Ten Commandments Still the Only Solution to the World's Problems

This is nothing short of an astonishing essay, at National Review, "The Decalogue is as relevant today as it was 3,000 years ago." The 9th Commandment is particularly relevant, considering what's been going on around here this past few months:

9. Do not bear false witness.

Lying is the root of nearly all major evils. All totalitarian states are based on lies. Had the Nazis not lied about Jews, there would not have been a Holocaust. Only people who believed that all Jews, including babies, were vermin, could, for example, lock hundreds of Jews into a synagogue and burn them alive. That similar lies are told about Jews today by Arab governments and by the Iranian state should awaken people to the Nazi-like threat that Islamic anti-Semitism poses.

Painting Credit: "Moses with the Ten Commandments," Rembrandt (1659), via Wikimedia Commmons.

Ed Schultz Should Be Fired for Deceptive 'Black Cloud' Video Edit Alleging Rick Perry Racism

I'm posting MSNBC's contact page, this bothers me so much: "Contact Us." And it's not an honest mistake. This kind of deliberate disinformation is wicked and unworthy of the network.

Watch the video at Gateway Pundit, "Shocker. MSNBC Dishonestly Edits Video to Make Rick Perry Look Racist (Video)."

And Allah reminds us that Schultz's dishonesty is in step with a long line of deceptive practices at MSNBC: "Ed Schultz: Rick Perry’s reference to a “big black cloud” was a racial crack at Obama, wasn’t it?" (Via Memeorandum.)

Update: Again at Allahpundit, "Ed Schultz: Sorry for deceptively editing that Rick Perry video."

'Sorrow'

David Bowie. I haven't played him around here much lately:

More blogging tonight.

Anonymous Hacks BART

At E-Week, "Anonymous Hack Exposes Personal Data of San Francisco-Area Commuters."

And LAT, "Hackers attack BART, Fullerton police websites," and "Protest closes 4 BART stations, leaving commuter crowd stranded."

Nouriel Roubini Video: Karl Marx Was Right

Roubini's a gifted economist, although this is the first I've seen him on video. He comes across more radical during interviews. At WSJ, "Nouriel Roubini: Karl Marx Was Right." (I had to click on the "pop-up player" to get the clip to load.)

I wrote previously on this here: "Capitalism in Crisis?" And see also Christopher Whalen, "Why Nouriel Roubini and all of us are wrong about Karl Marx":

When I hear people talking about Marxism in reverent tones it makes me nauseous. Marx was not right at all about class being the key determinant of human action. Yet despite America’s pretensions to being a free market, democratic society, the Marxian world view won the battle for ideas in the 20th Century. The New Deal and Great Society efforts to increase the scope of government in America all stem from the socialist ideas of FDR and his political heirs in both parties.

So much of our economic discourse in America today is entirely Marxist in nature — a reference to both Karl and Groucho Marx, as noted above. The legacy of FDR and the two world wars was to kill the American republic and put in its place a cheap imitation of France with platonic regulators pretending to moderate the bad old ways of greedy private business...

The fact of our intellectual reliance upon the work of Karl Marx to benchmark our economic success show humans to be creatures of habit, not reason. Marx embarked from a position of dialectical mysticism borrowed from Hegel and then attacked the classical economists, the enlightenment thinkers such as John Staurt Mill and Adam Smith who elevated the role of the individual. Those who laud Marx disparage all things American.

Ludwig von Mises writes in his book Human Action, that Marx stigmatized the economists as “the sycophants of the bourgeoisie.” He notes that Marx was “the son of a well-to-do lawyer,” and Engles, “a wealthy textile manufacturer, never doubted that they themselves were above the law and, notwithstanding their bourgeois background, were endowed with the power to discover absolute truth. It is the task of history to describe the historical conditions which made such a crude doctrine popular.”

