Post #3896 M: Medicare For All Sucks; It's Time to Legalize Betting; Innovation in the Makeup Industry

Quote of the Day


In politics an absurdity is not a handicap.
Napoleon Bonaparte 

It's Time to Legalize Betting

No, I don't personally bet (unless you consider investments a form of betting. I just don't like government monopolies or prohibitions as a matter of policy and principle.

FEECast: Makeup, Apps and Markets

Medicare For All Sucks

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Political Cartoon

Musical Interlude: Childhood Christmas

Gene Autry, "Frosty the Snowman". It's amazing how many Christmas songs Gene Autry originated.

Post # 3895 M: Harvard's Immoral Anti-Asian Admissions Policies

Quote of the Day

A life spent making mistakes is not only more honorable, 
but more useful than a life spent doing nothing.
George Bernard Shaw  

Harvard's Racist Admissions Policy: Not a Meritocracy

Friedman On the Funding of Higher Education

Social Media Digest

Here are some of my Facebook fragments/comments:

http://www.ncregister.com/blog/benjamin-wiker/brexit-and-the-principle-of-subsidiarity/

It's well worth it to read this entire excellent article. but here are some highlights.

« ... In this instance, we should be looking at the most Catholic principle of subsidiarity, one which favors Brexit. ... the dual problem with the modern state is that its overwhelming historical tendency has been to absorb “power” from below, and to impose secular agendas from above. The modern state thereby violates the principle of subsidiarity in two ways: (1) by taking away legitimate “power” from more fundamental social, moral, and economic levels of human communities, such as the family, the neighborhood, and the village, and (2) by harnessing that stolen power to secular ideas and policies that destroy these more fundamental social, moral, and economic levels, and the faith along with it. Modern nation states are bad enough in this regard, but adding over and above that a European super-state, the European Union, and the violation of subsidiarity is even more egregious: not just the family, neighborhood, and village get subsumed into the higher order community, but now also the nation. Given what’s at stake, we would do well to understand a little more clearly and deeply the dangers involved in thus violating the principle of subsidiarity. The more concentrated power becomes at the top, the easier it is for a smaller number of people to control the levers of that power, thereby making it possible for a very few to lord it over an ever greater number of people. In the US, political power has been sucked up from the local and state level to Washington DC, and gathered into the Supreme Court. It’s that concentration of power at the top that allowed for the imposition of abortion and the gay marriage…and whatever is coming next. The danger of such concentration of political power is all the more evident in the case of the European Union. ... But it isn’t just the family and the fundamental moral order that gets quashed from above. When political power concentrates at the top, it makes it far, far easier for Goliathan economic powers to seize control, and manipulate the economic order to their own enormous advantage. In the US, we know that concentration of power in the national Congress has meant that Big Banks end up defining public policy by giving Big Money to Congress. It’s easier and cheaper to buy a handful of congressmen in influential committees than it is to bribe a far greater number of people on the state and local level. All the more so with EU’s absorption of national power into the uber-state. It’s no accident that one of the main opponents of Brexit was Goldman Sachs. ... »

[discussing my getting called to jury duty before I moved to Houston]

Ronald A Guillemette I think the first time I got called, I was unemployed in San Antonio. I recall whatever they paid barely covered parking, and it was taking time from my job search. There was this businessman there who was pissed off because he had more important work to do and said they should get the jobless to do it...Yeah, buddy; just wait until I'm on your jury... I think we finally got dismissed around lunchtime. The day was a total waste. I did get tabbed back in WV--somehow they didn't know I'm in SC.

[On the Minimum Wage]

Ronald A Guillemette Prohibition of work at lower prices is not the answer to a slow-growth economy. You always need to keep the consumer first, and the consumer benefits from greater variety and price competition, which leaves them better off. The consumer is able to consume more and/or save at lower prices. If you look, US manufacturing has never done better--but it does it with fewer, more knowledgeable productive workers. You also have more personalized, small-scale production, e.g., through 3D printing.

The service economy has been growing relative to the manufacturing sector for several decades. Now only about 2% of the labor force is in agriculture vs. most at the nation's birth. We need to stop worrying about jobs. The profession I'm in didn't even exist when I was a kid. But the real problem is that government impedes innovation, discourages investment. We need to reconfigure our economy to our competitive advantage.
China has a rapidly growing middle-class, and there is a transition to a consumer economy similar to ours. When the economic fascists like Clinton, Sanders and Trump threaten expansion of trade, maybe even spark a trade war, it is a lose-lose proposition. Our mercantilist actions will be met by the same, aimed at products we sell them, hurting our workers.

[I was once in (libertarian) Jeffrey Tucker's FB group. I disagreed with him on multiple issues, most prominently he's anti-intellectual property.]

Ronald A Guillemette Rothbard, of course, flip-flopped on his issue, but the fact is that we have an unalienable right to migrate. Let me quote Rothbard before he lost his mind:

"Tariffs and immigration barriers as a cause of war may be thought far afield from our study, but actually this relationship may be analyzed praxeologically. A tariff imposed by Government A prevents an exporter residing under Government B from making a sale. Furthermore, an immigration barrier imposed by Government A prevents a resident of B from migrating. Both of these impositions are effected by coercion. Tariffs as a prelude to war have often been discussed; less understood is the Lebensraum argument. “Overpopulation” of one particular country insofar as it is not the result of a voluntary choice to remain in the homeland at the cost of a lower standard of living) is always the result of an immigration barrier imposed by another country. It may be thought that this barrier is purely a “domestic” one. But is it? By what right does the government of a territory proclaim the power to keep other people away? Under a purely free-market system, only individual property owners have the right to keep people off their property. The government’s power rests on the implicit assumption that the government owns all the territory that it rules. Only then can the government keep people out of that territory.
"Caught in an insoluble contradiction are those believers in the free market and private property who still uphold immigration barriers. They can do so only if they concede that the State is the owner of all property, but in that case they cannot have true private property in their system at all. In a truly free-market system, such as we have outlined above, only first cultivators would have title to unowned property; property that has never been used would remain unowned until someone used it. At present, the State owns all unused property, but it is clear that this is conquest incompatible (sic) with the free market. In a truly free market, for example, it would be inconceivable that an Australian agency could arise, laying claim to “ownership” over the vast tracts of unused land on that continent and using force to prevent people from other areas from entering and cultivating that land. It would also be inconceivable that a State could keep people from other areas out of property that the “domestic” property owner wishes them to use. No one but the individual property owner himself would have sovereignty over a piece of property."

