Tom Sowell: Economists are the real “Party of No!”

“Economists are the real “party of No.” They keep saying that there is no such thing as a free lunch– and politicians keep on getting elected by promising free lunches.

Such promises may seem to be kept, for a while. There are ways the government can juggle money around to make everything look OK, but it is only a matter of time before that money runs out and the ultimate reality hits, that there is no free lunch.

We are currently seeing what happens, in fierce riots raging in various countries in Europe, when the money runs out and the brutal truth is finally revealed, that there is no free lunch.

You cannot have generous welfare state laws that allow people to retire on government pensions while they are in their 50s, in an era when most people live decades longer.

In the United States, that kind of generosity exists mostly for members of state government employees’ unions– which is why some states are running out of money, and why the Obama administration is bailing them out, in the name of “stimulus.”

Once you buy the idea that the government should be a sort of year-around Santa Claus, you have bought the kinds of consequences that follow.

The results are not pretty, as we can see on TV, in pictures of rioters in the streets, smashing and burning the property of innocent people, who had nothing to do with giving them unrealistic hopes of living off somebody else, or with the inevitable disappointing of those hopes with cutbacks on the giveaways.

Nothing is easier for politicians than to play Santa Claus by promising benefits, without mentioning the costs– or lying about the costs and leaving it to future governments to figure out what to do when the money runs out.

In the United States, the biggest and longest-running scam of this sort is Social Security. Fulfilling all the promises that were made, as commitments in the law, would cost more money than Social Security has ever had.

This particular scam has kept going for generations by the fact that the first generation– a small generation– that paid into Social Security had its pensions paid by the money that the second and much bigger “baby boom” generation paid in.

What the first generation got back in benefits was far greater than what they themselves had paid in. It was something for nothing– apparently.

This is the way a Ponzi scheme works, with the first wave of “investors” getting paid with the money paid in by the second wave. But, like Social Security, a Ponzi scheme creates no wealth but only an illusion that cannot last. That is why Mr. Ponzi was sent to prison. But politicians get re-elected for doing the same thing.

As the baby boomers begin to retire, and there are now fewer working people per retired person to pay for Social Security pensions, this scam is likewise headed for a rude revelation of reality– and perhaps riots like those in Europe.

All the incentives are for politicians to do what they have done, namely to promise benefits without raising enough taxes to pay for them. That way, it looks like you are getting something for nothing.

When crunch time comes and politicians are either going to have to tell people the truth or raise taxes, the almost inevitable choice is to raise taxes. If the people think they are already taxed too much, then the taxes can be raised only for people designated as “the rich.”

If “the rich” object, then demagogues can denounce them for their selfishness and “greed” for objecting to turning over ever-growing amounts of what they have earned to politicians.

Economists often make stronger objections than the high-income people themselves. That is because history has shown repeatedly that very high rates of taxation lead to all sorts of ways by which those very high rates of taxation do not have to be paid.

No matter how high the tax rates are, they do not bring in more revenue when many of the people subject to those tax rates do not in fact pay them. The scams inherent in welfare states are not only economically counterproductive, they turn group against group, straining the ties that hold a society together.”

(The above article is titled, “Progress and Riots” at  Investors Business Daily….

“Sheriff Babeu Authorizes Lethal Force Against Cartels, Bandits”

The headline for this article wouldn’t mean anything here in the country’s Northland.  One of the great advantages of living just south of the tundra comes from the marriage of  georgraphy and  climate.   The two together  make invasions of nearly anything rather difficult from November to April Fools Day……all year round for those who are afraid of mosquitoes.

So, Sheriff Babeu is an unknown to me…..except that I received this article by Sergio Avila and Layla Tang at KGUN9  in Tuscon, Arizona from Prager fan, Steve Anderson.     Sheriff Babeu must have something to do with the border wars in that part of the country, I am guessing.    You remember Arizona, don’t you?…..that state in the United States sued by president Obama’s ‘top’ attorney, Eric Holder, for trying to protect its neighborhoods from foreign invasions and wars, something the neglectful Obama federal government is supposed to do.

“Lethal Force:”

PINAL COUNTY, Ariz. (KGUN9-TV) – Sheriff Paul Babeu has announced he plans to use deadly force, if necessary, to drive smugglers and border bandits out of his part of the desert.

The Pinal County Sheriff’s Office has recently been in the spotlight for sniffing out smugglers and their drug loads.  Sheriff Babeu told KGUN9 News he’s about to go on the offensive with a massive show of force to stop smugglers and bandits.

“We’re sending out three different teams of eight to fifteen deputies in each that are heavily armed, even with sniper teams, out to the desert at all hours of the day and night,” Babeu said.

