Baby Boomer Excess Led to Hubris, Cultural Decay | National Review

Baby Boomer Excess Led to Hubris, Cultural Decay | National Review:

"Nonetheless, the so-called Baby Boomers have a lot to account for — given the sorry state of entertainment, sports, the media, and universities.

The Harvey Weinstein episode revealed two generational truths about Hollywood culture."

THE DUNNING-KRUGER EFFECT DEFINED

Instapundit » Blog Archive » THE DUNNING-KRUGER EFFECT DEFINED: https://youtu.be/pOLmD_WVY-E Or to put it another way, “I…:
THE DUNNING-KRUGER EFFECT DEFINED:

Or to put it another way, “I think that I’m a better speechwriter than my speechwriters. I know more about policies on any particular issue than my policy directors. And I’ll tell you right now that I’m gonna think I’m a better political director than my political director.”
(Via Maggie’s Farm.)Posted by Ed Driscoll at 5:14 pm

AM Fruitcake

History for November 16

History for November 16 - On-This-Day.com
Burgess Meredith 1908, Daws Butler 1916, Elizabeth Drew 1935 - Journalist
  

Marg Helgenberger 1958 - Actress ("C.S.I."), Oksana Baiul 1977, Maggie Gyllenhaal 1977 - Actress
      

1915 - Coca-Cola had its prototype for a countoured bottle patented. The bottle made its commercial debut the next year.


1952 - In the Peanuts comic strip, Lucy first held a football for Charlie Brown.


1957 - Jim Brown (Cleveland Browns) set an NFL season rushing record of 1163 yards after only eight games.


1973 - U.S. President Nixon signed the Alaska Pipeline measure into law.


1981 - A vaccine for hepatitis B was approved. The vaccine had been developed at Merck Institute for Therapeutic Research.


1998 - In Burlington, WIsconsin, five high school students, aged 15 to 16, were arrested in an alleged plot to kill a carefully selected group of teachers and students.


1998 - It was announced that Monica Lewinsky had signed a deal for the North American rights to a book about her affair with U.S. President Clinton.


2004 - A NASA unmanned "scramjet" (X-43A) reached a speed of nearly 10 times the speed of sound above the Pacific Ocean.

LIBERTY REVIEW

LIBERTY REVIEW:

https://libertyreview76.blogspot.com/2017/11/november-15-2017-ribbons-and-trophies.html

Ribbons and Trophies

By Tammy Derouin

Is anything surprising these days? We have people in government, a shadow government and fellow countrymen who are so focused on destroying the current president and his administration that they will push false stories to create a fictitious reality, at any cost, to meet their desired goal. What is their desired goal? How well do you think it will work for our country if it is dependent upon lies and deceit? When people prefer false information, rather than the truth or the desire to find the truth, we put our society and our country in grave danger.

Do we really prefer fiction over truth? Are we prepared to live with the consequences of accepting false stories to promote an agenda, while stifling the attempt to find the truth? The desire to limit our freedom was pretty transparent under the Obama administration. Attempts were made to rein him in but some sort of invisible shield seemed to protect him and his politicized governmental departments from truly being called on the carpet, why?

As attempts are being made to bring us back to a political center, a saying comes to mind. I have slightly modified it to fit our current situation; hell hath no fury like a blindsided progressive Left-wing Democrat. They were so sure that the American people had jumped on board their train of delusion that many of the young snowflakes, still holding their unearned ribbons and trophies, melted on the spot upon hearing the news that their candidate lost. Two visuals come to mind.......

The way we were-----Papa Was A Rolling Stone (Original Soul Train Vemix)

Boob-tube-----Leave It To Beaver S03E30 Beaver Finds a Wallet

The Regulatory State Is the Enemy of Economic Mobility

The Regulatory State Is the Enemy of Economic Mobility
"Why are Americans less likely to move to better opportunities than they used to be? The Wall Street Journal reports:

“When opportunity dwindles, a natural response—the traditional American instinct—is to strike out for greener pastures. Migrations of the young, ambitious and able-bodied prompted the Dust Bowl exodus to California in the 1930s and the reverse migration of blacks from Northern cities to the South starting in the 1980s.

Yet the overall mobility of the U.S. population is at its lowest level since measurements were first taken at the end of World War II, falling by almost half since its most recent peak in 1985.

In rural America, which is coping with the onset of socioeconomic problems that were once reserved for inner cities, the rate of people who moved across a county line in 2015 was just 4.1%, according to a Wall Street Journal analysis. That’s down from 7.7% in the late 1970s.”