As for Rothbard II, Hoppe et al., the great Walter Block refutes them here
 https://mises-media.s3.amazonaws.com/22_1_29.pdf?file=1&type=document
Like · Reply · 14 hrs · Edited
Jeffrey A. Tucker
Jeffrey A. Tucker Thank you for posting this
Like · Reply · 59 mins

Almost all Republicans and Democrats oppose a real peace agenda, which radically reduces our overseas footprint, embraces universal free trade, and avoids meddling in international affairs.

— Ronald Guillemette (@raguillem) November 29, 2018

We need to start combating the creeping scope of counterproductive government interventionist policy in both domestic and foreign intervention. Both parties have grown the imperial Presidency. We need to restore liberty which is inversely related to the State.

— Ronald Guillemette (@raguillem) November 29, 2018

Both Elizabeth Warren and Trump are economic illiterates. The last thing lower-income people need are political whores saving them from more selection and lower prices. What we need is unilateral free trade. "NAFTA 2.0"

— Ronald Guillemette (@raguillem) November 29, 2018

No, Trump, killing more civilians over the past year than Nobel Peace Prize winner Obama's high annual over 8 years does NOT make America safer. https://t.co/B8bLSJ8arD

— Ronald Guillemette (@raguillem) November 28, 2018

SCOTUS is going to get back to the basics of the Bill of Rights. Asset forfeiture is corrupt legalized plunder. Chief Justice Roberts seems, though, to be rationalizing government corruption. https://t.co/F6qTHaynej

— Ronald Guillemette (@raguillem) November 28, 2018

Bernie Sanders is like a broken clock; he's right twice a day. The Saudi war on Yemen, and the US enabling it, is an abomination. https://t.co/Mqggfz5KMh

— Ronald Guillemette (@raguillem) November 28, 2018

[I think the Twitter censors were at play here; it seemed to get an abnormally low number of impressions, and Twitter would not provide embed code for the tweet.]

@raguillem
Nov 28
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Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.
George Santayana

"Nancy Pelosi"

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Not my favored candidate (a liberty Republican who failed to make the runoff), but infinitely better than electing another parasite to the Senate. #MSSen

— Ronald Guillemette (@raguillem) November 28, 2018

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Political Cartoon

Musical Interlude: Childhood Christmas

Gene Autry, "Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer"

Post #3894 M: Tyson Timbs v Indiana; Does Playing Computer Games Hurt Surgical Skill Development?

Quote of the Day

Adversity has the effect of eliciting talents 
which, in prosperous circumstances, would have lain dormant.
Horace

Image of the Day

via Facebook

Tyson Timbs v Indiana

DEAD WRONG: Games and High Tech Gadgets Are a Distraction From Mastering Surgical Skills

Could You Be Friends With a Democrat?

Probably. I used to be one. I know some of my nieces and nephews are/have been leftist, e.g., supported Obama; to be honest, I've almost never discussed politics with my relatives, although I think they know their crazy old uncle has a political blog. I think there's natural skeptical reaction to elders from young people. It takes unusual intelligence to be able to scrutinize one's own assumptions; for example, I did not come to conservatism through Reagan or to libertarianism through Ron Paul. I often have a nuanced perspective; for example, I love Coolidge generally, but I am revolted by his nativist perspective on immigration. I also have some differences with Ron Paul, but if you've noticed I've embedded a number of his video clips over the past 2-3 weeks. I'm far more tolerant than most people I know; in fact, I understand leftist perspectives better than most of their proponents.

It reminds me of when I spent several weeks in Brazil in 1995. I played the dumb monolingual American, but the fact is I knew more Portuguese than I let on. Some of the merchants there would haggle higher prices for "rich" Americans vs. their fellow natives. It pissed me off.

The point is that I have never really met other people who think like I do. I deal with people with differing opinions all the time. I read opinions that I disagree with. Yes, I can get testy with certain people, e.g., who lack intellectual integrity. It's not personal, but the other side makes it so.

One of my best friends, BB, a former fellow doctoral student and office mate at UH, is a fairly conservative Baptist who probably didn't care for my Catholic beliefs, but he never tried impose his beliefs. I remember going to an ISIS conference cocktail party and seeking him there. He never had a drink, but he was there with all these people around him drinking. He never said a single judgmental thing. He is one of the most tolerant people I've met in my life; I've never seen him let his emotions get the better of him. I've learned a lot from Bruce, and being his friend has made me a better person.

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Musical Interlude: Childhood Christmas

Gene Autry, "Here Comes Santa Claus"

Podt #3893 M: Socialism Leads to Violence; Ron Paul On the Failed Pentagon Audit

Quote of the Day

Nothing is more noble, nothing more venerable than fidelity. 
Faithfulness and truth are the most sacred excellences 
and endowments of the human mind.
Cicero  

Stossel On How Socialism Leads to Violence

Ron Paul On the Failed Pentagon Audit

Matt Kibbe On Political Violence

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Political Cartoon

Musical Interlude: Childhood Christmas

Gene Autry, "Up On the House Top"

Post #3892 M: Keep Politics Out Of Sports Coverage; Ron Paul Is Spot On On Iran

Quote of the Day

It is my ambition to say in ten sentences 

what others say in a whole book.
Friedrich Nietzsche

Keep Politics Out of Sports Coverage

Friedman On Vesting Parents In Their Children's Education

The Best Of Ron Paul On the National Obsession For Iran

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Political Cartoon

Musical Interlude: Childhood Christmas

Bruce Springsteen, "Santa Claus Is Coming To Town". No, this version of a child Christmas standard wasn't available when I was a little kid, but it's a definitive version.