Typically, deputies would sneak up on smugglers before arresting them, but Babeu says not this time.

“We’re going to wait until these cartel members come on through and we’re going to announce ourselves in Spanish in this known drug smuggling corridor. That this is the Sheriff, drop your weapons, you’re under arrest,” Babeu said.

In the week following the shooting death of a Border Patrol agent, the Sheriff admits the chances of having a gun fight in the desert are extremely high.  After all, it’s the same desert where one of his deputies was shot and where they’ve seized thousands of pounds of drugs. Babeu says deadly force will be used if his deputies confront dangerous cartels.

“I’ve given specific instruction, no less than lethal force is going to be used.  It’s all lethal force only and we go into that environment knowing that we’re likely expecting an armed threat from these people,” Babeu said.

9 On Your Side caught up with county supervisor, Pete Rios, to ask him what he thinks about Babeu’s latest tactic.

“My hope would have been that the federal government would have taken this kind of risk.  To some extent I’m concerned for the brave men and women in Pinal County that work for the sheriff,” Rios said.

Supervisor Rios told 9OYS he thinks deputies could be put to better use by trying to decrease response times.  Rios says it currently takes a Pinal County deputy anywhere from 10 to 12 minutes to respond to a priority call.  Rios admitted he knows Sheriff Babeu will do what he thinks is best for the community.

“If at the end of the day the sheriff feels compelled to do it, he will do it.  I have a lot of respect for the Sheriff and what he thinks is the best interest for the county he will obviously do,” Rios said.

Babeu told KGUN 9 one of his main concerns is that these border bandits have recently been impersonating law enforcement.  Babeu tells us smugglers may believe deputies are bandits which heightens the danger, but says they’ll be ready.  The Sheriff would not say when the operation will begin or how long it will last.”

On the Local Minnesota Front: Liberal Hypocracy Exposed

Prager fans Gretchen and Mark Waldeland sent in this observation:

“Seen in a Star Tribune story:  ”[Republican] Sen. Amy Koch, 39, will become the first female Senate majority leader next month, guiding a caucus packed with freshmen she helped elect. . . . “ 

Do you mean to tell me that the Party of Politically Correct Quotas, which has been the majority party in the Minnesota Senate since 1974, has never chosen a female Senate majority leader?  Why in all those years have we never heard howls of indignant outrage from NOW and NARAL?  

The “quotas for thee, but not for me” double standard bites Dems once again.”

 

Comment:  With Progressives  process in life doesn’t matter  except when it is convenient, for the ultimate goal of Progressive progress is Marxism.

Michael Vick a Victim of Feminist Hysteria? I Welcome This Obamapraise!

I do not know what motivated president Obama to reach out to the Philadelphia Eagles for giving Michael Vick  “a second chance.”    As if you didn’t know, Vick’s crime was he ran an illegal dogfighting operation.   The lovers of yappy lap dogs went bananas.  PETA melted from its own nuclear waste  exploding. 

I welcome Obamapraise here.

We live in a society which advertised human male against human male brutality highlighted on televison weekly to daily.   Why aren’t the blood thirsty patrons in person and via television pursued and sent to jail for two years?

I do not know what motivated Michael Vick to get involved is such a bloody  circus scene in our modern arm chair, pot smoking  world.  Without a doubt, my doubt, it must have something  to do with the  human male born with the  instinct  to be a predator.   Not all male instincts are equally distributed.   It is probably what draws so many humans of both sexes to go bananas watching human ‘dog fights’ at these modern “cage fighting events”  and professional hockey games.   They are as alluring as they are repelling.

The Romans knew that during their day of running “the world”.  The most thrilling sexually driven sport event ever was the gladiator entertainment, the viewing of two human males fighting to the death.

“Hail, Caesar.  I, who am about to die, salute you!”…..was the phrase of the day before the death match began…..in case you have forgotten.

I am one who thinks that Michael Vick got a raw deal being sent to prison.   I also believe there are a lost of lonely, loony birds in modern society, most of them aging single women, who value incredibly ugly, snarly, yappy lap dogs above anything human, have a lot of money, no family, and nothing else to do but ‘love’ animals and  PETA.   Nearly all are among the loony left, many principals at elementary schools, wear robes  in the courts, and  share their philosophies as instructors at Womens Studies Departments at the nation’s universities.

Michael Vick should have been fined, for I suppose society should have a proscription of some kind against cruelty to animals.   If he persisted in breaking the law…..perhaps a suspension from his wage earning career….but, I am not sure about that……..

Why does the human animal get so fevered with joy and thrill to see human males rip themselves apart at these caged events  and boxing?   Should the promoters be sent to jail for two years for every event? 

