wind noise and only then does the dispatcher asks Zimmerman if he is following Martin.</div>
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The dispatcher is clearly responding to audio evidence that Zimmerman is already out of his car and is pursuing on foot. Zimmerman says “yeap” and at 1:40 the dispatcher say “okay, we don’t need you to do that,” and Zimmerman says “okay.” </div>
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WAPO’s summary of the audio gets this sequence right: </div>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
Zimmerman got out of his truck to follow him. The dispatcher told him to stop, and at 7:13:38 p.m, the call ended.</blockquote>
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Yay WAPO.</div>
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<b>Addendum 2: Other counter-to-evidence media claims</b> </div>
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The <a href="http://www.latimes.com/nation/la-na-george-zimmerman-civil-rights-20150224-story.html"><i>LA Times</i></a> repeats the counter-to-evidence claim that Martin was walking home when the confrontation occurred, and adds the unsupported assertion that it was Zimmerman who confronted Martin:</div>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
Martin was visiting his father and his father’s girlfriend at a gated community in Sanford, Fla., when he went to a convenience store in the rain. Wearing a hoodie, he was on his way home when Zimmerman confronted him.</blockquote>
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No, Martin was <i>not</i> on his way home, and even Trayvon’s friend Rachel <a href="http://abcnews.go.com/US/trayvon-martin-told-friend-man-final-moments/story?id=19490796">acknowledges</a> that the first words between them were Trayvon challenging Zimmerman: “Why are you following me for?”</div>
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The question by itself sounds like it could be Martin challenging Zimmerman for coming up behind him, but once you know that Martin has already been home the interpretation changes completely, suggesting that Martin, who had from the beginning been complaining about out Zimmerman watching him, had gone back out to challenge Zimmerman over it, just as he started to do when he first saw Zimmerman.</div>
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The question of who initiated the fatal confrontation is critical. If it was Zimmerman that tends to vitiate his claim of self-defense. Of course it would be legal for him to approach and question Martin, but even such fully legal behavior could raise the question of whether Martin felt legitimately threatened, possibly leaving Zimmerman with some responsibility for the turn to violence, which could tend to support a manslaughter conviction, making the <i>LA Times</i> summary of the case very harmful to Zimmerman, but it is also completely without support.</div>
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<a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2015/02/25/us/justice-dept-wont-charge-george-zimmerman-in-trayvon-martin-killing.html">The New York Times</a> backs up the claim that Zimmerman initiated the confrontation by adding the counter-to-evidence assertion that Zimmerman ignored police advice not to follow the suspect:</div>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
[Zimmerman] got out of his car — ignoring the advice of a police dispatcher — and followed Mr. Martin, setting off a confrontation that led to Mr. Martin’s death, prosecutors said. </blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
Angry at Mr. Zimmerman and feeling threatened, Mr. Martin pushed him to the ground, punched him and slammed his head into the pavement, leaving visible wounds, defense lawyers said. Mr. Zimmerman, flat on his back, took out a gun and killed Mr. Martin. He told the police it was self-defense.</blockquote>
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The police dispatcher did not advise Zimmerman not to get out of his car. Zimmerman was already out of his car when the dispatcher advised Zimmerman not to follow Martin, to which Zimmerman answered: “okay.” The Times is just lying here. See the timeline discussion in Addendum 2 above. </div>
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The Times tries to get away with their false depiction by putting it in the mouth of the prosecutor but the prosecution is not a neutral party. They are one side, in this case the losing side, of an adversarial contest. It is obviously inappropriate to base a one-line summary of the incident on just the prosecutor’s assertions. Zimmerman denies that he continued to follow Martin and all the evidence is on his side.</div>
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Zimmerman tells the dispatcher that his truck is parked by a “cut through,” which turns out to be the bend in Twin Trees Lane where a walkway cuts over to the eastern side of Retreat View Circle. He has been out of his car for 15 seconds when the dispatcher suggests he stop following Martin and Zimmerman says “okay,” but the wind noise continues for several more seconds. It isn't until 30 seconds after Zimmerman shut his car door the wind noise ends completely.</div>
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Thirty seconds of brisk walking from his truck would cover about 200 feet which would put Zimmerman somewhere near the top of the “T” where another walkway proceeds south from the cut-through, down through several back yards including, about 150 yards down, the back yard of the house where Martin was staying.</div>
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Zimmerman says he next walked all the way across the cut-through to try to find a street sign so he could tell the police where he was, then came back to the area of the T, and that is where he says Martin jumped out and attacked him.</div>
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It is possible that Zimmerman is lying and that he actually did walk down behind Martin’s house (though there is no evidence that he lied about anything), but as the alternate juror noted, that would still mean that Martin followed him back up to the T, still indicating that it was Martin who at the end closed the distance and initiated the confrontation. </div>
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<b>Addendum 3: My semi-complete survey of errant media summaries of the facts</b></div>
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<a href="http://hosted2.ap.org/APDEFAULT/3d281c11a96b4ad082fe88aa0db04305/Article_2015-02-24-US--George%20Zimmerman/id-548db2ded99443d4bd66d01ebe1830c6%20http://wkrn.com/2015/02/24/george-zimmerman-will-not-face-federal-charges-in-death-of-trayvon-martin/">AP</a> wrongly claims that Martin was headed home from the store when the fatal confrontation occurred, and claims with no evidence that it was Zimmerman who approached Martin:</div>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
The February 2012 confrontation began after Zimmerman observed Martin while driving in his neighborhood. Zimmerman called police and got out of his car and approached Martin, who was returning from a store while visiting his father and his father's fiancee at the same townhome complex where Zimmerman lived. Zimmerman did not testify at his trial, but he told investigators that he feared for his life as Martin straddled him and punched him during the fight.</blockquote>
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<a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/post-nation/wp/2015/02/24/george-zimmerman-wont-face-civil-rights-charges-in-trayvon-martins-death/">WAPO</a> doesn’t say that Martin was on his way home, but their one line summary of the incident at the beginning of their 21 paragraph story does show a glaring omission:</div>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
Zimmerman fatally shot Martin while the unarmed African American 17-year-old was walking in Sanford, Fla.</blockquote>
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Martin was not “walking” when he was shot, he was sitting on top of Zimmerman smashing his head into the concrete. Only “below the fold,” more than halfway through the article, does the Post get around to mentioning that:</div>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
Zimmerman, a former volunteer neighborhood watchman who identifies as Hispanic, told police he was fighting for his life and fired at Martin in self-defense.</blockquote>
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<a href="http://fox4kc.com/2015/02/25/no-civil-rights-charges-against-zimmerman-in-martins-death/">CNN</a> </div>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
Civil rights leaders, as well as Martin’s relatives, took to the streets contending that the teen — who’d gone out to get a drink and Skittles from a Sanford, Florida, convenience store only to run into Zimmerman on his way back — might still be alive today if not for the color of his skin.</blockquote>
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Martin and Zimmerman <i>saw</i> each other when Martin was on his way back home, but the evidence says they did not “run into each other” (have a physical confrontation) until Martin, after reaching home, went back out in search of Zimmerman. </div>
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This was <i>the</i> most decisive piece of evidence to come out of the trial and the one or two line summaries from the great majority of news outlets manage to directly contradict it.<br />
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<a href="http://america.aljazeera.com/articles/2015/2/24/no-civil-rights-charges-to-be-filed-over-trayvon-martins-death1.html">Al Jazeera</a> </div>
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The Islamofascists take the NYT line, using the false claim that Zimmerman went against the advice of the 911 dispatcher to claim that he initiated the confrontation:</div>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
The fateful night began when Zimmerman called the police after he claimed Martin was acting suspiciously by walking in a neighborhood where he was not recognized. Against the wishes of the police dispatcher, Zimmerman approached Martin, who was in town visiting his father’s fiancee in the gated community Zimmerman was patrolling. In the ensuing confrontation, Zimmerman shot and killed Martin, claiming self-defense after the teenager allegedly punched him. </blockquote>
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<a href="http://m.washingtonexaminer.com/msnbc-host-hopes-trayvon-martin-whooped-the-s-t-out-of-george-zimmerman/article/2560711">Washington Examiner</a></div>
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Even the Washington Examiner’s conservative-leaning reporter Becket Adams got in on the disinformation, implying but not quite directly asserting the NYT line that Zimmerman ignored police advice to stop following Martin and barged ahead to initiate the fatal confrontation:</div>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
During a 911 call, Zimmerman described his suspicions of Martin, but a dispatcher suggested he not follow the teenager. Moments later the two came to blows. Physical evidence and the defendant's testimony indicate Martin was winning the fight when Zimmerman shot and killed him.</blockquote>
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By saying that the struggle came “moments” after the dispatcher suggested that Zimmerman not follow Martin, Adams creates the imputation that Zimmerman did not heed the dispatcher’s advice, that he <i>did</i> continue after Martin and likely was the one who initiated the confrontation. </div>
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But the confrontation was not “moments” later, it was minutes later, during which interval the only available evidence says that Martin reached his house and then went back out to confront Zimmerman.</div>
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That Adams seems not to know this shows just how pervasive the media disinformation is. Reporters get as much disinformation from their colleagues as the rest of us do, making it difficult <i>not</i> to get swept along with the tide. Becket trusted other news outlets to tell him the truth, but as the majority of Americans <a href="http://www.gallup.com/poll/1597/confidence-institutions.aspx">already know</a>, you can’t do that!</div>
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<b>Honor roll</b></div>
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No press outlet mentioned the testimony that Martin had already been home before the fatal confrontation occurred but credit is due to Fox and NBC (!) for not positively contradicting this and other evidence. </div>
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<a href="http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2015/02/24/doj-not-expected-to-file-civil-rights-charges-against-zimmerman-in-shooting/">Fox</a></div>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
Zimmerman has said he acted in self-defense when he shot the 17-year-old Martin during a confrontation inside a gated community in Sanford, Florida, just outside Orlando. Martin, who was black, was unarmed when he was killed.</blockquote>
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<a href="http://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/no-federal-civil-rights-charges-against-george-zimmerman-trayvon-martin-n311866">NBC</a></div>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
Zimmerman was acquitted of all charges. He was charged with second-degree murder, and jurors also had the option of convicting him of the lesser charge of manslaughter. He said that he was acting in self-defense when he killed Martin, 17, during an altercation in a gated community in Sanford, Florida, on Feb. 26, 2012.</blockquote>
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These are the only two examples I was able to find of summary statements that do not make crucial assertions that directly contradict key evidence.</div>
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<b>Addendum 4: post-trial revelations from Rachel Jeanteal</b></div>
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In post-trial interviews Rachel Jeantel opined that Martin threw the first punch but said Zimmerman didn’t need to shoot him because Martin was only giving him a “whoop ass,” not trying to kill him. Why did Martin want to "whoop ass" Zimmerman, if not kill him? The likely motive can be seen in Martin <a href="http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/1307/15/pmt.01.html">calling</a> Zimmerman a “cracka”: </div>
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PIERS MORGAN: C-R-A-C-K-A? </blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
RACHEL JEANTEL: Yes, and that's a person who act like they are police.</blockquote>
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It seems that Martin did not like to have someone monitoring his activity for possible criminal intent, which is not surprising for someone who’s Twitter handle was “<a href="http://dailycaller.com/2012/03/26/the-daily-caller-obtains-trayvon-martins-tweets/">no-limits-nigga</a>.” Zimmerman was trying to put limits on him, trying to make sure he couldn’t get away with any crimes. That's not going to work for someone whose <a href="http://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2013/05/new_evidence_shows_trayvons_life_unraveling.html">texts</a> with friends indicate that drug use, fighting and stealing were all on his “no limits” agenda. </div>
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In the months before his death Trayvon had been <a href="http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2120504/Trayvon-Martin-case-He-suspended-times-caught-burglary-tool.html">suspended</a> from school three times for drug use, graffiti, and burglary. There is also <a href="http://theconservativetreehouse.com/2012/05/19/trayvons-fight-club-the-inconvienient-truth/">video</a> of him orchestrating an arranged MMA-type fight, so what else was he going to do when a some “creepy ass cracker” tried to put limits on him? Jeantel tried to put it in street terms for Morgan.</div>
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She didn’t think the jury was racist, she just thought the problem with having so many whites on the jury was that they didn’t understand, as a black person would that, that Martin was not actually gong to kill Zimmerman, but just “<a href="http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/1307/15/pmt.01.html">whoop ass</a>” beating, not even as bad as a more serious “bashing”: </div>
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MORGAN: Because of the make-up of the jury? Do you think it was just wrong that you had no black people on the jury at all? </blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
JEANTEL: No, not that. They don't understand, they understand -- he was just bashed or he was killed. When somebody bashes like blood people, trust me, the area I live, that's not bashing. That's just called whoop ass.</blockquote>
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In another <a href="http://www.breitbart.com/blog/2013/07/17/rachel-jeantel-says-martin-threw-the-first-punch/">interview</a> with Marc Lamont Hill Jeantel said she thinks it was Martin who threw the first punch:</div>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
At some point a fight breaks out, who swings–who hits who first in your mind?” Jeantel replies “In my mind, I believe Trayvon. It was Trayvon…</blockquote>
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She also <a href="http://www.breitbart.com/blog/2013/07/17/rachel-jeantel-says-martin-threw-the-first-punch/">repeated</a> her view that Zimmerman didn’t have to shoot Martin because Martin wasn’t actually going to kill him: </div>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
Hill pointed out “George Zimmerman’s defenders would say well, if he didn’t pull out a gun, if Trayvon was whoopin’ his ass he could have killed George Zimmerman.” Jeantel replies “No. Trust me. That’s not killing. You have a big bruise, you don’t see inside your skin. You might have a little stitches.” Jeantel adds “He [Trayvon] would have fight him and run.”</blockquote>
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Jeantel’s sense of Martin’s actions dovetails closely with what Zimmerman says happened, with the exception that Zimmerman says Martin told him that he was going to kill him.</div>
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The interview part of Jeantel’s story did not come out in the trial but it was all widely reported and it is all pointed to by what did come out in the trial: that Martin had been back by his father’s fiancée’s house before the fatal confrontation.</div>
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If he went back out in search of Zimmerman, Jeantel is telling us that the reason was to give Zimmerman at least a “whoop ass.” None of which keeps our agenda-driven media from writing as if no evidence ever came out and the verdict is a mystery. They are even still using the original misleading pictures of Trayvon Martin looking like an innocent child.</div>
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<b>Addendum 5: the media still refuses to show Martin as he saw himself</b></div>
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Seventeen year old Trayvon Martin’s own chosen public image was aggressively thuggish. Here is his “no-limits-nigga” <a href="http://dailycaller.com/2012/03/26/the-daily-caller-obtains-trayvon-martins-tweets/">Twitter avatar</a>, trying to look like a rap-gangster, showing off his removable gold-colored “grill”:</div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhLjS2eljiPhyphenhyphenyd0uKk7i5Z_arLjixwWkS0Mid3pAp8pwcnBJ1YCqYs2zkhcQJnLvUoWvXrTvqr55k5uy_3rnSQtUbdvH2cDz-72CUXF4XzThc2dtbgXRFzEut2RMmCTgnZPlHcpw/s1600/Martin_no-limits-nigga_twitter-avatar.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="137" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhLjS2eljiPhyphenhyphenyd0uKk7i5Z_arLjixwWkS0Mid3pAp8pwcnBJ1YCqYs2zkhcQJnLvUoWvXrTvqr55k5uy_3rnSQtUbdvH2cDz-72CUXF4XzThc2dtbgXRFzEut2RMmCTgnZPlHcpw/s320/Martin_no-limits-nigga_twitter-avatar.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
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Here is Martin’s “T33ZY TAUGHT M3” <a href="http://dailycaller.com/2012/03/29/second-trayvon-martin-twitter-feed-identified/">Twitter avatar</a>, where he tweeted, “Plzz shoot da #mf dat lied 2 u!”:</div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjvXMDlRINrH0Bc3zLLdUSgTohacw5gud9CAMFoRaJHb6IEubw5JTI7XTyCYN3ANg2vMK_VW4uxy54RRNM6S-H0rwwZHW4T0ylkpZAU7p3eM3DKiwJfITS7OA1iQkIqYUy8DJKh1g/s1600/Martin_2nd-Twitter-Avatar.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjvXMDlRINrH0Bc3zLLdUSgTohacw5gud9CAMFoRaJHb6IEubw5JTI7XTyCYN3ANg2vMK_VW4uxy54RRNM6S-H0rwwZHW4T0ylkpZAU7p3eM3DKiwJfITS7OA1iQkIqYUy8DJKh1g/s320/Martin_2nd-Twitter-Avatar.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
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But the press still refuses to show Martin as he saw himself, instead using the same wholesome looking picture they used from the beginning to depict Trayvon as an innocent child murdered by a racist “white Hispanic.” Here is the still video frame that <a href="http://abc30.com/news/doj-to-announce-no-charges-in-trayvon-martins-death/532561/">ABC</a> selected to head their coverage of the DOJ announcement:</div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiL-B4QaMkavMTM5homwvvea0GxQ9J7yDVQ7LuQ76peLelu7v_EXhad8t_szY7mzIsuioAvJkbO9jmfycVqr5AZ1_w8pjruIzjtRYoPhJKjdI3hVQUsTKG7WKGjb6CLGhc8KFfXnA/s1600/ABC+leads+with+12+yr+old+Trayvon+in+2015.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="241" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiL-B4QaMkavMTM5homwvvea0GxQ9J7yDVQ7LuQ76peLelu7v_EXhad8t_szY7mzIsuioAvJkbO9jmfycVqr5AZ1_w8pjruIzjtRYoPhJKjdI3hVQUsTKG7WKGjb6CLGhc8KFfXnA/s320/ABC+leads+with+12+yr+old+Trayvon+in+2015.png" width="320" /></a></div>
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Here is how the 17 year old <a href="http://www.tampabay.com/news/a-review-of-the-evidence-released-in-the-trayvon-martin-case/1230750">five-eleven, 158 pound</a> Martin <a href="http://assets.nydailynews.com/polopoly_fs/1.1081561!/img/httpImage/image.jpg_gen/derivatives/article_970/martin21n-1-web.jpg">actually looked</a> on the night of his death, approaching the counter at the 7-11 a half mile from the gated community where he was staying. This is no little boy:</div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhzwsB6lL9nX9aNarjr4AmY1ghetlNvrniLvPSOsKJiw-J56l45gSt8r3eFBFaD0icQHdZ88EM_iVntjz2XElqCh8PDGckJB6MWILi5iEtE4BsDMBTZgYF5GpyTLf6lGlI7PTGd4w/s1600/Martin_7-Eleven.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="195" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhzwsB6lL9nX9aNarjr4AmY1ghetlNvrniLvPSOsKJiw-J56l45gSt8r3eFBFaD0icQHdZ88EM_iVntjz2XElqCh8PDGckJB6MWILi5iEtE4BsDMBTZgYF5GpyTLf6lGlI7PTGd4w/s320/Martin_7-Eleven.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
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Showing Martin’s imposing figure and his ugly self-image would help to de-mystify the jury verdict that upheld Zimmerman’s self-defense claim but our Democrat-dominated press obviously does not want this verdict de-mystified. Instead of explaining it they would rather un-explain it, creating a false narrative of black racial victimization that they believe works in their political favor.</div>
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<div class="blogger-post-footer">All content copyright © Alec Rawls, 2004-. Non-commercial use allowed with attribution. Commercial republication with permission. Please contact alec@rawls.org.</div>Alec Rawlshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18106800937399442588noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7347736.post-8694584357231439712015-06-27T14:42:00.000-07:002015-07-13T13:43:02.711-07:00The Supreme Court's gay marriage decision destroys the concept of tolerance, conflating it with approval, which is a near oppositeIt's a huge error, and one that just lost us the battle for Islamic hearts and minds. The appeal for tolerance is moral and right. A demand that society <i>approve</i> of homosexual relationships is morally insane, and will destroy whatever moral standing we had to appeal on the world stage for tolerance of homosexuality.<br />
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Homosexuals have a right to be tolerated but <i>no one</i> has a right to approval and marriage is society's stamp of approval, thus the only legitimate path to gay marriage is through majority support, a path that SCOTUS has now cut off with their <i><a href="http://www.cnn.com/2015/06/26/politics/scotus-opinion-document-obergefell-hodges/">Obergefell v. Hodges</a></i> decision. To do it they annihilated the distinction between tolerance and approval, which is the foundation of all of our liberty. Five half-educated lawyers who don't even grasp the distinction between tolerance and approval are completely oblivious to the magnitude of the pillar that they just removed from our system of liberty.<br />
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It's like knocking out a bottom corner of the Empire State building to make room for some extra parking. They have absolutely no idea what they have done, and homosexuals, who will always be a very small minority, utterly dependent on the tolerance of society, will suffer as much as anyone by the Court's destruction of the principle of tolerance. Do homosexuals think that their need for tolerance is past? Have they looked at the world recently?<br />
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Tolerance is in for the fight of its life and yet our system of law, at the very highest level, has suddenly wadded it together with approval, which is a near opposite. It is not tolerance to abide what you approve. Tolerance is abiding what you <i>don't</i> approve, and <i>that</i> is the one thing necessary for pluralism to exist. So we have this stab at the heart of pluralism, just as the totalitarian communists, feminists, and other groupists in the U.S., and the totalitarian Islamofascists everywhere, are ascendant in their power.<br />
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Tolerance has taken a huge hit, with implications far beyond this one issue. We now no longer have a coherent legal concept of tolerance to defend. How are we going to sell tolerance to the Islamic world when we have just declared that it means approval, that to be civilized according to our understanding of natural right Muslims don’t just have to stop throwing homosexuals off of rooftops but that they have to give their blessing to homosexuality and consecrate homosexual relations with their rites of social and religious commitment?<br />
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Sorry, but that declaration is <i>wrong</i>, and the Court’s assertion that it is right just lost us the battle for the hearts and minds of the Muslim world. If the Court was right then losing Muslims would be okay. If we have to have WWIII with these people then we have to have WWIII. Follow right and let the chips fall where they may, but we followed <i>wrong</i>. Natural right demands tolerance, <i>not</i> approval, and <i>nothing could be more basic</i>. The violation of our own fundamental principles here is immense and will be debilitating.<br />
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<b>Scott Walker's facebook post on the Supreme Court's sudden invention of a right to gay marriage</b><br />
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My remarks above were composed as a comment on Walker's <a href="https://www.facebook.com/scottkwalker/posts/10155683028900405">post</a>, which I think is very good. Here is Governor Walker's opening paragraph:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
I believe this Supreme Court decision is a grave mistake. Five unelected judges have taken it upon themselves to redefine the institution of marriage, an institution that the author of this decision acknowledges ‘has been with us for millennia.’ In 2006 I, like millions of Americans, voted to amend our state constitution to protect the institution of marriage from exactly this type of judicial activism. The states are the proper place for these decisions to be made, and as we have seen repeatedly over the last few days, we will need a conservative president who will appoint men and women to the Court who will faithfully interpret the Constitution and laws of our land without injecting their own political agendas. As a result of this decision, the only alternative left for the American people is to support an amendment to the U.S. Constitution to reaffirm the ability of the states to continue to define marriage.</blockquote>
Yes, the issue must be left to majority rule. As Governor of Wisconsin it is fully appropriate for Walker to assert the primacy of state majorities. National majority-rule could also be legitimate, and given our Constitutions's "<a href="https://www.law.cornell.edu/constitution/articleiv">full faith and credit</a>" clause (that "Full faith and credit shall be given in each state to the public acts, records, and judicial proceedings of every other state), a national majority decision may be required, but when decisions can be lived with locally then the more local majority rule affords more liberty and is preferable on that basis.<br />
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Walker also correctly identifies one of the key legal points: that what the Supreme Court has done is change the <i>definition</i> of marriage. This fact vitiates the Court's equal protection argument. Homosexuals have always had an equal legal opportunity to marry someone of the opposite sex (the millennia-old definition of marriage), but what they wanted was something else entirely new, something that no one else had ever had before: legal sanction for marrying someone of the <i>same</i> sex (a new definition of marriage). But the equal protection clause cannot redefine marriage. It can only require equal treatment for the same activity engaged by different persons, not between <i>different activities</i> engaged by different persons.<br />
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I'm surprised to find myself agreeing with Huckabee about anything, but he also <a href="http://hotair.com/archives/2015/06/26/mike-huckabee-i-will-not-bow-to-the-court-on-this-gay-marriage-decision-any-more-than-the-founders-bowed-to-british-tyranny/">nails</a> this one:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
This ruling is not about marriage equality, it’s about marriage redefinition.</blockquote>
This is the difference between gay marriage and the old laws against interracial marriage, which the Court rightly struck down in <i><a href="https://www.law.cornell.edu/supremecourt/text/388/1">Loving v. Virginia</a></i>. In <i>Loving</i> interracial couples were being denied the ability to marry a chosen mate of the opposite sex. They were not seeking to redefine marriage, only seeking equal access to marriage as it had always been defined. Redefining marriage is something altogether different which goes beyond the scope of the simple concept of equal protection.<br />
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<i>Loving</i> does deserve some of the blame for the current debacle, but only because the Supremes were not prescient in that case about how liberty rights to engage in intimate relationships were about to become dis-entangled from the institution of marriage. I come back to this history in the last section of this post.<br />
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<b>The distinction between tolerance and approval derives from John Stuart Mill's distinction between "direct" and "indirect" interests</b><br />
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My 2009 essay, "<a href="http://errortheory.blogspot.com/2009/06/gay-marriage-is-not-right.html">Gay marriage is not a right</a>," explains how the principle of maximum equal liberty (arguably implied by the "inalienable rights" of the Declaration of Independence) give rise to John Stuart Mill's famous principle of liberty, where "direct interests" (interests that impinge physically on a person's liberty or security) must take complete priority (what modern moral philosophers might call "lexical priority") over indirect interests (vicarious interests in what other people are doing or in what others think about what you are doing).<br />
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This distinction between direct and indirect interests gives rise in turn to the distinction between tolerance and approval, so the lexical priority of direct over indirect interests (necessary for the securing of maximum equal liberty) becomes in turn a lexical priority for tolerance over approval.<br />
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Approval interests (such as the homosexual interest in gay marriage) are to be given zero weight against the need for tolerance (or direct liberty interests). Thus for instance, even if homosexual marriage were to be granted social approval via legitimate means (by majority decision), it still could never justify punishment for those who refuse to participate (by baking cakes, conducting ceremonies, etcetera). Toleration of that personal preference must take absolute precedence over anyone demands for approval.<br />
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The connection to Mill's distinction between direct and indirect interests is well worth going into (the link above) if you are interested. Legal analysis does not get to these moral-philosophical fundamentals, thus is no surprise that five Supreme Court justices, who know nothing but legal analysis, and clearly do not care very much about even its principles and warnings, would turn out to be so incompetent when they start trying to identify unenumerated rights. They need to know a lot more than they do and have a lot more circumspection, but the relevant moral philosophy <i>is</i> clear, and shows the right answer, if we follow it.<br />
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Ideally we should seek to articulate the maximum equal liberty implied by the inalienable rights of the Declaration, but if it is adopted as a legal protection it should be adopted by amendment. In very limited fashion and only when necessary it might be legitimate to use the inalienable rights of the declaration to help discern the unenumerated rights of the Ninth Amendment. What the courts should obviously never do is proclaim unenumerated rights that go directly against the maximum equal liberty implied by the Declaration, as the Supreme Court has done by conflating tolerance and approval (direct and indirect interests) in its <i>Obergefell</i> decision.<br />
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<b>Indications are that the Court, after wadding tolerance and approval together, will next get the priority between tolerance and approval backwards</b><br />
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It isn't just that gay marriage, not even considered legitimate by any but a tiny fraction of politicians just five years ago, is now asserted to be required, it is that everyone whose religious beliefs bar them from participating in such marriages are now under threat of compulsory participation.<br />
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This is the subject of the Walker's last facebook paragraph, and the powerful statement from Texas Governor <a href="http://gov.texas.gov/news/press-release/21131">Greg Abbott</a>. Both promise to vigorously enforce all existing state legal protections for religious freedom so that constituents will not face legal liability for refusing to be personally involved with gay marriage, a concern that has been raised by a <a href="http://blogs.findlaw.com/free_enterprise/2015/02/in-gay-couples-wedding-cake-lawsuit-ore-bakery-loses-again.html?DCMP=cfeatures">wave</a> <a href="http://www.csmonitor.com/USA/USA-Update/2015/0122/Denver-baker-sued-for-refusing-to-write-anti-gay-slogans-on-cake">of</a> <a href="http://www.youngcons.com/christian-florist-sued-pens-defiant-letter/">suits</a> <a href="http://www.umc.org/news-and-media/gay-couple-files-complaint-for-refusal-of-wedding">under</a> <a href="http://www.foxnews.com/opinion/2014/10/20/city-threatens-to-arrest-ministers-who-refuse-to-perform-same-sex-weddings.html">state</a>-<a href="http://www.theblaze.com/stories/2013/04/16/lesbian-couple-wins-discrimination-lawsuit-against-religious-bed-and-breakfast-owner-who-denied-them-a-room/">level</a> pro-gay-marriage laws, and a concern which SCOTUS pointedly failed to allay. As noted by Ed Morrissey at <a href="http://hotair.com/archives/2015/06/26/scotus-to-churches-hey-no-worries-you-can-still-advocate-for-traditional-marriage/">Hot Air</a>:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
Kennedy, who brought up the topic, could have written explicitly that houses of worship and individuals have a First Amendment right not to <i>participate</i> in these ceremonies. That issue has been raised on a number of occasions in the courts. The absence of any such language sends a very disturbing message on religious freedom, in this and many other contexts.</blockquote>
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Without understanding the lexical priority of direct over indirect interests, and the lexical priority of tolerance over approval that derives from it, the Court going forward will have no basis for getting this priority right, or even recognizing that a distinction between tolerance and approval needs to be made. Indeed, given all they have gotten wrong, we can be pretty sure that the follow-on questions are going to be decided just as egregiously.<br />
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And so here we are, where support for the tiny minority of homosexuals, who are utterly dependent on the tolerance of society, has been transformed into a political-legal war of extreme <i>intolerance</i> for those who do not approve of their relationships. It is a complete inversion of the necessary priority of tolerance over approval, led now by the Supreme Court of the United States, and if it is not reversed it is going to destroy this country, which had until now been the leading light of liberty in the world. Suddenly we are looking more and more like just another fount of unprincipled illiberalism.<br />
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<b>As so often happens, Justice Thomas is the only one who gets the basic issue right</b><br />
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Thomas's <i>Obergefell</i> <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/volokh-conspiracy/wp/2015/06/26/of-marriage-and-liberty-thoughts-inspired-by-justice-thomas-obergefell-dissent/">dissent</a> does not make the distinction between tolerance and approval but he does makes a closely related distinction, noting that protected liberties have never been taken to include rights to government provided entitlements, as the particular emoluments of legal marriage status (and the government provided stamp-of-approval), can properly be classed.<br />
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Tolerance (liberty) takes absolute priority over <i>all</i> other concerns, be they claims of entitlement or demands for approval.<br />
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<b>Statement by Grant Starrett on the <i>Obergefell v. Hodges</i> decision</b><br />
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Grant Starrett, now running for Congress in Tennessee, also has a nice <a href="http://www.grantfortn.com/press_releases">statement</a> on the Supreme Court's terrible decision:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
If we desire to live in a constitutional republic, we ought to start recognizing its boundaries. The Constitution has power because the sovereign American people affirmed a particular interpretation at the time that its language was passed. I challenge the notion that any drafter of the 14th Amendment, much less the Framers of the Constitution, possibly imagined, in their wildest dreams, that what they were writing would require that every state give marriage licenses to same sex couples. Unfortunately, five unelected lawyers have overridden the will of the 80% of Tennessee voters who approved a constitutional amendment guaranteeing traditional marriage. I fear the vast implications of activist judges, unmoored from the original meaning of our Constitution, imposing their agenda through reinterpretations of our founding documents.</blockquote>
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Exactly right, and together with the Obamacare decision (<i>Burwell v. King</i>) where the Court now asserts the power to <a href="http://pjmedia.com/instapundit/209419/">rewrite any law</a> so as to better suit the law's stated objectives (the very core of legislative activity), the Court has deligitimized itself in a way we have never seen before.<br />
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<a href="http://www.theblaze.com/stories/2015/06/26/12-must-read-quotes-from-scalias-blistering-same-sex-marriage-dissent/">Justice Scalia</a> says of the Obamacare decision (which interpreted-away the fully intentional limitation of subsidies to state's that created their own Obamacare exchanges):<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
This is a naked judicial claim to legislative—indeed, super-legislative—power; a claim fundamentally at odds with our system of government.</blockquote>
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<b><i>Loving v. Virginia </i>and the untangling of liberty rights from marriage over the last 50+ years</b><br />
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If there is no right to approval, or to receive society’s stamp of approval via state sanctioned marriage, why did the Court in <i>Loving</i> <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loving_v._Virginia">declare</a> that:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
Marriage is one of the “basic civil rights of man,” fundamental to our very existence and survival. </blockquote>
The California Supremes made a <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_marriage_in_California">similar declaration</a> in 1949, eighteen years before <i>Loving</i>, when they struck down California's ban on interracial marriage:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
Marriage is thus something more than a civil contract subject to regulation by the state; it is a fundamental right of free men.</blockquote>
These declarations were not unreasonable in their time. In 1949 access to the institution of marriage was very much a liberty interest of couples because sex outside of marriage was illegal in pretty much every state of the union. That is, the law did not <i>tolerate</i> those sexual relationships that the state did not <i>approve</i> via the institution of state sanctioned marriage, and things were not much different legally in 1967.<br />
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Those were the bad old days, before the nation made so much progress in enforcing toleration for non-approved relationships, but with the Court’s 2003 ruling in <i><a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20040606222439/http://www.nationalreview.com/comment/comment-barnett071003.asp">Lawrence v. Texas</a></i>, striking down the criminalization of homosexual sex by the State of Texas, there has no longer been any criminalization of adult sexual relations outside of marriage anywhere in the United States. That removes most of the individual liberty-rights aspect from marriage, leaving mostly the approval aspect.<br />
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Established liberty of contract eliminates most of the other liberty issues surrounding marriage. Unmarried heterosexual and homosexual couples (or groups) can agree by contract to pretty much any sharing of income and property that they want, including terms for dissolution. Such contracts may have been off the table when the relationships themselves were illegal, but now that they are legal, these contracts can be entered.<br />