Post #3891 M: Ron Paul On the Nature of the Fed

Quote of the Day

Just because something doesn't do what you planned it to do 
doesn't mean it's useless.
Thomas A. Edison  

Ron Paul On the Nature of the Fed

On T-Shirts and Economic Liberty

Kibbe On Snowden

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Musical Interlude: Childhood Christmas

Bob Dylan, "Must Be Santa". No, I didn't hear Dylan's version during childhood, but it's a great version of a standard childhood song.

Post #3890 Man of the Year 2018

The Independent Voter

Trump thinks it's obvious he should be man of the year. There was a time I seriously considered it, at least when it looked like a breakthrough summit with Kim Jung-Un might lead to a formal peace treaty, denuclearization of the Korean peninsula, perhaps even reunification, in the late spring, although the euphoria seems to have worn off, with North Korea recently complaining about joint US-South Korean exercises.

Time Magazine isn't much better, with Pelosi, unemployed quarterback Kaepernick, US Open meltdown runner-up Serena Williams, and a variety of other celebrities. To some, Pelosi deserves the honor given what currently appears to be a 38-seat gain to end the House's 8-year Dem exodus during GOP control, but the fact is that many House seats converted were in areas Clinton won in 2016, Trump had abysmal job approval ratings, and mid-terms generally result in gains by the opposition party. A 38-seat swing is nontrivial but hardly as epic as the 2010 mid-terms.

Were there other candidates under consideration? Yes, Big Tech, including social media. This is particularly pertinent to those of us with conservative/libertarian views (I myself have found myself temporarily suspended twice over the past year.)

I would include myself as one of the independent voters, although my vote didn't count except for the reelection of incumbent Gov. Hogan (R-MD). Trump will insist to anyone who is receptive to his nonsense that the reason the GOP lost the House is because the losing candidates weren't Trumpian enough. Nope; that's absurd hubris. In fact, liberty Republicans Amash and Massey, both noted Trump critics, won their districts by double-digits, and the Trumpkin who primaried liberty Congressman Mark Sanford found herself losing the historical GOP-held seat.

That the Democrats had been counting the days since losing both Congress and the White House in 2016 is an understatement. There is also evidence that the GOP were motivated by Dem missteps like the attack on Justice Kavanaugh.

But Trump made a strategic error in crafting an agenda that focused on his party's narrow control of Congress. And he has been high maintenance, constantly stirring the pot (including his seeming tolerance or appeasement of white nationalists, e.g., the Charlottesville, VA murder), attacking judges, his own party's legislators, the Mueller probe, "fake news", NFL protesters, and 101 other things. The Republicans are justifiably concerned over their loss of support in suburbia.

Trump, like it or not, even with the advantage of incumbency, is facing a difficult reelection battle. He was all but shut out in key states providing him a narrow victory in 2016: PA, MI, WI. He lost key Senate seats he was vested in, in states he won in blowouts in 2016, including WV and MT.  By some accounts his approval among independents is around 31%.

It's always possible that the Democrats could fritter away 2020 by nominating a leftist nominee, but I've seen some polls putting Biden in the lead. Biden would likely take away states from the Trump coalition.

While party memberships have eroded in each party, independents now become the deciders, and Trump will need to rebuild their confidence  if he hopes to win in 2020.

Post #3889 M: Kibbe's Election Autopsy; Ben Shapiro Spoof

Quote of the Day

Greatness lies not in being strong, 
but in the right use of strength.
Henry Ward Beecher  

Kibbe's Election Autopsy

Internet Clippings

I haven't done one of these for a while, but I have a marvelous freeware software product installed called CintaNotes (the publishers also have a premium version) which I often use to clip text. Many of these are up to 3 years  old, many from Facebook, intended for republishing. Some of these are from other and are attributed; my own work is in red typeface.

FEE Comment (5/15)

Ronald A Guillemette Who SHOULD be arrested are those authoritarian bastards, many of them spamming this thread, who attempt to obstruct, even make illegal, the voluntary contracts between those low-experienced/skilled workers and those businesses willing to employ, many of them small with limited operating budgets. Political whores picking a number out of their asses are not only economically illiterate but are basically pricing a significant percentage of prospective workers out of the labor markets; the same hypocritical "progressives" who claim to be non-racist ignore the disparate adverse effects of counterproductive wage policies on urban minorities and young people. A minimum wage policy is, de facto, a punitive tax on low-income workers and their employers; if these idiots really wanted a less damaging, more coherent redistribution policy, they might look at an earned income credit vs. social welfare programs.

CATO Institute (7/15)

I don't think that I am qualified to speak for the black experience, but I'll suggest in part the government has been seen as the most reliable ally in standing up to majoritarian abuses, the US military among the earliest, most reliable and fairest employers (and government hires almost 1 of 5 blacks among the employed). And there can be little doubt that black participation in public office greatly increased, particularly in the Old South, during the Civil Rights era.

I do think libertarians provide a solid alternative for blacks: morally hazardous social welfare policies have created a permanent underclass of government dependents, Urban blacks generally live in more crime-ridden neighborhoods, are incarcerated at disproportionate rates, have no viable alternative to failing public school, face challenges to employment in an anemic overregulated, overtaxed economy with occupational licensing restrictions and dysfunctional minimum wage laws.

But I do think we have a bad PR problem: we are seen as the principled behind the free expression rights of racist groups, we have opposed almost every major initiative of the first President of color, our agenda to shrink government affects a large number of employed blacks and government benefits for many poor blacks.

(Probably an Illinois Policy thread excerpt  in 5/15 about Illinois' public pension crisis)

To all of the people who are up in arms about the pensions being threatened:

1. You should be. In their present form, Illinois will NEVER be able to pay these obscene payouts.
2. In the last 2 years, 180,000 people moved out of Illinois.
3. Illinois has the 2nd highest property taxes in the nation.
4. At this very minute, pensions devour 25% of Illinois's budget.
5. As right now, there about 12,500 retiree's making more than 100k. And by, 2020, there will be about 25,000 retirees making more than 100k... (that's just 4 years away)..
6. Chicago is one of the most dishonest and corrupt city in the United States.