I congratulate president Obama  for recognizing a good young athlete, frankly, one who behaves properly  as a decent citizen, a decent person  who was cheated out of  two of his most productive years in his professional life for committing  a misdemeanor. 

However, I might be wrong….I just don’t think so…… as yet.

The following is an article from the Los Angeles Times.

“A standout season has done plenty to calm the controversy surrounding quarterback Michael Vick. But President Obama‘s praise of the Philadelphia Eagles for giving the convicted dogfighter a second chance has brought new energy to an old firestorm.

“This is a nation of football lovers,” said Lisa Lange, a spokeswoman for People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals. She also said Obama was underestimating the negative reaction his comments would provoke. “It is also a nation of dog lovers.”

The subject of Vick, whose signing by the National Football League team in August 2009 sparked protests from animal lovers across the U.S., came up in a recent phone call between Obama and Eagles owner Jeffrey Lurie as the president praised the team’s ambitious plans to power its stadium with alternative energy.

While discussing Lurie’s November announcement to add hundreds of wind turbines and solar panels to Lincoln Financial Field, Obama also commended him for giving Vick a second chance, according to Peter King of NBC and Sports Illustrated.

In August 2007, Vick pleaded guilty to running a dogfighting operation, in a case that included graphic descriptions of dogs being hanged and tortured to death. He served 19 months in prison and was suspended by the NFL.

Upon his release in May 2009, Vick was mentored by former NFL head coach Tony Dungy, who ultimately testified to Vick’s changed ways. The Eagles signed Vick to a one-year contract, then exercised an option for this season.

A White House statement Tuesday cast Obama’s comments as consistent with the president’s view that “individuals who have paid for their crimes should have an opportunity to contribute to society again.”

But Bill Smith, the founder of Main Line Animal Rescue in the Philadelphia area, bristled at Obama’s characterization that the Eagles’ signing of Vick was motivated by wanting to give a convicted felon a second chance.

“If he couldn’t throw a football, he wouldn’t have had a second chance,” said Smith, who organized a campaign last season to collect food for animal shelters every time Vick was sacked on the field. “This isn’t about giving anyone a second chance; it’s about who can make the Eagles organization more money.”

Once the NFL’s highest-paid player, Vick played the last two seasons under a court-approved bankruptcy agreement brought on by his legal woes. He has led the Eagles to a playoff berth and the NFC East division title and is having the best season of his career. On Tuesday, he was selected for the Pro Bowl.

He also has spent the last 17 months doing volunteer work for the Humane Society and various Philadelphia animal rights groups, but critics say the story of redemption being portrayed in the City of Brotherly Love is more about Vick’s play than his efforts to rehabilitate himself.

“If the president truly believed in second chances, he would have adopted a dog from a shelter,” Smith said.

In a statement, White House Deputy Press Secretary Bill Burton acknowledged that Obama and Lurie discussed “other issues” beyond the green initiatives.

“He of course condemns the crimes that Michael Vick was convicted of,” Burton said.

As part of his probation, Vick has volunteered with the Humane Society and spoken to children about the evils of animal abuse. The Eagles also have donated money to animal shelters in the Philadelphia area.

Those efforts gave Vick a reprieve from some animal rights groups.

“As long as [Vick] is focusing on playing football and not abusing animals, we will focus our attention on those who are being cruel to animals,” said Lange, the PETA spokeswoman.

But Vick’s detractors have not forgotten the viciousness of his crimes. He riled activists this month when he told NBC News that he “would love to get another dog in the future. I think it would be a big step for me in the rehabilitation process.”

Vick is not allowed to own a dog while he is on probation, and PETA wants the restriction extended when he is up for review in 2012. In the same way convicted pedophiles are not allowed to be alone with children, PETA’s board says, it believes convicted animal abusers should be denied unsupervised access to pets.

“Children and animals are completely defenseless to an abuser,” Lange said.

Obama was foolish and wrong to praise his hiring. Just because someone is a gifted athlete does not mean they should get away with torturing animals for fun. That is just sick.

MorkManWarner at 8:01 AM December 29, 2010Vic did his time.  The PETA people are filling the atmosphere with toxic chemicals whenever they drive their cars, use energy and go to the bathroom…..this will eventually kill thousands upon thousands of dogs, cats, people, plants and other animals.  It will lead to global extinctions.  These hypocritical PETA people need to get a life and move on to a new cause such as Climate Change which they are causing on a daily basis.  

Further comment:  I am old fashioned enough to value human life more than non-human life.   Neither dog nor hamster is equal to a human being…..sorry, Lefties.

It should be noted not all loonies are Lefties.   Tucker Carlson, and admitted Christian and conservative claims Michael Vick should have been executed for killing dogs.   It is interesting how the mercies of Christ can be corrupted…….