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There are some weighty other complements to marriage, like the ability to adopt, but there are good reasons why society might not want to allow homosexual couples to adopt. Adoption is certainly a strong interest, but it involves third parties that keep the issue from being a matter of right for couples who may want to adopt. Thus relational liberty rights are pretty much all protected outside of marriage now, leaving not much exclusively to marriage except for society’s stamp of approval.<br />
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It was never technically correct for the courts to say that there was a right to marriage. There was a right to the liberty interests that were once bound up with the institution of marriage, liberty interests that have since been separated from the institution and protected independently of marriage. One can understand the earlier courts' conflation of marriage with liberty rights, given that marriage and liberty rights were in fact tied together within the marriage laws and within the whole society's understanding of marriage at that time, but that conflation belongs to the past. The liberty-rights aspect of marriage—the ability to live together and be intimate and make a life together—has already been secured without couples having to be married, leaving mainly the social approval aspect of marriage as the exclusive domain of the married.<br />
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This situation is recognized in Justice Scalia's argument that marriage is not a freedom at all but a restraint on freedom (his argument #7 <a href="http://www.theblaze.com/stories/2015/06/26/12-must-read-quotes-from-scalias-blistering-same-sex-marriage-dissent/">here</a>). This is in fact the situation today. There was a time when the liberty to have sexual relations and to live together as a couple was tied to marriage, but now marriage confers no liberties that are not available to the unmarried, only obligations and restrictions.<br />
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History thus proves that marriage and liberty rights are not necessarily tied together, and that to be accurate they should have been separated by the <i>Loving</i> and California courts. Marriage itself was never a right. The only rights at stake in these cases were the liberty rights that were at that time bound up with marriage, but have since been separated from marriage.<br />
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The second problem with the earlier cases, especially <i>Loving,</i> is that their invocations of marriage as a “basic” and “fundamental” right do not actually do any work. <i>Loving</i> was fully decided by the simple principle of equal protection, which applies the same whether the law in question restricts a right or grants a privilege. It didn’t actually matter in <i>Loving</i> whether <i>anyone</i> has a right to marry. Once the state allows <i>some</i> male-female couples to marry it must allow <i>any</i> adult male-female couple to marry, absent some compelling state interest, such as the avoidance of genetically transmitted disease. The invocations of a right to marriage were completely unnecessary in these cases and hence moot. They are <i>dicta</i> masquerading as <i>acta</i>.<br />
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Thirdly, marriage was certainly not recognized as a basic <i>individual</i> right until very recently. For most of recorded history, including Western history, an offspring’s freedom to marry was very much subject to parental authority, at least until the offspring had gotten beyond the normal marrying age, and religious authority was also in play. If a given marriage violated church principles then it would not be performed. These may have been matters of private choice, outside of government control, but that does not mean they were matters of <i>individual</i> right.<br />
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So <i>Loving</i> and California were not just putting forth flowery <i>dicta</i> masquerading as <i>acta</i>, they were putting out historically inaccurate <i>dicta</i>. The individual liberties that they were proclaiming as historic and fundamental were in actuality liberties that were receiving legal protection for the first time, under the handy excuse of the need to equally protect these supposedly longstanding liberties.<br />
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It was a nice trick, and was part of the advance of individual liberty in intimate affairs, which was a wholly legitimate objective, and with the decision in <i>Lawrence v. Texas</i> was fully achieved. But to take the next step, as the Court just did in <i>Obergefell v. Hodges</i>, and demand <i>approval</i> for what is finally being tolerated, is to turn this whole advance of liberty on its head.<br />
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We are now back to the bad old says where only what is approved is tolerated, except now approval is not determined by majority rule but by a small minority, the keening demands of <a href="http://www.gallup.com/poll/183383/americans-greatly-overestimate-percent-gay-lesbian.aspx">4%</a> of the population, backed by five unaccountable loose-cannon ideologues in robes. </div>
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<div class="blogger-post-footer">All content copyright © Alec Rawls, 2004-. Non-commercial use allowed with attribution. Commercial republication with permission. Please contact alec@rawls.org.</div>Alec Rawlshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18106800937399442588noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7347736.post-57524710526476083652015-06-22T16:13:00.002-07:002015-06-22T23:12:04.959-07:00Doesn't UBER know that criminals seek out "gun free zones"?<b>My letter in response to UBER's new prohibition against drivers or customers travelling armed (sent to the entire list of UBER's city by city "partners")</b><br />
<br />
Can whoever receives this message please pass it along to UBER leadership, because if this new firearms prohibition is not reversed ASAP your company is absolutely going belly up.<br />
<br />
“[t]o ensure that everyone using the Uber digital platform—both driver-partners and riders—feels safe and comfortable using the service… Uber and its affiliates therefore prohibit possessing firearms of any kind in a vehicle.”<br />
<br />
<a href="https://www.uber.com/legal/firearms-prohibition-policy">https://www.uber.com/legal/firearms-prohibition-policy</a><br />
<br />
Only an absolute freaking moron feels safe in a “gun free zone.” Out of all the mass shootings since 1950 <a href="http://www.foxnews.com/opinion/2015/06/18/gun-free-zones-easy-target-for-killers.html">all but two</a> occurred in “gun free” zones, the most recent being in Charleston last week. Mass shooters actively seek out defenseless victims and COMMON CRIMINALS ARE EXACTLY THE SAME!<br />
<br />
With this gun prohibition announcement the rate of violent robberies targeting Uber vehicles is about to shoot up, which does not make any rational customer or driver feel safe.<br />
<br />
In New York and California and a few other states it doesn’t make much difference because the criminals know that EVERYONE is disarmed. They won’t need to target Uber drivers to find undefended targets, but in the majority of the country, where gun rights are protected and undefended targets are hard to identify, UBER is putting a neon target on the back of every UBER driver and every UBER customer: “rare guaranteed-defenseless victim here!”<br />
<br />
You are flushing your company down the toilet. Why? Because you hate the United States Constitution? What the HELL is the matter with you?<br />
<br />
Not only are you making your employees and customers targets of violent crime but you are also alienating half of your customers. What kind of business decision is that? You are sacrificing the viability of your business to radical left-wing politics.<br />
<br />
Does this reflect the real wishes of the leaders of your company, or was this idiocy somehow foisted on you by some political mole out to subvert your company for his own purposes?<br />
<br />
Whatever the case, if you want to save your company you had better get this turned around FAST. I’d hate to see you all go out of business because some moral imbecile decided that his liberty-hating politics matter more than your company’s success.<br />
<br />
And to all the “Partners” I am ccing here, it will be up to YOU to report to upper management how much your business is dropping now that it is company policy not to let your concealed-carry customers ride anymore. You’ll know the facts of the matter before the national management does, and if you wait until they figure it out via collapsing business and profits it will be too late. <br />
<br />
Sincerely,<br />
Alec Rawls<br />
Palo Alto<br />
<br />
<br />
If you want to send your own feedback, here is the <a href="http://ridesharedashboard.com/local-uber-support-email-address/">list</a> of “partners” email addresses. I broke it down into four sub-lists. I would have used the national UBER web-sites' contact contact email or contact form, but I couldn't find one, so this is what they get:<br />
<br />
A-C<br />
partnersakron@uber.com<br />
partnersabq@uber.com<br />
partnersamarillo@uber.com<br />
partnersAnnArbor@uber.com<br />
partnersannapolis@uber.com<br />
partnersash@uber.com<br />
partnersatl@uber.com<br />
partnersmgm@uber.com<br />
partnersAustin@uber.com<br />
partners.bakersfield@uber.com<br />
partnersbaltimore@uber.com<br />
partnersbtr@uber.com<br />
partnersroa@uber.com<br />
partnersboston@uber.com<br />
partnerschs@uber.com<br />
partnerscharlotte@uber.com<br />
partnerscva@uber.com<br />
partnerschicago@uber.com<br />
partnerscincinnati@uber.com<br />
partnerscleveland@uber.com<br />
partnersCS@uber.com<br />
partnersclb@uber.com<br />
partnerscolumbus@uber.com<br />
partnersconn@uber.com<br />
partnerscorpus@uber.com<br />
<br />
D-K<br />
partnersdallas@uber.com<br />
partnersdayton@uber.com<br />
partnersdenver@uber.com<br />
partnersdetroit@uber.com<br />
partnersELPASO@uber.com<br />
partners.eugene@uber.com<br />
partnersfyv@uber.com<br />
partnersfay@uber.com<br />
partners.flint@uber.com<br />
partners.fresno@uber.com<br />
partnersgvl@uber.com<br />
partnersgrandrapids@uber.com<br />
partnersgrvl@uber.com<br />
sociosgdl@uber.com<br />
partners.halifax@uber.com<br />
partnershrva@uber.com<br />
partnersny@uber.com<br />
partnershonolulu@uber.com<br />
partnersHouston@uber.com<br />
partnersindianapolis@uber.com<br />
partnersIE@uber.com<br />
partnersjax@uber.com<br />
partnerskalamazoo@uber.com<br />
partnersKC@uber.com<br />
partnersknx@uber.com<br />
<br />
L-P<br />
partnerslansing@uber.com<br />
partners.lexington@uber.com<br />
partnerslincoln@uber.com<br />
partnersla@uber.com<br />
partners.louisville@uber.com<br />
partnerslubbock@uber.com<br />
partners.madison@uber.com<br />
partnersmemphis@uber.com<br />
partnersmiami@uber.com<br />
partnersmilwaukee@uber.com<br />
partnersmsp@uber.com<br />
partners.modesto@uber.com<br />
partnersmyr@uber.com<br />
partnersnashville@uber.com<br />
partnersNJ@uber.com<br />
partners.new.jersey.shore@uber.com<br />
partnersny@uber.com<br />
partnersokc@uber.com<br />
partners.omaha@uber.com<br />
partnersoc@uber.com<br />
partnersorl@uber.com<br />
partners.oxford@uber.com<br />
partnerspalm@uber.com<br />
partnersphilly@uber.com<br />
partnersphx@uber.com<br />
partnersgso@uber.com<br />
partnerspittsburgh@uber.com<br />
partnersprovidence@uber.com<br />
<br />
Q-Z<br />
partners.raleigh@uber.com<br />
partnersrva@uber.com<br />
partnerssac@uber.com<br />
partners.salem@uber.com<br />
partnersSLC@uber.com<br />
partnersSA@uber.com<br />
partnersSD@uber.com<br />
partnerssf@uber.com<br />
partnersslo@uber.com<br />
partnerssb@uber.com<br />
partnersseattle@uber.com<br />
partnerssouthbend@uber.com<br />
partnersspokane@uber.com<br />
partnerstacoma@uber.com<br />
partnerstal@uber.com<br />
partnerstampa@uber.com<br />
partnerstoledo@uber.com<br />
partnerstoronto@uber.com<br />
partnerstucson@uber.com<br />
partnerstulsa@uber.com<br />
partnerstcl@uber.com<br />
partnersvancouver.wa@uber.com<br />
partners.ventura@uber.com<br />
partnerswaco@uber.com<br />
partnersdc@uber.com<br />
partnerswichita@uber.com<br />
partnerswnc@uber.com<br />
<div>
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<div class="blogger-post-footer">All content copyright © Alec Rawls, 2004-. Non-commercial use allowed with attribution. Commercial republication with permission. Please contact alec@rawls.org.</div>Alec Rawlshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18106800937399442588noreply@blogger.com14tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7347736.post-62173836086920658832015-06-15T20:59:00.001-07:002015-06-16T00:15:50.640-07:00De Blasio brings in NRA's Operation Exile to offset the massive damage he has done to NYC law enforcement<br />
CBS New York headline:<br />
<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<i><b>"ATF To Join NYPD In Fighting New York City Gun Crimes"</b></i></blockquote>
<br />
Getting Democratic presidents to enforce existing federal gun laws has always been near impossible. Bill Clinton fiercely resisted the NRA-promoted "Operation Exile," which calls for systematic enforcement of the federal mandatory-minimum 5-year sentence for felons who are caught in possession of firearms, or use firearms in the commission of other crimes.<br />
<br />
Everywhere Operation Exile was employed it led to immediate and drastic reductions in violent crime, which is precisely why Democrats refused to enforce it. Operation Exile proved that the way to stop crime is to disarm the criminals, not the law abiding citizens, exposing the Democrats' wish-list of gun-control policies, all of which focus on disarming law abiding citizens, as both unnecessary and wrong.<br />
<br />
So what changed in NYC? Mayor de Blasio has so undermined his own police department that crime is skyrocketing. To limit the political damage he has prevailed upon the feds to bring in the one enforcement strategy that everyone has known for 25 years will radically reduce crime almost overnight.<br />
<br />
So there is a small silver lining to de Blasio's monstrous immorality. He has done so much damage to NY that he is forced to resort to at least one rational policy to keep himself from being impeached. Still not right as often as a broken clock, but at least it's something.<br />
<br />
He isn't calling it Operation Exile. That would give too much credit to the NRA, but de Blasio's turn to the NRA's longstanding call to enforce existing federal laws shows that the left has known all along that the way to reduce crime is to go after convicts who possess guns and crimes committed with guns, which proves that their longstanding opposition to the enforcement of these laws is because they need dead bodies that they can use to try to demagogue citizens into turning against their own gun rights.<br />
<br />
<br />
<b>Fast and Furious was also about creating gun crimes that Democrats could use to demagogue against gun rights</b><br />
<br />
I <a href="http://errortheory.blogspot.com/2011/03/is-atf-gun-running-operation-ploy-to.html">wrote</a> about Fast and Furious a couple of years ago, and yes there is proof that the plan was to use the crimes committed my Mexican criminals using Fast and Furious guns to attack the gun shops that the ATF had enlisted to make the otherwise-illegal gun sales. The proof is that, before the Fast and Furious lid was blown off by the murder of Border Patrol agent Brian Terry, the ATF had <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20111012150744/http://pajamasmedia.com/blog/operation-fast-and-furious/">already used</a> their information about crimes committed with Fast and Furious guns to attack a number of the ATF-allied gun shops.<br />
<br />
ATF leaked the data to the <i>Washington Post</i>, which then ran a <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/story/2010/12/12/ST2010121203267.html">long piece</a> blaming Mexico's high level of gun crime on the supposed easy availability of guns in the United States (as if Mexican drug gangs are really buying their guns over the counter from highly regulated and very expensive U.S. gun shops when they can buy them wholesale from the Eastern European black market gun runners they are are already connected to via the drug trade).<br />
<br />
In sum Obama ordered the systematic violation of American gun laws in order to create a body count in Mexico that he could use to attack the constitutionally protected gun rights of his fellow citizens here at home. Richard Nixon's crimes were minuscule in comparison.<div class="blogger-post-footer">All content copyright © Alec Rawls, 2004-. Non-commercial use allowed with attribution. Commercial republication with permission. Please contact alec@rawls.org.</div>Alec Rawlshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18106800937399442588noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7347736.post-30946955277782921492014-10-25T19:32:00.000-07:002014-10-31T16:30:16.540-07:00What would Thucydides do? How to create negative atmospheric pressure in the Ebola hot-zone<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi6u_rulAR13A5C4LnSCChe5t495ovWPWxU8xuzzYpYxEQkmlp306Qtx0yHrUCNq56wNPw_nA30FouVkhy3koZfdNidho3S51xxhDFOPKzeMVYq38B5J642f8n-bUN37b-WlKKhlA/s1600/NegativePressure_Qualitair.png" imageanchor="1" style="background-color: white; font-family: pt-serif-1, pt-serif-2, 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 19.3333339691162px; line-height: 25.1680011749268px; margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi6u_rulAR13A5C4LnSCChe5t495ovWPWxU8xuzzYpYxEQkmlp306Qtx0yHrUCNq56wNPw_nA30FouVkhy3koZfdNidho3S51xxhDFOPKzeMVYq38B5J642f8n-bUN37b-WlKKhlA/s1600/NegativePressure_Qualitair.png" height="246" width="320" /></a><br />
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<div style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #404040; font-family: pt-serif-1, pt-serif-2, 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 1.1em; line-height: 1.3em; margin-bottom: 1em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">
<strong style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17.5px; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">(Crossposted at <a href="http://wattsupwiththat.com/2014/10/22/what-would-thucydides-do-how-to-create-negative-atmospheric-pressure-in-the-ebola-hot-zone/">Watts Up With That</a>)</strong></div>
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To keep pathogens from escaping, contagious disease laboratories and isolation rooms use negative atmospheric pressure (or negative relative air pressure)<span style="font-size: 1.1em; line-height: 1.3em;"> that pulls air in through all doors and cracks. Barriers are not enough. At the inevitable openings in the barriers, the movement of the pathogen must be inward, not outward. The same logic applies to the Ebola hot-zone countries of West Africa. Barriers in the form of travel restrictions and quarantines can help keep the contagion from spreading, but they cannot do the job by themselves. There has to be "negative air pressure," where it is safer for Ebola hot zone residents to</span><span style="font-size: 1.1em; line-height: 1.3em;"> stay put than to flee. </span></div>
<div style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #404040; font-family: pt-serif-1, pt-serif-2, 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 1.1em; line-height: 1.3em; margin-bottom: 1em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">
<span style="font-size: 1.1em; line-height: 1.3em;">That requires greatly reducing the rate of transmission within the hot zone, and the only way to achieve that is by using immune survivors to separate and treat the sick, a strategy developed by the Greeks 2400 years ago. The special challenge with ebola is how contagious it is to anyone who tries to provide care. By systematically hiring and developing a survivor-based treatment system that hurdle can be overcome. They can give aid without themselves becoming a vector of transmission, allowing the epidemic within the hot zone to be rolled back, reducing pressure to flee. </span></div>
<div style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #404040; font-family: pt-serif-1, pt-serif-2, 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 1.1em; line-height: 1.3em; margin-bottom: 1em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">
<span style="font-size: 1.1em; line-height: 1.3em;"> At present our national policies are working ever more powerfully in the opposite direction, creating strong incentives for infected and possibly infected people to flee to the United States from West Africa. </span><span style="font-size: 1.1em; line-height: 1.3em;">An example of a policy that is creating an undesirable “positive atmospheric pressure” in the Ebola hot-zone (or equivalently, a negative relative pressure in the United States) is the promise that CDC Director Tom Frieden issued last week, telling the world that if anyone arrives at a major American airport with history or symptoms that indicate possible Ebola infection they will be whisked straight to the hospital, providing the strongest possible incentive for people who think they might be infected to come here for treatment.</span></div>
<div style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #404040; font-family: pt-serif-1, pt-serif-2, 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 1.1em; line-height: 1.3em; margin-bottom: 1em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">
<span style="font-size: 1.1em; line-height: 1.3em;">At the same time, Frieden insists that travel from Liberia, Guinea and Sierra Leone to the United States should remain unrestricted, providing opportunity as well as incentive for hot-zone residents to flee here. From Frieden’s October 9</span><span style="border: 0px; bottom: 1ex; font-family: inherit; font-size: 14px; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; height: 0px; line-height: 0; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; position: relative; vertical-align: baseline;">th</span><a href="http://www.foxnews.com/opinion/2014/10/09/cdc-chief-why-dont-support-travel-ban-to-combat-ebola-outbreak/" style="border: 0px; color: #b26600; font-family: Arial; font-size: 17.5px; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.3em; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">interview</a><span style="font-size: 1.1em; line-height: 1.3em;"> </span><span style="font-size: 1.1em; line-height: 1.3em;">on Fox News:</span></div>
<blockquote style="background: none 0px 0px repeat scroll rgb(249, 249, 249); border: thin solid rgb(223, 223, 223); box-shadow: rgb(150, 150, 150) 6px 6px 6px; color: #404040; display: inline-block; font-family: Arial; font-size: 16px; font-style: italic; line-height: 20px; margin: 1px 24px 24px; outline: 0px; padding: 10px 12px 1px 50px; position: relative; vertical-align: baseline;">
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Staff from CDC and the Department of Homeland Security’s Customers & Border Protection will begin new layers of entry screening, first at John F. Kennedy International Airport in New York this Saturday, and in the following week at four additional airports … [which] … receive almost 95 percent of the American-bound travelers from the Ebola-affected countries.</div>
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Travelers from those countries will be escorted to an area of the airport set aside for screening. There they will be observed for signs of illness, asked a series of health and exposure questions, and given information on Ebola and information on monitoring themselves for symptoms for 21 days. Their temperature will be checked, and if there’s any concern about their health, they’ll be referred to the local public health authority for further evaluation or monitoring.</div>
</blockquote>
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<span style="font-size: 1.1em; line-height: 1.3em;">This funneling of hot-zone travelers through screening here in the U.S. was just made</span><span style="font-size: 1.1em; line-height: 1.3em;"> </span><a href="http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2014/10/21/ebola-travel-restrictions-dhs-screening-jfk-dulles-ohare-newark-atlanta/17655889/?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=twitter&dlvrit=206567" style="border: 0px; color: #b26600; font-family: Arial; font-size: 17.5px; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.3em; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">mandatory</a><span style="font-size: 1.1em; line-height: 1.3em;">, guaranteeing care to the possibly infected. The resulting outward pressure—motivating infected people to move to a previously uninfected continent—will spread the infection, not contain it. </span><span style="font-size: 1.1em; line-height: 1.3em;">Set aside that the CDC is supposed to give priority to American lives and should first and foremost work to keep Ebola from coming here, intercontinental spread of Ebola is a disaster for the whole world. Each breach of containment endangers everyone everywhere. </span></div>
<div style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #404040; font-family: pt-serif-1, pt-serif-2, 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; margin-bottom: 1em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">
<span style="font-size: 19.3333339691162px; line-height: 25.1680011749268px;">Broad screening by it self would be fine. We have always tried to stop contagion from entering our borders. But screening together with a refusal to apply travel restrictions is an invitation to disaster, creating an obvious and powerful negative pressure on our side of the Atlantic that will suck Ebola here in volume. </span></div>
<div style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #404040; font-family: pt-serif-1, pt-serif-2, 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; margin-bottom: 1em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">
<span style="font-size: 19.3333339691162px; line-height: 25.1680011749268px;"><b>Creating negative pressure in the hot zone is not so easy</b></span></div>
<div style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #404040; font-family: pt-serif-1, pt-serif-2, 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 1.1em; line-height: 1.3em; margin-bottom: 1em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">
<span style="font-size: 1.1em; line-height: 1.3em;">So long as the contagion keeps expanding within the hot-zone itself the pressure on residents to flee will keep increasing. But fighting transmission inside the hot zone is a labor intensive enterprise. Health care workers have to first diagnose who is infected and who is not, then isolate and treat the sick, all of which presents a high risk of transmission to the people doing this work. </span></div>
<div style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #404040; font-family: pt-serif-1, pt-serif-2, 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 1.1em; line-height: 1.3em; margin-bottom: 1em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">
<span style="font-size: 1.1em; line-height: 1.3em;">Ebola is perhaps the most infectious pathogen ever encountered, transmissible by a single particle. The repeated assurances that Ebola is not highly contagious apply only while patients remain asymptomatic. Once they start explosively erupting at both ends, protection for anyone in attendance must be perfect, which is very difficult to achieve, a factor that the CDC and our news media has been slow to acknowledge.</span></div>
<div style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #404040; font-family: pt-serif-1, pt-serif-2, 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 1.1em; line-height: 1.3em; margin-bottom: 1em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">
<span style="font-size: 1.1em; line-height: 1.3em;">Three weeks ago</span><span style="font-size: 1.1em; line-height: 1.3em;"> </span><a href="http://www.npr.org/blogs/health/2014/10/02/352983774/no-seriously-how-contagious-is-ebola" style="border: 0px; color: #b26600; font-family: Arial; font-size: 17.5px; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.3em; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">NPR</a><span style="font-size: 1.1em; line-height: 1.3em;"> </span><span style="font-size: 1.1em; line-height: 1.3em;">ran a happy talk segment on how easy it is to stop the spread of Ebola that completely ignored the problem of transmission through health care workers:</span></div>
<blockquote style="background: none 0px 0px repeat scroll rgb(249, 249, 249); border: thin solid rgb(223, 223, 223); box-shadow: rgb(150, 150, 150) 6px 6px 6px; color: #404040; display: inline-block; font-family: Arial; font-size: 16px; font-style: italic; line-height: 20px; margin: 1px 24px 24px; outline: 0px; padding: 10px 12px 1px 50px; position: relative; vertical-align: baseline;">
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So to stop the chain of transmission, all health workers in Texas have to do is get the people possibly infected by the sick man into isolation before these people show signs of Ebola.</div>
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Then R0 drops to zero. And Texas is free of Ebola.</div>
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<span style="font-size: 1.1em; line-height: 1.3em;">Then we all found out how difficult it is to keep health workers from getting the disease. The transmission rate, R-naught, does</span><span style="font-size: 1.1em; line-height: 1.3em;"> </span><em style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17.5px; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.3em; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">not</em><span style="font-size: 1.1em; line-height: 1.3em;"> </span><span style="font-size: 1.1em; line-height: 1.3em;">drop to zero. With enough training and equipment transmission might be lowered dramatically, but only at impossible cost. Here a hospital director reacts to the CDC’s prep call (via</span><span style="font-size: 1.1em; line-height: 1.3em;"> </span><a href="http://pjmedia.com/tatler/2014/10/14/ebola-preparation-will-bankrupt-my-hospital-director-reacts-to-cdc-prep-call/" style="border: 0px; color: #b26600; font-family: Arial; font-size: 17.5px; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.3em; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Brian Preston</a><span style="font-size: 1.1em; line-height: 1.3em;">):</span></div>
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Ebola Preparation “will bankrupt my hospital!” “Treating one Ebola patient requires, full time, 20 medical staff. Mostly ICU (intensive care unit) people. So that would wipe out an ICU in an average-sized hospital.”</div>
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<span style="font-size: 1.1em; line-height: 1.3em;">At extreme expense we might be able to protect medical workers from contamination in a very limited number of Ebola cases. In Africa, forget it. But immune survivors do not need to be protected from contamination and this is a resource that Africa has in rapidly growing numbers. </span></div>
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<strong style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17.5px; font-style: inherit; line-height: 1.3em; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Immune survivors can make it both safer and more remunerative for hot-zone residents to stay put</strong></div>
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<span style="font-size: 1.1em; line-height: 1.3em;">Survivors have full immunity only to the Ebola strain they were infected with, but if they provide care in their local area they should be okay. Dr. Bruce Ribner on</span><a href="https://audioboom.com/boos/2413509-american-doctor-speaks-out-about-his-ebola-recovery" style="border: 0px; color: #b26600; font-family: Arial; font-size: 17.5px; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.3em; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">PBS</a><span style="font-size: 1.1em; line-height: 1.3em;">:</span></div>
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Ebola virus is a new infection on this continent, but our colleagues across the ocean have been dealing with it for 40 years now, and so there is strong epidemiologic evidence that, once an individual has resolved Ebola virus infection, they are immune to that strain, recognizing that there are five different strains of Ebola virus.</div>
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<span style="font-size: 1.1em; line-height: 1.3em;">Designate local isolation compounds for triage and treatment, drop off people and supplies, and no one comes out without a clean bill of health, bleached clothes, and a nice chlorinated shower. The immunity (in most cases) of the survivors means they could provide care without transmitting the disease, allowing the contagion to be rolled back, and the income they receive (this is where aid money comes in) would prop up the local economy, all of which would work to keep hot-zone residents in place.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 1.1em; line-height: 1.3em;">If coming to America is off the table then flight from the Ebola hot-zones is a very daunting proposition. Africa is not a thriving land of opportunity and travel is more of a way to catch disease than avoid it. Thus if transmission within the hot-zone can be drastically reduced, negative atmospheric pressure is readily attainable, and this is what the use of immune survivors allows. Not being vectors, they can intercede to stop transmission in the cases under their care.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 1.1em; line-height: 1.3em;">Some of these survivor health-workers will get infected with different strains and despite some cross immunity some of these re-infected health workers will surely die, but the fact that they are largely immune will allow the work of isolation and treatment to continue, which is simply not possible otherwise on any major scale.</span></div>
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<strong style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17.5px; font-style: inherit; line-height: 1.3em; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">The immune-survivor treatment strategy was implemented by the Greeks 2400 years ago</strong></div>
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<span style="font-size: 19.3333339691162px; line-height: 25.1680011749268px;">When I started advocating the immune-survivor strategy six weeks ago, I sent </span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-size: 1.1em; line-height: 1.3em;">my post to Stanford health economist Jay Bhattacharya and he said, hey</span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-size: 1.1em; line-height: 1.3em;"> that’s what the Greeks did, sending me the following <a href="http://www.classicpersuasion.org/pw/thucydides/thucydides-passages.php?pleaseget=2.51">citation</a> from Thucydides:</span></div>
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But whatever instances there may have been of such devotion, more often the sick and the dying were tended by the pitying care of those who had recovered, because they knew the course of the disease and were themselves free from apprehension. For no one was ever attacked a second time, or not with a fatal result. All men congratulated them, and they themselves, in the excess of their joy at the moment, had an innocent fancy that they could not die of any other sickness.</div>
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<span style="font-size: 1.1em; line-height: 1.3em;">According to a <a href="http://wwwnc.cdc.gov/eid/article/2/2/96-0220_article">report</a> published by the CDC (back when they knew stuff) the Athenian plague could well have been Ebola. </span><br />
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<span style="font-size: 1.1em; line-height: 1.3em;">I am not the only one to advocate the deployment of immune survivors today. The day after I published my post Dr. Michael T. Osterholm, director of the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy at the University of Minnesota,</span><span style="font-size: 1.1em; line-height: 1.3em;"> </span><a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2014/09/12/opinion/what-were-afraid-to-say-about-ebola.html?_r=1" style="border: 0px; color: #b26600; font-family: Arial; font-size: 17.5px; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.3em; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">wrote</a><span style="font-size: 1.1em; line-height: 1.3em;"> </span><span style="font-size: 1.1em; line-height: 1.3em;">the following in The New York Times:</span></div>
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The United Nations … should also coordinate the recruitment and training around the world of medical and nursing staff, in particular by bringing in local residents who have survived Ebola, and are no longer at risk of infection.</div>
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<span style="font-size: 1.1em; line-height: 1.3em;">We have one immune survivor here in the United States,</span><span style="font-size: 1.1em; line-height: 1.3em;"> </span><a href="http://abcnews.go.com/Health/blood-transfusions-ebola-survivor-dr-kent-brantly-patients/story?id=26182136" style="border: 0px; color: #b26600; font-family: Arial; font-size: 17.5px; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.3em; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Dr. Kent Brantly</a><span style="font-size: 1.1em; line-height: 1.3em;">, and with luck and prayers he may soon be joined by</span><span style="font-size: 1.1em; line-height: 1.3em;"> </span><a href="http://abcnews.go.com/Health/ebola-nurse-called-texas-health-officials-flight/story?id=26266763" style="border: 0px; color: #b26600; font-family: Arial; font-size: 17.5px; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.3em; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Nina Pham</a><span style="font-size: 1.1em; line-height: 1.3em;"> and</span><span style="font-size: 1.1em; line-height: 1.3em;"> </span><a href="http://www.cbsnews.com/news/ebola-search-expands-ohio-nurse-amber-vinson-visit-cleveland-akron/" style="border: 0px; color: #b26600; font-family: Arial; font-size: 17.5px; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.3em; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Amber Vinson</a><span style="font-size: 1.1em; line-height: 1.3em;">, but West Africa has a few thousand, and with the infection rate expected to soon reach</span><span style="font-size: 1.1em; line-height: 1.3em;"> </span><a href="http://www.abc.net.au/news/2014-10-15/ebola-cases-could-reach-up-to-ten-thousand-a-week-says-who/5814138" style="border: 0px; color: #b26600; font-family: Arial; font-size: 17.5px; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.3em; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">10,000 per week</a><span style="font-size: 1.1em; line-height: 1.3em;">, that will become another 3000 survivors a week. The resource is there, we just have to use it, but the rationalizations provided by CDC Director Frieden show that he is looking in the opposite direction.</span></div>
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<strong style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17.5px; font-style: inherit; line-height: 1.3em; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Frieden wants non-immune aid workers to go to Africa</strong></div>
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<span style="font-size: 1.1em; line-height: 1.3em;">That’s what he keeps</span><span style="font-size: 1.1em; line-height: 1.3em;"> </span><a href="http://blogs.cdc.gov/cdcdirector/2014/10/06/letter-to-the-editor-of-the-financial-times/" style="border: 0px; color: #b26600; font-family: Arial; font-size: 17.5px; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.3em; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">saying</a><span style="font-size: 1.1em; line-height: 1.3em;"> </span><span style="font-size: 1.1em; line-height: 1.3em;">whenever he tries to explain why he is against travel restrictions, that restrictions will make it harder for aid workers to travel to Africa:</span></div>
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One strategy that won’t stop this epidemic is isolating affected countries or sealing borders. When countries are isolated, it is harder to get medical supplies and personnel deployed to stop the spread of Ebola.</div>
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<span style="font-size: 1.1em; line-height: 1.3em;">As one of the authors of whatever restrictions would be imposed, Frieden would have a chance to attach whatever exceptions he deems necessary for getting aid workers in and out, but set that aside. His premise to begin with is that outsiders should be going in and providing treatment. Like the happy talkers at NPR (who were trying to</span><span style="font-size: 1.1em; line-height: 1.3em;"> </span><a href="http://www.npr.org/blogs/health/2014/10/02/352983774/no-seriously-how-contagious-is-ebola" style="border: 0px; color: #b26600; font-family: Arial; font-size: 17.5px; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.3em; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">explain</a><span style="font-size: 1.1em; line-height: 1.3em;"> why Frieden is so confident that Ebola will not spread in the United States), Frieden ignores the problem of health care workers as a disease vector. About people who are being tracked and monitored he</span><span style="font-size: 1.1em; line-height: 1.3em;"> </span><a href="http://www.foxnews.com/on-air/your-world-cavuto/2014/10/07/cdc-director-were-going-stop-ebola-its-tracks-here" style="border: 0px; color: #b26600; font-family: Arial; font-size: 17.5px; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.3em; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">says</a><span style="font-size: 1.1em; line-height: 1.3em;">:</span></div>
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The moment if they have any symptoms, if they have fever, they will be isolated. That is how you break the chain of transmission.</div>
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<span style="font-size: 1.1em; line-height: 1.3em;">Yeah, not really. For a very small number of Ebola patients, at huge expense,</span><em style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17.5px; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.3em; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">maybe</em><span style="font-size: 1.1em; line-height: 1.3em;">, if levels of protection and training are vastly improved. For Africa? Send in supplies and a small number of organizers at most, but no one from the outside should be sent in to deal with possibly infected subjects. They will just become disease vectors, both within Africa, and if they return without first undergoing a full period of quarantine they will bring it back here. </span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 1.1em; line-height: 1.3em;">Certainly don't send our</span><span style="font-size: 1.1em; line-height: 1.3em;"> </span><a href="http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2014/10/17/u-s-soldiers-get-just-four-hours-of-ebola-training.html" style="border: 0px; color: #b26600; font-family: Arial; font-size: 17.5px; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.3em; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">military</a><span style="font-size: 1.1em; line-height: 1.3em;">, or the</span><a href="http://legalinsurrection.com/2014/10/ebola-panic-obama-signs-executive-order-authorizing-reserves-call-up/" style="border: 0px; color: #b26600; font-family: Arial; font-size: 17.5px; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.3em; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">National Guard</a><span style="font-size: 1.1em; line-height: 1.3em;">, and unexposed natives should not be recruited either. Turn the job over to the immune survivors. That is the</span><span style="font-size: 1.1em; line-height: 1.3em;"> </span><em style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17.5px; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.3em; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">only</em><span style="font-size: 1.1em; line-height: 1.3em;"> way to stop the contagion, and this critical resource is not here in America. It only exists in Africa, so stop bringing Ebola patients here!</span></div>