One particular problem with today’s immobility is that people find themselves in areas where jobs are dwindling and pay tends to be lower. Why don’t they move to where the jobs are? This comprehensive article for the Journal by Janet Adamy and Paul Overberg points to a few factors:

“For many rural residents across the country with low incomes, government aid programs such as Medicaid, which has benefits that vary by state, can provide a disincentive to leave. One in 10 West Branch [Mich.] residents lives in low-income housing, which was virtually nonexistent a generation ago.”

And then there are regulations that discourage mobility:

“...Another obstacle to mobility is the growth of state-level job-licensing requirements, which now cover a range of professions from bartenders and florists to turtle farmers and scrap-metal recyclers. A 2015 White House report found that more than one-quarter of U.S. workers now require a license to do their jobs, with the share licensed at the state level rising fivefold since the 1950s.”

Read on! 

charles hugh smith-Weblog and Essays

charles hugh smith-Weblog and Essays
"1. Shred the entire 2,700 page tax code and replace it with a 25-page code. As I explained in The Fetid Swamp of Tax Reform (November 10, 2017), the 2,700 page current tax code is a complexity thicket designed to hide tax breaks and subsidies for big political donors.

Politicos give lip service to simplifying the tax code for PR purposes, but no politico actually wants radical simplification because this would eliminate the biggest grab-bag of political favors available to pass out to big donors.

Though radical simplification is politically impossible, it's the first and most important real reform.

2. Replace the entire convoluted mess of income tax for the bottom 99.5% with transaction taxes collected at the point of transaction. A transaction tax is similar to a value-added tax (VAT) or sales tax, but it's radically different in key ways: a transaction tax is levied on financial transactions, not just sales.

A transaction tax would be levied on every high-frequency stock trade, every loan that was sold, every financial transaction anywhere in the U.S. or any transaction anywhere in the world involving a U.S.-based entity or asset...

A transaction tax eliminates all tax returns, all accounting for income, deductions and expenses, and correlates to wealth/income. The working-poor household would pay a transaction fee when they buy something at a dollar store, but the fee would be much less than current state sales taxes. The point of the transaction tax is that it includes all the transactions of the wealthy class that aren't simple purchases of goods and services.

To insure a progressive tax structure, financial transactions above certain thresholds of size and frequency would be taxed at a higher rate...

Read it all!

School Discipline: Federal Rules Not Helping | National Review

School Discipline: Federal Rules Not Helping | National Review:

"DeVos has done an admirable job of reining in Barack Obama’s executive overreach. From giving states more freedom on K–12 schooling to paring back heavy-handed higher-education regulations, she’s taken step after step toward restoring a limited and principled federal role. But there is, unfortunately, one glaring exception: The Obama administration’s guidance on school discipline remains in full force."

Run, Joe, Run | The American Spectator

Run, Joe, Run | The American Spectator:
"Biden sees an America waiting with bated breath for him to challenge Trump.
Convinced of his own wonderfulness, Joe Biden trots around the talk shows as if on a perpetual victory lap.
What has he won?
Who knows?
It speaks to the embarrassing emptiness of liberal culture that such a buffoon is accorded the status of a victorious statesman. 
Encouraged in this delusion, Biden allows himself such modest musings as: “I have regret that I am not president. Because I think there’s so much opportunity. I think America is incredibly well-positioned.”
Still the blarney-ridden, puffed-chest phony with hair plugs of his empty senatorial days, Biden finds Trump very threatening to his manhood and likes to shadow-box him in the company of such tough questioners as Stephen Colbert.
On the campaign trail last year, Biden said that he didn’t want to debate Trump but to beat him up: “I wish I were in high school, I could take him behind the gym. That’s what I wish.”...
Read on!

Liberals must finally face facts about Bill & Hillary Clinton - NY Daily News

Liberals must finally face facts about Bill & Hillary Clinton - NY Daily News:
"In the past few weeks, I've been a woman of split personalities.
On a good day, I'm elated — empowered and inspired by the many women who have courageously opened the floodgates to help end the shroud of silence and shame that surrounds victims of sexual assault and harassment.
I shared my stories.
I brought other women together to share theirs.
We were giddy at the catharsis.
It felt like a sea change.
...While the right has certainly lost a significant amount of credibility on that front — conservative evangelicals defiantly embraced Trump despite his many troubling moral deficiencies — the left still has a long overdue unpaid bill to pay. 
Bill Clinton, that is.
That it has taken liberals almost 30 years to begin to question whether Clinton's behavior in the 1990s warrants additional scrutiny is both disturbing and unsurprising.
Disturbing, because his accusers were in many cases credible, yet were subjected to vicious smear campaigns by Clinton supporters and the Clintons themselves.
Unsurprising, because for the past three decades, Democrats have been trying to elect or re-elect a Clinton to office, and so covering up or denying their numerous and obvious flaws was for many a full-time job..."
Read on!