Not only was Marxism crude, but it missed most of the major developments of the 20th Century. Revolution occurred not in bourgeois Germany but in brutal, backward Czarist Russia. More important, the class-centric view of Marxism proved incorrect in a world of greater openness, mobility and individual choice. The act of conscious choice driven not by greed, but the desire for betterment; of human action as von Mises coined the term, rejects Marxist class determinism.

That reminds me of an essay, Eric Foner's, "Why Is There No Socialism in the United States?" Foner wants to minimize American exceptionalism while holding out more commonality with the European experience than scholars acknowledge (which is leftist baloney, of course). See also, Seymour Martin Lipset and Gary Marks, "It Didn't Happen Here: Why Socialism Failed in the United States."

The Left's Strategy of Hate, Fear, Stereotype, and Rejection of Diversity

Normally one looks to Barry Rubin for some of the best foreign policy analysis on the Middle East, but this piece is a keeper, "The Left’s Very Anti-PC Strategy: Hate, Fear, Stereotype, and Treat Diversity as Evil."

Sarah Palin's Toenails

I suppose one could find weirder blog topics, but you'll have to check Robert Stacy McCain for the background: "Blogging About Pathetic Perverts and Also Andrew Sullivan’s Sarah Palin Toe Fetish."

'One Way or Another'

Blondie will play Mandalay Bay on October 8th. Don't know if we'll be out there, but that would be awesome:

'No Friends'

W. James Casper = Racist = Repsac3 has no blogging friends. He's a user and a loser who himself is being used. Pure hatred is like a feeding frenzy. Indiscriminate attacks. No loyalties. Progressives suck that way. (Well, he's got Fauxmaxbear, but FMB's everyone's stupid enemy anyway, and he doesn't count for jack.) Yeah, recall that Racist = Repsac3 recruits progressive nihilist attack masters, and then he complains when they bail out after writing just "6 American Nihilist posts." Oh, please. Just 6 posts that helped launch the epic campaign of workplace intimidation at my college. And when that was done, OCTO threw away idiot racist Repsac like a piece of progressive feces. Yep, progressives destroy everything. For the left, Racist Reppy's as useful as human waste. Freakin' douchebag loser:

You're a liar if you follow all trends
Get out of here asshole, you've got no friends.

Victoria's Secret Fantasies

A follow-up to, "Candice Swanepoel Victoria's Secret Bikini Photoshoot."

RELATED: At The Other McCain, "Rule 5 Sunday: She’s The One."

With Motorola Deal, Google Sees Future in Mobile Markets

At New York Times, "Google’s Big Bet on the Mobile Future."

Also at Wall Street Journal, "Google's $12.5 Billion Gamble: Web Giant Pays Big for Motorola's Phone Business, Patents; Risks Alienating Allies."

And from Google's Larry Page, "Supercharging Android: Google to Acquire Motorola Mobility" (via Techmeme).

This seems like so much déjà vu. It's like the beginning of the end of Google as something cool.

Rick Perry Touts Downhome Résumé

Barely 48-hours into the race and virtually the entire Democrat-Media-Complex has the hit in for Governor Rick Perry. For example, from Paul Krugman, "The Texas Unmiracle." And more at NYT, "In Texas Jobs Boom, Crediting a Leader, or Luck." Los Angeles Times piles on, "Rick Perry's big donors have fared well in Texas." Then there's all kinds of gotcha reports at Memeorandum. Perry questioned Obama's patriotism? OOH!! Wouldn't want to do that now, would we?

In any case, for a less antagonistic piece, see Wall Street Journal, "Touting a Downhome Résumé."

DES MOINES, Iowa—Rick Perry became an Eagle Scout and Air Force pilot after growing up as the son of a cotton farmer "from a little place called Paint Creek, Texas," whose house had no indoor plumbing. As Texas's longest-serving governor, he says he cut taxes and red tape and helped boost job growth.

Mr. Perry is betting heavily on that biography and his charm as he introduces himself to voters in the early-voting states of Iowa, New Hampshire and South Carolina.