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<strong style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17.5px; font-style: inherit; line-height: 1.3em; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Frieden keeps insisting that efforts to contain Ebola geographically will cause it to spread geographically</strong></div>
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<span style="font-size: 1.1em; line-height: 1.3em;">It is a bizarre contention. All non-government commentators regard isolation and treatment as complimentary strategies but Frieden</span><span style="font-size: 1.1em; line-height: 1.3em;"> </span><a href="http://blogs.cdc.gov/cdcdirector/2014/10/06/letter-to-the-editor-of-the-financial-times/" style="border: 0px; color: #b26600; font-family: Arial; font-size: 17.5px; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.3em; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">insists</a><span style="font-size: 1.1em; line-height: 1.3em;"> </span><span style="font-size: 1.1em; line-height: 1.3em;">they are either/or:</span></div>
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Restricting travel or trade to and from a community makes it harder to control in the isolated area, eventually putting the rest of the country at even greater risk. Isolating communities also increases people’s distrust of government, making them less likely to co-operate to help stop the spread of Ebola.</div>
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<span style="font-size: 1.1em; line-height: 1.3em;">He is equating isolation with abandonment, which is a</span><span style="font-size: 1.1em; line-height: 1.3em;"> </span><em style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17.5px; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.3em; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">non sequitur</em><span style="font-size: 1.1em; line-height: 1.3em;">. Does a patient placed in an isolation room become harder to control? Does being cared for in isolation make him more distrustful, and make observers distrustful, or does it make every one thankful? Frieden’s strained efforts to support this weak narrative are illogical to the point of</span><span style="font-size: 1.1em; line-height: 1.3em;"> </span><a href="http://www.foxnews.com/opinion/2014/10/09/cdc-chief-why-dont-support-travel-ban-to-combat-ebola-outbreak/" style="border: 0px; color: #b26600; font-family: Arial; font-size: 17.5px; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.3em; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">dishonesty</a><span style="font-size: 1.1em; line-height: 1.3em;">:</span></div>
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When a wildfire breaks out we don’t fence it off. We go in to extinguish it before one of the random sparks sets off another outbreak somewhere else.</div>
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<span style="font-size: 1.1em; line-height: 1.3em;">Really, the guy’s never heard of a</span><span style="font-size: 1.1em; line-height: 1.3em;"> </span><a href="http://m.nationalreview.com/corner/390029/globalist-gibberish-cdc-chief-travel-ban-mark-krikorian" style="border: 0px; color: #b26600; font-family: Arial; font-size: 17.5px; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.3em; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">firebreak</a><span style="font-size: 1.1em; line-height: 1.3em;">? We actually</span><span style="font-size: 1.1em; line-height: 1.3em;"> </span><em style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17.5px; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.3em; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">set</em><span style="font-size: 1.1em; line-height: 1.3em;"> </span><span style="font-size: 1.1em; line-height: 1.3em;">fires, sacrificing part of the tree population to save the rest. Not that we should do that in Africa, but c’mon dude. Don’t just lie about stuff!</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 1.1em; line-height: 1.3em;">Travel restrictions may indeed have some downsides, but they also have a most important upside: they stop sick people from traveling around the world spreading disease. The question, which Frieden never even attempts to address, is whether the downsides he puts forward outweigh the upside in terms of disease transmission. Indeed, it is perfectly clear that Frieden is not accounting the upside at all, since he implicitly assumes it would be outweighed by the flimsiest of hypothesized downsides.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 1.1em; line-height: 1.3em;">In reality, it is hard to think of any downside to travel restrictions that could begin to compare to the importance of keeping the Ebola-infected from freely carrying the disease wherever they want. The first imperative is to stop Ebola from making its way around the world and as director of the CDC it is Frieden’s first responsibility to make sure it doesn’t travel</span><span style="font-size: 1.1em; line-height: 1.3em;"> </span><em style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17.5px; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.3em; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">here</em><span style="font-size: 1.1em; line-height: 1.3em;">. If other countries are also self-protective that is</span><span style="font-size: 1.1em; line-height: 1.3em;"> </span><em style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17.5px; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.3em; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">good</em><span style="font-size: 1.1em; line-height: 1.3em;">. It will limit the spread of Ebola which makes everyone safer.</span></div>
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<strong style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17.5px; font-style: inherit; line-height: 1.3em; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Is Frieden (and/or Obama) trying to reduce outward pressure by holing the containment vessel?</strong></div>
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<span style="font-size: 1.1em; line-height: 1.3em;">As meteorologists know, relative atmospheric pressure can be a tricky concept. Because air pushes in different places, distinguishing cause and effect can take some care, and this applies to the disease transmission analogy as well.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 1.1em; line-height: 1.3em;">To achieve negative pressure in the Ebola hot-zone containment is obviously not enough. Transmission within the hot zone must be greatly reduced or else pressure to flee will build and build until it inevitably explodes. Could Frieden be looking at this looming build-up of pressure and getting the causality backwards? Is he proceeding on the idea that, if we never have containment in the first place, then the pressure cannot build enough to have an explosion?</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 1.1em; line-height: 1.3em;">Actions suggest that he and others may actually be trying to reduce outward pressure by getting rid of containment up front and even encouraging people to flee. Witness the “</span><a href="http://www.uscis.gov/news/alerts/ebola-outbreak-related-immigration-relief-measures-nationals-guinea-liberia-and-sierra-leone-currently-united-states" style="border: 0px; color: #b26600; font-family: Arial; font-size: 17.5px; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.3em; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Ebola Outbreak-related Immigration Relief Measures</a><span style="font-size: 1.1em; line-height: 1.3em;">” issued by the U.S. immigration service in mid-August, which the CDC would surely have had input on.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 1.1em; line-height: 1.3em;">Some of the measures are reasonable, allowing “Nationals of Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone Currently in the United States” to stay here for now instead of forcing them to go back to the hot zone when their visas expire, but the measures gratuitously go much further, providing extreme incentive for residents of these countries to get themselves into the United States ASAP.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 1.1em; line-height: 1.3em;">The really damaging relief measure (pressure relief measure?) is the first, which offers an opportunity for, “[c]hange or extension of nonimmigrant status for an individual currently in the United States, even if the request is filed after the authorized period of admission has expired.”</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 1.1em; line-height: 1.3em;">A change of status means a change from non-immigrant to immigrant status, thus any West African who is here on a tourist visa is eligible to be immediately switched to permanent resident status, leading to citizenship, and here’s the kicker: as</span><span style="font-size: 1.1em; line-height: 1.3em;"> </span><a href="http://directorblue.blogspot.com/2014/10/viral-suicide-obama-dhs-now-expediting.html" style="border: 0px; color: #b26600; font-family: Arial; font-size: 17.5px; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.3em; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Doug Ross</a><span style="font-size: 1.1em; line-height: 1.3em;"> </span><span style="font-size: 1.1em; line-height: 1.3em;">noticed, there is no cut-off date for who is eligible for this change of status.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 1.1em; line-height: 1.3em;">Instead of applying only to West Africans who were already here in mid-August, any Ebola-zone citizens who can get themselves over here on a tourist visa are immediately eligible to switch to permanent resident status, providing huge incentive for immediate mass outflow from West Africa to the United States. Obama/Frieden are offering them a once-in-a-lifetime jump-to-the-head-of-the-line opportunity to become American citizens.</span></div>
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<strong style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17.5px; font-style: inherit; line-height: 1.3em; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">We know Obama’s motivation, but why is the CDC going along?</strong></div>
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<span style="font-size: 1.1em; line-height: 1.3em;">President Obama, being a politician, can of course have political motivations for incentivizing West Africans to come here for citizenship. His intentional collapse of our southern border suggests that one of the ways that he wants to “</span><a href="http://www.nationalreview.com/article/359967/obama-transforming-america-victor-davis-hanson" style="border: 0px; color: #b26600; font-family: Arial; font-size: 17.5px; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.3em; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">fundamentally transform America</a><span style="font-size: 1.1em; line-height: 1.3em;">” is by importing a new electorate, more to his liking. (DHS let a</span><span style="font-size: 1.1em; line-height: 1.3em;"> </span><a href="http://m.nationalreview.com/article/383159/obama-caused-border-disaster-andrew-c-mccarthy" style="border: 0px; color: #b26600; font-family: Arial; font-size: 17.5px; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.3em; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">huge contract</a><span style="font-size: 1.1em; line-height: 1.3em;"> for the internal transport of unaccompanied illegal alien minors months before the vast wave of “unaccompanied minors” arrived, proving that the entire crisis was engineered by Obama.)</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 1.1em; line-height: 1.3em;">But CDC Director Frieden is supposed to be non-partisan, guided only by the objective requirements for keeping his countrymen safe from disease. How can a medical doctor be supportive of a ramped-up influx of immigrants from West Africa that is highly incentivized to carry Ebola?</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 1.1em; line-height: 1.3em;">Friedan’s big career-making achievement was dramatic reductions of tuberculosis in New York City and India, accomplished by systematic tracking, isolation and treatment of the infected. His oft-repeated</span><span style="font-size: 1.1em; line-height: 1.3em;"> </span><a href="http://www.foxnews.com/on-air/your-world-cavuto/2014/10/07/cdc-director-were-going-stop-ebola-its-tracks-here" style="border: 0px; color: #b26600; font-family: Arial; font-size: 17.5px; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.3em; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">mantra</a><span style="font-size: 1.1em; line-height: 1.3em;"> on Ebola is the same. “</span><a href="http://www.csmonitor.com/USA/2014/1005/CDC-official-We-know-how-to-stop-Ebola-video" style="border: 0px; color: #b26600; font-family: Arial; font-size: 17.5px; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.3em; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">We know how to stop Ebola</a><span style="font-size: 1.1em; line-height: 1.3em;">,” he says, by tracking, isolating, and treating infected individuals. Could he be fixated on tracking as a means?</span></div>
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<strong style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17.5px; font-style: inherit; line-height: 1.3em; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Frieden <em style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17.5px; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">wants</em> people who could be infected with Ebola to fly so that they won’t travel “over land”</strong></div>
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<span style="font-size: 1.1em; line-height: 1.3em;">Note the particular</span><span style="font-size: 1.1em; line-height: 1.3em;"> </span><a href="http://edition.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/1410/16/wolf.01.html" style="border: 0px; color: #b26600; font-family: Arial; font-size: 17.5px; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.3em; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">language</a><span style="font-size: 1.1em; line-height: 1.3em;"> </span><span style="font-size: 1.1em; line-height: 1.3em;">Frieden uses to explain why he thinks travel restrictions will be counter-productive. He keeps saying he wants the possibly infected to travel by means that enable tracking. That points directly to a preference for airline travel:</span></div>
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FRIEDEN: Right now, we know who’s coming in. If we try to eliminate travel, the possibility that some will travel over land, will come from other places, and we don’t know that they’re coming in, will mean that we won’t be able to do multiple things. … Borders can be porous — may I finish? – especially in this part of the world. We won’t be able to check them for fever when they leave, we won’t be able to check them for fever when they arrive. We won’t be able, as we do currently, to take a detailed history to see if they were exposed when they arrive.</div>
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When they arrive, we wouldn’t be able to impose (ph) quarantine as we now can if they have high-risk contact. We wouldn’t be able to obtain detailed locating information, which we do now, including not only name and date of birth, but e-mail addresses, cell phone numbers, address, addresses of friends, so that we could identify and locate them.</div>
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We wouldn’t be able to provide all of that information, as we do now, to state and local health departments, so that they can monitor them under supervision. We wouldn’t be able to impose controlled release, conditional release on them, or active monitoring, if they’re exposed, or to, in other ways…</div>
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<span style="font-size: 1.1em; line-height: 1.3em;">The whole point of tracking is to stop further transmission so that we don’t have to do more tracking. The fact that a mode of travel enables tracking isn’t a plus if it also multiplies the need to track, as around the world commercial jet travel obviously does. In Frieden’s accounting the smallest amount of un-tracked contagion is more dangerous than a wide open and highly incentivized avenue of tracked contagion, because this is what we are talking about here.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 1.1em; line-height: 1.3em;">The “overland” spread of Ebola that is Frieden’s sole concern would be extremely difficult under a travel ban. Even if frightened people could make their way out of Liberia and Guinea and Sierra Leone by ground travel (very difficult, snce many neighboring countries have</span><span style="font-size: 1.1em; line-height: 1.3em;"> </span><a href="http://bigstory.ap.org/article/ac453f06666343f29229086d38f30c99/africa-stems-ebola-border-closings-luck%20" style="border: 0px; color: #b26600; font-family: Arial; font-size: 17.5px; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.3em; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">closed their borders</a><span style="font-size: 1.1em; line-height: 1.3em;">) they would still need to fly to reach the United States, which requires a visa, which requires a passport, which would still identify them as coming from a hot-zone country. The other possibility is that they fly to Mexico or Canada and travel overland at this end, but a) these crossings are within in our power to control, and b) if we impose a travel ban then Mexico and Canada will surely follow suit.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 1.1em; line-height: 1.3em;">Frieden focuses entirely on the relatively tiny number of cases where a few West Africans might still get in by these untracked routes (a number that might well be decreased, not increased, by travel restrictions), and he completely ignores ignores the vast majority of cases where travel restrictions would keep the possibly Ebola-infected out. This selective accounting is not legitimate. It is basic economics and basic epidemiology that all impacts have to be fully accounted. Only looking at untracked flow is like buying merchandise for $100 a pop, selling it for $1 a pop, and thinking you are making money because you are only counting the flow of $1 receipts.</span></div>
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<strong style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17.5px; font-style: inherit; line-height: 1.3em; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">NIAID head directly mis-states travel requirements</strong></div>
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<span style="font-size: 1.1em; line-height: 1.3em;">Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, does not seem to be aware of how travel documentation works. On Sunday he</span><span style="font-size: 1.1em; line-height: 1.3em;"> </span><a href="http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2014/oct/19/obama-administration-resists-ebola-travel-ban-even/" style="border: 0px; color: #b26600; font-family: Arial; font-size: 17.5px; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.3em; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">claimed</a><span style="font-size: 1.1em; line-height: 1.3em;"> </span><span style="font-size: 1.1em; line-height: 1.3em;">that:</span></div>
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<div style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: 1.1em; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.3em; margin-bottom: 1em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">
“If you say, ‘Nobody comes in from Sierra Leone, Liberia or Guinea,’ there are so many other ways to get into the country. You can go to one of the other countries and then get back in [to the United States].”</div>
</blockquote>
<div style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #404040; font-family: pt-serif-1, pt-serif-2, 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 1.1em; line-height: 1.3em; margin-bottom: 1em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">
<span style="font-size: 1.1em; line-height: 1.3em;">Wrong. Escapees from the hot-zone would only be able to get here</span><span style="font-size: 1.1em; line-height: 1.3em;"> </span><em style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17.5px; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.3em; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">via</em><span style="font-size: 1.1em; line-height: 1.3em;"> </span><span style="font-size: 1.1em; line-height: 1.3em;">“other countries” if those other countries start issuing them passports that hide their true origin. Frieden and Fauci are doctors, not travel agents, but the entire USCIS knows that their claim about border hoppers being able to fly to the United States is wrong.</span></div>
<div style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #404040; font-family: pt-serif-1, pt-serif-2, 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 1.1em; line-height: 1.3em; margin-bottom: 1em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">
<span style="font-size: 1.1em; line-height: 1.3em;">Regardless of Fauci’s confusion, the underlying error is still the same. Even if travel restrictions did somehow lead to an increase in un-tracked travel across the Atlantic (highly dubious), this increased avenue for Ebola transmission would still be tiny compared to the vast wide-open “above ground” highway for Ebola transmission that a travel ban would close off.</span></div>
<div style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #404040; font-family: pt-serif-1, pt-serif-2, 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 1.1em; line-height: 1.3em; margin-bottom: 1em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">
<span style="font-size: 1.1em; line-height: 1.3em;">These supposed experts are acting as if there is no danger so long as we can track transmission, ignoring what a desperate game it is try to smother every outracing tendril from each outbreak. It’s like trying to stamp out an intrusion of cockroaches before any can escape through a crack.</span></div>
<div style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #404040; font-family: pt-serif-1, pt-serif-2, 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 1.1em; line-height: 1.3em; margin-bottom: 1em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">
<strong style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17.5px; font-style: inherit; line-height: 1.3em; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Learning the wrong lesson from Nigeria’s close call</strong></div>
<div style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #404040; font-family: pt-serif-1, pt-serif-2, 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 1.1em; line-height: 1.3em; margin-bottom: 1em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">
<span style="font-size: 1.1em; line-height: 1.3em;">With heroic effort</span><span style="font-size: 1.1em; line-height: 1.3em;"> </span><a href="http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/how-did-nigeria-quash-its-ebola-outbreak-so-quickly/" style="border: 0px; color: #b26600; font-family: Arial; font-size: 17.5px; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.3em; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Nigeria</a><span style="font-size: 1.1em; line-height: 1.3em;"> </span><span style="font-size: 1.1em; line-height: 1.3em;">just pulled off the squash-all-the-cockroaches feat, dedicating thousands of man hours of urgent detective work to successfully run down and isolate each multiplying pathway of Ebola exposure before they could multiply out of reach and consume a city of 21 million.</span></div>
<div style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #404040; font-family: pt-serif-1, pt-serif-2, 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 1.1em; line-height: 1.3em; margin-bottom: 1em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">
<span style="font-size: 1.1em; line-height: 1.3em;">It was a very near thing and Frieden and Fauci are clearly learning the wrong lesson from it. They view it as confirmation that tracking works and can “</span><a href="http://www.cnn.com/2014/10/02/opinion/frieden-ebola-first-patient/" style="border: 0px; color: #b26600; font-family: Arial; font-size: 17.5px; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.3em; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">stop Ebola in its tracks</a><span style="font-size: 1.1em; line-height: 1.3em;">,” but the real lesson of Nigeria is the tremendous danger that just one infected airline passenger can pose. Realizing how lucky they were, Nigeria learned its lesson and</span><span style="font-size: 1.1em; line-height: 1.3em;"> </span><a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/to-your-health/wp/2014/10/01/why-hasnt-the-u-s-closed-its-airports-to-travelers-from-ebola-ravaged-countries/" style="border: 0px; color: #b26600; font-family: Arial; font-size: 17.5px; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.3em; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">stopped</a><span style="font-size: 1.1em; line-height: 1.3em;"> </span><span style="font-size: 1.1em; line-height: 1.3em;">its hot-zone flights.</span></div>
<div style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #404040; font-family: pt-serif-1, pt-serif-2, 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 1.1em; line-height: 1.3em; margin-bottom: 1em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">
<span style="font-size: 1.1em; line-height: 1.3em;">Much better not to let possibly infected people enter in the first place. Once an Ebola-infected person arrives a country</span><span style="font-size: 1.1em; line-height: 1.3em;"> </span><em style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17.5px; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.3em; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">might</em><span style="font-size: 1.1em; line-height: 1.3em;"> be quick enough to stop the contagion by tracking, monitoring and isolating individuals, but if the contagion gets away from them they will have to stop it the old fashioned way, the Greek way, by making use of the immune survivors as they emerge one by one from the spreading catastrophe.</span></div>
<div style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #404040; font-family: pt-serif-1, pt-serif-2, 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 1.1em; line-height: 1.3em; margin-bottom: 1em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">
<span style="font-size: 1.1em; line-height: 1.3em;">Every nation has to be prepared for those same three stages of Ebola prevention and response. First we try to keep it from entering. If that fails then we try to contain the outbreak with tracking, monitoring and isolation of exposed individuals, and if that fails and there is an epidemic, only immune survivors can roll it back. Frieden and Fauci are fixated only on the middle third of this puzzle, the tracking. They aren’t concerned with keeping Ebola from getting here and they aren’t looking at how to fight it if it breaks out. Neither are they merely absent from these other battlefields but their fixation on tracking has them aggressively bringing Ebola here when the only people who can safely treat the disease are in Africa.</span></div>
<div style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #404040; font-family: pt-serif-1, pt-serif-2, 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 1.1em; line-height: 1.3em; margin-bottom: 1em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">
<strong style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17.5px; font-style: inherit; line-height: 1.3em; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">A perfect storm of illogic</strong></div>
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<span style="font-size: 1.1em; line-height: 1.3em;">Put Frieden’s apparent belief that tracking is a panacea together with his apparent confusion about cause and effect and they support each other. This seems to be his actual thinking: that if we let the infected out of the hot zone (while carefully tracking) then there won’t be an explosion because the pressure won’t have a chance to build up.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 1.1em; line-height: 1.3em;">Could it be that simple, that he just doesn’t understand atmospheric pressure, where the whole point of creating negative pressure is to stop the outflow of the pathogen, so if pressure is reduced</span><span style="font-size: 1.1em; line-height: 1.3em;"> </span><em style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17.5px; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.3em; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">by</em><span style="font-size: 1.1em; line-height: 1.3em;"> </span><span style="font-size: 1.1em; line-height: 1.3em;">the outflow of the pathogen that means we failed? Is the guy just that stupid? Or does he have some horrific political agenda like President Obama? (Definitely possible, since</span><span style="font-size: 1.1em; line-height: 1.3em;"> </span><a href="http://www.foxnews.com/opinion/2014/07/07/immigration-crisis-tuberculosis-spreading-at-camps/" style="border: 0px; color: #b26600; font-family: Arial; font-size: 17.5px; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.3em; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">untracked TB</a><span style="font-size: 1.1em; line-height: 1.3em;"> </span><span style="font-size: 1.1em; line-height: 1.3em;">and</span><span style="font-size: 1.1em; line-height: 1.3em;"> </span><a href="http://sharylattkisson.com/polio-like-illness-claims-sixth-life-in-u-s" style="border: 0px; color: #b26600; font-family: Arial; font-size: 17.5px; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.3em; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">other</a> <span style="font-size: 1.1em; line-height: 1.3em;">infectious diseases pouring over our unenforced southern border elicit no protest from him.)</span></div>
<div style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #404040; font-family: pt-serif-1, pt-serif-2, 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 1.1em; line-height: 1.3em; margin-bottom: 1em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">
<span style="font-size: 1.1em; line-height: 1.3em;">Either way, Congress better provide some countervailing force and quickly because the CDC is working hard to bring the negative pressure to our side of the Atlantic, sucking Ebola in. It is clear what we </span><em style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17.5px; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.3em; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">should</em><span style="font-size: 1.1em; line-height: 1.3em;"> be doing: imposing travel restrictions and using hot-zone Ebola survivors to separate and treat the newly infected. Then the problem won’t just stay in West Africa, it will be solved there.</span></div>
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<div style="color: #404040; font-family: pt-serif-1, pt-serif-2, 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 1.1em; line-height: 1.3em;">
<span style="font-size: 1.1em; line-height: 1.3em;">The alternative, if Obama and Frieden can’t be stopped, is that we suffer our own Ebola epidemic, where the only way to avoid decimation or worse will be to deploy our own rapidly growing army of immune survivors. It’s either Thucydides in Africa or Thucydides in America, our choice.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 1.1em; line-height: 1.3em;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 1.1em; line-height: 1.3em;">UPDATE: Spencer case shows that we do NOT want free travel for returning aid workers, and it shows how</span><span style="font-size: 1.1em; line-height: 1.3em;"> quickly the tracking-hope could disappear</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 1.1em; line-height: 1.3em;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 1.1em; line-height: 1.3em;"><a href="http://www.cbsnews.com/news/ebola-craig-spencer-nyc-doctor-who-has-ebola-being-praised/">Spencer</a> had been working with ebola infected people in Africa, came back to America, started feeling weak, and the next day used several subway lines to go on an across-the-city bowling trip. But this was still a best-case-scenario because when his symptoms started to get worse Spencer knew it was probably ebola, isolated himself, and let everyone know.</span></div>
<div style="color: #404040; font-family: pt-serif-1, pt-serif-2, 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 1.1em; line-height: 1.3em;">
<span style="font-size: 1.1em; line-height: 1.3em;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="color: #404040; font-family: pt-serif-1, pt-serif-2, 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 1.1em; line-height: 1.3em;">
<span style="font-size: 1.1em; line-height: 1.3em;">The Dallas case was a similar best-case-scenario. Duncan knew he had recent physical contact with a person who died of Ebola. That's why he initially </span><span style="font-size: 19.3333339691162px; line-height: 25.1680011749268px;">went to the hospital when he only had a mild fever, and when the ambulance later came to get him at his apartment his daughter <a href="http://nypost.com/2014/10/07/dallas-ebola-errors/">told</a> the EMTs that he likely had Ebola, so everybody was on alert. They still made mistakes, but nothing compared to what would have happened if they had no idea what was the matter with him.</span></div>
<span style="color: #404040; font-family: pt-serif-1, pt-serif-2, Helvetica Neue, Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 19.3333339691162px; line-height: 25.1680011749268px;"><br /></span></span>
<span style="color: #404040; font-family: pt-serif-1, pt-serif-2, Helvetica Neue, Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 19.3333339691162px; line-height: 25.1680011749268px;">The nightmare scenario is what happens when some ignorant person comes down with Ebola and has no idea he has Ebola. Suppose an out-of-it druggie were to pick up Ebola from Dr. Spencer's long trek through the subway system--maybe Spencer coughed on somebody, who knows, the guy was full of Ebola at that point--so a week or two from now this hapless druggie spends a couple of days on the streets and in the subway while he is in the massive shedding stage of Ebola infection, bleeding, puking and crapping in public rest-rooms and alleys and tracking his mess through public places.</span></span><br />
<span style="color: #404040; font-family: pt-serif-1, pt-serif-2, Helvetica Neue, Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 19.3333339691162px; line-height: 25.1680011749268px;"><br /></span></span>
<span style="color: #404040; font-family: pt-serif-1, pt-serif-2, Helvetica Neue, Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 19.3333339691162px; line-height: 25.1680011749268px;">Then it's goodbye to any hope for tracing the pathways of possible exposure. If it gets on the seats, grab-rails and hand straps of a handful of subway cars it will pass hand to hand, doorknob to doorknob, far beyond the subway system in a matter of hours. A single germ is infective, the tiniest drop of blood contains millions of germs, and we'd have this disintegrating person slathering infectious fluids everywhere he goes. If this just goes on for one day there will be a rampant epidemic starting in NYC but not stopping there.</span></span><br />
<span style="color: #404040; font-family: pt-serif-1, pt-serif-2, Helvetica Neue, Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 19.3333339691162px; line-height: 25.1680011749268px;"><br /></span></span>
<span style="color: #404040; font-family: pt-serif-1, pt-serif-2, Helvetica Neue, Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 19.3333339691162px; line-height: 25.1680011749268px;">The danger is EXTREME, yet not only are Frieden and Obama still adamant against travel restrictions, but they are at the same time providing huge incentives for possibly Ebola-exposed people to make use of that allowance to come here, both in the form of promises of first-rate care and through a once-in-a-lifetime offer of U.S. citizenship for anyone who can himself here from the Ebola hot zone, creating massive positive pressure for Ebola to flow out of the hot zone and into the United States. These policies are horrific, and the consequences will be too.</span></span></div>
<div class="blogger-post-footer">All content copyright © Alec Rawls, 2004-. Non-commercial use allowed with attribution. Commercial republication with permission. Please contact alec@rawls.org.</div>Alec Rawlshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18106800937399442588noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7347736.post-68218891622007307592014-10-06T14:43:00.000-07:002014-10-09T11:21:19.812-07:00CDC Director Tom Friedan is a dishonest political hack<div class="MsoNormal">
My "<a href="http://errortheory.blogspot.com/2014/09/how-to-stop-ebola-pay-ebola-survivors.html">how
to stop Ebola</a>" post is about how to keep possible carriers from
fleeing hot zones but the Obama administration is a million miles from even
beginning to address such basic issues. Instead, Obama's CDC Director Tom
Friedan is in <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/10/02/tom-frieden-travel-ban-ebola_n_5922618.html">full
demagogue mode</a>, pretending that a ban on travel <i>from</i> the
Ebola hot-zone countries would block aid workers from traveling <i>to</i> those
countries, as if it isn't in the administration's power to set up whatever
restrictions, with whatever exemptions, are seen to make the most sense:</div>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
The approach of isolating a country is that it’s going to
make it harder to get help into that country.</blockquote>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
He is effectively declaring that any travel restrictions the
Obama administration implements will be intentionally obstructionist so that
they will have an excuse for not imposing <i>any</i> travel restrictions. Even
the headline of the linked Puffington Host report contains the answer to the
supposed problem with a travel ban:<o:p></o:p></div>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
Travel Ban From Ebola-Hit Countries Would Be 'Quick, Simple
And Wrong,' CDC Director Says</blockquote>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
A ban only on travel <i>from</i> Ebola-hit
countries is outside the grasp of our CDC director, but obvious to a random
Huff-Po headline writer. Yeah, it's not really beyond Friedan's grasp. He's just a political hack intentionally blowing smoke.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Another infectious disease expert,<a href="http://triblive.com/news/editorspicks/6906032-74/ebola-virus-shows#ixzz3FEZXl212"> Phenelle
Segal</a>, rides easily over Friedan's proclaimed stumbling block:<o:p></o:p></div>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
“I think as soon as we started seeing West Africa go out of
control with Ebola, that was the time” to halt air travel from the region, said
Segal, who supports exceptions for relief workers and aid missions.</blockquote>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Friedan is obviously aware of the possibility of exemptions
for aid workers too. He's just a typical Obamaton, lying about anything at the slightest perceived rationale. It's what they do.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Establishing appropriate restrictions with appropriate exemptions
would take some doing but that is the only hurdle: Friedan would have to
actually do his job and implement appropriate rules. Of course such rules would impose some costs which, like all
the other costs of mounting an effective medical response, would have to be met
by the governments and NGOs that are seeking to mount an effective response. In
particular, airlines will have to charge more if they are not allowed to
take passengers back out of the hot-zone countries and if they are required to
provide isolation for their crew members when they are on the ground
in-country, but again, those costs only block aid if Friedan doesn't do his
job.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
As Director of the CDC he is supposed to design and
implement our medical response to the health threat. Just as a matter of
already-existing contingency planning he should have quarantine plans on the
shelf that include all necessary exemptions, yet here he is making blatantly
phony assertion that he can't impose a ban on travel <i>from</i> Ebola
hot zones without blocking the flow of aid <i>to</i> Ebola hot zones.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b>Friedan also pretends that the Dallas contact-tracking
example is confidence inspiring</b><o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The Duncan case demonstrates clearly the extreme outlay of
highly competent manpower that is required to contain even one of the easiest
to contain cases, but instead of using this as an example of how easy it
would be for containment to get away from us Friedan <a href="http://www.cdc.gov/media/releases/2014/t1005-ebola-confirmed-case.html">spins
it</a> as reason not to worry:<o:p></o:p></div>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
[W]e have no doubt that we will stop [Ebola] in its tracks
in Texas. It's worth stepping back and saying how Ebola spreads. Ebola only
spreads by direct contact with someone who's sick or with their body fluids. So
the core of control is identifying everyone who might have had contact with
them and making sure they're monitored for 21 days and if they develop symptoms
to immediately isolate them to break the chain of transmission. ... [T]he work
of the state and local departments with CDC assistance has been terrific. They
have been able to assess all 114 individuals who might possibly have had
contact. They were able to rule out that 66 did not have contact. They
identified ten who appeared to have had contact with the individual when he
might possibly have been infectious. Of those ten, seven are health care
workers and three are family or community contacts. In addition, there are
about 38 other people in whom we could not rule out that they had contact. So
all of those 48 people will be tracked for 21 days to determine whether they
have fever and if any developed fever, they will be immediately isolated,
tested and if they have Ebola, given appropriate care and determine whether
there were any additional contacts to their case. That's how we have stopped
every outbreak in Ebola in the world until this one in West Africa. That's how
we stopped it in Lagos, Nigeria and how we will stop it in Texas.</blockquote>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
And what if just one infected contact slips through, say a
drug user who vomits up a crack house, and Ebola starts passing from crack
house to crack house? Enough with the idiotic "hope." The dire
"changes" that are immediately possible need to be war-gamed and
effective responses readied.<o:p></o:p><br />
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The first layer of protection is the border, which Obama has
been working systematically to bring down. Now Friedan is lying that we can't
restrict people from coming in without blocking them from going out.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b>Democrat lying is a fundamentally ingrained cognitive style</b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
These a$$holes are going to get a lot of us killed. In
Barack Hussein Obama's case that is very likely his intention, having been
taught by his mentor the "ex-Muslim" Jeremiah Wright that Muslims
living in infidel countries are <i>supposed</i> to lie about their
religion, and for Muslims who follow this instruction, we know what kind of
Muslims they are: they are followers of <i>orthodox</i> Islam, the
religion that attacked us on 9/11, the religion of al Qaeda and the Muslim Brotherhood
and ISIS and Khomeini too (Sunni and Shiite are the same on this). <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
But what is Friedan's motivation? I think it is just the
habitual dishonesty of Democrat half of our political spectrum, the same
habitual dishonesty that has allowed them for seven years to cover up Obama's
mature racism (again under the tutelage of the out-and-proud anti-white racist
Jeremiah Wright), along with his history as a paid professional Alinsky
communist, to say nothing of his strongly evidenced Islamofascism.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Democrats
control all of our information industries and they use that control constantly,
habitually, and without exception, to advance Democratic party talking points.