Lunch video-----Anti-White Racism on the Rise in America

Noon-toon

Report: Obama-era holdovers have led effort to funnel US arms to Iranian militants – TheBlaze

Report: Obama-era holdovers have led effort to funnel US arms to Iranian militants – TheBlaze:

"A new report from the Washington Free Beacon alleges that a substantial amount of United States military equipment has found its way into the hands of Iranian militant groups, with the tacit approval of the U.S. government.

The report, which is based on interviews with current and former U.S.  government officials, alleges that the military has turned a blind eye to the fact that large quantities of military equipment that was earmarked for use by Iraqi militias in the fight against the Islamic State has fallen into the hands of militant Shiite Iranian groups."

Yes, Virginia, there is vote fraud

Yes, Virginia, there is vote fraud
"If ever there were an election that proved the importance of accurate voter rolls, it was Virginia’s on Nov. 7.
With control of the General Assembly hanging in the balance, at least three Democratic candidates demanded recounts of their Republican opponents’ razor-thin victory margins.
One candidate led by 106 votes, another by 86, and a third led by only 10.
Another five races were decided by fewer than 900 votes. 

...People who oppose efforts to clean up voter rolls or to check voter IDs say that it could discourage some people from voting. 

But in the rare instance in which someone is removed from the rolls who is eligible to vote, that person can still vote. 

He or she can fill out a provisional ballot and furnish proof of residency later. 

So there is no justification for inaccurate voter rolls.
In 2013, Democrat Mark Herring defeated Republican state Sen. Mark Obenshain for attorney general by only 165 votes out of more than 2.2 million votes cast.
Nobody knows how many fraudulent votes are cast in any election, but we do know that literally thousands of ineligible voters are on Virginia’s voter rolls, including illegal immigrants and convicted felons.

...In May 2017, PILF issued a sequel, “Alien Invasion II,” which found:

•   Virginia election officials quietly removed 5,556 voters for non-citizenship between 2011 and May  2017;
•   1,852 of those removed as noncitizens cast ballots;
•   A total of 7,474 illegal ballots were cast from the pool of removed noncitizens;
•   Some records of illegal voting date back to the 1980s, way before their respective removals

Read on!

How can airlines stop hackers pwning planes over the air? And don't say 'regular patches' • The Register

How can airlines stop hackers pwning planes over the air? And don't say 'regular patches' • The Register
"At least some commercial aircraft are vulnerable to wireless hacking, a US Department of Homeland Security official has admitted.
A plane was compromised as it sat on the tarmac at a New Jersey airport by a team of boffins from the worlds of government, industry and academia, we're told. 
During the hack – the details of which are classified – experts accessed systems on the Boeing 757 via radio-frequency communications.
“We got the airplane on September 19, 2016. 
Two days later, I was successful in accomplishing a remote, non-cooperative, penetration,” said Robert Hickey, aviation program manager within the cyber-security division of the DHS's science and technology directorate..."
Read on!

#1 This day 1971-----Isaac Hayes - Theme from Shaft

Antarctic Volcano Role In Warming Was Understated | Science 2.0

Antarctic Volcano Role In Warming Was Understated | Science 2.0
"There is additional evidence a mantle plume, basically a geothermal heat source such as a volcano, is below Antarctica's Marie Byrd Land and it explains a substantial amount of the melting that creates lakes and rivers under the ice sheet. 
...The discovery may help explain why the ice sheet collapsed rapidly in an earlier era of rapid climate change, and why it is so unstable today. 
Antarctica's bedrock is laced with rivers and lakes, the largest of which is the size of Lake Erie...


Depiction of flowing water under the Antarctic ice sheet. Blue dots indicate lakes, lines show rivers. Marie Byrd Land is part of the bulging "elbow" leading to the Antarctic Peninsula, left center. Credit: NSF/Zina Deretsky

...At the end of the last ice age around 11,000 years ago, the ice sheet went through a period of rapid, sustained ice loss when changes in global weather patterns and rising sea levels pushed warm water closer to the ice sheet -- just as is happening today. 
Such a volcano explains this rapid loss..."
Read on!