With the GOP race suddenly shaping up as a contest pitting him and fellow conservative Michele Bachmann against the front-runner, Mitt Romney, Mr. Perry hopes to distinguish himself as the humble farmer who now runs the state with the country's briskest job-creation results ...

Sounds pretty good. More at the link.

Capitalism in Crisis?

Old Man Marx is (partially) being resurrected in Nouriel Roubini's, "Is Capitalism Doomed?" (at Memeorandum):

So Karl Marx, it seems, was partly right in arguing that globalization, financial intermediation run amok, and redistribution of income and wealth from labor to capital could lead capitalism to self-destruct (though his view that socialism would be better has proven wrong). Firms are cutting jobs because there is not enough final demand. But cutting jobs reduces labor income, increases inequality and reduces final demand.

Recent popular demonstrations, from the Middle East to Israel to the UK, and rising popular anger in China – and soon enough in other advanced economies and emerging markets – are all driven by the same issues and tensions: growing inequality, poverty, unemployment, and hopelessness. Even the world’s middle classes are feeling the squeeze of falling incomes and opportunities.

To enable market-oriented economies to operate as they should and can, we need to return to the right balance between markets and provision of public goods. That means moving away from both the Anglo-Saxon model of laissez-faire and voodoo economics and the continental European model of deficit-driven welfare states. Both are broken.

The right balance today requires creating jobs partly through additional fiscal stimulus aimed at productive infrastructure investment. It also requires more progressive taxation; more short-term fiscal stimulus with medium- and long-term fiscal discipline; lender-of-last-resort support by monetary authorities to prevent ruinous runs on banks; reduction of the debt burden for insolvent households and other distressed economic agents; and stricter supervision and regulation of a financial system run amok; breaking up too-big-to-fail banks and oligopolistic trusts.

Over time, advanced economies will need to invest in human capital, skills and social safety nets to increase productivity and enable workers to compete, be flexible and thrive in a globalized economy. The alternative is – like in the 1930s - unending stagnation, depression, currency and trade wars, capital controls, financial crisis, sovereign insolvencies, and massive social and political instability.

RTWT for the context. Roubini can't go all the way for the socialist revolutionary program (completely smashing capital), so he goes for a hyper-Keynesian quasi-socialist model instead. The end result is really the same: The complete obliteration of the individual into the maw of the state bureaucracy (and today's progressive thought police are the spiffed up version of communist totalitarianism's secret police, i.e., a new NKVD). And while Roubini merely cites Marx on the crisis, Stefan Stern (tweeted by Roubini), goes all the way for the proletarian revolution, "Marx was right about change":

Those who regard the recent actions of rioters in English cities as "criminality pure and simple" will not see any connection between Roubini's declaration that "Marx was right" and the decision to steal a 42-inch TV from a burning electricals store. But, for some, looting may have seemed a sensible (if illegal) response to the apparently continuous turmoil of the economy. If everything about your financial future seems at best uncertain and at worst desperate, why not carpe diem, or carpe television at any rate? Rational economic man (and woman) has finally been sighted, legging it down Tottenham High Street in a new pair of trainers.

Marx said that while interpreting the world was all very well, the point was to change it. If capitalists want to keep their world safe for capitalism, they need to face up to what is wrong with it, and change it, fast.

I agree. We need to change the ever expanding social welfare state, rationalize the economy with lower taxes and less regulation, and put people to work. The rioters in Britain's aren't remotely near the starving urchins of the British 19th century industrial revolution. They're mobs of yobbers outfitted with Blackberries. The state keeps them well fed and what do they do but burn down their cities? Socialism sucks. It creates ungrateful losers who kill the innocent and destroy productive capital. The left owns this crisis, all of it, and the politically correct spinelessness has only exacerbated the dislocation. ASFLs.