Their objective is never to tell the truth, it is always to support their
partisan narratives, and anyone who lives within that Democrat-controlled
information bubble comes to operate in the same backwards-thinking way,
starting with preferred conclusions. It is a cognitive style.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
This is what the term RINO refers to: Republicans who get
their information from the Democrat-controlled media and are not even aware
that there is a whole different alternate media available that doesn't edit
information in support of an agenda but thinks frontwards, following reason and
evidence. They don't even know what conservatism is. Their minds are controlled
by the backwards-thinking Democrat opposition.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Friedan, being an Obamaton himself, is even more deeply a
creature of the backwards thinking cognitive style and examples the extremity
of its hold. Even as he confronts the facts about the extreme danger Ebola
poses he is trying to spin them away in support of Obama's open borders agenda,
pretending with complete dishonesty that we can't formulate travel restrictions
that would still allow aid to flow to Ebola-hit African countries. Would a
doctor really suppress medical necessity in favor of a political agenda? The
answer is clearly yes, if he is a Democrat.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
It's just like with the global warming scare where a whole
cohort of Democratic Party voting scientists, receiving 100% of their funding
from the climate bureaucracy set up by Vice President Al Gore, have promulgated
blatantly a phony "science." Anyone who makes any effort to look at
the facts for themselves quickly discovers that there virtually <i>no</i> evidence
that CO2 causes more than a very small amount of warming. To account for late
20th century warming the small forcing effect of CO2 would have to be
multiplied up several times by water vapor feedback effects, but there is no
evidence that water vapor feedbacks are even positive.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Even the <a href="http://wattsupwiththat.com/2014/09/24/significant-new-paper-by-nic-lewis-and-judith-curry-lowers-the-range-of-climate-sensitivity-using-data-from-ipcc-ar5/#comment-1745886">lowest</a> IPCC-based
assessments of the feedback effect are based on the assumption that late 20th
century warming <i>was</i> caused by CO2, but the evidence actually
points overwhelmingly to solar-magnetic activity. The IPCC <a href="http://errortheory.blogspot.com/2012/02/omitted-variable-fraud-vast-evidence.html">dismisse</a>s this
evidence on the anti-scientific grounds that we don't understand the mechanism
by which solar-magnetic activity drives climate. The CO2-alarmists are using
theory (their dislike of available theories of how solar-magnetic activity
drives climate) to dismiss evidence, the exact opposite of the very definition
of science, which demands that evidence trumps theory.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Our Democrat "scientists" are engaged in pure
definitional anti-science on the grandest scale imaginable, demonstrating that once the
backwards-thinking cognitive style takes hold there is no subject on which it
cannot operate. Science and medicine are no barriers and this habitual dishonesty now defines our Democratic Party, leaving us without any
effective leadership on anything, including Ebola, where Friedan is not even
looking in the right direction.<br />
<br />
What the African countries need is not outside
personnel (who just end up getting infected) but strategy. We should be creating "negative atmospheric
pressure" by paying the now-immune survivors to isolate and treat the sick
and possibly sick (the subject of my <a href="http://www.cdc.gov/media/releases/2014/t1005-ebola-confirmed-case.html">first
post</a>), and we'd better get it figured out quick because the same
imperatives are only a plane ride away from the United States itself. Thanks to
the malignancy of Obama and the fecklessness of minions like Friedan there is a
good chance we will not be able to keep our own Ebola outbreaks contained and
will need to rely here at home on "negative atmospheric pressure" to
limit the damage.<br />
<br />
<br />
<b>Crazy update</b> <br />
<br />
Story today from the U.K. <a href="http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2782694/Ebola-victim-s-stepdaughter-took-hospital-vomiting-wildly-given-clear-return-work-nursing-assitant.html#">Mail</a>:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
Dallas Ebola victim's stepdaughter - who took him to hospital as he was 'vomiting wildly' - is given all clear to return to work as nursing assistant</blockquote>
They are ignoring the 21 day quarantine period for people with known risk of exposure! The stepdaughter herself knows this isn't right and is insisting she will not go back to work yet. What the hell is wrong with the CDC?<br />
<br />
Are they saying that there is no reason even for a person who had close contact with an infected person not to mingle with the general population unless and until they develop actual Ebola symptoms? "Don't worry about it, you're not communicable yet"? That's insane.<br />
<br />
It means they are making no distinctions at all between different levels of "contact" with an infected person. Someone who directly attended to an externally hemorrhaging hemorragic fever victim only has to be monitored for fever for 21 days, the same as someone who only crossed the victim's path when he was beginning to show symptoms. No way.<br />
<br />
If this woman comes down with Ebola they are going to have to do a whole new round of tracking. Who did she have contact with after they released her? Imagine if she really did go back to physical contact with numerous sick people every day, half of whom probably already have fevers from other causes. There would be no way to tell whether they were reacting to Ebola or not. They'd all have to be kept in isolation.<br />
<br />
All for what? To give the impression that there is nothing to worry about? Look how lightly we are treating his, so you should too? On the contrary, they give us more to worry about every day.<br />
<br />
<br />
<b>More madness </b><br />
<br />
West African family travels from Ebola hot-zone to Miami for family vacation, teenager <a href="http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2782303/Teenager-Ebola-like-symptoms-quarantined-Miami-getting-sick-following-trip-West-Africa.html">quarantined</a> with fever. Sure, we don't need no travel restrictions. What could go wrong.<br />
<br />
3 weeks ago Obama said it was "unlikely" that someone with Ebola would reach our shores and that the chances of an outbreak here was "<a href="http://www.weeklystandard.com/blogs/obama-two-weeks-ago-chances-ebola-outbreak-here-extremely-low_808405.html">extremely low</a>," all while following policies that make it all but certain that Ebola-infected people will be showing up here with substantial regularity.<br />
<br />
The aggressive dishonesty and malignancy of this racist communist Islamofacist a$$hole of a president is astounding to behold.<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="blogger-post-footer">All content copyright © Alec Rawls, 2004-. Non-commercial use allowed with attribution. Commercial republication with permission. Please contact alec@rawls.org.</div>Alec Rawlshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18106800937399442588noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7347736.post-74587930779909848942014-09-11T12:09:00.000-07:002014-09-20T12:31:26.538-07:00How to stop Ebola: create negative "atmospheric pressure" by paying Ebola survivors to treat the sickEbola rising, from Drudge today:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<b style="background-color: white; font-family: monospace;"><a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/ebola/11086598/Millions-more-at-risk-in-Ebola-outbreak-British-study-finds.html">STUDY: Millions more at risk in Ebola outbreak...</a> </b><b style="background-color: white; font-family: monospace;"><br /></b><b style="background-color: white; font-family: monospace;"><a href="http://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-29147797">'Spreading like wildfire'...</a> </b><b style="background-color: white; font-family: monospace;"><br /></b><b style="background-color: white; font-family: monospace;"><a href="http://news.yahoo.com/ebola-terrifying-evolution-234000111--politics.html">'Terrifying evolution' of virus...</a></b></blockquote>
The key to an effective response lies in the survivors, who are immune to re-infection (at least by the same Ebola strain, which is what would be circulating in their area). For those survivors who are undamaged enough for work, train and pay as many as are willing to tend to the sick, the dying and the dead. Non-immune people cannot do this work on a large scale. They are terribly encumbered and they still get sick, turning them into part of the problem.<br />
<br />
Because treating the sick is so dangerous they are now receiving minimal if any care, causing mortality rates to be higher than they need to be. Using survivors to treat the sick would greatly increase the survivor rate, increasing the pool of survivors available to treat the sick. It is a self-reinforcing amelioration.<br />
<br />
The immune would have to for the most part remain in isolation along with the sick. They couldn't touch stuff that other people touch, but supplies could be left for them and so long as they undergo rigorous disinfection before leaving isolation the sick under their care would would cease to be a source of infection.<br />
<br />
Ditto for those who only might be sick with Ebola. These too could be tended to by Ebola survivors, whose first job would be to find out if they do have Ebola. Survivors, if they are make sure that the outsides of their bodies are as non-contagious as the insides of their bodies, can examine those with ambiguous symptoms and determine whether they need to be kept in quarantine or can be released to non-Ebola medical care.<br />
<br />
<b>Negative movement-pressure is critical</b><br />
<div>
<br /></div>
Most importantly, an army of survivors working to separate and treat the sick would drastically reduce transmission, which is the only way to keep the uninfected from fleeing hot zones and propelling further spread of the disease. That's the problem now. There is tremendous pressure to flee the hot zones, causing the disease to explode outwards.<br />
<br />
No larger quarantine zone can hold under these conditions. The greater the external efforts at containment the more the pressure has to build before it explodes outwards but it <i>will</i> explode. Quarantine has to at least <i>begin</i> at the level of the individual patient. Stop local transmission from individual patients and then larger quarantine zones might work, if they are needed at all.<br />
<br />
With an army of immune survivors to isolate and tend to the sick at the local level it becomes safer for uninfected people within the hot zones to stay where they are. Travel is <i>dangerous</i> because it exposes travelers to massed humanity, where contagion is amplified. Thus it would not be hard to make it safer not to flee, <i>if</i> a growing army of the immune were used to provide treatment-in-isolation for the sick.<br />
<br />
Add people's interest in not losing their established homes and livelihoods the abnormal outward pressure of the infection would be eliminated. Economic devastation could also cause pressure to flee but this too would be reduced by paying survivors to care for the sick. There would be an inflow of disposable income that would keep the local economy propped up. Care for the sick would be a new industry, subsidized from outside. Somebody has to care for the caregivers, and the money would be there to do it.<br />
<br />
Just as it takes negative atmospheric pressure to isolate an isolation room, so too if we want hot zones to remain isolated, whether or not they are quarantined, the motivational pressure for people inside to leave must be negative. Now the pressure to leave is strongly positive. Effective use of the immune-survivor resource can change that by isolating and treating the sick, stopping transmission and creating more immune survivors. Then even without formal larger scale quarantine movement would be greatly reduced.<br />
<br />
The alternative is continued high rates of disease transmission, in which case no quarantine zone will be able to contain the epidemic. It will inevitably explode outwards, first across Africa, then anywhere else where Ebola is not dealt with rationally.<br />
<br />
<br />
<b>Addendum on the immunity of Ebola survivors to re-infection</b><br />
<br />
From Dr. Bruce Ribner, director of Emory University Hospital's infectious disease unit (via PBS <a href="https://audioboom.com/boos/2413509-american-doctor-speaks-out-about-his-ebola-recovery">interview</a>):<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
DR. BRUCE RIBNER: The medical staff here at Emory is confident that the discharge from the hospital of both of these patients poses no public health threat. Ebola virus is a new infection on this continent, but our colleagues across the ocean have been dealing with it for 40 years now, and so there is strong epidemiologic evidence that, once an individual has resolved Ebola virus infection, they are immune to that strain, recognizing that there are five different strains of Ebola virus.</blockquote>
<br />
<b>UPDATE:</b> The day after put up this post there is an <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2014/09/12/opinion/what-were-afraid-to-say-about-ebola.html?_r=1">Op-Ed</a> in the NYT warning about mutation and spread of Ebola and calling, among other things, for using survivors to tend to the sick. From Michael T. Osterholm, director of the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy at the University of Minnesota:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
The United Nations should provide whatever number of beds are needed; the World Health Organization has recommended 1,500, but we may need thousands more. It should also coordinate the recruitment and training around the world of medical and nursing staff, in particular by bringing in local residents who have survived Ebola, and are no longer at risk of infection. Many countries are pledging medical resources, but donations will not result in an effective treatment system if no single group is responsible for coordinating them.</blockquote>
I would leave the U.N. completely out of it. The U.N. is <i>nothing but</i> corruption. It is a well developed machine for siphoning off all monies that are channeled through it, maximally diverting every Dollar and Euro through its vast networks of sycophants, sinecures and profiteers. The U.N. is one gigantic "french drain," where pouring a flood in achieves at best a trickle out. Instead use the same Christian organizations that have been instrumental in fighting AIDS.<br />
<br />
<a href="http://www.pepfar.gov/">PEPFAR</a>, the successful AIDS-fighting project that President Bush established in 2003, did not partner <i>only</i> with Christian organizations, but it did not discriminate against them, and in some ways favored them, because part of PEPFAR's mission was moral education, emphasizing that there would be no sexual transmission of AIDS at all if people were not having sex outside of marriage.<br />
<br />
The resulting distribution of funding can be gleaned from PEPFAR's <a href="http://www.pepfar.gov/funding/budget/partners/index.htm">partner pages</a>. Here, for instance, is the page for Nigeria in <a href="http://www.pepfar.gov/funding/budget/partners/103019.htm">2007</a>. Maybe half of the partners, receiving half of the funding, are Christian (hard to tell because much of the money that went to secular organizations was distributed by them to Christian sub-partners). These groups actually try to deliver as much AIDS-fighting effect per dollar as they can. Similarly for the secular aid groups, which should also be employed, but U.N. is the worst. Maybe they will have to be paid off in some instances where they would otherwise use their reach to block aid, but there is unlikely to be any role in which the U.N. can do more good than harm.<br />
<br />
<br />
UPDATES 9/20/14: As predicted above, attempts at quarantine are motivating people inside the hot zones to <a href="http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/E/EBOLA?SITE=AP&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT&CTIME=2014-09-20-12-55-28">flee</a>. Instead of negative "atmospheric pressure," the attempt to impose quarantine on an out-of-control hot-zone is causing a powerful positive "atmospheric pressure" that will only get stronger until it explodes outwards like pressure-bursting pustule.<br />
<br />
Also predictable, Obama is jumping on the chance to kill some U.S. troops and possibly bring Ebola to America by sending U.S. troops to the Ebola outbreak sites where there is nothing useful that they can do. Dr. Jane Orient, executive director of the Association of American Physicians and Surgeons, explains:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
“What African troops are doing is shooting people who cross borders or violate quarantine,” Orient <a href="http://www.wnd.com/2014/09/doctors-irresponsible-to-send-troops-to-combat-ebola/">told WND</a>, reacting to news of the U.S. troop deployment. “Is that what we plan to support?” </blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
She added, “Africans are already very suspicious of us. How will they react to an army setting up hospitals?” </blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
Orient called the planned U.S. deployment a “dubious mission,” warning that the nightmarish scenario could bring Ebola to America. </blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
“There is definitely a risk,” she said. “It seems irresponsible to send more people there when the ones already there are having trouble leaving. Probably anyone who has been exposed should be quarantined for 25 days since the last exposure.”</blockquote>
No, our troops will <i>not</i> shoot fleeing residents. They will instead deal with them up close and personal, and become vectors themselves:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
“You can see that these doctors, who are highly trained people, got themselves infected,” said Dr. Lee Hieb, former president of the Association of American Physicians and Surgeons. “So sending troops into an area, if they’re dealing one-on-one with a patient, they’re not going to be able to protect themselves very well. It’s not easy to [prevent transmission], because you get tired and you get careless and you make some simple mistakes. All it takes is one virus particle.”</blockquote>
The only way to stop the spread is to mobilize the Ebola survivors. Pay them to isolate and treat the sick in the hot zones so that transmission within the hot zones can be extinguished, making it safer to stay put than to flee, creating the necessary negative "atmospheric pressure" and saving a lot of lives inside the hot zones as well as outside.<br />
<br />
If any quarantine enforcement is to be applied, Ebola survivors should be used for this to, unless the quarantine is to be enforced the African way: by shooting anyone who tries to approach the quarantine boundary. That leaves <i>no role</i> for the U.S. military, never mind that, in the words of <a href="http://www.wnd.com/2014/09/boykin-sending-military-to-fight-ebola-misuse-of-soldiers/">Lt. Gen. William G. Boykin Ret.</a>, this mission would in any case be “an absolute misuse of the U.S. military.” But then Obama wants to find any mission for U.S. troops that will keep them away from the "new Caliphate" he has spent <a href="http://thefederalist.com/2014/09/18/this-parallel-between-lbjs-and-obamas-war-plans-will-terrify-you/#comment-1596772064">five-plus years creating</a>.<br />
<br />
<br /><div class="blogger-post-footer">All content copyright © Alec Rawls, 2004-. Non-commercial use allowed with attribution. Commercial republication with permission. Please contact alec@rawls.org.</div>Alec Rawlshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18106800937399442588noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7347736.post-41996917456619895332014-09-05T02:55:00.002-07:002014-09-07T02:11:26.449-07:00Secular reason leads to the same moral law as Judeo-Christianity, but most people need Judeo-Christian help to get thereAtheism is an odd category of belief. I can understand thinking that it is irrational to believe, not just that an omnipotent and moral God <i>might</i> exist, but that a loving God <i>does</i> exist. Belief that god <i>does</i> exist implies certainty about something we have little or no direct evidence for one way or the other. That's why I rate myself "agnostic." Atheists agree with me that it is irrational to be certain that there is a god, but then they turn around and pronounce themselves certain that there is not a god.<br />
<br />
Wait, what? I thought you just agreed with me that certainty about things we have no direct evidence for is irrational...<br />
<br />
So I'm always wary about atheists, not that they must have a screw loose (any more than religious believers must), but that maybe they haven't thought things through very well, or don't know as much as they think they know. So I wasn't surprised last week to come across a self-proclaimed atheist claiming something very naive: that religious morality is based on appeals to authority, not on moral reason, which he regards as exclusively "secular" (or atheist). Here is Robert Tracinski, <a href="http://thefederalist.com/2014/08/05/what-atheists-have-to-offer-the-right/">writing</a> at The Federalist:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
Every atheist has heard the old saw that it’s impossible to rely on a secular foundation for morality because if people are left to act on their own judgment, they will disagree about what is right and wrong and it will all be subjective. So we supposedly need a religious authority to settle the matter. </blockquote>
Wrong. Christianity does not rely on any appeal to authority. What the founders of this nation meant by "natural law" was what could be determined by clear reason to be necessarily right, and they believed that these basic elements of right existed for us to discern because they are the product of a moral and rational god, <i>some</i> of whose ways we can discern thanks to our god-given brains (brains that, according to Genesis, are made in God's image).<br />
<br />
The idea that believing Christians do not have rational foundations for their moral beliefs, but merely accept them on authority, comes from the non-religious, and it completely misunderstands Christianity. "Faith comes through the word of God," said Paul in Romans <a href="https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Romans+10%3A17&version=RSV">10:17</a>. That word is first and foremost the commandment of Jesus to love your neighbor as yourself. (See also Galatians <a href="https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Galatians+5%3A6&version=NIV">5:6</a>: "faith worketh by love.")<br />
<br />
The "law of love" is a call to account all value, to see the world as God would see it, loving everything there is to love, which is also the essence of moral rationality. It doesn't mean you don't give more priority to your own life than the lives of others. It means that you value everything there is to value and see where that takes you.<br />
<br />
People who hear this word and practice its meaning find that this is <i>right</i>, that it is <i>the</i> way to approach life, and this is where faith comes from: a person's individual experience of the correctness of the word of Christ. Faith in the word isn't taken on authority but is found in the compelling substance of the word and in where it leads the mind, and this is the beginning of natural law. If you account all value, what can you say with certainty about what must necessarily be right?<br />
<br />
This is why, in spite of being agnostic as to whether or not the God of the Bible even exists, I still call myself a Christian. Hey, the dude got the moral law absolutely 100% right. I call myself a Millian because I adhere to the several key points of moral reason that John Stewart Mill got right, and I'm not going to make up a new term and call myself a Jesusian just because I am not certain that Jesus was the divine Christ. I'm also not sure he wasn't, and I am glad to take the label that expresses the moral understanding I share with my fellow Christians.<br />
<br />
The problem with atheists is that, after shunning the world's great fount of moral rationality on the false grounds that Christians accept moral rules on authority without moral understanding, few atheists are able through their own devices to find the moral rationality that Christianity espouses. Few are able to achieve communion with the law of love.<br />
<br />
Some do, and Paul acknowledged this possibility in Romans<a href="http://www.bibletools.org/index.cfm/fuseaction/Bible.show/sVerseID/27977/eVerseID/27977"> 2:14-16</a>, allowing that some who have never heard the word of Jesus may still "show the work of the law written in their hearts," and he says that these will be judged "by Jesus," meaning by the word (the law of love) that Jesus laid down. If without hearing this word some nevertheless find the morality within themselves to follow it, they according to Paul they will still be raised up by God on judgment day.<br />
<br />
Even for those who hear the word, there is a strong case to be made that Christianity is not asking for belief in God, or belief that Jesus is the only begotten son of God, or faith that Jesus is God. Paul's criterion for salvation is by belief in "the faith of Jesus" (Romans <a href="https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Romans+3%3A21-28&version=KJV">3:22</a>): not belief in Jesus himself but belief in what Jesus had faith in, which on my reading is the law of love. Others see Jesus as having faith, first of all, in the promise of resurrection, but I think that has to be secondary. That is a self-centered thought while the central message of Christianity is to account <i>all</i> value.<br />
<br />
Either way, the moral law that Christians are asked to follow is fully rational, and it is accepted on a morally rational grounds: by witnessing and comprehending its rightness and goodness in practice. The idea that Christian morality is embraced on irrational grounds is a product of ignorant imagination. I do not see grounds either to believe or disbelieve that Jesus was the Son of God / Son of Man, proclaimed by the Bible but I do have faith in the <i>word</i>, as Jesus spoke it (or as the Bible says he spoke it). That word--the Christian law of love--is the very core of moral rationality. It is not the starting point, but it is the central discovery.<br />
<br />
The starting point is just the rationality of husbanding and following one's discoveries of where value lies and then in one's pursuit of value accounting each bit of discovered value wherever it is enough at stake to be worth accounting, as far as one is able. That secular foundation leads directly to the law of love because the big discovery, when we husband and follow our discoveries of what there is to value in the world, is that all men have this same moral capacity.<br />
<br />
Like me, you are an engine for discovering and acting for value in the world and that moral nature, that bit of god-like substance in you, is what makes me love my generic neighbor as my self. We are all moral agents whose moral agency must be empowered. That is why liberty works, that is why gun rights work, because the great majority of un-stunted individuals have grown to maturity alert to value in its myriad forms and are driven to act for it, to bring it to market, to rescue it, to create it.<br />
<br />
People can arrive at this moral development without religion. They just need to be instinctively rational, husbanding and following evidence of value until the world of value opens up to their mind's eye. Or they can arrive at it through the word of Jesus, to love thy neighbor as thyself, which is also in the Old Testament book of Leviticus (<a href="https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Leviticus+19%3A9-20&version=ESV;KJV">19:18</a>).<br />
<br />
Without that Judeo-Christian guidance the central tendency of atheism has been towards totalitarianism. The one epic-scale atheistic mass movement in history is communism, and to a lesser degree this same preference for government imposed solutions is strongly associated with what is today the the less-religious, less-Christian side of our political divide: Democrats are the party of big government, and this correlation between illiberal policy preferences and rejection of Judeo-Christianity is easy to understand.<br />
<br />
Sure these illiberals think they are helping their neighbors. They know a thousand ways that their neighbors need to be forced to behave in order to live worthwhile lives. What they don't get is the priority of liberty, which stems from liberty's empowerment of moral agency. Judeo-Christians get this immediately. It is the animating spirit of the law of love, the <i>reason</i> you love your neighbors: because they are made in God's image, giving divine sanction to the empowerment of moral agency. Those who are made in god's image must be free, unless and until they freely choose to commit evils for which they must be locked away or put to death.<br />
<br />
This is solidified by living according to law of love. When you look for what value there is to account in your neighbors you learn to recognize and love their moral agency. They are engines for the discovery and pursuit of value which should therefore be empowered, or free to act.<br />
<br />
Judeo-Christian belief that man is made in God's image is what drove the Reformation and it is what ended slavery. It is a big central actor in the history of the Judeo-Christian world, affecting whole populations, while to grasp the fundamental importance of the empowerment of individual moral agency purely in moral theoretic terms is extraordinarily rare. There is probably not one moral philosopher per university who gets it, and there's not much indication that Tracinski gets it either:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
For those of us who don’t believe in a deity or supernatural power, the way we try to settle arguments is by pointing to observable facts. Do human beings flourish better under capitalism or socialism? Let’s look at the history of the two systems and see how they turned out. </blockquote>
That's better than nothing, but the lack of principled understanding creates a strong urge to slip a Judeo-Christian ladder under those dangling feet.<br />
<br />
Of course not all religions are created equal. You're not going to find any law of love in Islam, which instead commands a law of hate: that Muslims are to love their <i>Muslim</i> neighbors but are to hate everyone else. Koran <a href="http://quran.com/48/29">48.29</a>:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
Muhammad is the messenger of Allah. And those with him are hard against the disbelievers and merciful among themselves.</blockquote>
Not a morally rational religion to say the least, but Christianity is the world history's greatest fount of moral rationality and America today is worse-off for the large fraction of its citizens who no longer understand this.<br />
<br />
<br />
UPDATE: A good example from the Washington Post of the idiocies that the anti-religious are prone to. This was in the comments on a story about the San Diego black man, Douglas McAuthur McCain becoming "<a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2014/08/27/how-douglas-mcarthur-mccain-became-the-first-american-to-die-fighting-for-the-islamic-state/">the first American to die fighting for the Islamic State</a>," where one John Cunliffe had this to say about Islam:<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhl8gtSEtnqyY5ALkFXMoCPTUuNazyJChmrw56G7XTv4nmOvkUfd-v3mcRt3MlNnLwtJbLWH8uNSbFzwc3LZ6FirQd75gZT1gQ1hpjjztwD11lfl0oSGzVXxxaX0QjiBGcbQqfKSA/s1600/ChristianHaterCunliffe2.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhl8gtSEtnqyY5ALkFXMoCPTUuNazyJChmrw56G7XTv4nmOvkUfd-v3mcRt3MlNnLwtJbLWH8uNSbFzwc3LZ6FirQd75gZT1gQ1hpjjztwD11lfl0oSGzVXxxaX0QjiBGcbQqfKSA/s1600/ChristianHaterCunliffe2.png" height="93" width="320" /></a></div>
To which I replied:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
Yes, lots of Christians beheading non-Christians. You see it all over the world. And that Christian law of love, the second commandment of Jesus, to love your neighbor as yourself, expressly extended to all mankind via the parable of the good Samaritan? Exactly the same as the Muslim law of hate: that Muslims are to love each other but are to hate everyone else. Koran verse 48.29: "Muhammad is the messenger of Allah. And those with him are hard against the disbelievers and merciful among themselves."<br />
<br />
Law of love, law of hate, "what difference, at this point, does it make?" To people like John Cunliffe, who have a moral IQ of zero, it makes absolutely no difference at all. If this guy is the next American to show up fighting for ISIS, who could be surprised? He has NO moral compass.</blockquote>
Cunliffe's anti-religiosity suggests that he is probably an atheist instead of an agnostic, and the great majority of atheists almost certainly are anti-religious. Otherwise atheism is just illogical, as discussed in my opening paragraph. If a person rejects religious belief on the grounds that it is illogical to believe in (be certain about) what is unknowable, how can they turn around and believe in the equally unknowable proposition that there is no god? But anti-religiousity accounts for this logical contradiction. Atheists aren't being logical. They are just anti-religion, and Cunliffe manifests the likely outcome. He is totally ignorant about religious belief.<br />
<br />
When Cunliffe says Christianity and Islam are the same, it is probably because he ignorantly thinks that Christians are supposed to accept Christianity on authority, making it as irrationally founded as Islam. Of course that still would not make them the same. Accepting the Christian law of love on authority and accepting the Muslim law of hate on authority are still polar opposites. But this is the problem with Atheism. Once someone like Cunliffe assumes that all religions are irrational, that's all he thinks he needs to know so he doesn't look any further, and never learns a) that Christianity is highly rational, and b) that it is opposite in almost every way to Islam.<br />
<br />
Cunliffe cannot actually be ignorant of the vast difference between Islam and Christianity. He is just a willfully blind a$$hole who hates Christians more than genocidal jihadists because Christians are his domestic political opposition and the only thing he really cares about is political victory for "his side." The jihadists are slaughtering Christians across the entire Middle East? In his view that would be, "the enemy of my enemy is my friend." He hates Christians so who cares? Better they be slaughtered over there than be allowed to come over here and vote Republican.<br />
<br />
Tracinski doesn't share that politics so he is not aggressively ignorant about Christianity the way Cunliffe is, but he is still hugely ignorant. Like Cunliffe he assumes that Christianity, being religious, is a species of irrationality, and that is probably why he has never looked far enough into Christianity to understand how thoroughly it already incorporates "secular reason," which Christians understand to be god-given. His own secular reason, on the other hand, suffers from not availing itself of the moral understanding attained by Christianity.<br />
<br />
I have a different criticism of Christianity: that its tendency to over-focus on salvation and resurrection (the alternative reading of "the faith of Jesus") makes it much too solipsistic. Jesus said to Pilate "I am here to be a witness for truth." If Christians are to follow Jesus, he is telling us here the method. The law of love is the substance that the method of truth arrives at. Trust in truth, husband and follow all evidenced of value, and you will find your own moral agency, and see the same moral agency in your fellow men, and arrive at the law of love.<br />
<br />