Quotes

• Try to know everything of something and something of everything. ~ Henry Brougham
• Our aspirations are our possibilities. ~ Samuel Johnson
• Families break up when people take hints you don't intend and miss hints you do intend. ~ Robert Frost
• Next to trying and winning, the best thing is trying and failing. ~ Lucy Maud Montgomery
• Don't judge each day by the harvest you reap but by the seeds that you plant. ~ Robert Louis Stevenson

Reason Discussion of Whether Naziism Is a Variation of Socialism 8/15

I believe Beeler is a democratic socialist apologist and the following were his comments in the thread followed by my response and some references.

Nazis weren't socialist. They masqueraded as socialist but implemented very few socialist principles. They were fascist capitalists. Our government is more socialist than the Nazis were.
Like · 11 hrs

Noah Beemer I'm just going to copy and paste this here. Don't use the word "socialism" in ignorance.

"Democratic Socialism is a system of government and economics that at its base believes that capitalism is a tool to be used for the good of the people. An unfettered capitalistic system spins out of controls and ends up with a small handful of rich elite who either buy out the government for their own bidding (an oligarchy), or assume complete control of the government and people (case in point: Nazi Germany). Democratic Socialism seeks to remedy this probably by offering all the benefits of capitalism with some regulation to prevent injustice and government corruption. It is a system that is by the people, for the people. Many countries in the past have masqueraded as socialist when in reality they were authoritarian communist. Denmark, Norway, Sweden, and other Scandinavian countries are models of modern socialism. Denmark is one of the easiest countries to start a business in the world, attesting to the fact that socialism is not at odds with business and capitalism.

Authoritarian Communism is a system in which the state completely controls the economy. Citizens have no private property, and the get their pay directly from the government in most cases. Freedoms of religion and speech are usually infringed upon. It is not a true democratic society, there is usually only one party, or possibly two mock parties. Democracy is dead in these governments, and you have no rights as an individual. You forced to be merely a cell that works for the governing authority.

What Bernie stands for is Democratic Socialism, or libertarian socialism, which preserves the rights of all people, but does not treat businesses as individuals protected by the Constitution. He works for the interest of the American people, not those who would seek to purchase the governing officials for their own benefit. If you read this, then you know what these terms now mean, and I would hope that you would no longer use them ignorantly. Communism and Socialism are not the same, and our government is already largely Socialist, excepting that our politicians can be legally bought by the highest bidder, resulting in the oligarchy we now live in. Republican candidates are pushing toward a system that is nothing less than fascism. Bernie hopes to return control of the government to the people."

Noah Beemer doesn't know what the hell he's talking about, Naziism is a variation of fascism, that may allow some facade of private ownership but under the regulation of the State. If you study the rise of Hitler, you know he targeted Jewish capitalists in a classic class warfare argument.:

"Using a farrago of previously unpublished statistics, Aly describes in detail a social system larded with benefits —open only to Aryan comrades, naturally. To “achieve a truly socialist division of personal assets,” he writes, Hitler implemented a variety of interventionist economic policies, including price and rent controls, exorbitant corporate taxes, frequent “polemics against landlords,” subsidies to German farmers as protection “against the vagaries of weather and the world market,” and harsh taxes on capital gains, which Hitler himself had denounced as “effortless income.”

"Aly demonstrates convincingly that Nazi “domestic policies were remarkably friendly toward the German lower classes, soaking the wealthy and redistributing the burdens of wartime.” And with fresh memories of Weimer inflation, “transferring the tax burden to corporations earned the leadership in Berlin considerable political capital, as the government keenly registered.”

http://reason.com/archives/2007/08/15/hitlers-handouts

HumanProgress 8/15 on Plastics and the Oceans

Not so fast! According to a new study published in Environmental Science and Technology by co-authors Professor Jun Yang and Yu Yang of Beihang University, and Stanford University engineer Wei-Min Wu, plastic is biodegradable.

“Plastic, long considered nonbiodegradable and one of the biggest contributors to global pollution, might have met its match: the small, brownish, squirmy mealworm. Researchers have learned that the mealworm can live on a diet of Styrofoam and other types of plastic. Inside the mealworm’s gut are microorganisms that are able to biodegrade polyethylene, a common form of plastic.”

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Musical Interlude: Childhood Christmas

Spike Jones, "All I Want For Christmas Is My Two Front Teeth"

Post #3888 J: Twitter Is At It Again, and I'm Getting Fed Up

Twitter Suspends My Account Over An Ass-Kicking Tweet

I've actually toned things down quite a bit, since Twitter's last suspension  although I don't go looking for "progressive" Twitter users or tweets to bust. I've published over 16.3K Tweets, and I would say less than 1% are adversarial in nature.

Now I'm not necessarily proud of the fact when I call someone a fool, an idiot, an SOB or a bastard (although if and when I use those terms, they're often used in reference to politicians), and I realize that a number of the language police  never get past that. That in part reflects a past incident in academia. I was a young UWM professor talking to an older female professor in an adjacent office. I was in the middle of discussing something, when all of a sudden she kept interrupting me with the same word. It suddenly dawned on me that she was attempting to correct my speech, some word I had used. It also made clear that she hadn't been listening to a single word I had said since then, which to me was 100 rimes worse than her imagined grievance. Needless to say, the conversation ended then, and there were fewer subsequent ones.

A lot of the language police will say things like the use of profanity is a sign of lesser intelligence, but there have been studies that conclude the very opposite. Why do I use it? Mostly to snap people out of what I think is something incredibly stupid they've said or done, like Cher's infamous bitch slap in "Moonstruck". It's often all but impossible to rebut some stupid tweet in 140 or 280 characters. It is also often frustrating to live in a world where other people take longer to grasp onto ideas, don't seem to understand things you think are obvious or intuitive.

