The Slow Overnight Collapse of Venezuela

This is the best short description I've seen recently about the industry by industry collapse of Venezuela -once the richest country in South America- into...well...collapse like tin foil hat wearing preppers worry about. It can take many years for a prosperous country to fall apart, it just looks sudden at the end. No toilet paper, refrigerators are worthless because there is electricity only two days a week, but that's really OK because there is no food to put in the non-working refrigerators.

Now they don't even have enough money to pay for printing more inflationary currency, and the foreign printing companies which were flying it in, in fleets of 747s, have stopped because Why trust Venezuela to pay the printing and shipping bills?

Between corruption and Marxism, and corrupt Marxism, and Marxist corruption, the Venezuelans have well and truly buggered each other left, right, and upside down. Right along with all the good, decent people who did NOT vote this calamity.

Islamic State hands out rules for sex slaves in Iraq

We clearly need more tolerance for slave rapers. Their culture is just as good as any others. Especially ours. Our professors tell us so. We must believe it.

The Blue Angels In Honolulu

The Blue Angels were zipping about the area yesterday and today. How do I know? This afternoon all six flew through our kitchen door and out the living room window.

Well, four of them got out, as you can see below, escaping over our shower tree from the Fanged Terrors of the Ko'olaus, Calvin Pi and Sweetie Pi, Guard Cats Extraordinaire.

The other two Blue Angels faired not so well, as it is rumored that Calvin and Sweetie, taking just umbrage at the invasion of their personal airspace by Unusually Large And Raucous Blue Birds, bigger and more raucous even than chickens, which is saying quite a lot so far as Calvin & Sweetie are concerned, bit their tails and gave them a thorough shaking. Below is Calvin, recuperating from the Defense of the Home Territories. He and Sweetie may burp up bits of blue aluminum from time to time, but that's OK: They're Cats With A Mission.

Sweetie is tuckered out from all the excitement, but she remains ever alert to invasion. It will take more than an Unusually Large And Raucous Blue Bird to get past her.

Sam Adams: "Badass Founding Father"

David Forsmark has a quote from Sam Adams which suggests to me that many political things have changed mightily, and not for the better, since the American revolution:

“No taxation without representation” was the unifying theme behind much of Adams’s rhetoric, including this line from his speech protesting the Sugar Act:

For if our Trade may be taxed, why not our Lands? Why not the Produce of our Lands & everything we possess or make use of?

Import duties? Property taxes? Taxes on crops? Inventory taxes? Taxes on business machinery?

More on seven such founders here.

Pierre Omidyar Believes in Private Property?

eBay founder Pierre Omidyar pushes private property rights in 3rd world countries.

Who knew?

And when did they know it?

He still seems like a good guy, even if he does believe in private property rights. The author pretty clearly disagrees, though.

When Oregon Banned Parochial and Private Schools

Wikipedia.com has this to say on the issue:

On November 7, 1922, the voters of Oregon passed an initiative amending Oregon Law Section 5259, the Compulsory Education Act. The citizens' initiative was primarily aimed at eliminating parochial schools, including Catholic schools.

It also banned private schools.

Well, that's Progressives for you.

The New Totalitarianism

It's here, it's now.

One more example of the utter contempt with which our rulers hold Liberty, the Constitution, and the People. America has become a nation of crack whores, willing to do anything for the next fix of federal money.

The Boat House of Milwaukee's East Side

I remember driving past the Boat House ever since I was a kid. It's just a few blocks west of University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. Steve Schmidt of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel has a story about it with lots of pictures. Five hundred square feet, never a boat, it was built in the 1920s as a house which looks like a boat.

I'll bet a nickel that today one could not under any circumstances get a building permit for so much joy.

Enjoy it.

As Goes Argentina, So Goes US?

Argentines certainly like their economy to be screwed up.

In April, (Argentine President Cristina) Fernandez, who succeeded her late husband Nestor Kirchner in December 2007, seized control of (the country’s biggest oil producer) YPF from Spain’s Repsol SA, blaming lack of investment by her country’s biggest oil company for a doubling of fuel imports in 2011. During her first term, she expropriated $24 billion of private pension savings and nationalized Aerolineas Argentinas SA, the nation’s flagship airline.

So, she and her co-thugs robbed their own citizens subjects victims of $24,000,000,000, nationalized the major airline, and for some reason foreigners got leery of pouring more money into their reach. Now Fernandez has proven them right to be leery.

With Argentina locked out of global credit markets since its $95 billion default in 2001, Fernandez has tapped the bank’s holdings since 2010 to help pay the nation’s foreign debt. She plans to use $8 billion of reserves for the same purpose next year.

Argentina's government welched on their debts and is paying bills by spending capital robbed from their victims, but at least they have put Eva Peron back on their currency.

Argentina’s inflation data has been under question since early 2007, when Kirchner replaced senior staff at the national statistics agency. Last year the government fined more than a dozen researchers as much as 500,000 pesos ($107,000) each for reporting inflation rates that were higher than official data.

To avoid fines, economists now share their research with opposition lawmakers, who release a monthly report based on the data. The September report said prices rose 24 percent in August from a year earlier. Two days later, the statistics agency said annual inflation was 10 percent.