Christianity today largely ignores the method that Jesus laid down for his followers. All of our society's information industries are today dominated by Democratic Party operatives who practice maximal dishonesty as they apply the maximum pro-Democrat anti-Republic spin that they can get away with on every issue. It is all demagoguery all the time. THIS war on truth ought to be the primary focus of Christians today. They should be exposing it at every turn with all their effort, but instead most Christian religious focus is on achieving salvation and eternal life.<br />
<br />
When Christian proselytizers come to my door I always talk to them. I find out what they are focused on, which always turns out to be salvation, and I try to direct them to what they should be focused on, which is the method of truth and the war on truth that is being fought every day. "But we are fighting for the truth about salvation" they sometimes argue. "But that is not where truth is being attacked" I answer.<br />
<br />
The most religious Christians have tremendous difficulty escaping the solipsistic inward focus that our churches are teaching. They need to turn their focus outwards and get into the daily fight for truth, but their apparent self-neuterization may not actually be self-directed. It is a fully predictable consequence of IRS rules that grant churches tax-exempt status only on the condition that they refrain from political speech. This tax law is a direct attack on the very core of what Christianity is supposed to be.<div class="blogger-post-footer">All content copyright © Alec Rawls, 2004-. Non-commercial use allowed with attribution. Commercial republication with permission. Please contact alec@rawls.org.</div>Alec Rawlshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18106800937399442588noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7347736.post-59651680980948984792014-08-29T08:41:00.001-07:002014-08-29T08:57:35.298-07:00Boehner's wrong-target lawsuit would turn Obamacare into BonercareLiz Peek describes <a href="http://www.thefiscaltimes.com/Columns/2014/08/20/6-Reasons-Obamacare-Can-Win-Senate-GOP">six things</a> people really hate about Obamacare that just might doom the Democrats in November. I couldn't help <a href="http://www.thefiscaltimes.com/Columns/2014/08/20/6-Reasons-Obamacare-Can-Win-Senate-GOP#comment-1552448758">mentioning</a> the one really stupid way that all of these things people hate about Obamacare could sink <i>Republicans</i> every November for years to come. Speaker of the House John Boehner could win his <a href="http://www.oxforddictionaries.com/us/definition/american_english/boner">boner</a> of a lawsuit against Obama's non-enforcement of Obamacare, forcing full enforcement of what would henceforth come to be known as "Bonercare."<br />
<br />
The correct issue over which to sue Obama over his failure to faithfully execute the laws is his blatant subversion of border enforcement and immigration law. That would have been a win-win for the GOP. Win the lawsuit and the result is something everyone in the country wants: some forced enforcement of the nation's immigration laws. Instead Bonehead chooses the win-lose lawsuit. If he wins the GOP will be blamed henceforth for forcing the full enforcement of Obama's disastrous socialization of one sixth of our economy.<br />
<br />
Why did Bonehead choose the win-lose case? Because he is on Obama's side on border lawlessness. Stupid RINO. I wish we could launch this idiot into space. Completely immoral and just idiotic beyond belief, and he is supposed to be our party "leader"?<br />
<br />
Republicanism is the system of liberty under law. At the most basic level that is just two simple components: liberty and the rule of law. That means no socialized medicine and it means enforcement of our immigration laws. How can Bonehead get <i>both</i> of those completely wrong in one fell law-suit?<br />
<br />
<br />
<b>The proper long-term goal is health insurance for NOBODY</b><br />
<br />
Boehner's strategic imbecility on Obamacare leaves the question of what <i>is</i> the way forward on health care, but I have <a href="http://floppingaces.net/2014/02/07/the-proper-health-care-goal-is-health-insurance-for-nobody-guest-post/">already answered</a> that question. The only reason the health care market ever became dysfunctional in the first place is because government provided powerful incentives for people to buy health insurance and health insurance creates massive market distortions.<br />
<br />
When health care is covered by third party insurance people no longer have incentive to shop for price so there is no longer a normal competitive market. To keep prices under control it becomes necessary to impose cost controls, either through government regulation or by monopsonistic domination of the market by insurance conglomerates, and this destroys the other side of the market, which is what had already happened pre-Obamacare. Government had already succeeded in channeling the great majority of medical care through insured financing where government had also created an elaborate system of public-private price regulation.<br />
<br />
Instead of going deeper into government takeover we needed to follow the guidance that government is always supposed to follow when it interferes with markets at all: target the result that efficient markets would arrive at. There can be sources of market failure that are not created by government and government has warrant in these cases (in theory if not under the Constitution) to "fix" the market failure by trying to achieve the market result that would occur if markets were not imperfect. In the health care market that perfect-markets result is an insurance-free outcome, at least in the long run. This comes from the simple fact that insurance is expensive, not only because of the loss of price competition and the unavoidable distortions that price controls create, but because insurance also creates a huge parasitic bureaucracy that has to be supported. This expensiveness means that whenever they can, people will prefer to self-insure (to take the money they would otherwise spend on insurance premiums and use it to build up savings/wealth from which they can cover what unexpected expenses may arise). Self-insurance is the better deal (not larded with parasitic losses).<br />
<br />
Now put this in the larger market context. When markets are efficient everyone's wealth tends to increase, which automatically increases their effective level of self-insurance, giving them less and less need for or interest in third-party insurance. Thus the natural tendency of a market system is towards progressively less third-party insurance and progressively more self-insurance. (This is not an obvious result when consumers are looking at imperfect market prices but if the external costs of the inefficiencies caused by insurance are internalized--and this is what we are shooting for, the perfect market result--then it <i>is</i> obvious.)<br />
<br />
This movement away from third-party insurance yields further increases in price competition which continues to drive medical costs ever downwards even as care makes huge leaps forward, the same as happens with computers and every other competitive industry. These decreasing costs bring the cost of self-insurance further down, driving third party insurance ever further out, and this direction marks the long term objective that government policy should be aiming for: not third-party health insurance for everybody (as the GOP's <a href="http://floppingaces.net/2014/02/07/the-proper-health-care-goal-is-health-insurance-for-nobody-guest-post/">proposed alternatives</a> to Obamacare all target) but health insurance for NOBODY.<br />
<br />
<br />
<b>What about people who can't afford health care? Bill all aid to account of the recipient!</b><br />
<br />
The common stumbling block to rational market reform is always, "but what about the people who can't pay?", as if making provision for the needy requires a socialist system of production and distribution. No it doesn't. The answer is very simple. Afford all crucial health care services to whoever needs it, no questions asked, and if they can't pay the bill have government pay the bill with pay it tax money and charge every penny of this aid to the account of the recipient, to be repaid with full market interest over the life of the aid recipient according to an ability to pay formula.<br />
<br />
Of course not all such aid will be repaid in full. It will not just give loans but in the end will also forgive a portion of those loans, which makes the system costly. The important thing is that, by keeping incentives as intact as possible, the system of billing aid to the account of the recipient yields more bang-per-buck than any other way of giving aid. In particular, it is vastly more efficient than giving aid away, which also has the perverse effect of making recipients think that they must be owed, or why would society be giving them stuff? No, you are not owed, you owe, and we are keeping track to the penny exactly how <i>much</i> you owe your fellow citizens for the aid they have already loaned to you.<br />
<br />
<i>All</i> aid should be billed to the account of the recipient, not just health care. Look at the insanity now of paying people not to work (unemployment insurance). If this aid had to be repaid over the life of the recipient according to an ability to pay formula nobody would take such assistance unless they actually needed it, but if they do need it then it is there, and because people have incentive not to abuse it the conditions for qualifying for such aid could be made <i>more</i> generous and <i>more</i> flexible at <i>far less</i> expense than our present system of perverse incentives incurs.<br />
<br />
The costs of the perverse incentives themselves are huge. People don't work who otherwise would, making themselves a drain on their fellow citizens instead of a support. Not only to they take rather than contribute tax dollars, but they withhold their productivity from the market place, making the supply of goods lower and prices higher. At this point we are actually <i>paying</i> people to act this way.<br />
<br />
Philosophers can argue about what level of assistance to the needy should be but <i>how</i> the aid should be given precedes philosophy. It's elemental economics. <i>Whatever</i> aid is given it should be billed to the account of the recipient. Any other system gives less aid for any given level of cost. No matter what the level of spending on aid is, society should get the most aid as possible for that expenditure, and that means keeping incentives as intact as possible by requiring repayment according to an ability-to-pay formula.<br />
<br />
I've been trying to tell the world this for <a href="http://rawls.org/util_billing.html">20</a> years (and a lot of <a href="http://rawls.org/DirectProtectionFrame.htm">other</a> <a href="http://rawls.org/Multiple_verdicts_frame.htm">stuff</a> too). Nobody pays any attention. Stupid world.<br />
<br /><div class="blogger-post-footer">All content copyright © Alec Rawls, 2004-. Non-commercial use allowed with attribution. Commercial republication with permission. Please contact alec@rawls.org.</div>Alec Rawlshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18106800937399442588noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7347736.post-73543615093455326702014-05-29T10:19:00.000-07:002014-05-29T18:04:11.159-07:00Carlo Bonini in COLLUSION with Joe Wilson’s treason<h3>
Alec Rawls' review of the book <em><a href="http://www.amazon.com/Collusion-International-Espionage-War-Terror/dp/1933633271">Collusion</a></em>, by Carlo Bonini and Giuseppe D’Avanzo (Melville, 2007)</h3>
<i>This is a detailed expose that I wrote in 2007. In the confusion about how it might fit in with the publication of my <a href="http://www.crescentofbetrayal.com/">Crescent of Betrayal</a> book it never got published. Better late than never. It's almost 8,000 words but the subject warrants the attention.</i><br />
<br />
A month ago I saw Bill Moyers open an <a href="http://www.pbs.org/moyers/journal/05042007/transcript1.html">interview</a> with Italian conspiracy theorist Carlo Bonini by repeating one of Joe Wilson’s “Bush lied” lies. Moyers asserted that the president’s 2003 State of the Union claim (that we had learned from the British that Saddam had been seeking uranium in Africa) “wasn’t true.”<br />
<br />
Anyone who has been paying the least bit of attention knows that is <em>was</em> true. Saddam <em>had</em> been seeking uranium in Africa, and Joe Wilson knew it better than anyone.<br />
<br />
<br />
<h3>
A very brief background, for those who don’t know the details</h3>
<br />
Wilson went to Niger on behalf of the CIA in early 2002 to check out whether a superficially untrustworthy “memorandum of sale” of uranium from Niger to Iraq could possibly be real. Wilson was not told any specifics about the purported deal, but was able to confirm the unlikelihood that any such deal had been concluded. At the same time, Wilson learned from Nigerien Prime Minister Ibrahim Mayaki that the Iraqis had <em>tried</em> to buy uranium from Niger (President Bush’s SOTU claim).<br />
<br />
The 2004 Senate Select Committee on Intelligence (SSCI) report on pre-war intelligence summarizes Wilson’s Niger trip report to the CIA as follows (<a href="http://www.globalsecurity.org/intell/library/congress/2004_rpt/iraq-wmd-intell_chapter2-b.htm">Chapter 2, part B</a>, PP 17):<br />
<blockquote>
The intelligence report indicated that former Nigerien Prime Minister Ibrahim Mayaki was unaware of any contracts that had been signed between Niger and any rogue states for the sale of yellowcake while he was Prime Minister (1997-1999) or Foreign Minister (1996-1997). Mayaki said that if there had been any such contract during his tenure, he would have been aware of it. Mayaki said, however, that in June 1999,( ) businessman, approached him and insisted that Mayaki meet with an Iraqi delegation to discuss "expanding commercial relations" between Niger and Iraq. The intelligence report said that Mayaki interpreted "expanding commercial relations" to mean that the delegation wanted to discuss uranium yellowcake sales. The intelligence report also said that "although the meeting took place, Mayaki let the matter drop due to the UN sanctions on Iraq." </blockquote>
March 2003 (two months after President Bush’s SOTU speech) the International Atomic Energy Agency revealed that documents forwarded to it from the CIA (the “memorandum of sale” that Joe Wilson had helped to confirm the untrustworthiness of) had proved to be forgeries. Not a big surprise. If they weren’t real, they had to be forgeries. But this revelation presented Wilson with an opportunity. In a July 2003 op-ed in <em>The New York Times</em> (“<a href="http://www.commondreams.org/views03/0706-02.htm">What I didn’t find in Africa</a>”), Wilson lied about what he found in Africa, claiming that his Niger trip debunked the president’s SOTU claims, when it actually provided evidence for them.<br />
<br />
To make his accusations stick, and to make them more damaging, Wilson claimed in a series of interviews with <a href="http://www.commondreams.org/views03/0506-02.htm">high</a> <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn?pagename=article&contentId=A46957-2003Jun11">profile</a> <a href="http://www.tnr.com/doc.mhtml?pt=0cQNpJfYxhSff7JJVl4q9T%3D%3D">reporters</a> that he had personally identified the forged documents on his trip to Niger and reported back to the CIA that “<a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn?pagename=article&contentId=A46957-2003Jun11">the names were wrong and the dates were wrong</a>.”<br />
<br />
Wilson would later <a href="http://www.globalsecurity.org/intell/library/congress/2004_rpt/iraq-wmd-intell_pat-roberts.htm">admit</a> to the staff of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence “that he, in fact, did not have access to any of the names and dates in the CIA’s reports.” His report did not mention any documents at all, and “[t]he only mention of Iraq in the report pertained to the meeting between the Iraqi delegation and former Prime Minister Mayaki.” (<a href="http://www.globalsecurity.org/intell/library/congress/2004_rpt/iraq-wmd-intell_chapter2-b.htm">Chapter 2, part B</a>, PP 20.)<br />
<br />
<br />
<em></em><br />
<h3>
<em>Collusion</em></h3>
<br />
Authoritative exposures of Wilson’s deceits (<a href="http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/3060633.stm">by George Tenet</a> in July 2003, a week after Wilson told his lies in <em>The New York Times</em>, and by the SSCI report in 2004), have not stopped people like Bill Moyers from abetting Wilson’s lies for the past four years. Bonini’s interview with Moyers is part of this ongoing collusion with Joe Wilson.<br />
<br />
As reported in his just published book <i>Collusion</i>, Bonini did substantial original investigation into the origin and trajectory of the forged documents. In a carefully scripted/edited back and forth with Moyers, Bonini describes the forged documents entering and bouncing around the intel stream, the whole time simply assuming that this phony intel is what the president’s SOTU speech was referring to. This was Wilson’s fraudulent accusation exactly, but Bonini was not claiming any new basis for it. He just went along with Moyers in pretending that there was no distinction to be made between the Bush/British claim that Saddam had <em>tried</em> to buy uranium (an established fact), and Saddam’s <em>securing a deal</em> to buy uranium (as the forged documents purport to show).<br />
<br />
Someone would have to fact-check this new Joe Wilson so I held my nose and ordered <em>Collusion</em>, which Bonini co-authored with Giuseppe D’Avanzo. In addition to telling the story of the forged documents, Bonini (short, henceforth, for Bonini and D’Avanzo) also writes about the controversy over Iraq’s stockpile of aluminum tubes: whether they were missile bodies of centrifuge parts. This review only addresses Bonini’s central topic: the forged documents.<br />
<br />
<br />
<h3>
The forged documents</h3>
<br />
Bonini’s story begins in 1999 when Italian Intelligence (SISMI) intercepts a telex in which the Nigerien Ambassador to Italy tells his home office that an Iraqi ambassador will be coming to visit Niger. Because Niger’s only significant industry is uranium production, this trip is interpreted by SISMI as a probable attempt to buy uranium, and this intel is passed along to other intelligence agencies.<br />
<br />
Bonini lands an interview with SISMI chief Nicolo Pollari who tells Bonini a story (accurate or not) of how the intercepted cable also got passed on to an Italian con-artist named Rocco Martino, who used it as an opportunity to concoct forged documentation of an Iraq-Niger uranium sale that he figured he could sell for big bucks to various intelligence agencies. Martino had had dealings with SISMI in the past and, according to Pollari, a SISMI agent named Antonio Nucera “wanted to help his friend.” Nucera went so far as to hook Martino up with some other small time SISMI hangers-on who broke into the Nigerien embassy in Rome at the beginning of 2001 and stole letterhead and other documentary materials for making the forged documents. (Bonini, p. 20-22.)<br />
<br />
This seems a very long way to go to “help a friend,” but it is hard to come up with any other reason why SISMI would be involved in such a ruse pre 9-11. Post 9-11, Bonini suggests that higher ups at SISMI saw the Martino documents (whether they knew they were fraudulent or not) as a way to curry favor with the United States by providing a rationale for the United States to attack Iraq.<br />
<br />
Incomplete as the story remains, the upshot is a mixed bag of intelligence reporting coming out of Italy, including real evidence of an Iraqi attempt to buy Nigerien uranium (the 1999 telex, which the CIA would reinforce with Joe Wilson’s real evidence of an Iraqi attempt to buy Nigerien uranium in 1999), clouded by phony documents about a deal that never occurred. As a review of the SSCI and Butler reports will show, U.S. and British intelligence did an admirable job of separating the real evidence from the phony evidence, and of carefully crafting their statements to refer to the real evidence (that Iraq had tried to buy uranium), without making claims that a deal had been transacted.<br />
<br />
Bonini, however, is determined to tell a different story. He notes that the different intelligence agencies all regarded the Martino documents as untrustworthy, but wants to engineer the charge that the Bush CIA relied on these documents anyway, to give President Bush a pretext for war with Iraq. To do this, he has to first find a ways to dismiss the real evidence of an Iraq-Niger uranium link. If there was no real evidence, then concern about such a link must have stemmed from the phony evidence, and since everyone knew the phony evidence was probably phony, the implication is that the Bush administration knowingly took the country to war on false pretenses, as Joe Wilson charged.<br />
<br />
<br />
<h3>
Dismissing the real evidence</h3>
<br />
Bonini belittles the real evidence of an Iraq-Niger link by casting it merely as lending credibility to the Martino deception. “After all,” says Bonini at the outset (p.20), “every ‘fairy tale’ must begin with a documented fact.” But to make this spin stick, he has to find some way to interpret the real intelligence about the Iraqi ambassador’s trip to Niger as not really being about an Iraqi attempt to buy uranium.<br />
<br />
This interpretation comes from the mouth of a high ranking retired French intelligence agent named Alain Chouet, who gains credence in Bonini’s story for helping to expose the role of SISME in perpetrating Martino’s fraud. Chouet offers two reasons to think that the ambassador’s trip has nothing to do with uranium. He argues that Saddam would never send an ordinary functionary on such a mission but “would have sent one of his sons for a deal like that,” and he claims that: “We already knew the reason for Wissam al-Zahawie’s trip to Niger.” The Iraqis, says Chouet, needed a place to dump “the Iraqi regime’s stockpile of toxic waste in exchange for cash.” (P.33.)<br />
<br />
That seems implausible, given Saddam’s penchant for poisoning his own people by the region, but in any case, these arguments certainly do not apply to what Joe Wilson found in Niger: that Prime Minister Mayaki was approached by the Iraqis about uranium sales.<br />
<br />
This 1999 contact was separate from the 1999 trip made by the Iraqi ambassador. It was not a formally pre-arranged meeting, but took place, according to Wilson, “on the margins of a ministerial meeting of the Organization of African Unity.” (Wilson, p.28, quoted by Bonini p. 67.)<br />
<br />
In Wilson’s ironically titled book, <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Politics-Truth-Diplomats-Betrayed-Identity/dp/B000EMH5LQ/ref=pd_bbs_1/102-1042162-8536100?ie=UTF8&s=books&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;qid=1181418839&sr=8-1">The Politics of Truth</a>, he tries to make this meeting sound insignificant, in part by not revealing that the person who talked to the Iraqis was Prime Minister Mayaki. Wilson only says that “one of his sources,” “a Nigerien friend,” had talked to “an Iraqi official,” not noting that this “friend” was even a government official, never mind the Prime Minister. (Wilson, p. 28.)<br />
<br />
Bonini plays the same trick, simply quoting Wilson about the Iraq-Niger contact discovered by Wilson, but by the time Bonini writes about the incident, the 2004 SSCI report has already identified Wilson’s “friend” as Prime Minister Mayaki. Bonini has no excuse for withholding this information. He is just a Wilson abettor, which can be seen also in the fact that Bonini never mentions Wilson’s high profile lies about having identified the forgeries on his trip to Niger. That would seem to be a relevant tidbit for a book that claims to be tracing the various ways that the forgeries were misused.<br />
<br />
<br />
<h3>
Baghdad Bob</h3>
<br />
One detail that Wilson did include in <em>The Politics of Truth</em> is that his “friend” would later learn the identity of the Iraqi official that he met at the Organization of African Unity. Mayaki later saw the same Iraqi official on television, where he was identified as “Baghdad Bob,” the Iraqi Minister of Information who was the televised face of Saddam’s regime during the 2003 invasion of Iraq. Bonini (p. 68) spins this as reason to <em>dismiss</em> the Iraqi attempt to buy uranium:<br />
<blockquote>
This is the stuff of comedy. Al-Sahaf was the so-called minister who stood on the terrace of the Palestine Hotel while the Bradley Fighting Vehicles were speeding into the streets of Baghdad, assuring the TV networks in all seriousness that "the Iraqis are winning the war."</blockquote>
Thus does Bonini elide the real import of the Baghdad Bob revelation: that the Mayaki meeting was a top level meeting, not just on the Nigerien side, but also on the Iraqi side. Bonini glosses over <em>both</em> sides, but he is fully aware of the import, having earlier cited Alain Chouet’s dismissal of the Iraqi ambassador’s Niger contact on the grounds that Saddam “would have sent one of his sons for a deal like that.” Now Bonini refuses to notice when it turns out that Saddam did in fact send one of his closest henchmen.<br />
<br />
CIA analysts did not put much stock in Mayaki’s claim to have avoided discussing uranium with the Iraqis, since he would obviously say that to any American official, whether or not it was true, but either way Mayaki’s denial cuts against Chouet’s second reason for dismissing the Iraq-Niger link. If the actual purpose of Baghdad Bob’s overture was to pursue waste disposal services that were not forbidden under the sanctions regime he would have just said so to Mayaki, who in turn would have gladly reported to Wilson that the Iraqi interest was not in uranium (given his evident eagerness to allay any concern that he had talked about uranium). Yet Mayaki did not suggest that the Iraqis were interested in something other than uranium. He specifically stated that he <em>did</em> take them to be after uranium.<br />
<br />
<br />
<h3>
The Butler Report</h3>
<br />
Bonini certainly knows how to connect these dots. They go to the very heart of his central ploy: depicting all concern about an Iraq-Niger link as stemming from the Martino fraud. But not only does he decline to connect the dots, he shields the reader from them. Most glaring is his complete omission of any mention of the conclusions of the 2004 British Butler Report, which noted that British pre-war intelligence assessments (published in its September 2002 White Paper and shared with the Bush Administration) were careful to only state that Saddam had sought uranium in Africa and consciously declined to give credence to the suspicious Martino documents and the supposed deal that they represented: <br />
<blockquote>
We also note that, because the intelligence evidence was inconclusive, neither the Government’s dossier or the Prime Minister went on to say that a deal between the Governments of Iraq and Niger for the supply of uranium had been signed, or uranium shipped.” (<a href="http://image.guardian.co.uk/sys-files/Politics/documents/2004/07/14/butler.pdf">Butler Report</a>, section 500.)</blockquote>
The report specifically asserts that the intelligence assessments included in the White Paper and passed on to the United States were based on evidence that the Iraqi overtures to Niger in 1999 were for the purpose of buying uranium, that this evidence consisted of “intelligence from several sources,” and that these assessments were formulated before the British ever came into contact with the Martino documents. (Section 503.)<br />
<br />
This is a flat contradiction to Bonini's flat assertion that the British Intel came from the Martino forgeries. When I saw Bonini on Moyers I thought that his book must contain some counter to the Butler report, but instead he just pretends it doesn’t exist! There is no mention of the Butler Report anywhere in the body of <em>Collusion</em>. Bonini only mentions it in his “chapter notes,” where he simply describes the report as “discredited” and “thrown together to blur Tony Blair’s culpability,” without informing his readers that it directly contradicts Bonini’s foundational assertions.<br />
The British claim to have pre-forgeries intelligence from several sources about Iraq trying to buy uranium in Niger is perfectly credible. We ourselves had at least two such pieces of intelligence: the intercepted telex about Iraqi ambassador’s trip to Niger, and the overture to Prime Minister Mayaki that was reported by Joe Wilson. As the SSCI report concluded:<br />
<blockquote>
<a href="http://www.globalsecurity.org/intell/library/congress/2004_rpt/iraq-wmd-intell_chapter2-k.htm">Conclusion 12</a>. Until October 2002 when the Intelligence Community obtained the forged foreign language documents on the Iraq-Niger uranium deal, it was reasonable for analysts to assess that Iraq may have been seeking uranium from Africa based on Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) reporting and other available intelligence.</blockquote>
Given that our human intelligence in the field was/is almost non-existent, the chance that we happened onto ALL of Saddam’s Niger contacts is nil. If the Brits are not as blind as us, they might easily have discovered more about the Iraq-Niger contacts.<br />
<br />
<br />
<h3>
The CIA got it right, and so did President Bush</h3>
<br />
The CIA’s position in the period leading up to the 2003 State of the Union was the same as the British one: we had good reason to believe, as President Bush asserted, that Saddam had tried to buy uranium, but were skeptical that any deal had been concluded (that is, we did not give credence to the phony Martino documents). This is corroborated by both the Butler Report and the SSCI report.<br />
<br />
“In preparing the [September 24, 2001] dossier,” says the Butler Report, “the UK consulted the US. The CIA advised caution about any suggestion that Iraq had succeeded in buying uranium in Africa, but agreed that there was evidence that it had been sought.” (<a href="http://image.guardian.co.uk/sys-files/Politics/documents/2004/07/14/butler.pdf">Section 497</a>.) The SSCI report also shows the CIA taking just these positions. Before President Bush gave a speech in <a href="http://www.globalsecurity.org/intell/library/congress/2004_rpt/iraq-wmd-intell_chapter2-f.htm">Cincinnati</a> in October 2002 the CIA removed a claim that: “the [Iraqi] regime has been caught attempting to purchase substantial amounts of uranium oxide from sources in Africa," saying that the evidence for such a deal (the Martino forgeries) “was weak.”<br />
<br />
On the other hand, the CIA was certain enough that Saddam had <em>tried</em> to buy uranium that they allowed President Bush to say so in his State of the Union speech. The above blockquoted “conclusion 12” affirms that before the CIA encountered the forged documents, agents had reason to believe Saddam was trying to buy uranium, and they had even more reason to believe it post-forgeries, thanks to the evidence Wilson brought back from Niger about the Iraqi attempt to talk to Prime Minister Mayaki about uranium: <br />
<blockquote>
(U) Conclusion 13. The report on the former ambassador's trip to Niger, disseminated in March 2002, did not change any analysts' assessments of the Iraq-Niger uranium deal. For most analysts, the information in the report lent more credibility to the original Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) reports on the uranium deal, but State Department Bureau of Intelligence and Research (INR) analysts believed that the report supported their assessment that Niger was unlikely to be willing or able to sell uranium to Iraq. [<a href="http://www.globalsecurity.org/intell/library/congress/2004_rpt/iraq-wmd-intell_chapter2-k.htm">SSCI report, Niger conclusions.</a>]</blockquote>
Wilson’s report was seen as supporting the likelihood of a deal, but did not change people’s minds on that front, and here we see the continuing problem: that even the SSCI report fails to maintain the distinction between Iraq seeking a deal (what Joe Wilson found evidence for, and what President Bush asserted) and concluding a deal (what the Martino forgeries depict). Knowing that the Iraqis had indeed sought uranium, as Wilson affirmed, does make it more likely that Iraq concluded a deal (the question that the SSCI targets in “Conclusion 13”). But this is not the question that the Select Committee <em>should</em> have been looking at. They should have asked whether Wilson's report strengthened the conclusion that Saddam had tried to buy uranium in Niger, to which the only possible answer would be "of course." Their actual inquiry muddies the distinction between the real evidence and the phony evidence, and it is just this inevitable muddying of the water that Wilson and now Bonini use to level their unsupported charges.<br />
<br />
U.S. intelligence made plenty of mistakes. The SSCI report details all kinds of confusion, like the INR analyst who quickly spotted things wrong with the Martino documents that pretty much showed they had to be forgeries, but somehow this assessment was never attached to the documents. Overall, however, it is clear from the Butler Report and the SSCI report that British Intelligence and the CIA both managed get their basic assessments right. Both affirmed that Saddam had tried to buy uranium while remaining skeptical of the supposed deal indicated by Martino’s forgeries.<br />
<br />
This is most clearly revealed in the one place that matters most: in the properly limited statements made by President Bush and by Tony Blair. Thanks to the caution of our intelligence services, neither made any claim about Saddam making a deal, while both asserted correctly that he had tried to make a deal. This is what Wilson and Moyers and Bonini and a whole army of abettors are trying to make a scandal out of: that our intelligence agencies and our elected leaders got it right!<br />
<br />
<br />
<h3>
Legitimate criticism</h3>
<br />
There are some things to be skeptical about in the Butler Report. In particular, it is hard to believe the report's claim that the British assessments of the Iraq-Niger uranium link, published in the September 2002 White Paper, predated British exposure to the Martino forgeries.<br />
<br />
The Butler report itself only says that the British received the intel about an Iraq-Niger uranium deal sometime in 2002 (<a href="http://image.guardian.co.uk/sys-files/Politics/documents/2004/07/14/butler.pdf">section 495</a>). It doesn't say whether this was before or after the White Paper was written. [You can tell that section 495 is about the Martino documents because it references the 1999 Iraqi ambassador's trip to Niger (the actual intercepted 1999 telex was included in the Martino forgeries to make them look real), and it references doubts that a deal had actually been made (which would seem to be a reference to the CIA's warning about claims of a deal).]<br />
<br />
Rocco Martino says that his fake documents were handed to the British at the end of 2001 (Bonini, p. 48). SISMI itself only admitted that intel about the documents was handed over "to the intelligence agency of another allied nation" in April 2002 (Bonini, p. 52).<br />
<br />
Whatever the exact date, it seems that the British must have had the forgeries before they issued their September 2002 White Paper. This is clear from the fact that the White Paper declined to suggest that Iraq had made a deal to buy uranium, after having been warned off of this claim by the CIA (section 497). They couldn't have been warned off of evidence that a deal had been made until they <em>had</em> evidence that a deal had been made. <br />
<br />
But while this sequence belies the claim that the British Iraq-Niger assessements were untainted by virtue of preceding exposure to the forgeries, it supports the contention that the British assessments were ultimately untainted, thanks to being warned off of the forgeries by the CIA. <br />
<br />
Bonini is uninterested in any such substantive engagement with the Butler report. One wonders if he even looked at it. It may well be that People like Wilson, Moyers and Bonini really do only see those parts of the story that can be made to fit their story line, like a panner looking for flecks of gold amongst the dirt. Everything that doesn't have that useful glitter is just dross to be discarded. Still, this kind of thinking cannot really be called self-deception, because its deceptions are so calculated. Consider an example. <br />