Barack Obama's Still the Same Anti-American Leftist He Was Before Becoming President

From Norman Podhoretz, at Wall Street Journal, "What Happened to Obama? Absolutely Nothing":

It's open season on President Obama. Which is to say that the usual suspects on the right (among whom I include myself) are increasingly being joined in attacking him by erstwhile worshipers on the left. Even before the S&P downgrade, there were reports of Democrats lamenting that Hillary Clinton had lost to him in 2008. Some were comparing him not, as most of them originally had, to Lincoln and Roosevelt but to the hapless Jimmy Carter. There was even talk of finding a candidate to stage a primary run against him. But since the downgrade, more and more liberal pundits have been deserting what they clearly fear is a sinking ship.

Continue reading.

I love Podhoretz. He's got Obama down perfectly. In fact, I can't resist posting the conclusion:

I disagree with those of my fellow conservatives who maintain that Mr. Obama is indifferent to "the best interests of the United States" (Thomas Sowell) and is "purposely" out to harm America (Rush Limbaugh). In my opinion, he imagines that he is helping America to repent of its many sins and to become a different and better country.

But I emphatically agree with Messrs. Limbaugh and Sowell about this president's attitude toward America as it exists and as the Founding Fathers intended it. That is why my own answer to the question, "What Happened to Obama?" is that nothing happened to him. He is still the same anti-American leftist he was before becoming our president, and it is this rather than inexperience or incompetence or weakness or stupidity that accounts for the richly deserved failure both at home and abroad of the policies stemming from that reprehensible cast of mind.

Reprehensible.

You can say that again.

Professor Lawrence Connell's Hypotheticals

ICYMI, be sure to read my earlier entry, "Charlotte Allen: 'The Mess at Widener Law School."

I've been thinking about the case and will have more later. Mostly, I'm trying to figure out Deans Ammons' animosity toward Professor Connell. Charlotte Allen notes:

Connell’s most egregious offense ... and probably the offense that brought down the full-bore wrath of Ammons upon him, was a series of classroom hypotheticals. The scenarios involved Ammons herself and Connell’s efforts to kill her (hypothetically) after she threatened to fire him (hypothetically) for parking his car in her parking space. In one of the hypotheticals Connell rushed into Ammons’ office with his .357 magnum and shot her in the head—except that the “head” turned out to a pumpkin artfully painted to look just like the dean. The idea was to ask the class whether under prevailing legal rules he should be tried for attempted murder—or not, since no harm actually befell her. Imaginative and macabrely humorous hypotheticals, often pitting professors against deans and other campus authority figures, are a standard feature of Old Law School pedagogy. The idea is that the students will absorb and remember the underlying legal principles better in a context of humorous narrative. Hypotheticals show up not just in law school classrooms but in exam questions and moot-court competitions. Supreme Court Justice Elena Kagan was repeatedly murdered in classroom hypotheticals when she was dean of Harvard Law School.

Indeed, as Professor Jonathan Turley indicates, "Widener Law Professor Suspended For Using Dean In Hypotheticals":

I must confess that I routinely incorporate the Dean at our school in the same type of hypotheticals as well as any contract professors. Indeed, my final every year involves some struggle between myself and the Dean and contracts professors. Absent something more, I fail to see the basis for such disciplinary action. Other professors have raises objections to the case on sites like Volokh.

In his letter, [Widener Vice Dean J. Patrick] Kelly accuses Connell of an “outgoing pattern” of misconduct, and cites his use of such hypotheticals, including “cursing and coarse behavior, “racist and sexist statements” and “violent, personal scenarios that demean and threaten your colleagues.” Without more, the allegations raise serious concerns over academic freedom and privilege.

I am most disturbed by the statement of Gregory F. Scholtz, associate secretary and director of the American Association of University Professors. AAUP is organization that is expected to defend academic freedom. Yet, Scholtz is quoted as saying “Education is all about pushing the boundaries, and it’s all about controversial ideas, but the question always is when does it cross the line. Given our modern culture and the violence that exists, you’re really asking for trouble when you talk about killing people.” Really? That is news to those of us who teach torts and criminal law. It is common for faculty to incorporate colleagues into hypotheticals as good-humored jokes. At my school, contracts professors respond by incorporating me into their own hypotheticals. I have never found it even remotely bothersome or insulting. It keeps the attention of students and adds a needed element of levity in lectures.