So, who do you trust? The government or your lying eyes?

Eliana Raszewski has more here at Bloomberg News.

Of Course the NAZIs were Socialists

For some reason most people think the Nazis were some particularly awful group of right wingers. I've never understood why the National Socialist German Workers' Party wasn't properly thought of as left wing. Not so far left as, say the USSR, but over there.

National Socialists like the Nazis, the Italians under Mussolini, Spain under Franco, Argentina under the Perons, and some might dare claim the US Government of Franklin Delano Roosevelt, were quite different from each other, devoted to developing their own socialism peculiarly appropriate to the national culture. The International socialists wanted a global system.

People dispute the idea of their even being socialists, suggesting that the name was some sort of scam.

Here are some excerpts from the Nazi Party program, as presented by the Avalon Project at Yale Law School:

11. That all unearned income, and all income that does not arise from work, be abolished.

12. Since every war imposes on the people fearful sacrifices in blood and treasure, all personal profit arising from the war must be regarded as treason to the people We therefore demand the total confiscation of all war profits.

13. We demand the nationalization of all trusts.

14. We demand profit-sharing in large industries.

15. We demand a generous increase in old-age pensions.

16. We demand the creation and maintenance of a sound middle-class, the immediate communalization of large stores which will be rented cheaply to small tradespeople, and the strongest consideration must be given to ensure that small traders shall deliver the supplies needed by the State, the provinces and municipalities.

17. We demand an agrarian reform in accordance with our national requirements, and the enactment of a law to expropriate the owners without compensation of any land needed for the common purpose. The abolition of ground rents, and the prohibition of all speculation in land.

18. We demand that ruthless war be waged against those who work to the injury of the common welfare. Traitors, usurers, profiteers, etc., are to be punished with death, regardless of creed or race.

20. In order to make it possible for every capable and industrious German to obtain higher education, and thus the opportunity to reach into positions of leadership, the State must assume the responsibility of organizing thoroughly the entire cultural system of the people .

24.... The party...is convinced that a lasting recovery of our folk can only come about from within on the principle:

COMMON GOOD BEFORE INDIVIDUAL GOOD

Left unexplained, as lefties frequently do, is just how the common good can be separated from the good of the individuals who make up the commune.

Right wing? Sure, to a communist.

Democrats: Let's Ban Corporate Profits!

I don't think Harry Truman would agree:



OK, there are a lot of conventioneers to choose from, but these folks are about as bright as bacteria.

Of course, bacteria can kill you.

Plagiarising a Blogger is Double Plus Ungood

When Duane Lester over at the All American Blogger discovered that a local paper had published one of his posts verbatim, he apparently got mad, then got even.

I'm a bit surprised he was allowed to keep the camera rolling throughout the entire encounter, but it makes good watching.

News You Can Use

Meth Lab Found In Boaz Walmart Restroom

N.B.: I had some difficulty in deciding how to categorize this post, but using a WalMart restroom for illegal activities does seem like a property rights violation rather than an example of the New Civility. And the world does seem to be spinning out of control. You are welcome to use the comments section for alternative suggestions, though.

Possibly I should come up with a new category, as this isn't the first time a meth lab has been found in an apparently inappropriate place.

The United States of America v. $35,131.00 in United States Currency

This looks like a court decision we should all applaud, treating Homeland Security exactly as it should be treated.

Are Argentinians Incapable of Learning From Their Mistakes?

Or from anyone else's? Apparently so:

(Argentine President Cristina)Fernandez has rankled Wall Street by imposing price controls, nationalizing private pension funds and publishing inflation data far below private estimates.

So, how have the Argentinians responded to Fernandez destroying the economy and stealing their life's savings?

"Argentine President Cristina Fernandez looks set to win a second term in October and deepen her interventionist policies after thrashing rivals."

Why cry for Argentina? They do this to themselves.

Of course, one could quite reasonably cry for the minority who understand that stealing life savings, inflating the currency, and imposing price controls add up to armed robbery of the masses by the criminal elite.

By the way the Reuters article describes Fernandez as "center-left". Good thing she isn't radical.

This reminds me of a book I read a couple years ago: "The Modern Survival Manual: Surviving the Economic Collapse: Based on the first hand experience of the 2001 economic collapse in Argentina" by Fernando Ferfal Aguirre.

It isn't very well written or edited, but the author is the first to say so. However, a lot of his experiences mirror things I saw in Lebanon in the Fall of 1975 and Spring of 1977. One of his more important points is that the lone individual or family living in an isolated area is running a very significant risk of torture and murder by people who want whatever the lone person or family might have.

In a really major breakdown, like the Lebanese civil war I saw, even small towns will be at risk. The village I was in, Jouar El Haouz, was a Christian village which, between my visits, was taken over by the PLO: One morning the villagers heard someone ringing the bell of the church across the street from my step-sister's house. They went to investigate. The PLO told them at gunpoint to start walking. No stopping at home. Just get out or get shot. A few very old people were allowed to stay, but they were all alone.