<br />
<br />
<h3>
The Battelli cable</h3>
<br />
Bonini is at his most deceptive in his account of a September 21, 2001 cable from SISME chief Gianfranco Battelli to the CIA. Bonini quotes the cable as conveying news of a trip “undertaken by Iraqi personnel to Niger in ’99, during which they had made inquiries about the production of crude uranium in that nation’s two mines, and asked how that material might be exported.” (p.31)<br />
<br />
This cable would seem to be a reference to further reporting about the Iraqi ambassador’s trip to Niger in 1999. Alternatively, it could be about Baghdad Bob’s trip to Niger in 1999, or about some other Iraqi inquiry after Nigerien uranium in 1999. What it does <em>not</em> seem to be about is the Martino forgeries, since it says nothing about a deal being made, as the Martino documents purport to show, and the Martino documents say nothing about any “inquiries about the production of crude uranium in the nation’s two mines,” or about anyone “ask[ing] how that material might be exported.” (If you want to look for yourself, Cryptome.org has both <a href="http://cryptome.org/niger-docs.htm">photocopies and translations</a> of the Martino forgeries.)<br />
<br />
Even though it seems quite obvious that the Battelli cable does not stem from the Martino forgeries, Bonini simply assumes that it does, and never even considers the possibility that it could be about some other reporting. Bonini is also deceptive in how he goes about impugning the Battelli cable. First (pp. 31-32) he only insinuates that it is based on the forgeries by interweaving the story of the Battelli cable in with Chouet’s story about the emergence of the phony documents. Later (p. 44) Bonini relies on this earlier insinuation to explicitly describe the Batelli cable as stemming from the forgeries.<br />
<br />
For this second step, Bonini lists the Niger intel that was transferred from Battelli to Nicolo Pollari (Battelli’s successor as head of SISME). Pollari was given the “Niger dossier,” says Bonini, and “the related note that Gianfranco Battelli had sent to Langley on September 21, 2001.” Then he comments: “As far as we can tell, nobody pointed out that the information was fraudulent.”<br />
<br />
<em>Some</em> of the information was fraudulent, but not the Battelli cable, which could well be one of the real pieces of further reporting referred to in the Butler Report, where the British learned from "several sources" that the Iraqi ambassador had indeed tried to buy uranium in 1999. Bonini just asserts, with no supporting argument whatsoever, that the cable was based on the forgeries, and he is very tricky about it, first misrepresenting the cable by insinuation, then directly misrepresenting it by commission.<br />
<br />
Bonini’s citation for the contents of the Battelli cable is imprecise. His chapter notes only say: “We know that Gianfranco Battelli sent a cable to Langley because Nicolo Pollari confirmed this fact to both Il Messaggero in November 2005 and to the Parliamentary Commission on Intelligence Oversight.” He presumably is quoting from one of these sources, since he does not describe talking to Battelli or Pollari anyone else about the cable, as he usually does for his first hand reporting, but if he is quoting one of these sources, the reference to “a cable,” instead of "the cable" is odd.<br />
<br />
Searching for Bonini’s quote of the Battelli cable only turns up references to Bonini. That would make sense if Bonini had translated the quote, but wouldn’t a cable to Langley already be in English? If anyone knows of a publicly available source for the full contents of the Battelli cable, or knows where there is any further information about the Battelli cable, please contact me (<a href="mailto:alec@rawls.org">alec@rawls.org</a>). Bonini did talk with Pollari about Antonio Nucera, so it is conceivable that Pollari told him about the contents of the Battelli cable as well. If Bonini turns out to be a source of original reporting on this cable, then his quote of the contents of the cable is the most important revelation in the book by far, and to Bonini’s credit too, if he was in a position to lie about what the cable said but quoted it straight, even though it does not fit his story line (much as he tries to pretend that it does).<br />
<br />
<br />
<h3>
Chouet’s mis-statement</h3>
<br />
Bonini constantly uses the phony Martino intel to impugn the real intel, in effect trying to make the Martino fraud stick. Spinning the Battelli cable as stemming from the phony docs is only one example. He also finds quotable sources who are willing to abet Martino in the same way. One is the French agent Chouet. Another is Greg Thielmann, a senior analyst with the State Department’s intelligence group (the INR).<br />
<br />
Chouet simply makes a mis-statement, lumping the real intelligence and the fake intelligence together as all the same thing, when he presumably knows better. Bonini certainly knows better, but he let’s Chouet’s misstatement pass without comment.<br />
<br />
In recounting the repeated inquiries from the United States about a possible Iraq-Niger link, Chouet starts with the summer of 2001:<br />
<blockquote>
When the Americans came calling in the summer of 2001, I immediately rolled up my sleeves. I told my men in Africa to get down to work. … The results were totally negative. At the end of August 2001, we cancelled the alert. [P. 31.]</blockquote>
Chouet then tells a long tale about bogus documents pertaining to an Iraq-Niger uranium deal starting to turn up in the hands of different intelligence agencies. He describes the prima facie skepticism most showed towards the documents, and he describes how continued investigation only confirmed the documents to be fraudulent. Woven through this tale is the United States, coming back again and again in 2002 with further inquiries, first bringing details about what is in the suspicious documents, then with copies of some of the documents themselves. (Chouet dates U.S. possession of at least some of the actual Martino documents to the spring of 2002 (p. 36). This is a bit earlier than the SSCI report says, but certainly possible).<br />
<br />
By the time the U.S. comes around with the actual documents, Chouet is exasperated, which comes out in the form of a clearly incorrect statement:<br />
<br />
<blockquote>
The [American] documents were identical [to Rocco Martino documents already in French possession]. We decided that Rocco was the source of the ‘bullshit’ palmed off on the Americans. The same nonsense that made the rounds in the summer of 2001.” [P. 34.]</blockquote>
Bonini knows full well that American inquiries from the summer of 2001 had nothing to do with the Martino’s forgeries, but Chouet’s mis-statement fits Bonini’s thesis that all of the concern about an Iraq-Niger link came from the forged documents, so he does not correct it. Later in the book (pp. 52 and 59) he informs readers that as of the summer of 2001, no whiff of the Martino documents had yet reached U.S. intelligence. It was not until October 2001 that CIA agents in Rome first got a hurried look at the Martino documents and were able to jot down some of their contents. But when Bonini quotes Chouet’s mis-statement, readers do not have the information to know it is a mis-statement, and Bonini uses this to advance his central pretense: that all concern about an Iraq-Niger link stemmed from the forgeries.<br />
<br />
There is a very interesting contradiction between Chouet’s story and the SSCI report that is worth noting. Chouet claims that French investigations into possible Iraqi attempts to buy uranium in Niger all came up negative, but the SSCI report says otherwise:<br />
<br />
<blockquote>
U) On November 22, 2002, during a meeting with State Department officials, the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs Director for Nonproliferation said that France had information on an Iraqi attempt to buy uranium from Niger. He said that France had determined that no uranium had been shipped, but France believed the reporting was true that Iraq had made a procurement attempt for uranium from Niger. [<a href="http://www.globalsecurity.org/intell/library/congress/2004_rpt/iraq-wmd-intell_chapter2-g.htm">Chapter 2, section g</a>.]</blockquote>
This French report should have nothing to do with the forgeries, because according to Chouet (p. 34) the French had determined by June of 2003 that the Martino documents were fakes, weeks before they ever saw them (having already been asked by the CIA to investigate the details of the documents). Thus if the French were claiming in November 2002 to have real intel of Iraq trying to buy uranium, they presumably did have real intel. Maybe the French were one of the Butler Report’s “several different sources” on the Iraqis’ 1999 attempt to buy uranium in Niger.<br />
<br />
Why did Chouet leave this intel out of his story? Or <em>did</em> he leave it out? Maybe it is Bonini who left it out. Bonini has already shown that he is big on lies of omission. But then there is also that mis-speak by Chouet. It could be that his mis-speak was not so innocent. Maybe, like Bonini, Chouet is downplaying the real evidence of an Iraq-Niger link in order to support bogus accusations against the Bush administration. The French did everything in their power to obstruct our war against Iraq and might reasonably be regarded with suspicion.<br />
<br />
In any event, more information is needed. Maybe Alain Chouet would be willing to shed some light on the French intel from November 2002, and tell us whether Bonini’s account of his remarks is accurate.<br />
<br />
<br />
<h3>
The strange case of Greg Thielmann</h3>
<br />
Thielmann at the U.S. State Department attached a footnote to the October 1, 2002 National Intelligence Estimate saying: “The suggestion that Iraq sought to acquire uranium in Africa is, in the judgment of the INR, highly dubious.” (Bonini, P. 71.)<br />
<br />
This was seven months after Joe Wilson reported Prime Minister Mayaki’s view that the Iraqis he met with were trying to buy uranium. We also had the earlier reporting of the Iraqi ambassador visiting Niger, and it is possible that Thielman knew about the French intel and the Batelli cable as well. In sum, there was nothing dubious about Iraq trying to buy uranium. It was pretty much an established fact, and Thielmann’s statement to the contrary is just flat wrong, making Thielmann a very odd mixed bag.<br />
<br />
He seems to have been the most correct of the U.S. analysts in terms of being the most skeptical about the Martino docs, but the wrongest in his failure to account the real evidence of an Iraq-Niger link. Was he just biased against all evidence of an Iraq-Niger link? From his reaction to the CIA’s first report on the content of the Martino documents, this seems likely. Thielmann gave two reasons for dismissing the purported Iraqi deal to buy Nigerien uranium, neither of which has anything to do with the bogus specifics of the Martino documents, and neither of which holds the least bit of water.<br />
<br />
“The first reason,” says Thielmann in an interview with Bonini and D’Avanzo, is that: “We knew that Iraq possessed five hundred metric tons of enriched uranium in its warehouses at Tuwaitha, routinely authorized by the IAEA. A quantity sufficient to produce at least two nuclear devices. So it made no sense to for Saddam to buy a rather hefty amount of pure uranium in a country like Niger, where the mines are controlled by the French … the Spanish, the Germans and the Japanese.” (Bonini’s p. 57.)<br />
<br />
But as Thielmann notes, the uranium already in Saddam’s possession was under watch by the International Atomic Energy Agency. Even after Saddam kicked out the United Nations weapons inspectors (UNSCOM) in late 1998, he would know that movements of tons of uranium could be tracked by satellite. Clinton already <a href="http://www.cnn.com/ALLPOLITICS/stories/1998/12/16/transcripts/clinton.html">bombed</a> some of his facilities in 1998 in retaliation for kicking out the inspectors, so Saddam would have known that he couldn’t go using his existing uranium stockpile without consequence. To pursue his nuclear ambitions Saddam would indeed have had reason in 1999 to find a source of uranium other than his existing stockpile. How could Thielmann not know that? If he is not driven by bias then he is plain incompetent.<br />
<br />
Thielmann’s second reason for dismissing the intel in the Martino documents also has nothing to do with the bogus nature of the documents themselves. It isn’t really a reason at all: “You go with your gut instincts,” says Thielmann (p. 58). His actual problem with the Iraq-Niger intel seems to be that the CIA “kept repeating that Italian intelligence was certain that Iraq had at least attempted to buy uranium from Niger—as if that were an independent confirmation of the report.”<br />
<br />
Of course Iraqi <em>attempts</em> to buy uranium are not independent confirmation that Iraq had completed a <em>deal</em> to buy uranium, but attempts to buy uranium are important in themselves, and it is the attempt to buy uranium (not the completion of a deal to buy uranium) that Thielmann dismisses in his footnote to the 2002 NIE. Thus he accuses the CIA of failing to distinguish between attempts to buy uranium and succeeding in making a deal to buy uranium, then makes this exact mistake himself. <em>No one</em> is that stupid. That is bias.<br />
<br />
At the very least, Thielmann swallowed the “poison well” interpretation of the phony documents hook line and sinker. Of course you have to throw out the bathwater, but to throw out the baby at the same time is pretty weak for a senior analyst.<br />
<br />
<br />
<h3>
Lurid unsupported claims of pressure to phony up intelligence, with no mention of the authoritative debunking of these charges</h3>
<br />
Many of Bonini’s deceptions are well hidden, but his bias is completely overt, even ludicrous, when he starts ranting about “neocons” and leveling generic charges about intelligence analysts being pressured to produce the “right” conclusions, as if everyone already knows that “neocons” are some outrageously dishonest cabal. Here Bonini relies on pure antipathy to carry readers past his own blatant dishonesty.<br />
<br />
“It was necessary to buttress the instincts of President Bush,” writes Bonini, “who had prowled the White House on the evening of September 12, ordering deputies to ‘see if Saddam was involved.’” (P. 41.) Horrors. The president wanted to know if Saddam was involved. The neoconservatives, suggests Bonini, were eager to cater to this demand, and hence “it was the neoconservative camp within the Bush administration that took over.”<br />
<br />
But the Bush administration never claimed that Saddam was involved in 9/11. The U.S. put forward <a href="http://errortheory.blogspot.com/2004/09/chronicle-logic-redundant-resolve-lack.html">27</a> <a href="http://www.news.uiuc.edu/news/04/0510war.html">reasons</a> for war against Iraq, and Bonini goes conspiracy mongering after a rationale for war that was never asserted.<br />
<br />
(There actually was at least one solid piece of evidence that Saddam WAS involved in 9/11. The Czech’s are still adamant that they surveilled Mohammad Atta <a href="http://www.edwardjayepstein.com/2002question/prague.htm">meeting with an Iraqi intelligence agent</a> in Prague in April 2001. The CIA’s reason for dismissing this intel—that someone used Atta’s cell phone and credit card here in the U.S. when the Czech’s say he was in Prague—is absurd. All a terrorist has to do to create sufficient alibi to throw off the CIA is let someone use his cell phone and credit card? Grounded airliners at <a href="http://www.nationalreview.com/murdock/murdock040303.asp">Salman Pak</a>, outside of Baghdad, used for training airline hijackers, was another strong indication of Iraqi involvement in 9/11. But we're supposed to believe that after declining to invoke these actual grounds for tying Saddam to 9/11, Bush was insisting that people fake-up some phony grounds to tie Saddam to 9/11, though he never did tie Saddam to 9/11.)<br />
<div>
<br />
Another absurd Bonini charge of pressure to phony up intelligence comes in response to a typically careful Rumsfeld statement. “The absence of evidence,” Rumsfeld said about the failure to yet uncover Iraqi WMDs, “is not necessarily the evidence of absence.” “For spies,” Bonini writes, “this argument sounded like an order, a threat, and a piece of career advice.” Oh shut up you moron. You may be a Bush hating bigot, and other Bush hating bigots may jump the same Bush hating conclusions you do, but Rumsfeld’s statement is not evidence of anything but his typical clear thinking. Bonini’s accusations that intelligence agents were pressured to come to certain conclusions never rise above this level of absurd insinuation. Some “collusion.”<br />
<br />
<br />
<h3>
Hiding the SSCI and Silberman-Robb reports</h3>
<br />
Just as Bonini hides the Butler Report from his readers, so too does he hide the fact that the 2004 SSCI report and the 2005 Silberman-Robb report both investigated exactly the charges he is making about pressure to come up with the “right” intelligence conclusions, and found them completely unsupported. The Senate Select Committee on Intelligence was highly concerned about such charges and investigated them thoroughly, doing extensive interviews and issuing multiple separate calls for anyone who had been pressured to come forward. Their <a href="http://www.globalsecurity.org/intell/library/congress/2004_rpt/iraq-wmd-intell_chapter14.htm">findings</a> were stark:<br />
<blockquote>
The Committee was not presented with any evidence that intelligence analysts changed their judgments as a result of political pressure, altered or produced intelligence products to conform with Administration policy, or that anyone even attempted to coerce, influence or pressure analysts to do so. When asked whether analysts were pressured in any way to alter their assessments or make their judgments conform with Administration policies, not a single analyst answered yes. Most analysts simply answered, “no” or “never,” but some provided more extensive responses.</blockquote>
The report then goes on to list several analysts describing the actual pressure they felt: to get their analyses right, and not be responsible for another devastating intelligence failure like 9/11. The March 2005 Silberman-Robb Commission Report came to the same conclusion:<br />
<blockquote>
The analysts who worked Iraqi weapons issues universally agreed that in no instance did political pressure cause them to skew or alter any of their analytical judgments. [<a href="http://www.wmd.gov/report/report.html#overview">Overview section</a>.]</blockquote>
The Italian stinker simply refuses to acknowledge the existence of these authoritative refutations of his central claims. He is another Martino, completely comfortable with the most outrageous deceptions. He pretends to be the anti-Martino, while in fact doing his utmost to maximize the effectiveness of Martino’s dirty tricks, employing means every bit as dishonest as Martino’s. The difference is that Martino did it for money while Bonini’s deceptions are ideological. Martino is amoral (which is immoral), while Bonini is evil (or morally perverse).<br />
<br />
<br />
<h3>
Competitive intelligence</h3>
<br />
One of Bonini’s central metaphors is the echo chamber: when the different intelligence agencies asked each other about the information in Martino’s forgeries, they all would say “we heard that too,” but without sharing specifics, allowing them all to take reinforcement from each other without knowing that they were all looking at the same bogus source. Bonini cites a disgruntled ex-CIA officer named Robert Baer who charges that the CIA, in a method the Baer calls “competitive intelligence,” intentionally uses this echo chamber effect to seed phony intel, then get it “confirmed” by other intelligence agencies before passing it on to our elected leaders to justify a particular action. (P. 42-43.)<br />
<br />
As a general matter, “competitive intelligence” sounds like an obvious enough counter-intelligence scheme for fooling other intelligence agencies. To say that our intelligence agencies have used it to fool our own elected leaders, or that our elected leaders have used it to fool voters, is a different thing entirely. This is a very serious accusation, made by an ex-agent who named his dog “Risen,” after James Risen, the treasonous New York Times reporter who has published <a href="http://powerlineblog.com/archives/012571.php">leak</a> after <a href="http://www.timeswatch.org/articles/2006/20060623093557.aspx">leak</a> about our most sensitive terrorist surveillance methods. (See Bonini’s footnote on Baer, p. 43.)<br />
<br />
Baer’s generic accusations aside, what we can say for certain is that no such “competitive intelligence” was involved in the Iraq-Niger reporting. The actual “echo chamber” effect in this case went in the opposite direction from what the “competitive intelligence” charge implies. The different intelligence agencies all warned each other off of the bogus documents, with the CIA in particular warning the British. There was no dysfunctional echo chamber upholding the phony documents, but only rational cooperation in identifying the forged documents as untrustworthy, getting them out of the way so that the real evidence of Iraqi attempts to buy uranium could play its proper leading role.<br />
<br />
Bonini is completely oblivious to such logical inconsistencies. He knows full well that the different intelligence agencies were all telling each other not to trust the Martino documents. This is the foundation of his charge that, in nevertheless relying on the documents [Bonini’s false accusation], the CIA was knowingly phonying up a pretext for war. Then in the next breath Bonini pretends that the intelligence agencies were all affirming the Martino documents to each other. The inside of Bonini’s head is a logic-free zone. He embraces every interpretation that can be made to support his fraudulent accusations, no matter how mutually inconsistent.<br />
<br />
In this typical can’t-be-bothered-to-think-straight style, Bonini points to Douglas Feith at the Department of Defense as a practitioner of “competitive intelligence” (p. 42-43). But the truth about Feith’s Office of Special Plans—what the Democrats <a href="http://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/016745.php">tried to turn into a scandal</a> this spring—is that, while the OSP doesn’t generate intelligence assessments (making Bonini’s imputations about trumped up intelligence assessments nonsensical), they did have the audacity to consider the implications of existing intelligence assessments without simply assuming, as the CIA was doing, that Saddam Hussein’s Baathist regime would not work with Muslim religious fanatics like al Qaeda. In other words, Feith’s <a href="http://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/016781.php">claim to infamy</a> is that he broke out of the idiotic echo chamber created by President Clinton’s CIA to avoid seeing terrorist connections so that President Clinton would not have to deal with them. He was the echo chamber buster.<br />
<br />
<h3>
A real echo chamber</h3>
<br />
In one of Bonini’s typical summary paragraphs, he weaves several of his central deceits together:<br />
<blockquote>
American intelligence, under pressure to give the hawks what they wanted, suddenly found itself in possession of one report (Saddam is buying uranium in Africa) and two “allied” confirmations (the Italian and the British). In reality, of course the original report and its subsequent confirmations came from a single hand. And that hand belonged to the swindler Rocco Martino, manipulated and controlled by SISMI. It’s Robert Baer’s “competitive intelligence” at its very best. [p. 53]</blockquote>
Exactly backwards. The CIA actually did plant a bit of intelligence with the British that President Bush then cited in his State of the Union address. That bit of intel was the warning that evidence of an Iraqi deal to buy uranium looked to be bogus. In response, the British limited their Iraq-Niger claims to those that could be supported by the real evidence, and the President then cited this properly regulated assessment. Some scandal.<br />
<br />
The details of this Bonini paragraph are just as errant as the thrust. No, American intelligence was not “under pressure to give the hawks what they wanted,” and no, the different reports about an Iraq Niger uranium link did not all come from the Martino forgeries. The Italians were distributing at least two pieces of real reporting (the 1999 telex and the Battelli cable). The British say that they had pre-Martino reporting from "several sources." The CIA had in addition both Joe Wilson’s report about the Iraqi attempt to buy uranium from Mayaki, and the French report from November 2002. Add the cautionary messages that the different agencies were sending each other about any deal having been made, and Bonini's entire paragraph is is seen to be carefully crafted disinformation: a neat little story concocted by expunging every hint of the real Iraq-Niger reporting. <br />
<br />
Of course the fake documents prompted much investigation but they never were given credence. It is only by burying all the real Iraq-Niger reporting that Bonini is able to make that correct intelligence assessment look damning. "They knew the Italian documents were untrustworthy, and they still claimed an Iraq-Niger link!" But Joe Wilson has already been authoritatively exposed for making this same fraudulent accusation. Can the same lies really be retailed again and again, and be embraced just as enthusiastically each time, regardless of exposure?<br />
<br />
Fool us once, shame on Joe Wilson. Fool us twice, shame on Bill Moyers and everyone else who is eager to uphold known lies.<br />
<br />
What makes Bonini’s accusations about “competitive intelligence” especially rich is that Wilson, Bonini, Moyers et. al. really do engage in something like the “competitive intelligence” that Baer describes. They all employ the same central omissions in order to promote the same false accusations, and they all rely on each other for confirmation of these deceptions. The last piece of the echo chamber is Democrat-left readers who only want to hear the most unadulterated anti-conservative story that an author can tell, no matter how dishonest or even flatly illogical. It is a whole culture of despicable collusion, with bigots like Wilson, Moyers, Bonini and D’Avanzo as the ringleaders.</div>
<div class="blogger-post-footer">All content copyright © Alec Rawls, 2004-. Non-commercial use allowed with attribution. Commercial republication with permission. Please contact alec@rawls.org.</div>Alec Rawlshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18106800937399442588noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7347736.post-58489151515102456362014-04-30T14:32:00.000-07:002014-05-08T12:07:18.756-07:00Arab Christians would be put to death if they did not use the Islamic term for godMembers of a Colorado high school "CulturalArms Club" recently demonstrated how well they have learned the lessons of political correctness by leading their school in a recitation of the Pledge of Allegiance in Arabic. The problem, as Fox news <a href="http://gopthedailydose.com/2014/04/28/hs-students-say-pledge-in-arabic-one-nation-under-allah/">notes</a>, is that:
<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
... an Arabic translation of the Pledge of Allegiance would have replaced “one nation under God” with “one nation under Allah.”</blockquote>
CAIR spokesman Ibrahim Hooper (CAIR is a front group for the Muslim Brotherhood, which is the parent organization of al Qaeda), tried to pretend that "Allah" is a generic term for "god" in Arabic, not a specific reference to the supposed god of Islam:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
“Obviously in Arabic, you would use the word Allah, but
Christian Arabs would use the word Allah,” said Ibrahim Hooper, of the Council
on American Islamic Relations. “It’s not necessarily specific to Islam and
Muslims.”</blockquote>
<div class="MsoNormal">
A very clever deception. What Hooper is not telling you is if
Arab Christians tried to distinguish their god from the Muslim god they would
be <i>put to death</i>. That is because a fundamental tenet of Islam is that the Muslim
god <i>is</i> the Christian/Jewish god. Muhammad's whole gambit was to usurp the
established spiritual authority of the Christian and Jewish religions by
offering Islam as God-of-Abraham 3.0.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Arab Christians live as "dhimmis" in the Muslim
world, a form of third class citizenship where they can be put to death for the
smallest transgression, while blasphemy is considered the highest
transgression. They are being forced, against their will, on pain of death, to
acknowledge what they don't believe: that Muhammad is a prophet of the same God
as Abraham and Moses and Jesus. If they believed it they would be Muslims, but
they <i>don't</i> believe it, only they can't say so.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Hooper wants us to accept the forced Christian failure to
distinguish their god from the Islamic god as proof that "Allah" is a
general term in the Arab world for whatever god one believes in. Absolutely
false. It is a specific and exclusive reference to the Muslim god and anyone
who even suggests that there even could be a different god is liable to be put
to death, not just in every Arab country, but in every Muslim country. Thus to
insert "under Allah" into the Pledge is to assert the Muslim doctrine
that their god is indeed the same god embraced by Christians and Jews. It is an
assertion that Islamic belief is <i>correct</i>.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b>Willful blindness
hand in hand with religiously commanded deception<o:p></o:p></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
This bait-and-switch on the Arabic meaning of
"Allah" is an interesting and important example of how easily the
politically correct left is duped by Islamic deception. Political correctness
is a doctrine of willful blindness, looking away from any telling critique of
non-Christian, non-white, non-male society. Such "others" are
presumed to have been discriminated against by the white male Christian
power-brokers that created the modern world and in compensation we are now
supposed to discriminate in their favor by presuming the best about them at
every turn. Their supposed victimization makes them unalterably innocent,
otherwise we are "blaming the victim," and the <st1:state w:st="on">Colorado</st1:state> "Cultural Arms Club"
captures this spirit perfectly. Their goal is to "destroy the barriers,
embrace the cultures," without regard to what those cultures are.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Embrace
Islam? Really? What an educational club should actually be doing is not <i>embracing</i> Islam but learning about it. Lesson 1: a fundamental tenet of Islam is the saying of
Muhammad that "war is deception." (Al-Tabari, Vol. 8, p. 23.) This in a religion that calls the
non-Muslim world "dar al harb," or "the world of war." They
are <i>supposed</i> to lie to us. That is why Hooper pretends that Allah is a general
term for anyone's god in Arabic when it is in fact an exclusive reference to
the Muslim god, on pain of death for anyone who would proclaim any other god. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
If this school really wanted to promote "cultural understanding," that
is what they would be teaching their students: that if they use
"Allah" as a term for god they are submitting to Islam, accepting that the Christian god and the god of Islam are one and the samed. They are becoming
dhimmis to the religion of submission (the Arabic meaning of
"Islam"). So where are the teacher advisors to this club when the
students get something so basic wrong as the meaning of Allah in Arabic? Egging
them on of course. Our politically correct government run schools are schools
of misinformation wherever ideology is even tangentially related.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
We can't blame the kids. They are being indoctrinated. But
soon enough they will be adults and then they <i>will</i> be culpable, having had
enough years under the maturity of their faculties with which to discern the
fraudulence of their government educations, and if they don't wake up, they
will spend their lives on the side of evil.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b>Orthodox Islam is
fundamentally opposed to American liberty<o:p></o:p></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The Pledge of Allegiance is a pledge to support
"liberty and justice for all." The Colorado Kidz think that:</div>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
“No matter what language it’s said in, pledging your
allegiance to the <st1:place w:st="on">United
States</st1:place> is the same in every language.”</blockquote>
<div class="MsoNormal">
No it isn't. Not when the Arabic word for god specifically
asserts, according to Sharia law, that the god of Islam is also the god of
Abraham, Moses, and Jesus. But the error is even deeper than that because the
Islamic religion that is implied by the use of "Allah" is fundamentally
incompatible with the "<a href="http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/liberty-positive-negative/">negative liberty</a>" that is the great American
achievement: liberty <i>from</i> interference.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
In any "one nation under Allah" the only
"liberty" that would be possible is the communist brand of
"positive liberty," where people are only seen as free when they are
liberated from the immorality of acting contrary to communist ideology/ Islamic
law.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The contrast between Christianity and Islam on the basic
value of liberty could not be more extreme. "Christian liberty" is
where American liberty came from. It expresses the teaching of Paul in <a href="http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=2+Cor++3:6">2Corinthians 3:6</a> where he says that Christians are now to live by the spirit of
the law (the law to love your neighbor as yourself), instead of by the letter
of the law (the Old Testament), whose laws are henceforth to be regarded as
rule-of-thumb guidelines for an earlier condition of man that was not yet ready
to be guided directly by the spirit of the law. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Even the Ten Commandments are to be regarded as
rules-of-thumb that imperfectly capture the spirit of the law and can give way
in those instances where they do not manage to capture what the law of love
requires, as when Jesus justifies his "working" on the Sabbath
(performing healing miracles). You don't fail to save a life on account of what
day of the week it is: "If your son or your cow falls into a pit, don’t
you rush to get him out?” The unspoken general principle is that you work on
the Sabbath when love requires it, and the same for every other lettered law. We
still need the written law as a guide to help us find the spirit of the law.
It tells us where the spirit of the law mainly treads, but the Christian ideal
is to find and follow the spirit, not the letter.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
This fits with the common Judeo-Christian view, going
back to Genesis, that man must be free to make his own choices because he is
made in God's image, and God has freedom of choice. This is the ideological
foundation of American liberty. It came from Judaism and Christianity, which
then went on to end slavery, not just in <st1:country-region w:st="on">America</st1:country-region>,
but with the prompting and help of Christian England ended slavery across the
entire world except for parts of the Muslim world and the <st1:place w:st="on">Far
East</st1:place>. European America was born a part of the old world with all
of its gross violations of liberty, including slavery, but thanks to
Christianity it became the instrument for largely ridding the entire world of
these ancient wrongs.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
Islam, in contrast, is a totalitarian religion,
striving to specify halal and haram (the required way and the disallowed way)
for every detail of human existence. The Islamic view of liberty is accurately
stated by those <a href="http://moonbattery.com/?p=3661">signs</a> that are commonly carried by angry jihadists and their
niqabed women in Londonistan: "Freedom go to Hell!"