You ought to know!

Transgender Inmate Sues Indiana Department of Correction to Obtain Hormone Therapy

Transgender Inmate Sues Indiana Department of Correction to Obtain Hormone Therapy:

"A transgender inmate is suing Indiana’s prison system for denying his requests to undergo hormone therapy.
Anthony Loveday, 55, claims the Indiana Department of Correction’s (DOC) decision to deny his hormone therapy is cruel and unusual punishment, according to the complaint obtained by the Indianapolis Star.

Loveday, who is biologically male but identifies as female, stated in the lawsuit that he experienced depression, anxiety, and suicidal thoughts because the state would not provide him hormone therapy."

Prosperity and Taxation: What Can We Learn from the 1950s? | International Liberty

Prosperity and Taxation: What Can We Learn from the 1950s? | International Liberty:
Prosperity and Taxation: What Can We Learn from the 1950s?
In my decades of trying to educate policy makers about the downsides of class-warfare tax policy, I periodically get hit with the argument that high tax rates don’t matter since America enjoyed a golden period of prosperity in the 1950s and early 1960s when the top tax rate was more than 90 percent.

Here’s an example from Politico of what I’m talking about.

Well into the 1950s, the top marginal tax rate was above 90%. …both real GDP and real per capita GDP were growing more than twice as fast in the 1950s as in the 2000s.

This comparison grates on me in part because both Bush and Obama imposed bad policy, so it’s no surprise that the economy did not grow very fast when they were in office.

But I also don’t like the comparison because the 1950s were not a halcyon era, as Brian Domitrovic explains.

…you may be thinking, “But wait a minute. The 1950s, that was the greatest economic era ever. That’s when everybody had a job. Those jobs were for life. People got to live in suburbia and go on vacation and do all sorts of amazing things. It was post-war prosperity, right?” Actually, all of these things are myths. In the 1950s, the United States suffered four recessions. There was one in 1949, 1953, 1957, 1960 — four recessions in 11 years. The rate of structural unemployment kept going up, all the way up to 8% in the severe recession of 1957-58. …there wasn’t significant economic growth in the 1950s. It only averaged 2.5 percent during the presidency of Dwight D. Eisenhower.

For today’s purposes, though, I want to focus solely on tax policy. And my leftist friends are correct that the United States had a punitive top tax rate in the 1950s.

This chart from the Politico story shows the top tax rate beginning on that dark day in 1913 when the income tax was adopted. It started very low, then jumped dramatically during the horrible presidency of Woodrow Wilson, followed by a big reduction during the wonderful presidency of Calvin Coolidge. Then it jumped again during the awful presidencies of Herbert Hoover and Franklin Roosevelt. The rate stayed high in the 1950s before the Kennedy tax cuts and Reagan tax cuts, which were followed by some less dramatic changes under George H.W. Bush, Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, and Barack Obama.

What do we know about the impact of the high tax rates put in place by Hoover and Roosevelt? We know the 1930s were an awful period for the economy, we know the 1940s were dominated by World War II, and we know the 1950s was a period of tepid growth.

But we also know that high tax rates don’t result in high revenues..."

Read on!

AM Fruitcake

History for November 15

History for November 15 - On-This-Day.com
William Pitt the Elder 1708 - Known as the Great Commoner, 1st Earl of Chatham, Georgia O'Keeffe 1887, Ed Asner 1929


Petula Clark 1932, Frida Lyngstad (ABBA) 1945, Beverly D'Angelo 1954



1777 - The Continental Congress approved the Articles of Confederation, precursor to the U.S. Constitution.


1806 - Explorer Zebulon Pike spotted the mountaintop that became known as Pikes Peak.


1864 - Union Gen. William T. Sherman and his troops began their "March to the Sea" during the U.S. Civil War.


1901 - Miller Reese Hutchison patented an electrical hearing aid.


1939 - U.S. President Franklin Roosevelt laid the cornerstone of the Jefferson Memorial in Washington, DC.


1969 - In Washington, DC, a quarter of a million protesters staged a peaceful demonstration against the Vietnam War.


1986 - Ivan F. Boesky, reputed to be the highest-paid person on Wall Street, faced penalties of $100 million for insider stock trading. It was the highest penalty ever imposed by the SEC.


1993 - A judge in Mineola, NY, sentenced Joey Buttafuoco to six months in jail for the statutory rape of Amy Fisher. Fisher was serving a prison sentence for shooting and wounding Buttafuoco's wife, Mary Jo.