After the village was emptied the PLO went house to house, shooting the locks off the doors, then went in and vandalized what they didn't take: upholstery slashed, table tops gouged with knives, all clothes in closets cut with scissors. Eventually the Syrian peace-keepers moved in, and the PLO, unable to remove the ammo they were storing in my step-sister's house, blew it up.

If you look at the areal view at the Google link, you can see the church: It's the building with the orange tile roof on the inside of the bend in the road. Directly across the street to the northwest is a grayish rectangle: our house. There used to be an orange tile roof on it,too, but when the ammo dump exploded the roof went straight up and the walls moved out. It apparently has never been rebuilt.

If you back out a bit you see a lot of blue ponds. Those are reservoirs to catch snow and spring run off for irrigating the apple orchards during the summer. I spent a couple days guarding ours from a fellow who liked to cut the lock off the valve and steal the water. Not sure what I would have done if he had been pushy but fortunately the only person I saw was a goatherd with a Galil assault rife, and he just led his goats to the water and let them drink. No big deal.

Anyway, when things got bad there were a lot of shortages because trucks couldn't get to warehouses and out again: the village store ran out of bottled propane for stoves, and most foods. We had kerosene space heaters and were able to cook on one in the salon aka living room, and cooked a lot of windfall apples by candle light. Some nights that was all there was to eat. Or apples, cooked apples, apple juice, and Spam.

We had a gunfight around the house one night, and since my brother-in-law was against guns, we were at the mercy of whoever it was. They didn't try to come in, but if they had we were defenceless.

We had all gone to bed around 8:30 or 9:00. My bedroom was at the front of the house, and lying there in the dark I heard people standing on our porch, whispering. Then pulling back and releasing bolts on assault rifles. Shooting from the porch outside my window, with reverberations such that I couldn't tell which was the last shot and which the first reverberation. Then people running up the road Southwest of the church, and more shooting. Then silence, followed by a car driving fast past the house with it's lights out. Then it was over.

Next morning there was no sign of the shooting, no empty brass. No one in the village would say they knew who it had been. Just another night in a civil war zone.

Here is a website with a very little more on Jouar El Haouz.

The London Riots: Before and After Pictures

The BBC has them here.

The current fourth set is of Clapham Junction in south London. I stayed in a B&B there a couple of times a number of years ago. Very nice neighborhood. Or was.

Indiana Supreme Court: No Right to Resist Illegal Police Entry

I suppose Hoosiers should be glad the State Supremes didn't extend the protection to all other criminals illegally entering homes.

Dan Carden at NWI.com has the pathetic story.

INDIANAPOLIS | Overturning a common law dating back to the English Magna Carta of 1215, the Indiana Supreme Court ruled Thursday that Hoosiers have no right to resist unlawful police entry into their homes.

In a 3-2 decision, Justice Steven David writing for the court said if a police officer wants to enter a home for any reason or no reason at all, a homeowner cannot do anything to block the officer's entry.

Saddam Hussein agrees wholeheartedly with "Justice" Steven David. Or he would if he hadn't been hanged.

For what little it is worth, two Justices voted to uphold the right to resist illegal entry:

"In my view the majority sweeps with far too broad a brush by essentially telling Indiana citizens that government agents may now enter their homes illegally -- that is, without the necessity of a warrant, consent or exigent circumstances," (Justice Robert) Rucker said. "I disagree."

Rucker and (Justice Brent) Dickson suggested if the court had limited its permission for police entry to domestic violence situations they would have supported the ruling.

But Dickson said, "The wholesale abrogation of the historic right of a person to reasonably resist unlawful police entry into his dwelling is unwarranted and unnecessarily broad."

The Magna Carta: another one of those outmoded documents over 100 years old. The Indiana Supreme Court has taken the state back to pre-Magna Carta days.

Atlas Shrugged

In our time?

The Greatest Art Vandal of All Time?

I've long thought that the Chinese emperor Chien-lung (transliterated today for some reason obscure to me as Qianlong) had a shot at that dubious title. While Holland Cotter of the NY Times doesn't make the same statement, he does note in a column on an exhibit at the Metropolitan Museum of Art:

As an art connoisseur, he had an uncannily sensitive eye, yet he insisted on incising his name into precious ceramics and writing it repeatedly on priceless paintings, effectively defacing them.

He defaced great art works in jade as well, including many archaic pieces.

The cretin seemed to think his possessing was the most important thing which had ever happened to them, carving and painting his poetry and name on thousands of the most important Chinese art pieces that a dynasty of emperors could accumulate.

Chien-lung (1735-1799) seemed to accumulate for the joy of vandalizing: Perhaps he had so little respect for the truly great creations of China because he had no self-respect. Who knows? Today his psychological perversions matter less than the results. Whether or not he was the worst art vandal or all time or not, he ranks among the worst. More at Wikipedia. Look under "Artistic Acheivements."

Content-based Prohibition of a Mural

Hmmm....Seems to me there was a store in Waikiki which ran into a similar ban on signs a couple or three decades ago. A version of Hokusai's Great Wave Off Kanagawa print on the side of a surf shop comes to mind.

More on the current affair here. Arlington, VA, is getting hauled into United States District Court by the Institute for Justice over the First Amendment issue.