…Like A Housewarming For The Homeless

Debt, Economy, Government, Inflation, Labor, The State

A JOBLESS RECOVERY is the equivalent of a housewarming for the homeless. You have got to know that this sophistic term is a political construct, not an economic one. The term is meant to coat the entrenched, systemic effects of endemic, employment-killing government policies with a patina of scholarly respectability.

Typically, establishment economists will waffle about “structural changes—permanent shifts in the distribution of workers throughout the economy”—causing job losses, but will gleefully tout GDP growth, or some or other highly manipulable indicator, as evidence that the the jobless are fussing needlessly.

And here we return to square one: I am not sure that a vigorous recovery is even possible given government funded and unfunded debt amounting to upwards of $60 trillion, and counting. I don’t know that a country can surface from under all that. At the very least, a natural shift must take place—and be evident—from a credit-fueled, consumption-based economy, to one founded on savings, investment and production.

But, what do you know, the GDP statistic is consumption-driven: it measures the kind of economic Brownian motion of which less is required. “This statistic is constructed in accordance with the view that what drives an economy is not the production of wealth but rather its consumption,” confirms (Austrian) economist Frank Shostak. “What matters here is demand for final goods and services. Since consumer outlays are the largest part of overall demand, it is commonly held that consumer demand sets in motion economic growth.”

The prevailing “theory” of John Maynard Keynes “is not economics, but a statist political theory. Keynes’s political creed guaranteed a hand-in-glove relationship between the state and its stooge economists. Most of what Keynes advocated entails giving the state enormous … powers.”

Essential in this scheme of things is semantic obscurantism. “A Jobless Recovery” is exactly that.

So when you hear that “employers cut 467,000 jobs in June, far more than expected, and the jobless rate hit a 26-year high of 9.5 percent”; and that “wages shrank to their lowest in nearly a year,” consider these vital indicators of a moribund economy.

Updated: Palin Gives Up Governorship ('Only Dead Fish Go With The Flow')

Media, Military, Political Philosophy, Politics, Sarah Palin

I’m glad I waited a few hours pursuant to the announcements on cable that Sarah Palin had resigned, before posting this. For that is how long it has taken to get the truth from the horse’s mouth. To listen to David Shyster of MSNBC, with his version of news, you’d think Palin was leaving politics. This was the crawl caption plastered below Shuster’s facetious face:

Palin Leaving politics for good.

A bit of wishful thinking.

The same odious character was quick to conduct the ubiquitous interviews with Palin’s Alaskan GOP rivals. You see, beamed Shyster, a lot of sensible Republicans believe Palin lacks gravitas (something Barney Frank oozes).

Why my prudent wait? For the first few hours following the announcement, the cable culprits failed to screen Palin’s brief press conference announcing her resignation. When they finally did, the short resignation speech was truncated, and only the incoherent parts excerpted, as Anderson Cooper pulled ugly faces, and his colleague Candy Crowley feigned horror.

Why?

Our faux journalists and their producers are quite capable of screening and re-screening clips they like at a rate that would drive the placid Dalai Lama to a homicidal rage.

Granted, Palin, as I have said before, doesn’t know when to stop rambling. That much is true. But her announcement was, for the better part, perfectly coherent and even inspired in places (hell, anyone who favorably mentions the Tenth Amendment and States’ Rights inspires me, if only fleetingly).

Here it is. Decide for yourselves.

Update (July 4): To those on whom distinctions, made in plain English, are lost, this post, of course, is a critique of the coverage of the Palin resignation, not an endorsement of the woman’s political plank, an impossibility for this classical liberal.

For more on Palin—her empty homilies to our dead-as-a-doornail Constitution, her profoundly feminist, mod approach to her daughter’s foray into siring a (poor) bastard baby, her promises to erect unconstitutional government departments to serve the retarded, her whooping it up for equally unconstitutional, immoral wars, her selling her soul by soaking up McMussolini’s creed; on-and-on—all in the Sarah Palin archive, on your right.

Did she display promise? Of course. You’d have to be an idiot, or an envy-riddled female, or both, not to recognize her Reaganesque charisma (although he served as governor for 9 years, no quitting). But she has shown no learning curve.

Take this bit from her resignation speech:

“…this most recent trip to Kosovo and Landstuhl, to visit our wounded soldiers overseas, those who sacrifice themselves in war for our freedom and security… we can ALL learn from our selfless Troops… they’re bold, they don’t give up, they take a stand and know that life is short so they choose to not waste time. They choose to be productive and to serve something greater than self… and to build up their families, their states, our country. These Troops and their important missions – those are truly the worthy causes in this world and should be the public priority with time and resources and not this local / superficial wasteful political bloodsport.”