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12pt;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgmtwHneBA-Kg94ldNwW7MUEBLr4_9eyY-i6DWMfjMhfJfYB0ojNpewCwn_LJYa16f2Kto98dop1127OFxjEp4kOj5AQULm_xR3NGWQEsef07sCIl1dx3n0D60PD60JZpLSXKX-yg/s1600/freedom-go-to-hell.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgmtwHneBA-Kg94ldNwW7MUEBLr4_9eyY-i6DWMfjMhfJfYB0ojNpewCwn_LJYa16f2Kto98dop1127OFxjEp4kOj5AQULm_xR3NGWQEsef07sCIl1dx3n0D60PD60JZpLSXKX-yg/s1600/freedom-go-to-hell.jpg" height="204" width="320" /></a></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12pt;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b><br /></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b>Distinguishing moral
from immoral Muslims requires knowledge of orthodox Islam's evil doctrines, not
politically correct blindness<o:p></o:p></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Not all Muslims are immoral. It is orthodox Islam that is at
war with Western liberty and until recently much of what had become traditional
in Islam since the fall of the <st1:place w:st="on">Ottoman Empire</st1:place>
was decidedly NOT orthodox. Don't confuse traditional Islam, or cultural Islam,
with orthodox Islam. The orthodoxy was in broad remission until it flooded back
across the Islamic world on a sea of Saudi oil money, approximately $100 billion
since 1970, funding the rise of Saudi Wahabbism to its current dominance.
(Osama bin Laden was a perfectly orthodox Wahabbist.)</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Many Muslims, maybe most, are not happy with the ascendance
of Wahabbism in the Sunni world and the similar ascent of Khomeini-ism in the
Shiite world, but roughly equal numbers are vocal or silent backers of the
Wahabbist/Khomeini-ist murder cult. Post 9/11 polling consistently showed bin
Laden to be the most admired figure in the Islamic world.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Add the Islamic command to lie about Islamic intentions and
it becomes extraordinarily difficult to distinguish moral from immoral Muslims.
Instead of politically correct willful blindness what is needed is doctrinal
knowledge. One basic law in Islam, accepted by all branches except for the
persecuted Ahamadiyya, is that apostates must be put to death, which is flat
out murder. You can't get more antithetical to liberty than this: killing
people for adopting a different religious view than you have. Talk about state
establishment of religion.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
This makes a handy litmus test. If a Muslim tells you that
there is freedom of religion in Islam and that Muslims can freely convert to
other religions then you know that he is an orthodox murder-cultist, engaged in
religiously commanded deception. If a Muslim acknowledges the Islamic death
penalty for apostasy and says that it is wrong and needs to be changed then he is
a moral muslim who needs your friendship and protection because he is putting
his life at risk every bit as much as Hirsi Ali. She's an apostate while a
person who rejects settled sharia law is a blasphemer. Both are subject to the death
penalty across the entire Islamic world.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The Kulture Klub Kidz are taking comfort from Ibrahim
Hooper, who is full-on Muslim Brotherhood, which is ideologically identical to
al Qaeda. The Brotherhood has a propaganda wing and an armed wing.
Distinguishing Hooper from bin Laden is like trying to distinguish Goering from
Himmler. When these kids let themselves be duped by the Brotherhood they are
abandoning the moral Muslims who the Brotherhood is out to destroy. The Klub is
not a force for conciliation but is letting itself become a tool of the
Brotherhood's program of enforced submission.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
What <st1:state w:st="on">Colorado</st1:state>
high school students need is real education, not politically correct
demagoguery. For their own sakes they should begin with an honest investigation
into the actual meaning of "Allah" in modern Arabic. Anyone in the
Arab world who says it refers to any god other than the god of Muhammad is
putting his head on the chopping block. Do these students doubt it? All they
need to do is ask around. Then they will
find out who is who.</div>
<div class="blogger-post-footer">All content copyright © Alec Rawls, 2004-. Non-commercial use allowed with attribution. Commercial republication with permission. Please contact alec@rawls.org.</div>Alec Rawlshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18106800937399442588noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7347736.post-63704826236642156702014-01-28T10:50:00.000-08:002014-02-07T19:55:45.461-08:00New Republican alternative to Obamacare is another wrong-direction big-government boondoggle: the proper long term goal is health insurance for NOBODYUPDATE: A week later I posted a <a href="http://floppingaces.net/2014/02/07/the-proper-health-care-goal-is-health-insurance-for-nobody-guest-post/">more refined version</a> of this at Flopping Aces.<br />
<br />
National Review's Yuval Levin is all happy about a Republican Senate proposal to replace Obamacare with a new <a href="http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/369549/obamacare-replacement-senate-yuval-levin">pile of junk</a>. Some elements are benign, like removing barriers to interstate insurance competition. (These barriers were a problem long before Obama cranked them to the max with government-run state-specific insurance exchanges.) Other elements are massive new government interventions that are supposed to be improvements on Obamacare's massive government interventions, like the new Republican proposal to provide fully or heavily subsidized catastrophic health insurance to every American who is not way above the poverty line. (The subsidies are 100% for the poor and don't phase out until three times the poverty line.)<br />
<br />
Levin claims that this government provision of catastrophic health care to half the nation will not be expensive:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
The cost to the federal taxpayer would only be the cost of the tax credit.</blockquote>
Right, all we have to pay is the price, equal to one 12th of the economy (1/2 of 1/6th). Believing that wouldn't be expensive is like believing Obamacare won't be expensive but guess what? Nobody believes that anymore, not even the most low-information of low-information voters.<br />
<br />
Obamacare needs to be thrown in the trash, lock stock and barrel, and a rapidly growing majority supports that course, but Republican lawmakers are out to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory by splitting the anti-Obamacare consensus into two camps: those who want to replace Obamacare with another big government boondoggle and those who just want to get rid of it. (Ace of Spades had a post on this <a href="http://ace.mu.nu/archives/346728.php">opposition-splitting effect</a> the other day.)<br />
<br />
For now the country should just go back to the way things were. The uninsured were not without health care. They were getting "free" health care by not paying their bills at county hospitals and in many emergency rooms. That was the proclaimed <i>big problem</i>, which Obamacare was going to fix by <i>forcing</i> everyone to buy insurance. Now the Republicans want to solve the problem of the uninsured getting free health care by giving the uninsured... free health care.<br />
<br />
There is obviously no urgency to make this nominal change from de facto free health care for the poor to officially free health care for the poor. This is not something to split the anti-Obamacare consensus over. Whether free health care is the right solution is a big subject that would need to be debated. It is crazy to impose such an unnecessary and premature policy as a condition for doing what is right now both urgent and agreed upon.<br />
<br />
<br />
<b>Making health care free is NOT the solution: all government aid should be billed to the account of the recipient</b><br />
<br />
As I have been advocating for many years, <i>all</i> government aid should be <a href="http://www.rawls.org/util_billing.html">billed to the account of the recipient</a>, to be paid back with full market interest according to an ability to pay formula over the life of the recipient, whether the aid be for health care, unemployment benefits, welfare, farm price supports, or Social Security, or anything else.<br />
<br />
Many aid recipients will never have the ability to fully repay so such a system will still be costly, but billing the aid to the account of the recipient keeps incentives to responsible behavior intact, as far as it is possible to do so. That maximizes the bang-per-buck from giving aid, which means that whatever aid is given it should be given this way.<br />
<br />
Philosophers can argue over how much aid should be given but <i>how</i> to give it is determined purely by economics. Every penny of aid should be billed to the account of the recipient. Keep the books straight, which also has the salutary side benefit of keeping clear who owes who. Our present system of giving aid away instead of loaning it sends the perverse signal to recipients that they must be owed, or why would society be giving them stuff?<br />
<br />
The result of this wrong signal is a nasty, ungrateful, bitter underclass that blames its poor condition on the rest of society and responds by grabbing as much as it can, not just from social services, but through crime against people and property. The current national epidemic of blacks attacking random whites on the street is one of these byproducts. People who feel that they are owed a bitter debt often have an urge to take a pound of flesh, so make it clear: no, society does not owe you, you owe society, and here is an accounting of exactly how much and for what. You owe more than you will ever be able to repay, so don't ever pretend that it is you who are owed.<br />
<br />
<br />
<b>The ultimate goal is not health insurance for everybody but health insurance for NOBODY</b><br />
<br />
The deeper problem with the proposed Republican alternative to Obamacare is that these stupid establishment Republicans buy into the Democratic premise that the health care market is inherently dysfunctional and in need of massive government regulation. They don't <i>begin</i> to understand what actually needs to be done to let this market function efficiently. Like Democrats, they just pull a bunch of unnecessary government interventions out of their ass.<br />
<br />
The ideal system—what any policy today should be aiming for as its long-term objective—is not a system where everybody has health insurance but a system where <i>nobody</i> has health insurance. Self-insurance (paying for health costs out of one's own savings) is inherently more efficient than 3rd party insurance and everyone is automatically self-insured up to their level of savings/wealth. Over time, unimpeded economic development raises the prosperity of every segment of society, moving more and more people, and eventually all people, to the point where self-insurance is the most rational choice for them. At that point everyone is paying with real money (their own money rather than insurance company money), causing them to shop for price. The result is a normal market where prices get driven down by competition and all need for regulatory cost-control disappears. <i>That</i> is the goal to aim for.<br />
<br />
Ironically, Obamacare's rapid destruction of the existing health insurance industry could prompt a big step in this direction. Obamacare has already put a significant portion of the population into the ranks of the uninsured/self-insured and once the exemption on the employer mandate expires the number of the uninsured will rise dramatically. In this situation if government just vacates the field of health care regulation then a lot of the newly self-insured will likely remain self-insured.<br />
<br />
This would inject price competition which would bring self-insurance within the reach of more and more people, creating a "virtuous cycle." We have a chance here to bring the era of artificially over-insured health-care to an end.<br />
<br />
Unfortunately, we instead now have to fight a second big push for a different big government solution. Go to <i>Hell</i> you stupid establishment Republicans. It's another self-inflicted wound, like pushing for immigration reform that Republican voters overwhelmingly despise.<br />
<br />
Hey, if you want to commit suicide go ahead and commit suicide, but don't "suicide" other people: don't suicide your political party.<br />
<br />
<br />
<b>What kind of health insurance aid should be billed to the account of the recipient, insurance premiums or the actual cost of the care delivered?</b><br />
<br />
This is a technical point for the wonks out there (if Krugman and Klein haven't completely flipped the meaning of wonkery from unbiased policy analysis to purely biased political spin).<br />
<br />
Suppose that under a system where all aid is billed to the account of the recipient, need-qualified individuals were allowed to choose for themselves whether they want to have a monthly insurance premium added to their debt to society or whether they want to let the cost of actual health care services rendered be added to their debt as these costs are incurred. Which should they want to choose?<br />
<br />
With the government acting as a source of liquidity (making loans to cover claims of need), letting actual health care costs be billed to one's account would amount to a kind of quasi-self-insurance. It would be financed via debt rather than savings, but the benefits would remain.<br />
<br />
When people buy insurance it reduces their incentive to avoid the insured risks. If you know that obesity incurs lots of expensive health risks, you have far stronger incentive to avoid those by avoiding obesity if you have to pay the health costs out of your own pocket.<br />
<br />
Ditto for other health-risky activities like drug use, extreme sports, unprotected sex, careless use of power tools, etcetera. People who don't have 3rd party insurance are a lot more careful about a lot of things.<br />
<br />
This is one of the reasons why self-insurance is more efficient. The total costs that end up being covered are substantially higher when 3rd party insurance is involved so the price has to be higher by at least the same amount. Then there are administrative costs of insurance (which in the health field are gigantic), and worst of all is the resulting lack of price competition. Nobody is shopping for price so prices go through the roof.<br />
<br />
Self-insurance makes sense for anyone who <i>can</i> self-insure, so if the system of billing aid to account allows this option it would be the sensible way for most aid recipients to go. Of course this is also what society would like. Quasi-self-insurance by the needy would leave them a financial incentive to avoid risky behavior, reducing overall costs, and it would give them incentive for shop for price when they do need medical services, allowing the needy to become a major driver of the price competition that would turn our current out-of-control cost-regulated health market into a normal cost-minimized competitive market.<br />
<br />
The incentive effects that come from billing aid to the account of the recipient are not as strong as for non-needy people who pay for things with their own money rather than with government subsidized liquidity, but for anyone who expects to get on their feet and eventually pay down their social debt it isn't that much different, especially for young people, many of whom are needy just as a function of being young and not yet having developed their earnings potential. In other words, the benefits to society are still plenty strong so this is the solution that society would choose: to have actual health costs get billed to the account of needy recipients, not monthly insurance premiums.<br />
<br />
On the other hand, if aid recipients are forward-looking enough to think that paying insurance premiums makes more sense for them personally than the risk of owing a big medical bill, that is something to encourage, so let aid recipients choose: they can have premiums billed to their account, or they can have actual costs billed.<br />
<br />
Just note very clearly that what we do <i>not</i> want is the universal health insurance that Obamacare and the Obama-lite Republicans have both fixed as their objective. We want the opposite. The ideal is a society where <i>nobody</i> has 3rd party health insurance but everyone instead is self-insured, even if some are only quasi-self-insured <i>via</i> government loan.<div class="blogger-post-footer">All content copyright © Alec Rawls, 2004-. Non-commercial use allowed with attribution. Commercial republication with permission. Please contact alec@rawls.org.</div>Alec Rawlshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18106800937399442588noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7347736.post-44698099313128461952013-12-12T19:11:00.000-08:002013-12-18T21:58:31.683-08:00Evil is Coming: ticking-clock Newtown video makes more sense with a pro-gun narrationA group called Moms Demand Action ("for gun sense in America") just put out a <a href="http://momsdemandaction.org/no-more-silence/">video</a> marking the one year anniversary of the Newtown massacre. From a pro-gun perspective their video invokes some very effective imagery, using the impending sound of a ticking clock to highlight the vulnerability of a classroom full of undefended children.<br />
<br />
That's the story of Newtown, where a psychopathic loser took advantage of the "gun free zone" at Sandy Hook Elementary School to murder two classrooms full of first graders and their teachers without being opposed by anyone equipped to defend against him. When seconds mattered the Newtown police were only 15 minutes away, but the Demanding Moms don't get it.<br />
<br />
Their response to Newtown? They are on a nationwide crusade to create <a href="http://momsdemandaction.org/tell-staples-guns-crayons-dont-mix/">more gun-free zones</a>. Holy cow. (Bob Owens has more on the bullying Moms <a href="http://bearingarms.com/moms-demand-action-get-caught-in-another-deceptive-claim-trying-to-bully-store-managers-into-challenging-corporate-policies/">here</a>.) Still, for those who actually understand that seconds matter, that ticking clock is very evocative. It just needs the right voice over, which I have tried to provide (100% <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fair_use#Fair_use_and_parody">fair</a> <a href="http://fairuse.stanford.edu/overview/fair-use/what-is-fair-use/">use</a>):<br />
<br />
<iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="315" src="//www.youtube.com/embed/Z0Ls3NxzHkU" width="420"></iframe>
<br />
<br />
If anyone thinks this is not the time to invoke Newtown in the gun-rights debate, tell it to the Demanding Moms. This video is a rebuttal to their ill-conceived manipulation, which should not go unanswered.<br />
<br />
<br />
<b>Video script</b><br />
<br />
Pro-gun voice-over (by Alec Rawls):<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
Evil is coming, just as it came to Newtown one year ago.</blockquote>
Part of the original voice-over (from the Moms Demand Action "No More Silence" video):<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
With 26 more school shootings since that day...</blockquote>
Pro-gun voice-over:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
Evil is coming and everyone knows it, but nobody is preparing to confront it. They want to, but they are not allowed. Denied their constitutional right to bear arms, would-be defenders can only sit and wait. </blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
What society in human history ever gathered its children together, then issued a public guarantee that they would be left completely undefended? How much longer will we sit by as this invitation to slaughter the most vulnerable members of our society is repeatedly accepted?</blockquote>
Original voice-over:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
Ask yourself, is silence what America needs right now?</blockquote>
<br />
<b>No, silence is <i>not</i> what America needs</b><br />
<br />
But it <i>is</i> what our Democrat-controlled media systematically delivers when it comes to gun-rights understanding. A full half of the country had in unison one single immediate response to the news of the Newtown massacre: "Why the <i>Hell</i> wasn't there anyone on-site who was equipped to defend this entire school full of children?"<br />
<br />
We all know the reason: because the Democrats have managed to strip whole swaths of their fellow citizens of the Constitutional right to bear arms, but we still can't help erupting in questioning anger at the sheer unmitigated perversity of it. It screams out of us every time one of these psychopaths is able to go about his evil business unopposed, yet nowhere does our Democrat-controlled media breathe a hint of what a full half of the country is thinking and saying. <i>Our</i> voices are silenced by a relentlessly biased media, yet it is <i>our</i> voices that need to be heard, because it is <i>we</i> who are correct.<br />
<br />
<br />
<b>Our dissembler in chief</b><br />
<br />
At last year's Newtown <a href="http://www.npr.org/2012/12/16/167412995/transcript-president-obama-at-sandy-hook-prayer-vigil">prayer-vigil</a> President Obama artfully misrepresented the pro-gun position:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
Are we prepared to say that such violence visited on our children year after year after year is somehow the price of our freedom?</blockquote>
But every gun rights advocate in the country knows that this violence, visited on our children "year after year after year," is not the price of freedom but is the price of our <i>violation</i> of freedom (the Constitutional right to bear arms). It is a price that the <i>Democrats</i> are willing to pay, choosing to leave everyone's children undefended in the face of repeated mass murder rather than relinquish their opposition to one of our country's founding liberties.<br />
<br />
Conservatives are indeed willing to pay a high price for freedom in those instances where the price of freedom is high but this is not one of those instances. The freedom to bear arms makes us <i>safer</i>, just as all of our liberties contribute to our security and our prosperity. The price we have to pay for liberty is the price of <i>defending</i> it, not some supposed price that liberty itself inflicts!<br />
<br />
This is what a moral pervert we have for a president. He sees liberty itself as a negative and strikes at the tree of liberty wherever he has a chance, socializing one sixth of our economy with Obamacare; using the power of the state (in the form of the IRS) to <a href="http://www.foxnews.com/opinion/2013/10/20/obamas-fingerpints-all-over-irs-tea-party-scandal/">systematically</a> <a href="http://ace.mu.nu/archives/345668.php">attack</a> his political opposition; even running "assault weapons" to Mexican drug cartels with <a href="http://errortheory.blogspot.com/2011/03/is-atf-gun-running-operation-ploy-to.html">no plan to track the guns</a>, only a plan to use them, when they are discovered at crime scenes throughout Mexico, to ensnare America's law abiding gun industry, blaming our right to keep and bear arms for Obama's own intentional abuse of those rights.<br />
<br />
Is there anyone in the whole country who still believes a single word that comes out of this man's mouth? He spent four years clearing the path for the Muslim Brotherhood to ascend to power in Egypt, <a href="http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2009/06/-brotherhood-invited-to-obama-speech-by-us/18693/">advocating</a> <a href="http://thehill.com/homenews/administration/141783-white-house-on-time-for-eyptian-transition-now-means-now">for</a> <a href="http://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2011/12/obama-pushed-early-elections-in-egypt-knowing-that-it-would-likely-lead-to-islamist-victory/#!">them</a> at <a href="http://www.csmonitor.com/USA/Foreign-Policy/2011/1125/US-turns-up-pressure-on-Egypt-s-military-urges-transfer-to-civilian-rule">every turn</a>, <a href="http://www.nationalreview.com/articles/258419/fear-muslim-brotherhood-andrew-c-mccarthy#!">often</a> by <a href="http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/259500/theres-willful-blindness-and-then-theres-willful-stupidity-andrew-c-mccarthy">name</a>, only to see the Egyptian people, who had always sided with the Islamofascists against Israel and the United States and Europe, turn against the Brothers when, thanks to Obama, it was now <i>they</i> who were facing the Islamofascist hell. That turn against the Muslim Brotherhood (the parent organization of al Qaeda) is a bigger turn of events than Bush's victory in Iraq. It is a huge victory for liberty, and all because Obama's unbounded hatred for liberty is so extreme that it stimulates even the Islamic world's liberty-challenged immune system to vomit him out.<br />
<br />
We have to do the same here in America. Vomit out his poisonous Obamacare and vomit out his rottingly sweet attempt to depict gun rights, not as a valuable liberty, providing crucial defense against both common and uncommon crime, but as a negative: not something to fight for but something to fight against. Vomit out this liberty-hating monster. Overthrow his every machination and hope that the low-information Democrat half of our electorate, the willful idiots who seek to curtail their own thoughts as our Democrat-controlled media wants their thoughts to be curtailed, do not stay asleep long enough to carry him over any more finish lines.<br />
<br />
In that vein, here's hoping that the words I so jarringly put in the mouths of the Demanding Moms might be clear enough to pull even their grief-stricken heads out of the sand. After all, it is <i>their</i> ticking clock. Shouldn't they know better than anyone that seconds count? Come on woman in the video, show us that you have a brain in your head. Show us that a person who comprehends the horror of murderous seconds cannot really be in favor of defender-free zones!<br />
<br />
<br />
<b>Don't you DARE try to defend those children!</b><br />
<br />
Yeah, they actually said it. In response to the Newtown massacre Professor Erik Loomis from the University of Rhode Island passed along the following message (originally <a href="http://twitchy.com/2012/12/18/university-of-rhode-island-professors-retweet-murder-anyone-who-thinks-teachers-should-be-armed/">penned</a> by another angry leftist named Lee Papa, aka Rude Pundit):<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
"First f**ker to say the solution is for elementary school teachers to carry guns needs to get beaten to death."</blockquote>
They <i>know</i> that these murders were enabled by the state's unconstitutional disarming of all would-be defenders but they care more about their disarmament goals than about the murders and are desperate to switch the blame to those who seek to uphold a citizen's duty to be prepared to defend oneself and others.<br />
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
Professor David Guth also wants death for those who believe
in being prepared to defend themselves and others. More specifically, he wants
death <a href="http://therightscoop.com/idiot-leftist-professor-says-he-hopes-for-murder-of-nra-members-children/">for their children</a>:</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
#NavyYardShooting The blood is on the hands of the #NRA.
Next time, let it be YOUR sons and daughters. Shame on you. May God damn you.</blockquote>
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
And here is funny-man Jim Carrey's <a href="http://www.eonline.com/news/385441/jim-carrey-tweets-anti-gun-statement-riles-up-fox-nation-co">contemp</a>t for the lives of
those who would seek to defend children:</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
"Any1 who would run out to buy an assault rifle after
the <st1:place w:st="on">Newtown</st1:place>
massacre has very little left in their body or soul worth protecting."</blockquote>
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I <a href="https://twitter.com/AlecRawls">sent</a> him a few responses of my own:</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj0BRmBV6NccDh0FojY_MdXNgGYvx1QRhKx7sxo2iC-VBAZLuuXnDxgoYLNYQh-2fn5sTzDk1yiU8bDYTBUKfyKCsuGNiPU5Jk4BEVO2ctkhtob0MzSKMCWD6Pm_heKlBn7PkznnA/s1600/CarreyResponse2.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" height="297" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj0BRmBV6NccDh0FojY_MdXNgGYvx1QRhKx7sxo2iC-VBAZLuuXnDxgoYLNYQh-2fn5sTzDk1yiU8bDYTBUKfyKCsuGNiPU5Jk4BEVO2ctkhtob0MzSKMCWD6Pm_heKlBn7PkznnA/s640/CarreyResponse2.png" width="640" /></a></div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEihGSwn7S36Vav1FgBrtW6NjiwIbwDSbxU69mzZvUU4fCz7wYGQyaZjAiStagVtfRCiikwW5VNfA8D0RFbxDxuK_R7uLzry8sxXuuxPMDbhda_eRWv6ulVi8RJzu83sRHWM_-RO3w/s1600/CarreyResponse1.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="280" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEihGSwn7S36Vav1FgBrtW6NjiwIbwDSbxU69mzZvUU4fCz7wYGQyaZjAiStagVtfRCiikwW5VNfA8D0RFbxDxuK_R7uLzry8sxXuuxPMDbhda_eRWv6ulVi8RJzu83sRHWM_-RO3w/s640/CarreyResponse1.png" width="640" /></a></div>
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhMotT6aeUR2ihVCyMj2LdVOBGucqVTA8I29TGgFuWT8kaPDO46OhlwkTkwsRQ1oFDy8hqz20xqJ_N67556ZSnrDeM8CcrmeudcAxv6bCFj0AYYfonZcJNedDjel_rV_mn3y_-WVg/s1600/CarreyResponse3.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="160" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhMotT6aeUR2ihVCyMj2LdVOBGucqVTA8I29TGgFuWT8kaPDO46OhlwkTkwsRQ1oFDy8hqz20xqJ_N67556ZSnrDeM8CcrmeudcAxv6bCFj0AYYfonZcJNedDjel_rV_mn3y_-WVg/s640/CarreyResponse3.png" width="640" /></a></div>
<br />
<div>
<br /></div>
<br />
<br />
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br />
That <a href="http://www.jimcarreyonline.com/recent/news.php?id=1661">butt-hole routine</a> was sick but hilarious. Carrey's latest routine is just
sick.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b>The purpose of
liberty is to empower moral agency <o:p></o:p></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The anti-gunners need to learn some moral theory. Illiberal
"liberals" always think that they are the sophisticated ones but anyone
who doesn't understand why gun rights make us safer doesn't understand the
first thing about why liberty works. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
If human beings did not have moral comprehension it wouldn't
much matter if we were free. Not being cognizant of value we would not be
capable of pursuing value and so nothing of value would be lost by our not
having the freedom to pursue value (or "happiness" as it is listed in
the Declaration of Independence). But moral agency changes everything.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Our open ended faculties of intelligence are able to follow
evidence, not just about what is possible in the world, but also about what
there is to value in the world. Whether this is a product of godless nature or
is because god made us in his image (Genesis 1:27), what separates humans from
the rest of the animal kingdom is our capacity to make progress in the
discovery and pursuit of value.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
What do we see to find value in? In the words of Linnaeus,
"know thyself," ("<a href="http://bertie.ccsu.edu/naturesci/Evolution/Unit10Background/Linnaeus.html">homo sapiens</a>"). There are vast catalogs of music, humor, drama, dance and
sport, all with their unique attractions, discovered and explored and developed
by humans questing after value. There is literature and learning. There is love
of the natural world and the lesser-minded animals that need our guardianship
and our husbandry.<br />
<br />
Most basically there is our love for each other: man and
woman, parents and children, friends and colleagues. We discern the lovable
qualities in each unique individual just by witnessing their spirit in action,
and we see their hateful qualities, where instead of acting to preserve and
advance what the human mind can see to value some have a perverse desire to
trample value, as if it raises them higher to bring other people and things down.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
This is the difference between moral rationality and moral
irrationality. Moral rationality husbands and follows all evidence of value, then
acts for every discovery of value wherever it is enough at stake to be worth
accounting. But moral rationality is not the only human mode. We evolved
through the process of natural selection where different available human modes
compete on the basis of which produces and nurtures the most offspring.<br />
<br />
Here
two main modes are possible. People can make their way in the world either by
producing things that other people find valuable, then trading or selling what they produce, or they
can make their way by trying to steal what others have produced. These
competing strategies are both broadly present in the human population today,
but the stealers are a clear minority, essentially our criminal class, salted
away in every race, making up something less than 20% of the total population.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i>Most</i> people are moral. Their nature is to produce value, and
this strategy (for those who follow it) is facilitated by moral rationality. If
you have an eye for value, if your tendency is to follow evidence of value and
to act for value then you will be better at producing value. You will be more
successful in the be-productive reproductive strategy, and this seems to be the
course that the bulk of mankind has followed. This is our evolutionary path.
This is <i>you</i>, right? Know thyself.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
This human nature creates a fundamental fellowship. Why are
people all over the world so able to embrace each other as genuine friends,
eager for each other's well being? Because when we look for what there is to
value in each other we all see this same thing: that we all share this basic
moral rationality that seeks to make progress in the discovery and pursuit of
value. This makes us allies in our fundamental nature. We revel in each other's
discovery of value, each other's talents, each other's inventiveness. We love
each other's moral agency.<br />
<br />
This is why people are willing to undertake even
grave risks in defense even of unknown others. Because being morally competent,
we know the worth of other people's lives, that we have this shared ability to
recognize and act for value. We risk even for unknown others because we have a
rational expectation that others are worth risking for.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The fact of moral agency, that our open ended faculties of
intelligence are capable of apprehending value, is the key moral fact of our
existence. Lower animals (with some limited exceptions) don't have moral agency,
and they certainly have no capacity for moral rationality. Only the human being
can recognize whether he is making a contribution to the world around or is
reducing the sum of human attainment by predating upon it. We easily, even
automatically, use constructs like Kant's "categorical imperative"
(what if everyone were to behave the way I am behaving?) to magnify our
understanding of the implications of our existence for the world around. All of
which lead the moral majority to first want to be fair: to not be a cheater,
but instead be one of those who makes his way by making a contribution and
getting rewarded for it, not by stealing from others.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
All progress in the discovery and pursuit of value comes
through moral agency. That moral fact demands the empowerment of moral agency,
which in turn requires maximum equal liberty rights. The pursuit of value
requires freedom of action. If progress in the discovery and pursuit of value is
to be maximized then moral agency must be maximally unleashed, limited only
where one person's liberty interferes with similar such freedom for others.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
One of the most important things people must be free to do
is defend themselves and each other, because the cheaters and the stealers and
the predators are still out there. When we identify them we can take away <i>their</i> gun rights, but it is counterproductive in the extreme to disempower the moral
agency of the morally competent in this most crucial area, and this is what the
anti-gunners want. They don't want to disarm just the people who have revealed
a criminal nature. They explicitly want to disarm <i>everybody</i> except the
government, proving that they have zero comprehension of the primacy of moral
agency.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Listen up you liberty hating fruitcakes: <i>all</i> value comes
through the empowerment of moral agency, which first requires liberty. To be
against the empowerment of moral agency in some crucial area like saving lives
is to be a wanton destroyer of value of the highest magnitude. You are Godzilla
smashing <st1:city w:st="on">Tokyo</st1:city>.
You are a F4 tornado vacuuming up towns in the <st1:place w:st="on">Midwest</st1:place>.
And then to project the most tender concern for innocent life, as you work
perfectly overtly to insure that there will be no defenders of the innocent, how
is that even possible? </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Much can be excused on account of grief but most of those
who are trying to use the <st1:city w:st="on">Newtown</st1:city>
massacre to attack gun rights have suffered no personal loss that clouds their understanding.