I've had at least one indignant leftist a few weeks ago snap back (paraphrased mockingly), "Um, I'm going to tell Mommy Twitter what you said; you're going to be in so much trouble." My response? 'Make my day.' I am well aware that other people could read my tweets; I wasn't trying to hide anything. What astounds me is how utterly clueless leftists are about their rank hypocrisy and incivility; I usually won't snap back unless I find the tweet particularly provocative. It's mostly a leftist phenomenon; I do get some right-wingers snapping back at me that I am a "liberal" (they mean in the modern social sense, not in the classical sense like i am) But it's mostly a leftist phenomenon. I think because the perspective is so pervasive in the culture and academia, there's a feeling of entitlement. And the leftists copy each other so often, it's repetitious or boring.

Twitter was more obnoxious this time. (They did pay lip service to an appeals process, but that's a joke.) They've sort of adopted the Communist Party's tactic for charging a family for the bullet used to kill their dead family member. Last time they just spoke in general terms so I wasn't sure of what tweet(s) they were speaking of. This time the Twitter police were far more direct; they locked my account, with a specific reference to one "hateful" tweet, which I would have to agree to delete before my 12-hour suspension would start, that my Twitter account would be publicly stigmatized for a period of time and that any future violations might result in a permanent suspension of my account. (There was still some confusion because another message indicated Twitter had already deleted the tweet and it wasn't available in my accessible tweet history (unaffected by the suspension).)

I do have the Twitter email notification for locking my account and reserve the right to republish it in a future post. I just didn't want the tweet to distract from the general message. But here's the general context: Chief Justice Roberts issued a rare rebuke of Trump for meddling with the independence of the judicial branch of government with his criticisms of "Obama judges" not supportive of his restrictive immigration policies (including travel bans, etc.)

What this Twitter user, among countless other "progressives", did was attack Roberts, not Trump, implicitly arguing that the SCOTUS conservative majority was far from independent, having "gutted" the Voting Rights Act, validated religious-based travel restrictions, taking away a mother's "right" to have her preborn child killed, etc., but what really grabbed my ire was his implied allegations that Thomas and Kavanaugh are rapists.  Anyone who has read my blog on a regular basis knows that I have been particularly incensed by Democrat personal attacks on GOP judge nominees (I am unaware of any comparable personal attacks made on Democratic nominees).

Anyone knows that neither Anita Hill nor Christine Ford suggested sexual activity with the future justices, never mind involuntary sexual activity. Hill implied sexual harassment and Ford sexual assault, and there are a number of issues with those allegations, including inconsistencies and factual gaps.

So the rapist allegation really goes to slander or libel, and it's pretty nasty of and by itself. The Civil Rights Act criticism is a standard leftist talking point. This has to do with federal oversight over Southern states, initially specified for 5 years (as I recall); by every statistic I've seen, black voting (and participation in elective office), particularly at the local/county level, had fundamentally changed in the South, within 20 years, never mind 50 years. Southern states rightly noted federal oversight did not apply to other states and was not justified by current evidence--the fact that a majority of non-Southern states should impose a special burden on other states was de facto tyranny of a majority.

As for the travel ban, which I oppose, the fact is that many Muslim-majority nations are excluded from the ban. Even if somehow the wrongly-decided Roe v Wade were reversed, policy would revert to (in many cases permissive) state law, under constitutional police powers.

It's hard to put that all into one tweet. Did I also call him a retarded bastard in the process? Yes. I'm not sorry about it. Yes, I know it's easier to attract bees with honey, but sometimes you have to let progressives bluntly know when they've crossed the line, that blowback is inevitable.

As for Twitter, if they think I'm going to pay for promoting tweets or I'll be supporting Twitter advertisers, they're sadly mistaken.

What Did I Eat On Thanksgiving?

In my Thanksgiving post, I mentioned that I love turkey, so what did I eat? Even my Mom was curious, because she knows I've cooked whole turkeys before as a bachelor. I was sorely tempted by this year's very reasonable prices. But my refrigerator doesn't have room for the leftovers.

Restaurants? Nope. I don't really know any that serve turkey with all the trimmings (if any do, it's news to me). Maybe Denny serves a couple of slices of turkey loaf  with a ball of dressing. I can't forget that the Hilton in Sao Paulo back in 1995 laid out a Thanksgiving buffet for us American guests, but the turkey was bland, no longer hot, and dried out.

So what did I do? Simple. Turkey parts. I got a $5 pack of 3 small turkey legs from Wal-Mart and threw them in a crock pot. (You can also get wings, necks, and tails, depending on the supermarket.)

Christmas Programming Is Now On

I've mostly been on Hallmark Movies & Mysteries, but my favorites, like "A Christmas Visitor", "Angels and Ornaments", and "Farewell, Mr. Kringle", haven't hit the heavy rotation. Interestingly, one of the newer movies have the music behind the key instrumental hit from "Angels and Ornaments" playing in the background. I have a licensed copy of the "Angels" movie on Youtube, bur for some reason, I couldn't run it on my TV via Chromecast. I need to check into that. So I played it on one PC while working on the blog on a backup one.

Lifetime is now competing with its own new season of Christmas movies. But to be honest I haven't seen anything yet that I really like, although Hallmark's "Christmas Everlasting" is decent.

Post #3887 M: Liberty at the Family and State Level; Occupational Licensing is Economically Illiterate Anti-Consumer Policy

Quote of the Day

God whispers to us in our pleasures, 
speaks to us in our conscience, 
but shouts in our pains: 
It is His megaphone to rouse a deaf world 
C.S. Lewis  

Promoting Liberty in the State

Occupational Licensing is Anti-Consumer

Social Media Digest

Let's remember, in all of Trump's hubris as Commander in Chief, after running on the notion of "America First", Trump is still fighting Bush/Obama's wars and is still meddling in international affairs. I'm tired of Trump's losing all the time. "Trump's Thanksgiving"

— Ronald Guillemette (@raguillem) November 23, 2018

Well, I bet that the reason Trump banned the lettuce was that he thought the chef said the lettuce was Romanian. No foreign lettuce for the protectionist POTUS. "Trump's Thanksgiving"

— Ronald Guillemette (@raguillem) November 23, 2018

Less than 1% of my 16.3K tweets are adversarial in nature, and even those are not primarily insults. The one Twitter Mommy forced me to delete actually rebutted 3 points made by the partisan troll. Twitter is suppressing views it doesn't agree with.