Click here for his interview……I don’t believe he  was kidding, do you?   I see much greater humanity and self control in Michael Vick than the mouthy twits who offer no measure of thought to what they say.    To equate dogs with humans is sacriligious…….except to the modern young who are confused about the value of human life.   The expansion of Marxism knows no bounds. 

http://hotair.com/archives/2010/12/29/video-tucker-carlson-says-vick-should-have-been-executed-for-dog-killings/

Dennis Prager Answers the Question, “What do Women want?”

Dennis Prager’s columns appear weeklyat TownHall.com:

“What a woman most wants is to be loved by a man she admires.

I am well aware that to say this today is akin to announcing that the sun revolves around the Earth. For half a century, we have been told that what women most want is professional success and equality. And to the extent that a modern “liberated” woman does admit to wanting a man to love, she will say that she wants a “partner” who is her “equal.” And girls and women have been told — or, more accurately, have had drummed into them — that equality means that both sexes are essentially the same (except for the physical differences) and therefore want the same things. Equality and sameness have been rendered synonymous. That is why she cannot say — and ideally wouldn’t even admit to herself — that she wants a man to admire; that would be “sexist,” as it would imply an unequal relationship.

The notion that a woman most wants a man, admirable or not, has been scoffed at. This was encapsulated by the famous feminist slogan “A woman without a man is like a fish without a bicycle.” Even feminism that did not agree with the fish-bicycle metaphor communicated to young women that an “authentic” woman would not have as her greatest desire to bond with a man.

Today, feminism holds less appeal for young women than it did for the previous generation, but “equality” remains the liberal god of the day. That renders my theory — that a woman wants to be cherished by a man she admires — politically incorrect in the extreme.

It is problematic enough to say that a woman most wants a man. But that pales compared to the claim that she most wants a man whom she admires. That seems to affirm gender inequality. The image it conjures up is of a woman looking up to her man as if he were some sort of lord and she his serf.

Yet, any woman who believes that she is married to an admirable man would laugh at such a dismissal. Admiring one’s husband doesn’t render a woman a serf. It renders her fortunate.

The truth is that almost nothing — including job success — elevates a woman in her own eyes as much as being loved by a husband whom she admires. That is why when married women get together, they don’t talk about their jobs nearly as much as men do. They talk, among other things, about their man if they are proud of him, and complain about him if they are not. Even most feminists are happiest when married to a man they admire.

And what is it that women most admire in a man? From decades of talking to women on the radio and, of course, from simply living life, I have concluded that an admirable man is one who has three qualities: strength, integrity and ambition.

All three are needed. Strength without integrity is machismo. Integrity without strength or without ambition is a milquetoast. And ambition without integrity is a successful crook.

Women are drawn to strong men. Though many men, when asked the secret to their long marriage, answer, “I learned to always say, ‘Yes, Dear,’” the truth is that most women are not attracted to “Yes, Dear” men who always give in to a woman’s whim. They are attracted to a man who exhibits strength in the outer world and at home as husband and father.

But that strength must come with integrity. If it doesn’t, he is a strong bad man. And while more than a few women fall for bad men (precisely because of the power of masculine strength to attract women), most women do not want such a man over the long run.

And ambition does not mean that he is necessarily rich, but that he is a hard worker who wants to improve himself; plenty of men who earn relatively little are admired and loved by their wives. That is why a major “turn-off” to most women is a husband who sits and watches television all night (let alone all day).

The beauty of all this is that it all comes together for men, for women and for society.

Women get what they want most: to be married to and loved by a man they admire. Men then attain what they want most: to be admired by the woman they love. And society gets the thing it most needs: admirable men.

Unfortunately, none of this is taught at college.”

Oregon Soaked the Rich….and Lost Money

Ducking Higher Taxes

Oregon raised its income tax on the richest 2 percent of its residents last year to fix its budget hole, but now the state treasury admits it collected nearly one-third less revenue than projected, according to the Wall Street Journal.

• In 2009 the state legislature raised the tax rate to 10.8 percent on joint-filer income of between $250,000 and $500,000, and to 11 percent on income above $500,000.
• Only New York City’s rate is higher.
• Instead of $180 million collected last year from the new tax, the state received $130 million.

The Eugene Register-Guard newspaper reports that after the tax was raised “income tax and other revenue collections began plunging so steeply that any gains from the two measures seemed trivial.”

• One reason revenues are so low is that about one-quarter of the rich tax filers seem to have gone missing.
• The state expected 38,000 Oregonians to pay the higher tax, but only 28,000 did.
• These numbers are in line with a Cascade Policy Institute study, based on interstate migration patterns, predicting that the tax surcharge would lead to 80,000 fewer wealthy tax filers in Oregon over the next decade.