[SNIP]

I mean, what on earth are we still doing in Kosovo, and how does that relate to “freedom” here at home, the proper purview of a constitutional government?! This Bush-era neocon nonsense I do not miss. As for the “military” being so much better than the rest of us, to quote, “I confess to growing as sick-and-tired of the odes to the military in militarized America, as I have of the constant fretting over the toll stratospheric state debt will take on ‘our children.’ (What about all us stiffed working stiffs?) About the country’s under-educated, over-indulged, hyper-sexed, super-confident kids I don’t care. (I’m confident the homeschooled among them will survive on this road to serfdom.) The military is certainly no more deserving than the rest of us…”

Updated: Palin Gives Up Governorship (‘Only Dead Fish Go With The Flow’)

Media, Military, Political Philosophy, Politics, Sarah Palin

I’m glad I waited a few hours pursuant to the announcements on cable that Sarah Palin had resigned, before posting this. For that is how long it has taken to get the truth from the horse’s mouth. To listen to David Shyster of MSNBC, with his version of news, you’d think Palin was leaving politics. This was the crawl caption plastered below Shuster’s facetious face:

Palin Leaving politics for good.

A bit of wishful thinking.

The same odious character was quick to conduct the ubiquitous interviews with Palin’s Alaskan GOP rivals. You see, beamed Shyster, a lot of sensible Republicans believe Palin lacks gravitas (something Barney Frank oozes).

Why my prudent wait? For the first few hours following the announcement, the cable culprits failed to screen Palin’s brief press conference announcing her resignation. When they finally did, the short resignation speech was truncated, and only the incoherent parts excerpted, as Anderson Cooper pulled ugly faces, and his colleague Candy Crowley feigned horror.

Why?

Our faux journalists and their producers are quite capable of screening and re-screening clips they like at a rate that would drive the placid Dalai Lama to a homicidal rage.

Granted, Palin, as I have said before, doesn’t know when to stop rambling. That much is true. But her announcement was, for the better part, perfectly coherent and even inspired in places (hell, anyone who favorably mentions the Tenth Amendment and States’ Rights inspires me, if only fleetingly).

Here it is. Decide for yourselves.

Update (July 4): To those on whom distinctions, made in plain English, are lost, this post, of course, is a critique of the coverage of the Palin resignation, not an endorsement of the woman’s political plank, an impossibility for this classical liberal.

For more on Palin—her empty homilies to our dead-as-a-doornail Constitution, her profoundly feminist, mod approach to her daughter’s foray into siring a (poor) bastard baby, her promises to erect unconstitutional government departments to serve the retarded, her whooping it up for equally unconstitutional, immoral wars, her selling her soul by soaking up McMussolini’s creed; on-and-on—all in the Sarah Palin archive, on your right.

Did she display promise? Of course. You’d have to be an idiot, or an envy-riddled female, or both, not to recognize her Reaganesque charisma (although he served as governor for 9 years, no quitting). But she has shown no learning curve.

Take this bit from her resignation speech:

“…this most recent trip to Kosovo and Landstuhl, to visit our wounded soldiers overseas, those who sacrifice themselves in war for our freedom and security… we can ALL learn from our selfless Troops… they’re bold, they don’t give up, they take a stand and know that life is short so they choose to not waste time. They choose to be productive and to serve something greater than self… and to build up their families, their states, our country. These Troops and their important missions – those are truly the worthy causes in this world and should be the public priority with time and resources and not this local / superficial wasteful political bloodsport.”

[SNIP]

I mean, what on earth are we still doing in Kosovo, and how does that relate to “freedom” here at home, the proper purview of a constitutional government?! This Bush-era neocon nonsense I do not miss. As for the “military” being so much better than the rest of us, to quote, “I confess to growing as sick-and-tired of the odes to the military in militarized America, as I have of the constant fretting over the toll stratospheric state debt will take on ‘our children.’ (What about all us stiffed working stiffs?) About the country’s under-educated, over-indulged, hyper-sexed, super-confident kids I don’t care. (I’m confident the homeschooled among them will survive on this road to serfdom.) The military is certainly no more deserving than the rest of us…”

A July 4th Toast To Thomas Jefferson & The Anglo-Saxon Tradition

Founding Fathers, Government, History, IMMIGRATION, Liberty, Natural Law, The West

The excerpt is from my new WND.COM column, “A July 4th Toast To Thomas Jefferson,” a version of which was first published by VDARE.COM:

“The Declaration of Independence—whose proclamation, on July 4, 1776, we celebrate this Saturday—has been mocked out of meaning.

To be fair to the liberal establishment, ordinary Americans are not entirely blameless. For most, Independence Day means firecrackers and cookouts. The Declaration doesn’t feature. In fact, contemporary Americans are less likely to read it now that it is easily available on the Internet, than when it relied on horseback riders for its distribution.

Back in 1776, gallopers carried the Declaration through the country. Printer John Dunlap had worked “through the night” to set the full text on “a handsome folio sheet,” recounts historian David Hackett Fischer in “Liberty and Freedom.” And President (of the Continental Congress) John Hancock urged that the “people be universally informed.”

Thomas Jefferson, the author of the Declaration, called it “an expression of the American Mind.” An examination of Jefferson’s constitutional thought makes plain that he would no longer consider the mind of a McCain, an Obama, or the collective mentality of the liberal establishment, “American” in any meaningful way.” …

The complete column, “A July 4th Toast To Thomas Jefferson,” is now on WND.COM.

Miss the weekly column on WND.COM? Catch it on Taki’s Magazine every Saturday.