— Ronald Guillemette (@raguillem) November 23, 2018

As a libertarian, I regularly get whipsawed with antagonistic reply tweets from the left and the right far worse than anything I've published. But I'm not a goddamn snowflake crying to Twitter Mommy because my safe space to hypocritically insult other people is being infringed.

— Ronald Guillemette (@raguillem) November 23, 2018

Twitter is run by a number of hypocritical judgmental anti-liberty bastards, and if they ever try to suspend me again, they will no longer be privileged to host my content. Some "progressive troll" calls SCOTUS justices rapists, and the Twitter rulers judge my response "hateful"?

— Ronald Guillemette (@raguillem) November 23, 2018

Your immigration policies are fundamentally an abomination and un-American, a rejection of our open immigration roots. There is no statistical basis for scapegoating certain foreign visitors. Your policies come from a dark, evil side and don't promote our national safety.

— Ronald Guillemette (@raguillem) November 22, 2018

My God, you're an ignorant corrupt leftist bastard. The original Voting Rights Act included a long-overdue TEMPORARY federal oversight over discriminatory racist election practices. You want perpetual subjugation, which is a hypocritical form of discrimination and unjust.

— Ronald Guillemette (@raguillem) November 22, 2018

I think that Trump took his uncivil attitude on judges from Obama's diabolical precedent in attacking SCOTUS at the SOTU over the Citizens United decision. Both Trump and Obama are contemptible bastards. "John Roberts"

— Ronald Guillemette (@raguillem) November 22, 2018

The political whore Trump has been politicizing the judiciary and our justice system from day 1. (Not the Dems are any better, re: Kavanaugh.) Chief Justice Roberts is spot on; kudos to him for taking on Trump. "John Roberts"

— Ronald Guillemette (@raguillem) November 22, 2018

There is no constitutional basis for Trump to meddle with Justice and the court system. Politically/personally motivated prosecutions are inconsistent with the concept of the rule of law. But let's recall Obama had his moments, including abusing the powers of the IRS. Comey

— Ronald Guillemette (@raguillem) November 21, 2018

The Democrats (both of them) are filibustering nominations to the Heavenly Court. #ComplaintsAboutHeaven

— Ronald Guillemette (@raguillem) November 21, 2018

Well, Obama didn't hesitate against putting Americans overseas on his infamous kill lists, never mind those pesky constitutional rights. Why should we be surprised that Trump is also morally corrupt? "Saudi Arabia"

— Ronald Guillemette (@raguillem) November 20, 2018

The real question is why neither Obama nor Trump have had the moral integrity or political courage to end Bush's wars. "Iraq or Afghanistan"

— Ronald Guillemette (@raguillem) November 20, 2018

I'm far more concerned with the reality of nepotism policy in the Trump Administration. What the hell are people emailing Ivanka for--her recipe for chocolate chip cookies? Criminal Hillary Clinton was a custodian of the nation's secrets. Stop the comparisons. "Ivanka Trump"

— Ronald Guillemette (@raguillem) November 20, 2018

At least Ivanka Trump didn't host her own email server and/or wipe government emails from the server.

— Ronald Guillemette (@raguillem) November 20, 2018

I knew that nothing good could come from Ivanka Trump hanging around with the Clinton daughter. "Ivanka Trump"

— Ronald Guillemette (@raguillem) November 20, 2018

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Political Cartoons

Musical Interlude: Childhood Christmas

Jimmy Boyd, 'I Saw Mommy Kissing Santa Claus"

Post #3886 M: Happy Thanksgiving; Ron Paul is Thankful; Corrupt Academia

Courtesy of Aolor

Quote of the Day

A wise man can see more from the bottom of a well 
than a fool can from a mountain top.
Unknown  

Commentary

I've normally reserved personal commentary for my other post formats, but I think I'll start doing another feature to fit occasions like this

I love turkey. There are other foods I particularly like but rarely eat anymore due to dietary restrictions, including cretons and tourtieres (French-Canadian heritage ground pork specialties), boiled egg sandwiches, and my Mom's lasagna, but turkeys are right up there. But I live hundreds of miles from my nearest relatives, and a $600 round trip is a little steep for my budget: you can buy a laptop for that kind of money. Still, assuming I've got space in my refrigerator for leftovers, I've been known to cook one for myself (probably at least 3 times over the past 5 years). Of course, over the next few days of leftovers, I begin to wonder what possessed me and vow I'll never do it again. Still, when you see Butterball selling at under 90-cents a pound and some store brands selling under 50 cents/lb...

I prefer dark meat (yes, I know breasts are low-fat, but dark meat is only slightly more fat and has amazing nutritional benefits like iron;  I'll never forget one Thanksgiving going with my male relatives to see the Longhorns get blown out by then annual rival Aggies. the women weren't going to wait for us to come home to have their meal and so we would have to have to settle for leftovers. One of my brothers-in-law whined on our way back from Austin for us to stop for hot dogs !?!  And that's not the worst part--we get home and he cuts a big beautiful steaming slice of turkey breast and then douses it, not with Mom's giblet gravy, but ketchup! It's a sacrilege, I tell you! And my beautiful goddaughter, his second child, does the same! )

I usually got one of the drumsticks at family Thanksgivings. I remember flying in for one reunion at my second sister's. Her mother-in-law was going around with a camcorder and captured me in mid-bite chomping down on a leg and asking me how I liked it. How attractive, I said to myself. I'll never post that picture on the blog.

Apparently I'm not the only one who loves turkey. I remember I was doing occasional day-long visits to KRON-TV in San Francisco. There was a convenience store in the area which roasted turkeys once a week (Mondays) and carved the meat for fresh sandwiches and they usually had lunchtime lines stretching into the streets. Damn fine eating.