The biggest loss of revenues came from capital gains receipts, says the Journal.

• The new 11 percent top tax rate applies to stock and asset sales.
• Instead of $3.5 billion of capital gains in 2009, there was only $2 billion to tax — 43 percent less.

All of this is an instant replay of what happened in Maryland in 2008 when the legislature in Annapolis instituted a millionaire tax.  There roughly one-third of the state’s millionaire households vanished from the tax rolls after rates went up.

Source: “Ducking Higher Taxes,” Wall Street Journal, December 21, 2010.

For text:

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704034804576026233823935442.html?mod=googlenews_wsj

The above article was published at the National Center for Policy Analysis.

(Comment:  I have never received an annual salary over  $55,000.  I am not bragging.  I have had other priorities in life and have been lucky to have faced no major disasters outside of divorce.   I am a believer that those who have money will invest money.  I am a worrier that it is a decaying society in which  nearly 47% of the tax paying population pays no federal income taxes whatsoever yet have plenty of cash on had to bury themselves in drugs.   And, better than that, can go to the ballot box and vote Marxist-Democrat to give them more handouts and pleasures to perpetuate and expand  the decay and corruption.  

I announce my financial status history for the sole purpose of clarifying for my  critics that I am not one of the 5% of the  class that already pays for over 50%  of   the  federal income tax……and never have been.

I do not feel deprived, either racially or financially.   Life is a struggle of a most blessed nature.   I was lucky enough to learn this very early in life….from my public school teachers, from myself through  observation and investigation, from my church, from my parents, and from my neighborhood…….in about that order.

………an order that died years ago for those born into the welfare state and the world of Democrat Party progressive  largesse and bribery even before their present love affair with Soveit type Marxism.

The Socialist Dictatorships of Latin America

Fidelistas are exceedingly popular among our 2010-2011 American Democrat Party.  Fidel is the hero of the Hollywood Left and Dan Rather, too.  Obama Administration’s own Latin American agencies are sympathizers of this old potentate and his friends  as recognized when Barack Obama supported Hugo Chavez in restoring the Chavez-bought Manuel Zelaya to the Honduran presidency last year. 

Carlos Alberto Montaner of the Miami writes “Socialism has many faces”  the following  brief article on the five socialist dictatorships now comfortably established south of the border:

“Twenty-first-century socialism in Latin America actually consists of five socialisms, as many as the countries that constitute that caudillo-led, anti-republican, chaotic and authoritarian little world.

They unite in anti-Americanism, in the conviction that individuals must be at the service of the State, not the opposite, in their contempt for the market and in the superstition that the caudillo knows exactly what benefits or hurts all citizens, but they’re very different.

The governments that compose it are Cuba, Venezuela, Bolivia, Ecuador and Nicaragua.

The first one is Cuba, of course. Without the Cuban dictatorship, the other socialisms wouldn’t exist. Cuba delivers to the other four countries what it knows how to do with great skill: strategic leadership, intelligence chores, methods of political and social control, institutional carpentry, propaganda and international aid networks. It also contributes health personnel and sports training. But that’s only a cover, the least important contribution. Cuba teaches everything it learned from the Soviet Union in its 30 years of complicity with the communist world.

The great paradox is that Raúl Castro stopped being a Marxist-Leninist and regrets the days when he and his brother irresponsibly pushed the island in the direction of communism, but the only merchandise he has to sell is the manufacture of totalitarian cages like the one that destroyed Cuba. For that, Hugo Chávez pays him regally: 108,000 barrels of crude oil a day, plus other covert forms of subsidy and corruption that raise the final figure to more than $5 billion per year. Raúl does not share the plans of world conquest that Chávez caresses, but the customer is always right and Chávez is not just “the client,” he’s the only client Cuba has.

Chávez sees himself as Fidel’s hand-picked heir. His delirious fantasy is to triumph where Moscow failed. He wants to build and direct an anti-Western camp big enough for the Iranian theocracy, the North Korean madhouse, Zimbabwe, the Belarussian tyranny and anyone who hates the liberal democracies. He considers himself a Marxist-Leninist — no need to question his own self-definition — but does not seek ideological uniformity. He seeks the creation of a bloc united by the rejection of the political model wrought by the West during the Enlightenment.

Evo Morales’ problem is different. He hates modernity, progress, Western development. He loves coca, reveres the Pachamama (the world goddess) and would like to return to the barter system. He dreams of returning to an idyllic past where pre-Columbian values are revived. His socialism is not that of the 21st century, really, but that of the 15th century, before the arrival of Pizarro, whom he called the exponent of the “culture of death,” when Aymarás and Quechuas lived in an Andean paradise, a glorious kingdom of the “culture of life.”

