Mark Steyn ridicules the mainstream press’s fear of Islam: the killing of Aasiya Hassan seems to have elicited a very muted response. When poor Mrs. Hassan’s husband launched his TV network to counter negative stereotypes of Muslims, he had no difficulty generating column inches, as far afield as The Columbus Dispatch, The Detroit Free Press, The San Jose Mercury News, Variety, NBC News, the Voice of America, and the Canadian Press. The Rochester Democrat & Chronicle put the couple on the front page under …
The lesson of Japan’s failure
Ten years ago, Japan had a banking crisis very like the one we just had. It was discovered that financiers and big businessmen had blown staggering sums of money, whereupon the government massively intervened to keep those that had screwed up from losing their jobs. The Japanese economy has been stagnant ever since, even though, or perhaps because, the government has poured huge amounts of “stimulus†over the economy, so much “stimulus†that the Japanese government is now approaching bankruptcy. …
Smoot Hawley again
One of the several government actions that so greatly prolonged the great depression was Smoot Hawley. The Becker Posner blog reports that the democrats want do do FDR all over again – meaning do the great depression all over again.
The cause of the crisis
In numerous posts, I have argued that CRA affirmative action caused the economic crisis that is happening now. Vdare provides a far better post than any of mine, giving us case histories and numerous horror stories of bank?s proudly pissing away stupendous amounts of money, and boasting of their wonderful CRA compliance in so doing. The bank?s boasts of trillions of dollars gives the lie to the much repeated claim that CRA was tiny, supposedly much too small to cause …
Israel did not win
After the recent war in the Gaza strip, Hamas declared victory, and Israel declared victory. What do they teach small boys in school today? When I was in school, the first thing I learned is that the fight is not over till the winner can make loser cry “uncleâ€. Hamas has not been destroyed, nor coerced. They continue to rocket Israel. Since they are religious fanatics, nothing short of Roman methods can force them to cry “uncleâ€. People who rocket …
Plain speaking on warmist “scienceâ€
Hansen’s former supervisor tells us plainly what Climate Audit has been telling us politely The models do not realistically simulate the climate system because there are many very important sub-grid scale processes that the models either replicate poorly or completely omit. Furthermore, some scientists have manipulated the observed data to justify their model results. In doing so, they neither explain what they have modified in the observations, nor explain how they did it. They have resisted making their work transparent …
The Origin of Species
“blogging the origin†criticizes Darwin for emphasizing selection, rather than separation, as the primary cause of speciation. But we now know that Darwin was, as usual, right, and the latest fashions were, as usual, wrong again. Until recently the evidence for *any* speciation was thin, and in the absence of evidence, people liked to imagine speciation by physical separation, in large part due the rhetoric of Gould, who argued that absence of evidence was evidence for presence of the events …
British police retreat before Muslims
British police retreat before a hail of not very dangerous missiles: This retreat follows a long series of recent similar humiliations – the British submission in Basra, in Helmand province, and in the Persian Gulf. Weakness and fear is provocative. Someone is going to take Britain from the British.
All quiet in France
Small Dead Animals draws my attention to the fact that things are not all quiet in France On New Years day, more than 1000 cars were torched – but the French seem unable to mention the fact that Muslims were burning the cars of infidels. Islamic jihadism has tripled over the last year, but French government imposition of order has remained unchanged – which trend, if continued for much longer, will end with Islamic rule and sharia rule imposed on …
affirmative action, bad loans, bailout, crisis
The New York Times explains: creditors came to believe that their loans to unsound financial institutions would be made good by the Fed — as long as the collapse of those institutions would threaten the global credit system. Bolstered by this sense of security, bad loans mushroomed. Of course any crisis is multicausal. I have been blaming affirmative action loans. But instead of pushing back against government pressure to make bad loans to protected minorities, lenders eagerly embraced bad loans …