I also miss the extras, including my late Dad's outstanding stuffing (recipe in my memorial blog), his rutabagas, Mom's pumpkin pie and giblet gravy.

On a more serious note, I'm thankful to be living in a country and markets still relatively free, but we need to address unsustainable spending and regulations, exacerbated by economically illiterate . We still live in a country with the most innovative and highest quality healthcare, despite government meddling threatens it and we must be ever vigilant against the progressive parasites and parrots. I'm grateful for a loving mother and siblings, a brand new beautiful grandniece, for the best job I've had in nearly 20 years. I thank God for His generous blessings and unconditional love.

Ron Paul Gives Thanks

Corrupt, Discriminatory University Admissions

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Political Cartoon

Musical Interlude: Childhood Christmas Memories

Red Skelton, "The Little Christmas Tree".

This year's theme is not fully fleshed out out yet, but it will probably focus on annual TV specials (especially Bing Crosby and Andy Williams), infamous children's TV classics (Charlie Brown, the Grinch, Rudolph, the Little Drummer Boy), novelty hits (my two front teeth, the Chipmunks), traditional Christmas favorites, carols and hymns. I remember when I was little and Dad was stationed at Otis on Cape Cod, singing carols with my siblings on the way to our relatives in the Fall River area, real Christmas trees, etc. Christmas was a magical time. My Dad was struggling to provide for a growing family on an enlisted man's salary, so other family kids had bigger, better, more toys, but we didn't care.

My folks owned a few vinyl favorite LP's, including one on red vinyl. One of them was an earlier variation of the LP pictured below, including a beautifully narrated Red Skelton skit during the height of the Cold War (predating my birth), which has been dropped from later incarnations. (For those interested, I have found this vendor; I have no financial considerations (it would be great if Amazon or iTunes licensed the track), but judging from Amazon customers for later compilations, a lot of people are looking for the track.)

What libertarian wouldn't love Santa saying, "I come back each year hoping to find people living not by man-made laws, but the Ten Commandments...'

Post #3885 Bad Elephant of the Year 2018

Stephen Miller, Presidential Advisor, via Wikipedia

I was never in love with politics. I once worked as a volunteer for the Jimmy Carter campaign. (I would have probably supported Ford, except for his preemptive pardon of Nixon.) But, to be honest, even in my salad days as a pro-life progressive/social liberal (but fiscal conservative), I was never a partisan. I encouraged my folks n 1972 (too young to vote) to support a pro-life third-party candidate, not Nixon or McGovern. When 1976 came around, I was particularly intrigued by Carter's zero-based budgeting policy (meaning you had to justify expenditures from the ground up); in hindsight, the idea that you could implement ZBB on a federal level was hopelessly naive.

I became disillusioned enough with the hapless Carter Presidency to caucus for Kennedy in the 1980 Texas caucuses. It had nothing to do with Kennedy's policies; it was mostly a protest against Carter and a sense of a connection with the legacy of Ted's brothers Jack and Robert. But shortly thereafter I started work on my MBA part-time at night at the University of Houston. I never had a single professor who shared his political opinions publicly or privately, but as I took my first tough graduate economics classes (prerequisites for MBA studies), my political perspective shifted, as I developed a more skeptical outlook on government interventions and views more consistent with my fiscal conservatism. If anything, I remember my marketing professor admonished my more strident views on an assignment. (Ironically, my professor would later move to the University of Georgia and become the famous perpetrator of a murder/suicide in 2009, an event I discussed in my blog.)

So there's a sense of irony when Kennedy initiated the hostilities against the Bork nomination that my emerging conservatism confronted whatever the hell I was thinking in 1980, and when he and the other Democrats had sabotaged probably the most qualified jurist ever nominated to SCOTUS, I was done with the Democrats. I wasn't thrilled with the GOP, but they were the political adversaries to the Democrats. Ironically, I wasn't that thrilled with the Reagan Presidency; true, he had delivered on taxes but had done little to cutback on spending. Promises to end federal intervention in education  were never realized, etc.

I do realize that the GOP under Harding and Coolidge had taken the first steps (beyond the racist restrictions against Chinese in the late nineteenth century) to restrict legal immigration in the form of  a quota system, which persists to this very day. This contradiction to our traditional immigrant roots had been articulated by Lincoln in an 1855 letter on the anti-immigrants of his day, the Know Nothings:

I am not a Know-Nothing. That is certain. How could I be? How can any one who abhors the oppression of negroes, be in favor of degrading classes of white people? Our progress in degeneracy appears to me to be pretty rapid. As a nation, we begin by declaring that "all men are created equal." We now practically read it "all men are created equal, except negroes." When the Know-Nothings get control, it will read "all men are created equal, except negroes, and foreigners, and catholics." When it comes to this I should prefer emigrating to some country where they make no pretence of loving liberty-to Russia, for instance, where despotism can be taken pure, and without the base alloy of hypocracy.

From the perspective of authentic conservatives, who revere our traditional liberties, like a free market, and other traditions, including a small government,  the intervention against open immigration is economically illiterate, hypocritical, and grossly immoral; the imposition of a strong central government to enforce arbitrary restrictions, like Lincoln referenced against the idea of the equality of men, is the antithesis of liberty: your rights to restrict the liberty of others ends at your property line. Trying to scapegoat immigrants for the costs of our dysfunctional social welfare net or crime is particularly disingenuous; immigrants tend to have lower proportional ratios than natives. (In fact, legalized immigrants cannot apply for government subsidies for the first years of residency.) The labor protectionism angle also interferes in the voluntary agreement between employer and employees.

Still, one can argue that the Dems have hardly been pro-immigrant since the 1920's:

• their labor union constituency dislikes what they see as lower-wage foreign workers driving down wages
• FDR turned away European Jewish refugees from the Nazi holocaust
• JFK and LBJ under union pressure scrapped the Bracero program which legalized Mexican farmer/other workers
• Obama cast deciding votes killing the 2007 bipartisan immigration effort.