Rafael Correa’s socialist experiment in Ecuador has been eloquently defined by René Ramírez, the official in charge of Ecuador’s National Secretariat of Planning and Development (SENPLADES): The New Socialism is a “republican biosocialism aimed at building a biopolis, a society of bio-knowledge, of ecotourist services for the community and agro-ecological products, freeing time for creative idleness, for eroticism, arts and crafts, for existential research, for partying and celebration, for workers’ bashes.” (My God, what a sorry country!)

Like Raúl Castro, Nicaraguan Daniel Ortega stopped believing in communism but did not transform himself into a democrat. Today, he is a neo-Somozan. He wants to stay in power at any cost so he can rule and enrich himself. That’s his 21st-century socialism. For that, he has control of the courts of justice and a key element that the Somoza family also utilized with great skill: corruption. Ortega bribes parliamentarians, judges, journalists and voters.

The amount at his disposal for the purchase and sale of consciences and wills is $1 billion per year, supplied by his mentor, Hugo Chávez. That’s a lot of cash in a very poor country, but if that money ever ceases to arrive, his regime would founder swiftly.

Read more: http://www.miamiherald.com/2010/12/28/1990882/socialism-has-many-faces.html#ixzz19T3KewXD

Comment:   As with our own president, the only measure of importance in these American Marxist movements  is the advancement of  State control over citizen life.   In our United States Marxism’s  fans are excited about the forced equality part of the Socialist personality as well as the Power trip.   South of the border the Power trip dominates.

A Look into the Delusions of the Narcissist, Julian Assange

This article was published at Pajamas Media, written by Richard Fernandez:

“Baby, Look at Me, and Tell Me What You Think!”

“Jonathan Foreman describes the evolution of Julian Assange’s ‘War on America’ in an article in Commentary in which he traces Wikileaks’ disclosures which culminated in the release of “Collateral Murder” — “a selection of stolen and decrypted gun-camera footage that purportedly shows the unlawful killing of Iraqi civilians and two Reuters journalists by the crew of a U.S. Army Apache helicopter.” That took Assange into the big-time. “Skillfully edited and promoted, and widely accepted by the mainstream media as proof of a U.S. war crime, the video won WikiLeaks fame and praise around the world and made its founder, a 39-year-old Australian named Julian Assange, an international celebrity.”

Prior to that, Assange had released a bunch of turkeys. “A confidential investigation by Kroll Associates of official corruption in Kenya, UN documents concerning sexual abuse by the organization’s peacekeepers in the Congo, the tax returns of movie star turned tax refusenik Wesley Snipes, and private e-mails stolen from Sarah Palin and Holocaust denier David Irving. Bigger fish included the communications of a Swiss Bank allegedly engaged in money-laundering and tax evasion, and secret materials from the Church of Scientology” were greeted with some enthusiasm, but not much. With “Collateral Murder” Assange had found his market: the anti-American market. Prior the the big time, Wikileaks was more diversified.

But that was before “Collateral Murder.” In 2010, the focus of WikiLeaks turned directly and exclusively to the U.S. government and its conduct since September 11. In the summer, it released the so-called War Logs, nearly half a million internal Defense Department documents concerning the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. That was followed in November by the publication of the State Department cables. Indeed, so focused was WikiLeaks on these caches that it became all but impossible to access earlier postings on other subjects or submit new ones.

The need to serve the anti-American market as Foreman points out, transformed the organization from one in which “as late as 2008 … was insisting on its website that it was a ‘completely neutral’ conduit for information and that it would ‘crowdsource’ its analysis in the way that Wikipedia, the online encyclopedia written entirely by unpaid volunteers, allows public contributions to its entries”, into a “clandestine” organization run by one man by remote control.

The focus by Wikileaks on the anti-American market could have driven Assange in the direction of latent fantasy and exacerbated weaknesses in his management style. Even prior to his arrest in Britain, Assange had become embroiled in disputes with his former associates, accusing its German spokesman of collaborating with Newsweek in compiling a story about him and calling a woman novelist whose book he admired and therefore published in full downloadable form “enormously pompous” for daring to complain. Convinced he was being hunted by the CIA, he styled “himself [as] … living a cloak-and-dagger, semi-fugitive existence, sleeping on floors and communicating only through disposable mobile phones or online”.  Success had made him a legend in his own mind and had driven out the first rule of surviving in an underground: people on the run need people to survive and cannot go around treating them like servants.  Inspiring personal loyalty and love is the first and last skill of the man on the run.