Like President Obama, they are intentionally misusing tragedy to misdirect
blame, determined to create more of the defender-free zones that will give them
more mass murders that they can use as more fodder to advance their ultimate
goal of a government monopoly on power.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Evil is coming, not just in the form of broken losers, but
also in the form of usurping tyrants, as regular as any "26 more school
shootings," but looming a million times larger in human history. Evil is
coming and half the country is actively trying to pave the way for it, using
the demagoguery of misdirected blame to disempower the moral agency of a
nation.<br />
<br />
<br />
UPDATE: <b>Without the defender-free-zone part, Arapahoe shooter wants none of it, kills himself</b><br />
<br />
From the <a href="http://www.csmonitor.com/USA/2013/1214/Colorado-school-shooting-Armed-guards-the-answer">Christian Science Monitor</a>:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
As they investigate the latest school shooting in the United States – Friday at Arapahoe High School in Centennial, Colo. – one thing is clear to law enforcement officials there: The presence of an armed deputy sheriff on regular duty at the school was the key factor in preventing more deaths and injuries. </blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
As soon as he heard the first of five gunshots, that officer and the two school administrators he was talking to raced toward the commotion shouting their presence and ordering students and staff to follow the school’s lock-down protocol. </blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
As a result, Arapahoe County Sheriff Grayson Robinson said at a briefing Saturday afternoon, the heavily-armed shooter realized he was about to be confronted by an armed officer, and he took his own life.</blockquote>
Makes it pretty obvious that that young Mr. Pierson would not have gone human-hunting in the first place if he didn't think he would have a chance to engage in unopposed slaughter, especially if, as one of his classmates suggests, the reason why he went off is because he "<a href="http://www.cnn.com/2013/12/14/us/colorado-school-gunman-karl-pierson/">didn't like losing</a>." Pierson, who was an incessant and very proud debater, had lost by getting himself kicked off the debate team. He wanted first of all to kill the debate team coach but he was armed with molotov cocktails and other implements for killing many others as well:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
Senior Chris Davis, 18, was among many students Saturday trying to make sense of Pierson's shooting rampage. </blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
"He was a weird kid," Davis said. "He's a self-proclaimed communist, just wears Soviet shirts all the time." </blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
Pierson became easily aggravated, "always liked to be right" and didn't like losing, Davis said. </blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
"It seems realistic, now, that he did it," Davis added.</blockquote>
As is typical for our Democrat-controlled press, <i>The Denver Post</i> deliberately tried to make those who only read above the break think that this leftist was a pro gun conservative, leading off a story on Pierson's "<a href="http://www.denverpost.com/news/ci_24721367/arapahoe-high-gunman-held-strong-political-beliefs-classmates">strong political beliefs</a>" with this quote from one of his classmates:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
"He had very strong beliefs about gun laws and stuff," said junior Abbey Skoda, who was in a class with Pierson during her freshman year. "I also heard he was bullied a lot."</blockquote>
Since Pierson used a gun the implication would seem to be that he must have been pro-gun, not anti-gun. Only those who read to the end of the article find out what Pierson posted on facebook:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
The Republican Party: Health Care: Let 'em Die, Climate Change: Let 'em Die, Gun Violence: Let 'em Die, Women's Rights: Let 'em Die, More War: Let 'em Die. Is this really the side you want to be on?</blockquote>
The Post went on to <a href="http://www.mediaite.com/online/the-ugly-mindset-that-led-denver-post-to-sanitize-arapahoe-shooters-political-beliefs/">scrub</a> from its own article a statement from a classmate that Pierson was "a very opinionated socialist," reporting instead that the classmate had only described Pierson as "very opinionated." Liars.<br />
<br />
Senior editor Lee Ann Colacioppo explained the change:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
“We decided not to have another student apply a label to the shooter — a label the student likely didn’t even understand,”</blockquote>
The whole article was about the other student's views of the shooter. Only when he turns out to be a leftist like Colacioppo does this "labeling" become something pernicious that should not be credited in a news report.<br />
<br />
So in the <i>Post</i>'s view it is a-okay to write the article so that skimmers will wrongly think Pierson was some kind of pro-gun Tea Party conservative but evidence that he was actually a leftist has to be excised as a matter of "principle." Dirtbags.<br />
<br />
<br />
RELATED: <b><a href="http://www.schoolimprovement.com/voices-of-education/guns-and-school-safety-survey-results/?pr=guns">Survey</a> shows that if allowed, 13.4% of teachers would carry guns in school!</b><br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
72.4% of educators say they would be unlikely to bring a firearm to school if they were allowed to do so. 36.3% of educators surveyed report owning a firearm, 37.1% of whom say they would be likely or very likely to bring it to school if allowed.</blockquote>
.363 x .371 = 13.4. That is far above the average rate of carry in any "shall issue" carry permit state. Florida with the highest number of CCW permits (over a <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/12/12/florida-one-million-gun-permits_n_2287893.html">million</a>) has a permit rate of <a href="http://www.politifact.com/florida/statements/2012/aug/14/rick-scott/florida-no-1-concealed-permits-rick-scott-says/">6.2%</a> of its adult population. Georgia has the highest CCW rate at 11% (ibid.). 13.4% is huge!<br />
<br />
It is not surprising to <i>me</i> that adults who are responsible for classrooms full of children want to be able to protect them, but I expect that many anti-gunners <i>would</i> be surprised, if they were to learn about it. Well they had better not learn about it then. CNN reports the teachers' strong pro-gun response under the following headline:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<b>Survey: Teachers don't want to carry guns, do support armed guards</b></blockquote>
Because you see, a <i>majority</i> of teachers would not carry guns. Ergo, that's the news: "teachers don't want to carry guns." Propagandist hacks.<br />
<br />
CNN also claims that: "the survey was not a scientific measure of opinion," but nothing on the survey site suggests that this was not a controlled study:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
School Improvement Network surveyed 10,661 educators from all 50 states to find out how safe our schools really are, and the best ways to keep them secure.</blockquote>
The survey group's summary report actually understates the pro-gun response. Check out question 6 in the <a href="http://www.schoolimprovement.com/pdf/guns-security-measures-in-schools.pdf">detailed survey results</a>:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
How likely would you be to bring a firearm to school if you were allowed to? </blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
Very Likely 10.7%<br />
Likely 6.9%<br />
Somewhat Likely 10%<br />
Somewhat Unlikely 7.2%<br />
Unlikely 15.7%<br />
Very Unlikely 49.5%</blockquote>
Likely and very likely sum to 17.6%!</div>
<div class="blogger-post-footer">All content copyright © Alec Rawls, 2004-. Non-commercial use allowed with attribution. Commercial republication with permission. Please contact alec@rawls.org.</div>Alec Rawlshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18106800937399442588noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7347736.post-8573903675030737072013-11-23T14:51:00.000-08:002013-11-23T18:02:06.426-08:00Higher education is wasted on sugarbabies<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 10.0pt;"><a href="http://pjmedia.com/instapundit/179740/">Instapundit</a>
links to a young woman who is leaning towards accepting an offer to prostitute
her way through college. </span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 10pt;">I left a
comment on the implications of the sugardaddy-scholarship [links added]:</span></div>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 10.0pt;">Regardless
of what anyone thinks about it, this is happening at a <a href="http://abcnews.go.com/blogs/headlines/2013/01/economy-may-be-fueling-sugar-daddy-business-site-suggests/">substantial</a> and <a href="http://www.campusreform.org/?ID=4706">rapidly growing</a> rate,
contributing to the female-heavy nature of college. On the anecdotal side, I recently saw a couple of very pretty co-eds at the coffee shop looking at pictures of a 70-ish white-haired
beau. I thought they looked high school age but apparently they were college
girls, since the sugarbaby described her sugardaddy as a college professor.</span> <span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 10pt;">They talked about how he was still kind of cute, making the case to each other
that this was a good way to go.</span> </blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 10pt;">Not for
society. Highly educated females for the most part do not support families the
way educated men do. They either don't have children or they have children with
highly educated and/or big earning men who provide the support while the
woman's earning potential goes largely unused. [It's called
"hypergamy." High earning women show a <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/09/24/millionaire-men_n_3983741.html">marked preference</a> for still
higher earning men, while high earning men are glad to support lower earning
women.]</span></blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 10.0pt;">Luckily our
present college system is going to collapse, hopefully sooner rather than
later, under the weight of its own needless cost, to be replaced by a system
where the only credentials are test scores in various areas of knowledge. Together
with free or inexpensive online education the result will be a genuine
meritocracy, in contrast to our present faux-meritocracy, limited to those who
are wealthy enough, or dumb enough, to take on a house-mortgage worth of debt.</span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 10.0pt;"> </span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 10.0pt;">Until then our
majority-female colleges will become ever more female, and ever more heavily
stocked with the most corrupt gold-digging type of female, the least likely
people in the world to ever support a family. A worse misdirection of resources
is hard to imagine.</span> </blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 10.0pt;">[Sugarbabies are the most instinctively hypergamous of all females. Almost all women find alpha-male qualities like financial success and social status to be attractive when they see it, but here we have very young women actively prostituting themselves in search of these qualities. They are hyper-hypergamous, making it a virtual certainty that they will remain
hypergamous, and highly averse to supporting a family, for the rest of their
lives.]</span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 10.0pt;"> </span> </blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 10.0pt;">Like the
rest of the blue-state Obama-world it is all going to go away. As <a href="http://pjmedia.com/instapundit/116817/">our host</a> likes
to remind us: "Something that can’t go on forever won’t." But unsustainability only brings about an
ending when it smashes into the ground. Before things get better they are first
going to get much worse.</span></blockquote>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 10.0pt;">I'm not
against women taking advantage of their sexual desirability however they see
fit. With the coming economic collapse everyone is going to be struggling to
find a way to survive and it is not at all a bad thing that there is an "old
fashioned way" that many women will be able to manage this: by finding men
who are able and willing to take care of them. </span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 10pt;">If only all women could find this
most longstanding of human relationships, ideally the respectable way, but that
is going to be rarer and rarer going forward, with fewer and fewer men able to
provide support, together with feminist-era marriage laws that establish <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/helen-smith/8-reasons-men-dont-want-t_b_3467778.html">extreme disincentives</a> to male participation, </span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 10pt;">making
semi-respectable the best that many women will be able to find.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 10.0pt;">It's all part of the downward slope we have been on since the radical stinking left-wing
liberty-haters managed to get control of our institutions. They socialized
retirement (undermining childbearing by replacing personal savings and investment
with a massive system of transfer payments from the wealth-poor young to the
wealth-rich old); they are socializing a full sixth of the economy with
Obamacare (not only <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3sTfZJBYo1I">designed from the beginning</a> to destroy private health insurance,
but like social security, Obamacare is also anti-natalist, <a href="http://theweek.com/article/index/252897/obamacares-big-millennial-problem">transferring resources</a>
from healthy young people who are wealth poor to unhealthy old people who are wealth-rich); they</span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 10pt;"> are intentionally forcing energy prices up ("under my plan"
said <a href="http://dailycaller.com/2013/06/25/obama-admitted-energy-prices-would-skyrocket-under-his-policies/">Obama</a> in 2008, energy prices will "necessarily skyrocket"); </span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 10pt;">and they
are regulating the economy to death while imposing every employer mandate they
can think of.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 10pt;">We are
going all the way down baby. There's no avoiding the crash landing. Just hope that
in the aftermath we can get our Constitution back and re-establish a society
that protects and fosters liberty.</span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 10.0pt;">That's why sooner
is better than later. The faster that illiberal institutions like Obamacare
implode the less damage they have a chance to do, increasing the chance that we
will be able to recover. Faster
is also b</span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 10pt;">etter demographically. All of these anti-natalist forces (Social Security, Obamacare, the wasting of higher education
on hyper-hypergamous sugarbabies) are chopping our society off at the roots. They
cannot end too soon.</span></div>
<div class="blogger-post-footer">All content copyright © Alec Rawls, 2004-. Non-commercial use allowed with attribution. Commercial republication with permission. Please contact alec@rawls.org.</div>Alec Rawlshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18106800937399442588noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7347736.post-15032070761625160332013-11-15T12:20:00.000-08:002013-11-15T14:19:02.918-08:00Capitol Police Board confirms "stand down" order during Navy Yard slaughter<span style="color: #333333; font-family: Arial;"><span style="font-size: 14px; line-height: 18px;">House Sergeant-at-Arms Paul Irving, speaking for the Capitol Police Board's review of this September's mass shooting incident at the Navy Yard, confirmed yesterday that Capitol Police superiors did in fact order CP's fully geared-up SWAT team (CERT) to retreat from the scene of the ongoing slaughter. From <i>Roll Call</i>'s <a href="http://www.rollcall.com/news/congress_unlikely_to_intervene_in_stand_down_controversy-229075-1.html?pg=1">Hannah Hess</a>:</span></span><br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="color: #333333; font-family: Arial;"><span style="font-size: 14px; line-height: 18px;">“The facts are clear that the CERT was initially directed to the incident command post, and the facts are clear that they did not make it to the incident command post,” Irving said. “We also have radio transmissions from a Capitol Police unit at the command post that reflected they would be unable to make it due to heavy traffic congestion”</span></span></blockquote>
<span style="color: #333333; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14px; line-height: 18px;">Irving tries to present the order to proceed to the command post as an order to proceed towards the Navy Yard, where the command post would presumably be set up, but it is an established fact that the CERT team was <i>already</i> at the scene of the ongoing slaughter before any order from superiors was received, making the order to proceed to the incident command post an order to <i>retreat</i> from the scene of the shooting.</span><br />
<span style="color: #333333; font-family: Arial;"><span style="font-size: 14px; line-height: 18px;"><br /></span></span>
<span style="color: #333333; font-family: Arial;"><span style="font-size: 14px; line-height: 18px;">Here is what we know about the situation at the time that the CERT team first contacted their superiors (from the <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/24153252">BBC</a>, 9/18/13). The CERT team, which had coincidentally been near the Navy Yard, heard directly about the active shooter situation and had already gotten itself in position to intercede when superiors were first contacted:</span></span><br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="color: #333333; font-family: Arial;"><span style="font-size: 14px; line-height: 18px;">Multiple sources in the Capitol Police department have told the BBC that its highly trained and heavily armed four-man Containment and Emergency Response Team (Cert) was near the Navy Yard when the initial report of an active shooter came in about 8:20 local time.</span></span></blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="color: #333333; font-family: Arial;"><span style="font-size: 14px; line-height: 18px;">The officers, wearing full tactical gear and armed with HK-416 assault weapons, arrived outside Building 197 a few minutes later, an official with knowledge of the incident told the BBC.</span></span></blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="color: #333333; font-family: Arial;"><span style="font-size: 14px; line-height: 18px;">According to a Capitol Police source, an officer with the Metropolitan Police Department (MPD), Washington DC's main municipal force, told the Capitol Cert officers they were the only police on the site equipped with long guns and requested their help stopping the gunman.</span></span> </blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="color: #333333; font-family: Arial;"><span style="font-size: 14px; line-height: 18px;">When the Capitol Police team radioed their superiors, they were told by a watch commander to leave the scene, the BBC was told.</span></span></blockquote>
<span style="color: #333333; font-family: Arial;"><span style="font-size: 14px; line-height: 18px;">In a bizarre twist the <i>Roll Call</i> report does not provide this context, allowing Irving to get away with his pretense that the order to proceed to the incident command post was an order to advance rather than an order to retreat (or "stand down"). The title of Hess' article refers to the "stand down" controversy ("Congress Unlikely to Intervene in 'Stand Down' Controversy"), but the article itself never addresses whether the CERT team was told to stand down. </span></span><br />
<span style="color: #333333; font-family: Arial;"><span style="font-size: 14px; line-height: 18px;"><br /></span></span>
<span style="color: #333333; font-family: Arial;"><span style="font-size: 14px; line-height: 18px;">Hess must simply be ignorant of the most basic facts of the story she is supposed to be covering. Why else would she fail to report the biggest scoop a young reporter is ever likely to have dropped in her lap? It's not like this is a partisan issue where our Democrat-dominated media has a strong interest in presenting the police as helpless to protect the public from active shooters. This slaughter <i>could</i> have been stopped by the police and confirmation of that fact would seem to be a plus for the Democratic Party's anti-gun position that we should all be willing to trust the police for our defense without feeling any need to be prepared (by bearing arms) to defend ourselves.</span></span><br />
<span style="color: #333333; font-family: Arial;"><span style="font-size: 14px; line-height: 18px;"><br /></span></span>
<span style="color: #333333; font-family: Arial;"><span style="font-size: 14px; line-height: 18px;">In any case, Hess has left this story unbroken, leaving the opportunity for others to break it, as I for one am glad to do. So thank you Mr. Irving for providing us with the content of that communication between the CERT team at the active shooting scene and their superiors: they were told to retreat to the "incident command post," </span><span style="font-size: 14.666666984558105px; line-height: 18px;">which at that point would have been back at headquarters, since no forward command post would yet have been established. </span></span><span style="color: #333333; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14px; line-height: 18px;">And thanks to Hannah Hess for accepting Irving's ludicrous spin that the CERT team was blocked by traffic from reaching the shooting scene that they were calling from, allowing me to break what should have been her scoop.</span><br />
<span style="color: #333333; font-family: Arial;"><span style="font-size: 14px; line-height: 18px;"><br /></span></span>
<span style="color: #333333; font-family: Arial;"><span style="font-size: 14px; line-height: 18px;">As for the CERT team's failure to complete its retreat to the not-yet-existent "command post," supposedly because of "traffic," the real story isn't hard to figure. They never made it to their designated retreat point, not because of traffic, but because they would have been beside themselves with anger and shame. They should have disobeyed the stand down order and risked being fired rather than allowing the slaughter of innocents to proceed. It is not surprising that they would accept any excuse (traffic) to not return to the masters who ordered this betrayal of their purpose and their trust.</span></span><br />
<span style="color: #333333; font-family: Arial;"><span style="font-size: 14px; line-height: 18px;"><br /></span></span>
<span style="color: #333333; font-family: Arial;"><span style="font-size: 14px; line-height: 18px;">According to <a href="http://nation.foxnews.com/2013/09/18/report-swat-team-told-stand-down-navy-yard-massacre">Fox News</a> the murderer arrived on the scene at 8:15 and was not killed until after 9. If he had been engaged at 8:20 when the CERT team arrived it is hard to disagree with the Capitol Police source who suggested at the time that: "</span><span style="font-size: 14.666666984558105px; line-height: 18px;">some lives may have been saved if we were allowed to intervene."</span></span><br />
<span style="color: #333333; font-family: Arial;"><span style="font-size: 14.666666984558105px; line-height: 18px;"><br /></span></span>
<span style="color: #333333; font-family: Arial;"><span style="font-size: 14.666666984558105px; line-height: 18px;"><br /></span></span>
<span style="color: #333333; font-family: Arial;"><span style="font-size: 14.666666984558105px; line-height: 18px;">UPDATE: It seems there <i>was</i> an already established "incident command post" when CERT received its order from Capitol Police superiors to retreat there. This advance post must have been created by the District's <i>municipal</i> police, not the Capitol Police, and is presumably where the CERT team was told that they had the only long guns on site and were asked by the municipal police to help stop the shooter (as reported by the BBC above). They say that they arrived immediately at the command center and only moved aside while awaiting orders from Capitol Police headquarters. From Hess' report: </span></span><br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.44444465637207px; line-height: 17.98611068725586px;">The union disputes that claim [that they never reached the incident command center],</span><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.44444465637207px; line-height: 17.98611068725586px;"> saying that the </span><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.44444465637207px; line-height: 17.98611068725586px;">CERT officers arrived at the incident command post within minutes of the first call for assistance but relocated to ensure other first responders could reach the incident while they awaited further instructions from the Capitol Police.</span></blockquote>
<span style="color: #333333; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666984558105px; line-height: 18px;">Sorry for getting this wrong in my initial write-up, but the only change in the interpretation is that it makes Irving out to be a bold-faced liar. He said that the CERT team never got to the command post when they clearly did, supposing that is where they were asked to help stop the shooter. But he is still admitting to the stand down order. The ordered retreat is just now a shorter retreat, back to the nearby command post, but it had to have been an order not to engage the shooter or the team would obviously not have left the scene.</span><div class="blogger-post-footer">All content copyright © Alec Rawls, 2004-. Non-commercial use allowed with attribution. Commercial republication with permission. Please contact alec@rawls.org.</div>Alec Rawlshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18106800937399442588noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7347736.post-78673855844968791562013-10-31T12:15:00.000-07:002013-11-14T13:17:40.079-08:00Those with employer provided health care will suffer WORSE under Obamacare than individual purchasers<div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: 13.5pt;">O-care news coverage has so far focused on the extreme price hikes
for people who buy health insurance for themselves. Good to see Avik Roy at<span class="apple-converted-space"> </span><a href="http://www.forbes.com/sites/theapothecary/2013/10/31/obama-officials-in-2010-93-million-americans-will-be-unable-to-keep-their-health-plans-under-obamacare/">Forbes</a><span class="apple-converted-space"> </span>today noting that what is happening to
individual purchasers of health insurance will also happen to everyone who gets
health insurance through their employers, its just that the employer side cancellations are being delayed by a year through non-enforcement. In the short term, according to the government's own 2010 preditions, 50% will lose their
existing health care plans because the plans don't meet the Obamacare
requirements and because Obama's rules for grandfathering existing plans are
intentionally so restrictive that few plans are covered (dropping in a few
years to no plans covered). These lost plans will be replaced with
Obamacare-compliant plans that will often cost twice as much.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;">
<span style="font-size: 13.5pt;">The harm in the case of individual plans
is limited because the affected individuals can resist by refusing to buy the
hugely more expensive plans. They'll have to pay a penalty, and they will be
going without health insurance, but that's the extent of the damage. Most
people would be better off paying for health care out of pocket anyway. For
anyone who has substantial assets self-insurance is much more efficient than a
low deductible plan. Only the most major major-medical insurance (very high
deductible) makes any sense at all.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;">
<span style="font-size: 13.5pt;">But with employer provided health care (mandated
by Obama for all employees who work more than 29 hrs/week for all companies of
over 50 employees) there is no way for individuals to escape the full damage wreaked by
Obamacare. Basic economics says that the imposition of this employer mandate
will not and cannot lead to an increase in total compensation for employees,
who either will see their wages fall by the increase in the cost of their
health insurance or will lose their jobs. The actual result is certain to
be a combination of the two. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: 13.5pt;">The best outcome would be for wages to fall by the full amount of
the Obamacare price increases (many hundreds of dollars a month for most people).
This would create the least disruption in the labor market, but wages are
famously sticky in the downwards direction (as those with seniority in their
various enterprises gang up to heap the economic pain on those with less seniority). Thus the more likely scenario is that wages will at first only
stagnate for those who keep their jobs, but there will be huge layoffs and huge
decreases in profitability for most companies, who will then have no choice but
to belatedly whack the wages and salaries of their remaining employees. No one will escape unscathed.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: 13.5pt;">Basically, the entire economy is screwed, and employees are going
to realize it in 2014 when their existing health care plans are cancelled and
they are either told by their employers to pony up for the more expensive
Obamacare plans or they are sent packing. Obama cannot force companies to raise total
compensation and under his powerfully recessionary policies total
compensation as driven by market forces will be falling, not rising. It's just
a question of how people are going to take the fall: in their wages or on the
sidewalk. Hope for the former, but either way, its going to be big and its
going to be bad.<o:p></o:p></span><br />
<span style="font-size: 13.5pt;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: 13.5pt;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: 13.5pt;">UPDATE: </span><span style="font-size: 18px;">O-mouth Jay Carney has been heaping scorn on all the attention being paid to cancellations when they only affect "<a href="http://ace.mu.nu/archives/344775.php">5% of the population</a>." Yeah, but that's only because the employer mandate was pushed back a year. Next year the majority of </span><i style="font-size: 18px;">all</i><span style="font-size: 18px;"> pre-existing plans will be illegal. </span><br />
<span style="font-size: 18px;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: 18px;">That link is to Ace of Spades, who has done a <a href="http://ace.mu.nu/archives/344719.php">nice job</a> of countering the fraudulent media meme that prices are going up under Obamacare because the coverage is better. No. In many cases it is worse. Far higher premiums with far higher deductibles. The price increase is because those who pay for their own health insurance, either directly or through their employers, are being forced to pay for those who don't. The primary driver of higher prices is <i><a href="http://ace.mu.nu/archives/344761.php">redistribution</a></i>.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: 18px;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: 18px;">This point was nailed emphatically by the Obama-voting Democrat Kirsten Powers in an <a href="http://www.mediaite.com/tv/medias-obamacare-supporters-vent-about-their-cancelled-health-plans/">interview</a> with Bret Baier on Fox. Powers just had her own health insurance policy cancelled and doesn't like the pretense that it is because her previous insurance plan was "substandard":</span><br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="font-size: 18px;"><span style="background-color: #f8f8f8; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14.399999618530273px; line-height: 20px;">“My blood pressure goes up every time they say that they’re protecting us from substandard health insurance plans... </span></span><span style="background-color: #f8f8f8; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14.399999618530273px; line-height: 20px;">All of the things they say that are not in my [now cancelled] plan are in my plan,” Powers lamented. “All of the things they have listed — there’s no explanation for doubling my premiums other than the fact that it’s subsidizing other people. They need to be honest about that.”</span></blockquote>
<span style="font-size: 13.5pt;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: 13.5pt;">On the employer side, Megan McCardle analyzes survey data on how many companies will continue to offer health care coverage, finding that the news is </span><a href="http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-11-04/can-small-businesses-handle-obamacare-.html" style="font-size: 13.5pt;">worse</a><span style="font-size: 13.5pt;"> than it is being spun, but the truth is actually </span><i style="font-size: 13.5pt;">much</i><span style="font-size: 13.5pt;"> worse because what employers say </span><i style="font-size: 13.5pt;">now</i><span style="font-size: 13.5pt;"> about whether they will continue to offer health insurance is colored by all the lies they have been told about costs not going up. Once the one year delay of the employer mandate ends and employers get hit with the same enormous price increases that individual purchasers are getting hit by now the best case scenario is that they will start dropping coverage </span><i style="font-size: 13.5pt;">en masse, </i><span style="font-size: 13.5pt;">choosing to pay the Obamacare penalties instead, as individuals are doing.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: 13.5pt;"><br /></span><span style="font-size: 13.5pt;">As noted above, the alternatives are even worse. If employers provide the more expensive insurance then they will either have to lower wages accordingly (Obama can't raise the market determined price for labor, which is the price for total compensation, not wages alone), or they will just lay off workers until labor supply and demand are equilibrated at the new higher total compensation level. Given that nominal wages are notoriously sticky downwards the most likely outcome is massive layoffs, so hope that employers choose instead to drop coverage and pay the penalties.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: 13.5pt;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: 13.5pt;">These penalties will still add to total compensation, prompting a combination of wage decreases and layoffs, but it can't be as bad as participating in O-strap-a-bum-to-your-back-care.</span></div>
<div class="blogger-post-footer">All content copyright © Alec Rawls, 2004-. Non-commercial use allowed with attribution. Commercial republication with permission. Please contact alec@rawls.org.</div>Alec Rawlshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18106800937399442588noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7347736.post-25811049299915278522013-07-10T15:59:00.001-07:002013-07-12T00:55:16.829-07:00Cut child-support payments in half for children born out of wedlock<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 10.0pt;">Instapundit recently <a href="http://pjmedia.com/instapundit/171982/">called out</a> Ann Althouse for having</span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 10pt;"> zero
tolerance for bias against women while at the same time having </span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13px;">broad tolerance for extreme legal bias against men</span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 10pt;">. Eighteen years ago I wrote in the </span><a href="http://www.rawls.org/util_malechoice.html"><i style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 10pt;">Stanford</i><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 10pt;"> </span><i style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 10pt;">Review</i></a><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 10pt;"> about my
own encounters with this mindset:</span></div>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 10pt;">I could hardly believe my ears. Was this really the same woman friend who for years
had been adamantly pro-choice? Where she had always insisted that to force a
woman to carry a child to term was an unconstitutional slavery, she now was now
insisting that unintended pregnancy warranted a </span><i style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 10pt;">lifetime</i><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 10pt;"> of slavery.</span></blockquote>
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<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 10pt;">Of course
we all know the punch line. The subject under discussion was </span><i style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 10pt;">male</i><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 10pt;"> obligations:</span></div>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 10pt;">Watch out guys. Do not be lulled in to thinking that
your "liberal" girlfriend's attitudes towards sex make pre-marital sex risk-less
for you. Feminism is only interested in sex being as risk-free as possible for
women, and that means shifting as much of the risk as possible onto you.</span></blockquote>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 10pt;">Since women
are the one's who get to choose whether to continue a pregnancy they should
face a strong financial incentive to bear children within marriage (where the
outcomes for children are far superior). My proposal at the time:</span></div>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 10pt;">Half might be the best compromise for an already
compromised situation, leaving strong incentives for both would-be fathers and
mothers not to conceive or bear children outside of marriage. Half of a
divorced father's child support payments is still a tremendous obligation,
considering that, for women, most people judge it a tyrannical wrong to impose
any obligation to become a parent. But there is a baby involved, whose mother
has already proven herself irresponsible by having a child out of wedlock. The
strength of that need calls for splitting the incentive equally between the man
and the woman, even though the woman is the one who ultimately has the choice.</span></blockquote>
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<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 10.0pt;">The current
rules for how much support the bigger-earning ex has to pay in child support to
the more-custodial ex are complex and under the proposed reform that would
still be the case. The only thing that would be simple is the ratio of the
single man's obligations to the married man's obligations: one half.<o:p></o:p></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 10.0pt;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 10.0pt;">That isn't to say that existing child-support levels in cases of divorce are correct. I believe they are far too high, and generally try to squeeze as much out of the man as possible, going back again for more every time he gets a raise. The proper level would be one that strongly deters the woman from seeking a divorce, so that she will only do so when a marriage is genuinely intolerable, and not enable her to simply enjoy the lifestyle to which she has become accustomed at the man's expense but without providing the partnership and assistance that justified this support within the marriage.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 10pt;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 10pt;">Nice <a href="http://dalrock.wordpress.com/2013/07/10/asking-the-wrong-question/">essay</a> by Dalrock on the need for women to face a heavy loss of support if they seek divorce, otherwise the institution of marriage will not function and men will be deprived of basic fairness. Hey women: if he's not married to you, why the hell should he be supporting you as if he was? Thus t</span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 10pt;">o a rough approximation, the level of support that a divorced woman with children should enjoy should be half that of a married woman's, and that level of support should be halved again for a never married woman.</span></div>
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<br /></div>
<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 10pt;">Mrs.
Instapundit (Dr. Helen Smith) has a new book on the extreme disincentives to
marriage that the feminist legal revolution has created (<i><a href="http://www.amazon.com/Men-Strike-Boycotting-Marriage-Fatherhood/dp/1594036756/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1373312163&sr=1-1&keywords=men+on+strike">Men on Strike</a></i>). On
this front, it might seem</span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 10pt;"> that having a man's financial obligations to
any children he sires within marriage be double his obligation to children
sired outside marriage would increase the disincentive to marry, but not so. </span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 10pt;">The obligations of married men would remain unchanged. They would face no added dis-incentive.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 10pt;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 10pt;">There
would just be less dis-incentive for men to risk siring a child <i>outside</i> of
marriage, but the point here is that the obligations of men in this situation
are already much higher than they should be, certainly in comparison to the
obligations imposed on women, where our society has decided as a matter of
protected constitutional right that women have no obligations whatsoever:</span></div>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13px;">His body, his labor, his hopes for family in the future, are all confiscated over the exact same unintended pregnancy for which our constitutional process has decided that women must not be forced to sacrifice anything. [Again, from my 1995 article.]</span></blockquote>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 10pt;">That imbalance is a moral crime. Unfortunately, it has only gotten worse </span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13px;">over the last eighteen years.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13px;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13px;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13px;">UPDATE Neo-neocon makes a <a href="http://neoneocon.com/2013/07/09/should-men-be-allowed-to-opt-out-of-child-support/">different</a> suggestion: that unmarried men be allowed to opt-out of child support in exchange for their relinquishing of all parental rights. That's closer to equality with the present standard for women (who face NO un-consented-to obligations) than my proposal is, and for that reason is even less likely to ever be adopted in our anti-male culture. Would it provide a better balance between the needs of children and the liberty interests of adults? Probably not, as it gives a free pass to men who like the idea of having lots of children they take no responsibility for.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 10pt;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 10pt;"><b>My old <i>Stanford Review</i> and <i>Thinker</i> articles</b></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 10pt;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 10pt;">I managed recently to restore a lot of these old articles that I had long ago collected on my rawls.org website. They all got wiped out sometime around 2000 when I switched from Mac to PC but earlier this year I figured out how to add my old <a href="http://www.rawls.org/#Sheriff_Home">Mac-created</a> website to my newer <a href="http://www.rawls.org/">PC-created</a> one. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 10pt;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 10pt;">A lot of it bears the test of time I think. <a href="http://www.rawls.org/knowitall_superwoman.html">Mr. Knowitall</a> is fun, but t</span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 10pt;">he most important of the restored stuff is under the "Moral Science" tab, like how to vastly improve both crime control and the protection of liberty at the same time. </span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 10pt;">Instead of protecting liberty indirectly as we do now, by tying the hands of the police,</span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 10pt;"> protect liberty </span><a href="http://www.rawls.org/reframing_home.html" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 10pt;">directly</a>,<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 10pt;"> by articulating the full ideal of liberty and placing it in the Constitution so that nothing that shouldn't be criminalized <i>can</i> be criminalized.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 10pt;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 10pt;">That is a much more secure way to protect liberty and it does not depend on any restrictions on police methods. T</span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 10pt;">he apparent conflict between liberty and crime control disappears, and is seen to be just an artifact of our clumsy indirect way of protecting liberty.</span></div>
<div class="blogger-post-footer">All content copyright © Alec Rawls, 2004-. Non-commercial use allowed with attribution. Commercial republication with permission. Please contact alec@rawls.org.</div>Alec Rawlshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18106800937399442588noreply@blogger.com1