In fact, one can argue that several GOP Presidents over the past 60-odd years have been generally supportive of immigration:

• Eisenhower legalized most Mexican migrant workers, dropping arrests more than 90%
• Reagan and GHW Bush both signed immigration reform bills
• GW Bush embraced immigration reform during his second term.

Stephen Miller is Trump's immigration policy adviser, articulating his policies, including:

• the infamous family separation policy at the border as a deterrent
• the Muslim-related travel ban
• support for Cotton's measure cutting LEGAL immigration quotas
• throwing resources at the Mexican border (the Wall, Border Patrol increased staffing, and most recently the US military)

Now, to be honest, Trump doesn't need to blame Miller for a tone he struck all on his own at the start of his 2016 campaign. Keep in mind unauthorized foreign visitors are actually on the decline since 2007. Much of that had to do with an anemic American economy and an improving Mexican economy. And keep in mind we have had declining trends in violence, Trump notably had blamed Romney's 2012 loss on his "cruel" self-deportation policy, i.e., Romney felt if the US government harassed immigrants enough, they would leave on their own.

Trump made his anti-Mexican rhetoric part of his campaign from the start, accusing Mexico of dumping its violent offenders at the border. It largely feeds off a handful of anecdotal incidents and tries to portray 11 million residents as drug lords and gang members. He seeks to portray foreign refugees as closet terrorists requiring "extreme vetting" despite there is no statistical evidence to suggest that foreign visitors materially pose a security risk. 

No, Miller isn't responsible for Trump's political exploitation of immigration to manipulate his right-wing xenophobic base. But even if Trump is responsible for his actions, it infuriates me that my confiscated tax dollars are being used to promote a morally corrupt form of xenophobic policy, a rejection of our open immigration roots.

I've mentioned before that I had never heard of Stephen Miller before. I was listening to a Sunday talk soup podcast while writing a blog post when I heard some rabid anti-immigrant promoting his nonsense to the point I had to stop what I was doing to identify the fool. And my opinion has not improved over the interim.

I suspect that when historians review Trump's first 2 years, they will view them as largely a missed opportunity, that Trump wasted political capital on a pushing-on-a-thread agenda not moving the needle on feckless policies. Miller as the face of Trump's corrupt anti-immigration policy is this year's easy choice. I never thought I would see the pro-family GOP trying to rationalize legalized kidnapping.

Post #3884 Jackass of the Year 2018

Sen Dianne Feinstein (D-CA), Photo via Wikipedia

As we are now are in the year-ending holiday season, it's time for me to announce the tongue-in-cheek annual mock awards. Nope, there is no trophy, stipend or any other recognition beyond a few bytes in cyberspace.

There were other contenders for this year's honor of Dems behaving badly, including the prominent lawyer who represents a porn actress, attacked Justice Kavanaugh over alleged improprieties with women and then was recently arrested on allegations of domestic violence and various socialists who won elections as Democrats, notably Ocasio-Cortez. We could also have chosen DNC chair Perez who calls leftists like Ocasio-Cortez the "future"of the Democratic Party. I even thought about recognizing the suicidal voters of Illinois who decided to replace the only check and balances Gov. Rauner with a Dem-dominated legislature with a plutocrat in a state with sky-high debt and property taxes and a public pension system which is one recession away from insolvency.

I don't discount the possibility that some Democrat could emerge over the next 5 weeks who would give Sen. Feinstein some real competition, but any late-emerging contender will be actively considered for next year's award.

Let me be clear that as a libertarian, I have some real concerns about Justice Kavanaugh on Fourth Amendment issues. But any regular reader knows that I as a conservative Democrat left the Democratic Party over the sabotage of the late Bork's nomination and that concern deepened with a diabolical attack on Clarence Thomas. The Democrats have continually politicized court nominations (Miguel Estrada's selection under Bush Jr. immediately comes to mind), whereas Republicans have never resorted to similar tactics and have generally accommodated, at least through Clinton, judicial nominees they didn't necessarily agree with.

But what Dianne Feinstein did during Kavanaugh's confirmation process is beyond contemptible. She had received a complaint about the judge based on allegations from his high school years. I do not find Ms. Ford's allegations credible for reasons I've specified in previous posts and won't repeat here. But here's the point: Feinstein never relayed the allegations to the FBI, she never mentioned the allegation in open committee but as the committee concluded with a likely confirmation, somehow Ms. Ford's identity had been leaked, and Kavanaugh found himself and his family threatened and his personal reputation soiled, on little, if any evidence, beyond an accusation which first surfaced less than a decade ago 30 years after the alleged assault.

What Feinstein as ranking minority leader on the Judiciary Committee did is reprehensible and make her the obvious selection for this year's "honor".

Post #3883 M: Thankful For a Free Market; Protectionism is Unpopular

Quote of the Day

Everyone has talent. 
What is rare is the courage 
to follow the talent 
to the dark place 
where it leads.
Erica Jong  

Thankful For a Free Market

DEAD WRONG: Protectionism is Popular

The 1988 Election and the Movies

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Political Cartoon

Musical Interlude: My Favorite Vocalists: The Beatles As Solo Artists

John Lennon, "(Just Like) Starting Over". Lennon took this hit to #1, unfortunately his last in a life cut down far too short. This song has a brilliant retro feel, and his vocals were as strong as ever after a break to raise his young son Sean.

I will now put this feature on pause for my annual blog holiday music interlude. We'll resume this series after the start of the year.

Post #3882 M: The Dysfunctional People's Republic of California; Stossel On Vaping; Intolerant Academia

Quote of the Day

Let no man imagine that he has no influence. 
Whoever he may be, and wherever he may be placed, 
the man who thinks becomes a light and a power.
Henry George  

The Dysfunctional People's Republic of California

Vape, Vape, Vape, Let 'Em Vape

Personally, I've never vaped and have no interest/intent in doing it. But government prohibition is not good public poiicy.

Intolerant Leftist Academia

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Political Cartoon

Musical Interlude: My Favorite Vocalists: The Beatles As Solo Artists

John Lennon, "Stand By Me". One of the greatest remakes ever. Outstanding vocals!