Why is Assange so ready to diss his supporters?  Because he didn’t really need them for protection. Some suspected “that, for all the talk of Assange’s courage in taking on the American goliath, the truth is that his assault on the U.S. government has not put him at great risk”. The Foreman article noted that “Assange has long liked to talk in what seems like a self-dramatizing way about his persecution by the authorities, complaining of ‘covert following and hidden photography’ by police and intelligence agencies”. He needed to convey that impression to drum up transient housing, credit cards, freebies and dates. But creating such an aura around himself had the necessary side-effect of making visible to anyone who looked moderately hard. The authorities had no trouble finding him in Britain and knew where he was long before they arrested him.  It is not hard to see why.

John Burns described his meeting with Assange “in a noisy Ethiopian restaurant in London’s rundown Paddington district”, where “he pitches his voice barely above a whisper to foil the Western intelligence agencies he fears” — yet accompanied by a retinue of groupies. He is clandestine, but clandestine in the manner of a romantic novel, with cape, sword and mandolin. Burns writes:

He demands that his dwindling number of loyalists use expensive encrypted cellphones and swaps his own the way other men change shirts. He checks into hotels under false names, dyes his hair, sleeps on sofas and floors, and uses cash instead of credit cards, often borrowed from friends.

“By being determined to be on this path, and not to compromise, I’ve wound up in an extraordinary situation,” Mr. Assange said over lunch last Sunday, when he arrived sporting a woolen beanie and a wispy stubble and trailing a youthful entourage that included a filmmaker assigned to document any unpleasant surprises.

He thought he could have his cake and eat it too. But it doesn’t work that way. The unpleasant surprise came via the groupies themselves, who Assange is said to have actively sought out.  Two of them later accused him of rape. While it is hard to pass specific judgment, his lifestyle brought him into contact with volatile female companionship. Ultimately the kind of underground partners you choose is the kind of underground you get. The kind he would get was revealed by a report at the Sydney Morning Herald, which examines what Assange was looking for based on an old account at the dating site OK Cupid.  There he stated a desire to meet “women from countries that have sustained political turmoil” because Western women are “valueless and inane”. “I have asian teengirl stalkers.” That’s the kind of gal he was looking for. The dating site continues.

He describes himself as a “grown up enfant terrible” and says he has seen or done “attempted assassinations in Africa”, “telephone taps in Australia”, “election rigging”, “Russian mafia” and “politicians’ wives” … “I am danger, achtung”.

“Danger, achtung”  described the curious duality of his life. Julian Assange the “babe magnet” had to lead a life with two conflicting requirements. It had to be “clandestine” — doubtful, if you ask the British police — and yet it had to include the perquisities of fame so that his entourage could cast his spell upon women.  It could be sustained, Jonathan Foreman suggests, because Assange knew all he had to fear was the United States of America.

The truth is that both the Bush and Obama administrations have proved remarkably feckless and feeble in their response to the War Logs and, worse, in the latter’s failure to prevent the publication of the State Department cables it knew was coming. Indeed, the very fact that, despite the revelations before the April 2010 video, Assange remained alive and at liberty to continue and do even greater damage gives the lie to his paranoid fears of ruthless, hyper-powerful Western states capable of wiping out all truth and justice unless their actions are exposed by people like him.

It would be interesting to see if Assange ever dares to take on the Russian FSB, the Chinese government, or even the French security services—all of which would have far fewer scruples about lethally punishing him than the American state he believes is so dangerous.

He was a man who always needed cred, but only the cheap kind.  He wasn’t averse, for example, to taking credit for Climategate.  That may yet turn out to be the wrong move. One of the people who isn’t afraid to go intellectually up against Assange is Steve McIntyre, one of the pioneering climate skeptics, who rebuts the Wikileak’s founder’s claim that he broke “Climategate”, the release of the East Anglia emails which showed its scientists conspiring to “hide the decline”. McIntyre wrote, “Assange falsely claimed that the Climategate emails were broken by WikiLeaks” and goes on to prove it by showing the first Wikileaks citation on it came four days after a number of sites had downloaded it from a Russian server. McIntyre had it before Wikileaks “leaked” it.

This is obviously untrue as CA readers know. I can date WikiLeaks’ entry by contemporary comments. The first notice of the emails at WikiLeaks was 2009/11/21 at 2.50 AM Eastern (12:50 AM blog time). The emails had been downloaded by many people (including me) from a Russian server on Nov 19 and had been downloaded by WUWT moderators on Nov 17. A contemporary comment in a CA thread says that WikiLeaks was down and refers people to megauploads. WikiLeaks has not even been a major reference for Climategate – that belongs to eastangliaemails.com (originally anelegantchaos.org) which was up on Nov 20 and provided a searchable database.