It's routine. And Turley has more on how chilling the Lawrence case is for academic freedom.

Also, at Volokh, "Interview With Lawrence Connell, the Criminal Law Professor Suspended for His Hypotheticals":

Q: Can you give me an example of a hypothetical you might have used in class, to which the students who complained might have been referring? Can you describe the context in which you would have used it?

A: Yes, here is one: The Dean has threatened to fire me if she comes to school one more time and finds that I have parked in her designated parking space. Upset about the possibility of losing both my job and the parking space, I bring my .357 to school, get out of my car, put the .357 into my waistband, walk to the top floor where her office is located, open the door to her office, see her seated at her desk, draw my weapon, aim my weapon, and fire my weapon directly into what I believe to be her head. To my surprise, it’s not the Dean at all, but an ingeniously painted pumpkin — a pumpkin that has been intricately painted to look like the Dean. Dick Tracy rushes in and immediately wrestles me to the ground. I am charged with the attempted murder of the Dean.

The hypothetical raises various issues about attempted crimes that might entail discussion that spans more than one class. Some of the classroom discussion in the first, for example, will address the two basic philosophical problems of why we punish attempts, which are failed efforts at crime, and why we punish attempts less than successfully completed crimes.

A retributive argument, on the one hand, is that the attemptor has demonstrated his moral culpability by his bad conduct, and the degree of his punishment should not depend on a fortuitous turn of luck. On the other hand, a retributivist might argue that punishment in the absence of harm is unjust. For retributive purposes, has Connell demonstrated his moral culpability by shooting what he believes to be the Dean? Or does the fact that he merely destroyed a pumpkin suggest that his punishment would be unjust?

It's obviously a powerful heuristic.

More on this tonight. I'm checking around for more on Deans Ammons' motivations to persecute Professor Connell.

Why Won't Germans Have More Babies?

At Der Spiegel, "A Land Without Children."

A lot with children is a land without laughter and vitality.

But sure to read down to the bottom for Parts II and III.

Michele Bachmann: 'Ready For Prime Time'

An excellent essay at Althouse, comparing Michele Bachmann to Sarah Palin, "A Palin-Bachmann feud?":

By the way, Bachmann was great on "Meet the Press" today. She is excellent at not letting the interviewer control her. She interrupts appropriately and stands her ground. She has planned, neat responses to the stuff that they will use to try to mess her up — like her statements about gay people — and she resists pressure to restate or elaborate those responses. She is ready for prime time.

Instapundit 10-Year Anniversary

The video clip via Theo Spark:

I read Insty's post on August 8th, which links to some of the blog's first-week commentary. Glenn's style has gotten way more economical over the years. Interesting.

Pat Condell on the London Riots

Via Blazing Cat Fur:

Extremist NOH8 Campaign Exploits Christina Santiago Death for Crass Political Gain

This is disgusting.

They couldn't have just given her a beautiful commemoration. They had to turn Ms. Santiago death into sick sympathy shakedown:

Tragedies like this just illustrate how important it is for couples to have the rights that allow them to celebrate their love and their lives now.

Christina and Alisha were one of the first couples to get a civil union in Cook County when civil unions became legal in Illinois earlier this year. Those who claim the issue of same sex marriages and civil unions can "wait" should think hard about that idea after reading stories like these. This beautiful couple only had a short few months together to celebrate their civil union -- but we take solace in the fact they at least had that opportunity to prove their love to the world, however brief.

A beautiful young woman is dead. And LGBT ASFL NOH8 couldn't simply commemorate her life with dignity. These idiots had to turn it into some kind of epic guilt trip about "only" a few months to celebrate a civil union.

People die. And always, every death reminds us for whom the bell tolls. It tolls for thee.

A much more reserved article at Chicago Tribune, "Health center mourns staffer killed in Indiana State Fair stage accident."