The climate skeptics crowd has fought too long against the Global Warming industry to suddenly let Assange jump in and sweep up the chips. Interestingly enough, as McIntyre observes, Assange went on to complain that he was being framed by British intelligence as “a conduit for the FSB – absolutely outrageous”. Here’s Assange describing Wikileak’s Climategate, while at the same time asserting that he released it in order to force the Global Warming scientists to bring out the strongest evidence, which they have been withholding presumably to avoid humiliating the skeptics.

Feminist Sotomayor Acting Feministly in Court

The following article was written by Richard Fernandez at the New York Times:

“Sotomayor Guides Court’s Liberal Wing”"

At her confirmation hearings last year, Sonia Sotomayor spent a lot of time assuring senators that empathy would play no part in her work on the Supreme Court.

That was a sort of rebuke to President Obama, who had said that empathy was precisely the quality that separated legal technicians like Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. from great justices.

Justice Sotomayor would have none of it.

“We apply law to facts,” she told the Senate Judiciary Committee last year. “We don’t apply feelings to facts.”

We are now three months into Justice Sotomayor’s second term on the court. That is awfully early in a justice’s career to draw any general conclusions. But some things are becoming tolerably clear.

Justice Sotomayor has completely dispelled the fear on the left that her background as a prosecutor would align her with the court’s more conservative members on criminal justice issues. And she has displayed a quality — call it what you will — that is alert to the humanity of the people whose cases make their way to the Supreme Court.

So far this term, the court has issued two signed decisions in argued cases. Both were unanimous, and both were insignificant.

But for anyone looking for insight into the justices, there was much more information to be gleaned from another genre of judicial writing. In the last three months, the court has turned down thousands of appeals, almost always without comment. On seven occasions, though, at least one justice had something to say about the court’s decision not to hear a case.

Such writings are completely discretionary, and they open a window onto the author’s passions. They are also a good way to keep track of the divisions on the court.

An ideological fault line ran through those seven opinions. Not a single member of the court’s four-member liberal wing joined any of the three opinions written by a conservative justice. And not a single member of the court’s four-member conservative wing joined any of the four opinions written by a liberal justice.

Justice Anthony M. Kennedy, the court’s swing vote, was the only justice to join none of the seven opinions, which simplified the analysis.

Justice Sotomayor wrote three of the opinions, more than any other justice, and all concerned the rights of criminal defendants or prisoners. The most telling one involved a Louisiana prisoner infected with H.I.V. No other justice chose to join it.

The prisoner, Anthony C. Pitre, had stopped taking his H.I.V. medicine to protest his transfer from one facility to another. Prison officials responded by forcing him to perform hard labor in 100-degree heat. That punishment twice sent Mr. Pitre to the emergency room.

The lower courts had no sympathy for Mr. Pitre’s complaints, saying he had brought his troubles on himself.

Justice Sotomayor saw things differently.

“Pitre’s decision to refuse medication may have been foolish and likely caused a significant part of his pain,” she wrote. “But that decision does not give prison officials license to exacerbate Pitre’s condition further as a means of punishing or coercing him — just as a prisoner’s disruptive conduct does not permit prison officials to punish the prisoner by handcuffing him to a hitching post.”

In the courtroom, she was no less outraged at the argument in a case concerning prison conditions in California, peppering a lawyer for the state with heated questions.

“When are you going to avoid the needless deaths that were reported in this record?” she asked. “When are you going to avoid or get around people sitting in their feces for days in a dazed state?”

At that same argument, Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr., who is in some ways Justice Sotomayor’s ideological and temperamental counterpart, reserved his sympathy for people who might be harmed after prisoners were released to ease overcrowding.

He recalled what happened when prisoners were released under a court order in Philadelphia. The upshot, according to a supporting brief filed by 18 states, was “an extraordinary crime wave” that included 79 murders, 90 rapes and 1,113 assaults over a year and a half in 1993 and 1994.

“That’s not going to happen in California?” Justice Alito asked, incredulous.

In an amusing and astute post on his legal blog, Mike Sacks said the two justices had become “their sides’ enforcers.”

The seven opinions about decisions not to hear cases support this theory. Justice Sotomayor wrote or joined all four from the liberal justices, and Justice Alito did the same for the ones from the conservative side.

“Appearing rough around the edges, they send clear, aggressive messages, often on behalf of their comrades, but sometimes alone on principle,” Mr. Sacks wrote.

By contrast, he added, Chief Justice Roberts and the court’s newest member, Justice Elena Kagan, are all polish and charm. They wrote none of the seven decisions and joined one each. At arguments, their questions are wry and sly.

They are, Mr. Sacks wrote, “suave assassins, devastating advocates without compromising their gentility.”

Comment:  “I would hope that a wise Latina woman with the richness of her experiences would more often than not reach a better conclusion than a white male who hasn’t lived that life.”   That is the Sotomayor racist about which we are reading.